Ricardo
Anxiety did not *Go away*. At least, it didn't for Mattias Gates. It could be steadfastly ignored, redirected to socially acceptable targets, or overshadowed by a closer threat, but it did not *Leave*. Instead, it watched and waited, and the second they closed their eyes, resurfaced. A drifting corpse, unburied by ocean waves. 

Lately, the Cradle had been quiet. For a given definition of quiet. The angelic vigilantes were- somewhere, doing something Matti preferred not to think about. The eldritch void, and the creatures within (*Another* Incident best wiped from their memory), had been resolved. Neither Gabriel *Nor* Matti was hospitalized, or otherwise interred, and their abilities seemed (for perhaps the first time since their manifestation) content to keep their senses at manageable levels. It followed, then, that it was in these quiet calm days that their anxiety returned with all the force of a bat to the stomach.

It was small things, at first. An offhand comment from Blazer. An unfamiliar word from Gabe. The sudden and violent memory of Margo, explaining ultraviolet light in patient, slow paced words. Skipping lessons had seemed the natural response when every day was too-bright-too-loud. They hadn't had time, or "Emotional space" To deal with their own education. Really, they were in no position to complain about their own ignorance: not when they had made their own undoing. Matti could only, as always, scramble to contain the damage as quickly as they could. 

.

Only after confusion and stress filled nights did they consider asking for help. Their sources, of course, were limited. The institute itself was an idea immediately discarded (*What if they find out what if they **Send you away***). They weren't on speaking terms with Margo, and couldn't bother Uriel (who had been particularly attached to ""Owen"" Since the latter's birthday). That *Should* Have left only one option, but the idea of asking Gabe for *More* Help, on top of everything else he'd done, burned their throat like they'd breathed in bleach. 

Matti was so absorbed in their own thoughts they didn't notice their feet taking them *Not* To the courtyard, where they'd planned to go, but a much more familiar route. They startled as they abruptly shifted focus to their body, which was now standing in front of Gabe's room, one fist already reached out to knock. It was a reflex, one born of similar nights of turmoil. They lowered their hand. *There's no point, it would only bother him and-*

*Oh.*

Distant enough for their embarrassment, close enough to be safe. They'd been meaning to talk to her anyways, after they'd walked together to visit Gabe in the hospital. Matti swallowed down their anxiety and forced themself to knock.

"Sig?"

Mattias smiled not with their mouth, but with the rest of their face. Tucked under their arm they held a folio of printed papers, edges wrinkled subtly as if they had been crumpled and then painstakingly unfolded. Their shoes make a quiet noise against the floor of the hallway with the small movements of unexpressed anxiety.

"Well met. I come seeking guidance, on a matter which has bested me."

With a slight flourish that nearly sent their papers floating to the ground, Matti held the printed stack up so that Sigrún could see the first few pages. At first nearly indecipherable, a divergence from their typical neat handwriting, the notes ranged over a wide variety of subjects. Math, geography, history. Farther down in the stack, peeking out as if trying observe Sig themselves, were more subjects. English, physics, low-level biology. And clearly, as if written in the same neat print, were signs of frustration. The creases of a page held too tightly in the hand, words struck down by furious scribbles of ink. 

 *Messy. Unnaceptable.* A spike of self-consciousness coiled around their wrists, sending a slight tremor to their hands. Nothing in the contents of the papers were difficult enough to warrant such a response, months old even at their most recent. And, Matti conceded, they lacked organization. When they'd written the notes, everything had seemed so *Complicated*. A knotted web of information, with no beginning or end. No place to begin.

.

"My education was. Lacking. A mistake I am attempting to rectify, now."

*A mistake of my own making*, they did not add. They had already extended half a question, it would be bad form not to continue. Even if they were suddenly certain they would be rejected, forced to return to their dorm and the faint scent of cobwebs.

"You had posters in your room. They seemed technical or scientific. So you are. Knowledgeable. It doesn't-" Matti paused, pulling in a whistle of air between their teeth. They exhaled. Sorted their words in their mind, repeated them until they felt certain and steady footed again.

"I've come to ask a favor. I'm requesting aid from someone with more expertise than myself."

Not the right words, exactly, too stilted and stiff, but closer to truth than the bitter taste of *Wrongness*. They swallowed down their breath, and fixed their eyes on the empty air over Sig's right ear.
Richard
A pile of paper, scratched and crumpled, blueprints of a mind they were trying to build with tremors in their fingers through that sleep-deprived film over their eyes; Sigrún wasn't unfamiliar with the Desperation Pile. It was a rock face coated in sand, tiny grains of *Something* That allowed no fingers into any handholds, a maddening view from the base of the cliff.

That Matti was seeking *Her* Out, though, for help making some sense of it, pricked her expression into one of bewilderment. She snuck a brief glance at her wall—technical, yes, were many of the detailed drawings of tendons, bones, musculature, and nerves, but... Despite her seeming expertise, it never occurred to Sigrún that she might seem more knowledgeable for having them. She knew things about bones and sea life like she knew things about Vincent Price and death metal, not like a person people *Went to for help* Would.

Did she, though? Maybe?

Her roommate might have her head mounted on the wall by his exercise regimen if she didn't *Try*, though, despite herself.
 
"Enter the sanctuary, seeker," She replied, giving her bleached-blonde head a shake. "In, er, a moment, when there's less to trip on."

Hands still tucked under her arms, Sig leaned back on her heels, hanging from the doorframe by a row of suckers that appeared to come from somewhere behind her shoulder. In a sluggish blink, the half-read comic books, discarded socks, and unfolded clean laundry vanished from her bed and the floor around it to what closet and bookshelf space she could find for the moment.

Stirred enough by the sudden flurry of movement, her eyes were brighter when she looked back at Matti—they always seemed to be open too wide, seeing too far beyond her periphery.

"Dreadfully sorry it's come to this," It breezed, laughing a little under its breath. "My well of knowledge is a sweet one indeed, but, *Heheh*, not refreshing in the most, euh, useful way."
Ricardo
Matti gave the invisible impression of blinking, like a snake might, though their eyes remained open. As they waited, seeming more patient than they might be in any other situation, they thumbed through the papers in their arms. The stack made a quiet shuffling noise as they did, a bird ruffling its feathers.

"Gramercy. And worry not. I know the trials of cleaning for company. Apologies for my abrupt arrival." They grimaced slightly, stepping into the room with shoulders bowed as if they needed to duck to make it through the door (they did not). Crossing over the threshold, they were suddenly struck with the impression of standing at the base of a mountain, or perhaps the foot of an endless sea. The comparative insignificance of Matti, and their problems, lifted a weight from their shoulders and eased their lingering anxiety.

"My quest for knowledge-" Matti made a quiet clicking noise between their tongue and teeth, struggling to find the right phrasing. "I ask assistance. Mine own efforts have been. *Insufficient.*"

They hissed the words with an obvious distaste, before extending the stack of papers out in an awkward offering. Once relieved of their burden, they allowed their eyes to wander, tension turning to something closer to a mild curiosity. Matti's gaze drifted over the posters on the wall, the bookshelf, the bed, finally settling just over Sig's shoulder where the tentacles had appeared. With a figurative and literal bitten tongue, they refrained from commenting on the clear manifestation of parahuman abilities. Gabe had been trying to teach them "Tact", a fruitless endeavor to enforce the inane rules that allegedly guided "Normal conversation".
Richard
The taller of the two tilted her head inquisitively as Matti spoke, hands tucked back under her arms. It was still hanging from the wall, standing diagonally as casually as possible—it had the tendency to *'loom'*, it had been told, and most didn't seem to appreciate being *'loomed over'*. Matti's eyes rested on the rows of suckers stretching from her shoulder beneath her shawl, and—cheekily—the odd sea-creature flesh rippled back in the golden brown of their eyes. Sigrún could never quite pass up an opportunity to freak someone out just a *Little* Bit. In the name of bonding.

Guessing by how this kid had yet to blink, Sig suspected that it might be effective.

"What eats at you the most desperately, *Lillebror*?" Their pile was lifted from their hands, pages flipping in front of her face. Her cleft palate offset her mouth, giving her focused expression the look of a permanently bemused grin. 

"Would that I could help you perfect your scholarly discipline like my dear roomie has, but what's a mind that doesn't dwell soundly in a skull?"

Indeed, Gabriel and she were the difference between a teacher's pet and a teacher's yard dog, chewing on sticks out in the rain. Still, she shook out her head and flopped backwards, as though shunting the subtle self-deprecation off of her broad shoulders. Her jaw now tilted upside down, loose bleached-blonde curls spiralled toward the carpet. 

"One that will try its best, I suppose..."

And with that, she seemed quite finished with talking to herself. Pulling herself upright and un-suctioning from the wall (six *Pop*S, strung together like fireworks), Sigrún looked lively. Though Mattias likely wasn't a hell of a lot younger than her, the last thing they needed was confirmation so soon that their quest was impossible. Their odd clicking noise echoed in her green-stained mouth.
_ _

"Does your Desperation Pile have a due date? Essay outlines missing that you need for some reason even though you skipped to the finished thing without them but I can help you bullshit because teachers are always asses about the planning stages? Bitter, merciful coffee??"
Ricardo
Matti cocked their head, an unintentional mimicry of the motion of Sig's tentacles. Their gaze turned quizzical, distinctly owl-like, and one shoulder twitched as if in attempt to grow their own appendages. Nothing remotely odd, dark, or sea-dwelling manifested, and they straightened their posture back to their usual crooked stance. *Taller,* They thought with half-hearted disdain, though waived the complaint by in favor of responding.

"A mind unsure, a better kind, than one that seeks but does not find," They muttered softly, as much an encouragement as a reminder of the situation. Regardless of her brain's location, Sigrún showed clear wit and understanding. There wasn't much more they could ask for in a potential teacher, especially not with such a shallow grasp of the concepts themself. 

"Trial or triumph matters little. Mine byrst lies in sand, not stone." They bit the inside of their cheek, chewing over their thoughts. "Or, at least, I might hope."

At the repeated popping noise, Matti seemed to snap out of their self-deprecation. More parrot, than owl, or an archaeologist who had found a ruin particularly new and exiting. They tapped the fingers of one hand together, like a conductor might, echoing the rhythm. 

"Yes, later, some, or later still. Marked-" Their forward movement was sudden, and gave the distinct impression of a goat scrambling over a sheer rock face. They flipped through the corner of the stack, finding one paper with a red-inked star in the corner. "-by sign of warding." The marked papers tended to have subjects in common. Anything having to do with science was seemingly smeared with red, with the exception of a sheet of low-level physics problems. English seemed entirely exempt from the markings, as well as some of history- the Crusades, old empires, and the like.

.

At the mention of coffee, Matti started, flipping open their messenger bag to produce two takeaway cups cushioned by crumpled paper. Scrapped notes, likely, which fluttered to the floor.

"A gift? Or 'bribe', as *Some* Might call it." It was entirely clear by the fond, exasperated way they'd said the word who, exactly, 'some' referred to. Though what hand Gabriel had in the so-called bribe wasn't immediately clear. Matti held one of the two cups out to Sig, slightly cooled but not yet lukewarm.
Richard
Sigrún giggled a little as Matti lurched for their papers. They reminded it of a cat—serious as the night, animatedly skittering across a tile floor on their way to chase their red-starred mice. Separate from its most focused train of thought, a tentacle flicked behind it like a cat's tail.

"Gruesome, *Whew*," She muttered, grateful to see the physics unmarked, a little dejected that the histories were lower on the priority list. But, her eyes glinted with intrigue once again as she plucked the offering (and a half-baked timeline of the First World War) from their hand.

"And am I crooked *Indeed*!"

Bitter and strong, the way she liked it. Part of Sig wondered how they knew, its roommate surfacing in its mind as it eyed Matti again, the silvery animal irises making heads or tails of them offering little clear insight in return. With their seeming forgetting to blink, the blonde had little to remind her—curiously, she regarded them. It lightly tossed its cup from one hand to the other, then past the first hand and into the waiting tip of a tentacle that instantly curled around it.

"A wise little secret, for the kind of devouring you're after," She said finally, stretching the fingers on her freed hands. They were stained a deep green today, as though ink had been dropped onto her fingertips and left to drip down in a loosely looping pattern; stranger still, they left no smudges. "Not particularly secret, but it works, so no one will mention it."

"Your memory alone will fail you. Cramming this much into your skull at once, *Fie*, the pressure will crack you—so you store it somewhere else."

Its thumbs touched the tips of its fingers, all in a row, moving down to the second sections of its fingers, then the thirds.
_ _

"Ask me a question with my hands tied and there's not a drop in the well to spare you—but." She took another quick sip. "Countless formulas sleep in here that would never have rested soundly in my head. Alexander the Great's entire path across the ancient Mediterranean is somewhere in a tentacle *Iforgetwhichone*, and every leader of the Soviet Union hangs like a thief from one of the ribs on mine fish bone earrings!"

Sig bounced on her heels, cracking her knuckles. She spoke fast—the caffeine didn't actually do wonders for her energy, but the rules to *School: The Game of Cunning* Fell out of her mouth in an organized line, no friction on her teeth.

"You pick out what the other flotsam is made of, like pieces scattered of a glass. There's what teachers stress, and what *Matters*, and unfortunately one must precede the other. Then you can research *Whatever*. That lives in your head."

The tentacle holding the cup twisted around it in a more secure hold.

"You can ask about these, too, seeker, *Heheh*. I'd think you far more unsettling if you weren't curious."
Ricardo
Matti sipped their own coffee, loaded with enough sugar to mask the bitterness they'd only just started to dislike. They blamed the Cradle as much as Gabriel- one, for introducing them to the concept of modified flavors, and the other for keeping the small packets in such easy reach (and with such supply- they took some whenever they saw them, resulting in a small stash of packets, worth their weight in gold though of a much lighter yellow). The institution could afford the loss. 

At Sigrún's mention of *Hands*, their own twitched from some sourceless spasm. They kept their arms close to themself most days. Making themself smaller, though they preferred the term *Self-contained*. It was the reason most didn't notice the small marks drawn along the palms of their hand, at the joints of their wrists and elbows. They normally faded after a few days of rigorous hand-washing, but since they'd arrived at the Cradle their appearance was sporadic at best. More of an afterthought, now, whenever Matti had Seen some particularly interesting piece of information and happened to have a pen in their pocket. 

Of course, they looked like normal drawings, though perhaps slightly stranger and without discernable themes. None of the drawings were particularly extensive- they were meant as tethers, doors or signposts Matti could use to follow the footsteps of their day. They likely couldn't utilize *All* Of Sig's strategy, no matter how much they internally lamented their own lack of alternatively-located brains. But picking pieces of information- sorting- they were good at. Most of the time. Still-

"Memory eludes my faults- it. If knowledge only met *Understanding*, it might remain. Words of my tongue, as unsteady a beast, see their own demise- but other of their ilk defeat me."

.

Matti tugged at a few of the papers they recalled being especially troubling- *Cells*, small things, ones which should hide within their Sight. And yet- and *Yet*. They released a huff of frustration, just to the left of petulant, and wordlessly gestured to the messy array of writing crossed out (then rewritten, then crossed out again).

They pulled themself from their annoyance, focusing again on the strange manifestations of power. Eyes fixed on the tentacle holding the coffee cup, they blinked dying flecks of gold from their eyes. Nothing *Hiding*, despite their earlier impression of *Endless-depths-seeking-without-finding-comforting-bigger-than-you*. Did Sig have to change her body to support the extra appendages? Were they manifested from the psyche? Or from something greater? A kind of kinship pulled at their mind like an undertow, a bubbling stream of *Same not the same, cousin or kin*. Matti voiced a few of their better constructed questions- where did they come from? Where did they go? What could they do? The tentacles were strong- they'd supported Sig, at least, hanging off the doorframe. Could they be damaged? Repaired?
Richard
Ah, this was *Good*. To focus solely on being productive, in Sigrún's experience, was to get nothing of substance done at all—oh yes, Sigrún's well of knowledge was sweet indeed, inseparable from the saltwater.

"They're... In me, coiled," It told them, between whisperings of their notes to itself under its breath. "They don't *Go* Anywhere, just become less apparent—any part of an octopus that's not beak can fit through anywhere, *Ja*? The same works for what passes freely between belief and disbelief, if the barrier is even there at all..."

Her black pen ran ink onto a fresh sheet of paper as she sipped more coffee. Her drawing of a cell was textured in a similar way to her posters of cadavers from centuries past, organic and just-dissected.

"They're me, and I am what I make of myself, what I make of the salt, and the endless night that stretches over my kin without eyes to fail them." It touched its thumb to its fingertips methodically, muttering words beneath its breath. Her labels were quickly scratched in neat *Nyorsk*, replaced with the English words beneath them; Sig's writing wasn't neat like a typeface, but purposely stretched and looped like an aged scrawl drawn from an old bottle.

"I am always whole, then, for my painted form is as real as the flesh suctioned to the side of this chalice."

She showed her right palm, lined with proud crimson suckers; when her skin stretched and bent, they seemed to shift on another layer of skin, translucent and impossible to tell from a trick of the light. Every line visible on her exposed arms and legs had that quality—it was nigh impossible to follow the representation of one tentacle all the way down, as though they wound through a space far deeper than skin.
_ _

Its left hand continued to draw, with seemingly no difference in quality from its right—little humanoid figures, manning a boat, pulling nets from a hastily-inked sea, silently shouting to one another.

"As I am of the salt and the nightfall, every cell I have is of *Me*—think of the universe as increasingly incredible beasts, each concerned only with what's large enough to captivate them," It began, tracing the form of the animal *'cell'* With its pen.

"The crew of a fishing boat sees their quarry just fine, but as they cannot fathom the size of their universe, neither can they know every element in every fish's scale... Each fisherman knows his job, however, and they need know little more to keep their village fed, if they're content to stop there. We, it seems, are not! On every level you see, there are those more colossal you're a part of, and those microscopic that are a part of you."

Her excitement was evident in the subject at hand, as it was genuine. Cold, hard classroom facts didn't often agree with Sig, but a storyteller by passion knew well how to fashion transfixing beasts from the printed figures.

"Is that what bothers you about these fellows in particular?" Sigrún peered into Matti's eyes, searching for those gone flickers of gold. "Can't see them like the creatures before you? I'm dreadfully curious, if I may."
Ricardo
Matti listened attentively, occasionally contorting their hand to write on some near sheet of scratch paper. Questions, mostly, about functions or locations or parts of the cell Sig had written down. They boiled down to, generally, *Why*? Why do it? Why like that? How? How like that? They were pleased to find not *Everything* Was so dull. The concept of DNA- information pressed so tightly, like a bullet to the brain- something about it fascinated them as much as it built a headache. And they understood some basic functions of parts just. Not at all how it worked in groups. They fixed on the idea of *Wanting*- what did the cells want? The parts want? People, as foreign as the idea seemed, had desires that drove them. Behaviors could be predicted, actions explained, if only through the lens of what they *Wanted*. Why work without need? If one could not See some larger machine, why remain a cog? Their knowledge was scattered at random, and their workings seemed to be in the backwards way of piecing together an automaton from bomb shrapnel. Particles of processes stuck, but never the whole picture.

"To fish, for your words: the smallest fish form mountains, scales as trees. To see where mountains walk, how trees may grow- much that shrinks, hides, and all that hides draws me. Concepts- webs- are larger than I might see."

They thought for a moment, reordered their thoughts. It was difficult- much like the analogy, ideas slipped through the fingers of their mind as if through water. Each time they tried to hold onto one concept, another would escape, and neither could connect. Matti felt- they *Knew* That if they could only See how it all *Connected*, they could see the parts again. But a machine could not be *Built* Without parts to make it up, and so they were stuck with scattered pieces and several overdue instruction manuals. 

.

"To sing both in choir and in chorus is- never has my Sight found creatures lacking *Wanting*. Connections crumble without desire to have and take. And never so *Many*-" Another wordless noise of frustration tumbled clumsily past their lips. To be so many *Things* At once, to hold so much- the notion pushed pressure behind their eyesockets.

"I- to boil me to stock would find only mine eyes: wearg my body, mind, blessed my Sight. You- are sky and oceans alike. To weave you: to weave thy body, being, water and endless." 

"Not to attend the shadows of Leviathan, but." A huff, an almost frantic testing of unsatisfactory letters and sounds. "To be endless, I confess, I cannot comprehend."
Richard
Over the course of its explanation of the littler gears, Sigrún's posture had gotten increasingly worse—it was now somehow sitting upside down, kicking its legs off the back of its chair and listening intently. Matti got even flowerier and more ancient-sounding as they circled the sorest breaks in the skeleton of their understanding; they circled, in her mind, a great whale-fall laying on the seabed, piecing together why such a baffling creature would even have chosen to live in the first place.

Sig, for one, was now thoroughly *Enamoured* With Matti's laps around the enigmatic beast, with what eluded them so fervently. Though her mind was a quick, slippery thing, she paused to think for a while, idly gnawing on a rubber pendant that had found its way from her neck to her sharp, restless teeth.

"Is that difference between us truly so vast, so you lament?" Sigrún's tone was light, inquisitive; she implied nothing, merely questioned.

"Such a view of the world, so ceaseless that it's all that you think of yourself... Surely it doesn't merely glide off of your back—you've looked in enough mirrors, I presume, to know you're no dolphin." It slid off its chair, twisting shoulder blades never hitting the ground; it was upright again, stretching its arms behind its back, tracing every fibre of Matti's irises with its own ink-spill stare.

And yet, her body language wasn't accusing, relaxed and coiled around herself, like a child peering through a window at an interesting beast in the garden.

"Blessed is your Sight, you say, then it must be finer than even mine, drinking in the ultraviolet—oh, how a sense like that changes people," She mused. Around her, tentacles curled, suckers pointed outward like hands splayed to the sky; her skin, from animal extremities to her human face, dappled itself in all the colours of the rugs, the blankets, the posters in the room. Her point was an array of memories and impressions and rippling reflections.
_ _

"Is that not endless?" It tilted its head. "Where does all that light go, through those pinpricks wreathed in waves and particles—I see my reflection, but you are no mirror. Far, *Far* More is born and changed in there. One glorious maelstrom knows another."

She backed up, aware of her nose nearly touching theirs. *Personal space, right...*

"Ah, you bring up flattering pictures of the endless cold I was fashioned from, but I wasn't a finished limb nor life when I was bathed first in the salt 'neath the midday moon."
Ricardo
Matti watched Sigrún's odd movements, as the arc of her legs rose and fell like tides might. The motion brought about with it the same kind of calm, the feeling of holding a shell to one's ear and hearing the beckoning of sighing waves. Like a sedative, it flowed through their veins, like an undertow tugging at their frustration and shame. 

*How can you hold so much?* Matti might have asked, had it been a question they wanted the answer to. Emotion was- overwhelming. They knew anger and sadness and satisfaction as shadows passing under a ship, only hints of something larger under the surface. Everything they had was small and brief, clutched tightly in a bruising grip before it could escape. It left them holding nothing but dust and desperation- and now, a resigned shade of bitterness. Sig held *Oceans*, deep and vast, with the same instinctive ease as the moon cycled. She became it, folded it into herself, invited it to swim. To be able to take up so much space- those kinds of things were half-learned half-known, and Matti was as much a coward as a bad student. A horrible envy crawled into their throat and died there. Words stuttered into waking.

"I have but single purpose, as one might grow marigold. To watch, bear witness. Blessed eyes, yet blessed *Upon* Me. Holding more to painful whims than whimsy. Perhaps a hall of mirrors might show some hidden kind, yet all is made shallow in waters of my residence."

As Sig grew closer, Matti felt the impression of her on some unseen plane, as if through the ripples of water some large predator had displaced and sent waves. A moment of instinctual fear flickered through them, as quick as prey swiftly seeking shelter. Only a moment, but one wracked with stillness. A heartbeat paused, shaking in its cage.

.

They forced breath from their lungs and dread from their mind. The presence changed, a giant split by wind, an ancient guardian providing protection from a storm. They relaxed.

"Hark- the world, lacking space for breath, took mine eyes instead. In such spirit, holding all yet keeping none, mere sight is too little to suffer such humanity. Yet to blind myself is to stifle my lungs, and to step from Sight births naught but red glass from my heart."
Richard
Matti's words struck a balance in Sigrún's ear that was difficult to achieve—strange enough to take a precious few moments to decipher, and riddled enough with unintended meanings to keep her prying deeper into them, at once endeared and a smudge unsettled by such determined grimness on such a young face. In the tangled half-measures in which Sigrún felt those things.

"To grow marigolds is to me the only purpose you fiddle with worth devoting to, for its sweetest virtue of being assigned by oneself, really," She mused, pacing her shared room in long, loping strides. "I am under no illusions of my tastes in gift-wielding standing above all others, but..."

Its movements mimicked those of a cat's, when it thought hard about how to pluck its words in a hollow so delicately shaped as Matti's; its socked feet made no sound on the carpet despite the seemingly thrilled little springs in its steps, a diver pacing the edge of a cliff looking for the fathom far below where the water spilled into the deepest blue trench. She had wrapped her mind around Mattias Gates as a warlock opposing her on a spectrum few really felt like reckoning with; the thing that meant a world of blissful freedom to Sigrún was a solemn binding to Matti, weighted with a vague yet unrelenting duty.

"If to be given a gift is to be inherently saddled with a purpose, one so solid and unflinching as to be mistaken for a *Fate*, perhaps, if we may be dramatic..." It could be gleaned without stretching what was reasonable all that much from the shine in its eye that Sigrún very much did hope for dramatics. "Well, then I suppose I'd be the spitting image of my mother by now," She mused, hands flexing experimentally at her sides. The limb sliding across its palm and curling between its fingers tasted salt.
_ _

"Did it tell you such things? The one that kissed your eyes and put you out to pasture with the rest of we scattered warlocks?" Its crushed-opal eyes glittered. "I can hear it singing, all of mine own ilk, when it's dark and quiet..."

The blonde's tone was light enough, and she carried an air that suggested that if they were to lash out at her any word, any grudge would simply dissolve like foam; yet, by the way the red-and-black hoarfrost patterns bloomed and withered on her skin as she thought, there was a biting curiosity gripping her, one that threatened to pry open anything they slid towards it with a recklessness proudly inherited from the strange vortexes from whence it came.

It held up two hands: one whose palm faced outward, its red pattern of scrawled suckers facing them, and the other faced inward, the pale, iridescent stretch of skin over its tendons shimmering with that captured gold of their eyes. Layers seemed to sink inward forever, iridophores beyond the average naked eye glinting like glass one moment, quicksilver the next.

"It showed me the mirrors first!"
Ricardo
"I- find no kin in plants. Marigolds, less so"

Matti paused, breathing in poorly-filtered dormitory air that for a moment became that of open sky and blurred stars. Their hands, scraped twice over with concrete, stung in a phantom glimpse of their nighttime conversation with the strange figure. It seemed to follow them, these days- the question of their faith. Purpose, and life, and meaning. Ghosts of a strange kind, different than those who usually shadowed their steps. They swallowed the memory of tears, pressed flowers blooming across their cornea.

The freshness of the wound made the road easy to travel, cleared already of silt and debris. Still, Matti's thoughts took a moment to develop Sigrún's words, hurried camera clicks and half-intelligible ink skittering over the blank space of their arm. The mother, then, they noted with an investigator's inhumanity. A mind too small for the near-divine of the rolling sea. 

.

Habitually, they reached towards their temples to thumb the cruel arm of their glasses. Where they at all sharp, surely scars would mark their fingertips in these same patterns- but as always, the smooth steel wore away at their bitten tongue. Contrary to what seemed to be popular belief, Matti understood the power of words. Particular ways of phrasing, that mentioned or tactfully unmentioned. After that night on the roof, they had spent a gold-dawn morning turning over the river rock of conversation in their mind, wearing away at the words they could have said instead.

"A god requires proof of worth- of mine, a trial, the coal road. I had thought the transformation heart to sole beat of watching. No other could be set upon, and so the world withered. It was a cold time. I looked through windows, not mirrors. And yet. To make crucibles of cradles, to learn: men can be good, voices can be sweet, hands can be soft. Once, my eyes would close for naught but dirt. With a stomach full, a shoulder to share, a home both warm and warming- these things. Are enough for one to rest."

For a mind ever searching, a slip backed to the corners of a world infinitely vast, and dark, and unfamiliar, Sig's presence was not discomforting in its scale. To be sure, it pressed the itch of their hands, the serpent tongue that begged to read divine fate. But the force was with the same pressure as a mountain peak, or the tightening fingers of the cold- unseen, unknown, but even-tempered in its destruction. 

.

"I confess, I hold steadfast my eyes. That which carried me, the breath that drives my blood. One so singular as I can find no other purpose. And indeed- I searched. For some time I searched. The balance to reconcile skin and sight is not one I possess. I beg your understanding- to be human is a wretched thing, for one who feels the thousand miles of currents and every writhing body of scaled beast. To make the choice between a long road and the horizon is no choice at all."

Matti shifted, both on feet and in some puppet rigging of their bones and body. For a moment, in the same echoing way that Sigrún was a violent tide, they were a hollow alter built to house an amber stone. Nothing but bleached skeleton, hands to cradle an all seeing eye. It may have become immediately understandable, how one such as this could be so isolated. Neither of the two, in the shared air of sudden kinship, could weave themselves among words and muscle quite the way they were supposed to. Even the tea-dregs of that scorching Sight sent shockwaves of inhuman air, more so from the child Mattias Gates may have once been (a wraith almost seen, curious lamplit eyes, hands holding all things bright and colorful and kind). 

"A prophet has no earthly ties. And so, what else could I be?"
Richard
The way Sigrún listened, it should have felt like a brushing-off when she simply shrugged, jumping backward onto her bed. A tentacle swept the carpet near one of the posts, carefully sticking to the glossy cover of a comic book, flipping a plot that melted out of the inked boxes back and forth in front of her relaxed sort of a scowl. A change of focus, but not really.

To its side, a loosely-coiled arm smoothed a spot on its comforter small enough for Matti to sit, if they pleased. 

The sight of Sigrún taking something seriously was not one many tended to recognize, not in its truth; it pulled its shawl tighter about its shoulders, breathing a dreamy note into the lazily flipping pages. The colours shifted, and she turned Matti's hard-won conclusions around under her tongue.

It did firmly make her sad, she decided, tapping the spine against her nose. The paper was cool; her face must have gotten warmer than she thought. Matti was wound into a stunningly intricate knot—impressive, admittedly, but what did it get them? Still tied in a knot. The satisfaction of seeing something that looked whole, that seemed a flawless path to a glittering form, was nearly irresistible in its rarity. Them and Gabriel must drive each other insane. No wonder they were so close. Those abalone eyes had grown quite sharp, in proximity to the latter, to the intricacies of their brand of misery.

It remembered it should probably say something, before Matti thought themselves overtaken in importance by the pleasant smell of *Dream Country*, or, any more so than they probably did normally.

"A kid who's missing out on the simple pleasure of taking a nap in some mud," It answered, with no particular leaning towards humour or smugness. "However literally you'd like to take that." It snorted quietly at its own joke, stretching its legs and crossing its ankles.
_ _

Her voice turned a droplet sad, warm in her cool, even current. "A shame," She murmured; she did wonder why, whenever she tried to be careful, she tended to wind up just sounding blunt. The loneliness they unwittingly described tugged at the largest of its hearts, the one that knew it as an old scar.

"Consider the word of a shapeshifter, creature, given for what it is, nothing greater or lesser..."

*Creature*, lovingly—familial.

"The shape you wander in—it's not the same your eyes opened in, is it," She tested, still carefully tracing a colourful spread with her eyes. "What you see isn't the same, either, I'd wager my sharpest tooth at the least." A silvery pattern crawled slowly across her skin.

"*Who* You See..." It bit its lip and flipped a page. "No one like you, not in a long time. Enough to grow a kid's heart old and wizened, bent to gravity. Static." She meant and knew far more than she detailed; a stray limb brushed the back of their hand, just barely.

"But you are water as you are rock. In ways as strange as the rest of us."

"Him especially." She pointed to her roommate's side of the room with her foot, as though he were there to sigh in sage agreement. Sig cracked a curled smile to herself.

"If a lens you must be, fallible too are your woes to the changes in the light."