#closed -

     Their senses were honed more for a living world than yours ever were, after all.

     You picked up on it last; you noticed the abrupt shift of their gifts from bright buttons and shiny scraps of metal to sharp, dull wires. You had accidentally pricked your fingers and dropped them, but they hadn't been upset, even as you searched through the grass in an embarrassed panic.

     You're only noticing it after having to find it yourself, but the thin little things were harder for them to pick up, harder for your eyes to notice. They must have gone out of their way to all decide, collectively, to give you this.

     That was all the meaning you could glean from the wires; the crows' behavior was easier to read, from their ruffled feathers and almost paranoid looks.      You knew them, they knew you, but your feathers glowed bright where theirs were pitch black. It was as though some rumor had spread among the flock, and you were left out of the conversation for your own sake. Something was going to happen, but you had no idea how to prepare for that.

     The flock retreated into the branches of the trees in the quiet park you frequented, no matter how many crumbs you spread across the grass in front of them. Buying the bread itself had become an anxious ordeal in itself, as the baker's attitude had been alike to the flock's that morning.      And like you, they were silent. Not hungry, not chatty, not even interested in bickering among themselves. Nothing was normal. Ciara wasn't hopping along the ground, and Lilli didn't dare to fuss about cleaning her feathers.      Dread-soaked air further weighed on your shoulders, and your tongue felt glued to the roof of your mouth. Little black and blue eyes, all still and fearful, fixated on you alone.

     Silence, more silence, then distant eerie cries from all around. Your head swiveled this way and that. You had mistaken them (for a skipped heartbeat) as Nightmarish cries, but none of the noises sounded enraged enough.      If anything, it reminded you of the twelfth floor, where the broadcast was strongest———

——— !!

     It's a frequency so sharp, even distance muffling it wasn't enough to stop your ears from ringing. You get dizzy. Your heart aches, and a Memory of yours tricks you into believing there's red-hot heat all around...

     The signal is relentless.

     Here, now: you breathe. You try to focus your sight onto something else, but the world around the flock has torn itself into a ruined future. It's desolate, bleak, ruined, broken. PARADISE! Here, again, now?

     You look to the boundaries of the little field and find its iron gate to the neighboring graveyard tangled and rusted. It looks like some unfathomable beast had slammed into the bars with blind fury, wrenching gaps further to let fellow unknowable horrors in (out?). swarm in, swarm out      LUCAH, calm down, it's just your imagination running wild again. This is just a dream, you tell yourself, and pinch your cheek. Nothing. Just a dream, you tell yourself, and pinch your cheek. Nothing.

     Like it's ever worked that way before. Like you've never had to fight your way out of a dream. This place has changed too much of you; maybe it decided that you needed a reminder.

A rumble of laughter bubbled up from deep within his chest, rising up into whole-hearted peals. Tears welled up and spilled. He wipes them away; they don’t return. The Drifter hadn’t laughed like this in a while, hadn’t been surprised like this in a while--it felt cathartic and strange and good. The laughter settles back into the quiet as they contemplate their feelings, and the meaning of the gift. They are grateful for Noel, and for Snowtide.

Lifting the thing out of the box, the Drifter rises with it in his hands, then drops it onto the ground.

He kicks it.

The ball rolls and bumps around in the exact way it should. It’s a strange pink and fuzzy elastic sphere, whose sole purpose was to be used in a game of Drifter Soccer.

     You back up. He doesn’t move toward you. Christian’s wings aren’t out yet; you wonder if he remembers how to. You don’t know which Christian this is, what he remembers of you; you don’t have any words to say either way.

     He turns his head toward the window in your room, where you have the blinds folded up. Down below, the Ward is filled with passerby trying to get through yet another ordinary day. Bicycles and motorcycles slip around other tiny forms down below, the din of the day muffled by the height and glass.      As your rival walks toward the sunbeams, his form is momentarily distorted. You can’t tell what he’s thinking. You never could.

“Why are we here?” he asks. You don’t want to tell him. “Why did you do this?” he asks. You don’t know why you wanted this so much. “Where do we go?” he asks, voice quieter. You can show him that.

     LUCAH, you walk up to Christian and reach out for his hand. He’s so bewildered by the ease in which you do, he lets you do that. You can see his face better now; he’s scared and unsure, trying to remember why it is that your face causes him so much frustration. You pity him.

     In the dream before, the world was hostile and rife with corruption. Danger was at every turn, with pain following it soon after. Your dream here, now, reminds you of that place you had been; you still remember the other children as well as their own struggles...

     You don’t remember telling them anything, so there aren’t any final words to regret having spoken. Then you remember what they all looked like when in pain--the words that they’d yelled--

how

           they had

                              all

                                        fallen

(like you?)

     Yet as much as it hurts, you feel grateful you can still recall them at all. To know the world that you’d been in still meant something to your heart.

Your knees curl in instinctively as the sand around you shifts, slowly weaning you away from the haze you’d prefer to indulge in. Voices gently--then urgently--bid you awake, and you blink an eye at the ones who’d approached you. It’s a pair of worried strangers, letting go of each others’ hands to gently lift you up away from the mercy of the ocean.

     They’re propping you up on your feet, dusting your dress off of sand (trying). When your wings unfurl and Burst becomes summoned, it startles them, and a feeling of panic jumpstarts your alertness to full. You feel familiar guilt seep into your chest: you’re in trouble, aren’t you?

You aren’t scolded or punished or hurt for it. Their hands lift off, respecting what you want them to do.

     In a way that strikes you as a little empty-headed, they ask you about your parents, treating you like any other lost child--forgetting immediately your wings and your companion. You don’t bother as much as to move your jaw to respond; these are strangers, oddly kind as they are, and you have nothing to provide them.

     Then as though you’ve run out of time to properly respond, they simply nudge you closer toward the crowd of people enjoying the concert and blend back into another crowd. Spirale was strange. Above everything, Spirale was strange.

a dream?