I think when you get used to living life by surviving day by day, you forget you’re supposed to be alive. Days start to flow into each other like oil into water, and you feel like you’re just rolling down a hill, getting dizzy. I can’t tell you what happened last week, last year, none of it. But today and yesterday hang vividly in my mind. My memory is colorful, too, and I remember things that I don’t really need to. I don’t need to remember that the hokey pokey was grape, I don’t need to remember that the fish’s name is skin, but I do. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but it’s important to me.
I have one touch of kindness to remember everyone by. I remember DJ because they picked me up and carried me today. I remember Peony because she asked me to come with her and Sebastian. I remember Sebastian because he gave me a treat, and Adderall the same, my grape and butterscotch. Fuego gave me the armlet. I think the only one who hasn’t done anything is the bat-girl.
I don’t know why they’re all throwing themselves at me without hesitation like this. Maybe they’re insane, maybe they’ve got a deathwish, but I appreciate it, you know? Good things don’t come around as often as I’d like them to. If the party comes my way, then I’ll have a slice of the celebration. If they let me stay and celebrate, of course. Then again, I’ve seen my share of troupes, and I know when I’m not wanted. You see it when they bicker with one another, when they hold fast to only a pair, when one won’t talk to another. And of course when they ignore you. They keep to each other, spare you only a passing remark or spark of interest, but you’re a conversation piece more than a person. I haven’t seen them bicker, I haven’t seen them split off, and they’ve always made an effort to keep me in their midst. Maybe I’m a person to them.
Oh, what do I know? It’s only day two. They might have dragged on for months, but it’s only two days.
…
“Your first lie, hm?” DJ asks.
Ikimono nods. “I can hardly believe it myself.”
DJ wistfully grins. “I remember my first lie. You remember when I first came here, Fuego? How I had to help you with the wedding?”
“Oh, please,” ve cringes, “You were the only good thing about that fiasco.”
“Uh, hello?” Peony interjects, “Your bride is right here?”
Peony gestures to Juniper. Juniper laughs and puts her paw on Juniper’s shoulder.
“Don’t stop ven,” she smiles, “I feel exactly the same way about Fuego.”
Ikimono sputters. “You’re married?”
Sebastian rolls his eyes in jest. “Oh my god, here we go.”
Something about the air begins to change at the table, as though a heavy fog rolled in and engulfed the whole lot of them. The table begins to shake and distort, and the dishes of food sprawling out slowly start to evaporate into glimmering colors. DJ rises from their seat, and the soft glow of the fire around their bad eye ignites to lessen the darkness settling around them. With a snap of their claws, the table falls to the ground, slowly filling the dusty ground with polished wood. The others rise from their seats, jumping ahead to join DJ in the thin light. Ikimono, confused, stays put in their chair.
“You’d think it’s the subject of a very good joke,” DJ begins, “A gay man and a lesbian are getting married for political reasons. Boom–”
A warm, welcoming stage light beams down on DJ. The sudden jump from the shadows takes Ikimono by surprise.
“–With the setup alone you’ve got half the audience knocked out laughing. Of course, when the punchline comes and they’re cutting each other’s hands with their daggers, staring into each other’s eyes with nothing but seething contempt, you can’t really laugh.”
DJ’s spotlight grows faintly, pulling the others into the scene from their sides of the pocket stage. They’ve all taken their spots in other chairs, cushions, and fainting couches in an almost too-perfect set. Something about the placement reminds Ikimono of Sunshine’s lair, but they haven’t the courage to tell that to DJ.
Adderall, who has positioned herself along the back of a couch, dramatically puts the back of her hand to her forehead as if she were to faint. “Oh, how dreamy! On the altar and they already want to kill each other!”
“Why were they getting married?” Ikimono asks.
“A tale as old as time,” DJ continues, melodramatically gesturing and waving their hands to the opposite sides of the theater. “See, Juniper’s the fair princess of the Kingdom Under the Bed. Fuego here’s the noble Fairy Prince. The happy friends and the fairies haven’t had the most stable relationship, so the good King Frog and old Verbena the Wise agree to marry off their kids to keep peace between their lands.”
“You think they could’ve just signed a treaty, but no,” Juniper says, reclining atop a misplaced ottoman, “They had to do things the old-fashioned way.”
DJ waves their hand across Fuego’s side of the stage. “Verbena sends her beloved progeny and vens trusty handmaid-servant-what-have-you to make the trip across the starry sea of Andromeda to come to the Kingdom Under the Bed for King Frog to accept his daughter’s suitor and give his good blessing to host the wedding. Only when ve comes to the docks of Elfame, vens royal boat has already left!”
DJ pauses, then double takes.
“–Wait, it did leave without you, right Fuego?”
Fuego puts vens face in vens hands. “Worse. Other way around. They didn’t even float the boat out yet.”
“They didn’t even float out the boat?”
“Nope.”
“Dear god, alright.”
With a solemn shake of their head, DJ returns their attention to Ikimono.
“–Vens royal boat hadn’t even arrived! Woe unto the prince! How ever will ve make it on time to the citadel of the Kingdom Under the Bed?”
“A bargain with death, of course,” Peony smiles.
A small flourish of music fills the air. She leaps up from her seat on a fainting couch to stand beside DJ. With her voice comes a faint melody that follows her to her spot beside the narrator.
“Precisely! A deal with the harbinger of death, destruction, and all things terrible, the ferryman Peony! Ve and vens beloved servant, armed with as much or as little that will fit within the ferryman’s boat, paid the due to cross the starry sea. The trio set out that morning, with the raven’s moony eyes just barely open enough to see them out on their journey.”
“Sounds harrowing,” Ikimono remarks, reaching out to grab a steamed bun from a dish of fried treats just within the clutches of shadows. They wonder if the feast on the once-table was in anticipation of a story.
“Indeed, but that was not the end of their tale! For along the way, death had to reap, as is her unholy duty. Halfway to the kingdom, she happened upon a wayward soul lost in the waves. The fiery, beastly soul of a dragon.”
“You?” Ikimono asks.
The music climbs into an uproar as DJ’s enthusiasm froths from their voice. “Yes! ‘Twas I! Just barely blinking in the world, and I had already been tugged along into an adventure. I climbed into the boat and came with them to the Kingdom Under the Bed.”
The music abruptly stops.
“Climbed in?” Adderall rebukes, “You almost tipped the boat!”
“You knocked me out into the sky, DJ,” Fuego adds.
“Excuse me for never having wings before.”
Fuego’s eyes narrow. “A dragon who’d never had wings before?”
“How can you prove I was a dragon in my past life?”
Peony calmly puts her void hand between the three of them, and at once their quarreling stops.
“It was true,” she begins, lowering her tone to add suspense to the tale. “DJ knocked the Fairy Prince from my ferry, but I reached in and pulled ven out with this very hand!”
Peony holds up her void arm. It looks as though the stars from the sea are still shimmering in the inky ooze. The music returns again, just as barreling as before.
“Is,” Ikimono stutters, “Is that how you lost your arm?”
“Oh no, that was when I was wrestling sharks at the aquarium. Longer story.”
Sebastian, seated patiently with a glass cello, stops playing and looks at her in confusion. “I thought you told me you lost your arm in a sparring match with the Dusken Knight and forged a new one from star matter.”
“I heard her tell Creo she replaced it with magic so she could cast better,” Adderall chides.
“She lost it in a ritual accident?” Juniper asks.
Ikimono is just about as confused as everyone else.
She dismisses everyone’s puzzlement with a single sentence. “Could be. DJ?”
“Right.”
DJ nods, and the others relax back into their places. Sebastian shrugs and continues to play.
“And so we made it to the citadel just in time. King Frog’s patience was at the end of its rope, and had we arrived a mere minute later, our heads would be rolling in the street! The four of us knelt before his throne in humble prostration, and in return for our kindness, he yelled at us for our condition. The Fairy King and two stowaways, how preposterous a dilemma! He was almost willing to send us four back to Elfame with neither dowry nor bride. That was until Peony’s quick thinking saved us all.”
“I said we came as Fuego’s servants,” she explains, “I explained that I was vens knightley guard, Adderall his servant–”
“And I was vens advisor. That was my first lie. I didn’t know anything at all.”
“And King Frog believed us.”
“So he sent his humble assistant Creo to retrieve Juniper for us.”
DJ and Peony rush to grab Fuego and Juniper from the opposing sides of the stage. They each resist their captuer’s grasp for a moment or two, then begrudgingly make their way to center stage.
“I didn’t want to get married,” Juniper says, “But when I met Fuego, I wanted to get married even less.”
“Oh please,” Fuego grumbles, “It took everything in me to not gouge out all 8 of my eyes when I saw you.”
“And so our bride and groom first met!” DJ calls, “Oh, you could feel the pure chemistry between them suffocating you in the air!”
“The perfect pair!” Peony adds.
“But Juniper, for all the high glory of the kingdom she hailed from, didn’t have a handmaiden to help her prepare for her wedding. So Adderall generously volunteered to help her.”
Adderall leaps from their seat and crosses the stage to Juniper.
“I didn’t need the help,” she mumbles.
“Did to!” Fuego snaps.
“And since I was the great knight, I had to stay with Fuego to help him prepare for the occasion.”
“Ve needed the help,” Adderall smiles.
“Did not!” Ve retorts.
“But even with the bridesmaid, groomsman, and servants selected, all we needed was someone to officiate the wedding,” DJ continues, “And in spite of his mutism, Creo was happy to oblige.”
“Creo?” Ikimono asks.
Sebastian looks up from his instrument. “Creo, the grand wizard, advisor to King Frog of the Kingdom Under the Bed. He’s the last gooling in all of Portar.”
Ikimono can hardly fathom being the last of anything. They’ve encountered loneliness, sure, but there is something even more profoundly lonely about being the only one of your kind to remain without hope of ever finding another. They wonder if he finds solace, anger, or despair in his reflection. But before they can lose themself in thought, Peony picks up the narration.
“Marriages in our kingdom work a bit differently than how they work in the realm of the living. No rings for us fairies, happy friends, dead folk, and other miscellaneous freaks. We do things by blood here. Sebastian, would you help me demonstrate?”
Sebastian sheepishly looks up from his playing. He taps out a rhythm on the glass, and when he stands to join Peony, the cello continues to play by itself.
“When people want to be married, they begin by finding an ornate dagger or knife for their partner,” She begins, “Of course, any old kitchen knife or razor will do, but when love’s what’s on the cutting table, you want something better.”
“Can we make this quick?” Sebastian protests, “You know how squeamish I am with blood.”
Should’ve found a different circus then, Ikimono thinks.
“You find wherever it is you want to do the deed– if it were me, I’d find an old willow or wisteria somewhere far away from where someone else can see –”
“Oh, that sounds nice,” Sebastian mutters.
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“And you get someone to recite that old spell for you. When the spell is said, it’ll seal you together until either you die or the spell is broken. Sometimes, when the pair themselves know the spell because they’re magical scholars like Seb and I, they’ll say the spell themselves.”
“Is it a hard spell?” Ikimono asks.
“Not really,” Sebastian replies. “it’s like– oh, how does it go?”
Peony looks on in genuine anticipation as Sebastian ponders to himself. She looks down at the knife and wonders if she should really do it.
No, no, this is just a show, she thinks, And besides, he’d hate me if I did it without his permission. You don’t just marry someone blindly. Oh, he’d probably hate me for even thinking about it.
Before she can spiral, Sebastian snaps her from her thoughts. “I can’t remember it now. I’m sure it’ll come back to me at some point or another.”
“Right then,” Peony says, half stumbling over her words. “But once you say the spell, you cut your hands open.”
Sebastian pitifully looks down at Peony as she pulls in his hand. The two lock eyes for a mere second before he frantically looks away. To his surprise, though, she only taps his palm with the handle. Cautiously, he turns to look back at her.
“And if you feel really woozy at the sight of your own blood like Seb here–”
She turns to Sebastian and with a single glance asks him for permission. He nods in reply, leaning down a bit to look her in the eyes. She pauses and puts her hand on his cheek. He closes his eyes, enjoying the warmth. Then, with but a moment’s hesitation, she kisses him.
“--You get your partner to take your breath away so you’ll pass out and be done with it!”
Sebastian stumbles back a little, rising once more to his full height. She isn’t lying, whatever air had settled itself into his lungs has left behind a vacuum of butterflies and stardust. He thought it’d just be the hand on his cheek to calm him from his nerves. He isn’t complaining at all about her, gods no. If he were any more a fool, he’d dare say this was only a lucid dream. But oh, the pounding in his heart would be all the more to wake him up.
He anxiously glances over at Peony. He wants to think she’s joking, but she’s got the same sparkle in her eyes and the same red across her face.
Gods, she’s adorable.
No, no, she has to be. This is all a performance, after all. All for the act, all for the drama. Even the illusions and pocket realm surrounding them are inauthentic. Everyone’s on a high from the stage today, Peony no doubt the same. She’s just embarrassed she did it at all, that she kissed someone as undeserving as him. He would be too, maybe. The thoughts swarm him like hornets.
“And that concludes our demonstration,” Peony says, just as breathless at her partner, “Now, back to our regularly scheduled misadventure.”
Sebastian stumbles back to his instrument and finds his hands stiffer to work than what they were before. Peony almost walks straight into DJ when she turns away.
“Oh, terribly sorry,” she mutters.
“I’m so proud of you,” DJ whispers, “Had no idea you were such a casanova.”
“No, DJ, it’s not–”
“I’ll get you a boba afterwards, my treat.”
“DJ–”
They pick up without missing a beat. “Creo, the highest wizard in all of Portar, is ready to officiate the wedding.”
DJ claps twice, and Juniper and Fuego emerge from opposite sides of the stage, dressed to the nines in their cloaks and kimono.
Fuego nods at DJ. “You did a good job with the corset. Never thought someone with such big claws could work with such delicate threading.”
A certain disquiet fills DJ’s stomach. The memories flood back in droves. There have been as many ignorances resolved by calm instruction as there have been successes with careful weaving. DJ’s laced his corset a dozen times, each time better and more skillfully then the last, but they know to Fuego, they’d only laced it once. They just said yes, I’ve done it before, and ve believed them. Ve had no reason not to, but ve did without any questioning. Nothing of where they learned it from, nothing of who came before.
Who taught you how to lace a corset? They feared ve’d ask.
Well, I don’t know how else to say it, DJ feared they’d answer, You did, Fuego.
“DJ?”
The memories fade from their eyes.
Fuego’s just as patient as ve was the first time. DJ always liked that about ven. “You started again.”
“Ah, did I?” They reply, “My apologies.”
From the audience, Ikimono catches a glimpse of the terror in their eyes.
DJ clears their throat. “Fuego, progeny of the Fairies, and Juniper, princess of the Imaginaries, wed! Oh, what a glorious sight.”
“I’m not kissing you,” Juniper growls, “Once was enough for me.”
“Thank the gods,” Fuego replies, “You tasted like energy drinks and sour worms.”
“News flash, idiot, you’re not supposed to taste your victims when you kiss them.”
“Forgive me for my senses being flashbanged when you did whatever breathing thing you did to me. You gotta figure out how to kiss if you ever want a girlfriend.”
“You take that back, fruitcake! You’ve never even kissed a girl before.”
“As if you’re not standing right here?”
“You call that a kiss?”
Adderall swiftly cuts between the two and pushes them away from each other.
“Fun fact for our viewers at home,” she smiles, “Creo had to ask them to kiss! Neither of them wanted to!”
Adderall shoves the two to opposite sides of the stage. Juniper and Fuego shoot each other death glares as they depart. It’s hard to tell if they’re joking.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t get yourself killed when you started snickering to yourself mid-wedding,” DJ says.
“How could I not? Especially when Creo sounded so sopping wet and pathetic about it.”
Peony looks to the ground to hide her smile. “The dejected ‘please’ was what got me.”
“But the two were wed, however begrudgingly!” DJ continues, “And with that, the couple and the guests were sent away to prepare for the next day’s festivities. King Frog and Verbena had planned a roaring festival of good food, wine, and music to celebrate their offspring’s happy marriage.”
“But before all that,” Peony adds, “Our lovers had to pass the night with each other.”
The props on the stage start to rearrange into the familiar layout of a bedroom. Adderall tosses a blanket over the fainting couch now positioned to be a bed as she scuttles over to DJ and Peony on stage right.
“We take you now live to the royal bedchambers of our happy couple, where only one kind of scheming can be happening on their wedding night–”
The three narrators of the chorus put their arms around each other and shout in unison.
“--Homicide!”
Ikimono grins through a mouthful of steamed bun. The best stories are the ones where someone gets murdered. They pity they aren’t on the stage to see it up close, or better yet, take part in it.
Juniper and Fuego step out onto the newly arranged scenery and stand on opposite sides of the bed. Juniper puts her paws down on the covers with enough force to shake the bed and leans forward to get herself mere inches from Fuego’s face. Fuego idly leans against the back of the couch, crossing his legs as he towers over her.
Juniper, shockingly, is more desperate than angry. “So. Till death do us part, huh?”
Fuego shakes his head. “One of us has to die, I guess.”
“Which one, though?” Juniper asks, “If you kill me, the fairies will wage war against the happy friends.”
“And if I do, the opposite.”
The two lower their heads in grim acceptance. Sebastian’s playing slows to a dirge.
“What if we did it like this,” Juniper begins. “Murder-suicide. We inflict wounds on each other that only we could make. Like, I attack myself and you yourself, then each other. Then, nobody’ll know who did the fatal blow.”
“I’d rather not die though, you know? I mean, how old are you, anyway?”
“Common age, happy friend age, or, I don’t know, how do you convert age by fairy standards?”
“Common’s fine.”
“Seventeen.”
“Gods, I’m nineteen in common. This feels weird.”
“Ick, yeah.”
“But you’ve got the whole world to see. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you, you could go study magic or combat if you wanted to.”
They pause again.
Fuego shakes his head. “You could find a nice girl, go on a few adventures with her. You shouldn’t be stuck with me.”
“I know. Shouldn’t be stuck with me either.”
Another pause.
“What do you want to do with your future?”
“Me? I’ve got eleven siblings. Not much lost if I disappear.”
“Eleven siblings? Jeez, what were your parents thinking?”
“Could be worse. Father’s the oldest of 27.”
“Gods. Is Adderall a sibling?”
“No. More of a less-than-voluntary hired hand. And besides, she’s a glyph, I’m a kit.”
“I see. But you said disappear?”
“Sure. I don’t see why we couldn’t.”
“I’m an only child, though. Someone would notice.”
“Look. We’ve got Adderall, we’ve got Peony and DJ, and I’m sure Creo wouldn’t mind helping us. We can disappear.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Peony sniffles a little. “Oh, I just knew there was a soft side to those two.”
DJ nods. “Yes, the two had finally come to an understanding. They may not love how kings and queens loved, but there was love. And now there was a goal.”
“You there, you three!” Fuego calls.
The chorus turns to Fuego and kneels before their hero.
“Yes, Prince Fuego,” they reply.
“Help us escape.”
“We’ll take the way down to the cellar, then we’ll leave through the catacombs. It’s easier.”
“It is done,” Peony nods. “Let us go!”
“Oh, and Creo’s here too, by the way,” Adderall adds.
Sebastian’s playing picks up again as the five conjure yet another arrangement of the stage. Furniture and props now become places to hide and sneak past.
“We had to be swift in our path to escape,” DJ begins, “We may not have been the most artful of dodgers, but our path was sure and true. Escape tasted as sweet as summer’s fruit, and freedom the trinket within our grasp.”
“But then we met Willbyr,” Juniper hisses.
Ikimono turns their head to the side. “Willbyr?”
“Willbyr,” DJ says, conjuring a flame in their hands to cast shadows on the walls. “Willbyr, the changeling trickster. A wily thief with no true visage. One moment, a satyr with horns of gold and hooves of marble. The next, a snake-armed werebear with eyes of icy blue. He was after the treasured dowry of King Frog, but decided to make a detour. You see, some presence caught his mind’s eye, and he was hellbent on seeing just how far the rabbit hole went.”
“A fruit,” Peony continues, “A fruit which grew in the far regions of East Jabip, one that granted its eater a knowledge of their past life. And Willbyr was certain that one of us knew the way.”
“Not me,” Juniper says, “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“Not I,” Fuego says, “I’d never been to The Kingdom Under the Bed before, let alone heard of Jabip, let alone known there was an east one.”
“I’d heard of the fruit and of East Jabip,” Peony adds, “My travels mean I’ve heard of every story and seen every town under the sun, but never the two crossed in passing conversation.”
“Creo didn’t know either,” Sebastian says, pausing his playing for a moment, “He didn’t, did he?”
“No,” Fuego replies.
“Good, I’m remembering correctly then.”
DJ stands frozen in place, a sudden glassiness overtaking their stare.
I knew, They think to themself, I was damned from the start, whichever start it was.
Ikimono suddenly speaks up. “DJ?”
DJ snaps back to life, ready to act once more. “I didn’t know, but Willbyr thought I did. And with his belief in my guidance, he joined us on our path.”
Ikimono narrows their eyes at DJ. A blatant lie.
“And we made it out of the castle with our lives and friends intact,” Peony says, beckoning the others from their quickly fading hiding spots, “There was but one more test for our skills: the catacombs.”
Adderall asks a question, one perfectly rehearsed, one she already knows the answer to. “Can people even die in Portar?”
“Sometimes,” Peony says, “It takes a very special thing to kill a Portarian. Usually, people find themselves on the other end of something much, much worse.”
“What could possibly be worse than death?” Juniper asks.
Fuego smiles. “Being married to you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Aside from that.”
“Whatever it is, we don’t want to find out,” Peony says, hushing everyone, “Think about it, all you lot, and shudder! Creatures warped and amalgamated into each other, animated only by the rot that festers in their bodies. Things once human, now contorted and eviscerated so that their veins and skin grow like vines and moss on the walls. Haunting things, things no one has words to describe, prowling in search of our souls and the meat that sustains them. Whatever awaits us in the darkness, we must not let it find us!”
“And I?”
Sebastian appears from the darkness, sending all the others reeling in fear. Ikimono hardly noticed the song shift to its autonomous playing.
“Are you an amalgamate of creatures animated by rot?” Adderall asks.
“No, I’m quite alive,” he replies.
“Are you a human turned growth on the walls?”
“No, I’m all here.”
“Are you something beyond description wanting to feast upon our souls and the flesh that sustains them?”
“No. I mean, I’m hungry, but I’m not desperate.”
“Then come with us,” Peony commands, taking his hand and pulling him from the darkness, “We’re not letting you die on our watch.”
“And with the last of the automated players, we scurried off into the darkness, awaiting whatever fate awaited us in the deepest recesses of the catacombs.”
The lights on the stage fade, and the others turn and close their eyes so that the lighted colors in their sockets cannot cut through the darkness. All that remains is the fire around DJ’s bad eye and atop the tip of their tail.
Ikimono leans forward with caution. The darkness around them is practically suffocating, and the silence that follows it is just as violent. They squint to no avail. They wait, but nobody seems to be doing anything. They can’t even hear movement on the stage before them.
With a timid whisper, they finally speak.
“You survived?” They ask.
DJ laughs. They start off with a small chuckle, but as their voice grows into a manic howl, fiery lights of all kinds and colors ignite the stage. In the new, almost oppressive light, they find that DJ is the only one on the stage. Ikimono frantically looks to their sides, but the others are nowhere to be found.
The sharpness of feigned insanity flicker off DJ’s tongue like the sparks of hellfire. “If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here telling you about it, now, would we?”
DJ throws their head back and roars with madness. From either side, Peony and Adderall have locked arms with Ikimono and rush them to their feet. Sebastian and Fuego rush around the stage, kicking up papers, confetti, and glitter as they run. Juniper swoops down to where Ikimono stands and rips them away from Peony and Adderall, and as the lights finally fade to a wonderful blue, tosses them out into a spotlight.
DJ commands respect from the light in which they stand. Their scales glimmer in the brightness like precious gems, and their voice booms like a volcanic eruption. The madness has left them, but the pride holds fast. The microphone conjured in their hands needn’t be turned on for their volume to fill the room.
“Come on out, all you wonderful players, tragedians, vagabonds, bastards, thespians, troupers, and castaways of any other title! Take your places, you magnificent lot, and let us play!”
The space thrusts into chaos as DJ bows. Colors whizz by Ikimono’s face, heat and cold flicker randomly, and the ground below them seems to spin like a merry-go-round gone mad. The laughter and shouts of the others echo in the air, as does the flailing cacophony of a song they can’t place a melody to. In the midst of the tide, DJ stands calm, proud and ready as a soldier. They point out towards Ikimono, and at once a path of lucidity illuminates to their feet. DJ steps out from the spotlight and strides towards Ikimono, and the friendliness within their eyes and smile begins to overtake the whirlwind.
“Ikimono,” they begin, “Welcome to the show.”
DJ claps their hands twice, and the space vanishes as though it were never there. Ikimono looks down and finds themself back on their chair at the end of the table. The wood hasn’t changed, nor has the food upon the plates or the drinks in the cups. When they look up, they find DJ seated once more at the head of the table, and the others seated on the sides, quietly staring at them. Their ears ring loudly. Ikimono feels like they’ve been ripped from the water, half drowned.
With nothing left to do, Ikimono applauds.
DJ nods sincerely. “Glad you liked it.”
The other five seem to relax back into being people again, slowly shifting back into normal conversation between them. Ikimono stares at the plate of steamed buns before them. He knows he’s eaten, yet he doesn’t feel the weight of the food within him.
“Say, I’m gonna go back up and grab another boba,” DJ says, reclining in their seat. “Ikimono, you wanna come?”
Ikimono reaches out for a bun. “I’ll stay here. Just a bit of vertigo.”
“Ah, gotcha. Want anything? Some water, maybe? Might take the edge off.”
“If you want to get me some, I don’t mind.”
“Alrighty then, a water for you. Peony?”
Peony snaps up from a styrofoam bowl of mac and cheese. “Oh, right. I’ll come with you.”
“Right then.”
DJ and Peony stand up from the table and walk off into the sea of tables and chairs. Ikimono looks around and finds the space more vast than they’d ever thought it to be before.
“Hey, Sebastian?” They ask.
“Yeah?”
“That was awesome.”