The lever on the gas pump clicks inward as the tank is at capacity.
The desert wind blows through Miyu's fur as she holsters the pump back into its station.
She makes eye contact with the passenger of her vehicle after screwing in the gas cap and closing the lid.
Fay upturns her nose further with her thumb and sticks her tongue out at her silently. Miyu laughs and knocks on the hood with her left hand, slightly startling her before walking into the convenience store.
She browses the drinks, grabbing a soda for herself and a liter of water for Fay. She picks up several snacks and candies on the way back to the register near the door she came in.
Miyu intends to pay in cash, which she has ready before he rings her up, and makes small talk with the attendant as she waits, bored.
"Horrible weather we're not having, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't know," the gas station attendant says, not looking at her. The beeps and boops of her items being scanned. "We're not having it."
"Purist scum," she says leaning onto the counter with the outward palms of her paws. "Pack of cigarettes, please."
He looks up at her after he finishes ringing up her items and blinks vacantly at her.
His black, dull eyes sparks a memory from her childhood she digs for while he turns his head and plucks a pack from the wall behind him rather dextrously with his tail before scanning it and setting it on the counter.
"That'll be two hundred credits, ma'am," his voice squeaks. She finds this mildly cute. Perhaps he has a cold. Do snakes get colds? She'd better not ask, lest she come off ignorant.
"Anyone ever tell you that you remind them of Salty Salamander?"
"I'm a snake, ma'am," he says, poking at the register buttons with his tail until it opens and plucking her credits off the counter.
"I know. It's the eyes, I think. They've got a similar soul behind 'em, y'know? You sure you've never gotten that?"
"Never said I haven't. Just that I'm a snake."
She grins. "So you have."
"Only by people who think they're being clever," he says, handing her back her neatly organized change in the scaled spiral of the end of his body.
She takes it and counts it and stuffs it in her back pocket. "Maybe those people are clever and you're just not in love with the comparison."
"Could be," he says, looking away from her to bag her items.
"Don't you love Salty Salamander, friend?" She looks at his nametag. His name is Jeffrey.
"I'm not a fan," he says, handing her the bags on the hanger he's made out of himself.
"You don't have to be a fan of somebody to love them," Miyu says, taking the bags. "You can outright hate someone and still love 'em."
"That sounds like an emotional investment I'm not at the liberty to withstand," Jeffrey says, his forked tongue flicking in and out of his mouth to the rhythm of his speech patterns.
"You got sad eyes, hon. That's why you remind people of him. I hope they find their sparks."
Taken slightly aback, studying her for a quiet moment. "I could swear we met somewhere before," the attendant says, printing her reciept and tailing it to her.
"I get that all the time, you know," she says, collecting her things and shooting him a look. "One of those faces. See you 'round, now."
"If you insist," he says, waving her off. "Have a good'n."
"You too!" she says, letting the door close behind her.
That's when he notices the wanted poster he thinks he notices her from. He looks outside trying to see if in her car is the collie photographed on the wanted poster next to her, but the car already drove off. Kicking up dust and rocks at the pump as it left for the road.
He aint seen no passenger. And still, he eyeballs that phone next to him.
small blessings of the universe
The earth rotates underneath her as the wind hits her in the face. Her ears flopping arbitrarily as the mess of her fur dances in the passing atmosphere.
Her elbow rests on the car door as her hand, steady and straight outside the car, cuts through the resistance at angles. She makes soft whooshing sounds with her mouth, drowned out by the actual noise itself.
In her mind, her hand is an arwing. Particularly, and Enforcer, which is better than an arwing. She'd get no arguments from Miyu, whose cigarette dangles from her lips as she absentmindedly digs through a bag of tapes, blindly shuffling through them as she keeps her eye on the road.
Miyu had bought out the small collection of cassette tapes at random from a thrift store on the way to break her out of the mental institution.
This fact was one of the first things she had excitedly relayed to her as they buckled their seatbelts after a hasty kiss upon entering the car.
Miyu brings a tape up to her face and glances at it just long enough to comprehend the writing in big letters on the front of the case before redirecting her attention back to the road.
"Fablagoo," she says tight lipped through a cigarette as she squints and shells the tape from the case with one hand. "That sounds interesting."
She briefly glances, looking for the wound side to stick in the player. Side B.
The sun is setting over the desert, orange and pink hues crowding the ball of light spilling warped cactus shadows across the landscape in the distance.
Miyu puts her cigarette out in the car's ashtray and cranks the window up quickly, smoothly transitioning her rotations.
Fay notices her doing this and follows suit. They cut the draft off from both ends at roughly the same time.
"Music for children and other small things" by Fablagoo is playing softly through the car's speakers. Fay finds this adorable and inspects the seat between them, looking for the discarded case.
Upon discovery, she picks it up and eyeballs the information regarding its contents.
She notices something and her eyebrows raise. "Holy stuff," she says, looking up at Miyu. "You've discovered an artifact."
Miyu glances over and smiles. "The thrift store is full of those. What's the nature of it?"
"It's signed," she says, holding it up and flashing teeth. "B. B. Flumberghast."
"Is that the singer or something?"
"No, it's better. It's like, label signed. This was important enough to them that they wrote their name on it."
Fay examines the track listing and listens to the song for a moment.
Miyu looks over as Fay ejects the tape and examines it in the dimming light before continuing. "Oh my god it's a mixtape. You bought a signed bootleg. I bet that kid listened to this all the time."
"A magical find indeed. We should hold onto that one."
One apprehensively bitten lip later and a smile is born as she puts the tape back in the player and it resumes.
A sentence forming in her brain, and then her mouth.
"We should sign it and sell it."
"Are you kidding?" Miyu is surprised. "Besmirch the artifact? Are you mad, woman?"
She reaches over to feel Fay's face, and Fay giggles into her paw. "No! Of course not! We enjoy our time with it, contribute our lore and powers, and we set it free. Back into the universe."
The endless desert stretches and warps at an angle off into the melting sky.
"I'd rather keep it," Miyu says, rubbing her own neck with one paw and the other on the wheel. Her ears pinned back in thought. "I mean, who am I to contribute to this valuable artifact? We should hold onto this. Cherish it."
"In what sun does a brief immortality strike you so cold?"
"No sun, maybe," Miyu says, only now realizing how late into the evening they are. "Some shadow maybe."
Sun having slipped behind the world entirely after a flash kiss goodnight.
"And if I should sign?" Fay inquires.
"You should sign! A glorious addition to the lore it will contribute!"
"But you are just you?" Fay asks, disappointed.
"I am just me," Miyu replies, almost bitterly.
"And we are just us," Fay says with a penetrating warmth. "I will sign this artifact and I hope you will, too, because this is a small blessing from the universe. It is about love and it is about letting go and it is how it's all gonna be ok."
Miyu takes a quick look at Fay in the darkness of the car with a small sadness in her eyes before relenting.
"I will sign the tape," Miyu says. She will.
This pleases Fay.
When they see the turtle in distress on the side of the road, it's Fay's idea to help him.
"We should help that turtle," Fay says.
"I dunno if that's a good idea?" Miyu questions as she considers the wanted posters she saw in the gas station next to Jeffrey.
"Of course it's a good idea. Wouldn't you want someone to help us if we were stranded like that?"
"We're mechanics," Miyu says. "We could fix it."
"Exactly!" Fay says, bouncing under the resistance of her safetybelt. "We can fix it! We can do the good things!" She begins chanting. "Good things! Good things! GOOD THINGS! GOOD THINGS!"
"Okay, okay," Miyu relents as her heart flutters and she pulls gently over to the shoulder, close enough past the distressed turtle for a walk. "We do the good things."
Fay practically barks in excitement as she unclips her safetybelt and scrambles out of the car.
Miyu's hesitation holds her back enough to be a few steps behind when the driver's side door clicks open and she steps out into the cool desert night air.
Silhouettes in his headlights approaching from behind.
"Excuse me?" Fay is the first to speak. "What seems to be the problem...?"
The turtle, startled, drops a flashlight as he turns around. "I," he starts, sighing and then laughing. "I cain't get the darn thing to start. I don't know what I'm doing."
There's an expression on his face that strikes Miyu as it taking everything in him not to retract into his shell in embarrassment.
She can see this well through his shadows because cats have excellent night vision.
"You're in luck, sir," Miyu says, catching up to Fay's delight. "We are mechanics."
The turtle sighs, experiencing guilt for no reason. "I cain't pay ye nothin'."
"Don't worry about that," Fay barks warmly. "Just get us that flashlight you dropped in your engine and we'll help if we can!"
The exaggerated sweat on their collective brow you're probably imagining isn't far from the truth, because the delivery is what it is.
Miyu and Fay take turns holding the flashlight and smashing the engine in its most prudent of placings with a big wrench. When they are satisfied, they ask the bloke to get in his truck and try to start it. When he does, everything seems to be working.
When he asks them how they did it they bless him using witchcraft instead of telling him.
He is satisfied with the understanding that he wouldn't have understood regardless.
When the turtle starts his truck he thanks them and drives off into the planet's shadow.
Both Miyu and Fay feel good about themselves.
They return to the car and kiss for a bit.
Miyu straps herself into the driver's seat while Fay scoots over from the passenger door to the middle of the leather padded bench seat, discarding the artifact to the bag of tapes in the floorboard.
Fay wraps her arms around Miyu's waist and snuggles up to her. Shoulder to armpit, head to shoulder.
Miyu reaches carefully around Fay to the lever behind the steering wheel as she steps hard on the brakes and puts the car in drive.
Miyu embraces the light inside of her with one arm wrapped securely around her back and one planted firmly on the wheel.
As they search the shadows of the planet for some kind of sanctuary, Miyu calms her nerves as Fay culminates her warmth.
She looks from the silhouette of Miyu's figure in the brightly lit windowed office to the mirror hanging over her in the passenger seat,
"today you woke up and did the best you could," she says to her reflection, repeating, "today you woke up and did the best you could."
She looks to the office again and whispers to herself "today you woke up and did the best you could."
Miyu's silhouette opens the office door and walks toward the parked, running car. Fay counts her steps and mouths the words to herself.
And the driver side door opens and she climbs in with the flair and style of petals blooming arbitrarily.
The door closes and she says "we should be able to stay here for a couple of days," and for the first time on this trip Fay can see how tired Miyu is becoming.
She blinks a few times to collect herself as the car moves and warmly smiles. "Great!"
The car coasts into an empty spot in front of the door marked with the number nineteen.
Miyu turns the car off and the headlights off and removes the key from the ignition.
She turns and looks at Fay. Fay turns to look back.
They look at each other for a moment.
Comfortable silence.
Miyu pokes Fay in the shoulder with the key and she turns it. "Reh-neh-neh-neh," she says, very poorly imitating the sound of an engine starting. She turns the key again a couple times. "Reh-neh-neh-neh-neh. Reh-neh-neh-neh.
"What are you doing you goofball."
"I'm turning you on," she says, dryly.
Fay narrows her eyes and smiles. "Yeah you are. Cat she does it."
Miyu snorts, proud of herself. Fay pushes her face and calls her a nerd. Miyu responds dramatically by collapsing into dead weight against the driver side door. Fay rolls her eyes widdershins and unbuckles her safetybelt.
"Are you dead?" she asks, scooting across the bench seat, not waiting for an answer. "Did you die?"
Miyu is smiling but she doesn't say anything when when Fay's body presses against her as she digs through her pockets.
"What are you doing?" Miyu asks through a squinting eyelid.
"I thought you were dead," Fay says, still rummaging.
"I am, I just wanna know what you're doing."
"Robbing the dead," she says, sitting upright and producing a room key with the number nineteen on it.
"That's very rude," Miyu says, the facade dropped. Her eyes wide open. "You shouldn't steal from the dead."
"Why not?" she asks, opening her door and looking back at Miyu before she gets out. "They're dead."
Fay closes the car door and makes her way to the entrance of the room with the number on it.
Miyu unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the driver's side door.
"We should go out tomorrow night," Fay says, following a yawn.
The room silent amid the flickering light from the CRT television, wrapped and outlined in the varying depth of shadows.
"I'm not ready." Miyu says abruptly. "I can't."
Arm around her neck as her neck rests on her shoulder, Miyu's fingers gently brush through the strands of Fay's fur and hair.
"I understand if you can't," Fay says.
Miyu was afraid she would say that.
"We could go," she says, almost desperately. "We could flee the lylat system."
"I know you could," Fay says, distant. Looking away.
"I said we."
"I know you did."
The silence gets heavy and Fay rolls over to her right side.
Miyu's right arm under Fay, she turns the Tv off and sets the remote on the nighstand next to her before rolling over to conform her body to Fay's.
"I love you," Miyu says.
"I love you, too," Fay says, even though she knows it goes without saying.
While Miyu sells the bag of tapes Fay waits outside on the payphone.
Her hands tremble softly as she smokes one of Miyu's cigarettes.
When the ringing stops, words are spoken. Questions are asked.
"Hi," Fay says, biting her lip. "I'd like to report an anonymous tip."
Inside the thrift store, more words are spoken and more questions are asked.
The man at the counter gives her credits and Miyu takes them and smiles at the elephant in the room before leaving through the front door and joining Fay outside at the telephone booth just as she is hanging up and coins are deposited into the change cache.
Miyu sets the credits down on the inside of the protective phone box and Fay weighs them down with the returned coins.
Miyu nods across the street to the gate opening into the park. "That way?"
"Of course," Fay says, smiling.
They lock arms and cross the street. Every step is valued, but before Miyu realizes it, they're in the park and on the path.
Her nervous eyes and mind on the vacuum of inevitability.
A brief moment of eye contact quelling her nihilism.
Miyu breaks the anxious silence. "Tell me a story?"
"Not today, little one."
"Awh, C'mon," she insists, pretending to kick dirt. "You never tell me any stories."
"Never say never," Fay says coyly.
"What about tonight?"
"I said no. Can't we just enjoy the comfortable silence of each other's company?"
"Who said it was comfortable?" Miyu says, dejectedly.
Without thinking about it she stops.
And Fay stops with her, such as a solid link in a chain.
"Nothing's over, Miyu. Nothing ever will be."
"I know."
"Knowing something is true and feeling the truth of something are two entirely different things."
"I know," Miyu repeats.
"So," Fay says as they begin to walk slowly down the path together again. "Why don't you tell me a story?"
"It's hard to think of a story when you're sad," Miyu says.
"It is, isn't it?"
Miyu paused in thought. "There once was a sad eye named Jeffrey," she starts.
"Oh?" Fay pulls in closer, hugging Miyu's arm.
"Yeah," she says, letting loose a small uninhibited laugh. "Jeffrey the eyeball. He was cold, you see, he lived in a cave and he didn't know that space heaters were better than window units about regulating the temperature from one extreme to the other."
"Oh dear."
"Yeah, it was tragic. When he made fires, he had to get close to them to maintain them and he'd always dry out, so that wasn't a particularly good experience either."
"That's terrible."
"Tragic, right?"
Fay nods solemnly in response.
Miyu takes a deep breath before continuing.
"So, one day.."
And the lights interrupt her thoughts and the turning point of the story.
So their respective grips on each other's hands tightens.
The disembodied voices wash over them and echo throughout the night as lights flash through the trees like Christmas.
"What happened to Jeffrey?" Fay inquires.
"That's another story for another time," Miyu says, and when her face begins to leak, she feels shame. Even though she knows she shouldn't and even though she feels she shouldn't feel shame - she does.
And the teeth of Fay's warmth try to project it brighter than the lights, as forced as it is through her empathy.
They kiss, briefly - too briefly, but Fay would ask when a moment lasts long enough or when it lasted too long.
So when their interlocked fingers disconnect and their grasp is lost to the respective other's, the reality of finality becomes apparent.
As they are led down their own paths away from one another in their shiny new restrictive bracelets off into the light, they connect in some ways intangible, indescribable.
Miyu wishes she has Fay's confidence as her immediate world crumbles around her. She knows Fay would tell her that it's gonna be ok, and that they'll see each other sooner than she'll know it. She wishes she could feel that way as she fantasizes about pleading insanity and hoping for the best.
But Fay, when she closes her eyes, Miyu is never really gone.
for ellie
merry christmas
cornwallace - 2018