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After the fun escape-the-Circus adventure, the gang returns to the digital lake for the artificial sunset. The sun, in an inexplicable act of mercy, opts to stare them down with open hostility rather than voice any of her distaste for them at this time. All NPC characters go silent, as a matter of fact, as if they were put on mute.
None of the player characters complain.
Now, the human mind is prone to odd interruptions and compulsions, fixations that persist even in times and situations where they’re completely inappropriate. There may never be an appropriate time for some of these — there certainly never will be one for the one gnawing at Pomni, she knows. But still it persists, and it’s not something she can ignore or will away. It is one of those things where she’s going to have to say her thoughts out loud in order to get them out of her brain. Just for the sake of saying it, to have made your argument, even if closure may never come of it. Talk therapy, basically. All of this to say that Pomni has something she wants to say to Jax, so she goes and sits on the sand beside the beach chair where he’s camped out, lying face-down, totally still, very corpse-like.
But Pomni knows he’s not dead because his magically reappeared tail does twitch a little when she sits down. And because she can’t see his face at this time and this is all she’s got to work with, she remains looking at the tail for the duration of her incoming spiel. Her hands are settled at her sides, touching the soft sand.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.” He said a lot of things, so it’s probably best to specify which one. “About our archetypes.”
Pomni leaves room for Jax to say something. He does not. Pomni leaves room for Jax to get up and leave. He does not. She goes on.
“I wasn't sure, while you were saying it. But I thought about it and I decided for sure you’re wrong about me.”
Jax takes a prolonged deep breath, like doing it slowly will make it happen invisibly, when really it takes him so much effort that it’s quite noisy. A big, long breath that he holds for only one mississippi — can’t go showing off what happens if he holds it any longer, right? — before breathing back out, equally as laboured. It’s a pretty horrible experience to witness and hear, so Pomni decides to talk faster. And that’s fine, but it comes with the caveat of her statements being less polished before they leave her mouth, so there’s probably gonna be a fumble in there eventually.
“I mean about my archetype, not my me.” Or immediately, that works too. “Not what you said about me, uh — it’s not about that, it’s a whole different…” Alright, take a second at least.
Pomni does. She shuffles on the sand and leans back, putting her weight on her hands, looking up now at the beach umbrella rather than Jax’s tail. This helps a bit.
“I was new and didn't know stuff. That’s kind of how a story has to start, with someone new coming in, ‘cause characters aren’t gonna stand around saying lore they already know. So, the newbie, that was me, day one. But anyone who has that archetype eventually has to…lose it. Move on to the next one?”
Jax doesn’t say or do anything, just keeps lying there. Pomni squints at the umbrella. This idea felt far more articulate when she was looking at her room’s ceiling.
“There’s the ingenue archetype. Those characters usually stay that way, but that’s a different thing. Like, a newbie can become the ingenue, and then that’s what they are until the events of the story catch up to them. Like Christine in Phantom. She’s the ingenue the whole time but then you get to Love Never Dies and she can’t be that anymore, that's...stupid. Ten years have passed and she’s still floating around all naive like that? No way, dude.” Pomni shakes her head, then says, “Love Never Dies is the sequel to Phantom Of The Opera. It’s not as famous so you might not–”
Jax grumbles, “I know what it is.”
Pomni isn’t startled, but she does jump a little bit at the actual engagement on his part. She looks down ahead at him; he hasn’t moved. Regardless, it's a difficult task to bring her eyebrows back down to her face from where they shot into the sky.
“Okay, cool. Okay.” She grapples her voice back down an octave and returns to looking at the umbrella. “So, uh... That’s just one path the newbie can take. What’s another one?”
Jax doesn’t take the bait and engages no further, but at least Pomni knows he’s listening. At least there’s that.
“The everyman.” Pomni tilts her head, resting it best she can on her own shoulder. “The one that’s…normal, and...nice.” All the things she imagined he might say come into her mind, but not out of his mouth. She addresses them anyway. “And you’re gonna say I’m trying to cheat and I’m saying I’m a real person, but no, I’m playing by your rules. And you’re gonna say the everyman is the boring archetype, but no, it’s not! The everyman is...the straight man.”
Another invitation for engagement. Jax does not RSVP. Whatever, Pomni has her party anyway. It’s honestly a little gratifying to spell out to him something he definitely already knows. Makes her understand — but not like — mansplaining a little better.
“The one everyone else bounces off on. The funny one tells a joke and the straight man reacts, and then the audience laughs.” Pomni closes her eyes. “That’s why you’re not the funny one.”
She opens them; Jax is still lying stomach-down, but has moved his head to face the side. Not the side she’s on, though.
Not yet satisfied, Pomni says, “I am.”
His tail twitches a little. The feeling of victory is fleeting, quickly followed by hollow sadness, the sense of confused despair that has permeated since Caine's big reveal.
“I was thinking that saying this could get you to realise the whole thing is dumb. But you already know that. And then today happened, so.” Pomni sits forward, gathers her legs up against her chest and holds them there with her arms, resting her chin on her knees. “So yeah.”
She sits there and looks at the back of his head. He lies there and looks at a low-poly conch shell. All the other shells are all nicely rendered with plenty of imperceptible polygons, but it looks like Caine never got a handle on this particular design. Or maybe the lake is just unfinished. Those were some pretty crappy fish.
Jax sits up, still facing away, and says softly, “I’m sorry.” A moment, then he adds, in an attempt at that performative cadence, “Sorry you can’t go viral on Youtube with your meta analysis.”
Pomni cracks a little smile. “Oh sure, that’d get way more views than urban exploring.”
“Never gonna do that again.”
“I will,” she says, and it must be the forced cheer in her voice that makes his ears straighten. He looks over his shoulder at her and she confesses, “There’s this dead mall I’ve been putting off for a special occasion,” as her eyes gain a glassy sheen and tears well, but she refuses to cry. She wipes her face on her forearm.
Jax swivels around. He plants his feet on either side of Pomni’s and leans forward on his knees, looking down at her, pupils blown wide. In a completely flat, dissociated affect, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Her chest, wherever it is now, aches. "I don’t know what I believe right now,” says Pomni very neutrally. “How about you?”
He bursts into helpless tears.