Skirting The Pale

        The sun shone down brightly on the countryside. The knee-high grass and brush of the field, gold and tawny from the heat of the Georgian Summer, bowed softly in breaking waves under the breeze. Clara could see hardly any of it from on her back, but the wind brought relief to her, mellowing the burning heat of the blades of grass and soil against her bare arms and neck.         She raised her arm up to a cloud in the blue. She never could seem to keep her hands from wandering skyward when she lay underneath an open sky. There was a call--she could feel it--, though she wasn’t sure from where it originated. Whether it came from the edge of the atmosphere or from just beyond the moon or from past the edge of the universe, it made no difference to her; she felt the need to answer it, and until Clara could find it, she settled for greeting it in kind.         “Do you reckon we’re really gonna make it out of here, Clara?” A soft voice, barely more than a whisper, drifted from beside her.         Clara didn’t turn her head. “What do you mean?”         “I mean, do you ever think we’re gonna leave here? Get out of here and go somewhere where there’s more than a corner store and a railroad track?”         “Oh, it’s not that bad here.”         “You know what I mean. Our parents sent us off to boarding school because there wasn’t any better way for us to learn the basics that they couldn’t teach us. Latin. Math. Obscure philosophies that nobody could use practically but posed interesting questions.”         “At least we speak better than just about everyone else here now.”         “That’s just superficial, though. We learned rules that nobody we’re going to ever meet for the rest of our lives actually use just to appear elevated and sophisticated and proper in academic writings.”         “It makes it easier for us to be understood, though.”         “Only by the people that learned those rules, sugar. Think about Old Man Josie. He’s the brightest person in town, but you’re lying if you say you don’t have to make him repeat what he’s saying about three times.”         “Well, that’s just because he came from a small town in Louisiana.”         “Exactly what I mean, sug. The locals can understand him, but you and I can’t because we were taught how to speak just one way instead of how to listen to people who are different from us.”         Clara fell quiet for a moment. Reaching out her hand, she grabbed the one beside her. It was soft against her palm. She squeezed lightly.         “I think we’re gonna get out of here, babe. We’re bright, too, and one day, we’re going to live in a different city somewhere; then, we’re going to break free of the shackles the gravity of this planet has on us. I know this is true because I have you.”         “You could do it all on your own.”         “No, I really couldn’t. I’m too much of a pragmatist. You’re the entire reason I dream at all.”         There was a gentle chuckle and the rustle of grass as the form next to Clara rolled onto her side. “You’re always too sweet to me, Clara. I know full well that ain’t true, but I still appreciate it.”         Cast into shadow by the Sun behind her, a young Adelaide bent over Clara and kissed her on the forehead.         “We’re going to college in the Fall. Autumn’s going to change us, but it’s going to be for the better. I know it. I don’t quite know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to embark on the journey together. It’s going to be the best thing we’ve ever done.”         “And that’s the dreamer in you.” Clara smiled up at her.         “Oh, shut up. I love you, Clara.”

                The morning light reflected off of the placid water of the pool, brightening the earth-and-baked-clay rotunda. Adelaide slowly stirred to consciousness. Opening her eyes, she was surprised to find Joel already awake, with his back pressed to the curved wall. Sitting on the grass, his knees hugged to his chest, he was chewing his lower lip and intently staring at Gabriel’s tanned back.

                As Adelaide rose, she caught Joel’s attention. He gave her a slight nod, which she returned. She walked to the other side of the pool and lowered herself to the ground beside him. “You alright, Jo?”

                Joel immediately answered with a weak “no,” shaking his head. He cleared his throat and looked up to her. “That’s bullshit and we both know it. Sorry.” Adelaide wrapped her arm around his shoulders and pulled his head down to her chest.

                “You wanna talk about it?” She asked in hushed tones.

                He breathed deeply a few times. “I don’t know, Ada.” He paused for another few moments. “I’m just. . . frustrated? That doesn’t feel like the right word, but. . . I know there was something between me and Gabriel. I can feel it, you know? I mean, I figure we all knew each other beforehand because of how well we all get along, but I just know there was something between us. Uh, I mean, Gabe and me, but I think you and I had something, too? Maybe?”

Joel pulled away from her, hanging his head and cupping his face in his hands. “I’m so fed up with not knowing anything about who I used to be, Ada. I know everyone else is, too, but I’m tired of being worried about talking to you guys about it.”

Adelaide opened her mouth, but before she could get any words out, he cut her off.  “I know none of y’all have a problem listening to me about how I feel; I just can’t seem to bring myself to actually do it until someone wakes up and sees me being a massive creep and staring at a naked sleeping motherfucker that, for all I know, may have either been the dearest person in the world to me or a complete stranger.” Joel rubbed his eyes agitatedly. “I dunno. I’m done, I guess,” He laughed weakly.

                Throwing her arm around his shoulders again and giving him a firm embrace, Adelaide began to speak. “Listen here, Joel. Everyone here but Gabriel knew how you felt about him. He’s not going to initiate anything, no matter how much he wants it—with anyone—because he’s too caught up in everyone else’s professionalism. He’ll never do anything you wouldn’t want him to because he’s more interested in making sure everyone else is comfortable. I mean, making everyone a little uncomfortable and getting naked at the drop of a hat aside, anyway.” She cracked a grin at Joel.

                “If you wanna go for it, go for it. If you don’t feel comfortable, don’t. I can’t tell you what the past was, but you have a choice here, Joel Avery Wilder. You can either sit here and wonder about what was from now until the matter that composes this godforsaken places degrades into a heat-dead nothingness or you go on and choose to make sure that a person you are very clearly interested in knows it. There’s no promise that we’ll ever recover yesterday, son, but we’ll always have the duty of building our tomorrows.”

                Standing tall, Adelaide brushed the dirt from the seat of her track pants and the back of her tank top before reaching a hand down to help her partner up. He stared up at her with eyes wide as saucers for a moment. A smile slowly spread across his face and he accepted the assist.

                Joel wrapped her in a strong hug. “Thanks, Ada. I love you.”

                “Love you, too, Jo.” Stepping back, she looked over at their sleeping comrades. “Reckon it’s time to get a move on?”

                “Yeah.”

                “You wanna shake Gabe awake?”

                “Okay, so, if I’m right, we’re going to wind up under another sector in the Aquifer.” Clara announced, biting into an apple-like fruit she had picked from a temperate section of the Atrium early into the expedition. Having found a brickwork pool in a particularly broad section of the hall, the four of them had agreed to a rest. The ceiling arched steeply overhead in a large dome, an ornamental rose window serving for an oculus; no light came in at this time of night. Clara bathed her feet in the clear water, khakis rolled up to her knees.

                “You sure, Clair?” Joel queried, looking up from the pink citrus he was peeling beside her. “Something doesn’t feel quite right about that guess.”

                “I’d say so,” she said. “I mean, where else would it be leading?”

                “No clue, but the Atrium was the last entrance on the North side. There shouldn’t be anything further than that.”

                “The Atrium took a few turns. The only totally straight sector so far was the Furnace.”

                “So, then, that’d be. . . What, the Laboratory?” Gabriel asked, turning to look at her. He was submerged to the shoulders in the water. He had stripped to the buff, much to the chagrin of his colleagues.

                “I’d suppose that makes sense,” Adelaide murmured, lying face-up on the soft grass. “If the Atrium entrance was at two o’clock and the Furnace was at one o’clock, then the Laboratory would have to be at four o’clock. If the Aquifer stretches under each section and meets at the Hub, then lord knows we’re gonna be travelling Absolute Southeast for a while.”

                “At least we’ll have food,“ Gabriel laughed. “If we follow this path, no matter what happens, if we turn right, we’ll be headed Proximal to the Hub.”

                “The fact that we have to think about Absolute Directions and Relative Direction is so unpleasant,” Clara groaned. “I mean, using Proximal and Distal to describe moving along a sector is pretty bright, but I’ll think of it as North and South one hundred percent of the time. I’m not cut out for directional remetrication.”

                “That’s gonna be my band name.” Joel grinned at her and she gently shoved him. “You know you’re jealous,” he laughed. Without thinking, he offered a few slices of fruit to Gabriel, who accepted it with a thankful grunt and nod of the head.

                “So, then, what are we thinking?” Adelaide sighed and sat up in the grass, scooping a snail up from the ground. “We go ahead and camp here for a while? I mean, Clara’s feet and Gabe’s unmentionables aside, we’ve got plenty of clean water and it’s pretty nicely warm here. It’s like spending an early Summer evening with fireflies, just. . . It’s brighter and there are snails instead of lightning bugs. I. . . guess it’s nothing like Summer other than the temperature, but you all know what I mean.”

                There were murmurs of general agreement all around. The rest of the crew were on expeditions of their own, and without any sort of organizational imperative, nobody felt compelled to quick-march themselves to death.

                “Well, then, it’s agreed!” Gabriel clapped his hands together, turned around and pulled himself from the pool. Everyone else averted their eyes, a couple of them with measurable difficulty. “I reckon we need to go ahead and get some rest,” he said, stretching. He lay facedown on a patch of dry grass, bundling his overalls and brown cotton tee underneath his head.

                Joel cleared his throat. “I don’t know how you manage to sprawl out all shameless like that, Gabe. I don’t think I could do it.”

                “Iunno,” he grunted. “I reckon it just don’t make a damn. I know y’all pretty well by now, and I reckon we all knew each other pretty well beforehand, so I just feel comfortable around y’all. ‘Sides, I don’t wanna get my clothes wet. It’d take forever to get ‘em dry.”

                Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, Gabriel was asleep. Clara shook her head, stifling a laugh. “I don’t know how that boy does it.”

                “With an insouciance that encapsulates country living,” Adelaide said sarcastically, a smirk plastered across her face.

                Joel walked a distance ahead of the rest of the party. The light here, provided by bulbs far dimmer than the Furnace’s harsh tubes, shone softly on the floor of dewy grass. The ceiling of the passageway was made of simple brick and mortar. He absent-mindedly touched the walls of earth and sparse roots every so often, crumbling small clots of soil in his fingers.

So, I’m actually a complete idiot. Good to frickin’ know. He knew the others would be watching him, but he didn’t really care. I’m gonna be ornery for as long as I like. It’s part of being an idiot. Joel cracked a momentary grin.

                That hug didn’t mean anything, anyway, other than I was worried about him. The moron did something reckless and put himself in danger. And us! I was mad—

                So you fucking smashed your face into his chest?! Joel smacked his hand to his forehead and dragged it down his face forcefully, letting out an agitated sigh. He could feel his face burning with embarrassment.

                Whatever. Maybe it ain’t a big deal. The girls didn’t do anything, so. . . somebody had to reassure him. Let’s go with that. He turned back to look. The rest of his party were busy laughing as they walked, falling further behind.

                . . .Yeah, I’m actually a complete idiot.

                Shit.

                  Behind him, Adelaide was decorating Gabriel with snails. The moist softness of the floor was a paradise for them, but granted them no safety from her reign of terror.

                “You realize I can’t take ‘em with me, right?” Gabriel asked without looking away from a particularly large specimen that had taken to exploring his right forearm.

                “I don’t expect you to. I just figured that, after watching Jo run off, he needed some time to think we were laughing at him and stopping to pick up flatcoils would slow us down enough for him to—OH MY GOD THAT ONE’S A CANNIBAL.”

                The three of them stopped to watch a larger snail latch on to a smaller one. They both fell to the ground and were promptly lost as a subject of interest.

                Clara snorted. “I thought flatcoils were the safe ones, Ada.”

                “Well, shit, I thought so, but who knows how long these have been here evolving on their own!” She said excitedly, gingerly placing a small red one directly behind Gabriel’s earlobe and making him cringe.

                “Augh, don’t do that, Ace. Ain’t right.” He shook his head, but the snail remained firmly attached. “Why’s he think we’d be laughing at him anyways?”

                “Because he hugged you really tightly and thinks we don’t see the way he looks at you. I mean, we’ve seen how he looks at Ada, and there’s a significant difference between how he looks at her and looks at you.” Clara mockingly threw her head back and pressed her forearm to her eyes. “He never showed any interest in me at all!”

                “Wait, what? Shit, really?” Gabriel stopped in his path, dumbfounded.

                “. . .You mean you didn’t ever notice?” Adelaide looked back at him, a smirk spreading across her face.

                “Shit no, I didn’t! I’ve been too busy unravelling some sorta cosmic mystery to think about looking for romance and the like.” A lopsided grin spread across his face. “I could probably benchpress the little bastard easy. It’d be hilarious.”

                Clara blushed slightly. “Are you going to ask him out?”

                “Nah,” he droned. “We’re a bunch of professionals! Looking’s fine, but I ain’t gonna be the one to overstep bounds here.” Gabriel rubbed the coarse brown hair of his chin. “Gotta say, though, I dunno if I’d say no.”

                The three of them walked on very quietly for a moment before Gabriel called out to Joel. “Hey! You gonna keep to yourself the whole time? One of these bricks is gonna come loose and ain’t nobody gonna be able to help you!”

                The sudden dryness of the air was a relief. Clara breathed deeply, stepping into the metal corridor. Where the Atrium was lit by a natural light, the Furnace had no windows to the outside; a harsh fluorescence shone down from two glassen tubes in the ceiling. They ran out of sight, unbroken, to the North and South. The ceiling itself was made of what looked to be a single sheet of stainless steel, occasionally punctuated by the grilles of slowly-rotating fans. The uneven loam had given way to level concrete and the free expanse was replaced by panelled walls of a matte, rose-grey metal. The Western wall was home to a pattern of large, slow-moving fans, through which identical corridors could be seen, and long, narrow thin-slitted vents at the foot of it. The Eastern wall lacked any such contraptions, serving only to divide the Atrium and the Furnace.

                “Does it seem cooler in here than normal?” Clara asked, slightly confused. The heat was much more bearable than she remembered, decidedly cooler than the sweltering wilderness.

                “. . . Yeah, it does. I mean, it’s still really hot, but we have spent a few days in a frickin’ jungle,” Joel rationalized.

                “I guess.”

                “I reckon that makes sense,” Adelaide half-whispered to herself as they all turned Southward. “Then again, I haven’t actually been here before. I stayed at the Hub that go around. I didn’t get anything more than hot air rolling out the door. I read the reports, but I was braced to catch on figuro-literal fire when we opened this hall with how you guys sounded in yours.”

                “I was pretty sure we were gonna catch on fire. I’d still recommend not touching the walls, though, right Clara?” Joel drawled, laughing.

                “Oh, shut the fuck up, Jo,” Clara laughed. She held up her palm to Adelaide on her left. “The blisters have all pretty well healed, but it still hurts pretty bad. I don’t know who stocked the Infirmary, but I’m infinitely grateful.”

                “Still don’t wanna go exploring it, though.” Joel cringed. “The entire place feels like it’s crawling with old ghosts. It gives me the same feeling that… ah, shit, I reckon it’d probably be a grandparent of mine’s house or something, but it was Antebellum and served as a hospital during the war. Ain’t no way I’m going there on my own.”

                “Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts,” Clara said, half-jokingly.

                “Listen, we’re in an inexplicably-made, endless series of hallways with no discernable purpose and you saw the edge of the Atrium. I know you’re joking, darlin’, but I ain’t able to rule out a single thing. Not a goddamn thing.” Joel’s accent played in full force, an uncharacteristic worry showing on his face.

                Superstitious fears all around, I guess, she thought to herself. “Yeah, yeah; I’m sorry, Jo,” Clara murmured, patting him gingerly on the shoulder.

                “I kinda agree with him,” Adelaide nodded. “It’s just a feeling I get from the place, but it’s definitely a place that feels like you’re being watched.”

                Having thoroughly spooked each other, they continued on in silence. Every so often, the solid concrete would give way to steel grating. They desperately tried not to look down, where the brash light would dwindle through more and more grates until there was nothing left but darkness below. The boojums beneath their feet scared them less than those in the Infirmary, but nobody knew what might lie in the darkness.

                Clara sneezed. The others started violently and all three of them laughed nearly to the point of tears in some kind of relief.

“I guess we’re really just worrying for no reason,” Adelaide coughed. “I’d been freaking out because some weird piece of poetry had been stuck in my head since we got here and it’s been eating at me.”

                “What is it?” Clara asked. “I used to memorize poetry, I think, but now I can’t remember any of it.”

                “Yeah, all of the songs I wrote just kinda… vanished into the æther.” Joel frowned. “If you can remember any kind of written art, that seems to be pretty good!”

                Adelaide looked down at the floor, and then promptly looked skyward when she realized they had hit a section of gratework. “It’s kinda freaky—and it’s really not much--, but. . . fine.” She closed her eyes as they walked and began to speak, calmly and evenly:--

  Walking in an empty place, I scried

A dozen souls whom God collected;

Burnt and drownt, they crawled within a ring

That mortals hewed and Hell erected.

                  Adelaide opened her eyes again. None of them said anything for a moment as they walked forward. “I told you, freaky.”

                “Damn, I reckon,” Joel agreed absentmindedly.

                Clara stayed silent for a moment longer, only opening her mouth when she noticed something. “Guys, the wind’s picked up.”

                Everyone looked around, feeling the wind moving. Joel stopped moving first. “The fans are moving faster.” He chewed his lower lip intently. “. . .Shit. I just realized. When we came here last time, the fans weren’t moving at all.”

                “You’re right,” Clara said softly. “What. . . what’s that even mean. . ?”

                “Iunno.” Joel stared angrily at one of the fans. “I don’t like it, though.”

                Nobody had the time to really worry before they heard a commotion coming down the corridor in the direction they had come. By the sheer size of the person running toward them yelling, they could tell it was Gabriel.

                Without thinking, Joel turned, grabbing Adelaide’s hand, and ran.

                Clara tensed. “Gabe, what are you doing he--?!” She started to shout, but Gabriel screamed back from the distance.

                “DonmatterrunrunrunrunrunrunRUN!”

                Not needing any further prompting, Clara immediately about-faced and ran.

                The wind had picked up tremendously, beginning to whip her hair into her eyes as she ran. Soon, Gabriel was on top of her. “GOLEFT!” he yelled over the increasing noise.

                Ahead of them, Adelaide and Joel had waited at a junction where a single flight of stairs to the East went down and one to the West went up. “DOWNDOWNDOWN!” His repeated chant was hardly able to be heard.

                Nobody hesitated to follow his direction and they hurriedly descended as the wind in the Furnace quickly heated to scalding temperatures and the din became deafening. They burst through the double doors into a small metal room and Gabriel slammed the doors shut and barred them.

                “What the fuck just happened?!” Joel hollered, hugging Gabriel close to him and burying his face in his chest.

                The open expanse of the forest floor eventually gave way to the business of thickets of underbrush and vine. Adelaide foremost, they harrowingly forced their way forward, the muscles of their arms burning and covered in small stripes of the viscous latex from the cut stranglers.

                Clara worked doggedly, wielding Adelaide’s machete so tightly her knuckles were white; she treated the blade as though it were a dangerous animal to keep a distance from. She was fairly sure she’d never done any real manual labour in her old life, but she wasn’t about to back away when her team had already done so much ahead of her. Her two present companions had retreated a fair distance at her behest and were taking a much-needed breather at the base of a large, light-barked tree.

                “I don’t actually know how you got so frickin’ buff, Ada, but you’re absolutely ridiculous. I swear to God you wrestled bears for a living,” Joel huffed, grinning up at her from the thick covering of leaf litter. “I think you and Gabe should have an arm-wrestling competition. Or just wrassle. You know, either way.”

                Adelaide laughed, squatting down next to him. “I’m sure he could take me down easy either way.”

                “I dunno, A. Gabriel’s pretty bulky, but you’re damn well built.”

                “Maybe. Momma always told me to look smaller than I was. That way, if someone tried something, it’d be easier to knock them out.”

                Joel looked at her with some surprise. “You can remember your mom?”

                Adelaide’s face dropped. “I guess I can. A little here and there, anyway. You can’t?”

                “I can remember that I had a momma, but that’s about it. Same with my dad. I know I called him “Pops” when I got frustrated or whatever, but that’s literally the only thing I can remember without threatening to pop an aneurysm.” He sighed. “It’s rough, ain’t it?”

                “Yeah. Maybe we’ll start recalling things again soon, though,” she said, a smile raising the corners of her mouth. Joel could read the falseness in it, and he was sure Adelaide was able to do the same for his.

                The sympathy in their faces, however, was apparent.

                “The way’s clear, you guys!” Clara panted, highstepping over rootstock and felled branches alike as she made her way back to them. “The forest just sort of. . . stops  at a certain point. It gives way to grass immediately.”

                “What? Ugh, god, no, I hate this place.” Adelaide laughed in frustration. “Whoever the techs were that built this place have some explaining to do.”

                “. . . You know, that’s the first time I’ve thought of this place being built rather than it being a thing that just kind of existed,” Joel pondered. “I mean, that makes a lot more sense, but. . . I dunno. Maybe I was skeptical about it before we got here.”

                “I don’t think I wanna think about it,” Clara groaned. “This place is a nightmare as it stands. Please don’t tell me somebody didn’t make this a nightmare.”

                The others made sympathetic noises in agreement before turning Westward and making for the edge of the forest.

                  Just as Clara had said, as soon as the bramble ended, it was grassland for a couple hundred feet to the impressive edifice before them. Easily as tall as the expanse they just crossed, a grey wall of stones wide as a man is tall stretched out of sight to the North and South. Directly in front of them, a line of red twenty feet wide and two hundred feet tall broke the monotony.

                “It never gets any easier seeing any of this stuff up close, is it?” Clara asked nervously.

                Adelaide shook her head. “It really never does.”

                The first of the three to break their awed trance, Joel stepped forward. “Well, come on, girls, let’s see what we can find. Maybe it’ll be something good!”

                “Or maybe it’ll be a snook!” Adelaide exclaimed dramatically.

                “A-a, uh, what?” Clara asked, scrunching her eyes and shaking her head at Adelaide as Joel laughed. The great metal double doors in the masonry towered before them.

                “A snook! I can’t quite remember, but I’m pretty sure that’s what someone I used to know would call bugaboos that lived in places you weren’t familiar with,” she explained. “I can remember being so damn scared of them that I wouldn’t run off anywhere. Probably was a parent, then. Maybe a grandma? Seems like an old person thing”

                “You’re wandering, Ade.” Joel grinned.

                “Sorry. It just seems like a thing that’s got a lot of happy emotions tied to it along with wetting my pants as a kid.” She smiled sheepishly at the ground.

                “Well, hopefully we won’t find any snooks,” Clara said with an earnesty that was almost surprising.

                “The plural of snook is snook!”

                The heat in the Atrium was absolutely unbearable this close to the Furnace. Everything seemed oppressive in the perpetual twilight at the base of the tropical trees that populated the region; the drone of unduly large insects never stopped and the trunks seemed way closer than they had any right to be. Rare spots of white shone down from the canopy so far overhead, making it just barely bright enough to see without aid. The quarter-light of the early evening here turned everything into something alien—Clara guessed that at least that was an accurate statement.

                Resting against the base of a tree whose bark was so dark as to be almost black, she cracked her neck for what seemed to be the hundredth time that hour and resumed her skyward vigil. She wanted to scream up to the pair scaling the impressive emergent across from her just for a reprieve from the silence, but she knew better than to risk worrying people several hundred feet above ground. On top of that, she feared drawing attention from anything that might dwell in this rainless rainforest, though nothing had ever shown itself to any of the expeditions up to this point. There was something superstitious about her fear, she considered, but this entire place screamed of unknown and unknowable laws.

                Maybe not unknowable, she thought, but completely irrational compared to before. At least, I think? How the hell would I even know for sure? She swore sharply under her breath.

                The Pale had sealed away many of the memories of those who entered. The only thing that remained readily accessible was the fuzzy haze of the emotions associated with a recollection rather than anything more substantial, but if one pushed hard enough, the barrier could be dissolved—if only temporarily. Nobody could discern a pattern for what was hidden, let alone explain it; if they could, that knowledge was locked behind a wall that could not be worn down so easily.

                Clara snapped from her reverie as she heard Joel and Adelaide laughing about something as they came down. She crossed and waited for them by the base of the emergent.

                “Did you guys find anything?” The worn hopefulness in her voice was apparent.

                Adelaide shook her head. “The apex of the Atrium is something like nine hundred feet here, and this tree was the tallest of the bunch. I mean, it’s like five and a half hundred feet tall, so we really need to study these trees because there’s no way they should be able to support themselves. It’s a great scientific find, but all of the old rules are out of play now, I guess,” she sighed. “Is discovery fatigue actually a thing? Like, did explorers just get tired of finding so much new stuff? There’s an impossible quantity of awesome shit here, and I’m sick of being sick of it!” She groaned and scratched her head in exaggerated frustration, freeing several curls of hair from her scrunchie.

                “The Atrium ceiling also starts sloping back down about half a mile from here,” Joel began, throwing an underhand gesture to the direction they all agreed to call North, “so I guess there’s another temperate area further on. It’d be nice to get out of this humidity, I’d say; I keep expecting to come across a ditch full of crawdads at some point.” He grinned. “Regardless, we have three choices right now. We can head North to the new area, we can head West to what looks like a second Furnace entrance or we can head back South to the Hub, ‘cause I ain’t heading back East to the edge of the Atrium yet.”

                There was a general moment of no, hell no before the party mentally regrouped.

                “I think that checking out the Furnace might be a good idea,” Adelaide said. “I mean, yeah, it’s hot, but at least it’s a dry heat.” Joel grunted agreeably.

                “I agree with Ada,” Clara nodded. “We definitely need to try to gather as much intel as we can before we head back to the Hub, so if we can find alternate routes in case of emergency or if it’s shorter or whatever, that'd be great. Hell if I know. I’m just tired of how soft this ground is. At least the Furnace has solid floors.”

                “Welp, I don’t have any complaints either way. I don’t think I can stand hearing these fricking cicada-jumpers much longer, so anything that’ll get us out of here is keen by me,” Joel grumbled before turning due West and ambling off. “You ever seen one of 'em up close, Clair?”

                “Uh, no. I mean, one of them swooped by way to close for comfort earlier, but I didn’t get a direct look at it.”

                “They’ve got, like, pedipalps and shit.”

                Adelaide looked at him crossways, mildly surprised. “I swear on my life that you were an entomologist, Jo. Nobody else knows what a pedipalp is.”

                “Oh, shit, whatever, yeah. You know how spiders have those little limbs, like, right in front of their mandible, right? They use ‘em to hold on to whatever they’re eating. You ever seen a jumping spider hold one of her brood? Shit’s cute as sin.”

                “Sin’s cute?” Clara grinned.

                “ ‘F ya do it right,” he laughed. “Anyways, they got a set of those and they’ve got mandibles like a weta.”

                “Weta?”

                “Ugh, dangit. Just imagine a crazy big grasshopper. Either way, the cicada-jumpers have giant compound eyes, so altogether it’s a hellacious fucking look. They’ve got absurdly long bodies and ten legs. Those things hurt when they grab onto you, too,” Joel said, rolling up his sleeve and showing them two rows of five small, scabbed wounds. “Looking at it, I was sure it was gonna take a chunk of my arm for lunch, but it leapt off of me—which is what actually broke skin—and onto a piece of rottening fruit on the forest floor. I noticed a lot of the fruit here was woody, but I guess it makes sense they got some mad eating power. I have no idea how they make their noise because their legs aren’t designed for that. I guess they have some kind of vocal cord, which is kind of weird as shit but whatever.”

                Adelaide scoffed happily. “You’re enjoying this.”

                Joel walked on in silence for a moment. “Yeah, I reckon I am. I mean, I know y’all are, too. There’s a reason that we all wound up working together like this, I know it.” Looking up at the canopy so far above, he frowned. “And Gabriel, too. I just. . . don’t know, you know?”

                “Yeah, I know.” Clara stared down at the ground. “I know.”