Work Text:
The sky ran red, then bled out into purple, and Kris said yes into the wind. The flowers to their back swayed dizzily on their feet; white clouds wheeled above; the fading sun dragged them down with it past the mountains, out of sight.
“Uuuu,” cooed Aqua, dangling above the castle garden. “You have to?”
Below, the sky dredged itself back out of the horizon. Kris’ fingers fumbled with the clasp of their mantle; they hitched a breath of the flower-scented air, stared at the cold light cutting across the surface of the pond, thought of the lake. They wished that the sun would never rise again, and repeated themself: yes.
“Uuuuuuu, why?”
“Because,” Ralsei began—
“Yeah, I mean, seriously, why?” Susie asked, making that sad, hopeful face that made Kris want to give up and throw their knife into the lake and die. “Do we have to seal it? Wouldn’t it be fine to leave one of them?”
“I’m sorry, but, the Light World will be destroyed if we don’t. And, none of this is even, um, technically real, so,” Ralsei smiled, less convincing than ever. In the distance, the sun was already setting again. They cast a long shadow against the wall as it sank behind them. “If it makes it easier, you could just, think of it like waking up from a dream?”
The sun set seven times before the end, sinking and rising like a ferris wheel. Kris listened to the wind and the ponds and stared at Susie’s shadow stretching out in front of them on the darkening ground, and every time it faded away they thought of Noelle in her arms, and her footsteps in the water, growing farther away. Inside the castle the air was still. Flowery called Ralsei a princess; Kris let themself wear a blue dress and a skirt; Susie picked violets for Noelle, and her smile was so bright that for a moment Kris almost forgot that it wasn’t for them anymore and that they had never deserved it to begin with. The sun set one last time in front of the Fountain, and as Kris reached out to seal it, they stared into the waves and froze.
“Kris,” Susie said, voice soft as water, “you’re shaking.” She took their hand in hers; linked her rough fingers into theirs. “C’mon. Relax a little. It’ll be alright. We’re just waking up from a dream, right?” She pushed their hand back towards them, and smiled again. “I’ll be there with you on the other side.”
Kris took a breath. The Fountain air was deep and cold. But Susie’s touch was so warm, and her smile was so bright that as they stood facing the swelling darkness ahead, they didn’t think about their promise, or the lake, or the hopeless, faraway sun. In the quiet moment before their soul shone and everything fell away, they turned to their side and saw Susie there, smiling back at them like they were the only thing in the world. And for just a moment, they thought that maybe it was okay to believe her.
Kris couldn’t sleep. They sat perched on the window and let their eyes wander wherever they wanted. High in the sky a single cloud ran away towards the moon; below, the trees swayed and hissed in the dark. Past the forest to the south was the school; Kris quickly looked away to the empty lake to the east. Not the two of us, they thought, and began to lean over the edge. But Susie would notice if they broke something. What had to happen next would be easier if she were looking at someone else. They leaned back. The cloud passed over the moon and was gone.
The Fountain was closed, and on the other side Susie wasn’t there. Kris closed their eyes, and didn’t open them again until they heard something approaching from the driveway. She came back, they thought, for the brief, stupid moment before the sound of hooves reached them and Noelle stopped in front of the door. Her hand reached out then froze. She turned around and hovered there, skirt fluttering in the breeze skimming in over the trees, not quite leaving. Kris shuddered, then lurched away from the window. They fumbled the birdcage open, left their bedroom, and creaked down to the front door.
Noelle managed to not quite scream at the opening door, and by the time she had caught her breath enough to speak, she was smiling. Her big front teeth shone like the moon; Kris looked down at their shoes. “Gosh, Kris, make some more noise next time, fahaha!” she said, voice thin. When Kris looked up she wasn’t quite smiling anymore.
She looked worried and remote, standing in the faint living room window light wearing the same clothes she had worn to the festival: her black church dress, and the same December-coloured cardigan she always wore even though the colour of her hair made her look more like a September tree. It was messy, even in the low Autumn wind; her eyes were red and tired. She had come from the hospital, Kris thought, and then distantly and now she’s here. And before they could think of anything to say Noelle had opened her mouth and asked if she could come inside for a drink. They stood motionless, thought no and then, louder, yes, and stepped aside.
Behind Kris’ back Noelle let tapwater trickle into her bottle, slow and quiet. In front was the fridge: inside was food, all the same sustainable brands their mother had insisted on buying after watching that documentary on industrial food waste years ago. It all cost a lot. Kris looked away. They had already eaten today. Noelle turned the water off, and let Kris follow her back outside.
“Do you, um,” she said, running her thumb along the bottle’s lid, “do you know where Susie is?”
To Noelle’s left, a moth bumped its head uselessly against the living room window. It flew away into the gloom, came back, tried again. Kris said no.
“Oh,” said Noelle.
Kris opened their mouth to say they had to leave. But when their voice spilled out, it asked how her dad was doing.
“He, um,” Noelle’s voice slid down an octave, “the doctors said he isn’t getting worse.” A moment passed; she regarded Kris quietly. Around, the trees watched in silence. “You, um, really don’t know where she is? Even just, where you last saw her would be fine, so...”
Kris’ arm lifted itself up and pointed away from the school, to the east.
“Oh, um, she was still, at the lake?” Noelle asked, and made that face they had watched her make for Susie earlier. The moth hit its head against the window again, and Kris thought about turning around and going back upstairs and killing themself until Noelle said “Thanks, Kris. And, um, for earlier too. I had fun on the ferris wheel.” And Kris wasn’t sure what to think anymore.
Without thinking, they said that they could walk her home.
“What? Kris, no, that’s, um,” she stopped, and gave them a slow, questioning look. “I mean... yeah? Why not? Faha. But, um, can we go to the lake first? I still, kind of wanna see if Susie’s there...”
Eyes down, pulling at a loose thread in their sleeve, Kris said okay.
They walked through the sleeping town, down the road they had walked down together every day a million years ago, and said nothing to each other. Kris fell in line behind Noelle. Above her head were shivering stars; all around the dark trees watched and whispered. Kris turned their face down and wished they hadn’t come until a breeze sighed through the streets from the lake and smelled of Noelle’s hair. They breathed it selfishly in, and didn’t tell her that Susie was at the school, and when she wasn’t there at the shore Noelle sat down and started crying. Kris thought about going home. They sat down next to her instead.
“Sorry, I just,” she choked, “I was just, really hoping she’d be here, you know?”
Kris had known since the beginning. They had been watching Noelle watch Susie for long enough that when it finally happened they had almost been okay with it. But now Noelle was crying, and it was obvious that she would be because her dad was in the hospital, and Susie was in there instead of out here with her and Kris picked up the nearest stone and flung it into the lake. It hit the water with a hollow slap that startled Noelle back upright to stare at them. She wiped her eyes, and made a stifled little noise that almost sounded like a laugh.
“What,” she sniffled, “you just wanted to play fetch, like when we were kids?”
Behind their back, Kris’ hand closed around a fistful of sand. They didn’t say anything. But Noelle kept looking at them. She blew her nose into her stupid wrapping paper handkerchief, pulled her knees into herself and set her head down sideways. She let her hair spill down and pool on the shore, and kept looking at Kris, eyes half-lidded, sad and familiar. Noelle from next door.
“Hey,” she said. “Remember that time you stole Dess’ bike and took it to the lake? And, I took my mom’s camera and went out looking for you, to get— pffaha, to get evidence of the crime? But then, I got scared mom would get mad at me for stealing too, so... I gave it to you? Do you still, um... have, that?”
Kris remembered. Noelle’s photo had sat in their drawer for years, safe in one of their brother’s brown envelopes with the glue that they had licked after meals for a whole week after Dess told them it was an “acquired taste for grownups.” They had dug it out one last time, at the beginning of Autumn, before throwing it away. It wasn’t very good. The image was all blurry; Kris could barely recognise their own face. But when they saw the colours they could still smell the sunset, and they thought that if they turned it around they would still be able to see Noelle’s smile. She wasn’t there, of course: the back was empty, except for her clumsy signature, penciled painstakingly in alternating green and red for each letter. Kris thought that if Carol knew about it, she would have had it preserved in glass. But she had told them to throw away everything before opening the Fountain in their house, so they did. Noelle probably didn’t even remember it, they had selfishly hoped. They looked away from her, into the solemn trees, and said they didn’t know.
She gave a little hm, and kept looking at them. “I always thought,” she said, “about how even though we both did something bad, you lied and said you took the camera too. And then when we forgot to take the bike back and it got lost, you were the only one who got grounded. I guess, I just... always, felt bad about it?”
Kris said they were the one who deserved to get punished.
“Kris, no, we— we both deserved it. Ugh, why are you always like this? Didn’t you think I’d be sad when you couldn’t come over anymore?” Her face wrinkled up, in that Carol-like way it used to when a prank went too far. “Wouldn’t it have been better to get in trouble together?”
Water washed against the shore, and Kris’ mouth reached for a word starting with the letter S. Safe, they thought, then sorry. But when they opened their mouth what came out was a quiet Susie.
“Susie’s not here right now,” Noelle murmured. She put one hand down next to herself, between her and them, and shuffled a little closer. “Remember... when I used to walk home with my eyes closed? Lately, I’ve been... doing that again. I keep thinking about what you would always say to scare me, about how you couldn’t do it, because if you closed your eyes, you thought a big hole would open up in front of you and swallow you up. Do you remember what I always used to say?”
Behind their back, Kris’ hand twitched open, then shut again. They tried to look away, but couldn’t.
“I would just laugh,” Noelle said, “and say, if I fell into a big hole, I’d just grow wings and fly away.”
Kris said, in a weak voice, that they weren’t saying it to scare her. They said that they were the one who was scared.
“Kris,” she laughed, “you’re so silly. I was there with you. Would it really be so bad if we fell down together?”
Noelle closed her eyes. The moon hung above the lake, and in the pale light her shadow stretched out quietly behind her, a little farther than Kris’. She hadn’t always been so much taller than them. It had been Autumn when Kris first noticed; one day they had turned around on the way home from school, and Noelle’s shadow was so long that they were suddenly afraid that one day it would reach all the way to the lake. All around, the trees were tall and dark. The breeze brushed against the back of Kris’ neck and they shivered, and looked at Noelle, and thought that her shadow had already covered the whole town, for a long time now.
“Kris,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
Kris didn’t say anything.
“Kris, come on,” she said, voice like melting ice, “Don’t look so scared. I’m just... gonna prank you a little, okay?”
Kris closed their eyes. They listened to the water, and tried not to pay attention to their beating heart, and then they heard Noelle shuffling closer to them again across the sand and all they could hear was her. They felt her breath brush against their cheek; she was warm, and smelled of peppermint, and walking home, and the piano; they felt her prickly deer whiskers and her cold, sad lips, and Kris heard the water again and behind their eyelids they saw Noelle and Susie walking out into the lake, and they both looked happy. Kris opened their eyes and jerked their head away. In the corner of their eye they saw Noelle, staring, eyes wide and hurt.
“Of course not,” she said, turning away. “Not the two of us. It was all just... kids playing pretend, wasn’t it? You were just, doing it because I told you to, right? The ferris wheel, and the, the photo and the stupid couples vote,” the wind hissed through the trees; Noelle breathed. “I always thought, we couldn’t decide who should be king or queen because of,” she made an abortive gesture; she could never quite say it, “But, you just didn’t want to be either, right? Not if it was with me. That’s what you wanted to say?” Her face cracked into a smile. “But, I, I had fun on the ferris wheel today, Kris! I actually thought, maybe it wasn’t pretend! I thought, maybe, if you had done something like that before I met Susie, then...” She let the smile fall off of her face. “Sorry,” she said, voice low. “Don’t, um. Don’t tell Susie about this.”
She stood up to leave. But Kris reached out and grabbed her sleeve. Their grip was weak; they stared down at Noelle’s hooves, past their own shaking arm. They said that they would be the king.
“Kris?”
Kris said that they would be the king. And that they wouldn’t shake the ferris wheel again, and that they would do whatever Noelle told them to—
“Kris—”
They said that they would get stronger, and they would pick her up and carry her out into the lake, and they would walk with her with their eyes closed and they wouldn’t be scared,
“Kris, you’re crying—”
And they said that they would bring Dess back.
“Kris,” Noelle said. She held onto their sleeve. Gently, she pulled their hand away from her, and said “Kris, it’s too late for any of that.”
Kris said please.
“Kris, no! Why do you always do this? You think you can just, ignore me for as long as you like, and I’ll keep waiting for you forever? I never cared about who was the king or the queen! I would have been fine with either! All I wanted was for you to choose something for once! You always made me decide everything for you! And you’re still doing it!”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and took a deep, slow breath. Kris’ fingers lay useless in the sand where she had sat, and even though the imprint she had left was still warm, they were so cold that they could barely feel it.
“When we were kids,” Noelle said, “you’d freeze up like that, too. And I guess I just, I thought, maybe this time it would be different, you know?”
Kris tried to say something. But they thought about the food they didn’t eat because they didn’t want to waste their mother’s money, and about Dess’ bike rusting at the bottom of the lake, and Susie’s smile, and when they looked up into Noelle’s eyes the words froze in their throat.
“I have to go back to my dad,” she said, looking away. “Don’t follow me.” And she left.
Kris didn’t follow her. Staring out at the moon running away behind the other side of the lake, they sat still and thought about Dess’ bike. Dess had chased them when they stole it. They had pedaled away from her as fast as they could, all the way to the lake, and by the time they made it past the trees to the shore their legs were so tired that they could barely stand. They set the bike down next to them and waited for somebody to come and catch them; the stars had peered down at them as the sun pulled the silent blue sky down with it to the west, and when the clouds were pink they looked down at the shore and there was Noelle’s shadow, creeping out from behind them like always. Nobody else had come for them, Kris thought, alone in the dark, but Noelle had. And now she wouldn’t. They tried to stand up, but before they made it to their feet they reached into their pocket and closed their fist around the shard of glass inside until their legs crumpled and went slack. Ahead, the light from the moon danced on the waves, lucid and clear, like waking up from a dream that had lasted for too long.
The sun rose again, even though Kris wished it wouldn’t. When they heard birds they got up and dragged themself back through town. They passed through the flower shop’s fading shadow and looked down the intersection towards the church and the school resting behind the pale orange trees; they thought of how the Fountains had flowed out of their hands, and taken some feeling their useless mouth couldn’t find the words for and given it a shape, and how Susie had touched them and made them hers with her smile and then forced Kris to choke them back into silence. They looked north, towards their house, where their mother had looked so happy to have Susie there; they looked past the gate to Noelle’s house and thought that there was only one part of themself left for Susie to cut off. They climbed over the gate and hit the ground, dragged the knife out of their pocket, and thought that it was fine this way. This way, when everything was over and the sun set on them for the last time, at least it would be clean.