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From the windowsill of an unfinished nursery, Ranboo watched the world melt. Burn. Decay. Drip like candle wax until it pooled listlessly in the streets. Dead and digging.
It was beautiful, almost, the way things fell to pieces. The way the trees shed their coats and washed the ice from their faces. The way paint chipped into the miserable downpour. The way the house groaned like something half-alive as winter bled.
“I’m headed to the mainland for paper.”
“Oh, alright. Just be safe.”
“Do you need anything while I’m there?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you. Just paper, I guess. Didn’t we–”
“I know you said we had some reams in the bunker, but I think we ran out of those.”
“You checked, though, right?”
“Yes, of course I checked.”
“Because you didn’t check last time I asked you to check, and then you made me go to the quarry, and we definitely had stone bricks — I remember that much, we had stone bricks — and I almost hurt my hand, because–”
“Ranboo.”
“Tubbo?”
“I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
A storm was rolling in from the south, sweeping across the landscape with such graceful fury that it terrified Ranboo to think of its calculation. Gray clouds billowed up into the sky until they were endless. They cried burning, stinging tears. And all this white brilliance, which had slept over the rolling hills and settled against sleepy homes — it sunk into the earth, unevenly, unremarkably, until it was a patchwork blanket sewn clumsily by shaking hands. Ranboo pressed those shaking hands to the cold, wet glass, and tried not to blink, in case it would all be gone the next time he looked.
Because it would be gone. This Snowchester would be gone. Everything he had come to love would wash into the sea. A phantom on the docks. A full moon sitting on the water. A memory like white cotton sheets. He would pin it up on the line with the rest.
He’d make room on that line, next to everything else he’d been a part of, which had sifted through his fingers and stuck in the bloody pile at his feet. He knew this as sure as he knew the misting rain that hissed at his fingers from outside, ghosting scars on his cheeks. They were hot and boiling and they traced ugly patterns that stung until Ranboo couldn’t hear his own heart over the roaring in his ears. He knew those fat droplets would melt him next, until he was mud smeared on the front walk to be washed away with the next storm.
That thought made him crinkle his nose. Mud. Mud and dirt and sludge. As if he wasn’t already small enough. Curled into the crook of the window, cradled by gauzy curtains, Ranboo did feel small.
He was meant to be too big for this place — that had always been the way of things. He was meant to crouch and to duck and to bend, but his bones fit in these grooves, like they had been carved for him to watch his own private apocalypse. The snow burned away in some nuclear springtime, cooked against the soil. The rain was ash, thunderheads billowed up on lofty wings like heralds, and there was heat lighting in the distance, static-charged. The silent attic muffled what revelation scorched its hell outside.
“You wanted to see the building plans?”
“Oh, that’s right– I did, didn’t I?”
“Did you forget ?… You get it, right? Because it’s–”
“Yeah.”
“Right.”
“The plans, Foolish?”
“Right! Yes, yeah… The plans. I have those. Right– uh, here. Here.”
“Is now a good time to tell you that I don’t know how to read these?”
“Now is as good a time as any. It’s not about the intricacies, I wouldn’t waste your time on door swings or guest bedrooms. As long as you like the shape, I’m sure it’ll work out for the both of you.”
“Well, I do like shapes.”
“That’s good to hear.”
The rain grew thicker. What had been mist was now something real which streamed down the glass and blinked up at Ranboo from dips in the earth. The shape of the hills was defined without those layers of sculpted ice. They twisted and backtracked like iron rails, scooped into the earth with clumsy hands, breathed deeply through stone lungs which shifted the topsoil. There were now the barest hints of green splintering the front lawn, the broad leaves of crabgrasses which had already been growing underneath the winter.
Hadn’t they been dead yesterday? Hadn’t they been brown and rotted, matted into the soil? When Ranboo had gone to sleep that night, Snowchester had been all monochrome stillness. It had been black and white and the hard-edged gray of broad stone cliff faces. An indifference defined by patience, by the earnesty of staying put.
That still world had promised him the constancy of a fragile peace, which was a starless ocean and ice caps distantly visible from the shoreline. It was bare trees shooting thinly into the white sky. It was weathered shingles and thick wooden beams hanging spindles of ice like rows and rows of crooked teeth, bared, grinning, locked jaws defending steepled roofs, but not cruel. Never cruel.
It could never be cruel, because what would be the point of this?
What would be the point of this?
What would be the point?
The point.
Was there a point?
There had to be a point.
“Oh, Ranboo! I didn’t expect to see you here! But, I guess, what with–”
“The rain.”
“The rain, yes, and the, uh–”
“The mud.”
“The mud! Yep. You’re a good guesser, huh?”
“Puffy, did you need to see Tubbo?”
“Yeah, actually, he wanted to talk to me about business permits and vending licensure — fun stuff like that. Have you seen him?”
“You just missed him. He left a few hours ago for paper.”
“Hah! That sounds about right. Well, did you want any company? Since you’re stuck here.”
“I– I mean, I was kind of… sorta…”
“Hey, no worries, you know where to find me if you get bored.”
When the first footprints had traced the coast, leaving snaking patterns in the dustings of November, that must have been the truth. As much as he stared out at the shoreline, Ranboo couldn’t imagine what those steps had felt like, breaking into something unknown and disconcertingly real. It must have been the most important thing in the world.
He remembered that reality. Vaguely. Somewhere between the rusted storybook pages of his own life, time-worn and begging to be known.
Ranboo had arrived, led by the hand and matching Tubbo’s pace as they scaled the steep southern border, and he had numbed in the dry air. Followed rabbit trails beaten by snow boots. Listened to the silence of a fading autumn. Watched that tower as it reached further and further into the sky, until they stood at its base and it tore the gray morning in half.
He had drifted inside, lanky and unsure, watching Tubbo in his unruly optimism.
“I’ve never done this before,” Tubbo had admitted, sifting through papers strewn across a long table at the back of the room. His hands stilled over a manilla folder, and then they were moving again, sorting, folding, stuffing drawers that were somehow already full. “It’ll be… interesting! It’s an experiment — the first of its kind — isn’t that exciting?”
“I guess,” Ranboo replied. Fear was discordant between his lungs. “But what if I don’t want to remember?”
He didn’t know what Tubbo had said next. Maybe he didn’t want to know, because it was flaring behind his eyes hotly, brightly, jumbled words and characters that made so little sense that they fell backwards into comprehension. But Ranboo knew that it made something resentful in his heart sing.
He knew, too, the thick leather binding his wrists to a cold chair. He knew the bar over his lap and its weight, which was too much — too heavy, Tubbo, too heavy — and so tight that he couldn’t breath. He couldn’t think past the wild panic roaring through him like it was hot and alive and there was no place for it because the bar is too heavy, Tubbo, you’re crushing me .
And it was hot, it was so hot, so hot against the cold that it felt like dying in some hell of their own make. And if this was hell, then this chair was the devil, and its arms were splinter-scarred against Ranboo’s body. It was fingers and nails twisted into some silver tray that served his body to the hollow sky above. There was no roof, nothing keeping him tethered, nothing locking his feet to the ground and his head level with the horizon.
He wanted to scream. Wanted to swallow the fear and let it pour out of him. Wanted to lift up into that hollow sky and fall. But he couldn’t fall, because the bar is too tight, Tubbo, please let me out, I don’t like this plan anymore, I don’t like this plan anymore, I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t
But this wasn’t right, this wasn’t real — couldn’t be real because his hands were free, digging into his hair, running circles across his arms, and yet everything was so cold and so hot and so desperately, unendingly certain.
Lighting split the sky and it was iron and heavy and solid. The world went white and it rang like rapture. Two pale hands clutching, tearing, fracturing beneath his hairline
Let it end. Let it be over. Let the sky fall around my ankles and then sink into the earth and then let the sea wash over everything and turn this town into a sunken curse.
“Hey Tubbo, is it alright if I– wait, Ranboo? What are you doing here?”
“This is my house, Jack.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Forgot about that one, didn’t I?”
“Mm.”
“Are you alright? You look pale. Well, on the one side, at least.”
“M’ fine. What did you want?”
“Just had a question about something. Don’t worry about it, nothing important. Are you… uh, are you decorating? You’ve got a mess on your hands, pal.”
“It’s for Michael. He’s been in the basement, but we want him to have his own room here.”
“Oh, that’s the… the little…”
“Kid, I think. That’s the word you’re looking for.”
“Right. Well, let Tubbo know I’m looking for him, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
Ranboo pressed his forehead to the window. It was a lot easier to remember the bad things. They were real and tangible and ripe at the back of his throat. He was choking on them with each breath he took to speak their names: Tubbo, Michael, Phil, Techno — people who loved him, who he loved so, so much in return. How long would it take for them to be a mystery in black ink?
How long would it take for this attic to melt, too?
Jack had over-exaggerated about the mess, he knew, because when Ranboo looked around, he saw something beautiful enough to lose. There was a carpet rolled against the wall, and when it was spread out, the material was softer than anything Ranboo had ever run his fingers through. And the wallpaper — it wasn’t all up, yet, but along the far wall, fat green frogs smiled from lilypad perches. There was Blue on the shelves, nearly translucent, alongside a boxed set of music discs made for the little jukebox in the corner. Paper cranes and airplanes spun idly from the ceiling, folded from scraps.
If he reached up, Ranboo could just barely brush the nearest bird with his fingers. He strained, leaning forward, balanced precariously until he could cup the thing in his hands and settle it into the nest of his palm. He blinked at the bird, and it winked back from its side profile, all muted edges and wrinkled corners.
“I could really use some help right now.”
The paper bird had no reply. Outside, though, wind rattled the shutters as if its hands were prying eyes. It whistled mournfully under the eaves. That bright music filled his head until it hurt to think about anything else. The bird fell back into its frozen flight, and Ranboo folded over his knees.
He traced looping letters over the tops of his feet. There was a hole wearing along the seam of his socks.
“I could really use some help right now.”
The airplanes spun their contrails around the room, dizzy and colorful. Like the twine that held them aloft was smoke billowing in twisted wires from one to another. Quiet.
“I could use some help.”
The Blue shifted imperceptibly in the cold, gray lighting. There was something voiceless drumming its fingers against the glassy rocks.
“Please help me.”
No record in the jukebox. No song.
“Dad?”
“Michael, I thought– oh, dear god, get off the ladder! Come here, that isn’t stable.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Was I being too loud?”
“Yeah. Who’s here?”
“No one, I was just– just doing some writing.”
“Another story?”
“Another story, yeah.”
“I like those. Can you read me?”
“You’ve heard them all, though. I don’t think there’s anything left to tell. You know about Niki, Fundy, Tommy and Wilbur… There’s not much else to say. You like the one about the pirates, don’t you? We could read that one again.”
“Dad… can you read me about you?”
“Yeah. Yeah I can do that.”