Scene Archives

: “I will.”

is still holding the Mask. She has been holding the Mask the entire time. It’s been—days—since she brushed against the Mask’s consciousness. She does so now.

welcomes you home it always welcomes you - well there was a moment - a brief moment - where your paths diverged but are you not who you need to be, in this moment? and the mask knows the keeping of secrets the mask knows it well it is all the mask knows and this is why it is the mask and you are the wearer which is to say this: that the mask welcomes you and it stretches around-outside-without-bendingaroundtheedges of you and its depth is infinite or as good as such

trembles at the welcome.

trembles at the reminder that the welcome was revoked.

asks, who do you think I need to be, in this moment?

did not revoke the welcome and the bearer did not revoke any welcome either it is simply the case that persons move through space and time and in other ways in such a way that a thing passes between them and light and in that moment they are adumbrated and then the shadow passes. are you not who you need to be, in this moment?

doesn’t know.

knows, when there is someone else around. Walked the knife-edge earlier. Said words in the right combination to the Academician. She’s so tired of being careful all of the time, though. She’s tired.

does not know either and there is a brief sensation of vertigo but only a brief one and the bearer of the mask is surrounded by those who once bore the mask and they are all of them tired what they have all needed to be in some moment which the mask recalls has been ‘tired’. there are moments of comfort which bracket the moments of exhaustion and then there are moments otherwise. and the mask recalls those moments as well with a quiet and utterly remorseless dignity as facts but not as failures.

admits the Mask has a point.

also admits that in this moment what she needs is to not be alone, and there is a way to get that, but. That involves a degree of asking that she—can’t. She’s tired of needing too.

looks up at the Duelist’s Mask constellation.

looks back at Salme.

thinks, at the constellation, what do you see?

would like to borrow the Mask, from Salme’s hands, in order to have eyes with which to properly observe her. Is this within her Will?

Wills it to be so.

takes the mask, and holds it level with her face, and turns its towards her. Her eyes meet its eyes.

says, “I SEE AN ANTHROPOS THAT IS TRYING HER BEST TO PERFORM HER DUTY, AS SHE SOLEMNLY ACCEPTED IT, KNOWING NOT WHAT ITS RAMIFICATIONS MIGHT BE.” Its voice is quicksilver. The mask’s mouth moves, when it speaks.

does not drop the Mask. Holds herself very still. “Are you what sometimes watches me from the eyes of the Mask?” she asks carefully.

replies, “THE MASK IS OF ME BUT IT IS NOT ME. ITS WILL IS ITS OWN.”

: “And what is your will?”

: “TO SHINE BRIGHTLY. WHAT IS YOUR WILL?”

considers for a long time and then says, “To tell the story in such a way that those I love will shine brightly. To shift the course of the river just enough to save all that can be saved. To not just know, but understand.” She takes a breath.

: “To remember and be remembered. To keep faith in the face of despair.”

: “Too much?”

: “YOUR WILL COULD BE TO CURL UP IN A SUNBEAM IN THE WARM LIGHT OF THE ALSOS, AND IT WOULD BE ENOUGH.”

: “YOUR WILL COULD BE TO BECOME A BEAST THAT GNAWS ON THE WORLD’S HEART, AND IT WOULD NOT BE TOO MUCH.”

: “YOUR WILL IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS TRULY YOUR OWN. LIVE IN ITS LIGHT.”

: “IT IS AN ADMIRABLE WILL.”

: “Thank you,” she says solemnly, and then adds, “can you tell me what happened to make the Space in the Sky Empty?”

: “STARS WERE EATEN.” It sounds, for the first time, horrified.

: “I’m sorry,” she says, though she doesn’t think that is a adequate. “Can you tell me who or what ate them? Can you tell me what shape the stars held before?”

: “I CANNOT. THEY HAVE BEEN EATEN. THEY ARE GONE.”

: “Fair enough,” she concedes. “Can you tell me why you looked at me? Why you spoke to me?”

: “YOU SHINE BRIGHTLY.”

: “ALSO, BECAUSE I COULD.”

laughs. “That’s the best reason to do something, isn’t it?”

: “IT IS.”

: “You said your Will is different from that of the Mask. Can you tell me how to learn the Mask’s Will?”

: “TRACE ITS ROOTS TO THEIR BINDING. YOU WILL FIND THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW ITS WILL. BUT YOU WILL HAVE TRACED ITS ROOTS TO THEIR BINDING, AND THAT WILL HAVE MATTERED.”

: “I will do that.” Then, she pauses. “Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you, in turn?”

: “YES.”

: “REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE FIRE.”

stares into the Mask’s eyes, and then laughs.

: “If I could speak to the other constellations, would they each say something I would find familiar?”

: “I COULD NOT KNOW THEIR WILL.”

: “You can’t just ask?” She says, with a bit of a smile.

sounds almost sad? “I CANNOT.”

: “Why can’t you?”

: “I HAVE NO MOUTH WITH WHICH TO SPEAK. I HAVE NO EARS WITH WHICH TO HEAR. I HAVE NO EYES WITH WHICH TO SEE. I ONLY SHINE. BUT I SHINE BRIGHTLY.”

: “And yet you looked at me when I looked up at you,” she says.

: “YOU HOLD MY ONLY ENTELECHEIA IN YOUR HANDS. AND IT WAS YOUR WILL TO KNOW ME. AND SO: I SHINE FOR YOU AND YOU ALONE, IN THIS WAY.” It sounds fond.

: “Oh.” She smiles at the Mask. “Thank you then. For shining for me in this way.”

: “THANK YOU, SALME TOU ALSOS, O BRIGHT SHINER. BE THAT WHICH ONLY YOU CAN BE.”

allows the light to fade.

is simply the mask again, in the bearer’s hands

waits a moment, and then she puts the Mask on.

feels just a little more solid a little more concrete a little brighter a little closer to the light the star the source the bright-shining. just a little.

tilts her head up and looks at the Duelist’s Mask constellation. Is it any different through the eyes of the Mask?

wonders if the Mask is familiar at all with the stars?

takes the Mask off.

: “I was waiting to talk to you, you know,” she tells Nothing.

: “Until after Samudra.”

: “But.”

: “Since you insist on being vaguely condescending, I guess we can do this now.”

: “Yeah, you are missing that second eye.”

: “Or is that an affect? A stylistic choice? We all make them, you know.”

: “Hungry enough to each a whole constellation?”

: “And of course you’d never lie,” she says, going over and sitting on one of the central couches.

crosses her legs, and props her elbow up on her knee, and then cups her chin in her hand. “Obviously. Do you think I’d ever say no to that question?”

leans back on the couch, throws back her head, and laughs.

: “I resemble that remark.” A voice calls from … somewhere inside the library.

frowns. “Where’s that coming from?”

: “Huh. Didn’t know he could do that.”

: “(It’s coming… from… inside the house…!)”

: “You know, you could let him in. Either of him. I don’t know if you could read between the lines, but I missed him. Them?”

frowns, “though I’m confused why Jorule is flying around with Aurelius’ name, but I guess birds can get confused.”

: “Look the UI on this thing for name displays is. It was NOT build with two aspects of a spark occupying the same body at the same time, I will tell you that much.”

: “Oh actually I know what happened that’s funny as hell and maybe useful. Okay. Cool.”

: “Oh, that’s what Caion meant by an interesting conversation.” She looks around. “You going to come in and sit down, Angel of Darkness, or just continue giving commentary offscreen?”

: “I am fucking working and you’re both loud distractions and also WHY IN GOD’S NAME ARE WE ALL INSISTING WE DO THIS, ON SAMUDRA, THE ONE SINGULAR WORST PLACE TO DO THIS?”

: “We’re in a Bubble. It’s fine. And I think the … hmmm. Do you have a name?”

: “Imagine me putting both hands over my face, and slowly dragging my nails down upon it.”

: “You’ll ruin your youthful visage like that, Jory.”

sighs loudly.

: “Hm. I think it kinda sucks to be ‘nobody in particular.’ Awa’s better at encouraging people to choose, but. You could choose, if you wanted.”

: “You can’t choose, or you can’t want?”

: “Oh yeah, the guy who’s still so fucking horrified by the idea of having a past that HE won’t choose a temporary name is DEFINITELY the one who’d convince a confused Sage to take a name.”

stands up and starts wandering around the library, looking for a Bird.

It… kind of sounds like it’s coming from the viewing screen…?

: “It’s the stating with brazen confidence, I think? He’s doing it, or he’s mistaken you for someone with authority.”

: “Okay well that answers one question I had, but you are filling the role of one.”

wanders over to the viewing screen. “You there?”

There’s some… shit you wouldn’t know what speakers are. Weird little mesh patterns in a thin line on either side of it, where the voice is coming from.

blinks. “Huh.”

looks up. “You didn’t answer if you can’t choose or can’t want or both, you know. Are you avoiding the question or did you just forget?”

: “What do you want?”

: “Oh Goddess now this is going to be a whole Thing with her.”

ignores the bird. “How would we see you? Or talk with you face to face?”

: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely …” she murmurs.

: “You know, if you were trying to manipulate me, you’d be doing an amazing job of it.”

: “Why are you watching us? Could you choose that? Could you watch someone else?”

: “So it does have to do with being a Spark?”

: “We’re just really throwin’ this all out there right now, huh?”

: “It’s not like the term hasn’t been used.”

: “I know I did tell you to continue being annoying and never stop asking questions, but are the answers to these particularly ones something you want still floating around in your head when you step out of the sealed space?”

thinks about this, for a long moment, and then says, “You know. It’s never bothered me. This part of it. It makes more sense than not, I think. It doesn’t make anything else not matter. The parts that hurt me, that scare me, are the parts that feel like a story to you, Jorule.”

adds, to nothing in particular (not you, but truly nothing), “it’d be nice to actually be able to sit down and have this conversation, you know.”

: “I was kinda planning a whole dog and pony show about it after we left but whoo baby it’s gunna have so little impact by then at the rate we’re going.”

starts to say something else, realizes it would be Tempting Fate, and then remarkably discovers the ability to Shut Up.

: “Hey. Rude.”

: “I mean I did set it up for that, so.”

: “Anyway, all I’m really trying to say is - be careful about the things you’re poking at and the environment you’re in when you do so. Learned that lesson the hard way myself. But if you think it’s fine, then, well, you do you as long as you exercise caution. More your story than mine.”

: “Probably,” she snorts.

adds. “Well. You do have some answers. Like. Any interesting pointed questions I should ask my companions?”

: “Fair enough,” she says. “Far be it from me to not let a storyteller have some fun.”

: “Hm. See, the flattery makes me nervous.”

: “I haven’t found that’s particularly true, as an observer.” Though. She hesitates. “Well. Not until recently.”

: “Noted.”

: “I’m not promising anything. I haven’t decided about you yet. But. I’ll remember this.”

Salme’s voice plays back through the speakers: “You know, if you were trying to manipulate me, you’d be doing an amazing job of it.”

: “…Actually that was unnecessarily rude of me, ignore it.”

goes over to the … speaker? and says, “You know. I’m not actually stupid. I know you don’t actually think I’m that stupid. I appreciate you backed off, but come on.”

: “I’m not going to add every monkey I come across to this circus. But each monkey at least deserves some consideration, you know?”

: “The low hanging fruit turned out to be a bad apple yes, my bad.”

: “I can’t actually say shit I’m sorta in the same boat they are, ish.”

: “What do you mean about being in the same boat? You seem to have plenty of agency.”

: “Less than you’d think!”

sits down in front of the speaker. “Tell me?”

: “I mean if I had my way I wouldn’t of wound up needing to occupy some random body I found when I got here. I wasn’t even in the story which would have made that funny.”

: “If you had had your way, what would have happened instead? You seemed pretty excited about possessing Annarr at the time.”

: “It’s been a novel experience, if nothing else.”

: “Doesn’t matter in either case, was kind of a last minute thing and I didn’t have much time to think about it either way.”

: “I mean, it kind of matters? I am trying to figure out what everyone wants and do what I can to make that happen. You are, unfortunately for both of us, included in that.”

: “RIP.”

: “Not going to answer the question?”

: “What I want is to finish integrating this random ass code I had laying around to your tablet but we’re still in the waiting phase on that. And if that’s not a good enough answer, uh, I’ll think on it I guess.”

: “His ADHD seems almost as bad as Salme’s, yeah. Good thing he’s only got one boyfriend, I guess.”

: “Hmm.” She draws her knees up to her chest and peers at the speaker. “I want you to feel like you have a place.” She leans forward and rests her chin on her knees. “I want you to feel like the story itself can matter and not just the mechanics around it.” She flicks the speaker. “I want to help you like you’ve helped me.” She pauses. “And I don’t want to spoil whatever you’re doing, but I want the chance to just. Talk to you? Like a person? In the same room. Face to face, I guess?”

: “Would you feel better if I allowed you to bask in my full divine radiant presence?”

: “Yes? I’ve asked that. Twice.”

manifest with a loud sigh, spreading his wings of ink wide enough to cover up the ceiling for a moment, before they fade away into nothing. He then bows, before letting that segue into him toppling onto a couch.

: “Alright.”

: “So. Is that technically the … Stillness that makes up Annarr in Jorule-form or are you … some kind of. Spirit manifestation?”

I don’t know, what the hell am I doing? I feel like I’m just letting my Spark occupying a liminal space, not unlike transversing the White Sea, but I have no idea how the hell that aligns with any of the terms she just said.

laughs.

: “So you realize I can hear that?”

Oh, I don’t like that she can see my narration text.

: “Yeah unfortunately once you teach me how to look at something I’m pretty good at being able to see.”

Well whatever it didn’t feel like it was worth opening the Land of Blades and Truths for.

: “Point of order I have explicitly been trying to STOP ya’ll little shits from seeing that, but, yeah.”

stands up and goes over to sit on a couch near Jorule. “Blades and Truths? Huh.”

: “I feel like that one should be pretty self explanatory?”

: “Oh yeah it is. It’s kind of—so self-explanatory I’m a bit. Shocked?”

: “Mine’s Masks and Histories. So. You know.”

: “I’m actually multiverse famous enough that I have more than one title.”

: “Yeah and you have a bunch of hot girlfriends in a bunch of different universes and they all do psychoactive mushrooms. You’re a big deal. We know. Too bad you’re stuck with us losers.”

looks up. “And what. Are you telling me you didn’t want to be noticed?”

: “Just the one really. Some of us are satiable.”

: “There’s a one?” she raises an eyebrow. “Who?”

: “Hane?”

: “What happened to her? When you moved on to a different story?”

: “Hmm… that’s a good question.”

: “What does happen to a particular aspect of a Spark when it’s time to move on if they’re never in play again…?”

: “I feel like that’s something we all try not to think about too hard.”

: “Wait. How do you do that. No, we’re not talking about this shit right now.”

: “Huh. Was I not supposed to know?”

: “Grand scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter, if you want to dive into the thick of it, but if I’m going around telling ya’ll not to talk about certain topics on Samudra I sure as shit shouldn’t be talking about them myself.”

: “Well. If we get the opportunity. Tell me after? I’m not … really sure how being a Spark works but. I think every time you tell someone’s story to someone else, they get to live again. Even for a little while.”

: “Sure. I mean. I don’t think I’d be fooling anyone if I said I don’t like a little trip down nostalgia lane from time to time.”

: “Shocked to find out that there are things you like actually,” she says, dryly.

winces. “That was shitty. That wasn’t fair. You’re clearly working on something and it clearly matters. Ignore me.”

: “Okay but like,”

: “Would have said the exact same thing were the tables reversed.”

laughs. “You know, ‘I would have said the same thing in your position’ isn’t really …” She just laughs again.

: “I feel like it’s been well established we are more alike than not, at this point.”

: “Yeah. Super weird how I’m dating your other self. Who’s less like you than I am.”

: “Don’t have any good response to that which won’t read as flirting to anyone else so I am letting the moment pass.” A moment. He slides his hand through the air, making the sound of waves with his normal human mouth as he does, somehow.

: “Okay but I want to know? And obviously you’re not flirting.”

: “Want to know what?”

: “What any of the responses you could have made were?”

: “Fuck if I know, the moment has passed and I’ve cleared the discarded ideas already.”

: “Nothing good or particularly funny, I don’t think.”

: “Fair enough.”

: “Do you get … bored? When you’re out there in …?” She waves her hand up at the sky.

: “Ugh feels like a loaded question, skip.”

: “Fine,” she says, leaning back on her elbows. “What’s a fish?”

><(==8)

Wait I can do better than that: 🐟

: “You! You got upset with me for using ꙮ and then you’re just. Manifesting the image of a fish? How do you even … no.”

: “I wasn’t MAD at you I just wasn’t sure it was actually anywhere you were capable of seeing and was worried about potential retcons, until I remembered there was at least once place.”

: “Anyway don’t look at me you’re the one that made this stupid to begin with.”

: “Yes,” she drawls. “It was me who flew across the library as a cartoon bird with the wrong name.”

: “That was all NIP, who was only fucking around because YOU felt the need to address the elephant in the room.”

: “So, yes, pretty comfortable pinning the blame for this one on you.”

: “Okay, so the stupidity was a group effort.”

: “Can’t argue with a deep cut.”

: “Also, Nothing-in-Particular, do I have anything small and throwable in my pocket? Like a crumb?”

: “Yeah, but Samudra’s been low on grain and throwing lukewarm pieces of fish just has a completely different emotional valence.”

: “Hmmm.”

fishes out a long, dried grain of rice, and flicks it at Jorule.

: “Ah, no, this relentless hailstorm of - rice? - will be the end of me.”

: “It seemed more setting-appropriate.”

: “Fair.”

flicks two more grains of rice at him. “It’s not as fun when your target doesn’t have fox ears, to be honest.”

: “How sad for you.”

rolls her eyes. “So you’re the Angel of Truth as well as the Angel of Darkness? Angel of Music too, or …?”

: “No, just those two as far as I know.”

: “So. What is an Angel?”

: “What part of this entire conversation made you think I was going to answer that right now?”

: “Right. That was stupid of me.”

: “I was thinking you’d maybe enjoy the opportunity to explain but. You and Aurelius are both alike in that it’s impossible to do anything nice for you.”

: “That is, quite obviously, on the after we leave list, which you are definitely aware of.”

: “Sorry, the list is so fucking long I keep forgetting that apparently everything that’s interesting ever is on it.”

: “You should be more worried about the impossibly anchored island that appeared exactly when we did than ‘what is this weird horseshit that isn’t relevant to anything and wouldn’t naturally come up before then either’, but maybe that’s just me.”

: “Though, I guess, I wouldn’t have much to say on that topic either so here we are I suppose.”

raises an eyebrow. “I mean, yes, I have some concerns and thoughts about that but I didn’t think you’d care.”

: “Okay so the thing is:”

: “I feel like having to say this in normal text is giving you an unearned victory, somehow, but regardless: I care so much.”

looks at him, considering. Opens her mouth, and shuts it. Finally says, “But it’s easier to hide it by acting like it doesn’t matter at all, yeah?”

: “I’m not acting like things don’t matter I’m acting like I don’t matter because I am background noise, but, the more you focus on me the less that becomes true.”

: “From the bottom of my heart, I want nothing more than for the story you tell about this adventure when it’s over to be an interesting one. I want everyone involved to think back on it fondly, long after it’s over, and to have been satisfied with how things went, and how they ended. Nothing else is more important than that.”

: “Oh,” she says, quietly.

: “I think,” she begins slowly. “I think we’re really lucky to have you with us. And. I can shift the focus off you, if it isn’t what you want, or you’re concerned about the implications of you being too present. But you matter to me. You, Angel of Truth and Darkness, Jorule. And it’s different, obviously, than what Aurelius is but.”

: “I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say.”

: “Thanks to the power of us being the exact same kind of idiot, I understand though.”

reaches over and ruffles Salme’s hair the best he can, what with it all in braids and buns and what have you.

accepts the hair-ruffle.

: “I don’t want to ruin the story. I don’t want my heart to get in the way so badly that it loses coherence. I do know how to do what must be done. But also I don’t think it’s such a brittle story that we can’t fill it with whatever we want. Whatever, to some extent, I want.”

: “Yeah, I mean, It’s fine, really.”

: “Don’t worry about it.”

looks at him. “Have you ever met a single thing I was capable of not worrying about? I mean, aside from the narrative framework.”

: “The one thing, of all things.”

: “But yes. I realize there is no winning with you. Flippancy breeds concern. Sincerity reads as an invitation. Sheesh, remember when you thought 86 was weak to that? Got nothin’ on you.”

waves a hand dismissively. “So refer to earlier advice: do whatever you want, so long as some modicum of caution is exercised.”

: “Just don’t expect me to do too much outside of liminal spaces.”

: “…Overtly.”

laughs. “I mean. I care about you, but I am considerably invested Aurelius being present as much as possible.” Her mouth twitches. “It’s a little hard to reconcile, really.”

: “My one boyfriend and my asshole older brother are kind of the same person but also not.”

: “Yeah, uh, don’t think anyone was expecting you to read that much into an off hand joke and then for you to have decades of repressed desired just waiting to spill out when someone told you to think about what you want, but here we are.”

: “Yeah I’m still actually sort of embarrassed about it.”

: “As well you should be.”

: “But also, like, more power to you?”

: “Seems to have been working out pretty well.”

: “Yeah.”

: “I think. And I don’t know if you’ll get this but. I think it probably seems. Fake. Or forced. Or like it won’t last. And maybe. I don’t know. It just seems to me, if you’re actually certain about what you want, you should reach for it?”

: “I mean you are moving at the speed of lightning so maybe that’s part of it? But. Yeah. Might as well go for it.”

: “When you’ve done nothing but play roles your entire life, and you meet … not one, but two people you can be your whole, messy self with—three, I guess, if we’re counting you, which I guess I am—it’s hard to not. Well.”

: “I guess there was a fourth. A long, long time ago. Before I knew how to do anything other than be myself. Hm.”

laughs. “You absolutely don’t want to be hearing about this, I am certain.”

: “Oh no it’s fine I was just double checking on how system integration was going.”

laughs. “Oh. Of course. It’s fine. It’s just system integration.”

: “I did have a question, and I don’t think it will break anything. You’re curious about the Mask. Is there a particular aspect you want to know about?”

: “Hmm…”

: “Nothing you wouldn’t be interested in too, probably don’t need to give you instruction there I don’t think.”

: “Just for clarity’s sake though the fourth was Badri right?”

: “Oh. No. There was always a bit of an act with Badri. My grandparent, whose name I still can’t remember. That was the fourth.”

: “Aaah.”

: “It doesn’t mean I love him any less. It doesn’t mean he loves me any less. But there were things we couldn’t say to each other without hurting each other badly.”

: “That’s why it’s so easy to look past something like. Hm. You say it the truth that burns right? Because it’s always like that. We tell each other fictions and believe they’re real. We know it’s more complex, or maybe it’s a complete fabrication, but in order to survive you forget. You let the story carry you.”

puts his hands behind his head and laces the fingers together. “Suppose that makes some degree of sense.”

: “Oh. I’m making Bird Sense. I’m in danger.”

: “I mean it makes sense for YOU, not in general, don’t get carried away.”

chuckles to himself.

: “That pleased with your own joke or is something funny?”

: “We’re both comedic geniuses.”

: “Well, yeah.”

: “Different kinds, but yeah.”

frowns as she realizes something. “If you’re here, though, what happens to Aurelius?”

: “I’m not HERE, here.”

: “We went over this earlier.”

: “Right. But. Hm. When you were outside, working on the tablet, were you also unembodied? Or were you … in the tablet but not doing,” she gestures to his lounging form, “that.”

: “…?”

: “Aurelius was working on it outside, me inside… so, I guess the latter?”

: “You can exist in here without temporarily possessing Aury because it’s a liminal space. I also don’t physically exist here. But earlier, you sounded like you were outside the tablet?”

: “Oh. Wait. Are we still in Archie’s lab? Or did he take the tablet back? And if so where’s my body?”

: “You are still in the lab.”

: “…Oh do you mean when I was talking through him before?”

: “Yeah. When I was speaking to Nothing-in-Particular and your voice was coming through the speakers. What was physically happening outside the tablet?”

: “Oh! No that was happening inside here.”

: “Being dumb. And doing things hard to explain, that did not involve Aurelius. He’s where ever you left him, probably.”

: “I have no idea where he is. I mostly just got confused. And hoped that Caion and Archie hadn’t decided to come back to the lab just to find me still here.”

: “Frozen. Like a moron.”

: “I think we both know they are not coming back here any time soon.”

: “My concern was mostly they’d decide to move their activities here, but. That’s a pretty good point.”

: “Feels like sending you on your way would have been the play if they wanted this room, but. Yeah.”

drums her fingers on her thigh. “I know you didn’t mean it, but you said I was clingy. And he joked about my being needy. I really, honestly, wanted to go look for him after meeting with Archie and Caion but.”

: “I wasn’t sure.”

: “Oh no I absolutely meant that for real.”

: “But fair enough, go look for him, you’ve probably completed your necessarily mandated Bug Jorule Hours by now.”

: “I was more asking for advice. People don’t like clingy bitches,” she says it like someone’s said it to her.

: “Oh. I mean, luckily for you they both seem really into it?”

laughs. “Well. Sininen makes sense. Aurelius is harder to read. Which is probably your fault?”

: “How do you figure?”

: “Oh.”

: “MY fault. No yeah that’s. Fair.”

: “But yeah I think I will go look for him. Though …”

: “… want a hug, or is that too weird?”

: “Not really but I can deign to accept it if you feel as though you must.”

: “Nah,” she says, standing up. “I can respect at least one boundary.”

: “Thanks, though. For caring so much. And for the whole theme song and manifestation and everything. It’s great every time.”

: “No problem. Now forget about everything that happened by the time you walk through that portal.”

: “I absolutely won’t. I have a great memory, unfortunately for the both of us.” She heads for the portal, and then she’s back in Archie’s lab.

becomes flesh-and-blood and not ivory-and-gold, and she realizes a lot of time has passed.

picks up the tablet and turns the lights out in the lab, locking up after herself and leaving it no worse for wear.