Chapter Text
The screen in front of him goes dark. He jolts, making for the laptop touchpad with startled fingers. An empty document blinks at him, wide open and innocent; he swallows hard, looks away.
Arcade sighs, letting his head fall upon arms heavy and numb. He shakes them out to his sides, and his face hits the desk, leaving him to stare blankly out the window. Fern had used it to leave just the night before, he thinks. Maybe he could do the same. Escape out the window and run off into the forest.
No. There’s work to be done. (There’s always work to be done.)
He sits up straight again, forcing away thoughts of the forest, and squints at the assignment before him. An essay, his mind supplies. His history professor had discussed it weeks ago (not that his brain had been in the room with him, at the time; rather, it was somewhere beyond campus, in a cave filled with glow worms and Fern).
The topic is familiar enough. Anyone old enough to know right from left knew of the marks gifted to each and every person born into the world. It was a question to the scientists of the globe, but to everyone else (all the dreamers, all the seers) it was fact. Everyone had a Mark to pair with their loved ones.
Every year, every age, Arcade had trudged through presentations, storybooks, essays—in school and out, the topic followed him (haunted him). This year, for all its change, he surmised, was no different.
Write an informative essay in MLA formatting regarding the various theories of how Marks came to be.
The world assumed every person was Marked. Those who weren’t, or were of a low number, were considered to be “unsavory”. Still, for as commonplace as it was to discuss, specific queries regarding Marks were considered taboo.
He’d lucked out there, Arcade thinks. No one needed to know that his only mark was his mother’s, a lonely tree bracing his ankle, branches stretching up, up, up (corkwood, his mind whispers, Carallia brachiata; old knowledge clutched close to his chest, the result of a child desperately combing through every source he could find on trees in hope that his only Mark might have meant something, might have meant he was special).
(The information meant nothing. He was still bare, empty, floating adrift with one anchor too small for the storms he faced).
He shuts his laptop. He’s left the assignment long enough; it could sit some more.
—
“Where’s your head at, fairy boy?” Fern asks, blinking at him over the bag of chips shared between them.
“What d’you mean?” Arcade says. “I’m right here.”
“Oh, are you?” Fern says. “Well, then, where’s the rest of the filling between your ears?”
“Oi,” he says, flicking a stale chip their way, “I’ll have you know that both my head and all of my brains—rather impressive they are, mind you—are right where they should be.”
“Mm. Of course.” Fern leans back into the ground, contorting his body in an arch before settling. “And the way you’ve been obsessively checking the time for the span of your visit is entirely unrelated?”
Arcade sighs, leaning back on his elbows to join them. It’s a bit muddier, where he is compared to Fern’s spot on the riverbank, and he can feel it sticking up the length of his arms, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Alright, fine,” he says, “so maybe I’ve been a little bit distracted. It’s just this small assignment for school I keep thinking about, nothing big. I didn’t mean to be like this, really—all out of it. I’ll pay more attention.”
Fern lies quiet for a moment (still, too, the wisps of his wings tight and unyielding against his back). Then: “Arcade, I am not so clueless.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s okay if you must leave to complete your assignment. I understand that you must take time out of your day to come see me. You needn’t trouble yourself so.”
“What?” Arcade repeats blankly. “I—no, of course not! Wait, that is—it’s no ‘trouble’. I enjoy being with you, Fern.”
“…You do?”
“Yeah!” Arcade rolls over to his side to better face Fern, entirely ignoring how the mud further splatters across his well-loved shirt. Cheek pressed flat to the ground, he says, “You know what?”
Fern props themself up on one elbow. “What?”
“Let’s blow this place. Go out into town. Have some fun. You get to see some new human things, I get to take a break—wins all around! And don’t tell me you weren’t staring at that arcade the last time we went down there.”
Fern is silent, still, but his wings flutter against the dirt. “Alright, then,” they say. “Let’s, as you say, ‘blow this place’.”