Dream State. Over mismatched tenses, Shay heard the bubbling and frying of a market she long has missed. As she rose towards the open latch to her shop the ladder-rungs were chewed and bent; those above were a cleaner and rounder steel, gleaming untarnished in light from above.
∞
She listened there barely breathing, looking at the rays of holy sunlight against the ceiling she long has known, hearing umbra-steps and footsteps alike. She clung to the ladder and dared not emerge, observing her new hand and forearm with suspicion. Hoping with desperation there was nothing more to throw at her. She needed to regather all that was scattered.
∞
The entrance to the latch slammed shut with every weight above her and she almost fell startled - hiding her eyes she heard Woid’s muffled voice beyond:
“Yeah, I’ve closed it. She already there?”
All the air close to Shay filled surreal with ocean sounds, the walls shaking as though crept-by a quake. Lineages lashing. Languishing. Falling. Fading. Returning. Her own voice was known to her through the obstacles and obscurity as the surreal shaking breathed away, though no words could she hear clearly from the rooms above. She heard the front door creak only slightly open - without a bell hanging over it. There was an unlikely and vulnerable sound, then: the two of them laughing into a small kiss. The front door made a creak and another, thudding shut. She waited for the lock and their steps away she imagined into crowds; severed from her surprise and feelings: with a job to do.
∞
She hoped to all fortune the age would not change as she stepped into the shop. Thankfully the rule seemed abandoned or flimsy at best. 'Or perhaps a fallen angel is on your side…' read a hidden message of mine she would never see, wrapped around a ladder rung archaic in its twine.
∞
Her crimson and violet curtains were folded elsewhere, the unbarred windows fearlessly open, the street-food smells wafting in and settling over everything moving or moveless, and Shay inhaling it all was a small girl, each of her hands held safe by giants, being taken out for books and treats. She would be able to find her heavy medicine here, to help her forget and kill these recurring moments and their memories. As she long had.
∞
She grabbed her usual chest or drawers where her medicine kit was stored, near the entrance to the tunnels. The dusty leather roll unfolded and the needle was quickly into her vein with automatic process and precision: though her thumb was paused. Like a mad thing she’d pierced the prosthetic, though barely a scratch deep, and with mind her own again she placed the equipment back into the roll. Wondering afterwards why it was dusty having not been used; the reason she had put the kit away was the same reason it was neglected. It was no longer needed. Where Shay began and the version of herself that lived here with Woid ended, was Timelessly unclear. Photographs stared at her, Serib being in most of them.
∞
Forgetting all urgency, listening to the surreal nowhere-ocean, Shay shoved the chest back into its resting place. In another version and lineage, this was the same box Serib had opened when Shay was shot and suffering from withdrawals, itching for a desperate numb. The girl dragging her friend and protector. Shay thought about this for a while, recovering wit and will, as moved the unseen but always heard seas. Over a realm of wishes. She did not want to look out of the windows. The windows wide as hugs in waiting.
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∞
The shop was filled with the harmless reagents she knew how to weaponise, if only one would leave them baking in the sun too long, or hide them away in darkness, and other such tricks to her beknown. Her entire arsenal in glass rows all full and long untouched. She did not want to forget her pain.
∞
Bloodied and in exhaustion Shay removed her last disguise, every prop still clinging with layers of sweat and thick dirt to her face, the strange eye-lenses she thought had been removed, dull with the ages she has been gone; even her greasy scalp and hair was at last her own, as it always had been underneath. Dry from dyes. Her strange new arm there in the mirror. Limp. Then waving.
∞
Somesoul shouted happily outside in the market and soon a group of voices rose into fall-about laughter. Shay cleansed as though she was to be buried dead: cleansed herself with complete respect and dignity, having given her all before the last yet to come. She wore again her known leathers The Shadows knew her by, covering her head, concealing all the tricks and tools her harness was hiding. Powders, stalks, poisons, potions and wires, and most precious of all were the tea seeds for Lay’d Payn; some of which somehow were in bloom. Bloom or similar enough that she recognised this raw ingredient: though it was not so heavy as it should have been. The same addictive and amnesic ‘medicine’ she had moments ago (mere moments to her) been desperate to inject all over again. Its lack of weight had thrown her off all this while, and even upon realising, the weight did not pull her down; she held up the jar destined for Lay’d Payn. Amnesia. Shay. Amneshay.
∞
The sounds of the surreal ocean overwhelmed the noisy market outside, flooding it away further. Out of the fearful windows Shay dared her unmasked gaze - she saw frothing waves lapping Imirka, making shores of its floating ramparts though in bliss - eroding away cliffs never-before there.
∞
Unborn or as a ghost she roamed the shop. Photos hung, stuck, framed or draped around of a different life. ‘Yore Remedials’ was not a sign hanging outside but tucked away inside behind a chair, a sign atop which spirits of dust had gathered to discuss what had been and is no more. Shay nattered insanely to them, and they back. The contract between her and Lay’d Payn too was tucked there away, for Shay to take with her had she not already.
∞
Donning her mask and waist-cloak, she at last unclipped the case where her parents’ swords were kept, hung on the wall in ceremony or as enshrine she did not recognise. With one blade across her back and the other sheathed at her side, she made ready to leave the shop for who-knows-how-long, Timeless as things now be. Knowing now more what she was going into, departing not defenceless and disguised as before. Departing unweighed.
∞
Shay looked again at different photos through her mask and knew just as Lay’d Payn was in a prison that was once her palace, this was a shop no longer, but a home. Some normal tea she made. She took root by the window for a while, lifting her mask and sipping, watching and wondering if this was madness, these sunny waves over Courtly things, or the furthest of all her places. If in this earned version of things she did not need her swords, did not need to be deadly, then this was no theft at all she was committing against a very different Shay. What layer was this, where she did not need these dangers she possessed? Her destination yet, or a place already gone?
∞
None know if she went into that sunlight out of the window, or crept again into the dark tunnels underneath. Into hope or despair either switched.