Chapter Text
Agnes has a way about them, Cypress thinks, that makes them much like the sun. Particularly when they are playing the same few notes on their guitar to try to get them just right, the smell of baking bread and roasted mushrooms hanging in the air because Baba is making them all supper. When they hum while they try to fix their hair, folded over the shoreline in homespace to study their reflection. When they watch Tango whoop and holler when they beat them to the valley's temple with a warmness that was once for Cypress a lifetime ago. It was this way that let them slot themselves into Baba and Tango’s lives so effortlessly as a moth; brought Cassius into the fold of their strange little family when they needed a place to stay.
It is also this way of theirs that makes sadness fit so ill on Agnes’ face. So when Cypress came padding up feather-light behind them, huddled on the cliff that looked over the massive lake-turned-rink nestled in the valley where a handful of skychildren were sliding about, deep in a game of tag, and shook out the good half of their cape ‘til the little brass bell Baba had secured to the front jingled, they were not expecting Agnes to flinch and look back with wide eyes and streaks where tears had made themselves a route down their mask. Had they been Tango, they would’ve begun bombarding Agnes with questions. Had they been Cassius, they would’ve pulled them onto the rink below to join the other skychildren’s game. Had they been Baba, they would’ve pulled them into a tight hug and brushed their hands over their hair.
Cypress did none of these, and maybe it would’ve been better if they had-- would’ve made them a better friend. But they were Cypress, and they stood and stared at this Agnes that was so unlike the Agnes they knew, and they brought themselves down to sit in the snow a little ways away from them, and they watched the rink while sniffles and hitched breathing were drowned out by the jubilant calls and chirps that echoed through the mountains, and when the noises settled into consciously deep breaths that wavered in an effort to stay steady, Cypress turned to peer at them through their eyes squinted hard against the blinding white of the valley and began to wring their wrist in the nervous way they tend to. Agnes pressed the thumbs that held the pick and neck of their guitar together while their other fingers knitted together in their own nervous way.
“I thought you didn’t like the valley,” like a sheet thrown hastily over something unsightly, like a nice distraction from a terrible certainty, “You said it’s too bright here.”
“I don’t,” it crackles a little, still, but they’ve gotten better at making their whispers heard. They can’t call anymore, might never again, really.
Agnes doesn’t fill the silence that follows for a moment, like they’re waiting for something Cypress is supposed to say. It doesn’t come. They just sit, quietly as they do most things, and put the words they don't say into the palm passing over their wrist. Agnes slowly turns their head back to face the rink, draws their knees up close to their chest like a moth, a very Agnes-like thing to do, and lets out a long breath. This one doesn’t hitch. “I’m sorry you had to see that, you must think I’m rather silly. I’m not even sure exactly why I came out here; I suppose too many small things just became too dreadful to handle all of the sudden.” They laugh, pulling the side of their hand across the streaks on their mask until they’re too smudged to see.
Cypress thinks they aren’t wrong-- there are many small things to be sad about, indeed.
“Then we will sit here until they become less dreadful.”
There is more they want to tell Agnes. That when they are ready, they will go home to Baba and Agnes will play the guitar like they always do, and Cassius will likely sing with them the way they like to when they’ve had a good day, and Tango will trail in with a parade of manta at their heels, insisting they feed them baked bread and roasted mushrooms, too. But, they have to be careful and ration out their words sparingly. Sooner rather than later, even their whispers will give out. They like to think, though, that Agnes hears the words they do not speak when they lean sideways and pull Cypress over by the shoulder and hug them tight against their side; and just like that, they are like the sun once more. The skychildren below have long since flopped into an exhausted pile on the rink’s centermost isle.
(When they get home, Tango does indeed bring a brigade of hungry manta behind them.)