#float on

He breathed. It felt good to breathe. It felt good to be alive. First time since, well, since she'd died.

As he stood and left the water, he felt lighter, as though the gravity had lessened. Had she done that? Probably not. He walked over to one of the side tables and picked up one of her charms. It was square and had her Bane of the Swarm symbol embossed on it. He held it flat on his hand above the table. Then he dropped it. It fell with a clink. He lifted and dropped it again.

The Drifter had been in enough different gravitational pulls to have a gut feeling about the heaviness of things. He was pretty sure based on this ad-hock experimentation that his sense of being lighter was a feeling not Eris actually fucking with the gravity (although, as far as he understood it, she totally could if she wanted to).

Unlikely for her to do that, though. This was mental, then. Emotional.

"Damn," he whispered with a laugh, looking down at her charm. He caressed it with a pruney fingertip, wrinkled from the time in the hot water. He liked how the bumps of the charm's symbol slid along the bumps in his fingers. How cool it felt in contrast with the warm moist air.

On impulse he picked it back up and tumbled it across his knuckles, smirking to himself that he was naked in Eris Morn's soul, tumbling one of her charms just like his own coins. He palmed it without thinking about it and then caught it with his other hand as it had no sleeve to fall into.

Should fix that, he thought to himself, and walked over to the bench where he'd left his clothes.

Right. His ghost took those away. And then Eris told his ghost to fuck off. Might as well wear the clothing Eris had dreamed up for him for now. Dumbass ghost. Drifter wasn't even mad at the guy at this point. The jolt had fucking hurt and scared him, but it wasn't anything he wouldn't have done in the past. Pretty funny, really. They could laugh about it later. Eris was mad at his ghost now, though, and the Drifter kinda wanted him to stew a bit because it was a jerk move - the sort of move you use on someone who's been a jerk.

He paused after he pulled on the soft grey pants he'd found on the bench. That was the difference, he realized. Why he kept feeling he didn't deserve Eris, and everything Eris was, despite him not being able to ever leave her. Not now, not ever.

"It doesn't matter if you do." He heard her voice in his head. He remembered telling Sloane how justice doesn't keep your heart from collapsing. Two sides of the same coin, really. Two peas in a pod. Eris didn't care about fair. Everything that had happened to her wasn't fair. She didn't get anything by playing by the rules. So she didn't. Just like him.

He ran his thumb over her charm in his hand. He didn't deserve her. He couldn't. He couldn't think of anyone who ever would deserve Eris Morn. She'd be offended if anyone attempted to claim it. She was a force unto herself. She loved him because she wanted to. She had chosen to do so. There was no other reason. Sloane had punched him because he deserved it. His ghost had zapped him because he deserved it. Eris... didn't care what he deserved. She was just glad he was back. And it wasn't that she was pushing that aside. She really did not give... a flying fuck.

He laughed out loud by himself in the warm mist, remembering the profanity coming out of her mouth. A phrase she'd deliberately taken from him, just like she had reached out and taken his coin, the heavy one, the one from the Emissary of the Nine. He'd felt lighter when she'd done that. He felt even lighter now.

It didn't make any sense. He should be afraid for when he'd inevitably lose her love, paranoid for when the other shoe would drop. He had no power in this situation. She held all the cards. If she stopped loving him that would be... it would feel like the end of the world. But... it was weirdly ok. He wasn't scared. He trusted her. The way she'd touched him before she left. The way she'd held him while he just up and lost it in the water. His throat still hurt from that. He looked around and saw the metal pitcher and the cup on the floor beside the bubble-filled water.

Walking over, the Drifter picked them up and poured himself another glass, drinking it down and then stopping mid-swallow to look over at the hand still holding the pitcher. It had gotten heavier.

He brought it back to the bench where he'd left Eris' charm and the soft grey-green shirt he hadn't put on yet. He put the empty cup beside the charm, poured water from the pitcher into the cup, placed the pitcher down and then looked down into it, watching as it refilled with cool water.

"Huh," he said to himself, drinking the water back again and refilling it, watching the pitcher refill on its own out of nowhere. Endless cold fresh water.

"So this is what it's like to be in love with a god," he said softly to the air before his brain immediately took over with imagined schematics for how to use the infinite pitcher as crop irrigation.

Maybe a garden. An herb garden. She liked the rosemary and mint, clearly. He could make her more soap and both went good in food. She could straight-up imagine food like she had the rice earlier, sure, but it'd probably be less effort to have him make it. Give her something sustainable that she didn't need to expend the resources of her tithes on since that was finite and she wasn't currently getting any from anything. At least, he didn't think she was. She'd probably have told him if it was otherwise. But she only just recently became Ascendant so that might be something they figure out later. Whatever she needed, he'd get it for her.

He wondered if it would be too much work for her to make a small sun. He could always rig something up artificially. Put it on rotation. Get a bunch of little gardens going to make her things. Some veggies. Give all the different kinds of mint their own mint-area and let them fight it out. Plant Crucible. Maybe they could get some fish happening. Animals. What was that story about the guy with the boat saving shit before a flood? Grab a couple of everything.

He could grow her some of them pine apples! She'd like that.

Oooh. A cow. Then he could make cheese for her. Would it be a... Ascendant cow? Or just a cow cow? Would a Ascendant cow shit Ascendant cow shit? He could sell it as fertilizer. Eris Morn's Ascendant cow shit. Guaranteed to make your veggies grow even more freaky. Don't mind the Soulfire glow around everythin'. That ain't a bug, brother, that's a feature.

He chuckled to himself on the bench in the steam and put on the shirt. It felt nice. He sipped some more water and played with her charm, doing various slight-of-hand tricks with it, working out how to manipulate it smoothly while wearing the new shirt.

Savathun had frogs and bog slugs and fish. Get Eris a cow. Get her to make a spot where it could pasture and wander around and eat and shit. He could get her seeds to grow things in the cow shit to feed the cow good stuff and it'd make milk and cream and cheese. It'd been a couple hundred years since Ol' Drifter had looked after a cow but they probably hadn't changed much. Gotta milk 'em on time though or they get pissy. He remembered that. Cows like routine. Whole life has to revolve around the damn cow. Regular as clockwork. Him and Eris weren't very regular people. Maybe they could get one of her maintenance frames from the Moon in here to milk it when he was busy. That'd probably work.

Udon! Udon could come live in her throne world!

Shit. He'd have to tell her about Udon. They'd have to go get the bog slug back from Fynch. Drifter added that to the mental list of things to talk to Eris about regarding her being back from the dead. There was... a lot. A lot a lot. But it'd be fine. He knew that now. No one had expected her to be back.

So a bog to hold the bog slug. That'd be important. What else grows in a bog? Orchids. Drifter, why you thinkin' about flowers? Whatever. Orchids would be nice. Savathun didn't know shit about shit when it came to her own throne world. Probably came with the territory of bein' a genocidal space shrimp in a death cult not bein' good at the concept of living things. But Drifter had lived in swamps before. Maybe he could get Eris a crocagator for her swamp. Nah. It might eat Udon. That'd be bad. Some bugs though, to pollinate the orchids.

Oooh. Bees. He'd never been able to keep a beehive going for more than a few years on the Derelict but, if he could find her bees then she could probably keep them alive. Or at least not let them die. Yeah. Ok so definitely some expeditions to go hunt down some bees. Could do some camping trips to just... go forage for shit to bring into her throne world. Blueberries grew in boggy conditions. Hell yeah she'd want blueberries. And those cute rushes with the brown cylinders that grew on top and poofed out in fluffy seeds. Those were nice. Very boggy. And some frogs and maybe a turtle. Yeah. And tiny fish and insects for Udon to munch on.

"Alright," he whispered to himself as he looked down. Under where the shirt had been was a pair of slippers. The Drifter smirked.

He tried them on. They were soft and nice. Very gentle on the toes. He shook his head and kicked them off, feeling relief as he felt the mosaic tiling in the floor under his naked feet. He briefly chewed his lip as he considered summoning his ghost to get his socks back. He liked his socks. He liked the holes in them. They made sense. Nah. Let the bastard stew. He could make due without his socks for now. No way in hell the Drifter was gonna wear fancy fluffy comfy slippers though.

Sometimes he wondered if he'd even have any boundaries when it came to Eris and other times there'd be something like this. Yup. There's the line, he thought to himself. Drifter doesn't fucking wear fucking slippers. Hell no.

Drifter put them nicely on the bench and felt a twinge of guilt run through him. Of course if it mattered to her he'd wear them for her. If she asked him to. If it would make her happy. But he was pretty sure these were for his comfort, not hers, and he absolutely did not feel comfortable in comfy slippers. That shit was just too damn weird.

He picked up Eris' charm, rolled it across his knuckles and made it disappear. Then he picked up the metal cup and the pitcher of endless fresh water and walked, barefoot, to the door.

I've made a playlist for all the songs that will be added to this series as I go. Playlist on Spotify Playlist on Youtube