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Sometimes, Crescent believes that she is the only real person in the world.
The sun is coming up, and with it, the fishing boats. They glide through the cool, dark waters, throwing up clouds of murk, dredging silt and hiding things from their covers of dead leaves and lake-mulch and obscurity. Crescent dangles her feet off the docks, flashing in the black, black water like the pale corpses of fish, and watches the dock-workers move crates and bags and ballast with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows. To avoid catching them, on hooks and edges, and worse things.
In a few minutes, one of the dockworkers— if she’s lucky, and more, if she’s not— will march over to her perch, barrel arms folded over his barrel chest, and tell her to shove off, though not in such kind words. For now, though, the sun is rising, turning everything into the pinks and golds of a rich woman’s wardrobe, or the inside of a mouth with one too many false teeth, all meat and metal, shining pretty and wet.
One of Crescent’s teeth is false, but it isn’t made of gold. No, it’s made of a single, polished stone fished from the riverbed. One of the town guards kicked her in the jaw in passing, and knocked out her upper left canine. It still aches, at night and when it rains.
Something brushes her foot, and Crescent startles. Looks down, into the dark, dark water.
There’s something tethering itself to her ankle, cool, slick tentacles wrapping around the knob of bone. It’s a deep, indigo blue, except for the top of its head, which is a gelatinous helmet of sorts, pink like the inside of a shell, or, again, raw meat. It glitters with golden lights, flashing haphazardly in no distinctive pattern, and Crescent’s gaze meets two charcoal-black eyes, half-closed, but heavy with knowing.
Inkay. A Dark and Psychic-type. An abhorrent, self-consumptive curse.
Sinful.
Her first instinct is to kick it off, and dart back into the treeline, back to her ramshackle, well, shack, with her mother that pretends she isn’t there and her brother that does anything but, before anyone can notice, accuse her of cavorting with abomination. Her next, stronger instinct is to reach down into the dark, dark water, hand skimming over the cool surface, ice enveloping her knuckles, and grasp it in one small, pale hand, her other hand pinioned against the dock to stop her from falling in, just so.
So, she does.
It doesn’t fight, the Inkay. Barely blinks. It’s small, the size of an unripe piece of fruit, or a discarded boot, laces withered and crusted into stiffness. It latches onto her wrist almost instantly, and it’s cool in her hand, cool and slick, like a fistful of river-mud, or a mouthful of old blood, still stuck to her gums. It’s cool, and slick, and doesn’t try to fight her off, just holds her hand, holds her like she’s the only thing in the world, and gazes up at her with black half-open eyes, and—
Oh, Crescent realizes.
This is what it’s like to be held by something other than oneself.
Sometimes, Crescent believes that she is the only real person in the world.
Here, Crescent sits at the precipice, in her tattered, off-white dress made from a discarded sack of flour, and her tangled, greasy hair falling in charnel curls, and her raw, red fists balled together around a slick length of squid, and wonders. Crescent stares, and the black, black water stares back at her, a pale, unflinching shape, one crimson eye tucked behind a sheaf of charcoal, like a single, perfect drop of blood, and—
There’s no way of knowing. There’s never any way of knowing, and there never will be.
Two eyes stare back, perfectly round, perfectly black.
They blink, and Crescent blinks with them.
The black, black water brushes lovingly against her calves.
The sun is coming up.
Crescent watches it rise in silence.