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They squabble and nip and coo. Noelle listens to it enduringly, hands on her ears at the front of the class. It’s not that she isn’t happy for them, or just happy on principle that something is happening at all. No one has ever dated before in their class. It’s a jolt of something to talk about over Catti’s nail painting, over homework, in between games. That’s how Noelle heard about it in the first place.
“Miss Alphys caught them making out,” Catti drawled at a sleepover, flicking her heavy lidded eyes up to check their faces for the correct reaction. Shock it was. “And I checked, Kris totally had bite marks on their neck.”
Jockington wolf whistled and Berdly squawked and MK and Snowdrake snorted in tandem derision. Noelle’d squirmed as the image of them together entered her mind unbidden. Kris’ willowy knuckles deep in Susie’s hair, the hollow of their collarbone filled by her serpent tongue, the dig of her teeth into the soft skin of their throat. She’d wondered briefly which of them she’d rather be, then flushed very deeply and frowned at herself.
She frowns at herself now, and pretends she’d been smoothing her hair and shakes her ears. The flutter of Kris’ whisper carries up to the front of the class, but the substance of it doesn’t. Susie’s returning kick does too. Kris’ snicker, then. Susie’s shifting back. Noelle resists looking back over her shoulder for a flicker of a second, and then gives in.
Susie’s head is tipped back on Kris’ desk, eyes shut. They’re tugging their long fingernails through her hair, humming softly. True to Catti’s word, as they shift forward their sweater collar slips to reveal a series of small bruises. And they could be from Susie’s teeth, but something strange comes over her, and she’s suddenly certain that they’re not.
“Are you sure that’s what Miss Alphys said?” Noelle asks Catti at lunch, watching Kris and Susie in the corner of the schoolyard.
Kris is halfway up a tree, elbow tucked around a branch, legs around Susie’s neck as she boosts them. Susie does look, for her part, pretty flustered. It’s not that fluttery just-got-together kind of embarrassment, though. She helps them up onto a higher branch with nervously placed hands, just low enough on their thighs that it isn’t inappropriate, but with a lingering kind of look that indicates she’d really rather it were.
“Yeah, she said they were, like, totally acting all suspicious, and they stumbled out of the closet holding hands and looking all, like rumpled.” Catti wrinkles her nose at them. “What else would they be doing? Like, look at them.”
What else would they be doing? Kris and Susie don’t strike her as the types to spend hours making out at school, even if they were dating.
“I’ll ask them about it,” Noelle says. “I need to ask Miss Alphys about something for my class president campaign.”
Everyone tunes Noelle out the moment she mentions her campaign, which is exactly what she wanted. She cleans up her lunch and looks for Kris and Susie, but between one moment and the next they’re gone, and no one can find them for the rest of the school day.
Noelle shows up at Kris’ house when school lets out, but Toriel is still at work and no one else is home. She peers in through windows, but finds no further clues, besides a pile of childhood drawings on the livingroom table, and a lack of TV on the entertainment center.
It’s November, so the sun is setting early, but she wanders around town aimlessly looking for them until it’s far below the horizon. What’s the harm? It’s not like there’s anyone home to notice her absence.
She gives up around nine and heads home, but as she’s feeling around her bag for the keys to the gate, she notices something strange. The keyhole is bent.
When she kicks the gate tentatively with her foot, it creaks open on its own.
That means someone broke in.
Noelle waits for a twinge of fear but doesn’t find it. Instead there is that feeling from her strange dream, the one about the cyber city and the queen mom and Kris and Susie all dressed up like warriors. She is excited. She is exhilarated. Something dangerous is going to happen. Maybe even something fun.
She pushes the gate open as quietly as she can and looks around.
Down her long driveway her tall white house stands as pale and dead as a ghost. But then at a distance, in the backyard, there is a flicker of warm light. She sucks in a breath and follows it around the side of her house.
It’s coming from down in the gardens, past the pergola.
It’s coming, Noelle realizes with a shock of grief, from Dess's memorial.
Something moves and Noelle throws herself back behind her house, slams her hand over her mouth.
No. No, she can’t freeze up right now. If someone is trying to mess up Dess’ memorial–memorial, she says to herself, not grave, no body, no body, there was never a body–then she has to be that cool girl she was in her dream.
She rolls up her sleeves, steps out and walks into the light. And stops. Stares.
Because on Dess’ memorial is a bushel of flowers from Asgore’s shop. Because the light is from a fire in front of Dess’ memorial. Because, in front of the fire, with a green crayon, a headband, and a child’s drawing between them, are Kris and Susie.
“Oh, shit,” Susie says, and steps back, the firelight, catching her yellow eyes and lighting them, glinting. “We’re just.” She looks at Kris, that panicked help-me deferral, sweet eyed and scared, and then back at Noelle. “Um.”
Kris steps forward, grabs Noelle’s hands. She flinches for a moment, and looks down at their warm hands in hers.
“Good,” they say, voice crackly and flickering as the fire, and pull her over next to the two of them. “We really needed a third person, take this.”
They hand her the child’s drawing and she almost drops it from shock. It is the boy from her dream, the little prince who looked like Asriel, green hat and everything. She looks up at them, and meets their eye and she just knows. She knows Kris and so she knows.
“That wasn’t a dream,” she whispers. “That was real.”
“What are you,” Susie stutters nervously. “Um, what are you talkin’ about?”
Kris jerks their head, one decisive nod, and Susie clams her mouth shut.
“Yes,” they say quickly. “And Dess is alive. We’ve had a lot more… dreams, like yours, and now I know, Dess is alive.”
Hearing those words makes her wonder if she’s dreaming now. But she feels the sharp lick of fire at her ankle, and stomps at an errant ember. Real, this is real.
Kris was always the one putting up missing posters with Noelle, months and years after everyone else gave up. Of anyone, she knows they would never joke about this.
“Your neck,” is all Noelle can think to say.
Kris looks down and grimaces, pulls their sweater collar back up.
“I’m not healing as well as I should be,” they say and Susie flinches, they flick their eyes at her, nervous. Some chord of tension between them has tweaked, and it was tweaked hard. “it’s..Ralsei’s healing magic, that’s why we’re doing this.”
“That’s not it,” she says under her breath, and drops the crayon, the headband. “C’mon, don’t keep pulling this.”
They hug their arms to their chest. “Leave it, Suz.”
“No,” she snaps. “I’m fuckin’ terrified for you, dude, i’m not gonna leave it.”
She grabs their wrist, holds steady when they try to pull away and pulls their sleeve up. They hiss and pull back, but not fast enough that Noelle doesn’t see.
Noelle gasps.
Up their arm are a littering of bruises, but beneath them are dark red veins, sinewing up under their sleeve. Noelle doesn’t know much about human healing, but she’s pretty sure that’s not a part of it.
“Exactly,” Susie says to Noelle, high pitched and frightened.
The force of her attention is so intense Noelle nearly stumbles back with it. Susie is looking at her and agreeing with her. Whew.
“Kris keeps, they keep,” Susie stammers off as they bend down to pick up the crayon and the bare skin of their waist flashes. She notices Noelle noticing she’s looking and gnashes her teeth. Dear angel, she really likes Kris, doesn’t she? “They’re being stupid.”
“Whatever it is, we’re gonna fix it now,” they murmur, and hand the crayon back to Susie and taking the horns for themself. Their hands brush and a smile twitches both of their mouths at the same time. Then they both look down at what they’re holding, smiles flickering out.
Noelle shakes her head, steps back. This is all a little too much.
“Can you guys explain why you’re here, please?” she says, looking back down at the drawing in her hand, and then at the fire, which has fallen down into smouldering coals. Still, they cast small fuzzy shadows over Dess’ memorial. It almost seems like they’re taking the shape of something.
“There it is,” Kris whispers, shadow playing across their face. “Look.”
Noelle watches as the shadow rises, wavers up, and takes full shape. Shadow antlers, silhouetted ears, head, shoulders, hand with a softball bat.
The shadow of someone.
The shadow of December.