Chapter Text
They were… somewhere
Somewhere deep, conjured by the depths of their mind, a place never meant to be seen by anyone other than themselves.
It was a vulnerable place, empty but filled with thoughts and desires so personal that they would kill anyone who even got a peek of what was inside.
They did.
It always weighed on them. That night they were so vulnerable and open, but being vulnerable and open was never what really weighed on them anymore. It was what they did after.
He pushed her away.
They pushed her away.
Fueled by nothing but themself, they killed her.
There was always a lot of time to think in this place, not much to do and all. Sometimes they’d think about Pomni, sometimes they’d think about Ribbit, and other times they’d think about nothing at all.
It was weirdly peaceful here. It was a place away from the circus, away from Caine, and away from the problems that led them here. The only thing they missed here was Pomni, all the others could go f##k themselves, but Pomni… she cared. There were still problems with her, of course, but she was the only one that had actually tried to get them back.
“OH F##K YOU” they heard from the other room. If only they could shut up for once. “TAKE THAT YOU F##KING F####T” yelled a slightly different voice
“CAN YOU SHUT UP FOR ONCE” they yelled back in anger.
This always reminded them of life before the circus, before they had run away from home. Before the- “MAYBE YOU CAN SHUT UP FOR ONCE” interjected the first voice.
“m- maybe we can all just talk quietly a- and accept our differences,” said a smaller, meeker voice. They preferred hearing that version of themself over all of the others, and not just because ‘he’ was quieter but also because ‘he’ was more honest with ‘himself’.
“Get Back To Playing” yelled one of them, throwing a glass bottle at ‘him’, landing with an explosion-like boom. The music slowly started back up as the meek Jax stayed quiet. It always pained them when this happened.
---------------- POV Pomni ----------------
Things had calmed down a little since Jax had abstracted. She still visited Jax every once in a while, just to talk and admire his many eyes. Even if they always stayed closed. She sometimes had regrets about keeping him here, away from all the other abstractions, but she wasn’t quite ready to let go of him. It felt like sending him to be with the others would be like giving up on him, even if Caine had said that there was no way to bring him back, but she kept holding hope.
“You all good?” said Ragatha as she knocked on her door.
“All good,” she said as she walked and opened the door.
Ragatha was standing there in her usual outfit, a short one-piece blue dress with cowboy boots and a western hat to match.
“Hey Pomni,” said Ragatha, in a concerned tone “If you ever need-”
“I’m fine,” Pomni interrupted.
“You sure? I know that Jax abstracting and all has really affected you.” She said with the same tone as before.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it” Pomni repeated, “I’ll see you at dinner,” she said as she closed the door.
“Well,” Ragatha said, muffled behind the door “See you soon”
It had been a couple of months since Jax had abstracted, and not too much had changed. Caine had made an effort to fix up the circus, or at least the best that he could. Zooble was constantly asking for new things for Caine to add to the circus as well as ‘enjoying’ Gangle. Gangle just kept drawing, mostly outlandish exaggerations of Zooble. Kinger just sat in the aquarium, looking longingly at his wife. Ragatha usually just played games of softball with NPCs as well as caring for the horses that Caine had created for her.
“HEY POMNI,” a loud, booming voice said.
She jumped back, startled by the sudden intrusion.
“Aren’t you supposed to knock now?” she inquired, still quite flustered by the appearance of Caine.
“Oh right, sorry,” Caine said as he snapped his finger and teleported to her door.
The expected knocking at her door sounded only a second later.
“Come in,” Pomni said, already tired of this.
“So, Pomni,” said Caine “If you were in a scenario where hypothetically you noticed a small, barely noticeable change in an already mostly corrupted file, what would you do?” The blank stare that Pomni gave prompted him to continue “Assuming of course, it was acting slightly differently where an automatic compression algorithm that usually acted upon files like these every second was slowed by 3 ticks only on this file, amounting to a difference of 3.4ms on average… Hypothetically”
“w-what,” Pomni said in confusion
“Never mind,” said Caine “I’ll ju- I’ll just talk to Kinger”
“See you at dinner,” Caine said as he floated away, presumably to find Kinger.
The lack of closing the door only makes the interaction feel worse. She thought, getting up to close it. She knew that Caine was trying his best, but he still hadn’t gotten a good grasp of human norms.
She remembered what Caine had said to her. Corrupted file? Compression algorithm? It was like they were speaking different languages.
She eventually concluded she should check on Jax after dinner. Speaking of dinner–
The bell rang to signal the beginning of dinner, one of Zooble’s many ideas.
As she walked to the table Caine had set up, she was fidgeting with her hands, still concerned about Jax.
“You still thinking about him?” said Zooble, jolting her out of her thoughts.
She responded with only silence.
Zooble, sighing, said, “You need to get over him. It's clearly messing with you.”
Pomni decided to take her seat next to Ragatha and across from Zooble. The food tasted as it normally did, fake. It still tasted like food, just too even.
She took a look at the food on the table. It was fish with gravy, not one of her favorites. None of the foods Caine made were her ‘favorite,’ though she couldn’t really blame him. All the food in the circus felt fake either way. There was never any variation in texture or flavor, or at least that was the theory she had.
After dinner she walked over to the tent that they had moved to the corner with the help of Caine. She lifted the curtains blocking the light from entering the tent, allowing the outside to peer in for only a moment. She began to survey the pillow-covered floor for the dim rainbow light that she had come to associate with Jax. Peeking out from over a wall of pillows, there he was.
------------------ POV Jax ------------------
As they thought about what they could have done better and other such depressing stuff, they noticed a strange device on the ground. As bringing it up to their face—
“What are you doing,” said an aggressive voice from the door that they wished they could just get rid of.
“What’s it to you,” they said in return, looking up from the screen that was projecting what seemed to be where their physical body was.
“It's literally everything to me, you're me,” returned the voice, in a ‘isn’t it obvious tone.’
“No, you're me. You’re just less honest to yourself,” they replied.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” replied the voice
“‘He’s’ talking about the t####y s##t,” another voice butted in, like ‘he’ had any right to speak
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” replied the voice in a confused-angry tone.
“Well, just shut up for a bit,” they said, already annoyed at the constant bickering.
Grumbling from the other room was all they heard in reply. It was nice that they were finally able to get a bit of quiet from them.
“Anyway,” they mumbled to themself, as they looked back at the screen to continue observing the surroundings of their true body. They didn’t seem to be able to control their body or eyes, but they could see something. They instantly began dissecting the scene at hand.
They seemed to be in some sort of pile of pillows. They noted the different colors, pink, blue, green, white, it all just seemed to be random colors not quite picked out or anything. Other things they noted were the tent-like blanket draped over the pole in the center of whatever room they were in. Another thing that they noticed was…
“POMNI,” they screamed out
“What!?” “WHAT” “What” the three in the other room yelled in surprised unison
POP the screen that seemed to be their only way to actually see the outside disappeared just the same as it appeared.
“Did you say Pomni appeared?!” Said one of them
Wow, this is going to take a while to explain
------------------ POV Pomni ------------------
She had noticed the glow emitted from Jax, and was about to go over the pillow wall that separated them. As she climbed to the top of the wall, she was already dismissing false hopes of Jax coming back. Maybe all the things that Caine had said were just random coincidences.
As she peeked over the top of the wall to look for Jax. A singular glowing, animated eye stared at her. She was frozen, this was the first time that Jax had done anything. Was Jax finally coming back? But then as suddenly as she got her hopes up, the eye closed, locking itself away.
Her mind was racing, not focused on one specific thing, what could this mean? She had to find Caine.