Chapter Text
There is a memory, somewhere in the grey gossamer of what remains of Kris’ mind. They think it goes like this.
There are hot springs in the woods by the Holiday manor. It’s a tradition, by the time Kris is ten, eleven maybe, for Azzy and Dess to take them and Noelle tramping out to those woods when summer begins to crest, and the trees leaves start to brittle in earnest as the sun becomes a watercolour smudge in the sky. The light that drenches them there is still in the deep gold haze of nostalgia, the one that honeys all memories like this. Maybe that strange light comes from Azzy himself, teeth wide and bright as the sun, reflecting off the cool shadow of Dess’ moon as they hike ahead, long limber legs taking to the forest floor with more grace and aptitude than Kris and Noelle could hope for.
Actually, Noelle is the least cocksure of them all, staggering behind. Her skinny ankles mean that she rolls her hoofs a lot, and the sprawling web of jutting roots and moss blankets is doing nothing to help. Kris wipes feathers of sweaty fringe from their forehead and squints through the sun-haze as Noelle huffs and puffs against a yew tree, curling blonde hair frizzing with the heat like a ripe dandelion. The straps of the backpack she’s carrying are too wide for her narrow shoulders, and she keeps needing to stop to readjust—subsequently, she loses sight of where she is, and a rogue log or divot in the ground trips her up, and the bag straps slide down again.
Kris slows down. They say a word. An unimportant one, probably, so they don’t remember. All their words used to be unimportant, in the sense that they used to just say them if they wanted, and if they didn’t (the occurrence they generally deferred to), they didn’t have to. They never used to measure the worth of a word; now each one they speak feels deliberate, in the same way that poking around in a bleeding wound for shrapnel feels deliberate, watching the blood accumulate and spit in protest. Even the words in Kris’ own head are measured, assigned a worth, a value.
Are these words worth the look on Noelle’s face? Are these ones worth biting off your own tongue to stop yourself saying it?
But now, Kris is eleven and they say a word to Noelle, and Noelle looks back at them and scrunches her nose. Despite her obvious exhaustion, she smiles. Two piano-key teeth poke out between her philtrum and chin when she does. “Huh, Kris? O-of course I’m okay! This bag is just… whew, pretty heavy.”
Kris considers this. Azzy had discreetly loaded most of the heavy gear—their tents, mallets and pegs, collapsible gas stove—into his own backpack, leaving Kris only hauling their spare clothes and whatever they used to not be able to sleep without. There had been various exchanges throughout the years. A threadbare old stuffie of a flower, a plastic headband with two ivory stubs of horn. A rusty nail from a steel door that leads somewhere they’d rather not think about. A knife.
In the bag, though, it’s just clothes and a toothbrush and one of Mom’s books about snails. They say a couple more words to Noelle and she blinks her big eyes at Kris.
“N-no! It’s alright, you don’t hafta carry it for me.” Noelle stands up a little straighter and yanks the left strap of the bag from where it was drooping by her elbow, ruffling the pale blue of her shirt. “I want to get it all the way to the campsite.”
Kris suspects Dess’ gentle teasing may have something to do with this resolve, but they have known Noelle long enough to recognise that white glint of determination in her brown eyes. Know that there isn’t really a point trying to shift her opinion. Instead, Kris says something else and those eyes widen, showing a halo of white sclera as the pupils contract momentarily to black pinpoints. Noelle laughs, high and uncertain as a strained piano string. “Fahaha! You’ll motivate me?”
Kris nods. Noelle shifts, her hoofs brushing the undergrowth anxiously. Then Kris turns on their heels and bolts, ducking into the shrubbery, hearing Noelle make a screechy sound behind them.
“H-hey! Kris! D-don’t run off without me. Kris, where are you?”
Her calls are broken up with more of those pseudo-nervous, hiccuping giggles, and Kris can hear Noelle start to canter after them—but she’s loud and clumsy with the extra weight on her back, and Kris is a wriggling beanpole of sinew and mousy hair, blending into the vegetation with ease. They peer out between the dappled haze of leaves making a blurred, twitching vignette shrouding their peripheral vision, watching Noelle stumble into a patch of sunlight, peering around the clearing for a glimpse of Kris as that flushed, uncertain smile wavers and undulates, as though she cannot decide whether she wants to laugh or cry.
This is an oddly common occurrence for Noelle. For as together as she seems at school—knee socks always exactly the same height, colour-coordinated pencil case, long ringlets in perfect twin ponytails—she has these… outbursts of heightened emotion, very occasionally, that Kris has been privy to. When they watch a movie on the old TV in Kris’ living room and they get to a sad point, Azzy and Dad might have sniffled—but Noelle howled, clutching a cushion against her chest and burying her face in it until she emerged red-cheeked and sopping, the pillow stained with twin patches of tears. When Dad made one of his stupid jokes over the dinner table, Azzy and Mom would chuckle politely, but Noelle would swallow half her food in her gusto and collapse into peals of laughter, shoulders shaking for almost an hour afterwards.
That was just when she was at Kris’ house, though. When they went to the Holiday home, Noelle was… quieter.
Kris isn’t sure what to make of it. What to make of her. Sometimes, in those blue-moon moments of hysteria, she seems too intense for Kris to want to be around her. Kris thinks they like her—she’s always kind and sweet, and she tells corny jokes, and they like a lot of the same things, and Kris’ parents definitely love her—but sometimes they find themselves questioning what Noelle gets out of this friendship. She has a cool sister and a huge house, and although her mom is… busy, her dad is super funny and energetic, and he dotes on his daughters.
Kris watches, wondering which way the scales will teeter today. It’s more than the little ploy they’ve hatched that keeps them rooted to the spot, observing as a hunter might track prey, breath held against the soupy breeze. It’s their own idle curiosity, a want to watch Noelle while she doesn’t know she’s being watched. A pull to see how she behaves when she thinks the shutters are closed to prying eyes.
It starts to feel like looking at someone through a keyhole. So Kris jumps out with a ragged, animalistic sound, and Noelle screams and scrambles backwards, miraculously not losing her footing as Kris runs at her. Noelle bolts, scream dissolving into feverish laughter as she sprints away the best she can, kicking up spurts of leaves that have started to oxidise in green-umber arcs.
She keeps looking over her shoulder, checking how far behind Kris is. Every time she sees that they’ve gained on her a little, Kris sees her cheeks flush, that minute contraction of the pupils, and she gives a little whoop as she pushes herself, faster, faster—
“Eek!”
Inevitably, Noelle topples; Kris watches as a curling lip of a root catches her on the ankle, and Noelle pitches forwards with a yelp. She just about manages to catch herself on her palms, sparing her face from the packed earth, but the inertia and the weight of the bag on her back forces her forwards several more inches after she hits the ground, and she half-rolls down a sloping valley, landing in an undignified heap two feet or so below where Kris slows to a halt, panting.
They peer over the lip of the crevasse, stomach suddenly twinging uncomfortably. Noelle lifts a hand and brushes wisps of wheat-coloured hair out of her eyes, dazed, looking up at the canopy of leaves overhead. For a second, Kris is sure she’s going to burst into tears, bring Dess and Azzy running back over. Kris will get reprimanded; Azzy’s gentle disappointment will be worse than Dess’ light but meaningful scolding, and Kris starts to worry at their lip.
Noelle meets their eyes, and her mouth cracks into a big, toothy grin. She starts to laugh, the sound filling the air like wind chimes, or summer bells, and Kris’ body slumps in relief. They hobble down the crevasse beside her and offer her a hand, which she takes, and Kris takes a moment to realise Noelle is one of the only people they would let touch them outside of Azzy and Mom and Dad. Noelle’s grip is surprisingly firm as she staggers to her feet, letting out a breathless giggle.
“That… that was a heck of a fall!” she rasps, fiddling with one of her antlers as though worried it would suddenly be crooked. “Fahaha… Kris, you were scary! I thought I was gonna die!”
Kris thinks they might be smiling. It’s sort of hard to tell, but the way Noelle’s face lights up suggests something of the sort.
“Hey, you really motivated me, all right.” She nudges them with a sharp elbow, and Kris doesn’t flinch back from it the way they usually might. “I think that’s the campsite just there. Guess I can do anything if someone chases me through the woods, fahaha...”
Guess anyone would, Kris remembers thinking. They trudge the last of the way there, finding Dess and Azzy already setting up two tents. Noelle sends one last fleeting grin at Kris, setting the bag down heavily and scurrying over to help Dess.
Kris can hear the babbling of the brook only some feet away from where they make camp. The fettered diamond surface of the river sends spots of sunlight dancing off the trunks of the ash and hickory trees like a disco ball.
The rush of water soothes them to sleep that night.
(Another memory from this night.
Noelle is asleep. It used to be that Kris shared a tent with Azzy, and Noelle with Dess, but Kris and Noelle had been playing and Noelle had drifted off, so Azzy said it was fine, he and Dess could share for the night.
But Kris has always had a hard time falling asleep when they aren’t in their own bed, with the safety of knowing Azzy is only on the other side of the room. They like to look over and watch the rise and fall of his chest sometimes, just to reassure themselves, tracing the low movement in the ghostly moonlight. Restless, and needing to pee a bit, Kris carefully wriggles out of their sleeping bag, unzips the mouth of the tent just enough to prise themselves through, and shucks ungracefully onto the forest floor.
It’s black and monochromatic out here now, the green-gold space of earlier transformed. The rushing of the river sounds more like a whisper now, the branches of the trees warping as black fingers, blotting out the feather-light dots of the stars far above. Kris shifts, rubbing their eyes, and takes a step over to the shrubbery to pee. A noise stops them.
It’s a shuffling. At first they think Noelle has woken and come crawling, bleary-eyed, after them, but after a moment they realise the sound is coming from the other tent. The one with Azzy and Dess inside. Kris stops and stares at the unmoving mouth, puzzled. Maybe it’s the cognisance finally sinking in that, because they and Noelle are sharing, Dess and Azzy are, too. They’ve never really thought about Azzy and Dess as anything but extensions of themself and Noelle—but there they are, enclosed in their own little world. There’s a soft laugh, one that could be Dess or Azzy. Something in Kris lurches as they realise they are bleeding into one another.
Something hot and panicky sweeps their chest, a feeling they have no name for.
Another rustle of movement, another blaring reminder of there being two people in that tent who are thinking about anything but Kris.
They don’t want to think about the rustle. They find a dark place to relieve themselves, crawl back to their bed and jam the thin pillow over their head.
Just before the tent door zips up, they could swear they see a flash of something. Something pink, or maybe yellow, or maybe both, like the way an opal catches light and dissipates it through the pearl crooks of its surface. Lonely. The word stabs through them like the bitter serration of a knife.
Noelle snores on, oblivious, and Kris longs to swap places).