SWISHY BUZZED; SWISHY'S SOUL FLOATED.

His essence bounced in and out of his ocular holes, barely tethered.

The sun had fully set, drawing the latent glitter of the town's straw into blistering illumination. The gold straw glowed upon him and his play-pretend godliness.

And the wing! He didn't have basic control of it, his winglet inadvertently twitching, but he was overcome with happiness. The hope. The path forward. The world opened to him. Everything felt orderly. Everything felt right.

A vision of heaven, that's what he got, and that vision was in that constellation-peppered sky, raven black and lovely. Swishy daydreamed of soaring through the skies, hearing the wind and wind alone. He'd fly through the darkness without a peeve in sight. The clouds were unpolluted and pure.

The scarecrow jumped, arms outward in his comfortable cross formation, attempting to soar-but he fell flat, a crash-landing coat rack.

"GET IT TOGETHER!" Trey scolded. He picked Swishy up, brushed the dust off his clothing, and neatened the feathers of his shadowclaw collar. Trey's panicked expression said it all: MIDNIGHT was coming.

But Swishy's overwhelming joy dulled the danger he should've sensed. A wing. A following. A city of peeves. A looming threat of an ambitious Ruby. Everything happened all at once. And all to him. Life was a lot of things, he'd come to discover, wonderment and danger and intoxication among them.

"I'm sorry, Trey! It's just a lot."

"It certainly is. Now gather yourself, let's move."

"Okay!"

Swishy gave him a thumbs-up and a wings-up too. Even Trey had to smile at that one.

Success—they'd had their first success. Now they had to move before Ruby caught on. They hoped she wouldn't be mad. The snitchtalons weren't that important to her, after all, or at least Swishy assumed this. Ruby didn't do things for them—she just bossed them around.

The more Swishy navigated the outside world, the more he suspected that the darkness, the citizens, and the establishments were all extensions of Ruby. He couldn't imagine Ruby as a woman in a body. There were always tendrils attached, a web of control gripping and puppeteering and urging every mouth, every wing, every heart, to love and serve and work together.

Together, she said. But "for me" she meant.

The duo aimlessly walked for a while, carefully scoping out their surroundings. They knew they'd crossed a line and that the consequences were likely immediate and crushing. But the relative peace of the evening further unnerved them.

Swishy's worshippers, as far as they could tell, had returned to their routines. The windows of the residential homes were aglow with yellow lights, revealing the grayed silhouettes of the families inside, eating, talking, and proceeding with the business of domestic unity. The closed shops were shuttered, and the few opened ones were carrying out their day's-end activities. The town's soul frequencies linked up in a restful splendor.

A normal night? Or the eye of the storm? Swishy and Trey couldn't tell. They strolled, they observed, and they inwardly worried.

They wandered onto a small plaza containing a hair studio and lunch bistro and nail salon among other daytime-only businesses, when they finally broke their tense silence.

"Okay Trey. You only told me part one: to collect love, ching, and feathers. What do we do with it?"

"I don't know. I didn't expect you to grow a wing just like that."

"Isn't it nice? It's more than nice. What's something more than nice?"

Trey slipped a hand into his pocket and produced a random card: GRAND.

"Isn't it grand? Grand? Ah, graaand. Yes, Trey, that word is yummy."

"Glad you think so, my little straw friend."

"So we've collected—"

"And are still collecting." Trey stepped before a lamppost, quickly glanced around for onlookers, and then undid the garland wrapped around as decoration. "Here, Swishy. Eat up!"

Swishy twisted the garland around his arm as if he were a garden hose reel and began his feathery supper, chewing, slurping, making headway into that downy anaconda of darkness. "Mm...wing food."

"You know it!"

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"So!" Swishy began, spewing feathers from his oversized jack-o-lantern mouth, "What comes after collection?"

Trey shivered. He fidgeted. He rubbed the back of his neck.

Swishy offered a straw-chew but Trey declined.

"We find the altar." Trey's posture and body language betrayed nothing but Swishy was all too sensitive to his friend's quaking soul. The fear fissured through Trey and the scarecrow found the outward composure admirable.

Swishy aimed to relax him again. "That's...a GRAND scheme, hehe."

Trey cut his eyes at Swishy and smirked. "Certainly is. But it's scary, though."

Complex moods swirled through Swishy. The darkness comforted him. The darkness had been his best and only friend. Within the darkness, lay simplicity and confidence. He hardly remembered his shadowclaws days—probably too young to—but his first vessel was still a creature of darkness. His move to the altar abyss was a natural enough progression. Nothingness—or perhaps fogginess—had thus far been his favorite form of being.

"Isn't the altar far, Trey? It took me five suns and four moons to get here."

"The shrine is way out in the flatlands, yes. But Ruby summoned you from the city. She might've been home."

"She...took the altar?"

"Possibly. I don't know. All I know is the altar is in the city...up there actually..." Trey lifted his head up to the menacing plaza in the sky, those sick wooden tendrils uplifting The Curseworks.

Swishy gazed upon Ruby's sanctuary, her home in banes and hexes, which appeared to float amongst the clouds, towering over the wondrous oranges and yellows and golds that painted the city. But the overlord was shadows.

And that overlord had a new look now: a black wind, a tower of profane energy hurricane-ing around the Ruby's dark fortress. The cause was obvious. MIDNIGHT, a vicious spell, a sickeningly powerful one.

Trey continued his explanation. "The plan was to trade for wings. They're just feathers and coins. But we worked really hard. We had a lot of fun. I was hoping the altar would appreciate the efforts of not a human-but a bird. What you've done—and what you are—is unusual and special. The altar's gotta pay extra for that."

"You mean pay me enough for wings?"

"Exactly, my guy."

"But what about you?" Swishy took a page out of Trey's book and followed his dodgy, averting eyes. The scarecrow knew the windows to the soul better than anyone.

"Don't worry about me," Trey said through tight lips, an immovable jaw.

"But I worry. Even if I get my wings-and you'll still have to deal with Ruby." Swishy stopped eating. All his energy beamed into Trey. He needed his friend to level with him. He craved his wings, but he wanted his friend more.

Trey sighed. "I decided that, actually."

"You're going to quit your job?"

"I'm way past the point where that’ll even help. Quitting won't stop Ruby from getting me."

Swishy's eyes formed into twin exclamation points, the I-have-the-answer expression he'd adopted during tutoring times. "You're going to use the cards!"

"Yup...but I can't compete with the deck I have now. I have to...ugh I hate to say this."

"Spit it out!" Swishy said, spewing out more feathers-which Trey caught and then effortlessly tossed back into the Swish-head.

"I have to become a sorcerer for real.” Trey shook his head, a bit deflated.

"Like the mages in my games."

"I need even more strength than that. Ruby's the boss, and she'll do anything to win."

"She'll plant your heart...just like mine."

"She'll just kill me."

"I don't completely know that word, but it's awful, isn't it?"

"What happens when you run out of HP?"

"Ah..."

Swishy didn't want to say it but the Altruistic Altar failure screen viciously bloomed in his mind: GAME OVER.

"Come on, Swish. Library time."

"But we don't have time to read."

"We're just going to browse some words. I won't grab a Bible like Ruby's blasphemous self, but there has to be an altar-offering that'd work for me."

"I can't wait for your Level Up!"

"You know it!"

(...)

And the pair progressed away from the plaza and into a populated neighborhood, night markets buzzing with activity on both sides of the street, mostly fast food and curse wards. The folks were relaxed and winding down from their long day of activities. The normalcy was almost enough to make Swishy forget the eerie-ness. Almost. He followed Trey's gaze from lamppost to shop awning to windowsill to rooftop: no snitchtalons, no surveillance. Peaceful, strange.

Swishy slurped up the remains of his shadowclaw garland and remained vigilant.

Trey nervously fiddled with a second necklace beneath his giant rope chain. Fancy...

"What's that?" Swishy pointed.

Trey pulled it up, revealing a tired man, a skinny man, nailed and suffering. "It's a cross."

"And the person on it?"

"Jesus. He's the greatest spirit, a friend of the world."

"Is he a scarecrow too?"

"Why would you say that?"

"I mean, look at him..." Swishy held his arms out and dangled his neck like so.

Trey gasped—he straightened Swishy's neck and patted his arms back down. "No, no, no, he's not a scarecrow. But He's everything, Swishy."

"Can he help with Ruby?"

"We can only hope so!" Trey kissed the cross and tucked it back in. He calmed briefly-but only briefly. The anxiety softly swelled from his body. Trey's distress was palpable. His stomach rumbled, and he flashed an embarrassed smile.

In came the Swishy special: wide eyes, angled head. "Are the rumblies a nervous thing?"

"Definitely."

"You sure you don't want straw?" Swishy pulled down his coat wrist and offered a frayed end.

"Thanks, but no thanks. Golden Dog is right there. It's en route to the library."

"Cool, I'm out of feathers anyway."

The boys approached the stand. Swishy waved to the cashier and the cashier waved back, then looked to Trey—everyone used to the handler-to-star relationship. Trey ordered a "box", and that cashier eyed him as if he was the stupidest person in the world. Swishy covertly wing-whispered 12? You mean 12, right? Like a box of donuts. And Trey corrected himself. "Give me 12 glizzies, please. Put them in a box."

"A box?" The cashier said.

"Yeah bro, a box! We're gonna be walking." Trey counted out 12 ching-tokens and stacked them on the kiosk counter. "A ching per is the greatest thing ever. Right, Swish?"

"If paying for things is this easy, then why are you teaching me division?"

"Oh shut it!" Trey grabbed the hot dog box and tossed one into Swishy's mouth.

"Yum!"

"Alright, library!" Trey snatched a shadowclaw wreath from a streetlamp post.

The hotdog vendor opened his mouth-

"NUH-UH! It's for Swishy so I don't want to hear it." Trey handed Swishy the wreath and walked off.

Swishy hooked the wreath in the crook of his arm and waved bye to the vendor. Then he hurried after Trey, popping feathers into his mouth like chips.