The cloud wasn’t as awesome the second time. Or maybe it was, but my legs were still shaking like jelly and my ears were still ringing and my balance was still off and my mind was still reeling like What even the hell happened? Jeez. and there was no room in my head for the little pocket of happiness and wonder that the island had brought me before. It was gone like the shadow that had killed that poor woman—a thing of the past, the past that I could apparently see, but only through horrible, vertigo inducing sequences. Jeez, ugh. My spin still crawled whenever I thought about it.

Anyway, the cloud carried me down, and there I was again, amidst blue fire and half-imagined shadows, and I took a deep breath to try and steady my trembling limbs. Okay, enough bullshitting. This stuff’s real and it’s goin’ down whether or not we’re ready for it, so I guess I better pucker up and get on with it. Which, I guess, meant finally confronting Bro about some stuff.

“….Mesec?” I called, turning, hoping he hadn’t chosen a different path off of the island. And amazingly, somehow it was that moment in my life, my entire life of fuck-ups and consequences, that I realized I don’t know how to talk to people. I opened my mouth and kind of stopped—and something in the back of my head noticed the running theme. Shit, I thought. How do you even investigate motherfuckers? I can’t just say, “’Ey man, you’re Ma’s up to some bad juju and my Pa needs me to snoop around so I need you to spill some.” And I was thinking about that and some more stuff kind of bubbled up in my head, thoughts like this…poisonous kind of jealousy etching in the back of my eyes that I hated to have, but I had nonetheless. Bro had a Ma that wasn’t my Ma, a Ma he had known since the day he was born. A Ma that was dark and beautiful, a goddess of midnight and starlight, who that I was kinda forced to mistrust but I probably would’ve mistrusted anyway.

But I still didn’t know what to say (can’t just out-and-out admit that I hated the fact he had another family than ours) and, come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to be asking about. “So…um…” I said, smooth as all get-out and obviously not awkward in the slightest. “How….how are you?” Because there was a plague and some darkness and some disappearances poppin’ around since the last time I saw him, so I guessed that was the most appropriate thing to start with.

@[Mesec]
speaking