Content Warnings

Alcoholism/alcohol abuse
Internalised homophobia
Mention of sexual assault
Sexualisation
Transphobic stereotypes (this is a real edge case warning, I’m not even sure it’s needed in this case, but I am erring on the side of caution.)

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Grimgrave’s words are no empty rhetoric. She really will not leave me alone.

We decamp, in stages, to the Big Room, at her eager suggestion and my mumbled acquiescence. Grimgrave insists on helping; I no longer possess the basic dignity, personal credibility, or independence of thought required to refuse, so that cuts three trips down into two. She carries my laptop, charging cable, the borrowed mouse, easier and safer with two hands. I cradle one half of my bisected prosthetic arm in the crook of my left, expecting to trudge back alone for the second piece. But Grimgrave accompanies me with nothing to carry, simply for the sake of being at my side, bouncing and chattering down the concrete corridor, a train of curious zoogs at her heels, each hoping to get scooped up in her embrace.

She recovers so quickly, as if nothing has happened between us, as if I did not pin her to my bed and grind my knee against her cunt. The screams, the chair I threw, the rejection, all is forgiven without apology. She rights the chair herself, places it back before the desk, like it was her fault. She is a loyal and hearty hound once again, our intimate altercation just another bad dream.

Between headache and hangover, I start to doubt my memory. But one thing cannot be false — Grimgrave’s face after she declined to leave, a kicked puppy beneath my boot.

Can’t meet her eyes. Can barely look at her.

There are no more tears in me, no weeping or screaming. The pus-filled boil of my tantrum has been lanced and drained by Grimgrave’s preposterous grace. What right do I have to further self-pity, when she refuses to abandon me? So I obey her laughing suggestions and little touches, speechless and numb, though I do not understand how she can bear to touch me.

We take one additional trip back to my bedroom, so I can change my clothes. Grimgrave doesn’t complain at my vague gesture for her to wait in the corridor, but I don’t think I could resist if she wanted to watch. Nothing left to hide, not from her.

Fully dressed seems pointless overkill. Nobody in Plato Base cares, least of all me. I drag clean underwear up my legs, beneath my pajama bottoms. Can’t be bothered with a bra. Dig a jumper out of my sports bag, pull it on over my pajama top. A fresh sock on my left foot. Robe back over my shoulders, right sleeve still flapping empty.

Back to the Big Room, Grimgrave at my side. She offers me a zoog on the way there, holds up the confused creature like a loaf of fresh bread. I pet it on the head a few times, elicit some raspy little purrs, make Grimgrave giggle.

Knock her down and she bounces right back. Appears to.

Have I hurt her? Have I ever hurt anybody before this? How do I apologise? What am I even apologising for? I cannot begin to voice it.

In the Big Room it is apparently feeding time for the zoogs. Metal animal bowls have appeared in orderly rows on the bare concrete beyond the domesticated corner, each one filled with a mixture of wet dog food, dry kibble, and boiled oats; the air smells of hot meat and liquefied gelatin. The entire zoog population of Plato Base has assembled, a lake of greyish furry bodies becalmed by the meal, tails limp and relaxed, sharp claws gripping bowl rims, heads tilting back to chew with big wet mouth-smacking sounds, so much like their earthly cousins. Here and there a few zoogs come to brief hisses over whose food is whose, clambering over each other, paws shoving aside fuzzy rumps, jaws widened in warning. But no misunderstanding breaks out into scuffles, subsiding always into friendly coexistence. No scarcity here, no competition for scraps, no struggle over leftovers, always more bowls of meat and oats beyond the scrum, framed by rainbow graffiti on the walls, bracketed by the soaring columns of concrete dressed as marble.

Nerys’ honour guard up on the metal table have bowls of their own, but their share seems no greater than the zoogs down on the floor. Nerys herself is still sound asleep in her private animal bed, despite the chaos of munching and slorping and claws on concrete.

The zoogs who’ve been following Grimgrave skitter off at high speed to join the feast. The one in her arms squirms to be let down, drawing an amused squeal from Grimgrave.

“Want din-dins, eh!?” she laughs at it. “Want your din-dins!?”

“Yeeeeeeeeeh-ahhhh!” the zoog rasps, claws whirling in the air, tail whipping at Grimgrave’s flank.

Grimgrave sets it down with an affectionate ruffle. “Off you go!”

It skitters off to join the rest, claws skidding across the floor.

Latecomers have no trouble securing their meals. Among zoogs there seems no pecking order, no hierarchy of feeding, no proper way of doing things. The smallest and weakest happily shoulder in next to the boldest and oldest. The lone are not rejected by established cliques. The strongest do not necessarily eat first.

Spend a moment, try to count them; keep my eyes fixed on the spectacle, rather than acknowledge Grimgrave at my side, or poke at the tender bruise of my own thoughts. A seemingly impossible task, cataloguing and numbering zoogs. Crammed cheek-to-jowl and rump-to-rump, many of them shifting position, stopping to chitter and chatter. Some are already finished, licking their chops, departing in little clumps, heading for the other hallway-mouths of bare concrete which lead out of the Big Room. Others settle back down in the domesticated corner, finding their favourite spots. Some of the younger ones start to play-fight, rolling on the floor, gumming at unguarded tails, darting around the columns.

Two, maybe three hundred. A poor estimate.

“Three square meals a day!” Grimgrave announces. I try not to flinch; she must have seen me thinking. “Tissy keeps ‘em well-fed, like. They’ve even got vitamins and stuff mixed in. Healthiest zoogs anywhere, on earth or the dreamlands, for real!”

Tissy is nowhere to be seen. I cast about for a hint of blue ribbon or sapphire frill, slinking away behind a marbled concrete column.

“D’you want some?” Grimgrave asks.

Blink, frown, almost make eye contact, can’t quite get there. “Want some? Sorry, what?”

“Zoog chow!” Grimgrave blossoms with a mad grin in my peripheral vision.

“Ha ha.”

“Nah, for serious! Zoog chow’s some real gourmet shit, no joke. Tissy works miracles.”

Am I supposed to say yes? Is this my punishment? Grimgrave’s rapid recovery is only because she had planned on hazing me by forcing me to eat dog food? It is no less than I deserve now, is it not? If I was in her position, rejected and humiliated, would I not want to grab the back of her head and shove her face into a reeking bowl of cast-off meat?

Perhaps she’ll get violent if I refuse. The other side of Grimgrave will come back out, a shotgun muzzle pressed to my skull, down on my knees, until I bark and whine and eat my ‘din-dins’.

“No,” I mumble. “No, thank you.”

A shrug. “Whatevs. Your loss, Occy.”

Grimgrave braves the bank of the zoog-lake, departures flowing around her ankles. She grabs a metal bowl of her own, then produces a spoon from some secret pouch within her clothes, sticks it straight into the steaming mass of mashed meat and boiled oats. I try to brace, for either the punchline of an increasingly strained joke, or for her to skip right back to me and say ‘eat up!’

Instead she takes a huge mouthful of the stuff, cheeks bulging, chewing with relish. Sees me looking. Shrugs, big smile on her face, digging into her bowl of animal feed, ambling off to observe the other zoogs at their meal.

Dog food. Grimgrave is eating dog food.

Not my place to say a single damn thing, let alone criticise. For a long moment I can do naught but stand and wonder.

Over to my makeshift workspace, past the sofas and the corpse of Gregory the Moon Beast, floating in his tank of cloudy fluid. Grimgrave has helped clear off one of the many jumbled tables near to Signal’s computer station, adjacent to the 3D printers and CNC machines, wide enough for my laptop and the two halves of my prosthetic arm. I potter about for a few moments, doing automatic things, plugging in the laptop, locating spare USB cables, commandeering one of the many battered old computer chairs that lurk among the debris. Getting hooked into the wired network for the 3D printers and other machines is simple enough. Eventually I sit, try to settle down, install drivers, open my CAD software, poke through the files. Within a couple of minutes I have all the schematics and designs laid out, each relevant matter in a separate tab. My arm, my WestEuro Bionics XMR Model 4, along with all the changes and modifications I’ve made to myself over the years.

I take inventory. First, my severed arm. Note down and organise the damage. Which pieces will need replacements, which can perhaps be reused, which wires have to come out and be re-laid, what volume of foam must be discarded. Remove the battery, perform visual inspection for bulges or punctures or deep scratches. Unscrew the hand, detach the wiring, place it to one side for proper cleaning.

The rest of me is almost as bad. Headache and hangover still mounting. Gut queasy as the sea after a nasty storm, churned up with murk. Mouth vile, fuzzy, tastes wrong. Left shoulder aches from when I threw the chair. Right arm, invisible, intangible, clenched hard with phantom pain, long-dead joints of my fist so tight; real nails would have long ago torn through my palm.

Stare at the schematics. Stare at my arm. Stare down at my body. Assumed clarity of purpose dribbles out through bullet-holes in this tattered thing that passes for my soul.

Grimgrave brought me back to life and got me out here. But I’m the one here.

Repairing my prosthetic arm is self-evidently the correct option, the only option, the only thing of any value I can do right now. As long as I remain in several pieces the phantom pain of my tight-clenched right fist will never abate. Sleep will be impossible. Thought will be muddled. I certainly won’t be attempting masturbation a second time, not without more alcohol or sufficient painkillers, and neither of those are advisable. If I am to continue existing as anything other than tenderised meat, I require my arm. Skills, software, hardware, materials, I am master of all. This task is fully within my power.

And Willow wanted my prosthetics gone. She has almost gotten half her wish, but I will never give her the satisfaction.

Plus, if I choose to do anything else right now, Grimgrave will be there. If I go back to playing video games, she will sit on my bed and watch. If I try to sleep, she will linger in the room and make sure I rest well. If I wander around Plato Base, she will wander at my side. And I cannot face her eyes.

Only by beginning the repairs on my arm can I spare myself her gaze.

Grimgrave wanders over to the table more than once while I pretend to work — measuring the damaged parts of my arm, drawing up potential variations on 3D printed replacements, making lists of wires to strip out and re-lay. Munching her way through zoog feed, she still manages to talk incessantly—

“Woooaaaah, the innards is real complex, like—” “—sure you can do it all yourself? Siggy’ll help, she’d probably love to get a look at—” “—you could give yourself racing stripes! Or speed lines in red, or cool swirls or—” “—so wait, like, you just twitch the muscles in the stump and the hand moves? Holy shit, can you show—” “—expensive, right? Don’t wanna say? Bet it cost a mint. And here you are fixing it yourself! You’re cool as shit, Occy—” “—sure you don’t want some zoog chow? There’s tons of bowls left, they never eat it all, Tissy collects up the rest—” “—the hand comes off?! Haha, can I hold it!? Can I— “—we’re gonna put the telly back on, Occy! If you want a break, come sit down! Yeah? Nah? S’cool!”

—but I can’t reply.

Grunt, nod, make polite, technical, accurate responses when required. Lift my eyes from the laptop screen, watch her playing with the zoogs, helping to clear away and stack up the bowls now licked clean. Dozens of zoogs filter off into the depths of Plato Base as the meal finally draws to a close, slinking away in little groups, their claws clicking on the concrete. Several dozen also follow Grimgrave, clustering around her heels, trying to help with carrying the bowls, then returning to the domesticated corner, spreading out in post-meal torpor, leaving a space for Grimgrave to throw herself down on one of the sofas. She pets them at random, carries them in her arms, rubs her cheeks against their soft grey fur. Her wild mane of brown hair lies beside her on the sofa cushions. She slides down, gets comfy, legs splayed out wide, white-on-white-on-white.

I don’t know what to say to her.

Grimgrave has made her position clear, but I find it incomprehensible. Can’t decide if I’m an idiot, or if she’s insane.

She will accept anything, any indignity, any attack. Insults of the lowest kind, insinuations that she is a sexual predator, grumpy unjustified violent tantrums. Sexual assault, screaming hysteria, hurled chairs. She takes it all, and remains my ‘friend’, no matter the indignities I inflict. She won’t even run away. She speaks to me with gusto, helps to carry my things, grins with all her undimmed lunatic energy. She tries and tries and tries, even when I spit poison in her face.

If I led her back to my room and pushed her back down on the bed and carried on where we left off, she would accept that too.

That thought makes sweat break out at my hairline, forces my eyes to Grimgrave on the sofa, to her slender arms in her white sleeves, the way she flexes her spine to stretch a muscle, the lucky zoog pillowed on her belly.

How many magical girls has she lost before me? How many magical girls dead or dreaming? How many fast friends so quickly made, so suddenly gone?

I cannot take advantage of that. No better than Willow. I would rather die.

Back to the laptop screen. Focus on work.

Yet I cannot bring myself to finalise any design for the replacement outer sheath of my prosthetic arm. Once the process is started, the end becomes inevitable — my own repaired body, the conclusion of my convalescence.

And what then lies beyond?

Once I am whole again, what will I do? The wailing and weeping of the last few days has obscured that uneasy horizon, but now the storm of tears has been blown out by Grimgrave’s fresh breeze, and I am forced to measure the uncertain ground revealed. Will I be able to transform? Will I be a full and true magical girl? Will I fight for Nerys’ humanistic optimism, Grimgrave’s revolution, Signal’s resistance? Is this the rest of my life, hiding in a moon-base, with only other exiles and hundreds of zoogs for company, mounting raids on England for the sake of some ever-distant utopia? Will I face the Trio over and over, until we’re all old and wrinkled? Will they defeat me, kill me, forget me in haste? Will I stand victorious over them, stomp their skulls into the mud? And why, what for? To free England? What would be the result, what would the country be like? What would the world be like, if we were to win?

Will I have to face Willow again, on the way there?

I have been kept half my life in a gilded cage. Now I’m free, but what is freedom without purpose?

Grimgrave and the zoogs are channel-hopping on the quad-screen television, volume down tolerably low. Nature documentaries, daytime soap operas, reruns of Japanese cartoons. They settle on some kind of how-it’s-made program, great rolls of steel being stamped and cut into widgets. Half the zoogs sit up, hypnotised. Others ignore it, snuggle down with their friends, drift off into post-meal doze. Grimgrave looks heavy-lidded, ready for a nap.

She lives up here, doesn’t she? Is this what she does all day, when she’s not blowing up crowds of people or sparring with Bright? Grimgrave is a fellow exile, she can answer my questions, she knows what it’s like. How does Grimgrave give herself purpose, how does she stay sharp? Does she spend all her time with the zoogs? Does she practice or train? What about the rest of Plato Base, my new home, should I explore it, with a guide, with her? Is this ‘home’ now? What about for Grimgrave? Has she made it her home? What’s her bedroom like?

Dangerous question. Don’t go there.

Forearm on the table, forehead on forearm, close my eyes. Shut out the light from my laptop screen, embrace the dark. I am a corpse risen but not yet stitched back together, and perhaps it is better that I stay in pieces. If not for the phantom pain, perhaps I could. Sleep forever, curl back up in bed. Have a dream of my own. Forget the rest.

Don’t want to think anymore.

Time drifts aside.

“Occy?” Grimgrave says, up close. Taps my shoulder. “Occy, hey. Heeeeey? Wakey-wakey?”

Sit up, clear my throat, blink the gathering sleep from my eyes. The Big Room swims back into focus, laptop screen still a-glow. I only drifted off for a few minutes.

Grimgrave peers down, quizzical, curious; I peer up, back at her. Our gazes meet, stay met. Not courage, just groggy.

“Didn’t mean to take a nap,” I mumble. “Just … ”

Grimgrave snorts and smirks, then points past me, eyebrows raised. I follow her finger and almost flinch.

A plate of food has appeared next to my laptop, deposited in perfect silence. A pair of sandwiches cut into neat halves, great thick slabs of melted cheese and hot tomato between toasted brown bread, accompanied by a very large mug of gently steaming coffee. The scent grips my throat, kneads my gut.

I scan the Big Room for signs of Tissy, hoping for a glimpse of blue ribbon or deep-sea frills, but she’s long gone.

“Tissy, I assume?” I croak, clear my throat again. “When did she … ?”

Grimgrave shrugs. “Don’t feel bad, I didn’t see her either! Tissy’s real good at being sneaky.”

“Will you thank her for me? Please?”

Grimgrave cracks a grin, raises her head, and cups her mouth. “Occy says thank you, Tissy!” she yells, voice echoing off into the depths of the Big Room. I flinch and wince. Several zoogs scramble upright, then subside when they realise it’s just Grimgrave; a few join in, warbling thank yous into the concrete void.

“Will she hear that?” I ask.

“Sure!” Grimgrave says. “She knows!”

I push my laptop back and drag the plate over. Can’t eat and work at the same time, not with only one hand. I sip the coffee. Hot, rich, dark, very good. The sourness in my gut begins to settle. The razor edge of my headache begins to blunt.

Grimgrave lingers, a snowy fairy at my left elbow. I look up, manage eye contact a second time.

“ … yes?”

She shrugs. “You like, doing alright now? Feelin’ any better?”

Not a hint of awkwardness behind those glittering emerald eyes. Shouldn’t you be afraid of me now, Grimgrave? Aren’t you worried I’m going to launch myself from this seat, bowl you over, pin you to the floor, assault you? I jammed my knee between your legs, felt your cunt grind and give against my prosthetic. How are you not blushing like crazy? How can you look at me without sweating? Speak without stammering? Like I am, like how my heart rate is rising and my skin prickling with heat just looking at you.

Can’t keep my eyes on her. “Not really. But I’ll live, I guess.”

“Yeeeeeaaaah.” Grimgrave laughs. “That’s the important bit, you know? Keep on keeping on. Keep breathing. Gotta keep going!”

“Mmhmm.”

Still she lingers. Her throat bobs, a swallow. Her lips part, a wet click. It’s coming, I can feel it, like a seizure. Ask me why I held you down. Ask me why I threw a chair at you. Please just ask; please, Grimgrave, please do not apologise. I will shake myself to pieces if you apologise.

But the words don’t fall. When I glance up a third time, Grimgrave is peering at my prosthetic, in pieces on the table. She starts, as if caught staring.

“Oh shit,” she says, a grin creasing her face. “I’m not like, ogling it or nothing! Just curious, wondering like, if you’re, like, having any success and all?”

“I’ve made a fundamental error,” I say. Surprised at myself, being honest with her.

Grimgrave’s eyebrows perform the most fascinating climb. “Oh shit. For real? Like, something you can’t fix? Fuck, we can get Siggy on it, serious.”

Sigh. Almost smile. “Not a mechanical or technical error. Not something Signal can help with. A … project management error, let’s call it that.”

Grimgrave wrinkles her nose in disgust. “Ain’t no fucking ‘project managers’ up here in Plato Base! You do what the fuck you want!”

“Doesn’t that mean I’m my own project manager?”

Grimgrave looks sceptical. “Fuck. Whatever. I guess?”

I take a long sip from my coffee. “Metaphors aside, then. I have attempted to distract myself with work.” Gesture at the laptop screen and the 3D printers. “But the work forces me to face questions from which I would also prefer to be distracted.”

“Eh? You mean, like, about your robot arm?”

“No, I … I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Once my arm is repaired, what will I do with myself?”

Grimgrave squints with the effort of comprehending me; must I spell it out step-by-step? For her, considering what I’ve done, I will, if I have to. But then her eyebrows shoot up, her mouth makes an o-shape.

“Ohhhhhh. Oh. Shit.”

“Yes, quite,” I echo. “Shit.”

“Shit. Huh.” Grimgrave perches on the edge of the table, only a couple of feet from my left elbow. The fabric of her loose white jogging bottoms pulls taut against her backside, pillowing outward against the table. Just a product of the way she sits, not on purpose. I stare for a heartbeat, then jerk my eyes away, hoping she didn’t see. “Shiiiiiit. Shit.”

“Half my life so far was lost to a Dreamer,” I say, as much to distract myself from Grimgrave’s arse as to explain my mind. “I was caged, I suppose, in some respects. Now I’m free. But I don’t know … ”

Grimgrave smirks. “Don’t know how to fly?”

“Terrible metaphor.” I sigh, sip my coffee again. “Don’t start finishing my sentences for me, that’s … I don’t know. Weird.”

Grimgrave leaps up again, sparing me the temptation of her bum, arms in the air, grin on her face. “Occy, hey, whatever happens, you’re one of us now! You’re one of Nerys’ magical girls. You’re with us, and we’re gonna smash England to all fuck. Dream Control, the Trio, whatever! We made a huge splash, gigantic, and we’re gonna keep going and going until—”

“Don’t!” I snap. Then, quickly, softer: “Don’t. Don’t. Please. I’m sorry … sorry I snapped.” Can’t snap at you, not when you’ll take every abuse I hurl your way, not when I’ve touched you like I did. “I just … don’t.”

Grimgrave tilts her head. Unhurt, how? “Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk about ‘revolution’, about being one of you. I don’t know what that means.”

Grimgrave puffs out a long breath. A big shrug, flapping her arms. “Alright then, how about you like, start with something small?”

Close my eyes, try to fight the headache, soaking in the caffeine. “I’m really not up for listening to revolutionary theory, Grimgrave, no matter how elementary. Please, just—”

“Naaaah, not that. I mean with this!”

Open my eyes. Grimgrave gestures at my laptop and the 3D printers.

“What do you mean, something small?” I ask. “Working on my arm at all is making me think about things I would rather … I don’t know. Avoid? Put off? Have an answer prepared for, before I blunder into them? But what can I do except fix my arm? I need it, I need it so badly, the … the phantom pain and the … I can’t stop. If I stop, I may as well be dead.”

“Then make something unrelated, like!” Grimgrave says. She squats down, scoops up a stray zoog which has wandered over to nose at her ankles, cuddles it to her chest. The zoog paws at her shoulder, twists its snout to look at me. “Some doodad or something, you know? Siggy’s got enough feedstock to last forever, she won’t care if you print something for fun, like.”

I’m lost. “Such as?”

“I dunno!” Grimgrave shrugs. The zoog in her arms rides the motion, tail wrapping around her forearm. “A doorstop? Nah, okay, that’s boring. How about you print one of those 3D models of one of us, a magical girl! There’s tons out there on the internet, right? Still nah? Whatever, I dunno! A thing, a thing.” Her eyes light up, a maniac grin ripping across her face. “Heeeeeeey, you could print yourself a dildo!”

I give her a long look, as withering as I can muster, but Grimgrave is wither-proof. The zoog in her arms chimes in, “Dildoooooo!” A brief chant goes up, rasping from half a dozen nearby throats. “Dildooooo.”

Roll my eyes, turn my face away.

“Or maybe build a vibe!” Grimgrave carries right on as the zoogs quiet down. I try not to flush. “Oh shit, like, you’re actually thinking about it!”

“I am not,” I say. “What a waste of feedstock. Plus, if I—”

If I needed that, I’ve got you, right, Grimmy? What do I need a sex toy for when I’ve got your fingers and your tongue, when you would so willingly donate the use of your body if only I asked?

Unspoken thought all but chokes me. Burns on my cheeks. Prickles my skin, a sheen of fresh sweat. How could I think such a thing, let alone begin to voice it without care?

Grimgrave snorts, none the wiser. “Chill, Occy. Chill, chill. S’just a joke, for serious, just a joke. Print something random and cool, hey? Go grab a model off the internet or something, something cool to put in your bedroom. Shit, I dunno, you into any cartoons? Anime? There’s tons of those. Print a figurine. Anything you like.”

“ … I’ll … give it some thought. Maybe a … a model tank or something.” I pick up one of my toasted sandwiches and stop my mouth with a bite before I lose control, before I say something obscene.

“Cool! Just, you know, do something fun for a bit, yeah? Something for yourself, like.”

“Mmhmm.”

Grimgrave makes the zoog in her arms wave bye-bye for now, wiggling one little paw. She trots back over to the sofas and the quad-television, leaves me to chew my food and my thoughts together.

The sandwiches go down slow, careful, with surprising ease. The first half begins to settle my queasy stomach. Coffee seeps through the walls of my gut, into my bones and up my spine, smothering the ashen flames of my headache. Grimgrave has settled back on the sofa, a trio of zoogs in her lap, pointing and laughing at some vintage slapstick film that sends the zoogs into fall-about fits of chitter-chatter hilarity.

Design something for fun. Grimgrave’s advice feels woefully under-educated. Design what, why, what for? Designs have purposes, and right now I have no purpose, other than bare survival. What am I supposed to design and build, Grimgrave? Will you answer me that, if I get up and stomp over there and shove you back against the sofa?

A thought takes advantage in my moment of unspoken frustration. Slips through the unguarded gate. Edges in sideways, unctuous smile on its face, rubbing its hands together, presenting me with such a reasonable argument.

I would think so much better, so much clearer, with so much less lingering pain, if I had another drink.

Just one shot of vodka. Lubricate my mind, sand off the edges, take away the doubt and the second-guessing and the rancid self-loathing. I’ve recovered now, past the worst of the accelerated hangover, and I’m a magical girl, aren’t I? One or two shots can’t hurt. Grimgrave can keep an eye on me, make sure I only drink a couple, stop me at three, take away the bottle. She’ll do anything I say, won’t she? So why not ask her for the vodka again? Tell her the truth, you need it to clear your mind. Just a drop. Hair of the dog. You’ll be responsible this time. You’ll be safe. And you need it, because you need to think, and she’s put you up to this task in the first place, hasn’t she? She saved you, dragged you out here, made you face these questions. You deserve a bit of mercy, being stuck up here on the moon, your arm in pieces, feeling like shit. Just one drink. Can’t hurt.

Grimgrave would do it, if I asked. Pleaded, cajoled, threatened, begged. She’ll say yes.

I start to rise from the chair, still chewing the last bite of my sandwich, mind crawling with plans of what to say to Grimgrave, Grimmy, please, I’m okay now, I’m fine, just one, I promise, just one—

But then my gaze is yanked aside, by the most unexpected intervention.

Gregory, our dead Moon Beast, floating in the murky fluids of his big glass tank. A pair of massive dark eyes buried deep in a mire of tentacles. Slabs of dark grey muscle, pickled in brine. Rings of lamprey-like teeth. Grey claws in clusters of seven.

Dead eyes see through my justifications. Gregory tells me that I am an alcoholic. My excuses are pathetic.

Gregory knows, because he’s dead too.

I thump back down, cold sweat on my brow, a hard quiver in my throat and my gut, blinking away a sudden sheen of moisture in my eyes. Pour the rest of my coffee down into my stomach, better caffeine than alcohol.

Gregory seems to recede into his tank, though the corpse doesn’t even twitch.

“Weakling,” I whisper to myself. “You’re … you can’t. You can’t. Never. Never again.”

Perhaps the only thing for which I will thank Willow; then again, it was likely her dreams that drove me to drink in the first place.

Attention returns to my CAD software. Focus on work, distract myself, at any cost. Phantom pain ramps up, so my left hand occupies itself massaging my stump. Make something fun; more like make something functional. Doorstops to dildos. Maybe Grimgrave’s joke isn’t such a bad idea, maybe I really should design and print myself a vibrator, but there’s no way I’m doing that while she’s still in the room, even if she’s not watching. I would choke and blush and splutter and she would run over to see why.

All the other options are pointless. Little statues to put on tables, decorative nonsense, purposeless experiments. The only thing that interests me right now is the potential for repairing and replacing—

My own body parts?

I scoot the chair back, extend my right leg, examine my foot.

My prosthetic leg terminates in a complex curved joint of lightweight steel and carbon fibre — a dynamic-response energy-storage-and-return artificial ankle, painted black to protect from corrosion. This ‘foot’ alone is more than enough for walking and even a little running, though it’s not quite as expensive, complex, or heavy as some models. But walking directly on the exposed ESAR foot would wear down the underside over time, and it’s very difficult to wear a shoe without some kind of additional padding or layer. Thus, the beautiful machine-curves of my prosthetic are encased in a cheap polymer shell the shape of a real flesh-and-blood human foot. Off-peach plastic for skin, ridges for toes, the convex bulb of a heel and a concave arch, none of which I actually need.

I’ve always hated the necessity of a foot shell, but it’s not as if I have to see the thing very often. Usually it’s inside a shoe.

Removing the shell is not easy, especially with only one hand. I lever and wiggle and wince, pin it in place with my other foot, dig and pull and yank. Several nearby zoogs look up, to watch me disassemble myself. I almost laugh; doing this in view of anybody would have been obscene only a week ago, and now here I am, pulling my leg apart before an audience of zoogs.

Eventually the shell comes free, along with the foam padding from the inside. My true foot is revealed, an elegant curve of metal and carbon fibre. Gingerly, as if it might feel the cold, I place my naked foot back down against the concrete.

I stare for a long time. Try to imagine the result.

A problem presents itself. A solution begins to take shape, first in my imagination, then roughed out in a sketch, then painstakingly pieced together in a CAD file. I measure, re-measure, take dimensions from my existing foot-shell, guess how much foam I might need for the inside. Eliminate the toes, re-shape the outline, estimate the weight. Try a few different shapes, discard a dozen as unsatisfactory, settle on one that might work. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Almost an hour later I have a first prototype ready to print. Angular, sleek, machine-like.

My mind is buzzing, alive, active in a way I’ve not felt in too long. Did Willow’s dreams suppress this part of me too? Couldn’t stop me forever, Willow. I will build a better foot and shove it so far up your arse you will taste the carbon fibre on your tongue.

Out among the 3D printers, the cables, the wires, I get everything plugged in. Signal has a vast array of feedstock filaments, enough carbon fibre reinforced nylon to print a thousand drones. Perhaps I should use the same lunar regolith that Signal uses for her skeletons, but I suspect the process is more complicated than 3D printing; if the prototype works I can ask her about that later, or perhaps play with the CNC machines, but they’re not well-suited to a rough draft. First I need proof of concept, the CFRN will do for now. Fiddle with one of the printers, get it loaded, get the machine warmed up. It wakes, aglow and buzzing, ready to remake a little part of the world, a little part of me. I stroke the matte grey shell of the printer, beautiful little minion.

Back to the table, start the process, confirm, print. The 3D printer comes alive, cooling fans spooling up, dual print-arms clicking into place, nozzles switching and loading from an internal rack. Breathless, flushed, like I am the machine and the machine is me. It begins to lay foundations.

Time to completion, 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Sit back, take a deep breath.

That felt good.

Perhaps this is my future. Building drones and spare parts for Signal’s Opposition people down in England. Designing ambulatory skeletons. Making bombs.

Do I know how to make bombs? A little. The knowledge surfaces, always there. Another of Willow’s many suppressions.

Grimgrave is playing a complex game with some of the zoogs, but I cannot intuit the rules. They’ve set up a board on the concrete floor just beyond one end of the big metal table, dotted with brightly coloured plastic playing pieces shaped like other animals. Grimgrave makes most of the actual moves, taking direction from the zoogs; every now and again they all leap up and run the entire length of the Big Room, claws skittering over the concrete, Grimgrave always in the lead, winding around the columns, the zoogs braying and hissing. To my eyes Grimgrave always appears to win this ‘race’, but I don’t think it’s actually a race. Several times she flops on the floor afterward, zoogs piling onto her as if in victory. More moves are made. Zoogs chew on dice. Grimgrave laughs, that hitching hyena cackle.

Impressive when she runs, slender limbs flying through the air, messy brown hair streaming out behind her, face split wide by a mad grin.

So.

I’m a lesbian.

There, I said it, if only in the privacy of my own mind.

Now I’ve had a few hours to adjust, it seems so obvious. A naked fact, staring me in the face all my life, hardly some great revelation that recontextualizes everything I’ve ever known. Magical girls and Dreamers have done that already. Yet at the same time it seems impossible, a dislocation greater than Nerys and Willow and being lost on Luna. I am the thing I feared; the thing I feared was me all along. The monster lurks in the mirror, and she wants to fuck me. Would I fuck myself? Probably not.

I never thought about men, never had the faintest glimmer of boy-craze, never considered that as a prospect. Willow had a hand in all that, of course, suppressed parts of me in ways I will likely never understand. But the result, sitting here in Plato Base, shorn of comforting lies from a Dream, is all me. Hard to deny it after my session in front of the laptop earlier.

But what does it mean?

Down in England it would mean hiding, minimizing myself as much as possible, and wasn’t I already doing that? Willow was doing it for me, rather. Being a homosexual is not exactly illegal in England, not by the letter of the law, but it is so much more likely to bring one to the attention of Dream Control. Isolation and Observation must be full of people like me.

People like me. All those terrifying dykes. What a thought.

But up here? What does it mean on Luna, as a magical girl? Grimgrave clearly said we’re all like this, that’s why Nerys picks us. Magical moon dykes, every one. Maybe she lied about the orgy thing, maybe they all fuck each other on weekends. Makes me shudder, I don’t want that. Not interested.

Another form of freedom which I don’t know what to do with.

Turn my eyes from Grimgrave. Cast my mind — back to Willow? Did I ever truly find Willow attractive? Too raw, too recent, my mind shies from that question. So it’s back to Grimgrave, sprinting up and down with the zoogs, lying on the floor all flushed and sweaty, laughing as she loses to her tiny friends.

She would do anything I ask her.

Do I want that? Do I want — face the words now, Octavia, don’t flee from specificity — to have sex with Grimgrave?

Turn the idea over in my mind, think back to that moment on the bed, her face looking up at me, my knee between her thighs, the softness yielding. Imagine my lips descending to hers. My hand gripping her cunt. Her fingers sliding across mine.

I huff, shake my head. It seems unreal, impossible, an offensive presumption. A dirty little fantasy, only achievable if I overpower her again. The reality would be messy and painful and we’d both weep in the aftermath, wouldn’t we?

And I would be like Willow. So, no.

Whatever Grimmy and I are to each other now, lesbian sex will improve nothing about my personal situation. Probably it would make everything much worse.

Best stick to pornography.

Little to do and plenty from which to distract while I wait for my new foot to finish printing, so I go back on the internet. Thankfully the screen is angled so that Grimgrave cannot see from all the way over there on the far side of the domesticated corner. Yet, all the same, after a few moments of idle clicking back and forth on the same site I used earlier, I feel only vague disinterest. The girls are just as pretty as before, their boobs just as implausible, their outfits just as terminally slutty, but I’m simply not interested at the moment, in a room full of zoogs, food in my belly, my own sexuality a dull and distant irritation.

Instead, straighten my spine, fill my lungs, clear my thoughts. To magibooru, to see the fruit of our adoring public.

The fan-artists and meme-makers have been exceptionally busy in the days since The Battle of Oxford Holton Hospital, both illegally English and freely foreign. I already downed a good dose of this stuff while languishing in the depths of my tantrum, but that was mindless scrolling. Now I set out for systematic observation, paging through the last few days of new posts, mulling over what the international public thinks of our debut on the world stage.

Our? I suppose so. Like it or not.

All participants in the rooftop battle have been graced with artistic attention, but for once Scarlet Edge’s popularity has been collectively eclipsed by the novelty of not only three new magical girls, but the tantalising potential of their status as rebels and outlaws. Grimgrave, Bright, Signal, all three have been depicted not just as they were, locked in the duels that really happened, not only in dashing isolation, studies of their poses and outfits and what little the public have gleaned of their personalities, not merely as stylised cartoons, but also more than a few times as champions of places or identities or ideologies which have little to do with England and Dream Control.

Here is Grimgrave the mad terrorist, her clown outfit augmented with the balaclava and AK-47 of a thousand insurgencies. There is Signal, guitar riffs and death-metal growls knocking crowds of armed and masked police onto their backsides, to be rushed by the mundane riot at her back. Burning Bright the Dragon-Girl breathes fire on flags of distant nations, melting battle tanks, smashing jets from the skies; there is even one crude drawing of her on the side of an actual, physical, real-life explosive drone.

But not all depictions are so serious. Most are either vaguely sexualised, awestruck at their arrival in the collective imagination, or just bizarre and inexplicable. Realistic dioramas of the fight sketched from below the hospital. Character studies of Burning Bright’s duel with Azure. Strangely stylised illustrations of Scarlet Edge locked in battle with Grimgrave, some that are clearly a bit too enthusiastic about Scarlet’s wild blood-lust. One artist has drawn six full-body versions of Scarlet cackling and covered in blood. I run across a drawing of Signal wearing a Dragonball Z t-shirt and giving a thumbs up alongside Goku, the reason for which I cannot fathom. Many artists really enjoy Burning Bright, from more angles than I had considered possible. One particular artist has drawn thirty full-colour images of Azure Infinity burned and bruised from the fight with Bright, a sure sign of obsession. I squint with scepticism at one total nude of Dawn’s First Gloaming, chased by a conga-line of Signal’s armoured skeletons.

Precious few have dared draw Willow. Artists don’t seem to know how to respond to a Dreamer caught on camera. They depict her as a screaming banshee of dripping toxic gold, her real face not at all in evidence. She was lucky — or perhaps just clever — to somehow avoid the good focus of Signal’s cameras.

Though, to my secret delight, there is one very good piece of Grimgrave blasting her off the side of the roof. I save it on my hard drive, in case I need a smile.

Octavia Carter has garnered more attention as well, though less so than the three full-blown, authentic, rebel magical girls. Mundane eyes do not seem to have processed or understood the dark corona of my half-aborted transformation, but there I am, more than a few times, being protected by Grimgrave, menaced by Scarlet Edge, or else staring her down with electric tension.

A few artists have gone further, drawn the moment I punched her face apart, but that subject seems even more taboo than Willow. Most of them are just gore, not to my taste.

I try not to look at the porn. Grimgrave does not have breasts like that. Even if she did, she would likely not be at all embarrassed by them.

“Occy?” The genuine article wanders over, face flushed from all the running up and down. Most of the zoogs are all puffed out, sprawled on the floor by the game board, but a few trail along behind her heels. “Occy, yo, hey!”

“Hm? What?”

Grimgrave pauses at the edge of the table, grinning, surprised. “You’re smiling!”

“ … oh.” Control myself. “I suppose I am. I mean, look at this.” Gesture at the screen. Let her see. No harm in that.

Grimgrave comes around to my shoulder. I try not to stiffen. She bursts out laughing.

On the screen is a drawing of Grimgrave and Scarlet Edge, super-deformed cartoons. Grimgrave, in place of her shotgun, wields a gigantic comedy mallet, and is using it to hit Scarlet Edge on the head. Scarlet’s limbs are splayed, tongue dangling out, eyes replaced by big black Xs.

“Fuck yeah!” Grimgrave cheers. “Real Looney Toons shit, yo!”

“What do you think of this one?” I close the tab, pull up another.

Grimgrave goes quiet, lets out a low whistle. “That’s me? Fuck yeah that’s me. Damn!”

Grimgrave the murder clown, blood-drenched and dripping, grinning with razor-sharp teeth, lurking in the depths of a back alley, lit by the flicker of late-night street-lights, muzzle of her shotgun toward the camera.

“You like it?” I ask. “Seems unrealistic.”

“Yeah! Well … fuck, I wouldn’t dress like that for real,” she says. “Too edgelord for me. But it’s cool to see!”

“You don’t look at this stuff?”

Grimgrave shrugs. “Eh, sometimes, I guess? Not like we’ve been on there before. We made a hell of a splash, Occy, we really fuckin’ did, you were right! You were totally right, your debut idea, fuckin’ brilliant!”

“Mm. I suppose so.” Close the tab, forget what I had in the next, try not to avert my eyes.

Grimgrave bursts into hysterical splutters, almost doubles over, clutching her stomach. She laughs so hard that the zoogs at her heels skitter back in alarm.

“Phwoarrrrr!” Grimgrave says. “Look at the size of her! Occy, is that what you’re into!?”

A sigh. “No. I was researching. I’m curious what people think of us.”

Burning Bright, in full transformation, dragon claws and muscular tail and flame-wings and all, not a single scale missing, a perfect study of her real appearance. Except her breasts are bigger than her head and the artist has gifted her with an impossibly large and startlingly erect penis, also covered in scales, with a biologically implausible flared tip.

“Awww shit,” Grimgrave wheezes, still laughing. “I can’t fuckin’ breathe. Aw fuck. Wow. Wow! Hey, hey, don’t let Bright see you looking at that, she’ll shit an egg!”

“I didn’t plan on it.” Close the tab, return us to the front page. But there’s two more examples of similarly endowed pictures of Bright in the thumbnails, recently posted, extremely popular.

“Oh they fuckin’ love her!” Grimgrave says. “They love that dragon dick!”

Another sigh. “She’s the only one of us … ‘modified’ in that specific fashion, at least so far. I mean, yes, there’s a few of the Trio, going back a long way, but … why Bright? Why not anybody else?”

Grimgrave sobers a touch. “Big dragon girl, you know? It’s just, like, what people think. Half of them probably want her to fuck ‘em, you know?”

A third sigh. “Great.”

“Do you like it?”

Grimgrave should guffaw and chortle with that question, but her face is strangely serious, eyebrows raised, waiting politely. I give her a dark look; she mistakes it for incomprehension.

“You know,” she says, shrugs. “Girls with dicks. Girlcock. All that.”

Roll my eyes. “Apparently I’m a lesbian now. Or I always was. So … no? I don’t know. What a ridiculous question.”

“S’cool,” Grimgrave says. “You know. Whatever, hey?”

Why be gentle with me now, Grimgrave? Why not poke me again, make jokes about Bright’s impossible phallus? But she doesn’t, just stands there at my elbow in expectant silence, waiting for a return blow, a verbal riposte.

I disappoint her, say nothing, no good at these games. Refresh magibooru’s front page, load a handful of new thumbnails. More exaggerations to laugh at. Perhaps together, Grimgrave and I, perhaps we can laugh.

But the first thumbnail, the most recent upload, is in a style I recognise. Even in miniature. My heart stutters. Mouth goes dry. Head blanks out.

Grimgrave leans closer, a hand on my shoulder. “Oh heeeeeey, what’s that one? Is that you, Occy? is that—”

Alt-F4, quick as I can, but I don’t know why. The browser window vanishes, reveals the naked CAD design for my replacement foot.

“Nothing!” I snap, can’t look up at her. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I don’t want to see it.”

Don’t want Grimgrave to see it; but why? It’s just an illustration, who cares?

Grimgrave snorts, baffled confusion. “Eh? Occy? What—”

“I don’t want to see it.”

Lies. I love it already, and all I had was a glance. Shrug Grimgrave from my shoulder, turn my head away, afraid my eyes will betray the truth, afraid she’ll see — what? That I’m a slut? She already knows; she is too, we revelled in it together, almost ‘did it’ without thinking. But now my face is burning and my heart is racing and I can’t look at Grimgrave because I don’t want her to see what I saw.

Grimgrave straightens up. A beat passes, a horrible frozen heartbeat. I’ve hurt her again. It’s what I do. Covered in poison spikes.

“Soooooo,” she says at length. “What’cha printing? A new foot?”

Swallow, clear my throat. “Yes.”

“Cool.”

“Mm.”

Can’t be rude to her, can’t talk to her like this, because she’ll just take it, she’ll take it all, whatever horrors I heap upon her head. I cannot become that monster. I cannot be like Willow.

Turn my head, raise my eyes, meet Grimgrave where she stands. An awkward smile, to draw the sting from my words.

“Printing a new foot, yes,” I say. “An experiment, I suppose.”

A gesture I would never have made before: I pull back on the chair, show her the exposed mechanical ankle and foot at the end of my prosthetic leg, my metal claw. Grotesque, uncouth. But Grimgrave’s seen worse from me.

Grimgrave grins. “Woah. Robot foot!”

“I suppose. Anyway, yes, I’m printing a new cover for it. That’s all.”

“Yeah, yeah, real cool.” Grimgrave nods, but she’s not all there, eyes darting up and elsewhere, teeth chewing at her bottom lip. Have I finally hurt her too badly? Does she know what I’m trying to conceal? She swallows, looks away, at the far side of the Big Room, half-back again, can’t meet my eyes. “Occy, hey, I was wondering, like.” Here it comes. “Would you be okay on your own, for like, I dunno, fifteen minutes?”

And there it is. A straw has shattered the camel’s back. A final insult, a last indignity, and now Grimgrave wants to slink off to be a kicked puppy in private.

Something. Undefined. An excuse. To get away from me for five minutes, away from my sour looks and filthy thoughts and dreary, dead-end eyes.

She takes my moment of guilt as confusion. Brightens a little.

“I mean like, hey, you could come with if you want!” she says. “No probs, serious. Just didn’t think you’d wanna, with your foot off an all. So like … you gonna be like … okay? On your own here, for a bit, I mean. I’m coming right back, really! I just gotta go … uh … Just don’t go anywhere, okay? You just stay here. Be safe, like?”

Oh.

How many times has she done this before? How many girls has she lost, the moment she turned her back?

A sigh — half-performance, half-relief, half for her and half for me. “Grimgrave.” No. “Grimmy. I’m not going to go hunting for more alcohol as soon as you take your eyes off me. And my heart is … well, I assume it’s healing properly now.”

Grimgrave’s awkward grimace turns to a proper grin. “Ahhhhhhhh, I’m just worried, you know! Sure you don’t wanna come with?”

“I’m sure. I’ll be fine right here. I’m going to keep an eye on the printer, in case anything fails partway through the process. And frankly, if you need to go take a shit, I’d rather not listen.”

“Haha!” Grimgrave bursts out laughing, punches me gently on the shoulder. “Alright, cool! Back in a bit, okay?”

“Okay.”

Grimgrave turns away as if to leave, then turns back, a sudden spark in her eyes; she darts over to the sofas, grabs a cushion, and places it on the table, near to me. Then she squats down, selects a baffled but excited zoog, and deposits the zoog on the cushion.

“There!” she announces. “Look after Occy for a bit, okay?”

The zoog — older, heavyset, I think female — lets out a raspy ‘yahhhhh’, then settles down on the cushion.

Grimgrave shoots me a grin, then finally turns to depart. She skips across the Big Room; I cannot help but note she is not heading toward the corridor full of bedrooms, but in the opposite direction. Half a dozen zoogs peel off to follow her, but she turns, squats down, says something in a low voice, pets a few of them behind the ears, so finally they shy away from her destination. Framed in the mouth of a concrete corridor, she looks back, catches my eye, waves.

“Back in a few, promise!” she shouts.

Raise a hand, wave her off, smile to absolve her of any guilt. And then Grimgrave is gone, swallowed up by Plato Base.

I’m not alone, however, as she promised. I am surrounded, if not by friends, then at least allies. Dozens of zoogs are scattered all over the domesticated corner, a formidable backup force. My table-zoog quickly slips into a light doze on her cushion, eyes open but heavy-lidded, head on her forepaws, watching me with disinterest. I reach over, show her my hand, receive no warning hiss or shuddering recoil; I stroke her head gently, scratch behind her ears. One rear paw shakes with pleasure. She lets out a raspy purr. But she can’t see my laptop screen, not from that angle.

With Grimgrave safely beyond sight, I reopen the web browser, restore the previous session, back to magibooru.

The most recent drawing is by an unmistakable hand. I click on the thumbnail, view full screen.

It’s me.

On the roof of Oxford Holton Hospital. Charging at the viewer, fist pulled back, loading a punch. Haloed in red-black light, the ghostly outline of armour flickering and guttering about my limbs and torso, head half-obscured by a semi-transparent mask of void-dark metal. My face wears an expression I’ve never seen in the mirror, iron-and-steel in my jaw and brow, molten rage behind widened eyes.

My aborted transformation, unrequited transcendent beauty, the moment I almost crossed that abyss.

A shiver goes up my spine, crawls across my scalp, settles heavy and leaden in my heart.

The artist has captured me precisely and completely. Not how I looked on a thousand phone cameras from ground level, fuzzy and distant, nor even in the high quality footage from Signal’s close-range skeletons. Art captures how it felt, how I felt. And I’m all there, the slit of my right eye, the exact jagged ruin of my scar, the exposed joints of my prosthetic hand. My hair whipping out behind me as I rush toward the viewpoint. Rage in my eyes, the hint of a mad laugh at the edges of my face. About to break into a cackle.

Nobody else has been included; a half-finished sketch in the foreground corner might be Grimgrave, ducking from the path of my charge, but that’s all, as if the rest of the melee was of no consequence. Sky behind me a roiling cauldron of storm, a tempest about to break over my shoulders, as if my punch heralds a maelstrom.

I’m beautiful in the picture, impossible in a mirror. This is not the Octavia who wept and wailed for three days, or masturbated herself into a heart attack. This is Octavia Carter astride the world.

Who sees me like this? Not truth, that’s for certain.

Quickly I confirm my suspicion; this piece is by the same artist who drew the illustration of me facing off with Scarlet Edge, outside Dream Control Oxford Headquarters. Same attention to detail. Same realism. Same me.

The artist tag is ‘4en4’.

Click the tag, only two uploads, this picture and that earlier one. I save both, just in case. Search for a source, but both images are direct uploads, not taken from a social media account or artist page. Self-uploaded, by an account on the site with the exact same name.

The drawing of me on the rooftop, charging at the camera, is too real, raw, and realistic to be pure imagination. The artist saw me with their own eyes, not through footage. Not Willow, I already ruled her out by instinct with the previous drawing. Grimgrave would not be able to hide something like this. Bright has no reason to adore me in this manner. Signal, it’s possible, but why hide it?

How about one of the trio?

Only one of them saw me like this, from this angle.

Magibooru has no user-to-user direct message function, no way to contact ‘4en4’ outside of comments beneath the picture itself. I create an account, name myself ‘OC’, should be obvious enough. Open the comment box beneath the newest illustration.

I dither over the exact wording. Is this too much, too obvious? Will she delete the images and purge her presence if she knows I’ve seen these?

“Absurd,” I whisper. “This is insane. It can’t be her. Can’t be.”

In the end I decide to keep it as simple as possible. An invitation to engage, easily dismissed as a non-sequitur if she would prefer not, or if it’s not her at all. Post new comment. Done.

‘Scarlet?’ That’s all.

I lean back, stare at the single-word comment beneath the picture, listen to the whirr of the 3D printer fans and the distant whisper of moon-wind against the exterior concrete of Plato Base.

Scarlet Edge — Francesca — won’t reply straight away, if at all, if I’m right.

Insane. Can’t be her. It’s the only answer, but it makes so little sense. She’s tried to kill me twice, first as ‘vermin’, then as some kind of mercy kill. Why would she draw me in such resplendent beauty, to capture the truth of what it feels like on the inside, all my rage, my scars, my truth. Because I left a purple bruise on her mouth, a permanent mark on her lips? Because I bit her in a way she cannot forget?

“I’m being silly,” I say firmly. The zoog on the table looks up at me. “I’m being silly,” I repeat to her. “I am. Really. It’s simply not possible, it—”

A familiar figure shuffles in through the front entrance of the Big Room.

Sallow face framed by half-shaved limp blonde hair, shoulders heavy, eyelids heavier. Baggy jeans, baggier black hoodie, stained and creased. Dirty topaz eyes smoulder like fires banked with dung.

Burning Bright stops after a few paces. Sways with effort, turns her head, neck joints creaking. She looks right at me, hate in her eyes.

“ … Bright?”

She gathers herself, takes several deep breaths, musters her powers. Bright still looks like a woman two paces from death’s door, skin waxen and sweaty, deep dark bags around her eyes, every footstep a herculean effort against the bonds of her failing body. She plods around the edge of the domesticated corner, laceless boots scuffing on concrete. Zoogs look up, back away, open their jaws in silent hisses. Burning Bright’s eyes never leave mine.

“Bright? Bright, what is it?”

Slowly, as if trying not to provoke an animal, I get to my feet; my right foot scrapes, bare metal on concrete. Put the chair between Bright and myself. She moves slowly too, but doesn’t stop now she’s gathered steam. Rolls her shoulders back, each breath inflating her chest, pulling her further upright with every inhalation.

Suddenly I’m painfully aware that I still have only one arm.

Bright reaches the table, swaying and sweating. She looks even worse than our first meeting. Eyes bloodshot, days of sleep deprivation or hours of weeping, narrowed tight with the effort of keeping them open. Breath rattles in her chest, snagged on webs of sticky mucus, clotted and congealed in her throat. Skin greasy, unwashed, reeking sour of body odour and medical antiseptic.

She needs help, not whatever aggression she’s trying to provoke. This woman desperately needs to be spoon-fed medicine and then tucked into bed. She needs eight hours of sleep and a big meal. She needs a soft pillow and warm blankets. I know, like I know that fire is hot or clear skies are blue, that she would melt like wax in my hands if I could find a way to provide her those comforts.

Though I wouldn’t get far into such an offer; she’d bite me in half before I could finish.

“Bright,” I say, very slowly. “Are you … okay?”

She rounds the corner of the table, steps past the chair. One hand on the edge, steadying herself. Croaks at me.

“Finally crawled out of your hole, have you?”

“Yes. I mean, no.” A sigh. “I mean, it doesn’t matter. I’m here, aren’t you? Are you—”

Burning Bright raises her right hand, makes a fist. Slow enough to dodge, weak enough to knock aside. But I don’t, because she’s so unwell, so ready to be undone, so I struggle to believe that she’s really going to hit me.

Her punch crashes into my left cheekbone like a cannonball.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Tip number 35 for surviving on the moon: don’t forget about the jealous dragon girl and don’t let her get too close. Elemental mistake, Octavia! Now you’re getting beaten up!

Ahem. Anyway! Hello everybody! Arc 4 rushes toward its own mid-point with all the shocking clarity of a sudden punch to the face. And it is almost the mid-point, because behind the scenes I’ve now confirmed 100% that it’s going to 8 chapters. Octavia is … well, she’s … struggling, a bit? More than a bit? She’s made peace with Grimgrave, sure, but now she’s got a new unhinged magical girl on her hands, and this one probably never had hinges in the first place. Let’s hope she can dunk Bright in some water before she transforms.

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

Subscribe on Patreon!

Right now my patrons have access to three chapters ahead! For the moment I’m going to try to keep it as three; in the future I hope to push this out to more.

And thank you, dear readers! I know I say this every week, but I seriously cannot thank you all enough; none of this storytelling would be possible without all of you, the audience. Maidens of the Fall is for you, and I’m delighted that you’re enjoying it. Thank you!

Next chapter, is it time for a fight?! I don’t think Octavia can put up much resistance right now, not without her arm. Oh dear.