I was just happy to be together again and I guess the sky was happy for us too, cuz it was lit.

I remember, long ago up in the north, right before a certain kind of heartbreak kept me awake at night with monsters and nightmares and the creeping monsters of my own memories--I’d been in love. I’d fallen in love with the north (even though it was so damn cold) and the sky that adorned it, because, sometimes, it would dance. And here I was so far south, having staked a home next to the waves and the god awful sandy beaches, and for the first time the sky showed me Hey, I can dance wherever the fuck I feel like dancing. Rock the fuck on, sky. Rock the fuck on.

I lay with Chico draped across me, his wings and mane splayed out all around n’ shit, keeping me warm as we watched the lights play out across the sky. There was an ache in both of our chests that said many things--guilt, hurt, a fierce gladness to see each other again--that acknowledged the Yeah, I fucked up and the Hey, you fucked up and it hurt, bitch without letting it hang in the air. But we weren’t the type to argue it out, to hash it with words cuz who the fuck knows how to do that? We sat there and basked in the hurt of it, and I lay there and he lay on top of me to keep me warm, and we both watched the lights that ribboned above us and he learned from me how to love them, too.

Yo, he said suddenly in my head, the first words we had exchanged for a while; I followed his sight down from the sky, down to the valley that ended with the jagged edge of the World itself. There was a snow puff or some shit stalking that divide, coming dangerously close to the the maw of the Ocean And Everything, and after the first confused notion that it was a snow golem I recognized just who and what that floating piece of puff marshmallow was.

A surge of indignant anger washed over me, killing that mood in an instant, the quiet, forgiving contemplation that I was basking in with Chico. Despite that, I was still about to ignore that ho, and I cast my eyes back up into the dancing sky resolutely. Except it didn’t work because I was looking without seeing; my eyes were glazed over with the memory of the Steppe, of finding Leos and the little tantrums we both threw up there in the frozen north. The beauty of the sky was forgotten; I was pissed.

Handle that, was Chico’s word of advice. I snorted and lashed my too-small tail on the ground because hell no I didn’t wanna do no shit like that. So, naturally, I rolled to my feet even as Chico continued to cling to my back, and I jogged down the hill towards the valley with teeth.


Cuz he had a point and I wasn’t really in a position to ignore it at the moment; Chico was right. I couldn’t just act pissy and ignore a problem that was probably gonna keep brushing against my shoulders if I was gonna keep calling this place home. Better to bury the hatchet while I still could (or at the very least, mark that shit and keep an eye on it, make sure it don’t end up in my back or whatever).

“Hey kid!” I called out as I came nearer to the slender figure dancing (gracefully?) against the edges of the cliff, flirting with the idea of flight, of death if she didn’t jump right. The delicacy of--her I guess--from the smallness to her wispy build to her wobbling gait--none of it inspired any sympathy from me. My blood still popped and burned as I approached. “Hey, you got somethin’ to say to me?”

Was I trying to start a fight? Noooo…..? Okay fuck it, y’all already know how abrasive I can be and my tone wasn’t helping things, but. At least I was adressing it, y’know? At least I wasn’t asking some passive aggressive bullshit and letting the shame of it hang in the air and--

(okay sure whatever there’s still a lot of salt there)

I planted my feet, waiting with a square stance like a bulldog’s. “Why’d you call my brother a monster?” Explain that shit to me, please. Explain the goofy-ass, gangly-ass, soft-ass nerd of a motherfucker being any kind of monster to me.

"talk"