Chapter Fifty-Six: Wounds

What a strange day Gwen Twymann had just barely managed to live through.

Surviving a ship-to-ship battle had never been an item on her bucket list.

Evening darkened the skies, but Gwen's day was nowhere near over. She still had a piece of the Viridian Wind lodged in her shoulder, and it hurt like a motherfucker.

The ship's surgeon—a crotchety, middle-aged, tan-skinned consort by the name of Nikomedes—had been hard at work ever since the end of the battle, doing his best to tend to the wounded. He performed surgery on the most critically-wounded corsairs, making sure they stabilized before moving on to treat those with wounds that were not quite so severe.

The splinter in Gwen's right shoulder did not qualify as severe, so Nikomedes ended up tossing her a cloth doused in some sort of foul-smelling liquid that would keep her wounds from becoming infected. He did not even bother look at the laceration on Gwen's leg, from where an imp marauder had attempted to hamstring her. He sent Gwen on her way, leaving her to dab gingerly at her wounds with the medicine-soaked rag until evening.

As of right now, Gwen was trying not to tear up as she drained the last remnants of wine from the wooden cup she'd been given. "Another!" she whooped, hurling the empty cup to the floor. "I ain't drunk enough, yet, turtle guys—let's keep 'em comin'!"

"Wine for the Witch!" Inaros—one of the younger members of the crew, as well as one of the first consorts whom Gwen had met—blurted out, his own tongue already loosened considerably by the wine that was being brought up from the cargo hold to celebrate the corsairs' victory over the marauders.

The cry was infectious, and within seconds there were dozens of inebriated corsairs clamoring for the Witch to have more wine. Before Gwen could even join in the ruckus, another wooden cup full of wine found its way into her hand. She took several deep swallows, relishing the taste of the potent drink. This wine—the wine of LOSAP—tasted much fruitier than any wine Gwen had tried before. It was midnight black in color and fermented from fruits that were similar to grapes, but ended up yielding a much higher alcohol content.

This was Gwen's fourth cup, and she already felt happily drunk, finally able to let all the worries and stresses from the battle earlier in the day to just slide away, gently falling away like the seeds of a wisher in a calm breeze. For the first time in a while, she was able to simply enjoy herself for the sake of enjoying herself. She did not have to be constantly suppressing her wandering thoughts, she did not have to worry about where her friends were, she did not have to dwell on the horrible things she'd witnessed during the battle.

Gwen could simply have a grand old time with some turtle pirates. How often does someone get to party hard with sentient turtles who happened to be corsairs? Not very often.

The reason for Gwen's inebriation stemmed from Nikomedes, who waited patiently behind Gwen's chair for the teenage girl to finish her fourth cup of wine. The ship's surgeon had been about to treat Gwen's wounds, whereupon he was stopped by Inaros and several other crewmembers. They took Gwen to the upper gun deck, which had been cleaned of blood, debris, and bodily waste during the late afternoon hours, allowing the deck to be transformed once more into a makeshift dining hall.

Gwen was told that Nikomedes would find some way to make the treatment of her wounds painful, and that she should probably have a drink before the ship's surgeon proceeded. Gwen, tired and still slightly anxious from the earlier battle, had seized the opportunity to get alcohol, accompanying Inaros and his buddies back to the dining area on the upper gun deck.

Though he had grumbled a fair amount about it, eventually Nikomedes relented and began to treat the wounded right on that deck—far removed from the food and drink, of course. As for Gwen, she'd gratefully downed the cup of wine Inaros had given her. Then one cup turned into two, and then three…

And now, Gwen tipped her head back and drained her fourth cup, shaking her head several times, breathing in sharply in response to the almost comforting burn that spilled down her throat. It was good that this wine existed only in another dimension—if the consorts' black wine had existed on Earth, it would probably have killed a fair amount of people. It tasted very fruity, and one had to chug it in order for one's throat to burn; people would probably get carried away, drinking this wonderful intoxicating fruit juice until they keeled over from alcohol poisoning.

And upon finishing her fourth cup of wine, Gwen took several deep breaths and prepared herself for whatever was to come, grateful for the pain-deadening effect that the wine seemed to have on her. "Alright, doc, do your worst."

Nikomedes muttered something under his breath as he prepared his table. With that, two of the burlier corsairs on the deck ambled over to the box Gwen was sitting on, bending down and lifting it off the ground, carrying the teenage girl over to a nearby table, far removed from the food and drink. Gwen removed her shirt when prompted by the ship's surgeon, even before the tan-skinned consort began examining the wounds themselves. He first took Gwen's shirt and laid it out flat on top of the table. He then made a face, clicked his tongue several times.

"Problem?" Gwen asked.

"Yes, 'problem' is one word for it," Nikomedes grunted, retrieving a tool from his bag that almost resembled needle-nosed pliers, albeit with the 'needle-nose' part being much longer and thinner than one's usual pair of pliers. "Look at the right shoulder of your shirt. What do you see?"

Gwen glanced down at her shirt, observed the hole where the wood splinter had torn through. There was nothing special about it, and Gwen could not figure out what the ship's surgeon was getting at. "There's just a hole. I have a wood splinter lodged in my shoulder, in case you forgot."

"Exactly right," the ship's surgeon let out a quiet sigh, obviously annoyed that Gwen was not able to see the problem. "There's a hole in your shirt; a hole that does not close. That means there is a wee bit of missing fabric. And I'll give you three guesses where that missing fabric is."

"Well, I guess…I'll have to guess…" Gwen pretended to think about it, pretended to really mull it over for a few seconds, before the light bulb went off over her head. "In my shoulder! I'mma guess in my shoulder. An' that's my final answer!"

It would have been a feat for Nikomedes to look more annoyed than he did right now, but the surgeon kept his temper and impatience in check. "That is the correct answer. Congratulations. Now it is time for your grand prize—the removal of said fabric, along with the wood splinter, to be carried out immediately. Lie down, would you? And don't squirm."

The ship's surgeon removed the four-inch wood splinter from Gwen's shoulder with his hands, not needing any of his tools to do the job. That was the easy part. Now, blood started to flow from the opened wound. Acting fast, the ship's surgeon pulled a tin of some sort of white powder from his bag, along with a jar of yellow ointment and a long, thin, round-headed silver probing rod. First, Nikomedes sprinkled some of the powder over the shoulder wound—the powder acted as a coagulant, causing the blood to clot and greatly reducing the bleeding.

With the bleeding no longer a problem for the moment, Nikomedes proceeded. He took the silver probe and dipped the rounded head into the jar of yellow ointment. "This will hurt," the ship's surgeon warned Gwen, barely giving her enough time to brace herself. He then eased the rounded head of the silver probe into the shoulder wound, spinning it around, disinfecting the wound with the ointment, as well as administering a local anesthesia.

Even though the black wine in her system did much to deaden pain, Gwen still nearly let out a violent stream of profanity when the silver tool entered her shoulder. With drunkenness also came a lack of inhibitions, and so Gwen found that she also had to, on occasion, stop herself from actually balling up her fists and clocking the surgeon in the face.

Nikomedes would likely find a way to leave one of his instruments inside of Gwen if she ever struck him like that. Best not to find out what he would actually do…

After what felt like ten minutes of throbbing agony from the spinning silver ball inside Gwen's shoulder, the surgeon finally withdrew the probe. He then grabbed his needle-nosed forceps instrument, giving them a few experimental snicks, almost like he was testing out a new pair of scissors. He then peered into the shoulder wound, ever so gently slipping the needle-nosed clamps into the hole.

The pain was electrifying even while she was drunk, cutting straight through to Gwen's brain. She gasped, taking in a deep breath, trying her best not to move while the surgeon was holding a metal object partially inside her. Then, blissfully, the pain subsided as the consort surgeon withdrew the instrument. Clamped within the needle-nosed forceps was a much smaller splinter of wood—a piece of the larger fragment, no doubt, broken off inside Gwen's shoulder after impact.

There were four additional miniscule splinters of wood that had to be removed, one at a time, from the shoulder wound before Nikomedes could go after the piece of fabric from her shirt. The pain felt both worse and more familiar with each new attempt; a strange mix of sensations… Gwen's eyes were tearing up by the time the final splinter was removed.

Nikomedes went in with the needle-nosed clamps one last time. Gwen bit down on the insides of her cheeks—she could still feel every little movement within her shoulder wound made by the clamps as they were eased inward, but the pain was growing further away. Probably a mix of the local anesthetic kicking in and the effects of the fourth cup of wine.

And then the pain receded as the ship's surgeon pulled his forceps from the shoulder wound, a blood-saturated piece of fabric in the clamps' grip. "And here we are…" the ship's surgeon murmured, dropping the piece of fabric onto the table, making sure it fit the hole in Gwen's shirt. "Would've festered if we left it in there. You're welcome."

"So, are we done, then?" Gwen asked, sitting up from the table.

Nikomedes gave an almost sadistic chuckle, produced a length of thread and a small needle from his bag, holding them up for Gwen to see. "Yes. After I sew up the laceration on your thigh."

Gwen stared at the needle and thread, her mouth forming a silent 'oh'.

If Gino Caiazzo were to suddenly stumble across a genie lamp and was offered three wishes by its fantastical, his first wish would have been for pyrokinesis, because he thought being able to control fire was some pretty cool shit. His second wish would have been for a bar tap of Starbucks Frappuccino—the kind that they sold in those small glass bottles—that never ran dry. The third wish would normally have been for endless summer, but right now… Now, his third wish would have been for the ability to turn into air, because right now he wanted nothing more than to dissipate and fly off with the wind.

To his right, Tami Abramov walked silently. That was what got under Gino's skin the most—the silence. It was almost infectious. The planet was silent, the wind was silent; even the teenagers' footfalls were silent, as if the Land of Souls and Silence actually fed on the noise. Gino did not like total silence; he needed some sort of ambience, even if it was only the chirping of a distant bird. When there was total silence, the only thing Gino could listen to were his own thoughts.

But Tami's silence was what made Gino uneasy. She was the sort of person who always spoke her mind, had no qualms about telling people exactly what she thought of them. But here she was, now, silent as the rest of this crystal-tree-studded desert. It was almost maddening.

The two teenagers had been wandering through the desert for two days, surviving off of the various drinks and snacks that Gino had stored away in his sylladex. After reaching the Dersite mining settlement and liberating a critically wounded Tami from the miners, Gino had gone as far into the desert as he could to put distance between them and any possible pursuit, if the miners even attempted one.

Then Tami's gunshot wound had somehow healed miraculously by itself, by some strange cyan energy… Gino still replayed that moment over and over in his head. It was impossible. It had looked exactly what magic should look like, but magic didn't exist! Right? Now, Gino was not so sure.

At first, Gino had thought Tami was leading the way. If she actually was, though, it did not seem to matter, because they had not changed direction once. They walked and walked, and then they walked some more. And all they got for their efforts were more dunes of white sand, more tree-like formations of glowing crystal.

This desert can't go on forever, Gino started to think to himself, turning to self-reassurance. It's gotta end sooner or later… I mean, what's the point of having a fuckin' planet that's all desert? C'mon…

Then Gino would get tired of reassuring himself that the desert would eventually end, after it clearly had no intentions of doing so no matter how long he and Tami walked. But when he stopped thinking so loudly, he would then remember how quiet it was all around him, wonder why Tami was being so silent, start wishing that she'd start yelling insults like she always used to…and then he'd be back to thinking loud thoughts.

This worked for a time, but eventually Gino then grew tired of repeating that same cycle. He had the ability to end the silence that was causing him so much discomfort, and now he was not afraid to use it, even if it meant pissing Tami off. Honestly, when was Tami Abramov not pissed about something? At least having an angered Tami would give Gino something to listen to.

Gino resolved to speak to Tami sometime in the late morning. He did not actually do so until after nightfall, when the two teenagers stopped within the cleft between two particularly large sand dunes. The sand dunes were large enough to be dotted with groves of the glowing trees of bluish-white crystal—it was within one of these groves that Gino and Tami chose to sleep for the rest of the night when they could walk no further; their aching, protesting legs threatening to rebel by giving out.

Gino, waiting for the right moment to break the oppressive silence, kept glancing somewhat nervously at Tami as he sat down into the sand, resting back against one of the crystal trees, letting out a low moan of relief as he stretched his legs out in front of him. Tami was doing the same under an adjacent tree. After getting situated, she retrieved a book from her sylladex—Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer—and relaxed, reading quietly by the crystal tree's light.

The sand dunes still stretched out in every direction, as far as the eye could see. In the morning, the dunes would take on a rich, golden-white hue, the monotony of the endless sand disrupted by the long shadows. During the day, the long shadows went away and the sand became a bright, almost blinding white, the sky a pale green with occasional ripples of multicolored light energy rippling about the orange-hued clouds. When Skaia set in the west, the sky would shine a vibrant emerald green, shot through with pulsating patterns of yellow and orange, which soon faded to red and purple like flames into embers.

Then night would come, almost transforming the planet into a different world. Right now, the sky was black; vast and starless. The aurora-like ripples of energy in the sky were much more prominent—each one shining with a different mix of lights, colors, and patterns before they faded away. The faintest ones only shone for a matter of seconds, but some of the brightest ones would last for minutes.

The desert also shone in a new light. The luminescence of the crystal trees that sprouted from the dunes cast a soft, bluish-white illumination across the desert, causing the sand dunes to glow with a soft, pale radiance. It was completely different from the blaring, eye-watering white of the sands during the day. The glow of the nighttime sands was much more like moonlight—bright enough to make everything clearly visible, but not nearly bright enough to overcome the darkness of the night.

Gino preferred the desert at night. It felt disorienting to walk through a desert in the middle of a bright, hot day and not have any kind of sounds to fill the emptiness. At night, though…the desert's silence was a much more comfortable one after nightfall, when Gino wasn't sweating from the daytime heat, constantly squinting from the glare of the sands. Now, the desert felt calm, at peace. As if it were quietly releasing a breath.

But even the comforting quiescence of the desert at night quickly wore thin for Gino, who was growing

"So, uh…" Gino had to clear his throat. He had not spoken in a long while, and his voice was raspy at first. "You gonna tell me how, uh… You know… The whole bullet-hole-healing-itself thing? What was up with that?"

"Oh, he finally speaks!" Tami grunted from behind Artemis Fowl. Gino could not see Tami's eyes through her book, but he instinctively knew that she was rolling them. She was rolling them hardcore. "You weren't saying much there. Pretty strange for you."

Gino let out a quiet sigh, already having second thoughts, already wondering if the silence had actually been quite so bad. "Never mind…"

"What's the matter, you don't like the quiet?" Tami continued to speak, lowering her book a fraction, just enough for her to peek over the top, brushing aside Gino's attempt to bring the conversation to a premature end. "Understandable, I guess. No more crowds of bimbos constantly flirting with you, and such. Silence must feel terribly empty."

"I said never mind," Gino muttered, shrugging off Tami's words. "And no, I don't like the fuckin' quiet. I know for a fact you can't enjoy it, either. C'mon, there ain't a minute that goes by when I don't see you listenin' to or playin' music."

Artemis Fowl came down all the way, its golden cover and back no longer obscuring Tami's face. A corner of Tami's mouth curved upwards in a wry grin. "Yeah, I left my ukulele back in my house. It's been hell, actually. But it still beats having a conversation with you."

"Really? That so?" Irritation started creeping into Gino's voice as Tami's sharp verbal needling began to get under his skin. "Because it sounds like you're having a conversation with me right now."

Tami opened her mouth, then promptly closed it, blinked once, tapping her book thoughtfully against her chin, looking like she was really thinking through all of the ramifications of Gino's claim. Then, after a quick shrug, she gave her answer. "You're absolutely right!" she proclaimed in agreement, much to Gino's initial surprise. "My mistake." And with that, Tami closed her mouth and returned to Artemis Fowl.

The book went back up, covering Tami's face.

Gino tried to enjoy the newly-returned silence. He tried, he really tried…but now that he'd just started to converse with another person, even if that person was Tami Abramov… There was no way he could stay silent. It simply was no longer an option. He either really hated the silence, or else he was simply a glutton for punishment who was feeling especially masochistic tonight.

"Oh, c'mon, Tam, don't be a bitch!" Gino exclaimed. There was no response. He glanced over at Tami, saw only the cover of Artemis Fowl instead of her face, the rest of her not moving as she read the story of the book's eponymous adolescent anti-hero, clearly more interested in whether or not Artemis Fowl would outsmart the fairies and keep their gold than Gino's attempts to get her attention. "Tam. Tami. Tam! Jesus Christ… Look, will you start talking again if I punch myself in the dick? Is that what you wanna see? You wanna see me punch myself in the dick?"

Tami reached up and scratched an itch that sprang up on her ear, around where her industrial bar was. Her book did not lower, nor did she make any other kind of movement.

"Seriously? Nothing? Okay…okay, how about if I… Okay, if you start talking again, I'll eat a handful of sand." Gino tried again, cupping his hands and scooping up some sand, even going so far as to tentatively lick the topmost granules with the tip of his tongue. When he glanced back over at Tami and saw that his efforts were still in vain, he muttered under his breath, tossed the sand away. "Fine, just be a fuckin' mute, then… Dunno why you're still bein' a dick to me…"

Finally, without even intending to do so, Gino was able to get Tami to speak again. "How am I being a dick to you?" she asked from behind her book, not yet invested enough in the conversation to establish eye contact.

"Because you're fuckin' ignorin' me, that's why," Gino replied. Even as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. When Tami asked harmless-sounding questions, they usually led to more tongue-lashing. And Gino had just given her all the ammunition she needed.

"Mmm…" the green-eyed girl hummed. She still had Artemis Fowl obscuring her expression, but Gino could almost see the cold smile slowly spreading across her lower face. "So when I'm speaking to you, I'm being a bitch. When I'm not speaking to you, I'm being a dick. Quite the master labeler you're becoming! Really, keep it up."

"Okay, now you're bein' a dick, and you know it," Gino shot back, against his better judgment. "C'mon, Tam, it's been two fuckin' years—when're you gonna stop hating on me for sophomore year?"

This time, Tami's response was a brief spurt of genuine laughter, leaving Gino puzzled. After her chuckling died down, she finally lowered her book, closed it, stowed it back into her sylladex before starting to answer Gino's question.

"You just don't get it, do you?" Tami commenced her barrage with a questioning barb. "You really don't get it. You think I hate your guts. You think I get myself off on fantasizing about you dying in painful ways—and it's fucking hilarious to me, because you couldn't be any more wrong! I don't hate you, Gino. I don't like you, I don't hate you. Nothing there, get the picture? I don't feel anything towards you. I do not care about you." Tami said that last declaration extra slow, emphasizing each syllable, trying to pound the message home. She looked at Gino, now, let out another sigh, the venom in her voice now gone. "But you wouldn't understand that, would you? First, you'd need to realize that the universe doesn't revolve around you. And you clearly haven't reached that level of enlightenment, yet."

In a way, Gino was getting what he wanted. All those times he wished Tami would yell and scream at him instead of giving him the silent treatment and veiling whatever her feelings were…now his wish was being fulfilled. Tami was not yelling, though. She spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice—and that was what really annoyed Gino, Tami making all these accusations so nonchalantly.

Gino immediately started to protest, but Tami was not finished. She turned her attention away from Gino, now gazing upward at the night sky, watching the irregular aurorae that shimmered across dark expanse. "I'd be willing to wager money that you've been nervous this whole time 'cuz you thought I was gonna tear you a new asshole for the shit you pulled sophomore year. Don't even bother denying it—your muscle tension told me all I needed to know. And when I didn't do what you expected, when I didn't tear you a new asshole, you just jumped straight to the conclusion that, obviously, I was keeping quiet just to fuck with you. Sensing a pattern here? It's all you, you, you. Everything has to do with you. Like you just need to have your fingers in everyone else's minds."

Gino was still glad that it was no longer silent, but his great discomfort from earlier had now shifted to the fact that Tami was so effortlessly dominating him in this conversation. There were only a bare handful of people Gino knew who were ever really able to effectively speak out against him, but Tami was the only person who was able to go a step farther and actually wrest away control of the conversation. It was flummoxing to Gino, his confusion growing every time he tried and failed to retake the conversation. Even when she wasn't yelling, Tami had the ability to make anyone almost feel like they were being dispassionately scrutinized under a giant microscope.

In Gino's case, he felt like—in addition to being studied under Tami's microscope—he was also being neatly dissected, picked apart to expose the less-than-pleasant insides. Like any sane person, Gino did not like feeling like he was being dissected. But he could not get out from under the microscope; every time he tried to protest, to speak, Tami would simply shut him down with a single look. Once she was on a roll, there wasn't much that could stop her.

"But the thing is…" Tami changed tack, her tone softening a bit as she started to drive the point home. "The thing is that…everything I just said? I don't think you even realize you're doing it. You don't wake up every morning, open up your dresser full of personality flaws, and just choose to be massively egocentric. It's who you are, part of your essence. You can't grasp how much more involved in yourself you are than most other people because it's just your natural state of being. It's the baseline from which you express yourself—everything you do is rooted in it."

Gino was silent, now. He would not consciously admit to himself that he was taking anything Tami said seriously, but he was actually listening, now. Even though Gino himself was unaware of the fact, his subconscious usually knew what to do more than Gino's conscious mind, and it nudged him, now, subtly getting him to start listening to the words.

Perhaps he had also been made more receptive by Tami's change of tone. She sounded like, after letting Gino have it and giving him a concentrated blast of sharp, cold truths…she was now seemed to be relenting, even trying to empathize a little bit. Gino started to relax, sensing that the end was in sight.

"It's who you are. You don't act like a dick—you are a dick," Tami continued.

Ah… Back to being mean, then, Gino sighed to himself in his head. He suppressed the urge to chuckle at himself. He'd actually thought Tami was starting to try a different approach, only for her to simply take her current approach to another level.

And yet, still Gino listened, his conscious mind no longer even pretending to ignore it.

"You can't help it. It's just normal for you," Tami pressed on, staring back at the aurorae in the sky, barely blinking. "And I know you won't believe me, but I'm not judging you, either. Judging everyone else is one of those quintessential parts of the grade school experience—we've all done it, but some of us—including myself—were actually able to learn from it. In a world where the truth about themselves is the last thing most people want to hear, though… Someone who isn't afraid to speak their mind when they need to usually ends up being a social outcast, and I'm no exception. But I only tell the truth; the hard, non-sugarcoated, usually-unpleasant truth. Yeah, I know I sound like a huge cunt when I tell people the truth—and I'll admit, I tend to yell the truth at people a lot when they frustrate me—but I'm not doing it because I want to hurt their feelings. I do it because I want them to learn, even if I already know that they probably never will."

Now, Gino had no idea where this one-sided rollercoaster of a conversation was going to take him. This was the first time Tami had ever given him a glimpse into the workings of her mind. He wasn't sure if he was going to like where she was going with it.

"So yeah, there you go. Sorry for stomping you into the ground, I guess?" Tami gave a shrug. "You asked for the truth, so I gave you the truth."

Now, Gino had more than enough possible things to say in reply, and he decided to go with one of the less profane options. "Shit, I didn't expect a fuckin' psychological scouring! God damn, I might've kept my mouth shut if I'd known you had somethin' like that bottled up inside."

"I've kept those opinions to myself, but they definitely weren't 'bottled up'," Tami corrected the other teen. "That implies I wanted to share them with everyone…when really they were just normal, personal opinions that I've had for a while, now. Personal opinions that you happened to ask for."

Gino still wasn't convinced. "I didn't ask for verbal tsunami of what you thought was wrong with my goddamn psyche—I just wanted to know why you were bein' dickish! The whole 'lyin'-on-Freud's-couch' act was so un-fuckin'-necessary!"

"No, you did ask for my opinion!" Tami snapped, her trademark impatience rising back to the surface. Good, Gino felt a small stab of satisfaction. At least I'm still getting on her nerves. Tami took a deep breath, letting some of the color in her cheeks subside for continuing. "Your specific words were why I was still…ahem… Hatin' on you for sophomore year?" Tami put on an approximation of Gino's thick, Brooklyn-imbued tones that was more accurate than the other teen cared to admit. "You were asking for an answer that did not exist because the question itself was flawed—I was not hatin' on you for sophomore-"

"You don't need to do the voice…" Gino muttered.

"-year." Tami continued to talk right over Gino, ignoring his interjection. It was also quite possible that she hadn't even heard him speak. "What you actually wanted to know was why I wasn't going out of my way to talk to you about sophomore year, whether to yell at you or otherwise. And the answer to that question is that I simply dislike talking to you. I dislike talking to you because the topic of any conversation we have will always inevitably end up centering on you."

"That's not true-" Gino started to protest, but he was shut down yet again by Tami's glare.

"I gave you that 'psychological scouring', as you called it, because I knew you would disagree with my answer…like what you just did right now," Tami pointed out. "And so, because you're obviously blind to the truth when it applies to your shortcomings, I talked straight to you and told you flat-out what was wrong with you. Whether you learn from it, though, or whether you decide to ignore it…that's your choice. And I think you've already made it."

Now, Gino felt a spurt of anger, indignation. No, he did not like what Tami was saying, but it went a bit deeper than that. Whether or not she was actually right…who did Tami think she was? What made her so much wiser than everyone else that she felt she could sum up an entire person just by listing their biggest flaws? Did she possess none of her own?

"You know what, Tam? Fuck you," Gino raised his voice, now, retaking his place in the conversation. As he spoke out, Gino rose to his feet and stepped over to Tami, planting himself directly in front of her, forcing her to hold eye contact. "You think you're any better than me? You think you're so fuckin' enlightened, sittin' up there on your high horse, judgin' all the rest of us? Sittin' in your little corners, pluckin' away at your ukulele, wonderin' why no one else can act as jaded and cynical as you, wonderin' why all the stupid happy people can't just frown and scowl every once in a while? Yeah, I guess I got my issues, but you're fuckin' deluding yourself if you think you're lily-white pure."

Tami started looking hard at Gino, now, her impatience beginning to simmer. "Yeah, I'm a cynic. Yeah, I expect the worst in people so that, when they only act badly, I'm not too disappointed. Yeah, I have emotional issues. Who doesn't? But the difference between me and you is that I'm at least aware of what's wrong with me, and I don't deny it."

"Wait, wait, hold the phone!" Gino took a small step forward, moving even closer to Tami, looking almost straight down at her as he spoke. "That makes you worse than me, if anything! If you're already aware of your flaws, then what have you done to fix them? You haven't really changed, all that much. You're still a closed book, Tam. All that brilliance you have, locked away up there in your head? It don't mean shit if you can't learn to connect with other people."

"I tried that already. I went out with you for half a year," Tami reminded Gino, her emerald-green eyes drilling through the other teen's. Gino, who was taller than Tami to begin with, was towering over her…but she was not fazed in the slightest, didn't move from her reasonably comfortable spot against the tree. She did not need to be standing up to match someone else's force of personality. Normally she was able to send most people away with their tails tucked between their legs without even having to look at them.

Gino was not backing down, however. Not this time. "Ooh, you went out with one guy who turned out to be a dick. Boo-fuckin'-hoo, ya want a fuckin' tissue box to cry in? Naw, you tried to connect with someone, and you got burned. But you stopped tryin' after that. You chose to stay in whatever jaded, emotional, misanthropic, low self-esteemed deadlock you're in right now. And you ignore it by spendin' all your time bitchin' about the flaws of other people, when really you're just—AUGH!"

A very rare occurrence was happening; Tami was actually beginning to lose footing in a conversation. She'd allowed Gino to goad her into an argument, and now he had the upper hand, even if he did not fully realize it, and was starting to move into a position where he would be lecturing her. This infuriated Tami, being outsmarted in such a way. Being outsmarted by him.

Unfortunately, whatever else Gino had to say would remain a mystery, for he suddenly broke off midsentence, letting out an agonized scream as a sharp fire tore through his upper back. He crumpled forward, almost landing face-first into Tami's lap—he collapsed over her legs instead, falling facedown into the sand, a knife handle jutting out from under his right shoulder blade, his shirt glistening as it was saturated with blood.

Tami watched Gino fall almost in slow motion, staring uncomprehendingly as her ex-boyfriend landed partially on top of her legs. The hesitation cost her—she had barely begun to scramble away from Gino's body when a second knife hissed out of the darkness, catching her in her left side. Had she not moved, the knife would have pierced a lung, if not her pancreas or heart. Luckily, it was only able to swipe Tami as she yanked her legs free, slicing across the softer areas of flesh just above the hip, spinning away into the sand.

Even though the knife had missed its intended mark, the damage was still done. Pain exploded throughout Tami's body, a throbbing core of agony concentrated and centered around the deep laceration in her left side. A wave of adrenaline surged through Tami's circulatory system as she twisted away from Gino's body, moving with what felt like almost superhuman strength.

She mentally accessed her strife specibus; a small, oddly-contoured object appearing in her hand. Tami released a catch on the object, and its top and bottom suddenly unfolded into the object's true shape, strings and all—a compound bow. A quiver full of arrows had appeared on Tami's back, as well—when she finished deploying the collapsible compound bow, she was able to whisk an arrow from the cylindrical container and nock it, drawing gently back on the bowstring.

The whole process of retrieving the compound bow and arrows from her strife specibus took Tami about two seconds. After years of spending hours upon hours in the backyard with Tash, her older brother, the routine of retrieving her bow and readying it to fire now came to Tami as naturally as turning off the TV when political ads started to play. Whenever she was able to loose an arrow before her brother and hit within the target, Tash would take her out for ice cream—that had actually only happened twice, though Tami was not far from surpassing her brother's skill.

Unfortunately, Tami was now aiming at empty space. She stared hard in the direction the throwing knives had come from, but there was nothing to see. Unless… Tami's forehead furrowed in a frown as she spotted…something… A whisper of movement in the darkness. The light of the crystal tree Tami was taking cover behind, glinting in the shadows that lurked towards the top of the sand dune…glinting…

Glinting!

Tami had barely managed to jerk herself back behind the safety of the crystal tree before a third knife speared through the space where her face had just been, glancing off the side of the crystal tree, spinning away into the sand somewhere. Tami swore under her breath, her heart rate beginning to accelerate. She might have remained behind that tree until morning, had she not thought of Gino just then. Gino…hit by a throwing knife, bleeding out into the sand… Tami could hear him moving feebly, making inaudible attempts at speech. He was going to need her help.

If the events of the past few days had given Tami pause, she was now in danger of entering panic mode. She'd just watched someone she knew get stabbed right in front of her—it did not matter how much she'd been through since her entry into the incipisphere; watching Gino fall like that had been horrifying. Already she was beginning to feel tears stinging her eyes, beginning to feel regret for her harsh words, earlier, even if they had been true.

Tami crept around the circumference of the tree, stealing a quick glance in the direction of the attacker. Or, at least, she attempted to—a fourth knife struck the edge of the crystal tree before she could even take a small peek. Whoever the knife-thrower was…one of the Dersite miners, perhaps, still in pursuit of Gino after his liberation of Tami from the mining town… Whoever he was, he definitely knew his way around knives.

"Fuckin' cunt," Tami growled—she had not even gotten a glimpse of the attacker. The crystal trees pulsed with light, but the constantly-moving light resulted in ever-shifting patches of shadow out in the empty spaces between trees, making it hard to see someone who was using the darkness to their advantage.

Resting back against her tree, now, Tami forced herself to breathe deeply. She closed her eyes for a moment and focused. At first, she was unsuccessful—she could not stop hearing Gino's attempts at movement, could not ignore her pounding heartbeat, the white-hot pain in her left side.

Then it came to her, a single note…clear and pure. The sound, in her mind, was that of a concert violin—the actual note was a G sharp. It held for a long, slow beat, before shifting up to a C natural…holding for another two beats… Then it was up a half-step to C sharp, and right back down to an A natural… Tami heard the notes clearly in her mind, played in the sound of a concert violin at a tempo of adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo—that is to say, 'slowly, but not too slowly' and 'very expressive'.

The next notes flowed seamlessly through Tami's mind, as if the music was playing of its own accord, independent of Tami's thoughts. G sharp, F sharp, A natural, G sharp, F sharp, E natural, F sharp, G sharp… Then, the violin was joined by a second violin and a viola, the melody now gaining strength with this new support. Finally, the cello came in last, completing the string quartet.

Tami recognized the tune as that of the opening to Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, otherwise known as Opus 131, played in C-sharp minor. It was one of Tami's favorite pieces of classical music—over forty minutes in length—and she loved to play any of the four parts when she found herself alone on a quiet, rainy day, though she favored the violin parts. She let the soothing notes of the work's first movement fill her mind, felt her heart rate dropping back to normal, felt her stinging tears subsiding, her anxiety-driven emotions falling back into a state of focus. The music did not lessen the pain of the laceration in her side, but Tami found that she was able to much more easily shove the throbbing fire into a dark corner of her mind, drowned out slightly by Beethoven.

Tami opened her eyes and tightened her grip on the compound bow, slowly drawing back the arrow she'd nocked, feeling the tension of the weapon as its ends were stretched. Her leg muscles tensed, now, the ache plaguing them temporarily banished by the adrenaline. Tami knew she'd have to move fast, dodge at least one more throwing knife, and figure out the position of her attacker all at once. This was going to be a challenge, but Tami was never one to shy from challenges.

Taking one last deep breath, Tami broke out into a sprint. She dove into a forward roll as she cleared the tree in an effort to make herself harder to hit, but she did not register the noise of a fifth knife missing her…and it did not hit her, either, because she would have noticed that…

Tami's confusion lasted for only an instant. As she sprang back up to her feet, she glanced to the left just in time to see another knife flying towards her. Only, this knife was not a throwing knife. This knife was a larger, heavier knife, and it was held in the grip of a dark fist. The owner of that fist was in the middle of a sharp thrust, aiming for Tami's abdomen.

Tami, whose reflexes were already on a hair-trigger setting from all the adrenaline, immediately backpedalled, bringing up her bow in defense. She loosed her arrow, attempting to skewer the dark figure at close range. The dark figure twisted out of the way, Tami's arrow thudding uselessly into the ground. The attacker came at Tami again before she could reload, this time aiming a slash directly towards her throat. Tami did the only thing she could think of in that split-second, brought up her compound bow in defense, intercepting the slash with the center of the bow, where it was strongest. She then swung the lower end of the bow forward, striking the attacker in the side, causing the dark figure to falter and stumble back.

Tami reached up and back, tearing a second arrow from the quiver and nocking it in a single, fluid motion. Having ignored the pain of getting struck by the end of the compound bow, the dark figure had backed away while Tami reloaded, putting some small distance between them by the time the teenage girl loosed her second arrow.

Anticipating the second shot, the dark figure was once again able to leap to the side, deftly placing itself out of the arrow's path. Tami saw her mistake, realized she'd let the attacker get too far away while opening herself up to attack by loosing her second shot, swiftly reached for a third arrow…only for her arm to fall limp as a second explosion of agony—much worse than the first—nearly paralyzed her, began to rage throughout her body until it'd even reached her extremities. She looked down at her left side, stared blankly at the knife handle that was now protruding from the shoulder, almost next to the collarbone, the blood that was already beginning to flow from the wound, staining her already-tattered shirt and jeans even further.

Tami gasped at the pain, a high-pitched scream forcing its way out of her throat as she found herself unable to process the agony silently. She had been holding the bow with her left arm, dropped it upon being struck in the shoulder by the throwing knife. She desperately tried to lift it again, but her efforts were in vain. Waves of agony were rolling through her body, but her left arm was quite numb, incapable of using the compound bow.

That left only the arrow clutched in Tami's right hand. She flexed her right hand, gripping the arrow similar to a knife, holding it closer to the arrowhead for greater stability and force. The dark figure had rushed Tami as soon as it'd thrown its most recent knife, moving in a successful attempt to close the distance between it and the girl before Tami could catch her breath. It was already bearing down on her once again as she turned to face it.

Tami's reflexes saved her again as she jumped backwards away from the dark figure's opening thrust, leaping just barely out of range and forcing the attacker to step forward. She feinted a thrust to the dark figure's throat, moving almost too fast for someone to follow, before she shifted her weight to the right and inverted her grip on the arrow, drove it into the attacker's left side, under the arm, right where the heart was…only to blink in surprise when the only thing her arrow ended up piercing was empty air.

The dark figure had already sidestepped Tami's surprise killing strike, seeing it coming even before she'd planned on attempting it. It waited for Tami's failed attack to throw her off-balance, her leftward swing causing her to stumble in the same direction for a moment.

The dark figure seized Tami's right forearm, jerked it forward, brought its elbow smashing down into the inside of Tami's own elbow, causing her arm to fold in on itself, causing the girl to lose her grip on the arrow. Tami cried out in pain once again, but was quickly silenced when all the air in her lungs was violently forced out—the dark figure, having disarmed the teenage girl, now shoved her backwards, suddenly, causing her to lose her balance. It then finished the job with a powerful kick to the chest, sending Tami crashing down into the sand.

Tami lay there; battered, broken, beaten. Tired… She felt so tired, now… That was probably from blood loss, she reasoned to herself; her thoughts, at least, still functioning normally. She stared up at the dark figure who now stood over her.

The attacker had harsh white eyes and an angry scowl, displaying sharp teeth when his mouth was open. He wore a black suit and a dark, rumpled fedora…and the rest of him was black, too. A rigid, exoskeleton-like, almost shiny black carapace, instead of flesh… He was a Dersite. No wonder he had been impossible to see in the shadows.

"Don't try too hard to talk," the Dersite spoke in a low, slightly raspy voice. "I like the sound of Heroes screaming."

And with that, the Dersite reached down and yanked his throwing knife out of Tami's shoulder, grinning as he enjoyed the sickening squelch of the blade as it was withdrawn suddenly from muscle and bone. Tami actually blacked out from the pain for a few seconds when her brain found itself momentarily unable to process the brutal removal of the embedded knife.

As she lay there in the sand, fading in and out of lucidity from the pain and blood loss, as the Dersite brought his knife plunging down towards Tami's throat, she froze. Time seemed to stand still, all grew quiet, and Tami continued to stare up into the sky, curiously noting how long it was taking for the final pain of the killing blow to reach her.

Then two things happened that brought her back to a lucid state—first, a sudden heat against her chest; and second, the sounds of a struggle. Blinking several times and lifting her head up from the sand as far as she could, Tami was shocked to see the Dersite locked in an unarmed fight with Gino, who had somehow managed to regain full consciousness and drag himself over, despite having a knife embedded in his back.

Gino had reached Tami just as the Dersite brought his knife down for the killing blow. He'd blocked the Dersite's strike with his bare arms, quickly seizing the handle of the knife and tearing it from the surprised Dersite's grasp before the assassin could react in kind. Gino's hands were shaking, though, and he was not able to keep holding the knife.

The teenage boy kept the Dersite from retrieving the knife, fighting the attacker blow for blow. He retrieved his alchemized powered knuckledusters from his strife specibus and attempted to gain an advantage with them, but he had been weakened too much—he was not able to strike with enough force to cause any real harm.

In short, Gino was living on borrowed time. Most of his strength had been used up in his initial attack on the Dersite, desperately preventing the attacker from murdering his ex-girlfriend. Sure, he and Tami weren't on each other's 'Well Wishes' lists, but that didn't mean…that didn't mean he wanted her to die… But now, Gino no longer had the element of surprise, and he was fighting a strong, deadly-skilled opponent who was not currently wounded. Gino was running out of strength fast. Something needed to be done if he was going to survive.

Tami tried to rise from the sand, could not. She bared her teeth in frustration, furious at being useless, unable to get up and help Gino fight off that Dersite asshole… But then she felt the heat against her chest, again, was reminded of what she was wearing around her neck. With a surge of hope, Tami reached under her shirt with her good arm, clasped the bright green and orange pendant that rested on her sternum. She squeezed the pendant tight, closed her eyes, called with every fiber of her being to the one who'd given her that pendant.

It worked. The pendant, even while under Tami's shirt, glowed with a blinding green radiance as a creature made of identically-colored light energy materialized above her. The bottom of the creature's body—where its hind legs should have been—trailed away into an insubstantial, trailing wisp of light. As for the upper portion…

A face that, even when made purely out of emerald green energy, was cute enough to make Tami smile. Two large, innocent eyes, a protruding snout for a nose, small mouth with visible incisor teeth, rounded ears, whiskers, velvety-soft fur… It was her very recently-deceased pet mouse, Amadeus—he had been crushed by a falling bookshelf during the apocalyptic meteor storm that had been pounding the area before she'd managed to get herself, her brother, and her house teleported away to the Land of Souls and Silence.

Before breaking her cruxite artifact to trigger entry, however, Tami—under advice from Cass and Theo—had put the body of Amadeus into her kernelsprite, bringing her pet mouse back to life and even granting him some level of sentience as he now served as her 'spirit guide', of sorts. He'd given her a sprite pendant in case she ever needed to summon him…and she'd completely forgotten until now.

Amadeusprite hovered in midair, his face contorting with extreme concern as he took in the sight of Tami on the ground. "Bleeding! Bleeding!" the spritified mouse cried, his voice squeaky and high-pitched like a child's, green sprite energy pulsing from his body in alarm. "Tami bleeding! Can't die! Can't die, Tami, can't die-"

"Amadeus!" Tami summoned the necessary strength to yell loudly enough to interrupt the panicking sprite. The mouse blinked once, quickly rubbed his nose several time with his front paws, returning to his senses. "Amadeus…" Tami lifted her right hand, her good hand, pointed to where Gino and the Dersite were fighting. "Gino… Help him…"

The mouse sprite gave a loud squeak that actually managed to somehow sound remotely fierce, flying off towards the Dersite in a blaze of green light, ready to hurt the one who'd harmed his master.

Gino now found himself in a deadlock. He had managed to grab the Dersite's left wrist, just as the Dersite had grabbed Gino's own left wrist, leaving the two opponents within a test of brute strength, both fighters trying to break the grip of the other. Gino was in excellent physical shape, so he may have actually won this test of strength under different circumstances.

But sometimes Skaia had other plans. Gino was tiring, sweat pouring down his chest and back, mixing with the blood. He had been walking all day long, and then wounded—he was weary, and he could not keep this up. Then his left foot faltered for a moment, causing him to slide back maybe half an inch.

The Dersite felt the shift and acted fast. Even as Tami's sprite howled towards him, the Dersite suddenly leaped forward, throwing his entire weight into Gino, who had not quite regained his footing. Gino was sent reeling back, only to be yanked back forward as the Dersite sank his knee into the teenage boy's abdomen, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to double over towards his attacker.

The Dersite then grasped the handle of the throwing knife that still protruded from Gino's back. Gino screamed as the knife was torn from his back, starting to straighten up, only to be suddenly silenced when the Dersite thrust the knife down and inwards, driving its blade up through the back of Gino's neck, straight into the teenager's brain.

Tami's mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide as planets. She watched Gino's corpse thud to the sand, the dead teenager's arms and legs flopping, sprawled out at awkward angles. The worst part was the eyes… Gino was not wearing his sunglasses, as it was nighttime, so Tami could see his eyes… Yellow irises, slightly bloodshot, staring…

Staring at…nothing. Blank. Dead.

Dead.

The Dersite turned to face his next victim, only to come face-to-face with the angry mouse sprite who was barreling towards him, a crackling aura of sprite energy flaring out around the spirit guide. A small, yet destructive beam of this sprite energy was suddenly fired out of Amadeusprite's fist, a bolt of fiery, emerald green light striking the sand where the Dersite had just been, melting the very top layer to glass.

The Dersite dodged the sprite's first attack, diving back and away to where his knife had fallen, scooping up his trusty blade. Amadeusprite was already firing a second bolt of sprite energy at the Dersite, however, even before the assassin turned to face him again. The mouse sprite had not been surprised by the Dersite's attack from the shadows, nor was he burdened with any injuries—proving a much more capable opponent than either of the two Heroes.

Already having lingered in this place far longer than he should have, the Dersite took one last look at the protective, raging sprite…and absconded, turned from Amadeusprite and sprinted away, vanished into the darkness beyond the grove of crystal trees, melted into the shadows.

The attacker now gone, Amadeusprite released whatever excess energy he had gathered to himself, hovering back to where Tami lay, pausing for a brief moment to examine Gino's lifeless body. This time, Amadeusprite had to get Tami's attention—she was still gazing speechlessly at the body of her ex-boyfriend, almost unable to comprehend what she'd just seen happen.

She'd summoned her sprite to help fight the Dersite off; everything had been going to be alright! What had…how…?

"Tami! Tami!" Amadeusprite reached down and touched Tami on her good shoulder, giving her a gentle shock of sprite energy, capturing her attention. "You will be okay," the spritified mouse reassured his master, nuzzling Tami's brow with the very tip of his nose. "Everything will be okay."

"What about… Gino, is… Is he…?"

"That body is dead. I could see inside its head," Amadeusprite declared, 'sugarcoating' obviously an as-of-yet unknown concept for the sprite in its newfound sentience. "Not too late to save him."

Tami perked up, hearing that last bit of what her sprite had just said. "Not too late to…? What do you mean, it's not too late? He's already dead… I doubt even whatever healed my gunshot wound could bring him back… And you just told me he was dead-"

"No, no; that body is dead," Amadeusprite corrected his master, floating over Tami's face, looking down at her from behind her head. "The Gino human, still alive! Not alive here. Alive on Derse! Dream self awake!"

Dream self… Tami knew all too well what her dream self was—an alternate version of herself sleeping in a tower on Prospit; when Tami went to sleep, she would wake up on Prospit's moon as her dream self. Adam, Cruz, and Anna likewise had dream selves on the Golden Moon, just like Tami…but the dream selves of Gino, Theo, Gwen, and Cass were not there. Tami supposed it made sense for the other four to dream on Derse—an even split.

A miniscule tendril of hope was rekindled within Tami as she tried to understand what her sprite was telling her. "So he's alive as his dream self on Derse? He's fine? You're sure?"

"Alive on Derse," Amadeusprite reiterated. As he spoke, he generated a 'carpet'-like haze of green sprite energy underneath Tami, gently lifting her off the sand and moving her towards Gino's corpse. "Not alive for long. You, save him."

"How can I save him if he's on Derse?"

"His mouth, your mouth…" Amadeusprite touched his front paws together, his ears and whiskers twitching repeatedly. The sprite was clearly struggling with putting all these new concepts into the words of a language he'd only just started to learn a few days ago. "Touch. Touch mouths."

"…kiss him?" Tami suggested, hoping she was wrong.

"A kiss! A kiss!" Amadeus nodded rapidly. "Kiss him! Everything fine!"

"But you just said he's on Derse," Tami's impatience threatened to surge back. She was in a huge amount of pain from her wounds, barely even able to form comprehensible words and sentences without breaking down into tears, while simultaneously trying to translate the crude, infant sentences that her sprite was speaking in. It was starting to get aggravating. "I don't exactly have a fucking bus pass to go there, right now. I don't even know where it is-"

"No! Not Gino human! Gino human on Derse! Gino human, no kiss!" The spritified mouse exclaimed, interrupting Tami once more, some impatience of his own beginning to bubble to the surface. "Dead Gino human. Kiss."

"Dead Gino hu…?" Tami started to echo, only to have the meaning dawn on her when Amadeus lowered her to the sand…right next to Gino's corpse. "No. Uh-uh. Fuck no. Not happening."

"Fast, Tami! Must kiss fast!" Amadeusprite urged his master on, gesticulating manically at the corpse. "Gino human dying right now on Derse! No kiss, Gino human die for good! Kiss fast!"

Tami looked down at Gino's face. While his body was drenched in blood, at least his face was clean. Mostly. His mouth was open a fraction, and his eyes… Tami's stomach twisted with a sudden fit of nausea, and she very nearly threw up all over Gino's body. She had to look away from his eyes. Then she looked down at his mouth…and had to stare straight up at the sky for a moment to get the image out of her mind, fighting down the vomit.

"Kiss fast-"

"Jesus Titty-fucking Christ, I got the message!" Tami snapped, her impatience finally boiling over for a hot second. She took several deep breaths, bracing her stomach. Tami looked back down at Gino's blank, empty face, propped herself up on her good elbow…

This isn't happening, Tami declared to herself in her head as she started to lean down towards Gino's mouth. This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't… Oh god, fucking shit on dead puppies-

Tami's lips finally brushed against Gino's. She fought the incredibly strong reflex to pull away, moving herself forward just a tiny bit more, closing her eyes and laying a solid kiss down on her ex-boyfriend's dead body. In that moment, Tami did not think she could possibly sink any lower.

The nausea returned once again, and this time it was not going to be denied. After kissing Gino's dead body for a good second or two, Tami pulled away abruptly, started to roll over to her other side, remembered then that she could not use her left arm. The contents of her stomach were already surging their way up her esophagus by the time she managed to shimmy away from Gino's corpse, cascading forth into an unpleasant-smelling, foul-colored puddle that slowly seeped into the sand.

Tami wiped her mouth, hungrily sucking air down her lungs, tried to sit up further…only to collapse onto her hands again, her insides contorting as they expelled another stream of puke…and then a third stream of puke, after the second one was finished. By the time she was done, Tami's abdomen was twitching, and the puddle of vomit was on its way to becoming a lake.

Grimacing in disgust, Tami spat the last vestiges of vomit into the sand, sighing with relief as her stomach finally relented, rolling onto her back. She gazed up into the night sky for a few moments, still heaving for breath.

"Ama…Amadeus…" she tried to say between pants. She looked over towards her sprite, knowing full well that she was now losing the battle to remain conscious. The spritified mouse heard her, floated over to her, his large green-energy eyes wide with concern. "Sorry…sorry for…for yelling at you," Tami managed to get out. "Please…help me… Home…"

As Tami finally lost consciousness, she was dimly aware of being held aloft in midair by a soft, warm grip of green sprite energy, the sand dunes passing by underneath her like the remnants of a dream.

Tami opened her eyes, smiled at the warm sunlight that filled her bedroom. She kicked off the sheets and floated gently out of bed, glancing around her room…which she now saw existed only in varying shades of red. And the sunlight was strange, as well…it had a calming, soothing effect on Tami. It was light from Skaia, which seemed to have strange properties of its own.

She was on the Golden Moon of Prospit. Tami was dreaming.

For a moment, Tami was content to bob around her room, basking in the Skaian light…until the memories of how she'd fallen asleep in the Land of Souls and Silence came storming back into her mind—the assassination attempt, Gino's death…and then…what had come after.

Tami headed over to her computer, logged into PalHassle, scrolled down her list of pals on the side until she reached Gino's screen name. She hesitated for a minute, wondering if she should even bother trying…but then she knew that if Gino had woken up on Derse, it would be in a dream room just like hers…complete with a computer. She had to know… She had to.

Tami double-clicked Gino's screen name.

-tchaikovskysAccompanist began hassling gentlemanConsigliere-

TA: Gino?
TA: U
TA: uh
TA: U there?
TA: Hello?
TA: Look, i just watched u die, so fucking reply to this!
TA: Gino!
TA: Gino, look at ur goddamn computer!
TA: GINO
GC: mary mother of octopus cum, wat the fuck just happened
GC: tam
GC: tam did i die
GC: im confused
GC: am
GC: am i dreaming

-tchaikovskysAccompanist is no longer hassling gentlemanConsigliere-

In a flash, Tami was out the window and flying with all possible speed towards Cruz's dream tower, fully intent on smoking herself into oblivion for the night.

Waking self for dream self, Tami Abramov was done with reality for a little while.