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"This is nice," Inien says, as the raft climbs, impossibly smoothly, up the sheer side of the wall.
"This is nice. Maybe we should get back together," you half-joke. This is all ridiculous anyway. Your hair is plastered to your face. The last time you felt that was in the bath house—with Inien, again. Thinking about it twinges uncomfortably, and you push it aside: so much has happened since then, and you're still feeling the growing pains. The past doesn't belong in this moment. The weight of your arm feels lighter, somehow, even though it could have dragged you to the bottom of the ocean moments ago.
(And it's so, so easy to relax around Inien.)
"Maybe I should get a slime cat as a familiar," she muses. The air is heavy with salt. Your clothes cling uncomfortably to your skin, such an alien sensation to you.
Then, almost under her breath, "Maybe we should get back together. Anyways—" she interrupts herself, and that is familiar to you, "—slime cat?"
"Slime cat? Together? To save our marriage?" You shrug, like it means nothing to you. "Sure."
She smiles her little lopsided grin, eyes glinting with mischief (and maybe something more, you might allow yourself to think, if you were anyone else but you, Harlock). And she turns her head, and silently you thank her for it. A smile graces your lips, too, and then it is gone like the rushing sea foam beneath you.
Your peripheral vision is chaos: Markus and Gregor flying through the air, distant sounds of a circular saw cutting through plywood and cardboard (it reminds you of the Shrouded Isles, and maybe it reminds you of home, just a little, if you let it). Inien is still steering the raft, and you feel your muscles relax as if it were happening to somebody else: you are not your body.
The sun warms your back, and there is a lightness in your chest. Your mind is running—it never stops—so you almost do not notice the laughter bubbling in your chest until it leaks out, more like a cough than an expression of mirth.
Inien turns around and laughs with you.
Your mind derails, for a moment—and why shouldn't it? You swam, you joked, you smiled, and it was so easy, and the water was so cool, and you almost forgot about the burning sensation in your side, so why should you not dream?
You dream, then, of a sunny day not unlike this one. Inien lounges on a chair, you fiddle with some trap mechanism on your lap. There are frosty glasses on a little table: iced tea for you (unsweetened), lemonade for Inien (very sweetened). There is a small sound, and your attention stirs. A dark shape stretches out in a patch of sunlight.
"Ooh, biiiii—g stretch!" Inien's voice is full of delight, and a softness that doesn't usually accompany that delight—usually she reserves her excitement for violence, carpets, and new grease prototypes.
The shape—a cat, you realize, which should have been obvious—makes another little sound and closes its eyes, an expression of absolute contentment on its face. A puddle of green ooze is slowly forming at its feet. You look at Inien, a quip on the tip of your tongue, but you find her looking back at you—into you—instead.
You expect the moment to break, like it usually does, with some noncommittal gesture of disinterest: surely Inien will look away now, change the subject, or perhaps Kyr will conveniently burst into the room with something ticking loudly (and you realize, with a little sigh of resignation, that you are in the Nine Shrines, again), but it never comes. And—yet—you don't move. You don't blink. You are terrified, deep down in a place you haven't thought about in years, that you are not dreaming, that you hold something fragile and breathless in your hands, your hands. The ice clinks in your glass. Inien blinks slowly at you, like a cat.
You taste salt. The raft lurches to the side, and Inien curses.
The engine is fixed before you realize you have done it: machines, unlike people, are predictable, and you know, deeper than knowing, which screw needs tightening, which wire is short-circuiting.
You glance at Inien. She quickly looks away. It might be sunburn, but you think the color rises in her cheeks.
The waves are beating relentlessly against your meager craft, the engine complains at every exertion, and Inien has already moved on to yelling at Gregor, trying to catch up as he pedals into the distance.
And you—you, you who feels so much it burns you still—you let yourself relax.