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Zoox had been a clam, and parts of it felt a lot like dying.
He didn’t really remember dying directly. He remembered it vaguely, in bits and pieces. He could remember being cold: that was pretty consistent, although not entirely. There was at least one point when death felt entirely too warm. He tried to focus on individual sensations, but it felt like one was always overlapping with another.
He tried to remember what sort of emotional states his component parts had been in, and it was like trying to listen to five conversations layered on top of each other. He didn’t know if they, or he, or whoever, had died happily in their bed or in anguish at the hands of their worst nemesis. It was pointless to try to isolate the specific emotions each person had: it was like trying to find the exact point between being sad and being angry. And in any case, Zoox didn’t really enjoy feeling those things.
But still. The easiest thing to compare being a clam to was when he’d almost died on their last mission. He’d been trying to move his body but it felt like he’d forgotten how, he couldn’t seem to get his eyes to focus on the right things when he even managed to open them at all, and everything was simultaneously inaudible and too loud.
Zoox also still felt weird about the idea that someone could turn your own thoughts against you, connect to your mind with malicious intent. He hadn’t even realized that was something that could happen until back in the shanty town, where Orlean had turned Zoox’ crossbow on Devo before Zoox had even realized.
On the one hand, it had probably been a good thing that Orlean had done that, because if Zoox had been less guarded and less scared when he first reached out to the clam, it would’ve almost certainly overpowered him. But that didn’t make him feel all that much better about it.
Zoox didn’t really want to bring up the whole communing with the clam to Amber and Devo right now. He needed some time with his own thoughts. So he was starting to fill their onboard bathtub with ethersea.
The water that came through their boat ran through three separate filtration systems. The process was very helpful for preventing people on board being affected by the water, and very bad for Brinarr hoping to have a soak, as Zoox realized when he turned the shower on the first day of their journey.
This meant that if Zoox wanted to soak in the bathtub, he had to very carefully carry buckets of water back and forth, making sure he mopped up any water on the way back because his friends seemed really hesitant about it.
Amber had shut herself up in her room pretty much the whole time since they left the infinite clam, and Devo had half-heartedly offered to help Zoox carry water, but Zoox declined. It was kind of helpful carrying the water: wrapping his fingers around the water bucket helped him remember that he had fingers. He could’ve just as easily gone out the moon pool and been submerged in the sea instantly, but he liked to sit in the bathtub. It
Eventually, he had enough water to actually soak in. He climbed into the tub, letting himself sink backwards until he was looking up at the light reflecting through the water.
“But you’re empty too. And after looking within you, I believe I may be better off… to have had a hole to call home at all.” Zoox wished that didn’t cut right to the core. He’d been called hollow and empty before, but it felt especially painful coming from beings who mostly talked to him and nobody else. It made it feel like every organism in the whole ocean could see him for what he was, that he wasn’t figuring out who he was but simply getting better at hiding the emptiness.
Brinarr, when they first came into being, worked towards combining all the different parts of their personality. They started to determine from all their experiences and feelings what kind of person they wanted to be. Zoox felt like he was a whole person, but that didn’t come with a feeling of knowing what he wanted to do, or even who that person was. And unlike the other Brinarr, it didn't seem like he had any kind of memories to fall back on.
Zoox dragged his fingers back and forth through the water. The longer he stayed and thought about it, the more he was starting to feel like the clam had been right.
He didn’t know who he was. And he didn’t know how to find out.
*
Zoox had fought someone off using a pair of tongs, climbed down a hundred-foot ladder, and dealt with a giant squid that almost drowned both his friends within the last twelve hours.
Zoox hadn’t exactly gotten a chance to eat anything at the auction, so he was cleaning out their stash of candy bars. Devo had, albeit reluctantly, explained what was in the candy bars to Zoox, but as soon as Devo was asked how the individual components were made, he got tired of it and left the room.
Zoox would’ve tried his luck asking Amber, but he was pretty sure she had been the person who’d bought them the candy bars in the first place. He’d gone to thank Devo for getting them some other food, but Devo just seemed confused. Zoox didn’t want to seem ungrateful for Amber taking the time to try and make things a little easier for them, even if he doubted she would admit it if he asked her directly.
Zoox, much like remembering dying, had a vague sense-memory every time he bit into one of the candy bars, but he couldn’t really place it. He couldn’t even really decide whether he liked these particular candy bars or not, as frustrating as that was. He kept eating them, though. Partially because he was still hungry, and partially because he felt like he should.
Zoox felt the ship speed up suddenly, which wasn't exactly a new feeling but didn’t normally happen without warning. He shouted back and forth with Devo for a moment about the coral ship and what their intentions were (admittedly, it didn’t sound very good), then started running down to fix their failing engine. But he was stopped by some kind of pull.
He knew he should be fixing the engines, should be helping them get away, but he turned and let himself follow the feeling. He found himself standing in their pantry again, and he picked up the skull they found earlier.
He felt what was unmistakably a shiver, which was doubly a weird sensation since he didn't have skin to prickle. It hurt, but he pressed onward, trying to figure out where the pull he felt came from. And he could feel coral bodies like him, other brinarr, but not other brinarr, or something else entirely, and he could see them all in his mind, linked together. And he could feel himself slotting into place with them and he didn’t… really mind it? It felt natural, somehow. It felt right.
But, of course, he should probably warn his friends before he tried to go any further. So, with effort, he let himself remember where he was on the dock, and called out to Devo. Devo… did not take it well.
Zoox tried to let himself calm down, but as Devo was basically yelling in his ear, the more irritated he felt. Last time, Devo had told him that what he was feeling, having no idea who he was, was just normal for people, that everyone went through that. Maybe they did, but that didn’t change the fact that while Devo might not know who he was, he at least seemed to know who he wasn’t. He wasn’t devoted to Benevolence any longer. Zoox didn’t even have that.
Zoox wasn’t sure if it was spite or something else that animated his limbs when he went out to try to speak to the coral ship again. He was pretty sure the fight with them was going pretty poorly, so this was still probably their best option. And anyways, he wanted to try and talk to them at least once. Maybe then he would have something to do. Maybe then things would start making sense.
Zoox reached out a hand to the surface of the ship, and watched the color of his coral bleed out onto the ship in bright colors. And just as Zoox was starting to feel that same tug again, somewhere deep inside him, the ship sped off.
Zoox was left floating in empty Ethersea, hand still outstretched.
*
Zoox had gotten a lot of time to think since his friends got sick and he was left alone. He’d come up with a lot of ideas in that time.
Frankly, not all of them were good ideas. The bar fight they were having, in retrospect, was probably not their finest moment. But he had thought a lot about himself. Hard not to, when he was blaming himself for pretty much everything that had happened, and
He was pretty sure he knew what he wasn’t now, after all this. He wasn’t fearless: he had dealt with too much dread to claim that. He wasn’t effortlessly kind, but he was trying not to be cruel. And maybe most importantly, he wasn’t alone.
That hadn’t really sunk in for him until he was wandering up and down the rooms of the warehouse they were half-using as a hospital. Of course he felt sad and upset being surrounded by people who were sick, but he realized that he wouldn’t be feeling so guilty if he didn’t wish all these people would get better.
He was part of this city, whether or not they considered him to be part of it. And he wanted things to get better for them, for everyone. He especially wanted things to get better for Amber and Devo. In the same way he could talk to sea creatures and they could trust him, he hoped he could be that for everyone. He wanted to have a home, but more than that, he wanted to be a home.
Zoox didn’t want to die, but it was starting to seem like he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Still, he knew this whole situation was their fault as much as it was anyone’s, and maybe his fault specifically if he hadn’t been so distracted. So he waited below the little ball of plankton, trying and failing to hit it with arrows. He’d been splashed with acid, beaten by the sad imitation of someone he looked up to, and dragged across the floor, but so long as he was able to keep standing, he’d keep waiting here.
Cambria fell, and Devo shattered the glass surrounding the little organisms with a thunderclap, and Zoox let the water pour over him, and he realized that for the first time in two weeks, he was starting to feel like himself again.
Amber and Devo would be safe.