Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was his own fault, really, for daring to assume that just because Yuuko's latest task seemed to involve nothing worse than a foreign stage magician and some white rabbits that were slightly better at disappearing on cue than their job description usually required, this was going to be one of those errands that were only moderately dangerous. It wasn't as though he'd gone and asked just where those rabbits had been going to, out loud or otherwise; and this whole scene was getting old quickly. One wrong step, and then there was nothing but that absolute darkness that rolled in from everywhere and swallowed the entire world (or more likely just swallowed Watanuki, for economy's sake), and tended to mean that someone was having a near-death experience and it was probably him. And then just when his head stopped spinning, someone tapped him on the shoulder and said EXCUSE ME.

The one good thing about the situation to that point was that the spirit, or youkai, or shinigami, or whatever it was today was not likely to be the sort to tell Watanuki he screamed like a girl.

Actually, shinigami sounded like a pretty reasonable description. Watanuki had never really taken enough personal interest in the various monsters that had plagued his life to learn the names and natures of everything the world's various cultures had to offer in this department, but he did not need a reference book to know that a skeleton in a dark cowl holding a scythe was not good news.

"Oh no. Nonono, you're not…"

I'M AFRAID SO.

"I'm not…"

ER, NO. NOT AS SUCH. Death had the kind of voice that was made for doom and sentencing eternities of horror, which may have explained why even 'not as such' sounded rather more like 'not yet'. IT WAS A CLOSE CALL, BUT I BELIEVE THAT FRIEND OF YOURS IS ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING QUITE HEROIC.

That was an improvement on being dead, certainly, but only just. "Doumeki? Not again!"

HE HAS BEEN GETTING RATHER A LOT OF PRACTICE IN THAT DEPARTMENT LATELY.

"IT ISN'T LIKE ANYONE ASKS HIM TO!"

ACTUALLY, I BELIEVE THAT DURING THE LAST INCIDENT, YOU YELLED SOMETHING TO THE EFFECT OF...

"IT DOESN'T MATTER NO-ONE ASKED HIM TO!"

The spectre hesitated. ...THOSE WERE NOT YOUR EXACT WORDS AT THE TIME.

A corner of Watanuki's mind was questioning the wisdom of arguing the motivations of the person who was, very likely, right now saving your life. Watanuki steadfastly ignored it. Another corner pointed out that he'd just had a screaming fit at Death, or some manifestation thereof, and was he sure this was really how he wanted to handle the situation? Despite all assurances, clearly he was in some real danger or he wouldn't be here, which left Watanuki with the task of deciding whether this was going to be one of those serious moments when failure to tread carefully could be a genuinely fatal mistake, or whether his only hope of getting out of this with his fragile sanity intact was to lose his shit now and just hope he could find it again afterwards.

The rest of his mind managed to come up with something more practical. "But you didn't show up any of those other times I was… and if I'm not really going to die this time either…" Near-death experiences were rapidly becoming part of his week. Near Death experiences, however, when he showed up for a chat, were something new.

ACTUALLY, SINCE YOU WON'T HAVE ANYTHING PRESSING TO DO FOR THE NEXT FEW HOURS, I WAS HOPING YOU COULD PASS ON A MESSAGE FOR ME. TO ONE MS ICHIHARA YUUKO. YOU SEE, SHE'S BEEN CAUSING RATHER A LOT OF TROUBLE IN MY DEPARTMENT LATELY.

Watanuki had long since reached the point where it no longer surprised him to learn that someone knew Yuuko - but even so, to hear this from a skeleton during yet another near death experience was pushing the boundaries of his nonchalancy a little.

WHAT WITH ALL THE WISHES AND INTERDIMENTIONAL TRANSIT AND OTHER WHATNOT SHE PUTS HER CLIENT THROUGH ITS BECOMING QUITE IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO KEEP TRACK OF WHO IS MEANT TO GO WHERE AND WHEN. IT'S ALL BECOMING RATHER INCONVENIENT, AS I'M SURE YOU CAN IMAGINE. YOURSELF, FOR INSTANCE. PRIOR TO HER INTERFERENCE, WE HAD YOU SCHEDULED IN SIGNIFICANTLY EARLIER.

That was… well, okay, that wasn't remotely nice to hear, but it wasn't far from what Watanuki had half-suspected to be true ever since he first stumbled into Yuuko's shop. "I was supposed to be eaten by one of those spirits, wasn't I?" He'd probably been lucky to make it to his teen years as it was.

NOT EXACTLY.

Another horrible possibility struck him. "The lady from the park then – did she…" It would fit. If he hadn't collapsed in Yuuko's shop that day, there probably wouldn't have been anyone to stop him from going back.

ACTUALLY, IN THE VERSION OF HISTORY I WAS REFERING TO, YOU AND SHE WOULD NEVER HAVE HAD THE OPPORUNITY TO MEET.

Watanuki wracked his brains for other possibilities. One more truly horrible one came up. "Was Himiwari involved?"

NO.

Then what…?

WHEN THE TRUCK HIT YOU SHE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ANYWHERE IN THE VICINITY.

Watanuki's previous train of thought derailed itself in truly spectacular fashion.

"A truck?!"

MOVING AT APPROXIMATELY FORTY MILES PER HOUR. QUITE DEADLY.

A traitorous part of his mind which Watanuki would later vehemently deny any and all affiliation with took over long enough to get out "Are you sure Himawari wasn't involved?"

QUITE. SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN AWAY FROM SCHOOL SICK FOR SEVERAL DAYS PRIOR TO THE EVENT. A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF JUDGEMENT WOULD HAVE SIMPLY MEANT YOU FAILED TO LOOK IN THE NECESSARY DIRECTION BEFORE CROSSING.

Watanuki was surprised to find this proclamation of events almost… disappointing. "How was Yuuko involved in stopping that?"

Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, IF WE KNEW THAT, WE WOULDN'T BE EXPERIENCING THESE PROBLEMS. IF IT IS ANY CONSOLATION, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN RELATIVELY QUICK AND PAINLESS.

"Ah…?"

THAT IS, RELATIVE TO DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION, PARTIAL DISMEMBERMENT AND INCINERATION, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, YOU PICK UP A WIDE SCALE OF POSSIBILITIES IN MY JOB.

Watanuki, in a rare moment of real wisdom, did not try to figure out what to say to that. Why worry about one missed death when you had one more every other week?

GETTING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL ISSUE, IF YOU COULD JUST DELIVER THE MESSAGE. THE SITUATION REGARDING SOME OF HER CLIENTS IS BECOMING SADLY RIDICULOUS.

With limited success, Watanuki tried to figure out exactly what the problem was here. "Can't you go to see her yourself? She's nearly always at the shop."

Human skulls are not designed to look sheepish, but this one somehow pulled it off. ER, IT'S A BIT EMBARASING, ACTUALLY. I DON'T SEEM TO BE ABLE TO GET IN. IT'S RATHER A LONG STORY.

There was a pause, just long enough for Watanuki to wonder whether this was all that was going to be said on the subject.

THOUGH, COME TO THINK OF IT, YOU DO HAVE PLENTY OF TIME. Death concluded. I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE RULES TO A GAME KNOWN AS 'CRIPPLE MR ONION', ARE YOU?

Watanuki looked at him as though he expected Death to start sprouting tulips from his eye sockets any second.

NEITHER AM I. ALBERT PLAYS THE OCCASIONAL HAND, HOWEVER. ORDINARILY THIS DOES NOT CAUSE TROUBLE, HOWEVER IT SO HAPPENED THAT SOME TIME AGO, HE CHALLENGED A LATE SORCEROR BY THE NAME OF CLOW REED TO A GAME. IT APPEARS MR REED INCLUDED A SUM OWED TO HIM BY MS ICHIHARA AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH IN A WAGER IN THAT GAME. APPARENTLY THIS IS LEGAL – OR BECAME LEGAL ONCE ALBERT ACCEPTED THIS ASSURANCE THAT REED WOULD COLLECT THE MONEY AT HIS FIRST OPPORTUNITY. ALBERT FAILED TO ESTABLISH THE FACT THAT, THE WOMAN IN QUESTION BEING STILL IN THE RELM OF THE LIVING – AND, I MIGHT ADD, UNUSUALLY DETERMINED TO REMAIN THERE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE – THE REQUIRED OPPORTUNITY MIGHT NEVER ARISE. Death had either missed the fact that there was no way his listener could have know who this 'Albert' was, or had correctly guessed that Watanuki did not want to know. THIS CAUSED SOME DIFFICULTITES WHEN ALBERT WON THAT HAND, AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE.

WE DID TRY TO SETTLE MATTERS AMICABLY, IN THE SPIRIT OF THINGS, YOU SEE.

Watanuki was following this just well enough to try to imagine how Yuuko might respond to Death showing up to collect money owed by her to someone deceased in order to settle a gambling debt. It was far easier than it probably should have been.

AND, TO SHORTEN THE TALE, LET US SAY I MAY NOT HAVE ESPECIALLY INGRATIATED MYSELF TO HER IN THE PROCESS. I DOUBT SHE WOULD GO SO FAR AS TO IMPEDE OFFICIAL BUSINESS, OF COURSE. HOWEVER UNTIL THAT ARISES, ENTERING THE SHOP WITHOUT INVITATION DOES NOT SEEM TO BE POSSIBLE. I AM SURE THE MATTER CAN BE DEALT WITH BY A SIMPLE EXCHANGE OF SOME INFORMATION, OVER TEA PERHAPS, BUT WE ARE RATHER DEPENDENT ON YOUR HELP TO GET THAT FAR.

"Okay?" Said Watanuki uncertainly.

MUCH APPRECIATED. NOW, YOU SHOULD FIND YOURSELF WAKING UP SHORTLY, AND WE SHOULD BE GOING AS WE HAVE SOME OTHER APPOINTMENTS WE DO NOT WANT TO BE LATE FOR.

ALTHOUGH OUR CLIENTS INVARIABLY WILL BE. He added. HA.

Watanuki did some more staring.

LATE, THAT IS. Death added helpfully. AT THE APPOINTMENT. WHICH IS TO SAY... He appeared to give up at this juncture. I'LL JUST GO, I THINK.

Death started to fade, which is to say the few unshrouded parts of him which stood out against the backdrop gradually ceased to do so. One of several things that had been nagging Watanuki for some time jumped to the fore.

"Why are you saying 'we' anyway?"

SQUEAK. Said a voice near his ankle. With great expenditure of willpower, Watanuki managed not to look down.

With the exception of two minor further incidents, that was just about it for Watanuki's encounter with Death. Of those remaining two, the first occurred almost immediately after Watanuki woke up to the sight of Doumeki staring at him as though he was a pile of week old laundry he'd found on the floor and also, one fairly brief argument later, to discover that one of the white rabbits hadn't made it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Watanuki just barely heard some voices saying:

THEY AREN'T TECHNICALLY RODENTS, YOU KNOW.

SQUEAK.

OH WELL, IF YOU INSIST.

He added this to his already considerable list of things not to think about from that day.

The second occurred incident a few days later, and was more significant. Watanuki was passing through the gateway that lead into Yuuko's shop on a sunny Saturday morning when the world attained a foggy quality that the weather was not at all to blame for, and a rather familiar cowled figure appeared. This made twice within a week, which was in no way fair, and Watanuki wasted no time making this known.

"NOTHING REMOTELY DEADLY JUST HAPPENED. IT IS TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING FOR ME TO BE DYING. AGAIN." He added, because it was true.

SORRY. JUST ON MY WAY OUT. BUT SINCE WE RAN INTO EACH OTHER AGAIN, I THOUGHT PERHAPS YOU COULD DELIVER ANOTHER MESSAGE FOR ME.

This sounded ominous. Watanuki was not going to tell Death that he was probably lucky the first message got through at all. When he got back, it had been very important to yell loudly at Yuuko for several minutes on the subject of her sanity, his well being, his own sanity, and the purpose of the two surviving white rabbits. He nearly made it out too, before he remembered long enough to turn back and add "AND SOME WEIRD SHINIGAMI MADE OF BONES WANTS TO TALK TO YOU." In retrospect he could probably have been clearer on this matter, but evidently Yuuko had gotten the message, which was no real surprise.

"Another message? You're coming back again?"

NO, I BELIEVE WE WERE ABLE TO REACH A MUTUALLY SATISFACTORY ARRANGEMENT. BUT GIVEN THAT ENTERING HER SHOP REMAINS PROBLEMATIC, I'D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU COULD REMIND HER THAT I DO NEED BINKY BACK AT THE END OF THE WEEK.

"What." Said Watanuki, but Death was gone, and this is a state of matters which no-one in their right mind should ever complain about.

The next thing that happened of any real importance involved Yuuko, waiting for him in the doorway, and already in a good mood that morning.

"Watanuki!" She sparkled at him, and Watanuki could actually feel the horror the rest of the day had in store for him. "Tell me, have you ever wanted a pony?"

Chapter Text

There wasn't a lot of space just behind Watanuki on the footpath that morning, so Doumeki found himself trailing behind. He was not far enough back for Watanuki not to notice him.

"She didn't say you had to come!"

"But she sent you past the temple, right?" Doumeki pointed out reasonably.

"It was the shortest route! Don't you have a path to sweep or something?"

"It'll wait. You can help me finish when we get back," he suggested.

Watanuki made a number of semi-coherent spluttering noises in some kind of protest.

It looked like it was going to be an interesting day.

The day was already far too interesting for Watanuki's liking.

It had been one of those mornings when Watanuki absolutely dreaded going past the temple. True, this was common to most days that required him to go anywhere near the place with the expectation of meeting a certain Doumeki Shizuka, but today was still looking to be one that really stood out in the field of personal humiliation. Watanuki had long since come to the understanding that Yuuko's purpose on this earth was to make his life miserable under the dubious guise of it being "all for his own good," but wasn't it enough that he had to cook her meals and clean her shop and fetch her disappearing rabbits and deliver messages from shinigami hailing from other worlds?

Oh, of course not. Yuuko was entirely capable of getting creative.

There wasn't even going to be any delay to this meeting, because Doumeki was right out in front of the temple, engaged in the temple-dweller's never-ending duty of sweeping the front path. Watanuki maintained just enough faith in the universe to hope that there was still a chance he could just get past here without Doumeki saying anything like…

"That's a horse," said Doumeki, and Watanuki snapped like a bowstring.

"THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR CLEARING THAT UP. I WAS JUST WONDERING WHETHER YOU WERE GOING TO BE ABLE TO SEE IT, YOU
UNSYMPATHETIC BASTARD!"

"Everyone else can see it," Doumeki pointed out, in a possibly deliberate attempt to ignore perfectly good sarcasm. On the other side of the road, two young children, both pointing and squealing at the animal which was currently chewing on a tuft of grass outside the gate, were dragged past the shrine by their mother with some difficulty.

Watanuki gave a heartfelt sigh. "It's all Yuuko's doing." He tugged on the halter a couple of times, trying to make Binky give up on the grass. Binky relented, but the moment Watanuki let the halter slacken, he bent down again. "She thinks because he likes me, it should be my job to give him some exercise. And I never even wanted a pony!" he added, aware this last bit might have made more sense given some context, but equally aware Doumeki would be the last person in the universe to notice.

Doumeki regarded the horse with the same cool expression he used on everything from Watanuki's lunches to giant, invisible snake-spirits about to make lunch out of him.

"You're supposed to ride them. Not lead them around like a dog."

"Of course you are! But where would I have learned to do something like that?!"

Doumeki shrugged. "It's your horse."

"IT IS NOT MY HORSE! What kind of crazy person even keeps a horse in the middle of the city…?" Inspiration struck mid sentence. "Wait-- don't you know how to handle horses?"

"Nope."

"But your grandfather had a horse."

"Never rode it."

"Why not?"

"You can't ride in a girl's kimono."

And that there – that expression and this whole situation and that sentence – was the only evidence Watanuki ever needed to prove that Doumeki's divine purpose in this world was to drive him completely insane.

Yuuko's hand-drawn map lead them to a vacant lot between two buildings, and there the directions stopped. Watanuki shook it and turned it over a few times as though it might magically produce some new instructions (which, knowing Yuuko, was a possibility), but nothing useful emerged. Doumeki looked around the lot suspiciously.

"Oi," he called to Watanuki.

"What?"

"There isn't anything here, is there?"

"What the hell kind of question is that? Of course not."

"Hm."

Doumeki started a lap around the perimeter of the lot, just in case, and waited for whatever was going to happen.

Binky found himself another nice tuft of grass. Watanuki gave up and left him to it.

The lot had been vacant long enough to have collected a good stock of long grass and weeds, which Binky was now working his way through with some gusto. There was nothing to sit on that wasn't dirty or dusty, but after ten minutes, Watanuki gave in to his legs' loudening protests and sat down anyway. It was starting to look like it would be a very boring afternoon. Watanuki didn't trust boring afternoons; he'd been working for Yuuko too long.

It was just possible, Watanuki decided, that Yuuko really had sent him here to spend the afternoon in Doumeki's company while the horse she'd borrowed took care of feeding itself. Of course, that wouldn't explain the matchbox, but the matchbox wasn't something Watanuki was in any great rush to have explained.

To be a little more specific about Watanuki's position at this point, in order to get him through the day, Yuuko had supplied him with the following:

1 (one) borrowed horse (white, male, unsaddled, answers to the name of 'Binky,' or rather, doesn't answer, since (thank god) it was yet to show an inclination to talking).

1 (one) map, hand-drawn on the back of an envelope, apparently in crayon. Yuuko had not strictly told him to follow it when she handed it to him, merely made the suggestion that he might want to take a couple of things with him while he was out exercising the horse, but Watanuki knew her well enough to know how these things worked.

1 (one) matchbox, containing 1 (one) dead beetle. This had been handed to him with no explanation whatsoever. Worse still was the suggestion she'd made that if he did find a use for it, it would be taken out of his pay. Watanuki didn't want to know what the going rate for a dead beetle in a matchbox was when Yuuko gave it to you. It was bound to be far more than anyone else would ever dream of charging for it. Anyone else would probably agree it was worth a few yen to have such rubbish taken away.

A raven swooped on a rounded clump of dirt, rolled it over with its beak and pecked at it a few times in a disappointed manner. The lot continued being empty.

Over the other side, Doumeki was poking at a pile of broken timber, which they'd both generally assumed was the remnants of whatever had been here before the space returned to vacancy.

"Oi," called Doumeki's voice again. "Isn't there something odd about this stuff? It's been worn too smooth, like driftwood."

Reactions warred in Watanuki's head. On one hand, he knew it was possible Doumeki could be on to something. On the other, he knew Doumeki was the greatest idiot-jerk the universe had ever produced. These were difficult perspectives to reconcile.

"So someone's been using this place as a dumping ground, so what?"

Doumeki didn't appear to hear him. "Do you know what barnacles look like?"

"Those things that live on the bottom of ships? How would I know?"

Doumeki's frown grew deeper. "Do you smell salt?"

Watanuki made a concentrated effort to breathe through his mouth. "We're miles from the beach."

"I know."

There was a clatter as Doumeki let the plank he was holding fall back on to the pile. The silence that followed stretched out just long enough that something had to make the effort to fill it.

"Here, that's Binky, innit?" said a voice. "What's he doing here?"

From Doumeki's perspective, the situation looked like this.

Watanuki was waving his arms at a raven and talking to someone who didn't seem to be there, if by 'talking to' you meant 'arguing with', and if by 'arguing' you meant 'yelling at the top of his lungs.' When Watanuki was concerned, all of this was usually a given (up to and including the apparent non-existence of whatever was irritating him).

At one point, Watanuki made a horrified face, slammed his hand over his right eye so violently that Doumeki's own vision winked out over that side for a second, and yelled "NO OF COURSE I DO NOT HAVE ANY TO SPARE!" This could have been a real concern, but Watanuki seemed to be going on with the argument with no less than his usual energy, so the situation couldn't be all that bad.

From Watanuki's perspective, the rest of the conversation went like this.

"I was only arsking." The raven backpedaled as fast as it could manage. "You didn't have to take it so personally, I didn't necessarily mean one of yours. I could've meant someone else's." Something in Watanuki's face made it quickly amend this to, "Someone else who you weren't personally acquainted with? Look, it's a raven thing, awright?" he finished helplessly. "It's in our natures."

Watanuki let out a sigh. "You're not a spirit, are you?" he asked warily.

"Me? Naw. Just your typical raven. Tweet tweet tweet and all that."

Watanuki was relatively certain that 'tweet' was not exactly the usual sound associated with ravens, but there seemed to be more pressing matters.

"But you're talking. And you know… something about the horse."

"Well, we're in the same business, aren't we?" said the raven. "Faithful steed and occasional translator of the anthropomorphic personification of the decease-a-ment of rodents, that's me," it finished proudly, trying to puff up its chest, which ravens aren't actually designed do, so this failed rather miserably.

Watanuki looked a bit blank.

"You might have met him. Boney little chap. Goes SQUEAK?" the raven added helpfully.

Unfortunately, Watanuki had. "He's not here, is he?"

"Nah, I'm on a break. We're done here for the day. Rats always leave first, don't ya know. Some of them even make it as far as the shore if they swim well enough."

"Huh?" said Watanuki.

A breeze blew through the lot, bringing with it the faint smell of sea-salt. Binky finished his tuft of grass, pricked up his ears and whinnied softly.

"So, I guess a few entrails would also be out of the question?" said the raven hopefully.

"Oi," said Doumeki.

Watanuki realised he couldn't use both of them as an excuse to ignore the other at the same time. Doumeki won.

"What?"

"Your horse is getting away."

"I told you, it is not my--!" was as far as Watanuki got before he realised Doumeki was right. Binky, who had been very well behaved up to this point, had walked off out of the far side of the lot and down the street. Watanuki yelped and ran after him, grabbing the halter and trying to drag the horse back, but Binky was having none of this. Instead, he sped up so that Watanuki was dragged into a stumbling run, the equivalent of what happens when a small man takes a large, enthusiastic dog out for some exercise. They quickly cleared half a block, Binky showing no sign of slowing down.

Watanuki was briefly aware of the sound of footsteps, which meant Doumeki was catching up. The next thing he knew, he was being half-pushed, half-thrown up onto the moving horse, and he would have protested more but he was too busy half-dragging Doumeki up behind him, because hell if he was going to be stuck on a runaway horse on his own. As if this was all he was been waiting for, Binky picked up his pace from a fast trot to a canter and then to a gallop within the space of a few seconds. Faster and faster they went, until the whole world turned into a blur and Watanuki could've sworn Binky's hooves weren't even touching the ground anymore, and were they really going upwards? Within the space of a minute, it seemed they'd left the whole world behind them.

In fact, they very probably had.

Some sort of cinematic effects are usually pretty traditional during these sort of scenes. Time slows down, the world drops away from you, the camera travels down a great tunnel made of swirly effects and the stars go streaming past. It's quite pretty when done well, and serves to wipe any remaining doubt in the minds of those seeing it that they're going through some seriously weird shit.

Binky was a bit too familiar with these trips to bother with much of that, though this was probably for the best, under the circumstances. Doumeki was difficult to impress, and Watanuki had his eyes closed for most of it, and it would have been a shame for all that effort to go to waste.

By the time the horse started to slow down enough that Doumeki could see where they were, the scenery had changed quite a bit.

So.

He and Watanuki were riding a horse. Neither of them knew how to ride a horse, but apparently this horse was pretty good at being ridden.

The horse they were riding was flying. Through the air, at high speed, without any apparent difficulty. It was moving with exactly the same gait of any normal galloping horse; however, its hooves weren't actually impacting on any ground at any point in the process. This didn't seem to bother it.

The air through which they were flying carried them over a steep-faced cliff which descended some tens or hundreds of metres to a roaring ocean. Doumeki didn't take long to decide that it wasn't likely that either the cliff or the ocean had anything to do with anywhere that had ever heard of Japan.

In the ocean was a ship, not the modern metal-and-smoke-stacks variety, but one of the old fashioned wooden kinds, with masts and sails and rope hanging from everything you could hang a rope from. It was certainly not as impressive as the ones you saw in the movies; whatever the exact requirements were for a ship to be classified as 'stately' were, it seemed unlikely this boat would even have made the short list. It wasn't very large, obviously a long way from new, and had probably spent more of its life carrying cargo than kings. Had Doumeki still been interested in the question about barnacles, the bottom was bound to be caked with them. It was also in a lot of trouble.

The ship was being buffeted by gale-force winds from a storm, the like of which Doumeki had never even imagined. The vessel was under incredible duress, so much that it seemed as though the only reason it wasn't yet an utter wreck was that it was holding out for a way to splinter in every possible direction at once. The horse didn't seem the least bit bothered by the storm, but given that it wasn't bothered by gravity or dimensional boundaries (or two of the world's least experienced riders) either, this probably shouldn't have been a surprise.

From what Doumeki had managed to gather from Watanuki's mad ramblings on the subject, it seemed the horse they were riding had been borrowed from a shinigami from another world.

So.

Here they were, riding through a storm on a shinigami's horse, which was taking them towards a boat full of people who were about to die.

It made sense, if you thought about it like that.

For once in his life, Watanuki was too awed and horrified to scream at anyone about what was going on. He didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten there, but he didn't need to have ever actually seen an old ship caught in a storm like this before to have a pretty good idea of what was about to happen next, and he really didn't want to be here to see it.

Binky reached the ship and touched down with practiced ease. To all appearances, he was now standing on the deck, but the ship was definitely lurching around a whole lot more than Binky was.

People were still running, or in some cases, tumbling, or even – indeed – practically swimming around the deck, and doing incomprehensible things (to Watanuki's eyes at least) with the rigging and sails and various other parts of the ship that two twenty-first-century schoolboys would have no hope of understanding. No one seemed to notice the horse, but it was probably fair to say that even had Binky been conventionally visible to them in this world, they were all a bit distracted at the moment. By this point in the wrecking process, they weren't so much fighting a losing battle as flailing around in the mad hope that some kind of cosmic director would yell, 'Cut! Okay, everyone take ten!' if they just kept the scene going convincingly for a little longer.

It was a really first class storm – rain and thunder and lighting and wind and even a scattering of hailstones just to add that extra class; there very likely would have been water spouts had the ocean been just a little deeper. It would have been easy to believe it wasn't what constituted conventional weather at all, but rather what happened when two storms of quite different character collided and got into an argument over whose fault it was.

Beyond even this thought, there was something… odd about the storm, in a way that would probably have been nearly impossible to appreciate from any vantage point other than the mysteriously protected Binky – and this was that the storm had a width and a depth, no more than about a hundred meters to each, beyond which the wind calmed from violent to peaceful quite sharply. Perhaps stranger still, the storm actually shrank the closer to shore you went. The wind went funneling out to sea in something akin to a cone shape. And by that logic, if you followed it back far enough, somewhere back there would have to be the place where it collapsed down to nothing at all.

Watanuki squinted up into the storm. Even though he could only barely feel the wind, it did horrible things to visibility. And yet, Watanuki still couldn't help but feel – the same way he felt monsters sneaking up on him which no one else saw – that he could almost make out something up there, something that drew his eyes inexorably up towards it, and it was something important…

"What?" said Doumeki, as though he couldn't believe what he had just heard.

"I said I have to get up there!" Watanuki shouted, pointing, then realised that as long as they were close to Binky he didn't have to shout; he could hear himself just fine. "It's coming from something on the cliffs!" he shouted anyway, because it was still hard to shake the feeling he should need to, and since he was talking to Doumeki it was practically traditional anyway.

"You want to go to the source of the storm?" said Doumeki. He didn't say 'you really are an idiot,' but he was definitely thinking it.

"The wind doesn't bother him," shouted Watanuki, indicating Binky by yanking on the halter. "How do you get this thing to turn around?" Watanuki discovered that by pulling on only one side of the halter at a time he could make Binky turn, but making him start moving again was more difficult.

Doumeki was quiet for a few seconds.

"Oi," he called. "If you get up there, you can stop the storm, right?"

"What?"

Doumeki slid backwards off the horse in one movement, ignoring Watanuki's loud demands to know what the hell he thought he was doing, landed a bit awkwardly, but made sure to keep one hand in contact with the horse until he had the other wrapped firmly around the mast. Now secured as best he could manage, he slapped Binky once, hard on the rear.

It seemed to do the trick.

Binky charged upwards through the storm, Watanuki trying to keep him in the centre of the cone. He was starting to get the hang of steering. Left and right were fairly manageable. Up and down were a bit trickier, being directions the traditional bridle had never been designed to deal with. Fortunately, Binky seemed to be getting the idea of where he was expected to go. The wind howled at them, louder and more determined to force them back the closer they got, but Binky wasn't listening.

By the time they'd gotten within a few yards of the cliffs, the tunnel of wind had shrunk to barely a man's height, tapering off even more sharply over that last little distance, so that it really did come to a fine point somewhere on the cliff face. Binky slowed to a trot and then a walk so the final approach to the cliff face – visibility gradually returning as the wind diminished – became a slow-reveal affair.

From here you could really get an idea of the scale of the whole thing, just close enough to make out the scraggly trees at the top that gave the cliff some perspective. To let you know that it wasn't closer than your eyes were trying to tell you: it just really was that enormous.

And from here you could see the steep walls weren't actually smooth, they were littered with rocks, with seabirds' nests wedged into any crack that looked relatively safe. There were even a few adventurous mosses and weedy plants eking out a living anywhere they could find a few grains of honest dirt.

And from here you could make that out that right where the wind calmed, there was a little indention in the rock. It was the sort that might have been called a pothole had the ground only been a bit closer to horizontal – just about the right size for a hapless traveler to get a boot good and stuck in. Stretched across that were the delicate strands of a spider's web.

And caught in that…

"Oh," said Watanuki, wondering in some corner of his mind just exactly at which point in his life this had started to constitute a perfectly satisfactory explanation for anything.

Caught in the web, right at the very apex of the storm and struggling madly to get free, was a single butterfly.

Even given that it was flapping its wings at that frantic speed that only small insects are capable of, Watanuki could almost imagine he could see great gusts of wind emerging from every panicked beat of the entangled creature. Despite all the chaos, the spider's web itself had remained miraculously intact, but it was probably safe to say that if something the size of a butterfly was going to take it into its head to start causing storms with every careless flap, it was probably best to throw out all those 'equal and opposite reaction' ideas from the start. The spider cowered helplessly on the edge of the web. It wasn't even going to try to get any closer.

Watanuki didn't have to stop and think about what needed to be done. The angle wasn't ideal; Binky had done his best given the circumstances, but reaching from the back of a horse you have only a general understanding of how to stay on while suspended in mid air was never going to be the easiest way to get to anything. As carefully as he could manage with one hand, Watanuki reached around behind the struggling insect, broke a few crucial entangling strands, coaxed it on to a finger, and gently plucked the butterfly from the web.

The butterfly cooperated beautifully. The moment its wings stopped fluttering, the wind dropped away as if it had never been there.

"Alright now?" he asked it softly. The butterfly did indeed seem to be quite happy where it was. It opened and closed its wings once or twice in a lazy sort of way, but showed no sign it wanted to take off. Now that it had stopped moving, he could see that it was yellow and black in colour. There were detailed patterns covering its wings, something about which gave him vertigo.

Mission accomplished, Watanuki surveyed the damage. There was a large hole in the centre of the spider's web now, which had probably been pretty much unavoidable given the circumstances. Something about the sight of this made Watanuki's stomach try to move residence to his feet – events of late had given him a healthy respect for spiders. The spider was examining the web in a forlorn manner.

Watanuki shuffled the butterfly carefully on to his shoulder and fished the matchbox out of his pocket.

"Sorry about the damage," he told the spider, "but there probably wasn't anything else to do, and – well, have this in consolation."

He tipped the dead beetle onto the web. The spider prodded the offering cautiously with a foot, as if worried this meal was going to turn out like the last one, but finding nothing amiss, leapt on it with relish.

It was possible, of course, that all he was dealing with was the real common- or garden- (though not shrine) variety spider in this world, and efforts to appease it were laughably unnecessary; but in a place where even a butterfly could make storms, who in their right mind would take the chance?

Back on the ship, a crew of bleary-looking seamen was trying to figure out what had happened, whether this really meant the scene was a wrap and if they could all go for lunch now. Doumeki, still standing in their midst, was fully visible to them since he had separated from the horse, and a few crewmen were staring at him and trying to figure out where he'd come from, whether he was some sort of storm-induced hallucination, or what, if anything, he had to do with it at all. No matter how you turned it, he didn't look anything like any of the locally recognised deities of good fortune or miraculous rescues, but the sad fact of the matter was that, should the Cult of the Deadpan Schoolboy Ocean Weather God catch on in the area any time in the near future, it was going to be all his fault.

"What you did back there," said Watanuki, once safely back on deck, "was incredibly stupid."

"Which one of us went charging off into the eye of the storm, you idiot?" Doumeki released his death grip on the mast before Watanuki got back, but there were a few splinters still clinging to his clothes.

"Well it worked, didn't it?" Watanuki reminded him, a little petulantly. "The storm stopped."

"Yeah. It did. What's that?" Doumeki added, pointing to Watanuki's shoulder.

"Oh!" Watanuki found himself instinctively cupping a protective hand over the creature. Despite all the trouble it had caused he couldn't help feel a sort of fondness for the thing. "You may not believe it, but this little guy was what was causing that freak weather in the first place."

Doumeki seemed to consider this. "They say a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere can be the difference between a sunny day and a storm."

This logic didn't appeal to Watanuki. "Maybe, but it's not supposed to happen this fast!"

"Are you sure?"

Watanuki was sure. Watanuki was absolutely certain he was right about this one. It wasn't his fault there was a perfect counterargument sitting on his shoulder.

"Well? Can you make him take us back?" Doumeki indicated the horse.

"I think we have to just hope he wants to take us," Watanuki replied, fervently hoping Binky didn't have anywhere else he wanted to take them that day.

Doumeki seemed satisfied enough by this. "Help me up again."

Watanuki grudgingly leant him a hand. He screwed up his face as Doumeki settled back onto the horse. "You're soaked to the skin!" he complained. "You're getting me wet!"

"What did you expect? Get us home already. We've still got to sweep the shrine this afternoon."

Doumeki shortly discovered he couldn't hang on and hold his hands over his ears at the same time, but he probably deserved that. Binky took back off into the sky.

The wooden planks were gone when they got back to the lot, but no one really noticed.

Yuuko was waiting for them when they arrived, which was no great surprise. She was terribly pleased with the butterfly, which transferred itself to a proffered finger with almost no prompting at all. The image suited her so well Doumeki could have believed the butterfly had been created just for the purpose, although it couldn't have hurt the impression that she'd found herself a lacy, yellow and black dress for the afternoon either.

Binky was led away around the back of the shop for a good rest, although he still looked as fresh as ever. Watanuki said he was never, ever, ever doing anything like this again, no matter how many domestic chores he had to do instead, which Doumeki figured meant he had about a week off, maybe two at the outside. Life around Watanuki was a lot louder, but at least it was never dull.

Actually, it was exactly one week later, while Doumeki was sweeping the path again, that something bumped into his ankle and he looked down to see a large, metal-and-wooden chest. It doesn't take any particular skill to bump into something of that nature when it stands at about knee-height; however it does usually require one to be to be the one who was moving at the time, and Doumeki had definitely been standing perfectly still.

"Don't you even ask!" Watanuki's voice yelled from the gateway. "And don't step on any of its toes. And for heaven's sake, don't feed it anything else! "

Chapter Text

There was a knock on the door to Yuuko's shop. This was unusual, not just because there weren't many parts of the door you could knock on without putting your fist right through the paper, but also because most of Yuuko's customers found themselves in through the door before they knew what was happening. The woman who was there when Watanuki opened it, however, looked like she was determined to do this properly, regardless of whether anyone else noticed or not. She seemed normal, which was to say that there was an aggressive sort of normality about her that Watanuki probably wouldn't have dared question even if there'd been tiny planets orbiting around her head. She didn't look Japanese, but given that it was the end of the week, Watanuki was just prepared to be glad it wasn't the skeleton in the cowl again.

He was yet to discover that, given the right circumstances, Susan was capable of being far the scarier of the two.

"My grandfather," said the woman, "asked me to pick up Binky for him." Something about the way she said 'asked' implied that the proper word would have been 'sent', except that she was not the sort of person who was 'sent' anywhere, least of all by the man in question.

"Aha?" said Watanuki vaguely. The word 'grandfather' in that sentence had fried the part of his brain that would otherwise have allowed him to come up with a more helpful response. Animated skeletons (cowled or otherwise) did not have descendents – it was very important to Watanuki's little remaining sanity that nothing contradicted that. On the other hand, the shinigami had talked about someone called 'Albert' a lot, maybe this could be a relative of his?

It was probably fortunate that Yuuko chose this moment to do her appearing trick in the hall behind him and came to his rescue. "Of course. Binky is around the back of the shop. Maru, Moro, would you bring him around for us?" The girls ran off with twin cries of 'horsey!'

The woman did not look satisfied. "Your shop keeps trying to convince me it's not here," she complained, making it very clear that no shop could possibly engage in more impolite behaviour.

"The shop is only visible to those who need its services," Yuuko told her, in her usual authoritatively smug manner. "You don't have any wishes you need granted, do you?"

The question went ignored. "My grandfather still can't get in. How were you planning on sending Binky back once your week was up?" There was something odd about her voice that gave Watanuki the headache-inducing impression that she didn't actually speak a word of Japanese, but was going to have words with anyone who dared misunderstand her.

"Oh, something was bound to come up," Yuuko's eyes sparkled with mischief. "And here you are! Can I offer you some tea?"

The sound of clopping hooves and girlish giggles meant that Maru and Moro had finished their task. "No thankyou," said their guest curtly, "I should be on my way."

"Very well. Why don't you walk Susan back to the lot, Watanuki?"

Watanuki let out a sigh. "She probably doesn't mean that as a suggestion," he told… Susan, apparently, though he couldn't remember any names being exchanged. He wasn't especially keen on the idea. Quite apart from the fact that Susan gave the impression she was determined to be angry at someone and it might as well be him, an amorphous blob with feet had been following him around all morning. It couldn't get into the shop, of course, but he knew it would be waiting for him the moment he stepped outside.

"If you must." Susan replied, though at least this didn't particularly seem to bother her, and turned towards the door. As they went past, she patted Binky on the nose in an absent sort of way. She didn't take the halter, but Binky seemed to understand what was expected of him and followed her out. The ease of it all made Watanuki slightly jealous.

Once they were out on the street, Susan finally seemed to notice him properly and looked him up and down a few times. "You'd be some sort of part-time help to the witch then, I suppose."

"More or less." Though he had to admit the only 'less' part was whether or not this was entirely voluntary, and whether he was getting paid in any conventional sense.

"How on earth did you get my grandfather to lend you Binky?" Susan didn't sound quite like she was holding him personally responsible, though still as though she knew he'd been involved and was fully convinced the whole mess could have been avoided if he'd just put in a little more effort. "He's not something he rents out for children's parties on weekends."

"I don't know, it was all Yuuko's doing! I had nothing to do with it. Hardly anything!" Watanuki clarified, because Susan was not the sort of person you could get away with half truths with. "Look, I'm just the messenger, and I didn't ask for even that."

"Do you know what my grandfather has been using instead this past week?" Without giving him time to hazard a guess, she went on. "Neither do I, but every time I bring the subject up, Albert goes a colour I don't think there's a name for."

The Albert Theory of Susan's ancestry had just lost an awful lot of water. Worse still, the way she was talking about her grandfather as the owner of the horse had revived that other theory that Watanuki had been mentally denying he'd ever thought of. "Wait, you're… you're Death's granddaughter?!"

Susan sighed. "By adoption. Did you only just figure that out?"

"Yuuko doesn't tell me these things!" Watanuki wailed. Although she probably would have, added a voice in his head, just to see you react like that.

"No, I suppose she wouldn't, would she?" said Susan, though not unkindly.

They both fell silent for a bit. Over Watanuki and Susan's footsteps and the clop of Binky's hooves, it was a little difficult to make out the pattering of an extra set of feet, but…

Susan frowned. "Excuse me a moment," she said, and turned around.

The next thing anyone knew, the thing with the pattering feet had had been pinned up against the nearest convenient wall. Somewhere in the middle of an amorphous blob with feet, Susan had managed to find an arm to pin behind its back. From the look on the thing's… for lack of a better word – 'face', it hadn't been aware it had an arm either, nor had any idea something that painful could have been done with one if it had.

Watanuki didn't see a lot of variation in the basic expressions of the creatures that plagued him. With the exception of the very few friendly ones, mindless hunger was pretty well standard everywhere, and as a rule that didn't generally change right up until the very last few seconds where they realised Doumeki's bow meant business. He'd certainly never seen one look like it had just been caught trying to sneak out of the playground during lunchtime by the same teacher who'd warned it not half an hour before what would happen the next time it tried that.

"And what are you supposed to be then?" Susan asked it sternly. "It's a bit bright for bogeymen."

The creature spoke as if it hadn't realised it had a voice up to now either. "A betobeto!" It shrieked.

"Pardon?"

"A betobeto ma'am!"

"Oh of course you are," said Susan, making it clear that just because she'd never heard of one before didn't mean she didn't already know everything important there was to know about them. "I don't know why people waste belief on the likes of you in these parts. Do you know what we do to things that go pattering around behind us for a cheap scare where I come from?"

"Noma'am!"

"If you're out of here by the time I count to five, you won't find out." Susan let go of the arm, which vanished back into the betobeto as though it had never been there. "One."

The sound of the spirit's pattering feet became a rumble as it streaked off into the first direction that looked likely to take it to some decent cover.

Watanuki didn't know whether to fall madly in love or run for his life. He found himself leaning rapidly towards the latter, however, when Susan turned back to him, her expression having lost practically none of its severity.

"You only encourage them, you know," she said.

"What?!" Watanuki blurted in disbelief.

"Noticing monsters like that," said Susan. "You'd be surprised how many of them are only in it for the attention."

"I'm supposed to ignore the next thing that tries to eat me?"

"Have you tried it?"

"No! And you can tell because I haven't been eaten yet!"

"But you always expect the worst from them. Surely you know how much creatures like those are influenced by what people say or believe."

Watanuki was horrified to discover that Yuuko was not the only person in the universe with the nerve to start diagnosing his personal failings within minutes of having met him. "But I always do get the worst from them! What else am I supposed to expect?"

"There's no need to make the problem worse for yourself. Look," Susan added, and now sounded as if she was admitting something she was still not entirely thrilled about admitting to herself, "it's not all bad, living with this other-than-normal stuff. It just takes a certain mindset to get on top of it some days. The poker helps too, I find," she finished, without elaborating any further.

Not much was said for the rest of the trip. A few times Watanuki caught sight of a spirit coming around a corner up ahead, then suddenly coming up with a reason to go very quickly in the opposite direction. Even in Japan's spirit world, news like Susan travelled fast.

It took another couple of minutes to reach the vacant lot, though still rather less time than Watanuki remembered it taking. He was a little irritated to realise that, contrary to Yuuko's directions a week ago, Susan had found a shortcut that didn't require them to go anywhere near Doumeki's shrine. Outside the lot, Binky came obediently round to stand next to Susan. Mounting an unsaddled horse is no easy thing to do – especially when one is wearing an ankle-length skirt, but Susan seemed to find an invisible stirrup in mid air.

"Well, here we are then," she said primly. "You'll at least think about what I said, won't you? And if it does turn out Yuuko knows what my grandfather's been using in Binky's place," she added, "please don't ever tell me, I'm increasingly sure I don't want to know."

Watanuki decided he didn't want to know either.

Susan turned the horse towards the far side of the lot and eased him into a trot. Binky did not so much disappear as somehow fade into the distance without ever reaching the other side. Watanuki firmly told the side of his brain that was sad to see him go to shut up, and turned to walk back to the shop.

In the lot behind him, there was a thump and then a sort of scuttling sound. Part of Watanuki realised he should have expected this, not that this made it any less disconcerting - after all, knowing what's making the noise under the bed is often so much worse than wondering about it. Watanuki picked up his pace. The scuttling sound only got faster.

Watanuki thought about what Susan had said about expecting the worst, and decided it wasn't his fault if he was always right.

He stopped in the middle of the footpath, just to make sure. The scuttling continued for a moment then stopped too. Fearing the worst, he turned to look behind him. There was no-one there. Watanuki looked down at ground level, just in case…

"Stop following me!" He screeched. The thing had the decency to look slightly sheepish, but not at all inclined to obey.

Watanuki gave up and headed back towards the shop, the scuttling following him the whole distance.

The luggage did eat two nasty looking spirits on the way back though, so Watanuki had to admit he didn't really have very good grounds to complain.

Chapter Text

In retrospect, introducing Himawari to something that took such a dim view of anything that seemed likely to pose some danger to its 'master' as the luggage did had been a mistake. The reaction this got out of Watanuki left Doumeki particularly impressed - he'd never seen him invent so many new moves to the Dance Of Panic in one sitting before.

"Aaargh! No! Himawari-chan! What do you think you're doing you stupid lump of wood, you spit her back out this instant!"

For possibly the first time ever in its life, the luggage obliged. In fact, it looked a little queasy afterwards. Himawari landed back on the pavement, slightly dazed but otherwise unhurt.

"Himawari-chan!" cried Watanuki, tears of relief rolling down his cheeks. "You're alright, aren't you? It didn't hurt you, did it?"

Himawari blinked at him in good natured befuddlement. "I was inside something big and made of wood… and then I wasn't again. Did something just happen?"

Doumeki prodded the luggage cautiously with his toe. The lid sprang open again.

"That thing," Watanuki pointed accusingly at the luggage, "tried to eat you. But it's alright, because it spat you back out again. It's been doing this to things all morning! But it's not even mine, I swear!"

"There's someone's clean underwear in here." Doumeki reported.

"It's not mine either!"

Himawari got back to her feet. The luggage scuttled behind Doumeki. She smiled at it, pleasantly and cluelessly, which only confused it immensely. Smiles from the last thing that had scared it nearly that badly had had a lot more teeth.

Things went a lot smoother after that. Even when Doumeki sat on it later, the luggage remained on its best behaviour for the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

"It's not that I like having it around," said Rincewind gloomily, toeing the ground just hard enough to start the swing he was perched on moving back and forth in a sad sort of way, "but if I don't find it it always finds me eventually. And it does keep my spare underwear clean. It sometimes eats things that are trying to eat me too."

"It did that a few times while it was here," Watanuki told him. It had tried to eat Himawari too, which had not been one of the better moments of Watanuki's life, but he had come to accept that this had been a misunderstanding.

"Oh dear," said Rincewind, sounding unsurprised. "Do you get a lot of monsters around here?"

"I'm afraid so. They never go away."

"The giant kind with all the claws and teeth?"

"Mostly the floating, blobby kind with lots of eyes."

"Ah. I always hated that kind. Er… you're not going to get eaten when the luggage leaves, are you? Not that I can leave it here either way, but…" Rincewind's expression implied that he'd feel a bit guilty about this if it happened, and would rather avoid it if it wouldn't actually put him in too much danger to do so.

"No, no, it'll be fine, there's…" Watanuki supposed he might as well just admit it and get it over with. "There's always Doumeki."

"What's that?"

"He's… a bit like the luggage. He takes care of the monsters. But mostly, he just hangs around and eats a lot."

"Ah," said Rincewind knowingly. "A hero. I never did deal very well with heroes."

"What part of that jerk is a hero?" Watanuki protested. "He's not… he always… he never… Well, I am not the damsel in distress! I even have to save him sometimes!"

"There's always 'sidekick'," suggested Rincewind.

"I'm not going to be his sidekick either! He can be my sidekick. I'm the one Yuuko always gives these jobs to. He just tags along. And sometimes there aren't even any monsters."

Rincewind looked wistful. "There are just never enough of those days, are there?"

Behind both of them, there was a roar - some distance away, but getting closer.

"Did you hear that?" said Watanuki.

"If I say 'no', it's still going to try to eat us, isn't it?"

"Almost definitely."

"That friend of yours isn't around is he?" Rincewind asked hopefully.

"He went home."

"What about the luggage?"

"It's back at Yuuko's, it was having an eating contest with Mokona." They'd been at it all morning – the luggage was turning out to be very competitive. Maru and Moro had been feeding them both everything Yuuko would let them use. Watanuki didn't know where things the luggage ate went to, but from the sight of some of the things Mokona had been swallowing, he could only hope that Syaoran and co were somewhere with plenty of space.

There was another approaching roar. Watanuki sighed. "Race you back to the shop?"

Rincewind took a stance an Olympic runner would have been proud of. "I'd offer you a head start," he said apologetically, "but I have this inbuilt survival instinct that just won't let me."

"That's alright. I'm good at running. I get lots of practice," Watanuki assured him.

DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO SAY GO? A voice offered helpfully. There was a rustle and a clink as what looked like an hourglass that had been dragged screaming backwards through an Escher painting was produced and examined.

Watanuki considered the rapidly retreating back which was all that could now be seen of Rincewind. "Thanks, but I don't think we do."

JUST THOUGHT I'D OFFER.

There was no reply – everyone who might conceivably have done so was accelerating away far too fast.