Archive of Our Own

There is a tinge to the northward horizon, like warm candle-wax creeping across the surface of lacquered wood that’s beginning with flame of its own. It comes and goes, gurgles heavy like lungs of a chick torn from its egg a week too early, fighting off the inevitable, not always the brightest at the dead of night. From the valley’s edges, looking down the ancient cleave, distance is laced with streaks of lead-grey and black. Odd, angular craft sail through the atmosphere’s distant layers, barely glinting dots to the naked eye. Sometimes they clash, painting the clouds razor-blue and sickening violet, deafening receiver dishes. In the first weeks, familiar contrails would sometimes emerge from northwest to contest them. Not anymore.

I’m out in the orchard, that calming new layer over the wide ugly scar of the parking lot. Asphalt surface remains only as footpaths. The rest has long been split into fragments, peeled off, carried away, underlying gravel scooped out and replaced with kinder lakeside soil. And year by year that leftover tar-mix crumble fuses into ugly little memorial shrines to industry under rusty perimeter chain-link. Pear branches brush against my face, and warm wind carries a tinge of iron with it. The skin of my wrists wears the dazzle-scan of surrounding foliage, old damage and budding scales momentarily obscured, pushed into the backdrop. The bucket is half-full.

My former friend is on the balcony, huddling close to the door but allowing herself to bask in the evening heat. Through the gaps, I can see her fiddling with her knife, cutting away at some random bit of solid plastic debris. She can never say what she carves out. Most of it ends up on loops of string or fishing line, dangling from the mannequin, my old work with a brush picked up with her improvised sculpting. She is the woodhead’s new favourite, but doesn’t seem to mind. Whatever part of her had spent some ninety rounds trying to scare off wooden dolls on the way here is long gone.

An alarm screeches through the air, so sudden I flinch, have to grab onto the trunk for balance. The bucket wobbles together with the ladder’s platform and tumbles down, spilling into the grass with a cascade of thwumps. The human scrambles indoors before I’m even down at the ground, darting half-crouched below the mostly-buried skylight. I glimpse her hop the table obstructing the stairway. Her reflexes are certainly still with her.

It’s a deep, piercing tone, the kind that begins in the depths of your gut and rises, rises, rises, rises even when you thought there was nowhere left to rise, burns its way towards the base of your cranium. Vermillion bulbs extinguish the humble soft lights of mundanity. Root is alight with a ghost of past battles.

I kick off the last step and sprint towards the porch. Nearly tumble, catch myself on the railing, smash myself into the cracked concrete under the keypad, trying my best to appear untextured, unappealing, nonexistent. The venerable door chokes, struggles to drag itself open, each second more agonizing than the last. Sun batters my face, renders my search of the inbound threat futile. I’m not getting shot again. I’m not getting shot again. I’m not-

Finally, the cursed mechanism gives, revealing a dull square portal into blissful, familiar, steel-reinforced eternal dusk. I squeeze in, dropping to all fours, almost blind for a tick despite the burning alarms, sun’s fierce trajectory baked into my retinas. At least I don’t stumble into the Owl’s shrine by accident.

I detect two sets of steps are on the lowest stairflight - one punctuated, thumping against the metal, one subdued and constant, like the teetering of an elaborate windup mechanism. Kory’s multitude of gentle limbs distributes their humble weight across dozens of touchpoints, letting them flow along any floor or wall. Despite the urgency, I feel a glint of pride. We can do it.

If we don’t get blown to high heaven today, that is. Before I even punch into the intercom, I can hear those dreadful rotors close in over our roofs. My heart is a battledrum, except there are no warriors to answer it. It’s just me, panting frantically in front of the curtain-draped reception desk.

“What the fuck, we sabotaged the tower!”

“Concern, Extreme,” - Kory chitters in shortcodes, - “Human, Safe, Disappear, Sight, Sound, Make-Do, Not, Here, !.”

I give out a whistle of positive acknowledgement and crawl past the door. The chopping of blades overhead reaches its first peak, machine slowing down before a standard landing trajectory.

How does it navigate with the tower down? Is it being driven by an operator? This has to be the new showrunners, how much did they dig up on us? Who is the operator? Why is-

The noise wanes briefly and resumes with double vigor, reaching its second and last peak. Hovering some two meters above the ground somewhere in the lot. Probably a bit farther out than the cargo drop-off point. The garage gate is up. If this door opens, and it has a gun mounted… Are they here to kill us, or intimidate us into making that easier? Does hiding even matter? Did it already spot us-

…

Nothing is happening.

The cross-breed between a privacy nightmare and a cargo helicopter just hovers there, wasting charge. No announcement over loudspeakers. No pickup alert. No strafing runs. No change at all.

Then, a bang, but not that of a gunshot. A muffled, dull sound, followed by a spiraling scream of the drone’s own alarm, cutting over the air raid siren already burning into my skull.

A give in the sound of rotors, dragged sideways, away from the garage door, towards the bridge ramps.

A high-pitched screech of metal bucking under its own weight.

One final alarm.

And then just the blades again. Quieting. Slowing. Dying.

I allow myself to catch breath, slide down to the double-layer hall carpet.

Kory wires into the intercom back down the hall, speaking English again, in their leaf-rustle voice.

“Did it come here to die?”

“I… I think so?” - I get up, unsteady from stress, stumble towards the doors to the processing room. They hiss almost as reluctantly as the front entrance - “Playback?”

“U N C L E A R” - amalgam of hand-soldered boards and ape eyes gurgles out, but cuts the siren away anyhow.

Sensory relief washes over me, unnamed river’s distant hush seeping back into my ears. I turn into the observation block, making sure to keep the rearranged cubicle walls between me and the windows for concealment. Get a hold of one of the wireless mini-CRT’s, tune it to an outside camera. Playback is already pointing it at the drone.

It’s off, nearly toppled in its final descent, smoking mournfully on the fractured pavement. The structure is intact, though the landing rails suffered from the touchdown, and it doesn’t seem eager to come back to life neither burst into flames. That’s good.

It’s just the drone. Clean, carrying nothing. Except…

Playback zooms in, towards a corner of the bent chassis. Something thin and light is stuck to the back of the machine, edges fluttering in the breeze.

A paper note, secured hastily with masking tape.

you still don't know me, but that's fine
this is my last gift
everything after this point is an attack
most backdoors are down by now, except:
firewatch towers S, SE, NE
look for hidden compartments under the roofs
the relays are old but may still work. solar powered. take no chances
they're prepping a raid team. you have a week. i cannot help you anymore
love you, ?????

Handwriting I don’t recognize. Signature that doesn’t resolve into latin glyphs. Wet graphing paper that would slide apart in my fingers if not for the plastic and glue.

I blink at the piece, mouth still half-open.

“I’m beginning to feel like they should have just tried to shoot us again.”

“Should they have, now?” - Kory’s web of a body twists back into the bay, five-eyed head cocked at me in judgement.

“No, not really.”

I release my tentative grip, letting the little grid of grey and blue flop wetly to the floor.

I feel tired. Too tired for just a long day in the yard. Too tired for just a washback from an adrenaline rush. Too tired to write off.

I drag myself to the workbench, flop heavily into the promoted office chair. It must be entering the human retirement age by now. Years have not been kind to it, and neither have I. It creaks and shudders under my weight, steel stubs in place of wheels scraping against the cracked floor. I don’t notice it happening, but my face is buried in my sleeves, forearms as improvised padding beneath my heavy head.

It’s not something that happens. It’s not something that should happen. I don’t want it to happen. Please, for all that dies.

Outside that meek refuge built between my eyes and skin I hear the human slink out of the passage, squeezing past Kory into the dusk of the bay. Then, a rustle of paper. Then…

“It’s real,” - I wince beneath my body, realizing I’d almost forgotten her voice again, despite her being around for a month now, - “I know them.”

“Details, perhaps?” - Kory sounds from the corridor over the quiet sizzling at their limbtips. The door controls are getting an urgent re-inspection.

“Drone technician. Don’t remember the name. Obsessed with you. Three years working. Refused promotions. Wanted to keep watching. Sent notes.”

I feel tired. So tired.

“Did no one tell them notes go straight to the compost bin?”

“We did. Started sending tapes instead.”

“You mean… The random media? It wasn’t you fucking with me after all?”

The human exhales something in confirmation, and retreats from the gates, back towards the staircase. In absence of that horrid chopping, I hear with perfect clarity her boots descend once more. She likes it near the freezer now, oddly enough.

I fight off the nausea as the realization cascades through my memory. Evenings spent wallowing in the familiarity of humanlike routines. Time meant to be killed, with nothing thought of it, because who could it be but the ones whose tricks I knew already? Who else could possibly bother to try? And in that shining shield of assumed indifference, a backdoor undiscovered. And that unnamed thing behind the veil of consoles tapping into it.

I want to tear it out. Tear it all out. But I can’t. The cement has set. Every blurry dream and idle thought stirred by these gifts in the last three years was a new chain in the polymer weave. An itch spreads across my shoulders and back, like a swarm of metal insects assailing my changing skin. I feel stuck. I feel wretched. I feel violated. I feel-

“This is not a mechanical issue,” - my companion’s speakers hiss out. They are certainly aware of my accelerating self-clawing motions, though don’t show it yet, - “Oil pressure is fine, sensors are fine, actuators are fine. Playback, sweetie, have you spotted anything on the manufacturer control bands lately?”

“N E G A T I V E,” - I hear the beast gurgle. Almost managing a note of concern. It failed to come through properly, but I recognize the effort.

The air inside my lungs feels like bitumen. I kick the workbench, sending a screwdriver set clattering to the concrete, and my chair spins screeching into the garage. My steps towards the gear shelves are unsteady. I want to puke. I want to scream. I want to-

A thin metallic appendage punches confidently into my shoulder, not enough to pierce clothes but enough to sting. Refreshing? Anything to distract me from the claustrophobia. I lean back towards it, amplifying the pain. A second one joins it.

“Hey, I’m just going on a little adventure that… The humans suggested, since-”

“You are not going anywhere.”

“Oh come on, commander, I can-”

They abandon the keypad and flow into the garage in a single motion, almost growing into the air around me, a quietly clinking network of aluminium limbs. Their head swivels smoothly to rest in front of mine, cameras focused on the reddened mess that is my face. I stare up at them, suffocating in my own memory, like a corpse fly caught in tree sap. Ephemeral steel mosquitoes reduce the skin of my neck to regolith.

“Tomorrow. Now you take a cold shower, and go to sleep.”

Exhale of their cooling fans brushes against my cheek as they gently shove me back into the corridor, parting before me like a swaying jungle. I feel their eyes on me, force-stabilizing, long after walls rise between us.

Disabled drone’s cyclopean eye ponders the distorted stars. Another stratospheric dogfight dances like a strip of cheap christmas lights overvolted tendfold. I crash down on the dusk-blanketed cold shower tile. Mold-stained high walls of the bathroom are painted spectral vomit as I howl, helpless, into plastic stall bounds.

The sack of gourds gnaws on my shoulder, forces me to take breaks. The human took two, and appears entirely unburdened. Despite all the difference in lifestyles, she is still a head taller than me, and hasn’t lost much of her strength.

The final parts of the route break through her reluctance. Short bushes of the shaded dry creek crackle and part as she jogs ahead, seemingly familiar with the area. I lose sight, forced to tread slower as the weakness in my chest re-mounts with the little obstructions.

I think of a different her, born in another time. Time where that well of stamina and anger could make a name all on its own, rather than being a hindrance. Felling a birch grove to build a village church. Raising a halberd at a shuddering frond of desperate peasants. Pouring molten bronze into a mold.

Maybe she is still here because the forest brings her closer to that? I swat away the image and try to keep my footing steady.

By the time I catch up, she’s already unloaded one of her bags next to the entrance. The neighbors are out. A pair of arm-thick antennae brush across her face while forcipules saw rapidly through the woody shells, and she… Smiles?

“Already getting… Along?” - I pant, dropping my haul next to her at last.

“They vouched,” - she rubs the centipede, vast and coiling through the entrance, between its shabby old eyes, and rolls the next squash forward. The cave-dweller twists through her grasp and gets to work on it.

From the depths behind concealing lines of shrub another emerges. One of the elder’s offspring. The only one that hasn’t left yet. It marches up to us and greets me with a tug on my dress. I kneel and extend a palm, letting its antennae scan me. My other hand produces a handful of undersize pears as an offering. The offering is accepted swiftly.

We exchange gestures for a while. There’s not much else we can do without a translator. The younger one briefly disappears back into the gloom and returns carrying a bundle of dark, fragrant clumps. First I think them truffles, but something about how they breathe in my fingers hints otherwise. I brush off some of the dirt particles, and the surface that greets me is a splendent beet-crimson. Something to study later, I suppose.

We wait. I stretch out on the grass beneath the radiation warning sign, soaking in the soft-marble mountains-above-mountains passing above us. Fresh bumps on my back itch when pressed down like that. My hands still retch of gasoline, and bandages on my fingers need replacing. Back home, the workshop is in disarray. I’m behind schedule on rigging the little fleet of drones. I have to balance it against the usual harvest duties, and it’s painful, half-blind choices all around.

But for now I push them to the back of my mind, next to the wicked nonsense-circuitry extracted from firewatch towers. I’m just there, in the grass, and the human is socializing with our neighbors in my peripheral vision. Sky passes through me like i’m little more than a sieve, and in the swirl of decomposition below it nurtures dust mites and moles and dead astronomers and millipedes and demon-mothers and tuber roots and-

“Look now at the one who claimed sufficient sleep,” - the machine hangs above me, spindly legs segmenting that sky into a crosshair of cone-ribbons, lithe body’s central cutout unmistakable even as my eyes struggle to readjust to the light.

“Well… Alright, you caught me,” - I sit up, rubbing my eyes. My hair still flows across the rocks, bits of plant debris and little invertebrates embedded in it with or against their will. My shoulders and elbows itch with freshly surfacing scales.

I take a look around, and find the scene largely unchanged. The shadows are just a tad longer, from which I derive I must have been out for less than an hour.

“I thought she had a phobia or something?” - Kory hushes into my ear, tilting back towards the entrance while I gather up.

“I thought so too.”

A rolling sequence of sharp clicks, like a pebble tumbling down a mountain, command the centipedes’ attention. Twelve eyes across two heads turn towards Kory, then march to make contact in a synchronous burst of movement. Aluminium alloy limbs brush rapidly against chitin-covered ones.

The translator has arrived. They turn their head to me and nod, signalling the start of the negotiation. The human squats to the side, watching.

“So, you may know already, but the valley will have some… Unpleasant guests soon,” - I start after a deep inhale, - “Worse than the usual kind of unpleasant. Another-Blood-Spring kind of unpleasant, for all we know.”

Short pause, filled with quiet brushing. Wind paws at the pines framing the slowly chilling ravine.

“They did know, but appreciate the warning regardless.”

“Good. So, then, we’ve been preparing for damage as much as we could, but we won’t make it in time. For one, we are not very strong, and most of the food we have for winter so far we can’t easily hide or carry away. Also, Kory is, uh… Very vulnerable to some tools the guests have. It would really hurt them if they were in line of sight, let alone caught.”

I pause, not sure how to segue from explaining the situation they probably already know to the actual point we came here to make.

“They agree that it sounds very bad,” - Kory dutifully relays.

I fail to come up with anything smooth, and decide to be blunt instead.

“We need your help. We want to move the supplies into your home for the duration of the attack, and some equipment too. In return, we can give up to… Quarter? Yeah, quarter of the food. Also, Kory would need to stay in the cave until danger passes. The human too, possibly… Human, do you want to camp out with the centipedes?”

The human nods enthusiastically, short black hair stiff against the movement.

“So… Yeah. That’s why we’re here. Does the offer sound acceptable?”

Linguistic work continues, inscrutable to me. I try to keep my mind light, not dwell on the myriad negative responses that could come back bouncing. It’s not a lot of food, their high metabolism considered. And the nest area doesn’t have that much space. And they’re not even the only ones living there. And-

Kory finally turns to us, triumph illuminating their features.

“They say you are a good friend, and didn’t need to offer payment. They can start tomorrow. Though the human may need to blindfold herself, for the third’s sake.”

That baleful swarm of steel mosquitoes again, getting through clothes and scales with equal ease. Never lagging far behind. I claw at my shoulders and keep my breath as steady as it can be, given the ghostly stimulus.

“That’s good… That’s good to hear,” - I struggle out, eyes peeled into the dirt, - “Very… Thanks, yeah. Yeah.”

Our hike back is quiet, but filled with shared relief. Wannabe conquerors may burn our home to the ground, but at least we aren’t starving to death. This year. I hope.

My legs hurt after the ascent. The human only looks slightly exerted. Kory has infinite stamina. Still, we take a short break at platform Yankee, just down from the excavation site. The rocky shelf is still uncomfortable, even if not as windy as the top of the ridge, so we ascend the rattling walkways to the server room.

The old doors part, still reluctant, though we had removed the backdoor. Human’s eyes widen at the sight.

“Out here?” - she breaks the silence, hands going over the interior, as if she needs to affirm its reality. The mattress, the fold-out plastic table, the lawn chair, the pillow pile, the jars of pickled fish in the corner, the space heater.

I just shrug. I don’t know what she’s really asking, or if she’s asking at all.

“She began setting up safehouses after nearly freezing solid at the ridge back in 23,” - Kory interjects, willing the door closed behind us and turning to dissect the panel, - “I had told her before that, but she wouldn’t listen.”

There’s a note of judgement in their voice. I ignore it. Or, at least I pretend to.

I plop down on the mattress next to the human, who’s already flicked on the heater. Stretch my legs out across the marked steel floor. She seems hesitant to touch the shelf-stables without my permission, so I give a thumbs up. Gobble up. Today has been successful. Cause for celebration.

She pulls a jar close, and twists the lid off with a loud pop. The first slim body slides out of the brine, and she freezes with surprise again.

“Uh-huh, herring. They really ought not be here, but sometimes they are. At the lake, mostly.”

She bites in, tearing a chunk out of the fish’s side. Skin and all. Brine dribbles down her chin, stains her patched-up fatigues. She’s won’t wear my clothes, even when they fit, and we couldn’t find her backpack.

She won’t wear any of my clothes. She looks all droopy when called some variation of her name. Why is that?

She carries a concentrated, tranquil expression. Tearing a strip of muscle sideways, slurping it up behind her cheek. Chewing the whole of it, reverently, aggressively.

I don’t know. I don’t know her anymore.

I reach into the jar and help myself to a different specimen.

Some of Kory’s limbs reach behind me and thread through my hair, picking out dry needles and confused late caterpillars.

The heater blasts against our backs, excommunicating the evening chill.

I finish the fish, and reach up for another. My eyes wander up for a moment, and at the top of the server rack, I spot a humble plastic crate, almost tipped on the side. I’d completely forgotten it was there at all. I laugh.

“Kory, do you remember when I tried making melomel?”

“Yes? It appeared to be a huge waste of time and honey.”

“Oh, you’re so right.”

I get up and retrieve the crate. Three plain bottles of murky golden liquid clink against each other, fine slices of pear and not-quite-lemon floating under the recycled corks. They’re still pleasantly cool. With how shabby insulation can be in these towers, we’re lucky they didn’t freeze over and pop by now.

The human squints at the tare in my fingers with a glint of something like excitement. Right. She liked her booze varied and obscure. Well, this one is barely a wine. I pass her a bottle.

“Consume at your own risk, human, it appears to be two thirds young lemons by mass,” - Kory warns, already finishing up reassembling the door panel. They’re so dexterous. I’m so proud.

They nestle their central body between us, surrounding us like a nest of mechanical flesh. I lean onto them, ignoring the concern of blocking cooling pathways for just this minute. The human pops the bottle and takes a swig, then struggles to suppress a coughing fit, spewing most of it onto the floor and the mattress.

I laugh. Kory laughs. The human laughs, through tears. Wind laps at the sliding doors from the outside, barely getting a trickle of saliva through.

It feels too nice to be real right now, with another confrontation raging in the troposphere. Like a large fluffy cloud has swallowed the valley whole, filled the space above the dirt with cotton wool of poisonous illusions. But I don’t feel poisoned at all.

“It can still be used to treat scurvy,” - I half-heartedly defend the failed brewing project.

“Ah, yes, let us warm ourselves by setting the roof on fire,” - the machine keeps up, mercilessly, - “There is such a thing as hypervitaminosis, love. Even I am aware of that.”

“Dilute,” - the human states, taking a tiny sip in-between the mighty bites at her third fish. The spines of the first two lie on a roll of paper, picked clean.

“Huh?”

Kory turns their head to her, seeming surprised by her actions for the first time… Ever, probably.

“Brew’s not terrible. Just not for use as-is. This bottle preps half a barrel of rainwater for drinking. Could work as seasoning too. Definitely not melomel at this point though.”

I blink, surprised by the sudden verbosity. She might have just said more words than she had in the last month combined. Kory appears equally puzzled.

“Well, ain’t that the way to get you talking.”

She is already back at it, munching down on corpses of aquatic trespassers. I grab another one before it’s too late.

I suppose it is real. No, it must be real. It has to be real, because the unending pull at the side of my mind is so eager to take me away from it, fit me back into place. Return stray ganglion to sender. Replace the worn chainmail link. Prop up the fence. Back in the soil. Back in the soil.

“What does that entail, exactly?” - Kory’s housing vibrates into my ear. The human gives me a strong side-eye, frozen mid-chew.

I didn’t know I was saying it to more than just myself. But I guess I was.

I sigh, and focus on the pull.

A bed of black flowers, at the bottom of a great cavern.

“I… I think you will have to pack up the move without me, tomorrow. It’s… I think He wants me somewhere, in preparation. For defending the valley.”

“Will you come back from that preparation?”

I focus again.

Seven quintillion forking paths, all taken at once.

“I don’t know.”

“Asshole.”

Both of us dart to face the human. She is towering above us, silhouette cut into the flicker of the dish console’s burnt-in cathode ray tube. In the creeping gloom, it’s hard to make out her face, but the anger is impossible to misinterpret.

I don’t understand.

“Your master is an asshole.”

“Don’t say th-” - I try to hush her down, to no avail.

“What else to say? He sucks,” - I can smell her fear, too, that backbrain mutiny already close to taking over. Her heartbeat hammers louder than the hungry gale. But she reigns it in, somehow, forces herself out of that long, safe silence, - “And this place sucks. But it sucks less now. You leave me out with a call like that fifteen years ago - I’m dead. But I’m not. You treated the centipedes when they got sick. You buried my sister’s bones, even though she bit a chunk out of your shoulder. You ate that fucked up alien weed thing they kept bringing up. The one the cats dragged in, right? Because it would only die if digested. So you poisoned yourself, so they didn’t have to. They all remembered it. They remembered you. And now he’s just throwing you under a tank? Leraje, espèce de merde, un peu de décence!”

I look up at her, stunned, frightened, annihilated. Frenzied eyes glint back from the dark.

How does she know all that? How is she still not afraid enough to stop?

She’s crying, I think.

I think I am too.

I think Kory is, however different their cry is, a warbling whale-call, a resonance pattern across am impossible space.

I look up at her, and through my eyes He does too. I think she feels it, how His mere attention makes the room feel too small and too vast all at once. And I think that only makes her angrier.

My mouth moves on its own, weaving words slyly into my exhales.

“Fear not, O fugitive of two dead covens, we hold our High Priestess in value much too high to simply let her perish.”

“That is not the fucking point!!!” - she screams off the top of her lungs into the dull presence, crashes her fist into the side of the server rack. The system chokes and kernel-panics with an unrecoverable cascade of disk errors. But He is gone already, leaving wind to fill the gaps, the silence. The human’s scream tapers to a quiet groan as she claws at the uncomfortably high console, slides back onto the mattress.

We sob together in an awkward row, huddled inside the ancient radio telescope under a cheap lawn table, walls padded by potent smells of pickled fish and lemons preserved in bitter booze. A human, a machine, and me. It’s warm inside, and cold outside, and I don’t want to go.

But I do.

My thoughts are in disarray, and I let Him take the seat, body stiff against the fragrance of wet rock and ozone.

We descend, ascend, then descend again. He takes me on new paths. By that I am not terribly surprised. The valley is vast, and my whole unnatural lifespan tenfold would not be enough to step on every stone. What I am surprised by is that the landmarks are new too. New edges on old ridges, new great trees, new monumental boulders, new hollow logs. Guided by His sure yet awkward commands, my legs stomp through the underbush, and every pair of trees He guides me through seems to take me further and further away from home on axes I had not even considered before. At some point, the rain subsides, and the sky is numb too, like it woke up from an uncomfortable sleep and doesn’t remember where it put its hairbrush.

Suddenly, His hold vanishes, and I tumble to my knees, deposited onto a neat round clearing. My fingers make contact and crush dozens of tiny waving stalks under them, delicate fruiting bodies turned to clouds of spores in a second. A ripple passes through the clearing, an understanding of the impact, but in my gut something knows it is not pain. An awareness through light touch, maybe.

I stand there on all fours, letting the spores settle on my skin, and when they do it is as if they were never even there. Diffused or destroyed, I feel no different. Everything is already inside me.

It’s warm. Not like a temporary relief in the midst of September. Like a sunset in July. But it’s not July. And it’s not sunset. The sky is perfectly clear, if disheveled in some intangible quality. Moon hangs perfectly in zenith, and has a bit more eyes than usual. Conifers framing the clearing are vast and unidentifiable, carrying in them every coniferous trope and then some, retaining harmony of form through sheer force of faith or will. My dress seems to have dried, even though it could not have been too long. My face did not, though. I think I’m still crying.

I get up again. My body feels light. The clearing is perfectly round, and, looking back, there is no path I could have taken to get here. The fluffy palisade seems impenetrable, every ray cast from my position eventually hitting a trunk, no matter if it’s ten paces from the edge or ten thousand. The explanation, then, is that I was always here.

And, across this little waving moon-spot of cognition, He stands. Not His typical copper refuge. Just Him. Unfiltered, without masks and shields and plaques and sigils. Transparent and inscrutable. Immortal and vulnerable.

I take a step towards the center, and so does He, in perfect synchronicity. Though his form is vaster than mine, incalculably so, that mirror-step brings him the exact same distance. We are two of my quasi-human paces closer now. We play with this inconsistency for a few moments, circling around the center clockwise and back, examining ourselves. Shimmering colorless stalks under our feet regrow in seconds, silver dust swirling in the wake of our bodies. Ripples pass through the clearing, interfering with their own rebound, producing standing waves. Then, I muster up the courage, and head straight for the center, and so does He.

I outstretch my arm, and He extrudes His.

Our fingers intersect, pass through each other. We feel each other throughout the tissue, unimpeded by collision.

I plunge my hand into his chest, sharply, and feel his pass through mine. The stream of feeling from within my thoracic cavity is nauseating in its volume, it almost forces me to recoil, but I hold it down, keep steady. He, on the other hand, is not disturbed in the slightest.

We brush across each other’s insides, slowly. I have not a slightest clue as to how He functions, wild shapes and textures seeming to stretch on forever. I suspect He feels the same way about my body, too. What is obvious, though, is how much of it holds together on thoughts and prayers and whatever ethereal thing passes for collagen in his anatomy. Whole fields of organs that ache from just being observed. Impurities in the mass, like ugly streaks of epoxy holding a ruined glass antique together, scarcely good enough to pass for intact from the top of a dusty shelf. His appendage shudders going over my lungs, then again at the stomach, then again near the neck.

That’s right, we both think. You wouldn’t have ended up here were you intact, we both think. You’re just another thing that can’t fix itself, we both think.

We lower our sights, to the center of the clearing, and find that we are standing in the only spot free of the dancing growth. Its edges are uneven, frayed but intentionally so.

It’s the perfect size for us to lie down, phasing into each other.

So we do.

It’s overwhelming and strange. We have to stay perfectly still, holding our breaths, for what feels like hours on end, barely avoiding going over the edge of our tolerance, stumbling away, resetting our progress. Maybe we do. But if we do, we try again. And we get used to it, eventually.

He ends up surrounding me like a living globule of aerogel, moon’s blinking coming through the mass of His body, but I find that it is much easier to look out of Him than it is to look in.

The moon. It is as radiant as it can ever be, even though the rest of the sky has had a bad hair day, or just isn’t feeling up to it.

I lock eyes with the moon.

The forest floor explodes, stalks shooting up, through our forms.

Scar tissue gives, dissolves, evaporates, bubbles out, bubbles in, propagates in reverse.

The atmosphere breaches my skin. Fungal bodies flood the gaps. The forest infiltrates me. The forest infiltrates Him. The forest infiltrates itself.

A cable slotted into a socket. Antenna aligned, grounded properly at last. A stray ganglion slithering in place. Connectome hotfix.

I wake up.

“Kids don’t fight like that, Landry.”

They think he can’t hear.

He is in the kevlar beasts’ den, the very core of it. It ticks relentless, strangling him with spirals upon spirals of dead ends and choke points. The cavern’s walls are lain in carnal patterns of undead directorates. Wards against clerical insurrection, spreadsheet tapestries of hunt yields, spells for good funding.

Remains of his predecessors hang in a grid across the dull bolted-down table, dried, pressed to paper-thin flat visages, blue plastic backplate the final refuge of their caramelized worthless souls. Words between words. Billy Midsmith, petty thievery, sauteed with garlic and served at an interdepartmental wedding feast. Janice Greggs, amphetamine trafficking, roasted whole, sacrificed at the break of spring to the governor of harvest. Alexander Norman, attempted carjacking, processed into pemmican.

Soon, a new entry will be joining them. Kellin 4403e2449dc5bd, aggravated assault, insufficient standalone nutrition, batched to cattle mulch.

If he does not get out, that is.

The kevlar beasts are dumb, and they are imperceptive. They think he can’t hear. But he can. He counted the turns. He spotted the cameras.

“Come on, man, don’t tell me you’re impressed. Just this quarter, how many lil’ cunts did you process who were out to shank each other? A broken arm’s nothing. We’ve wasted enough time on this.”

“Fuck you, he was chewing on that arm.”

“Tell me something I don’t know already. That, or stop nagging me and let me finish the job. I’m starving, and they’re serving these chicken wings in the cafeteria again…”

His mind crawls across the glittering web of secondary plans and scenarios, rushed contingencies for all the different ways the primary plan could go wrong.

The optimal path is to appear not to struggle. The kevlar beasts’ vision is movement-based, their memory is short, and their distractions are many. Though it may seem that the gut of their nest has deposited him in a dead end cavity, it is merely a temporary slowdown. The superorganism of dead meat and living paper is tardy. The ways to sidestep the harsh parts of its sprawling meta-digestive tract surely are myriad. He just needs to move when not observed, shuffle between the cognitive routines.

“No, listen to me, something’s real off about the little shit. Have you looked at the recording?”

“Well, shit, ’course I have, Finny, that’s all we’ve been doing all morning!”

Yet still he iterates and dwindles, crawls through that web inside the web. What if they see through his disguise? His mask of resignation and fright could slip off, could be slipping off right now. Perhaps the camera in the interrogation room is manned, and they observe the spotty ritual of his face as it interrupts itself. What if they fall for it, but disregard protocol, claim the catch for themselves, however insignificant? The slower one is hungry, after all. They would want to eat him somewhere out of sight, to avoid unnecessary paperwork, perhaps a broom closet or a backside stairway. He hadn’t seen the kitchens or the smokers yet, they must be somewhere down below…

“How can you… Look, we both know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yeah, sure, we do. 1230 from school canteen, march 5th.”

“Then look, look, here. What is this?”

“Piss off.”

“No, Landry please, for the love of God. I’m serious.”

Each one of them is much too strong for him to fight off, should they decide to wrench him, but his placid behavior so far can prove a boon. If only one of them is in range, he could go for the eyes or the throat. It would need to be from an inobvious angle, a vector not expected of the desperate and confused. Boosting off some furniture behind them? Not much furniture around these parts. If it’s successful, he would need to hop back to avoid the immediate retaliation. But prevent noise somehow… No, that wouldn’t be enough time. Just make a break for it immediately. Yes.

The shorter, annoyed one sighs.

“Okay, man, sure. This is the lil’ shit’s file.”

“With how many records in it?”

“One. Just the current one. And some neutral-positive writeback on family history.”

“See!”

“See what?!”

“That it doesn’t make sense! He’s clearly done this before.”

“You don’t fucking know that, Shitlock Homeboy.”

“No, I do. He looked like he stumbles over his own shoelaces, right?”

“Still does, to be honest.”

“Right! Sorta waddles around. Up until this random fatass decides to spill his bowl of gruel. Then, wham, palm in the throat, kick in the knee, kick in the side to turn the body over, then knee on the neck, arm wrenched back. The other kid is, what, twice his weight? That’s not a juvie style shanking, that’s year two CQC course. Solid 80 grade. Minus trying to peel the muscle off with your teeth. Where does a fifth-grader get that?”

An incoherent grumbling in response.

He remembers the way back fairly well, but, ah… It’s not that simple, is it. At least three doors don’t open without credentials. The nest probably has remote lockouts as well. He didn’t see any hounds near the entrance, at least. That’s good. That means he must be faster than most things in the building, other than bullets of course.

But still, dashing seems unreasonable. Maybe if he knew a better path… But there haven’t been any fire escape plans on the walls. He scans the interrogation chamber around him, careful not to appear too decisive to the wall-eye. Of course there’s none. Only the proud blue panel of processed children. Could he leave quietly instead? Betting on camera feeds only being inspected post-fact. Foolish, but not totally implausible.

“Finally we agree on something. So, just… Admit it. Something’s wrong.”

“Yeah, sure. Something’s wrong with all of ’em. You gonna starve me for another three hours over it?”

“…No, I won’t. Just… I want to come back to this later. Keep it in mind.”

“Jeez, Finny, you really wanna get an extra assignment? On a Thursday night? Maybe you’re the loony here, not him!”

A distant sigh. A creak of a door. Footsteps approaching.

He suspends the web inside the web from his mind, purges all distractions. His muzzle recomposes into a mask of fear and resignation, as perfect as he can get it. He simulates the nervous shuffling, stuffs himself deeper into the cruel metal chair. Accelerates his breath. A perfect act. They will not see him. They will see a breathing body.

The door handle, pushed down. Two kevlar beasts, waddling into the room. From the corner of his eye, he judges their complexion again, tried to take note of what they’re carrying. The taller one seems to only be carrying a baton. That’s good. Better chance to get away if need be.

“Alright, one last time,” - the short one states, picking something out of his beard. The tall one sits across him, a chair that appears equally uncomfortable.

He pulls the neat rib-tiling of rehearsed answers to the forefront of his mind.

No, there was no noticeable animosity between him and his classmate in the past.

The short one paces back and forth in the room, infected by the tall’s distrust. Slight limp on his left leg, but he has a… No, that can’t be a proper gun, right? Maybe a stun gun. Pepper spray projector?

No, he does not smoke.

The door does not shut all the way. Someone pushes a cart through the corridor, parts the nearest doors with its weight. No clatter of a lock after they swing closed.

Yes, he has a good relationship with his family. No, they had not had any fights recently.

Distant voices, fading in and out.

No, he does not drink. Yes, his parents drink, but only on holidays.

Revving of a car engine, taking off.

His name is Kellin 4f3774f0449403. He is thirteen years old.

No, he has not fought people before. He felt really upset that morning. Someone else had broken his favourite toy. He acted on instinct. He will apologize to his classmate as soon as he can.

No, he is thirteen years old.

No, his favourite subject in school is physics, not biology. Yes, his name is Kellin 652815b9e65411.

Yes, he has never smoked.

…

It goes on for a while. He flows into the role, letting the puppet-image of a scared human cub lead him by the hand, through the trench criss-cross of repeat questions and lines of trap nodes. The kevlar-backs are impenetrable in their tone, but the way of their limbs betrays reactions. They do not trust him, neither does. But they are also distracted. Their minds appear to wander, and he almost finds them slipping on their own questions.

He falls between the blows, moving only when out of sight.

…

…

“Alright, I think we’re done,” - the tall one stands up again with unspoken frustration coming off of him like cold sickening fumes. The room smells of defeat. Their defeat.

His heart flutters with hope. Are they truly giving up? Did he manage to appear not worth processing? No, this could be a trap. He braces for a trick question.

It never comes.

“What, you glued to the chair or something?” - the short one scoffs and waves to the door, - “Come on up and lope along, we got your mommy waiting in a car outside. I’m sick of your mug.”

So he ascends, follows between the two on a full retrace through the nest’s bowels. Towards the front doors. They are still alarmed. That’s no good. But they are leading him to the exit, right? He will be let free, right?

Tapestries of triumph get brighter, more grotesque. Keycard-locked double door. The stuffy lobby with its nasty smoking chairs.

Familiar beige hatchback outside. Woman without a face waiting by the doors.

He is passed along to her. She performs some sort of ritual towards the kevlars, some barter of words and symbols he has no stamina to parse. The world shifts out of his grasp, and all his strength is concentrated on the task of maintaining composition on that final stretch, not stepping out into the dark beyond the glass threshold before his time. Even though the condensing void sings so sweet.

Finally, it is over. The woman steps through the glass door, making a gesture as if to grab him by the shoulder but reconsiders at the last moment. He follows into the chill of the parking lot. A cold drizzle rarely feels so welcoming.

He is out of that maw.

And right into another, seated behind the woman in the back row of the metal stallion as the precinct pulls away behind them. He does not put on the seatbelt, leans onto the window, pawing at the screwdriver resting in the outer pocket of his school bag.

Night streets are a blur of velvet black and pale yellow, windows merging into lines, people merging into myriapedes. His vision blurs. He wants to go to sleep. The passenger seats are dry, soft, deceptively safe.

He will not fall for that again. He rewinds and replays in his head, over and over, the movement of the screwdriver necessary to disrupt the door lock.

The streets are replaced with orchards, then paddocks, endless rows of paddocks floating away through the night. Droplets patter against the windshield. The road is smooth and silent. The woman does not turn on the radio. Does not speak.

…

The car stops.

The door locks click open.

He pulls the handle, and clambers out into the night, limbs numb and trembling from the exertion. Down in the countryside, there are no windows. No streetlights. No fire. Only the unending pattern of wet grass and slippery stone.

He closes the door behind him.

The car takes off, leaving him behind, stoplights like eyes of a ghostly hound retreating into the night.

He waits until it’s out of sight, hidden by the bend of the hill. Only then does he allow himself to fall.

He falls down, down into me. I reach up with a legion of twisting branches and miss. He falls right through, eyes unresponsive, tumbling into the smoke-like monolith of asphalt at the base of the world, like a metallic hydrogen core of a gas giant pulling him in.

“You’re not done,” - I whisper, breaking out of momentary stupor.

“Objective summer,” - he ticks out, twitching, clicking like the nest of dead humans and living paper.

“Home is forward, not down,” - I whisper, trying to give chase, outrun gravity.

“Marrow marrow sky,” - he ticks out, limbs twitching in fading light.

“There will be good food tomorrow,” - I whisper, plunging after him into the ocean of nevermatter with seven quintillion disposable bodies, twisted, immortal, waning, legion of legions of dead physicists and astronomers and engineers and construction workers rallied to a singular push, to stop him, to keep him, to comfort him.

“Element between, seventy two, capillary,” - he ticks out, jittering, fraying at the edges, pressure of a thousand earths meshing his skin into itself.

“Get up, get up, get up,” - I whisper, burning after, still failing to scream.

“Soldering sardines,” - he ticks out, losing form.

“That’s stupid,” - I whisper, on fire, on fire, on fire, on fire within myself.

“You’re stupid,” - he ticks out, chuckles out, contorting into something else.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” - after a lifetime of agony, I reach him, smoldering hypnae twisting around his wrists and antlers and tin claws and bare bones.

We burn.

Bitumen soft like honey floods our lungs.

We burn. We burn.

Gravel grains sail through our trachea.

We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn.

I pierce into his skin.

We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn.

He doesn’t tick.

He screams.

He whispers back.

He laughs.

We swim back up. It’s hard.

We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn. We burn.

Metallic hydrogen threatens to melt us into a senseless blob or a sphere, but we reemerge, burst into the blissfully violent layer of superheated gas from our asphalt prison. It’s hard to tell the boundary, but we’ll deal with that later.

For the second time ever, I got him out.

We wake up.

It is scared. It is trapped. It can’t move. They are looking at it. So many of them.

“af9f0f5d73bf0365dc9794c45525f10b6d5441de77ee35e0253e273879”, - the figure points something at its glass prison. It doesn’t hurt, but it feels violated. It doesn’t want to be transparent to their tools. It wants to sleep. It wants to be left in the dark. It wants to go home.

“630b1f4d14d09e00717be4f9d669c0b429d535d80f2bfc!” - another argues. The cell tilts into a new position, carried by a bulky, dull contraption of crude iron. Its body tilts along, helpless to resist, molded into the glass.

It cannot leave the vessel. Why can it not leave the vessel? It’s just glass. It should be so easy. Glass is fragile. And if it’s not, why can’t it just skew away, shuffle into a little seam? There must be a seam nearby. There are always seams. But not here. Everything feels stuffy in this big stone room. Everything feels solid. Too solid. Horrifyingly solid. So solid that it must play strictly by the rules. Trying to shuffle towards finding a seam fills it with an overwhelming, gut-wrenching sense of dread.

It wants to sleep. It hasn’t slept in so long. It really wants to sleep. Eat, too, but it wants to sleep first. But the light shines. The figures bicker. What do they want with it? Do they want to eat it? Why did they put it in a tasteless jar then? Lights fade in and out, figures shift, but it still can’t move. It tries to speak, but the figures just seem more agitated. Their robes are too bright. Everything smells stuffy. It wants to go home.

“7008ab30306def63bff62b0672bd692e41a25979ab6391!”

“aeb8f75e7e6054ad1d5bf8e7bddcd7f0c2?”

“7713cb98d099dd5b82ea5c0e94edeb40e783c30154bc6172ee167d798e, 08e1073461!”

They move it. They shine lights through it. They inspect it. Again and again. It wants to go home. Why won’t they kill it already? More lights. More robes. Through the glass it can smell something coming out of the censers, and it would vomit if it had anything to vomit. Tilted again. When will this end? What did it do to them? It’s hungry. It wants to sleep. It needs to shift, but the jar hurts, strains against its extremities, rubs its surface raw. Tension builds within its bones, they buck against its organs. A new kind of pain, one that makes it more scared, like its body is destroying itself slowly, with no way to stop it. Like a piece of ceramic accumulating microfractures. How does it know that?

The figures shuffle out, replaced by a new set. Smaller set. One works the wall cranks, changing the orientation of its glass cell. One instead of two. Figures argue. Censers swing. It wants to sleep. It wants to sleep. It wants to be in the dark. It wants to sleep. What did it do? It wants to be in the dark. It just wanted to play.

“fee7083fd3d37d.”

Something approaches. Something familiar. It wants to sleep. Something inside it flutters. Crown of black feathers floating after an otherwise unremarkable figure. A presence. A gaze. The figures drop to the ground, reverent.

“Help me”, it screams, “help me, I’m stuck, they caught me, I don’t know what to do, please help, I want to go home, please help, it hurts, I want to sleep, I’m scared”.

The other just looks down into the stuffy stone room. Fully aware and indifferent. Then leaves the way they came from. The figures get up.

It screams, thrashes against the glass. “Please come back”. “Please don’t leave me here”. The light intensifies. Something hurts. The glass cracks. Something hurts. It freezes amidst the panicked dashing enveloping the room, praying the other returns, helps it out. They don’t.

…

The light shines.

It wants to go home.

…

The cage tilts.

It wants it to be over.

…

Shifts change.

It wants it to be over.

…

Censers swing.

It wants it to be over.

…

The ceiling grows grey and black with smoke.

It wants to end.

…

They left. No one is here. The light still pierces. But at least it’s quiet.

It surfaces from the haze of mind-rending pain, body straining against itself, using its last reserves not to burst apart at the seams. It’s quiet. It wants to sleep.

It didn’t sleep. It doesn’t feel rested. It feels hungry. It feels sick. The restraints feel as if though it managed to vomit up its own organs that are now sloshing against its outer surface. But at least it’s quiet. At least the light is static. It wants to sleep.

Why did they do it? It just wanted to play. It wants to sleep.

Something shuffling in, and it braces for another shift, another round of violation of its form and thoughts. But it’s just one figure, a small one. Carrying a wooden bucket and a primitive mop. It wants to sleep.

The figure treads across the floor, slowly rubbing the thing across monumental stone tiles. Momentarily moving faster whenever they both hear something traverse the corridor. It remembers now, this same figure in plain robes, weaved into the shifts, sometimes working across the floor, sometimes operating the crank. But never holding a light or a burner. Why is that? It wants to sleep.

The small figure empties out the bucket behind some shelf or crate. Where no one will see at a glance. It wants to sleep.

The small figure darts to the entrance, glances in both directions, then runs right up to it. It should be frightened, but it can’t. Not anymore. It just wants to sleep.

The figure does not turn the crank. The figure clambers up onto the perch. The oversize bucket is positioned directly under the glass prison. It produces a chisel from under its robes. With five careful fist strikes, the container cracks just enough to let it slip out.

The freedom of its skin is agonizing, overwhelming. The exhaustion is made all the more apparent when it has to hold its own shape. It can’t, draining into the bucket like a carcass of a cow emulsified by overlapping artillery shell detonations. Without the glass cursing its view, it can see, and the sharpness of sensation makes it oh so more painful.

With the last of its strength, it looks up at the figure. It does not know what faces are, but we tell it. We give the figure our faces.

“You will get out,” - we whisper, with the servant’s lips, - “It will get better.”

It drifts off. It’s not proper sleep still, more of a post-shock paralysis. It is muddily aware of the horrible wards on the internal checkpoints it is dragged by, of robed guards carrying terrible spells within their burning bowels. But, somehow, none of them pay the servant any mind. Somehow, the dirty rag thrown over it proves sufficient as cover. None of the wards are set off. No one gives chase.

When the sky is no longer made of stone, when it can’t smell anyone’s innards but its own, then it finally lets itself drift away. It should be looking for a way to run. But it’s too tired.

…

…

…

It comes to in an unfamiliar place, a cabin surrounded by a mumbling ocean of green. No, it is the cabin. Everything hurts. There is a nest in its windpipe chimney. The planks on the walls peel off and the roof is leaking. But it’s dark. It’s the right kind of quiet. There is a rug under the cot on which the servant with our face is sleeping. There are rabbit carcasses being smoked in a shed outside.

Everything hurts, but it does not feel as though it is dying. An intense fear strikes it. What if the small figure only took it away to place it in a different prison? It tries to slip out of its shape, assume its primal flowing form, but a burning bolt of agony stops it.

It’s too wounded to move on its own.

And the figure, it sleeps haplessly next to it. Inside it. That is not the behavior of a kidnapper.

It reaches carefully into the vulnerable mind, just to see what’s going on. It recoils in horror, windowsills clattering from strained gusts of wind. It scans its inner space for an intruder, something that must be imparting the vision of burning lungs and ice cold water and wrists held constricted by cruel wide palms into them, but finds none.

The figure stirs, woken by the noise. It stills. It feels bad for waking.

“I understand, I think,” - we say, rubbing their eyes, - “I cannot hold resentment, though reservations I did. But it’s okay. I have faith in you. You will get better. You will go to sleep, and it will be better.”

It’s still not had enough sleep. It drifts away.

…

It comes to in an unfamiliar place, inside a knapsack filled with simple clothes and sap-treated tarp and spare chisels. No, it is the knapsack. It lies on the edge of a clearing, under the impartial shielding of a cliff face. The landscape curves away under them. A plume of smoke rises in the distance, separated by two rivers.

The smoke feels familiar in tone, its unwinding pain almost like it’s own.

“They burned down the cabin, then. I see. Poor little you,” - we sigh, emerging into the clearing, stone sling and its victim in hand, a weakly thrashing grey bird. The figure kneels next to the fire, shielding it from the sight of its last body being reduced to volatiles. It traces something into the packed dirt with a sharp stick, fills the little trenches with some sort of glistening powder.

It tests its extremities again. Everything still hurts, but the pain is dulled. It feels better. It’s still exhausted, incapable of moving without guidance. Something didn’t heal right, a bump in the movements of its mind.

The figure drags the bird into the center of their work, and pulls out a knife. It says something, and suddenly it feels in two places at once, superposed between the worn-down knapsack and the sigil.

The false servant cuts the bird’s throat, and it suddenly realizes just how hungry it is. It reaches out into the sign in the dirt, crawls up to the dying animal, drinks from its fading light. It never ate a sacrifice before, and the flavor is overwhelming and a bit gross, but it feels better after enduring it.

And after that meal, it feels twice as tired. The bird is dead. The figure is cleaning up. It drifts away.

…

It comes to in an unfamiliar place, twisted around a chipped shortbow held in a child’s trembling hands. No, it is the bow, and it is the arrow. The last remaining arrow, pointed at a narrow pass between two titanic boulders, with raised voices approaching from behind. There is no retreat path from this once-secluded rock shelf, just the sheer cutoff of a cliff, and an ocean of green beneath it.

The figure is crying. The knapsack is nowhere in sight. It hears chainmail clinking against itself, weapons unsheathed. Several pairs of footsteps approach through the gap.

The string is drawn.

Its savior is muttering something, shuffling closer to the edge of the cliff. Preparing to lunge down into the pine-spikes below after its one shot inevitably fails to penetrate. Anything but to be caught again. Anything but to go back.

It tests the edges of itself. Everything still hurts. But it can move now, it can finally move.

An armor-clad human steps onto the clearing, locking eyes with the child. Kite shield protecting its chest and torso bears the same cross as the prison’s banners. Hook in hand.

The string is released.

It is the bow. It is the arrow. It is the air between them.

It screams with all its strength, puts all the momentum it can exert into the iron-tip projectile. The wooden limbs burst into dry splinters in the fingers of its savior. It traces an impossible trajectory, curving into the passage. A front of terrible sound, a sonic boom rivaling a shotgun blast is left expanding in its wake, shaking pebbles to tumble down cliffs, throwing the false servant back into the rock.

First target’s coif is punched through clean, skull like a roll of cotton candy under its might. The shattered arrow is a growing cloud of flak, freed chainlinks join the choir. A wild orbital collision, seven quintillion sub-millimeter fragments escaping each other, yet still it steers itself, concentrating the blow. The arrowhead is dented, but whole.

The cloud hits the second man in the chest. The prism of smoking iron exits behind where his spine used to be, now a secondary fragmentation in itself, tumbling away and apart. It fails to exert further control, stretched thin between countless little fragments, so the third man is pelted haphazardly, doing only negligible damage. But the momentum was enough to send the body ahead of him flying backwards, and the surviving human is destabilized by its impact, tumbling back onto the precarious mountain pass, tumbling down and down the steps, dazed senseless by the sound, struggling to come to a stop. Away and away, and then he reaches a turn, and plummets, screaming, into a deep trench, and comes to a rude rest.

It realizes that it is no longer bound, hanging in the air where the cloud of shards was last able to be steered. Two corpses are smoking at the sites of impact. The second one’s top half twitches weakly, blood bubbling lazily out of his twisted mouth.

It flops down to the field of carnage and turns back to the dead end passage, crawling towards the small figure. They hyperventilate, slumped against the wall inches away from the cliff, staring blankly at the bloody salvation painted in front of them.

It calls out, afraid to approach more than a few human steps, hovering above the pooling crimson fluid. The bow’s splinters seem to have cut up their skin up to the elbows, not very deeply, but they still need dressing.

Very slowly, the first priest calms down, gathers up, holding onto the rocks for perch, barely keeping themselves from slipping.

They take a step forward, and their arms wrap around its wavering extents. They bleed into its surface, and it can’t help but lap some of it up.

“Home is forward, not down,” - we whisper, burying their face into it, - “We’ll go to a distant place where it is dark and quiet, and it is not impenetrable but it gets better. You will get better.”

And so we do, after the child bandages up their forearms. Clambering over the mulch of two dead soldiers. We climb further, and the top of the mountain pass is not too far, and beyond that tall ridge we welcome ourselves with outstretched branches, conceal ourselves in the lagoon of needles.

It will eat fireflies, and look at the strange fish chasing each other through the sky, and the priest will build a small hut atop the old mountain-wound, and read it stories in the two languages they know, and the ghosts of satellite dishes yet to be built will guard them from the prying hands. They will get better. We will make sure of it.

We wake up.

I lie on the cold tile floor of the dormitory shower, and a streak of vantablack flowers bud between me and the floor drain. There is no one here. The lights are off. The sounds are off. Everything is off.

There are no lectures tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that. My stomach hurts in two ways at once. Four ways at once. Eight ways at once. The floor smells of detergent, and so do I.

I just need to not move for a little while longer. Let the fields bloom, and then I can go home.

“You’re not done,” - a whisper emerges from the drain, accompanied by a trickle of whispering white. Ghostly stalks infiltrate the field of coal. The drain gurgles, pipes bucking under impossible pressure swelling within.

“No, I’m going home,” - I exhale, barely audible. Not now. Please not now.

“Home is forward, not down,” - the pale fire rages against the streaks of colorless crimson. Dull grey tiles tremble and crack. Thick roots slither out of the drain, reversing the flow, ossifying as they go, bursting out of themselves. Reaching for me.

“There’s nothing there, and I’m so hungry,” - I whimper, daring to roll onto the side despite the blinding pain.

“There will be good food tomorrow,” - a wave of soil crashes through the windows, spilling onto the floor. The field of black flowers is losing. Earthworms chew at their roots.

“That I can’t buy,” - I scream, trying to swat away the encroaching white, but it is faster, permeating, inevitable.

“Get up, get up, get up,” - The demon flows into sight, rupturing the floor like a thousand birch sprouts would a measly old coat of asphalt, reaches out to me, into me, towards my arms, towards my stomach, towards my lungs.

“I don’t want to,” - I thrash as He jolts my stiff limbs, one by one, turning me onto my front.

“That’s stupid,” - He whispers into the inside of my neck, raising me into half a plank stand. Ghostly white brushes against my shoulders. Roots encircle me and prop up His movements as he succeeds. My own fingers slither into my mouth.

“You’re stupid,” - I mumble, trying to bite down, but it is pointless.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” - My fingers press into my throat, against my will, and I vomit out the noxious mix, violently, my body dragged out of the carefully inflicted stupor. I bend in half, convulsing, coating myself with stomach acid and external chemicals, and the sea of white washes it all away. A centipede crawls across my arm.

Eventually, I subside, sobbing into the shattered tile sinking further below the round clearing. He is somewhere between inside and above, holding fast against my limbs like a swirl of smoke, like a pair of beetle hindwings receding back under armor after an exhausting long flight.

“I’m so tired,” - I stream into the grass, and I would be inaudible completely if he wasn’t a part of me anyways.

“I have faith in you. You will get better.”

“But they’re going to ruin everything again.”

“You will go to sleep, and it will be better.”

We don’t have anything to object with. So we sleep. We sleep, united, and the forest dreams of us.