Content Warnings
Animal cruelty (discussion of)
Dissociation
Suicidal ideation
Choking on food
Ableism
Fatphobia
Internalised homophobia
Nerys squares up, zoog-style.
Her jaw hinges wide with a silent needle-snout snarl, beads of ink-black ooze dripping down her teeth. Head dips low, eyes blown wide, glossy dark pebbles in her tar-slick face. Back arches high, tail stiff and straight, front paws flexing obsidian claws. Fur bristles, muscles tense, flappy ears standing tall.
She hisses at me, same way she hissed at Scarlet Edge.
Every zoog in the Big Room answers her rallying cry. They spring upright from comfy nests in the domesticated corner, peer around every angle of furniture they can find, scramble up onto the backs and arms and cushions of the sofas and chairs. Many more than I expected, as if called from hiding places in the mess. Four dozen zoogs open their little jaws and show their sharp little teeth, screeching and hissing and warbling, an undulating zoog war-song.
Nerys snaps her jaw shut with a gunshot clack, too loud for her tiny body.
I flinch. So do the zoogs; they cut the cheer, trailing off into little hisses, clawing at the sofa backs, naked teeth bared and waiting.
“Haaaaaaaa,” Nerys rasps in mockery of a laugh, narrows her black-chip eyes. “It’s been a while since this last happened. A while and a while, it really has. But I suppose this is a good day for a fight, isn’t it? Get it out of the way nice and early, get it off your chest, get yourself centred and correct. Yes? Haaaaaa.”
“Nerys—”
“Bright did this too. Did you know that? After I turned her into a magical girl, after I saved her from a slow, horrible, humiliating death, she fought me too. Not quite this quick, though. Bethany took a few days to sulk in her room, another few getting drunk and breaking things, mostly bits of herself. Only after all that did she have the clever idea of trying to break me. But you! Hahahahahaaaaaa!” Nerys bursts into laughter — double-voiced, a scritter-scrabble zoog cackle over a rich and womanly chortle. “Quick off the mark again, Octavia. I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect this from you, but perhaps I should have done. You continue to surprise, but can you keep doing that? I would like it if you did. I would like it so very much. Show me another surprise, Octavia.”
“Nerys,” I say. “Take me seriously.”
“Hnnnnnrrrk!” Nerys rasps. Her amusement vanishes. “You think I’m not taking you seriously? If you want a fight, then you’ve got a fight. I’m not running from you, I’m right here. Right here!” She stamps one oil-black zoog paw against the metal tabletop. “Reach out and take me! Do it or don’t!”
Deep breaths stoke the fireplace in my chest, but the tinder won’t take spark. Clean and simple anger won’t come easy against an animal less than one tenth of my body weight.
I was expecting Nerys to show her true face.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I’m challenging you as a Dream-God, not as a zoog. I will face the consequences of this, via my fists, but I’m not going to pick you up and sling you at a wall. Not in this form, not like this—”
“Huuuuuuuuuuuh!?” Nerys screeches. “Too good to use those fists on a zoog, are you?? Don’t want to dirty your knuckles on vermin, huh?”
“What? No! No, that’s not what I meant! Nerys, you’re a Dream-God! This isn’t a game, and I’m not playing. I don’t want—”
“I’m right here, Octavia. Take your best swing.”
“But you’re not—”
“You want to throw yourself away, after I gave you a second chance at life?” Nerys rasps. “Then do it. Throw yourself away.”
Signal’s nearest skeleton takes a half-step forward. “Nerys,” she says, flat robotic voice from the speakers. “You have made your point. There is no need to carry this further. We do not need this.”
“Octavia does,” Nerys rasps.
“No?” I say. “No, I don’t ‘need this’.”
“Hnnggh?”
“How do you still not understand?” I say. “I don’t have some perverse need for violence in the abstract. I’m not angry that you saved me, or resentful that you made me into a magical girl. I’m thankful! I’d be dead without you, Nerys, I know that. You saved my life, and I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to ‘beat you up’. I’m not doing whatever sick nonsense Grimgrave and Bright are doing. All I want is to know if my— if Willow is safe and … and … ” Can’t finish that sentence. “That’s the only reason I’m doing this. Help me, please! Or I … I have to go through you. And not like this.” I gesture at Nerys on the table, the extruded illusion of black ooze, the vulnerable zoog. “You’re a Dream-God, Nerys. I know you can fight me, you might even be able to win, I don’t know. Help me, or I will go through you.”
Nerys tilts her snout to one side. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It would make this easy.”
“ … w-what? I don’t—”
“Do you know how many zoogs it takes to overpower an adult human?” She flicks her snout the other way, indicating our audience of zoogs, waiting with their jaws open, their teeth ready, their eyes wide with adrenaline.
“I … I don’t … what are you suggesting?”
“Hnnnkkk,” Nerys rasps. “I told you before, but you weren’t listening, or maybe not thinking. I am only a small god. I am not pretending to be a zoog, I am a zoog. When me and mine are threatened, I will think like a zoog. Individually we are small and weak, easy prey for hounds and cats. In numbers we can devour the world.”
I boggle at her. “You’re going to rush me with four dozen zoogs? To protect yourself? But you’re a Dream-God.”
“To protect you, fool!” Nerys snaps. “I’m not the one being threatened, you are!”
“I— I don’t—”
“It is the only field in which zoogs truly excel. Dying, messily and easily, in great untold numbers.” Nerys’ voice turns bitter, a gurgle of deep hate, matched by the human voice, a woman melancholy with old loss. “You’re trying to throw your life away. For what? For a friend, for a warren-mate, mated for life. Fine, fine, that I understand well enough. But you’re not ripping her from the hunter’s jaws, are you? You just want a little peek, and that will cost you everything.” She stamps a paw again, claws clicking against metal. “I have put myself in your way. If you want to destroy yourself, you can destroy me first, can’t you? Wring my neck. Break my bones. Pull out my organs. Dash my body against the floor. Every zoog in Plato Base will come running to my side. In case you’ve forgotten, you aren’t human anymore, you’re a magical girl. Zoogs are only mortal. You can kill them all. Do that, and then you can leave, because you won’t be one of us after all.”
Cold sweat all down my back, under my armpits, on my scalp. Mouth gone dry as powdered bone. Pulse pounding in my skull.
“You’re not serious.”
“I told you I care, Octavia,” Nerys rasps. “If you want to throw yourself away, you must throw me away first. And I’m only small. Snapping my neck will take only a moment. I’m so easy to toss aside, aren’t I?”
For Willow I will wade into the most rancid depths of the dream, waist-deep in rotten corpses on black seas of infinity, to fight a carrion-god of inhuman desire, armed with nothing but my prosthetic fist and the flame in my heart. For Willow I would fight every magical girl brave enough to put herself in my path, no matter how intimidating, how righteous, how flush with fire and fury. For Willow I could kill again, ten times over without hesitation, Dream Control or Section Special or any other flavour of police officer, anybody who tries to keep us apart.
But will I kill a zoog?
Single one out among the fuzzy faces and toothy snouts. That one, perched on the end of the nearest sofa, claws dimpling the fabric, jaw hanging open, beady black eyes staring wide. A little heavier than average, flanks saggy with loose skin, fur patchy along the spine, snout and face tufty with age. Male or female, I cannot tell; I always thought zoog females were larger, but perhaps that was another English lie.
Why this particular zoog, no different to any other? Random chance, pure accident. Like me in the shelter, collateral damage.
Could I pick up that zoog and break its neck, for Willow? Could I dash its brains out against the wall, for Willow? Could I bear to feel it warm and wriggling and screaming in my grip, knowing that I am about to murder it, for Willow? Could I hunt it with horse and hound, like they used to do with foxes, but now they do with zoogs? Could I set the traps and watch it struggle against the snare around its neck? Could I fill in the burrow-mouths and plant the aluminium phosphide tablets to gas a warren? For Willow?
Because that’s what they do down in England. The hunt, the trap, the gas. And not just for zoogs. Everything that comes from the Dreamlands finds no peace on English soil. With zoogs the public is an easy sale; nasty, dirty, ugly pests, might hurt your children, infesting our woodlands, ruining our once picture-perfect hedgerow and meadow and heathland and moor. A blight on Britannia’s pretty face. With ghouls it’s even easier, eaters of the dead so rarely seen. But for ghouls they never show the aftermath. Shaped too much like us, too much like a massacre. They use the army for ghouls.
I’ve seen so many dead zoogs, like everyone else in England. Left to rot by the side of the road, thrown in with the rubbish they scavenge for. Torn apart by dogs, devoured by cats, dried out by thirst in steel-wire snare traps. Hit by cars, kicked by horses, shovelled up by the dozen. Dreamland vermin, the acceptable target. All my life I’ve accepted it as the way of the world, the way things are, because zoogs are weird and dirty and offensive and dangerous.
Could I do that? Not to the abstract notion of zoogs in general, but to that one specific zoog, on the end of the sofa back?
It is the most disgusting thought I’ve ever had.
I unclench my fist and lower my hand.
Something in me, tight and tense my whole life, lets go as my fingers uncurl. I will kill to save my own life, and I would kill the world to save Willow’s, but I won’t massacre a passel of zoogs for no good reason. That’s what England has tried to do to me; I am a cripple and freak, broken in more ways than I will ever understand, and I will not kill the lost and the rejected. Akin to killing myself. Not even for—
For Willow?
Soft brown eyes shine in her perfect face. Are they swollen shut with bruises? The rose-like stems of her arms and legs, slender and elegant. Are they burned, bleeding, wrapped in bandages? Her voice soft as a gossamer bell, is it broken and cracked with pain? Does Willow cry out for me, unknowing that I’m as far from her as I’ve ever been, as I ever can be?
Willow’s face glows so bright in my mind’s eye, like she’s right in front of me. The only beacon I’ve ever known.
You’d do anything for me. Wouldn’t you, Octavia?
Won’t you?
Won’t I?
Won’t—
My fist remakes itself.
Phantom pain shoots down my arm, prosthetic fingers out of sync with the memory of my flesh. My eyes drag back to Nerys, scraping across the concrete. My heart goes hard and cold, shuttered against weakness. For Willow, anything, yes? For Willow, murder. For Willow, for my own English rose, scour the life of the Dreamlands clean from my conscience. For Willow, myself. For Willow, suicide.
Nerys tilts her snout in surprise. That makes two of us.
“I need … ” I hiss, but I almost can’t speak, throat thick with the threat of tears. “I need to see Willow. No matter … no matter what … I … ”
You’d do anything to get back to me, wouldn’t you, Octavia? You would never abandon me, I know that, because our hearts beat the same. You have to come back to me, back to my side.
“I … I don’t … Willow, no … ”
Anger was so clean and bright, pure clarity. All those years of doubt and shame fell away like shed skin, my actions raw and real beneath the lies. Anger made me free. Anger made me.
But this is the opposite. Cold, inevitable, drowning. A slug clings to my spine, wet and sticky and nauseating, crawling up into my brain.
When I raise my fist, it doesn’t feel like me. Stare down at Nerys. Nod my head. Prepare for an end.
If I don’t do this, then I don’t love Willow.
Nerys grins, dripping dark.
The zoog-god turns two-in-one, images overlaid on each other. An oil-black zoog is crouched on the breakfast table, and a towering carrion goddess cranes low from a blackened sky, tarry waves lapping at her ankles. The woman opens a hand, full of razor claws, inviting my first strike. The zoog opens her jaws and hisses at the top of her tiny lungs; the chorus rejoins her, her followers so ready to be slain.
I’m already a murderer. No salvation lies over the line I’ve crossed. But if I can only return to Willow, to be at her side, all will be forgiven.
Though, I don’t know why, but I’m almost weeping.
“I’m sorry—”
For Willow.
“Stop!”
Signal’s simulated voice squawks at near-maximum volume. The zoog-chorus cuts out, some tumbling onto the sofa cushions, claws scrabbling back, tails winding around each other. Nerys hesitates too, glossy black eyes swivelling aside.
Signal is up on her feet, standing by her plush computer chair. She’s stepped into her big black boots, matching her hoodie and headphones, the arm-mounted computer wired into both. Her eyes are unfocused, pointed off somewhere to my left. The five skeletons have retreated toward her, formed a loose cordon, facing outward.
The rib-screens all show the same emote.
໒( ⇀ ‸ ↼ )७
Signal’s fingers fly across the arm-mounted keyboard.
“Both of you stop right there, right now,” her speakers say, voice fully robotic. “Octavia, lower that fist, step back. Nerys, I really expected better of you. I understand what you were doing a moment ago, but that is enough. Both of you can back off this nonsense, right this instant.”
“This is none of your business,” I say.
“Wrong.”
“I don’t deserve—” Bite off the rest, voice trembling too hard. “I have to— I have to see Willow. I have to get back to her side. I have to! I don’t— I don’t care what it takes from me, I don’t—”
Signal sighs, static in her speakers. Her voice bounces up, robot-tone vanishing with a sing-song lilt.
“Oh, you’re so much further gone than I thought, lass,” she says. “I didn’t want to do this, but you’ve forced my hand. Show time. Don’t bite your tongue, hey?”
She grabs the wire that leads into her headphones. Yanks it hard. Rips it free.
A silent sphere of swirling static swallows Signal whole. An omnidirectional television screen, tuned to a dead channel. Her skeletons too, all five blotted out by visual interference. The static grabs my eyes, won’t let me look away, hijacks my optic nerve; an abyss of infinite meaning, where everything is possible and nothing is true, the electromagnetic spectrum brimming over with pattern-ghosts.
The static flickers, gutters like streetlights in a power-cut — a signal, cutting through the chaos. A silhouette stands amid the tumult, a naked girl with sagging belly and heavy thighs and head slumped forward, a doll with severed strings. Every flicker changes her, a stop-motion transformation; she flowers with lace and frills, plated in fluted steel, armed with an axe slung over her shoulders, helmeted with naked skull and a visor of pure mirrored silver. She straightens up, smooth and light as carbon fibre and aerogel, aloft on wings of pure gravity.
Static clears with a gut-shaking electric thunk, like the degaussing of an antique CRT television.
A woman surfaces from the noise.
Pressure assaults the inside of my skull for one dizzying split-second before my soul catches up. I have no idea who I’m looking at, nor why she is surrounded by five bodyguards. But then the pressure equalises with a wince-inducing cranial crack, because I accepted Nerys’ deal, and I’m not normal anymore.
The Locus of Lost Signals, magical girl, transformed.
Her physique is about the same. Overweight beneath her clothes, dark-skinned and heavyset. But nothing else remains.
Cheeks and chin painted with a rictus grin, the face of a skull in silver dye. Eyes hidden behind a flat visor, a strip of LCD screen glowing with argent light. Hair a stuttering wave of semi-static shining grey, crowned by a garland of black wires. Ears like those of a bat, chrome-plated ridged cups each the size of my hand. Her dress is impossibly intricate, a silver-black filigree flush from throat to fingertips to toes, layered like a jellyfish of tissue-thin metal, inlaid with a pattern of a billion twists and turns, fluttering circuitry forming lace and frills so complex that the eye can’t find purchase on her outline.
No shoes; she doesn’t need them, floating three feet off the ground. Legs crossed at the ankles, head raised high, LCD visor up and out.
An electric guitar hangs from a strap around her shoulders, a beast of an instrument plugged directly into the folds of her mechanical dress. Silver-black bodywork glimmers in burnished chrome and shining steel, curved like the shell of an extinct giant cephalopod. Layers of RGB lighting glow through the metal as if from the translucent body of a deep-sea mollusc. The strings are light as living moonlight.
Her skeletons have transformed too; because of course, they’re part of her body. Plated head-to-toe with matte black metal, sealed up inside light-drinking armour, every scrap of attention turned away, left for Signal’s gleaming core.
The performer on her personal stage, behind a wall of faceless bodyguards.
Nerys is suddenly just a zoog again. “Signal—”
Signal punches her knuckles across the strings of her guitar, fist gloved in the silver-black of her metal dress, strumming like she’s trying to break her wrist.
A single perfect chord — so low, so deep, so harsh and hard — shakes my bowels, vibrates my eyeballs, turns my muscles to jelly.
All the zoogs break and run, leaping from the sofas, diving into the debris of the domesticated corner, wriggling out the other side, fleeing down the concrete corridors of Plato Base. Signal lets the chord play out, head held high, as if politely waiting for the innocent to depart.
“Signal!” Nerys screeches again. “Sig—”
Signal opens her mouth — her flesh-and-blood-mouth, framed by skull’s teeth in silver paint — and rumbles forth a deep and guttural death-metal growl.
Impossibly loud, the sound grabs me by the brainstem, shakes me until my thoughts come loose. I clamp my hands over my ears, fist forgotten. But mere flesh and bone won’t stop those vocals; Signal’s voice penetrates my soul, makes my eyes water and my teeth chatter and my skin break out in fresh-hot sweat. She punches the strings again, once, twice, three times. Her growl rises into a howl, then crashes back down, trailing off as a long tail of vocal fry.
The flat silver of her LCD visor changes to an emote:
(⋆ˆ ³ ˆ)♥
Silence will never be the same. A buzz lurks behind all quiet, even when I take my hands away from my ears. Blinking away tears, panting for breath, clenching up so I don’t shiver. Nerys shakes herself, fur bristling, lips peeled back in a grimace.
“Signal,” she rasps. “Huuurrrrk. That wasn’t necessary, was it? I wouldn’t really have hurt Octavia. You know I wouldn’t have done that.”
Signal raises her right fist to strum again. I clamp my hands back over my ears.
“Don’t answer in song, please!” Nerys snaps. “Please.”
Signal lowers her hand; I remove mine. Her fingers tap at the strings, sounding out muted, cut-off notes.
“Aye, true enough,” her voice comes from one of the skeletons, from inside the matte black armour, bouncy as ever. “But she would have hurt you.”
“Hnnnnghhhh,” Nerys grumbles. “Really now? So little faith, Signal.”
I’m speechless and shamed, face flush with awe. Can’t find the words, because Signal is correct.
“You’re both being awful,” Signal goes on, tapping her strings, her lips unmoving and without expression. She floats a few inches higher, as if rising on a platform behind her armoured skeletons. “Nerys, you’ve made your point, it’s time to back down. And Octavia, you’re not going back to Earth before you’re ready, lass. We are not losing any more girls, and I’m using violence to enforce it this time. I’d rather have you sad and alive than happily dead. I think we all agree on that. We do believe in freedom, but I’m taking this choice away from you. I’m sorry.”
Signal’s death-metal interruption has broken the trance of cold inevitability, hauled me from the choking waters, saved me from drowning. My fist, my limbs, my will, all belong to me again.
Willow’s voice no longer whispers in my ears.
“Octavia?” — but it’s only Signal.
“S-sorry, I … I … didn’t … I didn’t expect … ”
“This?” Signal flicks a string on her monster guitar, a single note deep and solid, vibrating in my gut. “Nobody ever does. You see a programmer and you think that’s all she is. But music is maths, and maths is music. Can you out-math me, lass? I don’t think you can, maybe check back in ten years. Now, no more fighting. That means you too, Nerys.”
Nerys rasps a little zoog-chuckle. “As you say, Signal.”
“Wha-what?” I murmur. “She can order you to stop, just like that?”
Nerys tilts her head, looks up at me; her expression is hard to read, covered in dripping dark oil, but I think it’s no hard feelings. “Signal’s been around long enough to surpass me,” she rasps. “You, Octavia, I could bat you around a bit, we could have some fun. But Signal takes things too seriously.”
“As if there’s anything wrong with that,” Signal says. “Octavia, are we good now? Are you going to step back, settle down, be good?”
I turn to face Signal, and raise my prosthetic fist.
“No,” I say, panting, shaking, almost laughing with relief. “No! You’re going to teach me to translocate. We’re going to fight, and … and … ”
Signal has saved me, and she doesn’t even know it. Nerys would not have let me hurt her, not really, but I was ready to wring her neck and kill as many zoogs as I needed. I would have thrown myself away, as surely as cutting my own throat. And for what? For Willow? No, as Nerys pointed out. Just to glimpse Willow’s face. I have never been more disgusted by myself.
Signal tuts. Her real lips don’t move. “Give it up, lass! You’re worse than Bright, you don’t know when to stop.”
“We’re going to fight!” I almost shout. “You have to finish what you started! You have to stop … stop me … ”
Signal strums a single string; her five skeletons step aside, fanning out.
The emote changes on her goggles: (ノ﹏ヽ)
“Lass, I won’t have to use more than one finger,” she says. “My voice alone would be enough to put you on your arse for a month. Look, I really don’t want to. Grimgrave isn’t the only one who would rather be your friend. Please, Octavia, just give it up. Don’t make us throw you in a room and lock the door. We’re trying to stop you dying!”
Can I take five moon-skeletons, through that iron-like armour, while Signal sings my brains into mush?
Of course I can’t. Still don’t know how to throw a proper punch. Eyes all hot and wet, left knee gone weak, guts quivering like I’m about to vomit. But I don’t care. Getting beaten up by moon-skeletons and deafened by magical girl death metal is infinitely preferable to the serious and sombre contemplation of cold-blooded murder. Signal needs to knock me out. Purge me of this filth. Make me clean again.
I plant my feet on the solid concrete of Plato Base, to put myself between the cold slug in the back of my skull and the me I would rather be.
But I can’t explain any of that to Signal; I can barely explain it to myself.
“I need to see Willow,” I hiss. “That’s it, the only thing that matters, the bottom line. I need to know that she’s—” I’m going to cry, and I don’t know if it’s frustration or relief or joy or horror or self-disgust; I don’t know how much of this is the truth or what part of me is speaking anymore. “Signal! I need to know that my best friend isn’t … dead! Do you understand that? Do you have friends? Because if she is dead, then it’s Patience’s fault. Your fault. All of you. And I’m going to come undone if I don’t know!”
My voice rises into a shout, then fades away, lost to the panting and the thickness in my throat.
One step forward. Then another. Raise my fist. Hit me, Signal! Hit me! Hit me!
“Wait!” Signal says.
“Yes?” Please!
Signal sighs though a skeleton. Her ‘core’ floats in mid-air, silver-black dress serene as a cyborg jellyfish, fingers tapping at the strings of her guitar. “We could … compromise.”
Her visor emote changes: ┐(~ー~;)┌
“Signalllll,” Nerys rasps.
“Oh, you be quiet!” Signal snaps. “This is your bloody fault too, Nerys. You could have stopped Grimmy’s bullshit with that bomb any time you wanted. You could have at least told us. You got poor Octavia here out of that mess, sure, but you also got her into it in the first place. Look at her! She’ll batter herself to pieces over this girl. It’s like we’ve caged a deer.”
I nod. “I will. I will. For Willow. But … compromise?”
“Compromise, yes. Nice word, isn’t it? Look. Okay. If we wait for Bright and Grimmy to get back from their little scrap, we could hash something out between us.”
“Something? What kind of ‘something’? I need more than an empty promise. And not ‘something’ that’s going to take weeks. Not even days. Today. Now!”
“Mmhmm,” Signal murmurs. “I understand. We’ve all been there, one way or another, you know?”
“Been where?”
“Sick to the heart over a girl,” Signal says, then sighs again. “Though maybe not as wild. Nerys really should have accounted for this.”
“No!” I snap. “I already said, I’m not like you, I’m not a—”
“Yes, yes, never mind that for now. Listen, okay? If you agree to sit down and not start any more fights, then I’ll talk to Bright and Grimmy, and we’ll come up with something, together, all of us, as a team. We’ll make a proper plan, with contingencies and agreements and mission control, not just one magical girl hurling herself into danger. It doesn’t work like in the cartoons, you know? You do realise that, yes?”
“I … I know that, but Willow—”
“Would this Willow of yours want you to die trying to reach her? When she’s not even in mortal danger, as far as we can tell?”
“N-no, of course not—”
“Then how are we — me or Nerys, that is — supposed to face her if we let you get killed trying to abduct her from a hospital bed? If you’re determined enough to kill yourself just to hold her hand again, then fine, we’ll work something out. Perhaps we can make this our big debut thing, today. We could attack the hospital, stage a distraction, maybe try to exfiltrate your friend. Maybe we make this our big public splash, saving a girl from the clutches of Dream Control. How does that sound?”
“You’re not just saying this?” I shake my head. “This sounds too good to be true, that’s how it sounds.”
Signal sighs. The silver-black lace-layers of her dress float and flutter, as if she just shrugged, but I didn’t see her body move. “You’re one of us now, lass. Maybe that doesn’t mean as much as it used to, but it still matters to me. You don’t get it yet, but you will one day, if you stick around. If you really care about this girl, so much that you’d batter yourself to pieces just to know she’s safe, then what right have we got to deny you that? But let us help. Let us do it right.”
Slowly, I lower my fist. Still shaking. Coated in sweat. I sniff once, loudly. Wipe away the threat of tears.
“You promise?”
“Promise. I’ll do my best. If you let us help.”
“What about Bright?” I ask. “She doesn’t seem like the helpful type.”
Signal strums three strings on her guitar, gently, softly. The sound makes my eyelids heavy. “Bright can be coaxed with the prospect of a duel against Scarlet Edge. Or perhaps other ways. Leave that part to me. Now, will you be a good girl?”
Spent my whole life pretending to be a good girl. Here’s where the lie got me — a magical girl terrorist, stuck on the moon.
Signal could be lying, telling me what I want to hear. Delaying until Bright and Grimgrave get back so the three of them can clap me in irons and toss me in a dungeon. But I doubt that, so I’ll play along, and keep an eye out for another way back to Willow. Because the alternative is too disgusting, even for a murderer.
Deep breath, exhale slow. Flex my prosthetic fingers, work out the muscle kinks deep in my stump. Close my eyes, count to five, then up to ten.
Open my eyes again; Signal’s still there, floating amid silver frills. Clasp my hands before me. A sensible young woman.
“No,” I say. “I won’t be a good girl, certainly not for you. But I will compromise. Thank you.”
“Good enough,” says Signal.
The Locus of Lost Signals ends her magical girl transformation with a flicker of static, a split-second of visual interference on a television screen. Silver-black dress, screen-goggles, bat-like ears, monster guitar, all of it vanishes, along with the matte black armour on her five skeletons.
Signal’s core thumps down onto her feet, staring straight ahead, dead-fish eyes and messy hair.
She steps out of her big black boots and settles back down in her computer chair, fingers already flickering across the keyboards. Her skeletons fan out, two staying at her side, two moving toward the entrance to the Big Room, and one ambling back to the table.
That’s it? I’m coated with cold sweat, flushed with stress hormones, and struggling to process what I almost did. And Signal goes straight back to her screens?
Nerys waddles to the edge of the table and peers down, claws clutching the lip.
“Nerys?” I say. “Do you need … ”
“Mmnnnhhh,” she rasps.
Nerys looks up as I hold out my arms; we both pause, but I don’t know what to say, because I don’t know why I’m doing this. Nerys shows her teeth in that zoog zipper-smile, nods her snout, and reaches out with oil-coated paws. She lets me pick her up, both arms beneath her weight. She doesn’t feel the slightest bit slimy; the black ooze that coats her body is merely an oily medium from which she is extruded, phantasmal nothingness from the dream. Beneath is a mass of scratchy old fur, the high body temperature of a zoog, little claws clutching at my coat sleeves.
Hug her to my chest, lower her to the ground, gently let her go. Nerys slithers from my arms and pads across the concrete, waggling her fuzzy backside, dragging her tail.
“Thanks much, Octavia,” she rasps.
“You’re … welcome, yes. Where are you going?”
Nerys looks back over her shoulder, snout to one side. “To let the family know the fireworks have stopped. Even zoogs get lost in these halls, if they wander too far.”
“Ah. Right. Yes.” Nerys turns away again, but— “Do they have names?”
“Hrrrhng?”
“The zoogs. Do they have names? Do they name themselves, or get named by each other?”
Nerys tilts her snout aside again, looking back at me with one eye. “Humans can’t pronounce zoog names. Your throats aren’t shaped right.”
“So they do have names, then? The zoog on the very end of this sofa, on the left, when we were … arguing.” I point at the spot in question. “What’s their name?”
“Huuunnnggg?” Nerys looks up at the point I indicate, then lets out a sequence of clicks and hisses — sounds a bit like ‘psssh-hiii-pok-cak’.
I sigh; no way I can pronounce that. “Fair enough. Thank you anyway. Tell them I’m … I’m sorry. The zoogs, I mean.”
Nerys smiles, thin and knowing, then turns away and trundles off, dragging her tail across the floor. She vanishes into the nearest concrete corridor of Plato Base, chased by the whisper of moon-wind from beyond the walls.
Signal has parked her skeleton at a polite distance, an unreadable emote on one of the rib-screens: ( 〃．．)
Return to my seat, sit back down, smooth my skirt across my thighs. Pour myself another cup of coffee; it’s gone lukewarm, but the taste is still rich and strong. The zoogs left their cartoons playing on the telly, sound turned down to a distant burble.
I take a moment to examine myself with great care, searching for that cold slug on my spine. The most disgusting thought I’ve ever entertained — killing zoogs. But I can’t find that determination again, can’t imagine the part of me that raised my fist a second time.
“Octavia?” says Signal, through her skeleton-speakers, still too bubbly for my liking. “You must have so many questions, lass. I’m still here to talk, if you want.”
“There’s only one question I want answered, thank you,” I say. “How to translocate.”
Sip my coffee, slow and deliberate.
Her emote changes: ༼ ﹏ ༽
Not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
“Fair enough,” Signal says. “Do you mind if I ask you a question instead?”
“If you sit that skeleton down, you’re very welcome to do so. I don’t like the way it— the way you tower over me.”
Signal sits the skeleton back down at the table, two places away from me. Skull faces straight forward. Rubberised hands rest on the tabletop.
“This friend of yours,” the speakers say, Signal’s fingers tapping at the keyboard on the other side of the domesticated corner. “Willow Finch. I understand you’re concerned about her, you care about her, she’s important to you, and so on. I’m not questioning any of that. But you’re so fixated on her, it seems … well. I just want to ask, who is she to you?”
Signal says it so gentle, voice growing warm and motherly again. But it’s no different to Grimgrave’s mockery.
“Willow Finch is my best friend,” I say. “My only friend.”
Signal waits, but I refuse.
“And that’s all?”
Sip my cold coffee. Raise my chin. “Yes.”
(´◡`)
“Look, Octavia, I’m not being weird, I’m not teasing you, I’m not trying to offend you, I just want you to know. It’s okay. We all understand, up here. Even Bright, believe it or not. There’s no Dream Control on Luna, no Emotional Health and Hygiene nurses, no censorship, no nothing. You don’t have to hide anything about yourself. Do you understand?”
I pick a lens on the sitting skeleton. “Willow Finch is my best and only friend.”
Emote changes again: (º～º)
“Well,” she says. “Close friends are good to have.”
We lapse into silence. Moon-wind picks up against the outer walls of Plato Base, ghostly voices moaning against cold concrete skin. I sip my coffee. Try not to care that Signal has labelled me.
Zoogs drift back in ones and twos, little groups peering from the corridor, nosing their way into the debris of the domesticated corner. They freeze at the sight of myself and Signal, but then relax and carry on when we stay silent. After a few minutes I spot the one slightly older zoog that I asked about — ‘psssh-hiii-pok-cak’ — creeping back in, flanked by two companions.
I load up my breakfast plate with several slices of bacon and carry it over to the domesticated corner. All the zoogs freeze at the sight of me; a few jaws open in silent hisses. I freeze too, because they’re right to be afraid of me. All those beady black eyes watch to see if I’m a violent monster.
“Oh, lass,” Signal tuts. “I already told you, they’re perfectly well-fed. You don’t need to treat them to table scraps.”
“I’ll treat them to whatever I like, thank you.”
I put the plate down on the floor at a nice safe distance. I don’t stick around, don’t try to lure them close, don’t push my luck and assume I can pet one — not that I would. I doubt any of these zoogs have ever seen the inside of a bathtub. But I do make eye contact with ‘psssh-hiii-pok-cak’. Point at the plate. Then turn and leave. Zoogs don’t need me leering over their meal. I don’t even care if they like me, just that they understand.
By the time I sit back at the table, they’re happily munching away, tearing at the bacon.
Signal sighs. “You’ll spoil them, you know?”
“I have a question about Plato Base,” I say, settling back in the chair. “Grimgrave implied it wasn’t safe here. Was she telling the truth or just … being Grimgrave?”
Signal lets out a soft chuckle, warm and bubbly. “Ahhhh, well, a bit of both? That’s a simple question with a complex answer.”
“Then I would like the complex answer,” I say. “Please. If we’re going to rescue Willow from Dream Control, that means bringing her back here, yes? I need her to be safe, so I would appreciate a better understanding of this place.”
“So would I, lass. So would I.”
Roll my eyes. Not the answer I needed.
“How does a building like this even exist, up here on the moon?” I gesture at the Big room, the concrete-masked-as-marble, the designs on the walls, the illustrations, the rainbow splashes, all of it. “The sheer amount of concrete, the process of constructing a place like this, it’s beyond anything that was brought up here in any moon landing. How far does it extend underground, and back into the mountains? Was it dug out, or was this some kind of cave? How is any of this possible?”
Signal stays silent for a moment; her speakers wake with a click, like a wet tongue against the roof of her mouth. When she speaks, she’s more robotic than before. “Plato Base goes deeper than we know. We have mapped most of the top three floors, all the way to the back, underneath the bulk of the mountain. It is dark and weird and disused back there, but these top floors are safe enough. The true underground levels, not so much. There is a lot of weird stuff down there, places we have not explored. I would not recommend going down there alone. Not even as a magical girl.”
“And that’s why it’s dangerous?”
“Not precisely. You are forgetting that the entire moon is a Dreamland overlap. Moon critters steer clear of Plato Base. Other things can pass at will.”
“Other things? Signal, I already requested you not treat me like a child.”
“Dreamers.”
“Oh.”
Signal’s skeleton turns, raises a hand, points at the wall — at the ruined dresses hanging against the painted concrete, as if on display. “Plato Base has been home to many more magical girls than are still with us. Not all of them died fighting. Some of them walked into the Dream. Sometimes they come back to the places they knew in mortal life. But they are not magical girls anymore. Grimgrave told you to run if you see one. Correct?”
“ … yes. Yes, she did. She didn’t explain that properly, but … yes.”
“I echo that advice.”
“I suppose we won’t be bringing Willow up here, then.”
Signal chuckles softly. Her robotic tone smooths out, more motherly again. A new emote appears on a rib-screen.
¯\_(シ)_/¯
“Probably not, though I’m making it sound worse than it is” she says. “In the whole time I’ve been with Nerys, those who’ve left us have only returned five times, and there was no violence. It’s just … precaution. You can never tell with a Dreamer. They’re not us anymore. But, regarding your friend, it’s not safe for any unprotected human in an overlap. Either she’ll need to become a magical girl as well — which is unlikely, Nerys doesn’t pick just anybody — or we’ll need to stash her somewhere else. Don’t worry, I’m already making plans. We’ve got contacts in England and elsewhere, among the Opposition and others, occults on our side, that sort of thing. We’ll find a place for her, no problem.”
The Opposition; that’s even worse than dragging Willow up here to the moon. Making her a mundane terrorist, hiding out in the highlands or Wales or the concrete jungles of the North. Or send her to be terrified by some occultist freak leering over a bubbling cauldron? She’d end up stripped for parts, organs extracted, dumped in a bathtub full of ice cubes.
Perhaps rescue via magical girls is not on the menu after all.
“Octavia?” Signal says. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” I nod. “Of course. You … you, uh, didn’t answer my other question, though. How was this place built? Plato Base seems impossible.”
Signal pauses. The skeleton’s head turns toward me, lenses glinting inside fleshless sockets.
“Nerys didn’t tell you?”
I shrug. “Obviously not? If I’m asking you?”
Signal laughs. “Oh, Octavia. You’re a spicy kitty once you get comfy, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me!? Spicy what?!”
“Never mind.”
“No, not ‘never mind’! Don’t you call me that, don’t you dare, you—”
“Plato Base has a somewhat chequered past, you see.”
“And don’t change the subject.” I slap the table with my left hand. “Signal—”
“It started life as a Nazi moon base.”
Moon-wind murmurs and mutters against the outer walls. Zoog claws tap on concrete. Zoog jaws munch on bacon.
“ … I’m sorry? How is that— No, that’s nonsense. You’re having me on, and it’s not funny. The Nazis never went to the moon.”
“Not with a rocket, they didn’t. And not during the war, not exactly.” I must be boggling at her. Signal laughs. “Look, Octavia, I don’t have all the details. Believe it or not, I’m not eighty years old, I wasn’t there. You want the short version?”
“Any version would be better than a ‘Nazi moon base’. Explain, please.”
( ´∀｀)b
“During the Second World War, the Nazis had some kind of occult organisation. I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head. That part is all in the mundane history books, even Pre-Harding. Anyway, it was mostly nonsense, but there was a small handful of real occultists hidden among all the other monsters, along with precisely two Dreamers. Again, Pre-Harding, so they were all totally under the radar, nobody could remember when they bent reality, all that kind of thing. When the Nazis lost the war, the Dreamers fled into the Dream. They took the occultists with them, along with a few hundred others, soldiers and whatnot. They went as far as they could from Earth, up here to the moon, and built this structure. They didn’t call it Plato Base, of course.”
“You’re serious. You really are.”
“Totally, lass. They lasted five years up here, going mad in the Dreamlands, stewing in all their race shit, plotting some kind of glorious return to the waking world. They started kidnapping Moon Beasts for some bullshit Nazi reasons. Eventually there was an alliance to destroy them — about a dozen Dreamers, the old type, from deep in the dream, along with just about every Dreamland species that can think and talk. Nightgaunts, ghouls, gugs, things that used to be human. Zoogs and cats put aside their feud for a while.” Signal lowers her voice to a whisper. “There were even cats from Saturn, but don’t mention that in front of the zoogs, it’s a sore point for them.”
I nod. “And what happened?”
Signal raises her voice back to normal. “Nazis died, corpses eaten by ghouls. What else? Look, if you want all the details, ask Nerys. She was there. It’s why Plato Base belongs to her now. None of the other allies really wanted it.”
Nod. Numb. Sip my coffee. Don’t know what to say.
“What about the rest of the moon?” I ask. “Is it safe out there?”
“We haven’t explored,” Signal says firmly. “And I would ask that you don’t.”
“Ah? Why not? Not that I want to.”
Signal laughs softly. “Because we don’t belong here. Nerys ‘owns’ Plato Base, as much as she can be said to own anything, but beyond that? Luna belongs to the Moon Beasts. It’s their land, we’re just guests. We stay out of their way, and they don’t come near us.”
I glance at the big glass tank with the dead Moon Beast floating inside. “What about ‘Gregory’?”
Signal sighs, heavy and full of static. “Long story.”
I nod, shrug, let it go. “Still … Nazi moon base? I can’t believe it.”
“Kinda shocking, yeah,” says Signal. “But it’s one of the things that convinced me to trust Nerys, back in the early days, when it was me and her and … a couple of those we’ve lost since. Nerys plays games with your head, but her heart’s in the right … place … ah.”
Signal tails off. Our shared silence is broken by the crackle of an approaching bonfire.
Burning Bright, dragon girl, stomps out of a nearby corridor.
Tight-eyed and sour-faced, scaled tail dragging behind her, clawed feet clicking on concrete. Eyes like infra-red searchlights flick over the Big Room, ignoring Signal and me. She snorts a huff of dark red smoke, rolls her shoulders, stomps over to the table.
I resist the urge to leap to my feet, deny her the satisfaction. Keep my hands where she can see them, out on the table, give her no excuse. Signal turns the skeleton’s head to face her.
Bright stops, radiating heat like a furnace, reeking of smoke and superheated metal, scaled skin rippling with ropes of dense muscle.
“She been through here?” Bright grunts.
How she talks through a mouthful of fangs, I have no idea.
“We haven’t seen Grimmy,” Signal says. “She hasn’t been this way.”
I shake my head. Keep my mouth shut.
Bright sighs, red smoke trailing from between clenched teeth. She flexes the claws of one hand, fingering a series of shallow dents in the scales down her front — bullet marks from Grimgrave’s gun?
“Fuck it,” she grunts — and ends her transformation.
Burning Bright’s dragon-form collapses like a flame snuffed out. Her scales, her fire-mane, her claws and tail and iron-red layers all turn to a coating of grey ash, then blow away, as if never there.
Bright — dressed in trenchcoat, baggy trousers, dirty tanktop — rakes her lank blonde hair out of her face. She clears her throat, grunts and winces, tries again and fails, something thick and sticky stuck on her breath. She digs a crumpled handkerchief from a coat pocket, then hacks and coughs into it for almost thirty full seconds. She brings up mucus, green and sticky, spotted with blood. Shoves the handkerchief back into the pocket.
Finally done, she sags into the nearest seat, across from the skeleton, too close by half.
Burning Bright just sits there, staring at the table, at nothing, hands limp in her lap. Her eyelids droop shut for a second; she rouses herself with a heave of breath, lungs crackling and popping. She fishes a piece of toast from the rack, bites into it dry, chews too slowly.
“Giving up for now, are we?” Signal asks. “Didn’t go to plan, did it?”
◪_◪
“Mm,” Bright sniffs, once, twice, three times. Swallows hard. Blinks at Signal’s skeleton. “Heard you growling, Sig. Get in a fight with the dream-bait?” She nods sideways, at me.
“My name is Octavia,” I say. “Octavia Carter.”
“Protecting her, actually,” says Signal.
Bright pulls a sceptical frown. Looks at me. Looks harder. Narrows her eyes. “The hell you glowering for?”
“E-excuse me?” I stammer. “I’m … not?”
Bright sits up, just an inch. “Don’t you fuck with me.”
Signal comes to my rescue. “She’s not glowering. It’s just how her face looks. Don’t be nasty, Bright. Come on now.”
Bright squints harder, as if having difficulty thinking. But then she snorts. Almost smiles, just a twitch. “Bad case of RBF, eh?”
“RBF?” I echo.
“Resting bitch face. You got it bad.” She snorts again, really does smile this time, no warmth in her lopsided sneer. “It’s that scar, the way it makes your eye all messed up, makes you look pissed. Huh, there we go. Now that’s real pissed off, right?”
“Do not comment on my scar,” I say. “Keep it out of your mouth.”
“Or what?” Bright growls.
“Or we can resume where we left off. Would you like that?”
Bright shrugs. Looks away, disinterested. Back again. “Give us a smile, then?”
“Fuck you,” I say. Surprised at myself.
“Eh. Whatever.”
Bright slumps down in her seat again, takes another bite of dry toast, coughs as it sticks in her throat. She fumbles with a mug, reaches for the pitcher of orange juice, almost knocks it over. Signal’s skeleton twitches an arm, as if she wants to help. Eventually Bright pours herself a mug of orange juice, drinks it halfway, puts it down, seemingly forgets it again.
She sets about the process of slowly wrapping a piece of bacon around her half-eaten slice of dry toast. It is neither an elegant nor practical way of combining those particular foods, as she discovers upon her next bite, dropping half the slice of bacon onto the table, getting grease all over one hand, and a poorly angled mouthful of mostly just more toast. She frowns at the scrap of lost bacon like it’s a puzzle she resents having to solve.
Finally she slides a plate over to herself. She dumps the whole fat-drenched soggy mess of toast and bacon on the plate, wipes her hand on the metal tabletop, picks up a fork, spears the remains like they owe her money, and takes an awkward half-bite, teeth stopped by the tines of the fork.
I simply cannot look away; this woman is not even remotely functional. How is she still alive? Does she get all her calories in magical girl form, poaching sheep and roasting them with her breath? Her clumsy eating would almost be cute, if she was anybody else. Perhaps she needs somebody to feed her; she certainly needs somebody to tuck her into bed and give her some medicine.
Bright must notice me staring, because she looks up and stares right back — at my exposed right hand.
“The fuck is that?” she grunts.
“This?” I raise the offending limb. “My arm? My prosthetic arm?”
Bright stares blank, then snorts. “Grimgrave was going on with all this shit about how you’re a robot. Thought she was making it up.”
“I’m not a robot. It’s a prosthetic.”
“No wonder you and Sig get on. Pair of cripples.”
“Hey—”
“Bright!” Signal warns, cutting in over my own snap.
（ ▽д▽）
“Ahhhh fuck off,” Bright croaks. She picks up a slice of toast and throws it in the general direction of Signal’s core, but toast lacks the aerodynamic properties required for flight, and it doesn’t even get a quarter of the way there. A zoog darts out to retrieve the failed projectile. “A joke. S’a joke, Sig.”
“You are incapable of jokes. You know that. Don’t try.”
Bright sniffs, loud and liquid, then swallows whatever she just sucked from her own nasal passages. “Am not.”
“I’ll forgive you for that one,” Signal says. “If you listen to my plan.”
“Plan?” Bright perks up. Blinks hard. “This thing Nerys was talking about, yeah? We’re finally going loud? Shooting our load?”
“Sort of,” Signal says. “I would like to propose that we modify whatever plan we were going to come up with. Octavia here has a special friend, by the name of Willow, who is currently in the custody of Dream Control. They’re using her as bait.”
“Huh,” Bright grunts. “Fuckers. Kill ‘em all.”
Perhaps Bright is not totally irredeemable.
“Quite,” says Signal, then explains the basic problem; I stay quiet, let her work, listen to her recount Willow’s current known condition. “So,” she finishes. “Octavia is rather desperate to confirm her safety, possibly even get her out of there. But Nerys is adamant, Octavia’s still too green to translocate back to Earth, not as she is right now. I happen to agree. I’m proposing that we combine these two aims into one plan. Our big debut could serve as a distraction, or we could make part of it saving an innocent young woman from Dream Control. That would make our position extra clear, and it would play well with the public, especially if we can get raw footage.”
Bright grows more lucid as Signal explains, sitting up, hunched forward, brow creased in a deepening frown. First she focuses on Signal’s skeleton, but then she stares at me. A nasty smirk grows behind her lips, tight in the corners of her eyes.
“Bright?” Signal says. “So, what do you think? … Bright?”
I stare right back, daring Bright to say it. Go on, you may as well. Ask why I care about Willow. Call me a dyke.
“Bright? Bright?” Signal keeps trying. “Look, I know we need to bring Grimmy on board too, but this could really work, it could—”
“Fuck it,” says Bright. “I’ll teach her how to translocate.”
Silence. Moon-wind on concrete. Heart in my throat.
“ … you will?” I whisper.
“Sure. Simple.”
“Bright,” Signal snaps, voice gone hard and robotic. Her skeleton stands up, scraping the chair back. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare do this. I am trying to help.”
Bright shoots her an exhausted glare. “Shut your fat gob, Sig. She can do what she wants.” Bright climbs to her feet too, slow and steady, planting both boots firm on the floor. She nods to me. “Come on. Octavia, yeah? Step outdoors.”
“You and me,” I say, staying seated. “Outdoors?”
“Octavia,” Signal says, speaking fast. “Bright is messing with you. We have been over this. Dream Control have set a trap, Willow is the bait. If you go alone, you will die. You heard what Nerys said, don’t throw yourself away, don’t throw your life away for this. Let us help you. Give us an afternoon. Three hours, even. We will come up with a plan, we will—”
“Ahhhh shut up!” Bright roars, then dissolves into a fit of sticky coughing. She waves a hand at me. “I’m— huurk— not going to fight you, you— hugh— stupid cunt. I’ll teach you, outdoors. Translocating indoors is ten times harder. Outdoors you’ll get it first time. You wanna leave, or what?”
I nod. Stand up. Make sure I have my phone, my purse, in my pockets. Slip my glove back onto my right hand. “Yes. Yes, I do. Please”
“Octavia!” Signal snaps.
Can’t look at her. There are too many reasons I cannot stay. I’m not one of these people, I’m not like them, I don’t have what it takes to be a revolutionary, and I don’t want to be a terrorist. All I want is to be back by Willow’s side. If I stay, that cold slug in my brain might take priority again, and I’ll do something unforgivable. If we carry out Signal’s plan, Willow could end up torn from her life, dumped somewhere so much worse.
If I don’t go, I’ll have to sleep here again, sooner or later. Plunged back into that nightmare.
“Right,” Bright grunts, steps away from the table. I move to follow, scurry in her plodding wake.
At the exit to the Big Room, two skeletons block our path, nothing but black on their rib-bound screens. Bright rolls her neck left and right, vertebrae popping, wet and crunchy.
“Bright,” says Signal. “I will never forgive you for this. Even you have never gone this far. Do not do this. Do not.”
“Get out of the way,” Bright grunts.
“No.”
Bright raises her chin. “No? You’re telling me no, you fat fuck?”
“Don’t you get lippy with me, you streak of piss,” Signal snaps sudden, voice a whip-crack. Bright blinks, recoils, almost a flinch. “I could hang you upside down by your tail and spank you raw, and you know it. Right now I’m still being nice, but you push this much further and I’ll flay your hide, missy. You turn around right now and park your backside on one of those chairs, or you fuck off out of here, and I don’t want to see you again for the rest of today. Octavia? Octavia, don’t listen to a word she says, she’s trying to—”
“Sig,” Bright says, all her aggression gone. “Sig. Look at her. Really look at her. She wants out.”
Signal goes quiet. I hear her fingers stop typing.
“I … I just want to go home, yes,” I say. “Just to see Willow. I’ll come straight back.”
Will I? I’m just saying the words. Just let me go.
Neither of them acknowledge me.
“Sig,” Bright says. “We do this now, or we do it later. Your choice.”
“Grimmy … ” Signal pauses again. “Grimmy … ”
“Exception that proved the rule,” says Bright. “Fuck it, Sig, I’m not going through this again. I’m just not.”
Before I can voice a question, have a second thought, or turn back, Signal’s skeletons silently step aside.
Bright fumbles for my hand, grabs me by the wrist; her grip is so weak, like she’s made of paper, but she drags me along. Through the open doorways of the Big Room, past the weird little reception area, out of the battered-open doors of solid gold, out of Plato Base.
Daylight on the moon. Bright, clean, stark; nowhere to hide.
The sun seems cold, harsh on the grey-black lunar soil, gracing the rainbow facade of Plato Base as it rears high over my head. Black skies yawn wide beyond, framed by the lunar horizon, the fluted rocks and shivering silver forests and the mountain curves which cradle this concrete secret.
Earth floats alone in the inky firmament. If England’s still down there, she’s shrouded in thick grey cloud.
Burning Bright stops before the steps down to the lunar surface and lets go of my hand.
“Mm,” she grunts. “Not walking all the way down there just to walk back up again. Fuck that.” She looks me in the eyes, her own lids drooping, squinting with effort. “Right, dream-bait. Translocation. Easy enough. It’s different for each of us though. Your way is gonna be your way, whatever it is.”
“ … what? I thought you could teach me how.”
“I am teaching you,” she growls, swallows, throat full of gunk. “But your way is your way. I rip a hole. Signal tunes a channel. Grimgrave does some silent movie slapstick shit. You? Fuck it, I dunno. Something with your fist?”
Clench my prosthetic hand. “My fist. Okay? Okay, what do I do?”
Bright shuffles a step away, back toward the front door of Plato Base; one of Signal’s skeletons has followed us, looming just inside the doorway, watching in silence. Moon-wind murmurs and mutters over the distant rooftop, catching stray hairs about my face.
“Picture where you wanna go,” Bright says, voice a low and raspy croak. “Are you one of those people who can’t imagine places?” I shake my head. “Alright, then picture it in your head. As detailed as you can. Try to go there without moving, like the world should move around you. Then do your thing.”
“My thing?”
Bright shrugs with one shoulder. “Punch the air?”
I turn aside, face empty space.
Earth, England, Oxford. My grandmother’s flat, my bedroom, my bed. Home. Home. Home.
Raise my fist, pull back my elbow, prepare to punch. A magnetic tugging takes hold of my wrist and forearm, as if unseen force is helping me along. My prosthetic fingers tingle, phantom sensation in the long-lost arm. A quiver trembles in my hand. The ghost of a migraine lurks behind my right eye, anchored in the scar tissue down my cheek.
“There you go,” Bright mutters. “See you in the next life.”
Home. Home. Oxford and England and Home. Think of England. Think of Home. Home is—
Willow!
A sensation like falling forward rocks upward from my core, a reflex action triggered by a nerve that I should not have, like vomit from a stomach I had not known existed. My arm jerks back hard, a punch aimed at thin air, to split a single atom.
Home! Willow! I’m coming—
“Occy!”
Grimgrave bursts through the broken doors of Plato Base, with Nerys cradled in her arms. She’s untransformed, a sylph all in white, horror on her face. She shoulders Signal’s skeleton aside so hard the false bones rattle against the concrete wall. Bright turns too slow, catches Grimgrave’s other shoulder in her gut, goes down like a sack of potatoes, retching bile onto the floor.
Grimgrave drops Nerys. Leaps at me. Reaches out with those sweaty little hands to catch my waist, grab my wrist, stop me from leaving.
Why does she care? I’m nobody to her. Nobody to anyone but Willow.
Besides, Grimgrave is a split-second too late.
My fist is a wrecking ball. My arm is a piston. My blood is molten metal. My punch slams forward, splitting space in two.
The world opens like a cracked skull.
And I fall through the wound.
Silly Octavia, you can’t fight Nerys! You can punch her apart, sure, but you’ll still lose. Besides, oh dear oh dear. Whatever lies between Octavia and Willow, this isn’t right …
And here we are, at the end of arc 2! This has been quite a wild ride so far, and I do hope you’ve been enjoying all this just as much as I have, dear readers. Octavia is very much still eyeball-deep in … well, whatever it is that makes her the way she is. And it’s going to take more than a few kind words and magical girl transformations to change that. Let’s hope she’s not going to be all alone, back down in jolly old England.
Behind the scenes, it looks like arc 3 is going to be about the same length, probably 7 chapters. But as always, this is subject to wild changes, because magical girls cannot be caged.
Also! Guess what? That’s right, more fanart from over on the Discord server! This week we have an ‘artistic prediction’ of what might be going on between Octavia and Willow, simply titled Evil Willow Theory (by sporktown heroine!) Then we have this little doodle of Nerys ambushing a magical girl in a back alley, (by flaxsquiddle). We also have matching doodles of both Grimgrave, and Burning Bright (both also by flaxsquiddle!) Thank you so much for all the fanart, it’s amazing to see, and still incredibly flattering!
Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can:
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! Thank you for being here and reading my little story, it means the world to me whenever people enjoy what I’m doing here. Thank you for all the support, all the reading, all the comments. I couldn’t do it without you!
Next chapter, Octavia goes … home? Is there even a home left for her, down on the surface? Or is this daughter of England forever an exile? More importantly, where’s WIllow?