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You sweep through the halls of the nearest drugstore, following the rows of lights on the ceiling down the greeting card aisle. It’s not a large store but there are lots of distractions, so it’s easier to look upwards. You’re still intimidated by the variety of redundant products offered at the Constitution State’s most affordable prices. Each single aisle condenses three, maybe four market stalls in the Boiling Isles. You’ve gathered that this condition is part of the American dream, even though everyone is awake.
You pass by the column of cards marked Loss of Brother and contemplate buying one for Hunter to send as a joke. Two things stop you. First, you’re not sure whether he’s still brother and/or sister or just sister. Also, you don’t know Emperor Belos’s mailing address. Gus will be disappointed you can’t use the umbrella-themed postage stamps he’s picked out, but it’s okay. Camila will always have another bill to pay.
In the human world, there’s no card section for Loss of Palisman. There weren’t any on the Titan either, because palismen simply didn’t die enough to make the venture worthwhile, otherwise Eda would have been a hawker of condolence cards. You skim the cards for Loss of Pet instead. It’s not right, but it’s not far off.
The prewritten words don’t inspire much feeling in you, nor does the imagery on most of the cards. You find one without a cat or dog that references a place called the Rainbow Bridge. You’ll try to find it on a map of the human realm later, but for now you buy the card using human snails with pictures of stern men on them and head back to the Noceda house.
Hunter and Gus are observing sacred media time courtesy of the basement VCR. Their emotional eruptions burst through the floor at almost constant intervals, quoting loudly and hopefully spoiler-free from Cosmic Frontier. You enjoy listening to your— girlfriend? boyfriend? That’s a conversation that will happen at its own pace— your Hunter’s excitement, especially now, when his mind should linger somewhere other than sadness.
You will be allowed down there soon, once you finish the next two chapters of the Zirconium Mines of Zorxax arc and accompanying comic book adaptation. You usually appreciate Camila and Manny’s thorough hoarding of Cosmic Frontier merchandise, but sometimes it gets tedious. You tell yourself that reading from the perspective of O’Bailey’s best friend and cross-referencing it with the comic’s omniscient narrator makes it a worthwhile endeavor.
For this section in particular, Hunter needs your help. You have the better memory for trivia, and he wants his fan fiction project to be canon compliant: O’Bailey gets turned into a girl by cosmic radiation refracted through veins of tungsten oxide and manganese in the asteroid mine’s outer segments. Passion project or projection project, helping him here is among your highest obligations as a girlfriend.
You fill out the card and get the upstairs crew to sign as well. The whole exercise feels weird, like a piece of somewhat durable card-stock dares to stand in for hours of conversation and a good cry or two. You planned to do that with Hunter anyway, but Camila insisted it was good form to get a card as well.
You write a brief message and sign Love, Willow in your sloppiest Hexside cursive that remains legible. Hunter was forced into penmanship lessons in the Emperor’s Coven, complete with slapped knuckles for strokes out of place, and has vowed to never write a correctly curled letter again. This joke lives between just the two of you— let the others be confused and wonder who this Webbow person is leaving trails of x’s and o’s on Hunter’s card.
Hunter resurfaces for pizza rolls from the human box of ice magic. They’re sort of like pizza and marginally like rolls, but the appeal is their scalding mushy consistency, which reminds you of food from home.
“Hey, Hunter.” You look into his brown eyes, which still startle you, even as they witness you with their same world-weariness, through which shines a stubborn spark of feeling that reminds you of a plant perking up after a good water. He only looks like that when he looks at you, but he doesn’t need to know that. “We got you this card. It’s a human custom.”
Hunter works off the gold sticker that seals the envelope. To your relief he doesn’t notice, or pretends to not notice, the bird shape embossed on the sticker’s surface. He wedges out the card and looks at it, head angled in perplexity.
“Sorry my, ahem, furry loved one has crossed over the Rainbow Bridge?” Hunter reads stiltedly from the front of the card. “Interesting, I didn’t know rainbows were traversable in this realm.”
“That’s the thing, it means—” You trail off as Hunter opens the card to the inside. He should get the meaning after seeing the messages.
With his middle finger, he traces the penciled glyphs that take up the bulk of the center of the card, Luz’s contribution. His index finger still hurts from where Belos’s tar-phlegm-rot leaked through him, which was also where the sewing contraption injury never fully healed. He taps to keep count.
“This makes, let’s see, twelve white flowers with six slightly wrinkly petals that curve outward—”
In his eyes you see recognition. The flashcards you’ve been using to memorize human flora have helped more than just you learn about garden plants that won’t get code enforcement called on Camila’s property.
“I’d like to solve.” He borrows a phrase from an evening show about spelling words for money. “These glyphs make lilies!”
“That’s right!” You mirror his excitement but catch yourself and swallow, aiming for a somber delivery without sounding sulky. “Humans give lilies when someone dies,”
“Oh.” He notices the graphite smudged on his finger, an uncomfortable gray-green that looks too much like what came out of the other one. You catch the small tremble in his wrist and intervene with a timely baby wipe, but he still looks unsteadied. You know what he’s reliving through his entire body and can’t fault him.
“This is really sweet then, Willow, but who died?”
Your jaw refuses to move, so you blink aggressively instead. You finally manage to croak out the name you haven’t said for days. “Flapjack. When you were unconscious— or dead— after, you know.” You make antlers at your temples, then push your arms down, bend your wrists, and claw your fingers.
Hunter has the response you did, stupefied shock. Some of that is reflex, protecting himself from the sensation of shallow-buried memory. Some of it isn’t.
Unspoken but in sync, you both sit and brace yourself against the hard reality of the Noceda’s kitchen table.
He sets his elbows down. It’s not mealtime, so they can stay on the tablecloth.
“Flapjack is— fine.”
His stilted intonation pricks shivers and raises hairs for how close it was to Belos’s, but you recollect yourself. You know what it sounds like when he lies to himself. This is the sound of belief. Still, you have to wonder whether it’s also the sound of truth.
“I saw you—” You suck the words back in before your mistake is apparent. “I saw Belos crush him. I saw him turn into bits of light and rise into the sky. I wiped his glowing palistrom blood-sap from your chin. How can he be fine?”
“He’s in here now.” Hunter taps his chest.
“In your heart?” you challenge. You remember touching the same spot after Flapjack’s sacrifice, relieved and aggrieved when the rise and fall of life reemerged from a drawn out stillness. Your brain serves this memory to you chilled, often moments before waking panicked and sticky with sweat. In your nightmares, Flapjack remains gone and Hunter never stirs.
“In all of me. Mostly in my head.” He pauses. “That sounds weird, but it happened. With the magic from titan’s blood in the graveyard, Flap could fuse into me, but with it gone, undoing our merger is a little harder. Probably impossible.”
“I— I’m having a hard time with this. I’ve never heard of that happening, ever.” You could also say that most people in the Boiling Isles had never heard of people surviving in the human realm for months on end, so you temper your disbelief even as it rampages.
You look into Hunter’s eyes again, deep and brown like Flapjack’s. He’s a horrible liar and lies with whole face, so the fact that he’s holding your gaze is enough. As your face warms, you wonder if the color is coincidence, if just add palisman to whatever a grimwalker is would always turn out brown. That’s not an experiment anyone wants to repeat. There’s a lot you can’t know.
Hunter schemes, eyes darting around a map only he can see in his mind. “When we return to the demon realm, we could be around enough ambient magic that Flap might just poof out of me. Who knows? And if not, we know a little Titan who would help us, maybe prick a finger. We could be boo boo buddies, like me and Luz, right? If we bribe him with hugs or tummy rubs, he’d be in. And worst case, maybe the Collector has a way.”
Under no circumstances would you have considered working with the being that turned the Emperor into roadkill and ground the Head to bonemeal without setting a finger on it. For Hunter, you’re surprised to find yourself reconsidering. Love makes him take risks. Love makes you take risks. It feels worth it.
“It’s all a big if, but let’s say we do get back.” Your hands itch at the idea of going home. “We can’t know what’s going to happen. Until then, what does Flapjack do?”
“He just hangs out in my head, I think. I hear him like I heard Belos.”
“So only you can hear him.” You nod slowly.
“Yeah, real suspicious, I know.” Hunter looks to the ground for answers and finds none.
“Is it like,” you sing, “he lives in you, he lives in me—”
You remember hearing that song while watching Hamlet With Lions 2 — target demographic, ages 6 to 11 — holding hands together under the covers. Hunter had tapped his pinky against yours and finger by finger initiated the hand holding. You had taken the blanket off in the end, partially because it was getting warm and partially to see whether Hunter would turn a deeper red than Captain Avery’s uniform. He did.
Flapjack was a good sport about it, occupying himself by chirping along with the other birds in the soundtrack. It makes you sad that you can’t see him hop around to music or hear him whistle anymore.
Hunter laughs with nothing else overhead, just clean laughter. It’s a sound that should come from him more often. “It’s less like an omnipresent force and more like— one flesh, one end from Gay Space Death Wizard Women.”
You have that series in your column— a more accurate word than stack or pile— of human books to read, but the meaning is apparent.
“Which is like, where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay,” you quote. You’d read a couple stories in a thick book with thin pages and that line stuck out to you. You remember that they were both women.
“Exactly” says Hunter with finality, leaving the card face down on the table. That hurts you, even though you didn’t see the meaning of it in the first place. “I’ll leave you alone then. Gus must be wondering where our pizza rolls are.”
You mumble goodnight, then trip on the raised edge between the kitchen tile and hallway carpet.
Hunter bolts to catch you, flickering there then here with a bright red crackle. “Oh my Titan.” He gasps, hands around your waist. Your stomach moves against his hands when you breathe. His chest rises against your back. Adrenaline surges through you, but you want to stay like this for a while as you settle. “This is proof. Of Flap’s magic, at least.”
This is proof. You squeeze your eyes shut until tears roll down your bunched cheeks.
“Did you stub your toe?” Hunter asks. You feel his breath in your ear, on your neck.
“That’s not it. I didn’t believe you.” You turn to him with lacrimal specks splattered against the lenses of your glasses. His face as you see it is warped through water and concern. “I was doubting you when I should have trusted.”
Hunter shushes into your forehead, “I forgive you,” but this close to him, you get the impression of a wish more than a statement of fact. You look to his eyes but they are closed. His breathing is steady against you. That is enough.
“Like you said” he mumbles just loud enough to hear, “being revived by a palisman is unheard of, as is having the palisman live on. Flap also thinks it’s reasonable.”
“Hi, Flapjack,” you try, even as believing comes hard.
“He misses you. Says you give good kisses.”
“I miss him too.” You break and your voice follows suit, every vowel fractured like old asphalt. “Together — sniff — you’re not going to sing in the morning, eat worms, or race with other birds, are you? Like how Eda had her deal with the owl beast?”
“I already sing in the mornings. That bathroom is echoey. I know you listen!” Hunter sticks his tongue out. “But none of that other stuff. The only worms I like are gummy.”
You try to laugh, but it comes out as a wail. You know with the rational swath of your mind that the voice of Flapjack that’s unhearable to you could simply not exist. You want it to be real, because you loved Flapjack too, and for Hunter’s sake most of all. If Flapjack is in Hunter's head, then you need to return to the Boiling Isles and bring back the little bird palisman that adored him and he adored. If Hunter's convinced himself of truth in delusion to put off heartbreak until another day, so be it. You still need to return to the Boiling Isles. You can be a shoulder to cry on, although the crying and shoulder use will be mutual. Along the way, if he’s set on where to go and how to get there, therefore so go you. It is decided.
“I’m so sorry, Flapjack. I miss you.” You kiss Hunter’s cheek.
“I’m so sorry, Hunter. I love you.” You kiss his mouth.