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There was absolutely nothing human left in the halfhearted way in which Ragatha had dropped from the Circus ceiling.
At Caine’s snap-summon, she was returned, no longer crushed beneath the breath of the tousled digital tide. She’d fallen up through the black of his portal and then back again. Back down and down and down. Heavy with the weight of the water, she collapsed onto the cracked linoleum tile like a wet and discarded bit of laundry might slip unnoticed from a clothesline. Like a child’s toy left too long in the rain. Loose-limbed and floppy and entirely complacent, in the way that she’d learned she always needed to be to escape his wrath.
The pile of cloth that she had been reduced to quivered, as if rustled by a breeze, though none came. There was nothing left but the shake and the wet and the cold that clung to her plush carnage. Even long after Caine had supposedly righted everything; long after the water had been wrung from Jax’s ears and removed from each of Zooble’s orfices, it remained, worming deep into her soft false flesh like a thousand earwigs. A chill so intense that she held herself tight, as though she would never warm again, busying her hands in nervous circles where she crouched.
This Adventure had, in every sense of the word, been an uncensored disaster. Caine had only succeeded in doing precisely what an AI knows how to do best– namely, warping everything that was alive and familiar out of a story. One that had itself already been long oversung. Twisting it into a threadbare tapestry of untucked tangents and an ending that didn’t truly end at all. It just lingered there, like this shiver, like this cold.
They’d boarded the battered remains of a model ship that had clearly been used before. The Icelandic– heck, even the name was lackluster. Jax and Pomni had of course been placed into the center roles– two star-crossed and not-at-all coerced lovers– and given the names John and… Carnation. Yeah. It wasn’t subtle in the slightest; in some small manner she believed and in her own way lamented the words Caine had mumbled once prior. It seemed true in every sense. He really didn’t care any more.
The two of them had argued over the small space available aboard a severed window, leaving the rest of the cast to flail under the wicked waves and drown slowly beneath the snow-capped sea. She tried her best not to hold it against Pomni; not to hold it against Jax, even. But it was difficult.
How could an artificial ocean, a sensation that in every way could not possibly be real, feel so genuine, so final? Unless it was. Unless she had been dead or dying all this time. Would she have felt it if she had? Would she even care? Would anyone, there or here? It seemed less and less alluring by the day to chase the beauty of this place, to seek respite in friendship that may end only in desertion. In being marooned here alone again in this unholy countryside like a riderless horse.
She only had herself; she only had her own arms to hold her now as she shook and shivered, sniffing back tears.
She was cold. She was so, so cold.
The others carried on as normal: Pomni with Jax, Gangle with Zooble, even Kinger undoubtedly muttering a disjointed conversation all to himself. It was hard not to feel like an extra in everyone else’s movie. A corpse, stiff and rotting; a book with the ending cut and mangled, her paragraphs tangled between the jaws of some whale-weighted entity she could not know or understand. No one had even seemed to notice that she was still shaking. It was as true as it had always been in life and in here. Nobody was coming to save her.
She made a step forward, which she immediately retracted. A breeze drifted overhead as Caine– all teeth and coattails– vanished into ether. The tail end of it prickled her nose. She hardly knew what it was until it had settled over her fully:
“Hihh… Hhhitshoo!”
This little sound, of course, was what finally succeeded in perking up those purple ears. A cheshire smirk curled over Jax’s lips.
“Yeesh, you sick or somethin’, Stitches? Or is this just your new baseline level of pathetic?”
Ragatha offered him a testy glance– it was all she could do before she doubled forward again with a second, a third. Small, breathy things, and, just as Jax had said, pathetic. It was ridiculous to think that she was actually sick here, from some stupid bootleg adventure, no less. But the water still hung to the fabric of her flesh as though it were real. She felt soaked through and worn and suddenly very, very old.
“You gonna answer me or just keep sneezing?”
She lifted her button gaze only slightly from her fingers, not quite holding his. Wearily, she replied, sniffling softly midway through:
“Sh… Shut up, Jax…”
Pomni’s head tilted, her pale moonlike face filling with concern.
“You good? Do you need, like, a towel, or…?”
Immediately, she dismissed it with a wave and a shrug, doing as her softest, restless instinct seemed to encode:
“No, no! It’s– Well, I… I’m fine, really! Just need to sh–shake it off, I’m sure!” she chimed brightly, battling a second coming of shivers. “Maybe we can all–”
But Jax was already tugging her away; Pomni threw a sorry smile over her shoulder, little bells tolling tinnily from the ends of her hat as she turned back round. Gangle and Zooble had skulked off as well. She was the only person left standing here, little and alone. She tested the walls, her small voice echoing round the colorful, faceless void:
“Caine? Can you… fix this, maybe? Caine? A-anyone? Is anyone… still here?”
Her nose twitched again, as though someone had brushed the end of it with a fraying string of yarn. Her body sank as she bent into the sensation:
“Aahh… hhh’tch!
Can anyone… Can anyone hear me? Hello?”
…
“I can hear you.”
Ragatha rubbed at her nose. “Oh! Kinger–”
Those off-center eyes, big and blue, looked her straight in the face while seeing nothing at all. He scratched at the back of his neck– well, what could pass as the back of his neck, that was.
“Who’re you?”
Ragatha blinked before sighing fondly. He was doing it again. Going crazy. He’d be of no assistance to anyone like this. Indeed, it was probably best that she saw to him before he had the chance to get himself into trouble. She felt better when she knew that he had been tended to. To her surprise, though, he continued on, his features squinting and crinkling into a sheepish smile:
“Eh, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Would you, uhh… Would you help me? Got some tea that needs spillin’. Not, like, a lot of it, or anything, just a little. Never hurt anyone to spill a little tea, hm? Whaddya say? Help me out?”
He was rambling again. She knew that. His regular cacophonic non-sequiturs about counting eggs before they hatch and who and where and when. But there was something warm and sincere in his wooden expression that made her soften, made her weak.
“If you did, I’d… Well, I’d be most grateful. If you did.”
She gave a quiet nod, shivering again as she staved off a sniffle.
“All right,” she told him. “All right, Kinger. I’ll help you.”
His gaze lit up like Christmas day; his body seemed almost to glow with all the wild luster of a gold-coated firework.
“Excellect! Upsie-Daisy!”
The digital wind was knocked completely from her body as this crazed chess piece hoisted her over his shoulder like a drooping sack of potatoes. He was insane! Absolutely insane! But his hold was tight and the ruff of his cloak was cush and downy, and… was he petting her? A firm, gentle rub against the small of her back and the space between her shoulders, like she was a little child and not, in fact, a grown adult woman. Natural, like he’d… done this before. Had he done this before? She hadn’t the slightest idea.
After a moment of quiet, she spoke up once more.
“Kinger? What are you…?”
“Shh. Gotcha,” he murmured. “I gotcha.”
…
After a while of being held and carried like this as the man wandered aimlessly, Ragatha had given up the fight completely. She figured he had no earthly idea where or why he was. She just allowed him to do his thing. As long as he was occupied, he was safe, she reminded herself. And maybe, under the heat of his hands and the familiar rivery balm of his garbled speech… maybe, just maybe, she could be, too.
At last he knelt to the ground and she rolled gracelessly off his shoulder and onto a soft floor. She recognized this floor. This place. His pillow fort. Of course. That seemed to be where Kinger took all things that he had decided had been lost. Including her, now, apparently. He brought his knees to his chest under his purple robe, looking to her as though for guidance.
“What… What was I…? Oh, right. The tea.”
Ragatha slipped into another helpless sneeze; when she emerged from it, there was a mug of steaming amber liquid cradled in his palms. She blinked, entirely enchanted. He pressed it ceremoniously into her grasp and she looked down at it, tucking it close against her heart.
“How… how do you keep doing that?”
Kinger hummed absently. “Hmmh? Doing what, making tea? Well, it’s quite simple, actually: you put a little bag in a kettle, and just let it steep for a few minutes or so. Then you–”
“No, I mean… making things appear. Like that butterfly, before. It’s… Well, it's incredible.”
He gave another unbothered shrug. “I dunno! I… think about what we need, and it just… shows up, I guess. Not much to it.”
At her next sneeze, quiet though it was, he jumped in alarm with a shriek, shrill and high, which melted away almost immediately afterwards into an emphatic “bless you!”
“Thank you, I… er, I don’t exactly know what’s happening to me right now,” Ragatha admitted. “Do you?”
Kinger only chuckled. “Truthfully, I haven’t had any clue what’s been going on for a very long while. But I bet you knew that already, didn’t you, sugarbee? You’ve always had your way of knowing.”
“I… What did you call me, just now?”
“What?”
“‘Sugarbee.’”
He shut his eyes. “Oh! That. It’s an… an insect, I think? Right? No. It’s an apple; heh. You’re gonna have to forgive me here, Ragatha. I fear I may be losing my mind. Just a little. But do me a favor and take a sip of that for me, anyway. Go on, tell me what ‘cha think.”
She lifted the small mug from its porcelain saucer, tipping it forward to take a short pull from it.
Oh, god. The flavor was marvelous; it was absolutely divine. It was just as though someone had stirred the concept of autumn itself into a steaming cup; against the fabric of her lips flavors snuggled in and settled. The firm crispness of an orchard, the peppered spice of cinnamon sticks, all blanketed over with the barest tongue-nip of citrus, the smoke of a campfire. How was he doing this? How the boink! was he doing this? The sensation rendered Ragatha silent, washing over her like a milk-warm bath and sitting deep within her like a hearth in her breast. It made her want to shiver and sweat, to laugh and sing and cry all at the same time. Instead, baffled by her own body and by her own mind, she did none of this, sipping with trembling fingers as Kinger regarded her unblinkingly.
“Sugarbee,” he mused again. “Not a naturally occurring variety, no. It was made by people, you know; cultivated by machine. But the sweetness is no less genuine. It appears to blossom surprisingly easily, even in unwelcoming conditions.”
“How do you know that?”
His eyes crinkled again. “It’s tricky to remember exactly how I remember that. Someone important to me. I don’t quite recall who; I inherited their bug collection, I know that much. And their love of gardening, evidently. It’s… hard to see it clearly in this light.”
At that, she realized for the first time that the inside of the fort was illuminated by strings of delicate little fairy bulbs, which pulsated in and out like the heartbeats of a thousand fireflies. Even Kinger himself again seemed to shine faintly with a soft yellow heat.
“We… we can make it darker, if it’s more comfortable for you,” Ragatha suggested tentatively. “If that’s better.”
He laughed hazily, easily. “Nah. Then you wouldn’t be able to see your tea. Wouldn’t want ‘cha to miss your mouth and burn your nose. Besides. I don’t have to remember everything perfectly to know how I feel.”
His mood was contagious, and Ragatha found herself chuckling along in spite of everything. The action, strangely, wrought another shudder all through her, and a few burning drops of the liquid sloshed over onto the waiting cushions beneath them. She recoiled back, trying in vain to prevent what had already been done:
“Ah! Sorry. S-sorry, I didn’t mean to–!”
He raised his hands to surrender, to soothe. “Hey, now. It’s quite all right. What’s the expression? No use crying over a little spoiled milk, eh? No. No, that’s not right. You can’t make an old horse drink poisoned broth? Mm. That’s even farther. What I mean to say is… You know what I mean to say, yes? Please say yes. Say you do.”
Ragatha only tilted her head.
“Well. You spilled tea, and there’s no reason to fret about it.”
“But, it stained your pillows–”
“My pillows, which aren’t real,” Kinger stated. “None of this is real. And even if it is, it doesn’t matter. I like you anyway. Now, where did I put my…?” His voice trailed. “Huh.”
He seemed to dance in and out of lucidity in a strange rhythm with the blinking of the lights. It was disconcerting and yet oddly comforting to see him like this. So at peace with everything. He overturned the cushions carefully, bending down and lowering his face nearly to the fabric, the way a young boy might look for spiders beneath the rocks in his backyard. His brow was furrowed in deep focus.
“What are you looking for?” she inquired. “Maybe I can help.”
He waved her off. “No, no; you’ve done enough to help me already. Take a load off and just drink your tea, honey,” he responded dismissingly, affectionately.
That word. It struck her the way the low melancholy vocal of a cello surrounds a symphony. Deep and warm and resonant– a sound that seems oddly, hauntingly parental.
“With honey,” he replied, as though it were a simple slip of the tongue and not an emotional massacre. “Your tea with honey. And sugar. And cinnamon, and… and, heavens, Ragatha, what was I doing before?”
Her voice was small and shaky when she answered. “That’s what you were going to tell me.”
He continued his frantic search for a few more half-hurried moments, muttering fussingly beneath hot breath. “I swear it was right here. Heck, I’d go and lose my skull if it weren’t attached to my…” His rambling was interrupted by a short, abrupt lightning-crackle of laughter. “Ah! There it is.”
He ran gloved fingers over the rich violet fabric of his cloak, which pooled on the floor in a silken flood whenever he shifted– which he did often.
“That’s what I was looking for. I think.”
Ragatha took in a hitchy breath– one she had, at this point, been battling for several winded minutes. She muffled the ensuing noise into the side of her shoulder.
“Ihh… Ihht’shoo! Sorry! Sorry, Kinger!”
“I know,” Kinger corrected. “No. No, I know.”
He whipped the robe from his back, fanning it out like a distracted old matador. Then, in one fell swoop– one fluid, butter-smooth motion, he spread the thing over her. He tucked the corners round her shrinking, shying frame with learned elegance, practiced grace. It was warm with the leftover fake body heat from his digital form, warm like a meal for the soul. It smelled of spice and… men’s three-in-one shampoo. The kind fathers wear.
“I can’t accept this, Kinger.”
He arched one whiskered eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Because… because… I don’t know,” Ragatha admitted. “I don’t know why not. But, I can’t. I just can’t.”
He hummed his usual hum. “You can. You are.”
“But you–”
“Shh. You don’t need to worry about me; I know you do. I know you do, and I appreciate that. But it’s not necessary. I’ll be fine. I am fine. I have you, and you’re helping me immensely by being here now. More than you know.”
This was about more than just a simple cloak– Ragatha was aware of this. But it was difficult for that to truly soak in and stew. Extremely difficult. So, she deflected.
“I don’t know what my body’s doing, I–” she hesitated. “I feel like a dog. Like somebody's sick pet. I can’t understand what to do to make it go away. To make this all go away, and leave me in peace. Leave you in peace, because you deserve it, Kinger! You deserve it, and you’ve been here much longer than anybody else, and I don’t know how you’re still–”
Kinger only chuckled. “Know what you do with dogs?”
Ragatha blinked. “Wha… What?”
He continued. “You sit with them. Pet them on their heads, let them know…” He paused to run a careful hand through the red ends of her hair. “Let them know you’re there.”
A tear threatened; she sniffed it back stubbornly, but it won out anyway.
“I don’t know what’s going on with your body, Ragatha. I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to. But I do know that sometimes, when you’re ill, it’s there to serve as a reminder to slow down for a spell. To listen to yourself, to feel whatever you feel without shame. I figure that’s true even here. Even now. Whenever and whatever that means, here and now.”
“Why are you so kind to me, Kinger? I don’t… I mean, I’m not–”
“–'Cause I’d lose my head without you, Ragatha, that much is certain. I think I almost did, you know. But then there was you. All of you. And suddenly, I had all of me again. Well…” he laughed. “Maybe not all of me, actually. But enough of me to matter. Enough of me to be me. Enough of me to be Kinger.”
It was warm here. It was safe here. And the water rolled, hot and heavy, from her cheeks onto his robe; onto the bare white wood of his shoulder as she settled her chin there.
“I feel like I’m falling apart,” she confessed. “Like I’m losing my hold on… whatever yarn of reality I was still clinging so tightly to.”
“Heh. Happens to every one of us eventually,” Kinger answered. “Just… don’t hide in it. Don’t let it isolate you. Things might never be the same again, Ragatha. But you’re still in there as you always were. Your story isn’t over, far from it. The chapters may change, but the pages remain. Ready and waiting to be filled. Things may fall apart, Ragatha; everything could. Maybe everything will; it could happen, you know that. But you will be all right.
You’ll be all right.”