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On the other side of the door, you come out small and frail and blind. There are hands on your shoulders and fingers lifting to heave you from the grass. The Green Sun has left a sour and vacant yawning inside of you that burns and burns and burns. The neon swims behind your eyes and renders you an insignificant thing who cannot see anything, cannot control even a pebble beyond an arm’s reach, and everything that has made you special has been sucked from your cells. You swallow the bile that rises in your throat and bite back the howl of agony that’s pushing to get out of you.
On the other side of the door, one boy you have known for forever and a girl you have never seen except in the hidden corners of eldritch bubbles are curled up and coughing up shards of the Furthest Ring, the dust of disappeared ghosts and melted memories. Two figures are standing over them, a girl and a boy, blurry shapes you can’t make out past the motion sickness of being hollowed out. More people will join them, shouting cloudy “are you okays” and “I can’t believe it’s yous” and “you’ve got to be fucking kidding mes.” Once your brother is supporting your weight and pulling you upright (just the way you remember, just the way you’ve dreamed of, even if he’s taller now) you see that Davesprite and Nepeta Leijon have been surgically separated, their Hearts in the right vessels and their Life newly restored.
You wonder how many others will be born again before the day is done.
◘
It will happen on that first night, staring at the ceiling with your friends all around you, dozing on their bunched-up hoodies and spare blankets and sofa cushions in a parody of a sleepover. Your head will be buzzing from too many events packed into one day – when’s the last time you’ve done more than sleep for fourteen hours? You will have learned some important things today, namely that shower water takes a lot longer to heat up if your house isn’t powered by a volcano, and your voice is much quieter than those of your friends. You call them friends, but is that what they are? Is someone your friend if they haven’t spoken to you in three years? Have you been demoted to an acquaintance, a part-time sister? It will be hard for you to pass into sleep, afraid of what’s on the other side of the curtain, but mostly unsettled by the soft sighing of so many human bodies.
The door will crack open, light poking in from the outside hall, and a nocturnal girl with wide, olive eyes and scruffy hair will tap your shoulder as you lie on the couch. You will not startle, just turn over and look at her with an even stare, and the details of her face will be lost without your glasses but you will be able to sense her fidgets anyway. She will climb onto the back of the couch and slide to sit across from you, legs crossed and fingers jittering.
“You want to know, don’t mew?” she’ll say in a stage whisper. Nepeta has a voice like a child. You will tilt your head, confused, and she’ll shake her head in embarrassment.
“I mean, ‘you!’ I’m sorry. I’m trying to be serious,” Nepeta will backtrack.
“What am I supposed to want, exactly?” you’ll whisper back. In their sleep, someone on the floor will roll over and groan.
“You have missing meowmories,” she’ll say simply.
Your heart will skip.
“Memories! From before everything changed. You want them back, don’t you? I’ve seen them myself,” she’ll say. Her face will turn green – not envy, just shyness. “I think you’d like them better than the ones you have. Just a guess.”
“I’m sure I would,” you’ll agree, “but there’s nothing I can do about it, is there?”
“No,” she’ll say. Her smile turns mischievous, a soft little curve like a cat’s. “But there’s something I can do. Do you know what a Rogue of Heart can do?”
You’ll say nothing.
“I can steal the soul of the ‘you’ from before. We’re all still out there – the ghosts of us who didn’t make it. I can take what she felt and lived and transfer them to you.”
You will bite the inside of your mouth. “That doesn’t sound right. What will happen to her?”
Nepeta’s smile will falter. “It’s hard to explain. Where they are now… it’s not the same as the dream bubbles. They’re more like… traces, or impressions that are resting beyond the Furthest Ring. I could give you all your memories, if you really wanted,” she’ll say with a smirk, “but I don’t think everyone’s meant to hold that much stuff. Take it from me. It’s a lot.”
“It won’t hurt her?”
“I think being ‘hurt’ is kind of a loose concept out there,” Nepeta will giggle. “Imagine having a whole can of paint, and someone takes out just a tiny drop.” She’ll hold her thumb and index a hair apart. It will strike you how sharp her nails are.
You will swallow hard, butterflies erupting in your gut. It won’t be certain to you that this will work at all – where’s the hypothesis, where’s the data analysis? – but why wouldn’t you take the chance? You’ll nod just once, and Nepeta will grin wide.
Her hands will cup your temples, and her fingers will be soft in your hair. You’ll think for a clear and sharp moment that she smells of steel and soil, and then you won’t be able to see anything at all. Vivid fuchsia will pour over you, hot and electric, and the tears will spring from your eyes almost immediately. Before you know it you are sobbing with sheer relief, from sheer heartache, and this girl you do not know will be whispering frantic apologies. Someone in the armchair by the window will readjust themself in their sleep.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Nepeta will repeat. “I’ve never actually tried this before. Did I do it right? Do you remember?”
You will breathe in hard and shudder with weeping, and after you’ve wiped your face dry you’ll start to nod. She’ll all but collapse with relief, clapping her hands quietly, and you’ll force yourself to laugh a gargling laugh.
Three years of an alternative life will take so long to settle. You’ll be kept awake, tossing and turning, by visions of a bright gold hull and pittering consorts and hands entwined with yours. The happiness takes a long time to deflate and digest, and for hours you will feel flushed and trembling. By the time you fall asleep, the sky outside will be bleeding blue with dawn. When your friends start to stir, you will also understand why Nepeta waited so little to come to you. It’s nice for someone to share the memories you’ve lived.
You will fall asleep wondering if you imagined the whispers in the hall when Nepeta left.
◘
It will take time for Davesprite to come out of his hole in the wall. Again you will feel the deep frustration of blindness, of having no way to tell where he is. You will find feathers on the windowsill, unanswered texts and offline statuses, your paths will continue to cross but will never quite meet, and before the week is over you will find him on the back porch completely by accident. You will yelp at the sight of him, and his feathers will puff up in fright, and after what feels like minutes he will push his glasses up his nose.
“Hey.”
You will tread to the edge of the patio and fold your skirt underneath you, sitting cautiously just beside him, and for a while neither of you will say anything. You will think of a million things to say – make a comment on the restored presence of his legs, or ask him how he likes this unusual and green new Earth – but none of it seems appropriate. What you end up saying will be rather simple.
“I missed you,” you’ll say. It’ll come out quiet and strained, almost inaudible, and you will hear the silent sigh ripple through him in the way he shakes his wings out.
“I missed you, too.”
Two years ago, you sat with your legs dangling between the copper railings of a golden battleship. The air crackled, a living void, and far below you the Yellow Yard popped and swirled, impressionistic. Davesprite exhaled, his face propped up with his hand, and you occupied your hands by running them through the feathers around his neck. It’s a misty memory, a little far away and a little smudged at the corners, but you can faintly feel what it was like, and it makes your cheeks warm up. You will press the memories down with both palms before they turn bitter and sour.
Is he watching you? You will not be able to tell.
“The sky is really dark,” he’ll observe. You won’t say anything, and it will make his face go gold. “Compared to the asscrack of pseudo-reality we were barrelin’ through, I mean.”
“‘We,’” you’ll repeat. “You know, then.”
He won’t reply, and it will make your fingers fidget.
“You know that I’ve remembered, don’t you?”
Davesprite will flex his legs, maybe still unsure how to use them, and the muscles in his ankles will pop.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He will turn to look at you for the first time, and you will feel your heart calm. “So you’ve remembered, but you still missed me. What’s the deal with that? Trying to make me feel better?”
That familiar agitation will come back, the frustrated sting in the corner of your eyes whenever you failed to yank him out of these moods. He’d sink lower the more you pulled, leaving you weary and ragged, and he would be just as deeply submerged as he began.
“Maybe you should clarify what it is that you’re trying to tell me,” you’ll murmur. “I’m no good with hints.”
He’ll sigh heavily, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his legs. “I mean you can let me have it, if you want. I won’t hold it against you if you give me a black eye. I feel like it’d be a real big milestone in our dynamic if you just tell me you hate me already. We’ll gain an achievement and level up and become better people all around.”
Your fists will clench at your sides, and you’ll cross your ankles so quickly that they’ll skim the bushes and send a pair of moths flittering away.
“I have never hated you,” you’ll whisper. You will clasp your hands around the need to cry in anger, squeezing it tight and choking it down. “Never, not even once. You just convinced yourself I did so you could justify cutting us all off. This is your whole problem – you want so badly to be hated that you pretend we already do.”
“Fine. If you don’t hate me, John does. Dave does. Everyone else just feels apathetic. They’re disappointed I made it to the other side. I’m the strand of toilet paper you track out of the bathroom stall, all trailing on your Sketchers while you’re trotting through Target unawares.”
You’ll start to stand. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything other than existential despair from you at this hour. Once you’ve persuaded yourself that each of the stars in Orion has a personal grudge against you for a crime committed in a past life, be sure to come back inside. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
Just before you leave, Davesprite will take the hem of your skirt in his talons. It’s a childish gesture, a plea for the favorite babysitter not to go home just yet, and when you turn back the look on his face will be stony.
“I’m sorry.”
You’ll stare at each other.
“I’m sorry, okay? Please don’t leave.”
You will sit down again, tenser than before, and you will feel staticy when his hand rests between you. Davesprite will hang his head.
“I really thought I was fixed, y’know? I… we had all the answers. I could see everything that every version of me had ever done, and my sense of me became this tiny little blip. It didn’t matter to me, all the shit I’d waded through, because it was just a piece of this giant fuckin’ cosmic jigsaw. But being split up again. I don’t know. You can’t outrun that shit, I guess. It just comes down twice as hard as before. I feel, like, permanently hungover. Like a bad trip or somethin’. Still see the flashin’ when I close my eyes.”
He’ll rub his temples, and the rock in your chest will soften.
“I remember us kissing you,” he’ll say. His voice will be rough and avian, gravelly and rasping.
Your heart will seize, and your palms will go clammy. Out in the trees, some sort of animal will scurry down the branches and knock the loose twigs to the grass.
“Sorry about that. We didn’t ask you, and I… I guess I’ve been scared that we freaked you out. I know I would’ve gotten ten types of the creeps. I’ve tried to rationalize it – I’ve tried to be all, ‘oh, we were goin’ off on this fuckin’ suicide mission like every version of me is dead-set on doing for some reason and we thought we’d never see her again,’ but I can’t. Justify it. I’m sorry.”
“I accept the apology,” you’ll respond.
This sounds mostly true once it comes out of your mouth. It wasn’t a wholly unpleasant experience. Maybe a little bright and a little disorienting, and you would’ve liked a warning, but still not unpleasant. Any semblance of human contact becomes welcome after a while. Maybe you missed it.
“And I guess part of me was still feeling shitty about the whole past year. I’m really fuckin’ sorry, Jade. If I had to retire to be consumed by nihilistic dread 24/7, I could’ve at least stayed in touch. You didn’t deserve the swamp of angst that we left you in, and I don’t know why I thought kissing you would make it go away.” He’ll rub the back of his neck, rambling all over himself, and you won’t be sure he even knows where this train of thought is going.
“It didn’t hold up to any of the previous times, but I’ll forgive you anyway,” you’ll respond.
Davesprite will look startled, the feathers ‘round his neck rising in surprise, and you’ll smile across the backyard at nothing in particular.
“I’ll try harder next time,” he’ll blurt out, and his face will burn with such a radioactive hue that you’ll know better than to comment.
“You keep saying ‘we,’” you’ll remark, and his shoulders will sink with relief that you’ve changed the subject. “What was that like?”
He’ll pause. “Enlightening. And not in the ‘twenty-something backpacker who went to India for two weeks and came back with colored glasses’ kind. I guess it showed me that being happy is, like, so close to being possible, but it wasn’t the right way. Like I can finally put out the trash someday and be functional again, but this time I’ll have to, I don’t know, do it manually?”
“That will be difficult.”
“Yeah."
“I think you can do it.”
Davesprite will not respond.
“Have you talked about this with Nepeta? How are you getting along?”
“Nepeta is all right. It’s kinda like watching after a little kid, even though she could probably bench press me. Those cat puns are really startin’ to sound like a speech impediment, though.” He’ll scrunch up his mouth. “I kinda feel like we’re in the same boat. Hardly any of her friends thought she was worth anything. I mean, the guy who pummeled her over the head and sent ‘er to the bubbles still managed to get it on with two of her favorite people, so. I guess we can’t all be winners.”
He’ll kick the bushes, and the leaves will rustle loudly in the stillness.
“She just misses her moirail, y’know? He was part of a regular sprite, so he… y’know.”
The face of your mother will come to mind, bright and blue, and sadness will flit down into your lungs.
“You can’t just ignore someone once they’ve shared every minutia of your fuckin’ existence,” he’ll shrug. “It’s kinda awkward. I haven’t figured out how to ask her if she remembers the time I tripped in the cafeteria and brought a string of grubby seventh graders down with me like a tragic line of dominos. Would like for the details of that day to remain mine alone. Kinda like how I wanna forget how it feels for a wild animal’s jugular to spurt blood in my mouth.”
“I guess you’re both going through culture shock.”
Davesprite will laugh and drag his hand down his face. “I guess, yeah. Mostly I just get earfuls from her about my impawper conduct. I’ve had to cover my ears before she whips out the graph paper and draws me detailed diagrams about how badly I’ve fucked up my quadrants.”
“Impawper?”
“Improper.”
The planks of the patio will creak under you as you adjust yourself, toes curling and flexing, and Davesprite will give you a subtle look that he must think you don’t notice.
“Hey, Jade?”
Your white ears will flick. “What?”
He’ll shake his head, and the pipes will hiss under the porch. “Nevermind.”
◘
You will encounter Nepeta again in the slit between night and dawn, when the sky is a dark and vivid blue. Your eyes will burn, your palm rubbing the sleep away, and as you open the door to the balcony you’ll start when you see it isn’t empty. The blinds clack against the glass panels on the door, and you and Nepeta will stare at one another.
“Hi,” she’ll say. Her voice is always so quiet and soft, with a whistling edge that comes through her little fangs.
“Hi.”
“Are you staying up late?” She’ll pull her knees up to her face, and in the sinking moonlight you’ll see the ghosts of countless green-tinted scars on her legs and shoulders.
The legs of the plastic chair will scrape against concrete when you pull it away from the table, and you’ll kick your legs on top of the frosted glass tabletop. “No, just couldn’t sleep. My circadian rhythm has been kind of screwed up these past three years. Aren’t you up a little late, too?”
Nepeta will give you a toothy grin. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Somewhere in the front yard, a little bird will begin to chirp. One of Nepeta’s long ears will twitch and stand to attention, and it’ll remind you of some kind of elf. She’ll clasp her hands around her bony kneecaps, and you’ll think you see her face tint with that soft olive blush. Or maybe it’s just her freckles.
“Um, Jade? I know we don’t really know each other very well… or um, at all.”
“Yes?”
Her black lips will scrunch up, and she’ll examine the scrapes on her arms with renewed interest. “I wanted to apawlogize. I gave you a really bad impression during the game.”
You’ll shake your hand through your curls of hair and sigh. “Don’t worry about it. I think we’ve all been drowning in apologies lately, myself included. I’ve decided to bury the mass hatchet.”
“Yeah, that’s fine, but, it’s been a little hard for me. I’ve been dead a long time, and being prototyped for the second time was really upsetting. It kinda seemed like everyone forgot about me, and no one really needed a sprite, so I was just stuck being yanked around like a bell on a string!”
“Oh, yes. I heard about that. Has Rose partaken in the communal apology ritual and begged your forgiveness?”
“In between dying her hair pink, hiding from her alternate self, drafting new names for herself, and occasionally letting go of Jaspers long enough for other people to pet him, not really. Her teen lusus is nice, though. Roxy has been quite keen on the glomps.” She’ll pick at her claws. “Rogues of a feather flock together, I guess. I think it’s the only reason I haven’t packed my things and gone to live in that appealing cave two miles out. Jane’s man lusus wouldn’t be able to cage me in his domestic box forever.”
“I’m sure she’s just as embarrassed. Give her time. Rose has a lot of dignity – she’s probably too mortified to face you.”
“Probably. It’s just so humiliating that I got another shot at life, but it ended up being such a disaster anyway.”
“That’s how I felt, when I got prototyped.”
“No one stopped to consider what I wanted. I didn’t even get to see my friends. Not that any of them really cared. They all became so different, you know? I hardly recognize them.” Nepeta will exhale through her slit nostrils, her horns reflecting light from a bedroom window upstairs.
“Yes.”
“Jade, do you ever feel like a plot device?”
You’ll look at her and blink in surprise. “How?”
“Like the silly things that happen to you are just pushing the plot along for the people who really matter? Like you can feel that maybe you were chosen for something bigger and greater because you get to go to a fancy purple moon when you sleep and have this cool heroic title, but in the end you’re really just makin’ sure that the important players get their happy ending?”
You’ll close your eyes, and they’ll sting so badly that it’s a while before you can open them again.
“Yeah, Nepeta.”
“You get what I mean?”
“I felt very important when I was growing up.” You’ll open your eyes and blink slowly at the branches skimming the railing. “I felt like this mover and shaker who was getting everyone prepared for the game, but once I entered it was like I had been plopped in quicksand. Everyone was getting to show off their moves and go on missions and all that cool stuff, and no one ever said it, but it kinda seemed they thought I was the weakest link. I knew all these things way before they did, but I was still just a silly little kid. I was the wizard behind the curtain, not any of the real adventurers. Hopping down the yellow brick road and learning life lessons was for them, not me.”
“Exactly, exactly!” Nepeta will lurch upright, excited, and her fake cat tail will almost seem to wag.
“And everyone got to stick it to the big bads in our session, and what did I do? Oh, yeah, got punched out. That’s it.” You’ll squeeze the bridge of your nose. “God, how embarrassing.”
“Oh, but you did the most important thing of all! You made the universe we’re all living in, didn’t you?”
Your mouth will twitch, bashful. At one time, you may have been able to see your frog’s shimmering skin from where you sit, to admire the living, nebulous organs of the creature you put so much work into. But all you see is a dark, dark sky. It seems like forever ago that you held him in your palms, flopping around with his iridescent tadpole fins.
“I guess so, yes. But doing one cool thing doesn’t really make up for being shoved into redundancy, does it?”
“Right? Like, we thought we could take down Lord English of all people! Do you know how easy it would’ve been for him to just vapurrize us? What were we thinking?”
You’ll laugh a little. “That’s funny. You say ‘we’ the same way Davesprite does.”
Nepeta will lean back in the lawn chair again, tiny fangs poking out of her clamped mouth.
“It’s weird,” she’ll murmur. “Having memories of a world you never lived in. I’ll wake up sweating, being afraid of someone whose name I don’t even know. They’re starting to fade away… like, I’m getting my own memories back, and they’re dominating ofur his, but… I don’t know. It feels like an invasion of purrivacy, knowing how he thinks about other people. I have pretty good intuition when it comes to this sort of thing, but it’s another thing to know with certainty.”
“Like what?” You’ll flinch as soon as you ask.
She’ll give you those wide eyes like saucers, her little eyebrows hidden in her bangs as they shoot upward. Then she’ll look away just as quickly, and you know you are not mistaking her freckles for a blush.
“Hey, Jade?”
“Yeah?”
“I used to message you a lot befur the game, but you never answered me. Why was that?”
“What was your name again?”
“arsenicCatnip.”
“Oh, right. The one who was always roleplaying.” You’ll crack into laughter right after Nepeta starts giggling, her hand covering her bright white teeth. Her ankles cross, embarrassed. “Your friends were awfully rude, you know! I’m sure I just thought you were m–”
“Making fun of you? Yes, that’s what I figured.”
“It’s better than the flirting that the others were always getting up to.” You’ll twirl your hair on your finger, raveling it tight until it uncurls in a black ringlet. “I’m sorry I misunderstood you. I always felt that I needed to be suspicious.”
“Apology accepted. I should’ve just told you upfront that I wanted to be your friend.” Nepeta will dig her fingers into the back of her hair and squeeze her eyes shut in nervous laughter. “It’s always been hard for me to tell people that. I just beat around the bush until they forget about me entirely.”
“Well, how’s this?” You’ll hold out your hand, and Nepeta will simply stare at it. “Friends?”
She’ll give you that adorable smile, dimples carving into her cheeks, and she’ll shake your hand. It will surprise you how soft her palm is.
◘
You will be pit-patting up the stairs as the sun begins its slow descent, yanking your ponytail out and wiping the sweat from your forehead. Little leaves still stick to arms from where you’ve been pruning the front garden, your knees cratered with the mulch you were kneeling in. You will consider this karmic penance for letting the pots in your atrium wither and die.
It will become clearer that you’re fumbling over the fineries of human interaction. The entire house is alive, and the yard along with it, and you will feel antisocial when your friends approach you with conversation. How are you supposed to respond to the people you convinced yourself would resent you? You had worked them up as cold and snarling in your mind, pointing the finger at the girl who let the Land of Wind and Shade go up in smoke. It’s unsettling to see their smiles, their warm eyes, and you shrink away from their platonic advances. Maybe you should invest in earbuds – or maybe you should post a new rule on the refrigerator: “No talking to Jade when she has gardening shears in her hands.” This is not life on the battleship, and it certainly is not life in the Pacific.
A door will be cracked at the end of the hall, a door you know is Davesprite’s (partially shared by the artist formerly known as Jasprose, if you consider her mound of sweaters and knitting projects to be a bed). There’s a girl’s voice coming from within, but it is not the growling, eerie tone of Rose berating her brother for some verbal infraction. You will pause behind the door, knowing your presence will intrude on their conversation, wanting badly to teleport to the safety of your own room but being utterly unable.
“You can’t hold back on this furever,” Nepeta will be hissing. “You remeowmber, right? All those mewrals on the wall?”
“Yeah, how could I forget. The secondhand embarrassment has left third-degree burns across my brain.” Davesprite’s voice will be hard to hear, muffled in its mumbling. “Who did you think you were, ninjaing around the vents thinkin’ that no one would see your deluxe-sized ship art. As if your merry little band of untrustworthy bastards wasn’t gonna go sniffing around every corner and discover everyone’s darkest secrets.”
“Ha, ha. We all draw embarrhissing things when we’re that age, Dave.”
“Speak for yourself, Nepertiti.”
“Your comics are one big stinking heap of embarrhissing!”
“Can you say your peace before you project your yiffy past on me any further.”
There will be the sound of a mattress creaking, and you realize that Nepeta is sitting at the end of his bed. Through the crack in the hinges, you will be able to see her gesticulating at him. Davesprite sits still, passively letting her chew both his ears off.
“My point is, you don’t want to end up like that, do you? I don’t think you do, being so nervous and scared of what the other purrson will say that you end up getting bashed over the head with a club before you can admit anything!”
“What exactly do you think I get up to in my free time.”
“Dave!”
“And what about you, huh?”
“That ship has sailed – literally. Listen. I’m not trying to lecture you, okay?” She’ll sigh heavily, her tail whisking across the crumpled, unmade sheets. You will press yourself against the wall, making yourself invisible. “Don’t think I haven’t had years of experience dealing with sunglass-wielding boys who think they’re too badass to show an inkling of feelings. I know you feel things deeper than some kind of distant, cool-kid aloofness. I have felt it fur myself. You can’t pull the wool over a hero of Heart!”
Silence. Davesprite may be nodding, but you will have no way of knowing.
“It kinda sounds like you expect me to draft a fuckin’ speech and call a family meeting so I can confess my undying affection for everyone in the room. I’ll lose all my street cred and get promoted to being in the sweetheart in the center of Christmas pictures, all apple-cheeked with a ‘HO HO HO’ sweater.”
Nepeta must have jabbed him in the ribs with her claws, because he will squawk with indignation. Then she’ll give a tired exhalation and lean back against the blankets.
“One step at a time, Dave. One step at a time.”
You will decide to scurry down the stairs before one of them notices your shadow. There are some things you are not meant to be privy to.
◘
Days will pass into weeks. You will find yourself only loosely fitting into the frame of this great and twisting dynamic. You were not a member of the meteor clan – you will not understand the complexities of their relationships, or their inside jokes, or their dialect of Alternian-meets-the-Wild-West. It probably won’t help that you’ll deck Dave when he comes out to you – “I thought you would all hate me for letting John die, and you’re still so far up your ass you thought I’d be disappointed you were dating someone?” – or that Karkat has joined him in the Heads Shoved All The Way Up A Rectum Committee and will refuse to apologize gracefully for years of antagonism. Rose and Kanaya will be a different matter. You want desperately to ingratiate yourself with them, but you will feel out of place and sad in their company. Rose will murmur to her knitting needles, standing upright as Kanaya hems the skirt she’s modeling, and you will feel so removed from their personal loop that you’ll slip out of the room, quiet and unnoticed.
You will find yourself trailing after your fellow Prospitians like a lost puppy. Some days, you will only leave the room you share with Jane when she or Roxy or Calliope drags you out by both hands. Then you’ll pinpoint another who has your face, your black hair or brown skin or dark freckles, and follow them about. Your fingers held loosely and childishly to Jake’s sleeve, your face poking out from behind John’s shoulder – your human shields, your Secret Service. You will let them do the talking most days.
You will resent yourself for your sullen inability to be the person you used to be. Gaining back all those precious memories will not cure the deeply-rooted sadness that’s lodged inside of you. Gaining them back will not sweep away the girl who was ready for her friends to lay her to waste for killing her brother.
It will be Davesprite and Nepeta that you continue to run across, and it will be the two of them that you feel ready and willing to speak to. You won’t know what it is about them. You will not go mute (most of the time), and you will always have a retort ready (again, most of the time). Neither of them linger long in the doorway, and neither of them can go long without inventing an excuse to leave. You will wonder why it is that you don’t see them more often, why it’s the thin hours of the late night that you bump into them. Living with humans has made the trolls of the meteor diurnal – sharing a mind with a troll has made Davesprite the opposite.
You will stay up later and later hoping to cross paths with them again. It will seem rude to knock on either of their doors.
You will continue to resent yourself.
◘
The nights will be long and warm when you meet Davesprite again. It won’t be on the back porch this time; you will be toeing the long and narrow stairs down into the basement, smelling concrete and sofa leather and stale containers of dog kibble. You will hear him tense up before you see him, and when you get down the stairs you will give each other an awkward stare. He’ll kick his legs off the couch, shoving his phone in his pocket, and you’ll clasp your arm in your hand.
“Am I disturbing something?”
“No, no.” Davesprite will clear his throat and tuck in his wings, moving closer to the armrest in a nonverbal request to join him. “Rosamund’s goin’ fuckin’ apeshit up there, and I needed to get away from her midnight craving for oldschool Evanescence. Only good thing about livin’ with her is that her cat’s too small now to terrorize me.” He’ll fidget with the plates on his arms. “Pretty sure she’s blasting the emo hits because she knows Rose can hear it from her room. What a little instigator.”
“Is that the name she’s going by this week?”
“Yeah. I give her ‘til tomorrow to change it.”
You’ll perch cautiously beside him, folding one of your legs up underneath the other. “My roommate is quiet as ever. Just felt like pacing around the house is all.”
“And now you’ve fallen directly into my trap. You have to answer my three riddles if you want to escape to the land of good company.”
“I always think you’re good company.”
You’ll settle into the couch cushions, sweeping your hair over one shoulder, and Davesprite will twiddle with his bird hands the way he always does. He’s only this talkative when you’re alone – groups render him as quiet and camouflaged as a sparrow, his alternate self assuming the role of Life of the Party.
“Congratulations on having low standards for the meatsacks you surround yourself with.”
Encouraged by the smile on your face, Davesprite will stick out one leg and drape it dramatically across your lap just to get an annoyed sound out of you, and he’ll cackle, birdlike, as you wrestle it off of you.
“All right, all right, I take it back! You are a scourge on mankind and I associate myself with you purely because I am an infamous masochist.”
“That’s the shit I like to hear.”
“How’s the manual brain chemistry reengineering?”
He’ll make a so-so gesture. “Log date who-the-fuck-knows – the gremlin in my brain still beats me blue with the walking cane of self-hatred.”
“Hey, same here.”
Davesprite will give you a look that almost suggests he’s offended. “Excuse-ay moi?”
You’ll lean back to rest your head on the armrest opposite him, folding your hands on your stomach. “You’re not the only one who’s allowed to be depressed, Davesprite. You haven’t bought the copyright.”
“Damn, true. I should get on that.” But he won’t be smiling. “You’re being pretty casual about it. That must mean it’s bad, huh.”
“I don’t know, Davesprite. You tell me – do you think three years of guilt and loneliness so bad that you were constantly nauseous will go away because I got back the feelings and the memories of a me who had it better off? You tell me. If Nepeta gave you Dave’s ‘soul,’ would you be happier?"
Pause. “No.”
“Yeah. I’m glad I remembered it all. I’m glad I have all those good things to fall back on when it gets bad, but no matter what, it’s not going to scrub away what I already lived through.” You’ll tuck your hair behind your ear. “I don’t want to be back where we were… I don’t want to be on that cramped ship, separated from everyone we cared about, wondering if they’re okay with no way of finding out… but I also don’t want to be here. This place has no rules. It has no mechanics.”
“The road trip’s more fun than the destination.”
You’ll shrug. “I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, is there.”
Upstairs, a water pipe hisses when someone turns the sink on and off again. Footsteps creak overhead, and then it’s silent again.
“You have no idea how badly I wanted to… well, I thought the timeline was doomed. I knew it must be. I thought, you know, why does it keep stringing me along? But there were all those consorts, and all those carapacians, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. I had to keep living so they wouldn’t get hurt.”
It will occur to you that you’ve divulged too much.
“I missed you. I really did. I’ve missed you in both timelines.”
Davesprite will prop his elbow on the back of the couch and lean his head against his fist. “Why?”
Your eyebrows will twitch. “What do you mean, ‘why?’”
“I remember the split second of being that guy, back when I was a precarious Lincoln Log stack of collective Strider miasma. Poor guy barely lasted a day. Blipped off the radar in record time. You hardly got two minutes with the dude. Why’d you miss him, if there was a Dave on the other side of the window?”
“Because you’re different people. Why would Dave be able to replace you?”
He will not have a smartass response to this, and for that you’ll be grateful. It will be minutes before he adjusts his seating and folds his arms. A broken clock on the entertainment center will announce four in the afternoon.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about projecting my own shitty feelings on other people.” He’ll scratch behind his ear. “It should’ve annoyed me. I should’ve been like, ‘hey, whoa, unless you’re a certified Strilonde you’d better not come to me that that psychoanalysis.’ You were right, though. I worked myself into thinking everyone would be better off without me, and I didn’t think about what that’d do to you. I didn’t even give you an explanation.”
The house will settle, and you’ll let one of your legs droop to the floor. The carpet is already trampled under your toes – too many people have sat here before you.
“What’s done is done, I guess. We can’t all be Seers. But if I knew this is where we’d end up, I would have never broken up with you.”
You will already know this would be the single point he was spiraling towards. You will stare at the stains on the ceiling and say nothing.
“I wish you’d say something.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Literally anything. You can read off the Wikipedia article for Newton’s third law for all I care, just say something.”
You’ll pull yourself upright and peer at him through your bangs. “It wouldn’t have fixed anything, you know. You could have still been the way you always were – stubborn and sullen and unwilling to let anyone help you. Is that better than disappearing completely?”
“You’re being unfair. I mean, I know that last year fucked you up. I was an asshole and your brother was a dick and that whole ship was ready to snap in half with undiluted teen tension. If I could’ve made sure that at least one of these shitty timelines wasn’t a total nightmare for you, I would’ve. I would’ve stayed.”
It would be so easy to twist his arm. It would be so easy to take him by the feathers and let him have it. You fucking wrecked me, you could say, and leaving didn’t make it any better. But you do not hate him, you never have, and you cannot tell the difference between the two aches you have felt from his absence. So because it will be the only response you can think of that’s both true and socially acceptable, you purse your lips and nod.
“I would have liked that.”
You will hang your head and stare at the wispy ends of your hair, and it’s while you avoid his look that he moves across the couch and rests his rough hand on yours.
“It won’t make me feel much better to say it out loud, and it sure as hell won’t make you feel any better, either, but I never stopped caring about you. I’ve never, I haven’t… fuck, you know what I mean.”
He’ll lean his forehead towards yours, and your mouth will open to give a nervous exhale, and before he can get out more than “Can I…?” your lips will be on his. His talons will dig into your hems, your arms will wind around his neck, and while his wings are unfurled to block you from sight and his sunglasses have been forgotten on the carpet and his hands are locked at your thighs and he’s drawing a long sigh out of you, he will lean forward and whisper into your hair not to wake the neighbors.
◘
It will take longer with Nepeta – weeks and months longer. She will take the news of you and Davesprite calmly, if not with a knowing smile that twitches at the corners of her mouth. It’s better than the reactions of the others you’ve told; John will roll his eyes into the back of his head, and Roxy will weep happy tears and clasp you in a python-tight hug. For once, Nepeta will refrain from asking you questions about your quadrant pursuits. A good thing, too – you were starting to think she was researching for a Quizilla page titled “Which Emotionally Stunted SBURB Player Are You?” Congratulations: You are Jade Harley! You are literally incapable of telling anybody the truth about your feelings unless it’s incredibly coy, and you have successfully rendered all your significant relationships awkward by sequestering yourself away in a depressive hidey-hole! Have fun with your limited social circle, numbnuts!
Nepeta will begin to trail after you the same way you trail after your family – pretty soon you’ll have a conga line of dependency that spans throughout the entire house. It will start off simple. She’ll lie across your bed and watch your computer screen as you type away on the floor, and you show her the Neopets you created when you were nine. You’re still quite proud of this one, you’ll say, and Nepeta will agree that your unconverted Faerie Kougra is very elegant. She will laugh at the Gaia avatar you haven’t changed since 2007, try to revamp it for you, then marvel at how expensive everything is. The economy, you’ll shrug. Laissez faire doesn’t work when everything’s run by prepubescents. Nepeta will beg to differ.
You will begin to think that you might still be fun to be around after all.
You will become attune to her quirks – the way her sentences hook at the end to sound like questions, or her penchant for eating lunch meat right out of the container even if she critiques it for tasting “artificial.” It will be when she finds your old drawing tablet that she gets really excited, retrieves her own and apologizes for the dingy model. The surface is scratched with years of pen nibs scrawling across it.
“Wanna do an art trade?” she’ll ask.
Your eyes will squint with the width of your smile. How many years has it been since you’ve heard that question? You will tell her to hold on, rummage up old files, and give her a reference sheet for a white and lime green dog you haven’t drawn in eons.
Nepeta will fawn over it. “Hey, is that you?” she’ll ask. “She’s so pretty!"
“I…! Well, no, not strictly speaking… I mean, I made her when I was like, psh, eleven….”
“Did you ever roleplay with her?”
You will know your face has gone too flushed to lie. “Maybe… sometimes….”
Nepeta will nod sagely. “Say no more, Jade. I know exactly how impawtant these matters are.”
“Okay, well, what do you want me to draw?”
“Oh! That’s easy.” Nepeta will fiddle with her cat tail, wringing the pilled blue fabric in her hands. “Imagine a big white cat with two mouths!”
“Two?”
“Two!” Nepeta will use her hands to form a W on her chin. “For twice the prey."
You’ll smack your hand over your mouth to keep from laughing. A cat with two mouths is far better than a dog with dyed hair, zebra stripes, and glasses. You will spin your tablet pen between your fingers (once you’ve found it, that is), and by day’s end you will have mapped out the canon of Thallium and Pounce de Leon’s glorious adventures.
It will take longer with Nepeta, but it’s when you’re outside that you get a centimeter closer. The forest is teeming and alive and obscene in its vibrancy. You will scarcely know what to do with so many trees, so much shadow in one spot, but Nepeta will waste no time launching herself up the trunk, digging retractable claws into the bark and hoisting herself up.
“Come on up!” she’ll yelp. A trail of leaves will helicopter down from where her boot has kicked them loose. “And no god tier flying, that’s cheating!”
You will try and fail several times to keep your toes in the ridges, to keep your hold steady and your body light, but each time you’ll slide back down to earth. Nepeta will take pity on you, give you permission to fly up, and it will shock you how many things you can see from even the lowest branch. There are rock faces, black and white heads of carapacians strolling through the hiking paths, John running across the lawn after his errant salamander daughter. It will all be far away and close enough to hold in your palm – just like seeing it through the lens of the Green Sun. You will swing your legs, content, and barely register Nepeta’s thigh brushing yours.
“I think I’ve got all my memories back,” she’ll say, not even a bit breathless from the climb. “From my own prowlper timeline, y’know? They’re not all mixed up with other mes and other Daves. It’s nice.”
“I’m glad. How’s it feel to be you again?”
“Same as ever. I have some leftofur things, though. At least, I think they’re leftofur? Impurrints left behind from Dave’s stronger impressions of people. I’m starting to think they might be my own feelings. It’s really hard to tell.”
You’ll kick your leg out, and your sandal will almost slip off your foot. “What kind of things?”
She won’t answer, and when you turn to give her a curious look, she’ll blink and break eye contact.
“Just some things.”
◘
It will still be midmorning. The artist formerly known as Jasprose will still be locked out of the room – Davesprite is going to pay for this sooner or later. But for now your head is on his collarbone and his hands are idly fiddling with your hair and outside there’s the screeching laughter that follows someone getting a soccer ball to the face. More than two years ago, you might have occupied yourself by twirling the planets in your palm and watching their wind currents shift, but that’s lost from you now. You can’t see anything but the books Rose has slewed across the desk, the highlighters on the floor and the empty cup of coffee. And this sight will be just fine for you.
“Hey,” Davesprite will whisper. “I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“You like Nepeta, right? You’re friends?”
“Yeah, we are. Why?”
Davesprite’s talons will skim your dog ears, and they’ll flick in response. It’s not a conscious gesture – if a medieval-type prison warden hasn’t shackled his hands to the wall, they’re absentmindedly lost in your hair, grazing your palms, tracing your waist. If there’s nothing to keep himself tied to the ground, he’ll float away into the stratosphere.
“Just wanted to know.”
You’ll lift your face to give him a sharp look, and he’ll offer a shy smile.
“Not like we can really afford to not be friends with anyone here.” You’ll resettle your face on his chest. “They’re in our faces too much to dislike them.”
“Not true. My mistrust of those horned fuckers knows no bounds. Keep cacklin’, you goddamn miscreant, you’ll slip up eventually. I won’t be caught unawares when you set up a gremlin nest in the basement and start demanding blood sacrifices for the hive mother.”
“Except for Nepeta, though, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Davesprite will stretch his legs out, and the pair of shoes he tossed to the end of the bed will tumble to the floor. It will only be recently that he’s started to walk at a normal pace, no longer using table ledges and wall paneling to keep himself balanced. “I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything, like, I don’t think I’m readin’ too much into it, but I’m at least three percent sure she almost moirail-proposed to me a few days ago.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nah.”
“What would you have said?”
“Dunno. Just ‘cause I got a phonebook-size manual on the many nuances of alien four-square fuck ceremonies permanently sloshing around in my subconscious doesn’t mean I understand it. I guess it’s like… I don’t know. There are things I don’t want to talk about with Dave. Not because he’s a dickhole – even though he is – but because we’d just end up talking in circles. It’s havin’ a conversation with yourself, y’know? Predictable and stupid. So I’ll go to Nepeta and be like… yo Nepperoni, remember the time I was seven and my bro designated me Self-Babysitter while he fucked off to Arizona for like, two weeks? What the fuck was up with that? Like am I overreacting here or was that some grade-A negligence?”
You’ll curl your legs close to your stomach. “Isn’t there room for cultural misunderstanding there?”
“Well, yeah. ‘Gee, Dave, I don’t know what to say, my giant kitty cat mom thought I was purrfectly capable of looking aftfur myself as a grubling while she went on the Hunt.’”
“But it must help somehow, if you keep going to her.”
“Yeah. It’s nice to have a second opinion.”
You’ll stretch your arms above your head, giving a squeaking yawn, then swing your legs over his and pull yourself upright.
“What time is it?”
“Like, eleven.”
“Okay. I gotta get up, I’m going to Nepeta’s room.” You’ll punch your palm and put on your stern face. “It’s Gaia time.”
“Oh fuck yes, I’m comin’ too. Need some counseling on how I should wrap up the third chapter to Akwete Purrmusk’s character arc. His clan is so close to being revived from the spirit kingdom.”
You’ll give him a shove that makes him crow with protest, then toe to the door and check the crack for a shadow. “All right, but be quiet. I’ve got to make sure you-know-who isn’t waiting outside with an airhorn.”
“I wish those fuckin’ Crockerberts would stop giving her weapons of mass disturbance.
◘
It will take longer with Nepeta – weeks and months longer – but of course it will happen, because the narrative has already said so. Ah, sorry, you shouldn’t break the fourth wall, not again at least, but it’s hard to shed a sixteen-year-old habit of viewing your own life as a convoluted Odyssean tale. Where were we? It will take weeks and months, yes, but of course it will happen, and you will hardly be surprised when it does.
It will happen at the crack of dawn. The tree line will be running lavender, the moon still transparent, the grass cold and dewy under your knees. The air will smell crisp and wet, and a droplet of water will hit your nose from the leaves above, and from the lowest-hanging branch Nepeta will be hanging by her folded arms. Her shirt bunches up to show her green-gray abdomen, muscles strained to keep her curled and balanced.
“You were my favorite human, you know,” she’ll say.
You will forget what line of conversation brought you down to this, but the confession will make the blood pool in your cheeks. Her blue tail will sway back and forth, her short little legs kicking as those of a restless rainforest creature.
“Why?”
“What’cha mean, ‘why?’” Nepeta will grunt to swing one leg over the branch, and the whole thing will tremble as she readjusts herself to sit on it like a precarious see-saw. “It was a lot of things. I thought you were the toughest in your team, but not in a way that made it seem you were trying too hard or comin’ off mean. Efuryone else was whipping out swords and blasting underlings to bits, but you always waited until the time was right to really pull out the guns. Literally!”
You’ll tuck your hair over one shoulder and grin at the ground, still unsure how to take a compliment without smothering it alive in your hands.
“And I thought you were cute!”
“Really? How’s that work out?”
“You can be cute and tough! I’m already an expert in the field!” Nepeta will drape herself over the branch, looking like a sloth. “I kinda felt we were in the same situation. Big fluffy lusii, horribly adorable, no one’s sure what to do when we start kickin’ efuryone’s butts….”
“Oh, well, when you put it that way….”
“It was sorta silly, how my furrends were latching onto you guys. I think we wanted to feel we were making up for how bad SGRUB went, y’know? I thought maybe I’d prove myself if I got to be that mystical troll guide for you, but the competition was purretty tough.”
“Yes, that went awfully well, didn’t it? Karkat was such a mystical spirit guide, it totally didn’t give me migraines to decode what was supposed to be helpful out of his crappy monologues.”
She’ll give a sad smile and bury her cheek in her arms. “He just wanted to be a good leader. I can’t blame him for picking the best one out of the pile. The rest of us, though… we just had to be content with bein’ benched.” She’ll scrunch up her nose. “‘Benched?’ Why do I know what that means….”
“That seems to be a trend, doesn’t it? Being made to fill up space in the picture? Pretty soon the garbage truck will have to come and take us to the landfill. The house would be so much cleaner. Less mouths to feed.”
It will be quiet for a while, the sky making itself a gradient of white and gray, and you will hear Nepeta tugging at the haphazardly-cut length of her bangs before she says anything else.
“I don’t think you’re here just to fill up space. I think the others just don’t know how to deal with people like us. We can’t be pushed into the itty bitty hole of ‘hero,’ because efuryone else is always doing the screaming and fighting and adventuring. So what are we?”
You will lay back against the grass, and you won’t even care that the dew is beading in your hair and plastering your dress to your back.
“Something very strange, and very different.”
“It’s exciting, isn’t it?”
“I think it is.”
“I think so, too.”
It will happen when the sleep is weighing your eyelids shut and the dew is crystallized in the webs between your fingers. Her boots will thud dully in the bark, and her shadow will fall over you, and when you blink to meet her stare, her hair will be falling forward to frame her nervous face. You won’t be sure you’ve ever seen such a vivid green.
“I think I pity you,” she’ll whisper.
“Uh… what?”
Her hands will fly to her mouth, burning olive, and she’ll shake her head. “Oh, no! I forgot that has a different meaning for you! I’m sorry!”
She’ll stumble over every word, each syllable turning the green in her face darker. You will continue to blink up at her, utterly confused, the grass cold and wet in your hair.
“I don’t pity you, not in the human way. What I’m actually trying to say is… gosh.” She’ll drag her hand through her bangs, her little elf ears drooping. “I haven’t done this in a really long time, and it was for a completely different quadrant, and it was online, so I could actually plan what I wanted to say….”
It will finally occur to you what is happening.
“I thought for a while that it was something left behind, like these bones and scraps from Dave’s life that ended up in me.” She’ll fiddle with the hem of her shirt, and the scars on her shins will shine in the gray. “It was clear even before we got here. He really loves you, you know.”
Your hands will shake.
“After a while, though, I started to realize that my feelings weren’t his. They were always mine.”
“I… does he know?”
“Of course. We always know.” Nepeta will hide her nervous laughter behind her hand, her knuckles sharp and bony under the skin. “He told me to tell you. Really lectured me about it, too! I think he almost prepped a speech for me.”
You’ll cover your eyes with your hands. “He would.” When you uncover your face, she’ll be staring shyly at the trees. “Thank you for telling me this, Nepeta. It must’ve taken a lot of courage. I’m really glad I got to know you.”
She won’t say anything when you lift yourself from the grass, blades of grass sticking to your shoulder blades, and rest your fingers delicately on her knee.
“Did he tell you to do this, too?” you’ll ask.
“Maybe not… directly….” She will still smell of steel and soil.
A quiet gasp will leave her when you lean your face in, and you’ll wait until her heart has settled enough to bridge the gap. She’ll kiss you tentatively, and it will surprise you again how light and soft her fingers are, but it will not surprise you that cat lips still don’t make a difference. Her scrapes and scars will prickle under your hands, and the sun will not quite be risen yet when she tells you again that you were her favorite.
◘
It will avalanche from here.
Davesprite will give Nepeta a high-five so loud it stings both their hands, congratulate her for wriggling out of her metaphorical cat tower for once, and then Nepeta will have to lie down to process the blunt-force trauma done to her understanding of the Alternian romance formula (“who efur heard of two matesprites at once that efuryone mew about?”). You will spend the next few nights piled on Davesprite’s bed, jabbing elbows and tangled earbud wires and limbs numb from being lain on top of, and the reek of PDA will send Rose out of the room like garlic to a vampire. She will only come back to reclaim her cold tea and her cat when you’ve all passed out, glasses askew and DS stylus’ lost in the sheets.
It will be Nepeta who cuts your hair short in the bathroom, and it will be Davesprite who makes sharp noises of skepticism from the ledge of the tub when she shears it spiky and uneven in the back. It will be getting colder outside, and you will continue to feel the ghost weight of your long, long hair, but it will be exciting to have it bob at your shoulders, and Nepeta will assure you that it’s harder for the animals to get you if you don’t have hair to grab onto.
It will be no one who comments on the fact that you leave Sharpie marks and streaks of paint wherever you go. Your palms will be permanently flecked with colored ink, some on accident, some left from swordfights waged with uncapped markers. The clotheslines strung across Davesprite’s window will be hung with faded t-shirts from dollar stores, screen printed with esoteric memes that only he thinks are funny. Out on a run for the most garishly-neon shirts he can find, he’ll come back with one of those huge sketchbooks for children and spend the next month redrawing dinosaurs that he gets off of Wikipedia. With his official state approval, Nepeta will be permitted to finish them with colored pencil. On your side of the bedroom, you’ll tape up their collaborative rendition of a plesiosaur in a fursuit. While doing so, you will be wearing a shirt of dubious quality, a couple of holes in the sleeve and a slogan that reads “Man, I Love It When My Wife Lets Me Play The Banjo.”
It will be you who is the first to successfully carry both Davesprite and Nepeta under each of your arms. This will’ve been a heated competition between you and your olive-blooded girlfriend, and many arm muscles will be strained in the Olympian effort to best the other. Being able to carry your loved ones is highly desirable in other countries, Davesprite will claim. The more aging uncles that fit on your shoulders, the bigger the dowry. You will both tell him to shut up. On your seventh consecutive contest, you will heave them both across the lawn like a stressed mother carrying her family’s suitcases to the imminently closing terminal gate, and where the grass turns to weeds you’ll gasp with exhaustion and drop them in the dandelions. Just you wait, Nepeta will say, shaking her finger, one of these days soon I’ll be able to bench press both of you. Neither of you will doubt this.
Nepeta will not try again to mold Davesprite into a moirail. She will accept him as something that the quadrants cannot describe, and for the first time this will be enough for her. It will make your chest ache, the warm and silent looks of knowing that you catch between them. Something absolutely wordless, something that cannot be expressed with anything other than a tired frown and a tilt of the chin. You will never understand what it meant for them to be what they were, and you will not press yourself to, either. There are some things you aren’t meant to be privy to.
It will be when you’re swinging from a tree branch by your hooked legs, your short and uneven hair swaying and the blood rushing to your head, when you finally realize what has happened. Everything will be delightfully upside-down beneath you: miniature figures walking on the ceiling, black and white shells of chess folk who survived because you knew you had to carry them through to see the other side, new friends and old friends and even a brother who have stubbornly refused to give up on you. Nepeta will have her hands on your shins, guarding you against the sharp drop down, and Davesprite will be in the shadow of the trunk, his wings stretched out and his face tilted up to watch you, prepared to serve as human trampoline if you both come toppling down – it’s happened before. Your face will flush – mostly from the blood, but at least a little from love – and you will realize that it’s been quite a long while since you’ve been so happy.
