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1.
Nick Mora sees the infinite.
It is layered in threes, significant numbers, fractals. It is one and one and one, I and aye and eye. It is the rivers intersecting, the planes shifting in their track. It is the feeling of his feet leaving the mound, of every word in his vocabulary shifting and replacing, of every bone in his body losing their souls.
It is rubbish and it is a waste of time. This is not what he came here for. He harrumphs, turns, reaches for his prize, and his hands close around the great gold of the star.
2.
In hindsight, he should’ve known it would come with a price.
Nick Mora does not see the god that curses him, nor see its face or a name to call it by. There is only a blinding flash and a burning in his fingertips, then he is on the ground, reeling, with an ache in his back and a pounding in his head.
The roster of the Philadelphia Pies stands around him, peering down like curious baby birds. When he opens his mouth to speak, they squawk with laughter like birds do, at the weird withered worm in their shadow.
3.
“Can it, Mora, we can’t understand your jokes anyway.”
Peanut Holloway shrugs invisible shoulders, laughs, meaner than Mora cares to rebut, trying too hard. Mora thinks for a moment, whirls around in his mind, galaxies colliding, and concocts a real doozy of an insult to fire back at the scientist.
No matter how he tries it, the joke comes out in Latin. He spits it out five different ways, and Holloway leans back on his heels and scoffs. The heat wafts up from the walls of Tastykake, and the wind smells sickly sweet--blood, sugar, milk, icing, and rot.
4.
He wraps the cloth diligently around the mold, and sews it together with nimble fingers. It’s not perfect, but it’ll have to do. He’s tried every trick in the book by now, and all have fallen disappointingly flat, fizzled out like sparks on the old burner in the back kitchen. But this one...this one has promise.
The puppet rises in the air before Nick Mora, and its eyes gleam with a brightness he hasn’t seen since he burned his hands in the sky so long, long, long ago.
“Well then”, he says, miraculous, in English. “Here we two are.”
5.
The Pies don’t appreciate his art. He likes his puppets, though, and that’s all that matters. He can get away with so much more when it’s behind a cloth face, can sling insults like comets around the sun and watch them crash right into somebody’s weak spots.
“Oi, Tosser! Anybody ever tell you you look like half a lobster somebody forgot ta finish eating?”
The Crabs pitcher snorts, grumbles like a bull, looking for the source of the noise. Mora ducks behind the dugout, the only thing visible a ratty and faded pink rabbit, flapping its mouth open and closed.
6.
Jessica Telephone stomps past, fuming again. Mora steps smoothly out of the way, but she still slams the locker room door in his face.
He sews the arms on a new puppet. The last one had already worn through, the glow of the star inside melting the fibers down to a clump of sad ash.
She shoves back open the door. Mora stands in her way, unfinished green cloth in his right fist.
“Here’s a tip,” he says, in Latin. She understands. “If you want anyone to believe you on the dirtbag act, you have to look them in the eye.”
7.
“I think I’ll call you Shmurmgle”, Mora says in Latin, holding the puppet in his lap, like someone might hold a particularly skittish rabbit. “It means nothing at all and it will irritate anyone who hears it, so it’s perfect.” He chuckles to himself.
The button eyes of the puppet look up at him, and there’s no malice there. Something in him softens, and feels warm, like sitting close to a fireplace. He frowns, and smooths back the fibers of the puppet with one wrinkled hand.
“Frasier, then. Frasier Shmurmgle. Even worse.” He sighs, gets up, goes to bed.
8.
The Pies hate Frasier. Good, Mora thinks. For a puppet, this is the greatest equivalent of “growing up strong” he can imagine. He lets the frog run looser than he usually would, loosens the cosmic connection, lets him make messes around the back kitchen, knocking over tubs of powdered sugar and jars of jam all over the counter and never, ever bothering to clean up.
He always looks up, dreadfully guilty, when he does. Mora sighs. There’s too much good in this little frog, too much light and star and shine, and yet, he can’t bring himself to be angry.
9.
He cuts the string on the morning of Day 32 of season 7. Mora has been speaking to the stars long enough to know when his gut calls on him to do something, it’s usually best to follow.
Frasier looks up at him, big orange eyes blinking, serene.
Mora has to admit, he isn’t sure what to say. He’s never cut one loose before.
“You’ll still be here, right?” the frog says, in Mora’s own voice, distorted with humor, yet so genuine.
Well. Might as well go the whole hog with sentiment.
“Course. Just follow the stars. You’ll find me.”
10.
It takes Mora a few hours to check the news. He’s not pitching that day, and so he’s on the town when he ducks into a splorts bar with a TV and realizes what has come to pass.
His first thought, oddly, isn’t for what has happened to Cookbook, or that showboat Scorpler, or any of his old teammates. It’s about the tiny name scrolling at the bottom of the screen, the worried, scrunched green face in the replay camera, running frantic from a bunted single.
He trusts the Tigers, those old bastards. He hopes to heaven they’ll keep him safe.
11.
He’s pitching again, on day 71, and doing a rubbish job of it, as usual. His mind is elsewhere, a thousand miles beyond the Earth, lost in nebulae, a galaxy over, anywhere but here.
He’s pulled back down to Earth exactly when his intuition tells him he would. It is a knowing that is beyond knowing, one and one and one, layered in threes, in sevens, in fourteens.
Mora collapses on the mound, and falls to his knees. The Pies look at him in shock, too surprised to think of a retort. He doesn’t leave until the game is over.
12.
It is many, many seasons from that day, and Nick Mora has come home. He rubs the ruby-red helldust all over his palms, tightens his grip on his bat, and scores for the Tigers on his first game back in town.
He returns behind the dugout, wipes the gleaming sweat off his brow. An old friend leans against a wall, the blue denim of his jacket a stark contrast against the brick.
“You ever gonna tell them?” Landry says, amusement and sympathy crackling off the ends of his words.
Mora harrumphs, and turns to the side. “Like hell I am.”