Partial Draft Update 19/07/23 (Patreon)

(Managing two updates with only 10 days between them is better than I've been in almost a year, which is pretty fucking dire, honestly.

Still. Things are improving. Hopefully this week I can manage it in less (obviously ideally 7) and get things back on the right track. At the very least, I'll try to update this draft earlier than the last day or two-- This stuff is probably really hurting the growth of Patreon subs, which in turn is hurting my changes of ever doing this as a real job.)

Linos's body hangs limply in the air for a moment in spite of what has happened, the incantation that sustained him remaining in effect until the committed eris runs dry. The shattered pieces of his skull fall to the bottom of his barrier, collecting at the lowest point for a few seconds until they suddenly fall all at once.

For just a moment, Kamrusepa's eyes flicker with something at the sight of Linos's exposed spine, but she's already in motion, beginning the next stage of her plan. She screams for no one to move, floating sharply back to keep everyone in the view of her rifle, and starts to shout something at Theodoros.

But things don't go as she intends. Before she can even declare his guilt, Seth assumes that she's turning on them, and makes a reckless attempt to raise his scepter and make a discharge attack, hoping she'll have been paying more attention to his pistol and not see it coming. Kamrusepa is taken by surprise, but only to a point. She fires at his arm, just barely missing, and the situation turns to absolute chaos for a moment as his scepter falls from his hands. Ptolema screams something and tries to pull Seth away, while Ezekiel panics and fumbles reaching for his pistol.

Kamrusepa roars at Ptolema to move, but she refuses, demanding everyone calm down. Utsushikome, understanding what's happening, yells her support for this as well. But it's already too late; Ptolema floats too close as she sees Ezekiel finally retrieve his weapon, and panics. She shoots again, this time hitting Ptolema through the side of the chest. Seth screams. Everyone screams.

In the midst of this, someone manages to throw a grenade in the air; they must have been carrying it since the visit to the armory. The timing is off and it explodes half way towards the ground, but the impact is still enough to wound almost everyone to some degree. A fireball scorches Kamrusepa dead on, burning her face and her clothes; shrapnel embeds itself in Utsushikome's chest; Ezekiel goes flying backwards into the wall of the building. The entire group scatters.

Kamrusepa manages to heal herself with the Time-Reversing Arcana quickly, while Seth escapes with only light injury. From here, things spiral out of control. Kamrusepa, assuming the attack came from him, quickly starts raising a barrier of her own, firing through the smoke at the silhouettes in front of her in the moments before its complete.

Ptolema, desperate and now bleeding out quickly, cries out and fires a blast from the Matter-Carving Arcana,trying to cut Kamrusepa's scepter, but miscalculates the math, carving off a section of the nearly roof, which tumbles sharply to the ground. Seth, his head wounded in the blast, raises his scepter as well, trying again to cast a simple discharge attack.

To the right, Ran sharply rushes to Utsushikome's side as blood pours from her chest, the former's eyes wide.

---

Actually, there were a lot of things I never told Shiko. Even though I opened up to her more than anyone I ever had previously - and probably, have since - and we had a lot of conversations about our lives, I was never completely honest about how grim my situation really felt. I always pretended that I had other friends, or that the atmosphere at the home was warmer. I didn't want her to pity me; to make the relationship feel as asymmetrical for her as it did for myself.

More seriously, however, I never told her what happened on that night with Samium. Like I said, it took place relatively early on in our friendship; it was the first time I stayed overnight. I think if it had happened even just six months later, I would have gone to her without hesitation, but...

Something stopped me.

"What are you fucking staring for, now?" Ran demanded from the other side of the coffee table, her gaze piercing. "No more talking around it. Where is she? What have you done with Utsushikome?"

I stared down into my cup listlessly, my hands trembling slightly as conflicting strands of thought shot through my mind. I cleared my throat hoarsely, almost like I was choking.

"...t-they tricked me," I told her, my voice feeble.

She grimaced in contempt. "What do you mean, they tricked you?"

"Like I said, you won't even believe me..." I managed to raise my my eyes, meeting her furious gaze. I lowered my voice. "Listen. Do you know-- Do you know how people become arcanists? How they attach your mind to a machine on another plane, and the Power is a way of giving it instructions--"

"This has even less to do with Utsushikome then the shit you were saying a minute ago!" Ran declared angrily.

"Just... Give me a second, okay?" I said, exasperated. "Listen. T-There's another part to that process that they don't talk about-- That people aren't allowed to talk about. A secret that only arcanists know." I swallowed. "Everyone alive in the present day are just clones of people from the old world, right? And because the Mimikos is severed from the universe that used to exist, the ironworkers needed to modify the human brain to make an artificial connection to the Higher Planes, so that it could work properly. That's the stuff everybody knows."

"What about it?" she snarled.

"Because the connection is artificial and the people are just copies, the mind doesn't grow in the Higher Planes in the way it used to," I continued, speaking quickly. "So it's not built right for connecting to those machines. So to fix that, they-- They take that part from other people, mostly from storage in the Tower of Asphodel from when they were trying different ways to evacuate people during the collapse, and attach it to arcanists' minds. That's how they can use the Power."

Ran glanced to the side for a moment, curling her fingers into a first. "...yeah, I've heard that rumor before."

"You have?"

"Yeah," she said, furrowing her brow in thought. "On the logic sea. You see people talk about it in some of the more out there rooms."

I almost felt relieved. "And the part about how some people... Take on the memories, of those implanted minds? Witches?"

Ran didn't say anything for a moment. It looked like an understanding was, for the first time in our conversation, dawning on her face, her eyes filling with a subtle horror.

But after a moment, she shook her head, turning back towards me. "So what, you're telling me you're some creepy fuck from billions of years ago, and got put in her body when she went through her initiation ceremony? A second ago, you were saying you knew her when you were kids. You can't even get your story straight."

"No, I..." I hesitated, biting my lip hard. "It's not that simple. Because every so often, someone from our time has a mind that develops in just the right way, and can operate those machines after all. Or rather, can fill the broken part that normal people have, or..." I struggled, my facing flushing. "I'm sorry. I don't quite know how it all works--"

"It doesn't matter," Ran cut in. "Again. Just get the point."

"My-- S-Shiko's grandfather was one of the people who retained their memories from the old world," I tried to explain. "He'd wanted to reunite with his daughter, and had been trying to find her mind somehow... Maybe in the Tower of Asphodel, or somewhere else-- I never learned." I gulped. "Again, I don't really understand the specifics, but you can apparently use the Power to manipulate how... How things turn out, when you connect the two minds. To some extent. Which person becomes the dominant one. And he'd meant for Shiko to be the one to..."

Ran was just staring at this point, her expression so intense I felt convinced that even an attack dog would have stopped dead upon making eye contact.

"The point is," I struggled to continue. "He never managed to find his granddaughter. And then he developed dementia. But some friends of his - or whatever you'd call them - didn't want him to die unhappy. So they wanted someone to pretend to be her. And they couldn't use a mind from the old world, because it would be impossible to explain the situation before they'd already done it. So they went looking for one of the few people who had that trait, especially people who knew her enough to impersonate her, and I--"

"And you what?!" Ran hissed violently, thumping her fist as loudly into the table as she could get away with in a public space. "You just fucking did it? You took over her life?!"

"T-They told me it would only be for a month or two!" I protested, my voice trembling. "And again, they offered me a house!" My eyes averted, unable to stay focused on her. "But then he died in an accident, and they stopped contacting me, and..."

Why? Why did I not tell Ran the truth?

Why did I not tell Shiko, that day? Even though it was the dawn of our friendship, and there was genuinely nothing in the world I cared about more than her?

In both cases, the answer is the same. It's because my mind is adept at tricking itself. At declaring one thing, while in the shadows knowing what it truly desires.

I took everything that was in the records of that logic bridge, along with whatever I could scan in from Samium's journal, and transcribed it to an echo labyrinth. I took it back to the room Shiko's family had given me and hid it at the bottom of my bags. I convinced myself that I was going to show it to the police, to protect Shiko.

I never showed it to the police. I took it out to the woods near the foster home, and buried it in a hidden spot I only knew about. I kept telling myself I was afraid of what Samium would do. Then later, when I was a little more mature, I wondered if there was a way I could use it to extort him for resources. Get debt relief for my education. To move away from Itan.

But those weren't the real reason I kept it. No, the reason I kept it was a thought that crackled through my mind as I'd sat on the sofa after Samium had left. The one that emerged beyond disgust, fear, and love for the person I called my friend.

If that's really possible... If that's something that genuinely exists in this world...

Doesn't it sound wonderful?

To cast off this repulsive 'self', and become someone different?

Yet for a long time, I forgot that altogether. Again: If it had been a few months later, things might have played out very differently. The ugly side of myself receded more and more, and my days filled, for a time, with warmth and light.

The year came and went, and I kept growing. I got better and better grades at school, rising to the very top of most of my classes. Even the Isiyahlas, apathetic as they were, begun to notice and praise me frequently. While many people in my class still regarded me as a strange and unwholesome nerd, a few started to look up to me and come to me for advice on their work.

And I to know some of Shiko's friends, first just through being invited to the theater along with them as part of a group, then even as individuals. Slowly, I was growing a social circle, albeit a small one.

With that, I set my eyes on the first real goal of my life: I wanted to get into Shiko's new secondary school alongside her: Tanay International School, the most prestigious on the island, for little that was worth. Almost everyone I cared about at that point was going there, and moreover, I was tired of being treated like garbage by the close-minded thugs of Enu Combined Primary and Secondary. I couldn't stomach the thought of another five years in that shit hole.

The school was private and very expensive, but it had a scholarship program that accepted local high-achievers as part of some sort of land debt write-off agreement with the government. So I studied hard, not just with Shiko but on my own. I went to after school classes. I crammed through the holidays. I beat the knowledge into my head on the nights leading up to important exams.

I don't think I was very academically talented back then, especially not with math and the hard sciences, so I was almost surprised at my own success. But as I've learned explicitly since, there's many things in the world you can accomplish with the absolute determination that comes from having nothing else you care about at all. You can turn a wall to dust with your palms if you beat them against it every day, all day, for years.

And... In the end, I made it.

The week that I got accepted also happened to line up, roughly, with my birthday. So Shiko and some of her friends threw a little party for me at a local restaurant.

I think it was the happiest day of my life.

"Happy birthday, Kuroka!" Shiko's cheery friend Nikkalma declared, passing me a large, heavy wrapped gift.

"Happy birthday," her subdued friend Yohani said, passing me a smaller, rectangular gift.

"Ah-hh!" I cried, overwhelmed. "Thank you so much!"

I shredded open the wrapping, feeling the over-excitement of a small child despite already approaching the latter half of my teens. I could already tell just from the shapes what the gifts probably were, but it didn't diminish the moment at all.

Nikkalma's gift was an echo labyrinth game; a story and puzzle-driven title set in the age of space exploration prior to the vacuum collapse. While interesting, it wasn't quite the sort of thing I was normally into, but as a new release from a major guild, it had probably cost a decent chunk of luxury debt. This made sense, because we didn't really know each other beyond an extremely superficial level, but she was from a wealthy family - even wealthier than Shiko's, somehow. She'd probably just remembered some idle comment from me about my tastes in media and based the gift on that, rather than anything substantial.

Yohani's, inversely, was cheaper but more thoughtful: A hardback a copy of a mystery novel from a series Shiko and I were both fans of. I'd read it once already, but only after borrowing it from her, and it was one of my favorites. We'd got to know each other pretty well, and it was just the sort of deliberated, low-risk kindness I'd come to expect from him.

Both gifts were great in their own ways (or at least I thought so at the time). Both gifts were some of the nicest I'd ever received-- Even though I'd only known the two of them for a dozen months. I was shocked.

"I hope you like it!" Nikkalma declared cheerfully. "I don't know much about games, but my brother said this one had a good story. Hopefully he didn't have me pick something weird, haha."

"N-No, I've heard of it!" I replied gratefully, shaking my head. "I'm sure it'll be great! Thank you!"

"Sorry if what I picked was a little low-effort," Yohani said, scratching the back of his head.

"No, it's really thoughtful!" I said, trying to push feelings through my throat that were too thick and heavy to come out. "Thank you!"

"You don't need to keep saying thank you over and over, Kuroka," Shiko said, with warm sarcasm.

"S-Sorry," I said, unable to stop smiling. I was so happy that my face felt hot, like I was tremendously embarasshed. My body didn't know how to react to what my mind was feeling. Being the center of attention like this. "But I just-- I mean, you didn't have to get me anything! I don't know if I'll be able to get you anything this good when your birthdays happen..."

"No need to worry about that!" Nikkalma spoke cheerily. "I'm just trying to get in your good graces so you'll help me cheat on tests once we're in school."

"Don't try to get her involved in something dubious, Nikka," Yohani chided her.

"Hey, I'm only saying this because you two are so stuck up about that sort of thing," she told him, pointing." She hesitated, glancing back towards me for a moment. "Uh, just in case it's not clear, I'm just teasing. Mostly."

I laughed, mostly just overwhelmed at the attention and not knowing what to say.

"Seriously, though, it's bonkers that you got in through the scholarship program!" Nikkalma continued. "Mother said the test scores they expect are ridiculous, like it's practically rigged... I think I'd have lost my mind, personally." She laughed. "Hopefully you at least rub off on me a little."

"Honestly, it wasn't so bad..." I said, thrilled at the praise. "Chemistry was the only one I got really stuck on, but Shiko helped me a lot."

"Ehh, I barely did anything," she said, laughing modestly. "I just gave you some tips, you know...? I never expected you'd put in so much hard work."

I kept smiling to myself, facing the table.

"So did you decide what to eat, Kuroka?" Shiko went on.

"Umm." I hesitated and looked down at the menu again. We weren't at a particularly fancy restaurant, but it was still definitely above the standard I was used to. The menu was full of complicated Saoic cuisine from the mainland, when I was more used to the Rhunbardic stuff they served at the foster home and other basic stuff. "I think I'm going to have a tuna steak, but I don't know what to have on the side yet... Maybe just some fried rice and salad?"

"If you wanna splurge, feel free!" she encouraged me. "It's your birthday, after all."

"I dunno..." I muttered. "I don't want to make you take on too much debt for me."

"It's no big deal," Shiko insisted. "You can cook a meal for me sometime to make up for it."

I scratched my head. "I'm not if I could cook anything half as good as they serve here."

"C'mon, that's not the point," she replied.

"They make you take culinary studies at Tanay, so you'll probably pick up some skills there," Yohani told me, taking things too seriously as usual. "And you're always helping out Shiko's grandma, so I'm sure you're not as bad as you think."

"That's true!" Shiko continued, nodding along. "You're really good with a knife, actually. It's kind of scary watching you chop vegetables."

"Uh, well... They make us help out at home sometimes..." I explained, still furrowing my brow a little at the menu. "If it's alright, could I try the aurochs steak instead? I've always wanted to try it, but you can't get it from the distribution centers."

"Like I said, whatever you want! I'm... Probably gonna have the Sanbeiji, I think."

"You always get Sanbeiji, Shiko," Yohani told her."

"It's my favorite food, and I'm a creature of habit," she said flatly, before perking up. "Oh, I almost forgot! I still haven't given you my gift, Kuroka."

"Oh!" I said, setting the menu down. "O-Okay!"

She reached into her bag and withdrew a third box, this one smaller and lighter than both the other two. I pulled away the blue wrapping paper to reveal a small black container with the logo of a technology company I vaguely recognized. Inside was a pristine, brand-new portable logic engine, the false iron still clean and untouched. The name 'Kuroka' was engraved on the rim.

"Happy birthday," she said cheerfully.

It wasn't that it was anything special. Our conversation was superficial - kid stuff - and I found out later that Shiko, knowing how my birthdays were usually pretty dull and how worn down I was after the previous few months, had specifically asked the other two to get me their gifts rather than them doing it of their own intuition.

But even so... To be surrounded by friends who I felt cared about me... Who I had a future with, who I'd be going to school with, walking home with every day... It felt like, for the first time in my life, I was finally innocent. Like I'd been born already old, and had just become young for the first time. The world felt filled with light.

The taste of the steak.

The fun I had playing Nikka's logic game, and the jealousy of the other kids at the Isiyahlas' home.

Yohani's book, which I read over and over to remind me, if nothing else, of that night.

The incredible beauty of Shiko's smile, and the warmth of her kindness that filled my chest.

For the first time, I was a special person. The protagonist of gentle and cheery story.

"See you guys later...!" Shiko said, as we parted after the meal was over in the street.

"Yeah, see you at school," Nikka called out. "Happy birthday again, Kuroka!"

"Thanks!" I said, smiling. "Have a good weekend."

"Take care," Yohani added.

The two of us waved to them awkwardly as they headed towards the tram station. Then, we looked to one another.

"Wanna stay over at my place, again?" Shiko asked me. "There's a new episode of The Kurata Files out we could check out. I heard it's kinda a filler episode, but I kinda wanna see for myself."

"Yeah!" I said, all vestiges of awkwardness fading now that the other two were gone. "I mean, people always say that about character-driven episodes, so you can never really take their word for it."

"Alright!" she said, setting off. "Uh, sorry if I made you feel awkward by setting all this up, by the way--"

"No," I cut her off. "It was great!"

In the end, being happy is uncomplicated. When you're depressed and alone, it's easy to overthink it; to constantly compare yourself to fiction and whatever your mind conjures as happening while people are living their normal, fun lives without you. You develop these grand ideas of what it's like to be close to others, of spectacular intimacy and unceasing pleasure, like a child pushing their nose against the window of a toy store, imagining just how fucking great it would be to ride on that toy horse. Like how hunger makes food delicious, nothing makes something feel so grand, so agonizingly grand, as being left out.

But all happiness really means is being around people who care about you for who you really are. That's it. Most of the time, you don't even do anything. You just sit around. Talk about little things. Find stupid distractions.

It doesn't have to be wondrous. It doesn't have to be an adventure, or even particularly eventful. It's enough to just live, knowing you're seen and yet unjudged. In those moments, all the narratives we build to try and make sense of the world don't even really matter.

Humans, too, are uncomplicated. We're social animals. We are saved through the fulfillment of our role; through the realization of our survival strategy, refined for millennia untold. When we are loved without deception or self-deception, our hindbrain is at last convinced of our safety and loosens its grip. The horizon softens, and water ceases to fall through the hole in our souls. We become strong.

On that night, for the first time, I was content.

...

You know the feeling, don't you? Of regret?

Like you've swallowed a glass of acid. Like something is trying to claw you to pieces from the inside of your stomach. Like your muscles are fraying and tearing as your arms try to reach for a mirage that isn't there.

Fire. Anguish.

Regardless of whether or not I loved Shiko, I can say with some confidence that back then, I would have died for her. I owed her everything, and cared about her more than I cared about myself. I would rather have ceased to exist while still her friend than the alternative.

But obviously, even in the brightest days back then, I didn't spent all my time with her and our social circle; not even close. Most nights, I was still back at the Isiyahla household, sitting in some loft with my books, or trying to sleep on the uncomfortable mattress I'd eventually got for a bed. By then, I'd begun to really dream. I fantasized about becoming an arcanist and having amazing powers, or sometimes more modest careers like being a logic engine designer.

Even doing well in school, though, it all seemed like a fantasy. By this point, I had an enough of an understanding of politics to know that the world was in a declining state. The transformation of society at the dawn of the Perpetual Peace meant that there were far fewer jobs than people, and the measures to account for that - the transition away from a monetary economy to a post-scarcity one where most things were free, and housing and services were provided by the sprawling bureaucracy of the Grand Alliance - were straining at the seams.

Those with property and institutional influence had lost interest in basing society around accommodating an ever-expanding class of people who to them served no functional purpose. What had seemed initially like a compromise that would lead everyone to a utopian lifestyle without ruffling any feathers had instead divided society into owners - those who had been prospering before the transformation, or the small minority who were still useful afterwards - and dependents - everyone else, for whom social mobility was rapidly disappearing. Meritism and Idealism had appeared as movements to find 'uses' for the redundant masses or, in the former case, to stem their numbers.

So even if I worked hard every day, there was no guarantee things would improve. Even if I managed to secure one, most jobs I could hope to access would expect me to work for upwards of 50 years before I'd see any meaningful pay; you were supposed to take it as an honor to even be there without centuries of demonstrated experience. And that was if the socio-political status quo remained as kind as it was, which seemed, despite the revolution, increasingly unlikely. And even though there were technically laws against it, most of those roles went to the children of established families anyway.

In other words, it could be hundreds of years of relentless work before I could afford a house even as nice as the Isiyahlas', let alone Shiko's.

It was during those nights, staring at the ceiling as my understanding of the world and my place in it deepened, that I began to feel something tangibly that until that point had only existed as a faint impulse in my mind.

Envy.

Why had I had the misfortune to be born like this, and not been like Shiko? Utsushikome of Fusai?

Even though my heart still thought of her as a higher order of being, my head knew that wasn't the case. She was more naturally gifted at some things than me, but she was still just a person. We had many of the same feelings about the world, the same passions. What separated us wasn't the core of our existences, but rather their shells. How much work we had to do to simply be ourselves.

Everything about my life felt cobbled together from scraps; desperate, fleeting. My body was defective and wrong, and I always had to conceal it and explain it. My clothes were shoddy and indistinct, and almost all my possessions were template-model or second hand. I had no private space and slept uncomfortably. And I could never afford anything. How often did I have to explain not being able to pay when I went to a restaurant? Or miss social openings because I couldn't afford to participate in whatever was popular - the latest book, the latest game, the latest stupid little trend? Shiko went to the theater every Saturday, and though she paid for me to come along at times, I could have gone every time if I'd just had the luxury debt allowance.

Even the fact I didn't have a family was part of it. How much of my nervous and stiff nature was inherent, and how much just the fact I didn't have anything to fall back on? That everything I did was tinged with the fear of being palpably set back to zero? If I stopped being friends with Shiko, it didn't just mean I'd lose her. I would lose the nice meals, the borrowed novels, so much else...

And yet, she never even had to think about any of this. My existence was like a brick trying to fit into a circular shaft. It ground against the corners constantly, becoming damaged just trying to move. Shiko, on the other hand, was a ball. She slid through the world silently and smoothly. With magnificent grace.

But what was 'grace'?

Was I just using it as another word for wealth? After all, it could solve all those problems.

It all became muddled in my head. My love of Shiko and her world, and my hatred of myself and my own. Kindness and cruelty, warmth and coldness, wealth and poverty, happiness and pain. To put it bluntly, I wanted to be close to her, and also to all her stuff.

...okay, that might have been a little too blunt.

Well, anyway. Time passed, and for a while, things remained broadly good. I went to school with Shiko and had a good year, and more or less another good year after that.

But already, there were cracks forming. Even if my grades were good, I didn't fit in as well as I'd hoped. My fantasy of a fun school life where I hung out with the same group of friends every day didn't quite manifest; we still spent time together, but relationships when you're young are fluid and subject to a lot of social circumstance. I wasn't bullied in remotely the same way, but I was still ostracized by many members of our class for my obvious awkwardness and other strange qualities.

And of course, the standards for grading were a lot higher, and unlike the others, I needed to do well to be allowed to maintain my scholarship. It took up a lot of my time.

There were other little things. Even though we still had many fun days together, there was an increasing sense in me that I was hanging on to something precariously. And that at any moment, it could slip through my grip.

"...I'm still not completely sure," she told me one summer, as we walked along the beach, "but the more I think about it, the more I do feel like I want to become an arcanist."

"O-Oh yeah?" I asked, my eyes looking at the golden horizon, the great lamp dipping beneath the rim beyond the shores of Mekhi.

"I was thinking about when that girl got her leg cut open during physical the other day," she explained. "All I was thinking was... 'I wish I could do something to fix this right now', I guess. It'll sound odd, but it kind of reminded me how I felt when we were leaving Oreskios?"

"How do you mean?" I asked curiously.

"I don't know," she said, with a shrug. "Helpless. It feels scummy to walk past people who are suffering. It nags at me in a weird way..." She laughed stiffly. "Sorry, that probably sounds really cheesy and fake. I'm not getting this across well."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "That's just what I'd, uh. Expect you to feel, I guess."

"I dunno," she continued. "Like I said, I'm still not really sure... I probably shouldn't be talking about it when I haven't even made a decision. What are you looking at?"

I blinked. "Huh? Oh." I shook my head slightly, turning to look at her smiling face. "I was just wondering what it's like at the edge of the Mimikos."

"I think there are supposed to be massive walls that keep the water and the atmosphere in," she explained. "They're miles high, but because of the sheer scale of it all, you can't even see them until you sail or fly close."

I considered this. "What if you climb to the top? Would you be able to breathe?" I furrowed my brow. "Would you see the whole world if you looked to one side, and just... The sky, in the other?"

She looked puzzled, which was rare for her when it came to any sort of academic knowledge. "I'm not sure. I mean, would the air be breathable as bits floated over the edge? And the gravity..." She bit her lip. "I'd have to look it up."

I turned, looking back at the horizon again. "I'd like to see it myself, one day."

"That sounds fun," she replied. "How about we go together?"

I laughed a little. "You'd wanna do that?"

"Yeah!" she said, nodding. "Someday, for sure!"

Someday, for sure.

Someday, for sure.

Poison. Anguish. Fire. Burning without cease.

The scythe on the rim of love, cutting and cutting until nothing remains.