Chapter Text
Clouds were soft, the girl realized. They were soft, and she had no idea why it had taken her this long to try resting on one.
She leaned back and sunk slightly into the plush surface. Not too far that she was worried about falling through, but enough that her neck and back felt supported. It almost felt like a hug. What she wouldn’t do for a real one right now, though.
The sky was beautiful tonight. It was full of twinkling lights, reaching out to her from afar, illuminating brilliant clouds of dust and getting sucked into black holes. She wanted to be out there, dancing with her siblings, letting go for once in her life.
But for now, she thought, the cloud was good enough.
The girl closed one eye and raised her arm above her head. There was a star smack dab in the middle of her vision, and she pinched it with her thumb and index fingers. She mimed dragging it across the sky in an arc, wrenching it out of its home and taking it on a journey. The dust in the air sparkled as she did so, and she smiled.
It was a funny thought -- the idea that you could take something as brilliant and powerful as a star and play with it like it was a toy. Stars weren’t toys. They were friends, and she was so, so lonely.
She closed her eyes, just for a moment, but when she reopened them, there was a massive comet between her and the star. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before. It just hung there, frozen in space. Motionless. Breathless.
The girl reached up again and wrapped her fingers around the comet. From her perspective, it seemed like it was in her reach, even though she knew it was millions of miles away. So far away that she’d never be able to tighten her grip, jerk her hand back, and bring it to rest with her on the cloud.
Except, that’s exactly what happened.
“Hi sweetheart,” the comet whispered.
The girl flushed bright red. “Hi there, m’lady.”
The comet giggled. “Miss me?”
“So much,” the girl breathed. “Every day.”
“I’m sorry.” Her smile held for a moment, and then turned into something darker. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know. Me too.”
They fell silent. The comet leaned back into the cloud just as the girl had, and looked up at her celestial home. For a few minutes, there was no need for words. The air glittered, the stars danced, and the girl… wasn’t lonely. She reached over and slipped her hand into the comet’s.
They smiled together. The girl puckered her lips, leaned over, and...
A voice reached into her ear, so tiny and distant that she wasn’t even sure it was real. “Mizar?”
The girl sat up. “Did you hear that?”
The comet cocked her head, letting her hair cascade over one shoulder. “Hear what?”
“I could’ve sworn I heard something.” The girl looked both ways, but nothing seemed to reveal itself. “Must’ve been my imagination.”
“That does sound like you,” the comet said, smirking.
The sky started to change colors, moving from a dark, deep blue to an orange. The girl frowned. “How do you mean?”
“You just have had the wildest imagination.” The comet leaned forward on her palm. “That’s always been so inspiring to me.”
“Heh. I guess. I guess I just -”
This time, it was a shout. “Mizar!”
“There it was again!” she yelped. She jerked her head upward, and gasped. The sky had lost its peaceful visage and seemed to be boiling over -- yellows and oranges and reds cavorting and bubbling wildly. “You see that, right? Do you see that?”
The comet smiled weakly. “Yeah. I do. It’ll be okay.”
“It’ll be okay? What does that -”
There was a sound like a whip cracking across the sky. Something bright appeared overhead, bright and yet so overwhelmingly dark. Something great and terrible, unfamiliar and unwelcome, and it was screaming through the heavens, igniting the dust as it flew. “Mizar! There you are! Mizar!”
The comet said nothing, and moved in close to hug her. The girl, frozen in shock, didn’t think to return the favor. All she could see was the furious ball of something hurtling violently toward her.
“‘Til we meet again,” the comet whispered in her ear. “‘Til then, you’re going to have to wake up.”
The cloud beneath them began to shake. It was like the entire world was being torn apart. And all the while, the thing kept screaming, screaming so loud that the sound was rattling the girl’s very essence.
“MIZARMIZARMIZARMI-”
Jay woke with a start.
She instinctively tried to sit up, but there was a jolt of pain in her side, and she fell limp onto her pillow. She stared into the inky darkness of the room, trying to get her bearings without moving. She was awake now. She knew she was awake, lying in bed, safe and sound, and everything was fine -
A fit of coughing wracked her body. Her hand flew to her chest and started scrunching up her shirt in panic. She tried as hard as she could to just take a deep breath in… and out… in… and out... Her body hurt -- all of everything hurt. But this had worked for her yesterday, and the day before that, so she’d just have to power through. That was what she was best at, after all.
Her breathing gradually slowed, and her heart rate returned to normal. The pain in her chest started to subside. One last choking cough, and she lay limp on the bed again.
Everything was fine, for some definition of fine. She was still alive, after all.
She wiped away the spittle that had accumulated on her face, and sighed. What was up with that dream? It had been a while since she’d had a pleasant dream -- these days, her dreams couldn’t seem to stop fixating on all of the ways she could accidentally get hurt at work. But that dream had been different. It was peaceful. It was relaxing in a way that she hadn’t experienced in quite a long time. And she’d been talking to someone, someone she cared about…
An uncomfortable tickle rippled through her skin, and she looked down to the foot of the bed. She couldn’t see anything but she could swear someone was there watching her.
Her eyes grew wide. Her arm lashed out to her side and flicked on the lightswitch. The sudden brightness seared her vision and for a minute she could only squint. When her eyes finally adjusted to the light, she gazed back down to the end of her bed. The room was a blurry mess, but as far as she could tell, there was no one there.
She sighed again. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Again. Akko had always told her that she had the wildest imagination.
Jay’s heart twinged, but this pain wasn’t physical.
Taking a deep breath, she slowly lifted herself into a sitting position. She fumbled around on her bedside table for her glasses and put them on. The room was the same as it always was. Small. Cold. Lonely.
She glanced at the clock. It was 9th trentile on the dot, which meant she still had a whole trentile before she had to get up. But she could tell from the way her skin was crawling and her mind was racing that she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Which was fine. She wanted to get some writing in today anyway.
The room was filled with a symphony of creaking and popping joints as she picked herself up and made her way over to the desk on the other side of the room. Out of bed, she felt less exhausted, less encumbered by her body. The tightness in her chest eased up a little more, and the ache in her muscles slowly worked itself out. Everything was fine. She was alive.
When she got to the desk, she said in a sing-song voice, “Hey, computer, wake up!”
The screen lit up, revealing a text document that was just as barren as the last time she’d seen it. Her eyes scanned over the few lines she’d gotten down so far:
Harsh cold nights in the recesses of space
Plucked right out, leaving me without a trace
Death defied, now she’s on her way back home
Jay frowned. She’d gotten stuck on that line the day before, not because of the rhyme scheme -- she knew the line would end with the word “alone” -- but because she didn’t quite know what she wanted to say.
She briefly closed her eyes and thrummed her fingers against her nose. Behind her eyelids, the image of the distant star from her dream reappeared. She thought about closing her fingers safely around it, and then she knew how she wanted to end the stanza.
“One last hope that I won’t be so alone,” she said aloud, and the computer wrote it down.
“Rhysti-Du!” came a barking voice when Jay walked into the mine that morning.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s Jay, sir.”
Her shift manager, Kanif, narrowed his three pairs of eyes and peered up at her, just like he did every day. “You’ll get a first name when you deserve it! What are you doing coming in so late?”
She glanced up at the clock projected on the wall. “Are you kidding me? It’s two minutes past 11th trentile. I’ve been working here my whole life and you still can’t look past two minutes?”
“That is correct!” Kanif fumed. “You, along with everyone else here, are expected to be through this door and scanned into the system by exactly 11th trentile! I’m sick of having to give you this speech!”
She gritted her teeth. “Sorry, sir, it won’t happen again.”
“See to it that it doesn’t! You’ve been skating on thin ice, Rhysti-Du. And let me tell you,” he added, reaching up to grab her chin and direct her gaze down at him. “I don’t care how many decades you’ve worked here. You’re not ‘special’ just because you’re older than the other workers. If another ion compressor detonates under your watch, you are history! Is that clear?”
She swatted his hand away. “Clear as cobalt, sir.”
She walked past him and up to the timekeeping system’s biometric scanner. She reached her hand in, and it made a harsh dinging noise, indicating that she was late. There was a whir, and her mining equipment was deposited from a chute onto a hoverdolly beside the scanner. She grabbed it by the handles and started to walk away with it.
“One more thing, Rhysti-Du,” Kanif called out.
Jay stopped, but didn’t turn to face him. “Yes?”
Even without seeing him, Jay could sense the smarmy grin on his face. “Since you were late, I’ll have to dock your pay for the whole trentile.”
Images of her monthly bills flashed before her eyes, decorated by the cruel glee underlying her manager’s voice. Something snapped within her, and she turned on him with fists clenched. Just like every day, she entertained the thought of pummeling the lights out of him. But then she saw the clock projection floating above his head, flickering 11:05 back at her, and she remembered how poorly that would work out for her.
She instead ground her teeth together, and forced herself not to scream when she spoke. “Well, then, I guess I might as well leave and come back in 45 minutes, seeing as I won’t be getting paid until then anyway.”
He narrowed his eyes again. “Good one. Get back to work.”
Jay opened her mouth, and then shut it before she said something she’d regret. She turned back to her hoverdolly and set off to her work area. She felt Kanif’s eyes on her as she heaved the dolly out of the room, and she knew how much enjoyment he must’ve been getting out of bossing her around.
As she passed through the doorway, she felt that prickling feeling on her skin again, like there was something else watching her too. But she didn’t want to give Kanif the satisfaction of seeing her turn around, so she ignored it and pressed on.
It was late when Jay finally powered off her quantum axe and laid it on the hoverdolly. She knew she couldn’t afford to have her pay docked, so she worked an extra trentile to make up for it. Combined with the trentile of sleep she’d missed, she was feeling extremely worn down at the end of the day.
Her body cried out to her with exhaustion as she pushed forward with her hoverdolly and began the winding trip from her work area to the mine’s entrance. The mine was mostly empty at that point, with only a few other workers left behind who must have also been unlucky enough to miss the start of the day by a minute or two. She waved at them weakly as she went, but didn’t bother exchanging words. She knew neither she nor they had the energy for that.
When she arrived at the entrance to the mine, she expected to see Kanif still standing there with the same callous grin on his face. To her surprise, he was nowhere to be seen. He usually loved to rub her exhaustion in her face, even if it meant staying late. But it seemed that even he had better things to do that night.
The world was dark when she deposited her equipment and stepped outside. It was a little after 22nd trentile, and the nearest star, Prima, had probably just dipped below the horizon. After the day she’d had, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She always loved watching the star set -- loved watching the sky flush with pinks and oranges and yellows and reds.
She also loved watching it with someone. A friend, a family member, a lover… She hadn’t had any of those in quite a while.
She swallowed, and she started on her walk home. She made a quick stop at the diner at the end of the block to pick up some dinner so she wouldn’t starve, just like every day. Then she headed out of the town proper, and into the residential district. There were fewer and fewer people on the street with every turn she made. Soon, she was alone, and instead of dodging passersby, she found herself gazing up into the starry sky as she walked.
It was beautiful, as always. And as she padded down the street, exhaustion weighing down her mind, she wondered what would happen if she reached up into the sky and...
There was an odd noise, like what she imagined “twinkling stars” sounded like. Then, rustling, from not far ahead of her. Jay blinked, and took her eyes off the sky to find that she was in a dark alley.
Great.
Maybe she’d made a mistake taking this route home, but it was by far the fastest way, and it wasn’t usually this dark when she went home after work. If she ended up getting mugged because of Kanif playing games with her, she might not be able to restrain herself from hurting him the next time she saw him.
“Anyone there?” she yelled into the dark. “Show yourself!”
There was a pause, and Jay wondered whether she’d maybe imagined the noise and the rustling. It wouldn’t have been the first time that day her imagination had been working in overtime. She was just about to let out a sigh of relief… and then the darkness started to chuckle.
“Oh, that’s right,” the voice replied. It had a weird echo to it that would’ve been intimidating if it didn’t sound so… giddy. “You can’t see me. I’ll fix that.”
Jay set her jaw. Right. That was enough. “You think I’m gonna be an easy target just because I’m old?” she shouted. “Get out of here, I don’t have anything you want.”
There was that chuckle again, and from the darkness stepped a man. She couldn’t make out any of his features in the low lighting, but she could see he was wearing a ridiculously old fashioned suit and a matching top hat.
“Don’t be silly,” he responded, and Jay felt a shiver rush through her body. “It’s you I’ve been looking for, Mizar.”