Chapter Text
“That one’s called Orion.”
“Why?”
“Because it looks like a guy with a bow and arrow.”
Matt sits up on his elbows, staring in utter bewilderment at the sky and then at Gus. “No, it does not.”
“It does,” Gus argues weakly because he can’t see it either. Still, Luz had looked so excited while explaining it to him and enacting the dramatic tale about Orion and the scorpion and some guy who brought Orion back from the dead that he hadn’t had the heart to tell her that it just did not look like like a guy with a bow and arrow.
“Augustus Porter,” Matt says, gesturing at the sky. “There’s no guy.”
“There’s a guy.”
“Really? Point him out to me.”
Gus points in the general area of Orion.
“No. Where’s his head? Where’s his bow and arrow?”
“I can’t believe you don’t see it.”
Matt groans. “Because there’s no guy!” he says, sounding so exasperated that Gus almost considers conceding. Almost. “Maybe we need to get your glasses prescription checked.”
He decides to double down instead. “Maybe that means it’s you who needs to wear the glasses.”
Matt snatches Gus’s glasses from his face and puts them on. “Woah.”
“Do you see him now?”
“I can’t see anything now. You live like this?”
Gus snorts, elbowing his friend hard in the side as he grabs his glasses back. “Fine then, wise guy. What do you think it looks like?”
“A bunch of dots?”
“Where’s your imagination?” Gus complains.
“I left it in the demon realm,” Matt grins cheekily, his cracked tooth on display.
Gus rolls his eyes, sitting up. “You’re such a pain.”
Matt sits up, too. He crosses his legs, looking up at the sky again. They’d traveled around the human realm a few times now - the first time they’d left Connecticut, Matt had rejoiced as if they’d just discovered brand new territory. He’d been properly obnoxious about it to the rest of the Human Appreciation Society. And while he had never been as taken with the stars as Gus had, he was still a good sport about Gus getting excited whenever it was a new moon, and they could see even more stars, which meant they should go camping to see them.
Gus scoots a little closer to the fire, warming his hands.
“It kind of looks like a thumbs down, right?”
He looks over at his friend, then at the stars again. He moves so he’s next to Matt again, close enough that their shoulders almost brush. “Oh, like those three are the knuckles, and that one’s the thumb?”
“Yeah. You know what it also looks like?”
Gus leans closer just slightly, letting their shoulders brush for a moment. “Hm?” he asks, smiling as he can see Matt’s cheeks redden in his periphery.
“You know those tube demons they have outside the car orphanages?” Matt says, making a spell circle and summoning an illusion of one of those inflatable tube men that Gus sees outside where humans buy cars.
He’s long since given up trying to convince Matt that cars aren’t “dumb palismen”, and buying one from the lot was not the same as when they’d adopted their palismen from the Bat Queen. It always came back to the same argument about the Transformers franchise. “I don’t see it.”
“Are you serious? But you see some guy with a bow and arrow.”
“That’s because he’s actually there, yeah.”
Matt dismisses the illusion and creates another, this time a projection of the sky with the lines connected. And Gus has to admit… it does look like one of the tubes swirling around. It’s almost uncanny, actually.
“Hmm, no… I don’t see it…”
“Are you serious?!”
“Maybe if the tube had a bow and arrow…?”