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No one was in the ship's communal sleeping cabin when Candy entered except for Malingo, whose limbs seemed longer than usual. He stretched out across two sleeping cots which he had pushed together.
Candy watched his orange body breathe for several long moments. She'd been reunited with her family briefly, then been separated from them again... It had made her realize that she missed her human family, but also that Malingo was as much her brother as either of her biological brothers. He was family in a way she couldn't articulate.
She hassled him to wake him up, as was the right of any sister, by nudging his shoulder. Lucky for them both, he hadn't been entirely asleep. His large gold eyes opened and his slit pupils adjusted. "Oh hey, Candy," he said, pleased to see her as always. He wasn't upset to be woken up because she had done the waking.
"Scooch," she demanded lovingly, gesturing with both hands in a sweeping motion to show him that he needed to give her one of the two cots by rolling over. He was happy to oblige.
At once, Candy felt so guilty for even slightly bossing him around that she added, "Sorry Malingo, I should have said please... Thanks, though."
He dismissed her please and thank you with a little hand wave.
He was older than her, old enough that he would have been considered an adult if he had been human. Despite his years, his lack of life experience outside of Wolfswinkel's home made Candy see him more like someone younger than she was. With her biological brothers, she was the oldest by several years. Her authority to ask them to scoot over for her was unquestionable, and they usually respected her demands because she was almost always kind to them and rarely had unreasonable requests... but if they had said no, hypothetically, she could have wrestled them and won. It was more common for the Quakenbush kids to fight with their parents than each other and when they did fight, they made up quickly.
It was different with Malingo. She tried not to boss him around. He'd lived too much of that.
She lay down next to him and they were quiet for a while.
He asked, "Is there a reason you didn't take one of the other cots?"
There were other places to sleep. She could have taken one of the other beds without waking him. "I just wanted to be next to you."
Even though his teeth were sharp, Malingo's smile at hearing this was nothing but peaceful, almost beatific. "Oh," was all he said.
"Can I talk about sad stuff?" she asked. "I mean, I know we do that a lot anyway. We see crazy stuff. But I meant like personal sad stuff."
"Sure," he said, staring up at the low wooden ceiling. Outside, the ship was painted red, but in here the wood was bare. Light filtered in through windows as they sailed through somewhere in the afternoon. Candy was still adjusting to living in a world where the time of day had nothing to do with when it was time to sleep.
"I had a question."
"Yeah?" He asked.
"Well, you know how easy it is for people to hurt each other," she said. "I guess I'm talking more physically than mentally, but I mean both. I was gonna ask if you thought there might be an opposite of that."
"Like what the opposite of hitting someone is?" he put a long-fingered hand over his face and thought.
They'd both been hit in their lives, but that was something Malingo had endured much more than she had. "Yeah," she said. "That kind of thing."
The boat swayed.
Malingo ventured, "An apology, maybe. A really good one."
"Maybe," she admitted. "But that's also an opposite that only comes after something bad happens. You can't give someone an apology unless you did something wrong." Candy didn't think she would never get an apology from her father or from Christopher Carrion, and Malingo would never get one from Kaspar Wolfswinkel. Even if Malingo was right, it wasn't a helpful answer.
Candy transitioned topics and said, "I know you have nightmares."
"Yeah?" he said, concerned. His fingers curled, bunching up the blankets, and his fan-shaped ears pinched back against his head.
"I'm not saying it's a bad thing!" Candy clarified. "I get them too."
"Since you were on Efreet," he said knowingly, and turned his lizard-like eyes on her. Candy hadn't spoken much about her time stuck in a house with The Lord of Midnight and Malingo had never pressed her. He was scared to know but his enormous ears were always ready to listen.
She pulled the blankets up over herself and kicked her sandals off so they fell off the foot of the cot. "Yeah. And I had some bad dreams after I first met Shape, but those nightmares weren't as bad as the new ones." Christopher Carrion haunted her. It was just what he would have wanted.
"Neither of us are going to get our apologies," Malingo sighed. He had made peace with that.
The girl burst into a smile and rolled onto her side to face him. "No, I don't think we are," she said. "Any other ideas?"
Malingo scratched behind one of his ears. He made a long, noncommittal sound like the whine of a machine. "Welllll, What helps me the most is just knowing you. Talking to you every day, being treated like I'm a person instead of a thing."
Candy turned her head slightly and her brown eye was obscured by the pillow, leaving only the blue one to watch her friend. It watered. Malingo panicked, as was his wont, pupils tightening until they were almost invisibly thin lines.
"Did I--"
She cut him off and put a hand on his bony shoulder. "Happy tears, Malingo," she said. He breathed an immediate sigh of relief.
"Oh, good. I mean, not good that you're crying, just..." he trailed off, slowly halting his anxiety spiral.
"When I was on Efreet," she began with a sniff. "And I was more scared than I'd ever been, I didn't think that I wanted my parents to show up. I thought, I can't wait for Malingo to get here. Because I knew you would show up. And then when I saw my family when we went to the Hereafter, I had a really weird, funny thought even though it was nice to see them."
"What was it?"
"I thought, none of these people are Malingo."
He laughed, a high, giddy sound that almost reminded Candy of parrots squawking. "You know," he said, "I think if I saw my family after all these years I'd probably think the same thing but about you!"
She held out a hand and offered her hooked pinky to him. "I'll be your sister if you'll be my brother," she said. She was a little concerned she would have to explain pinky promises to an Abaratian, but it was apparently customary here too, and he hooked one of his clawed pinky fingers around hers.
"I swear," he said.
They fell asleep like that, little fingers threaded together.