Author's Note
Well we have a new record, folks. Just about six months since the previous update. Before, I think the record was around four months. Perhaps next time we'll shoot for eight?
In all seriousness, I struggled with this chapter. Progress was very slow - sometimes a sentence every few days. After the first couple months I realized I didn't give a shit about what I was writing, which felt profoundly wrong to me, so I deleted mostly everything and began again. Although it took a long time to complete, I'm glad I made that choice.
I've been living in South Philly since September. Moving to a new place in June, also in South Philly. During the winter I performed onstage at a local theater in Chestnut Hill and sound designed a production of Laramie Project for a charter school in Center City. Those gigs wrapped up by March, so I then got two new jobs - one as a walking tour guide showing people various historic sites in Old City, and the other as an actor in a silly murder mystery dinner theater. Gotta make that rent.
To make a long story impossibly short, I have been very busy as of late. Still adjusting to the idea of not being an academic student anymore after spending 19 of my 23 years in school. It's equal parts exhilarating and terrifying to suddenly find yourself totally in control of what you choose to do with your days. We may grumble and rail against having authority figures always telling us what to do throughout childhood, but the truth is we get very used to it, and it is disorienting at first not to have that any longer.
I suppose I've talked enough.
If you are reading this, I commend your patience.
Thank you for returning.
Work on Ashes and Grist continues.
Chapter Eighty-Five: The Veil
Cruz Arevalo picked away at the cuticles of his fingernails.
He knew the cuticles weren't really supposed be picked at, but he loved seeing the white half-moon in the nail underneath.
The shuttlecraft's engine hummed underneath the metal floor, sending a gentle vibration through the entire cabin.
After exposing the lunula of his right thumbnail, Cruz took a break from his fingers. He allowed his gaze to wander the cabin, examining the calming glow cast upon the bulkheads by the soft blue lights set into the ceiling.
Cruz's first mistake was making accidental eye contact with Tami, sitting next to Anna directly across from him.
His second mistake was breaking eye contact too quickly, immediately sending a panicked glance to Anna, whose only reply was a blank stare. You're on your own, she silently communicated. He hardly blamed her for not wanting to get involved – arguments with Tami were nasty affairs.
Cruz looked to the floor, avoiding eye contact at all costs. He felt Tami's gaze boring into him. Maybe if he just didn't say anything-
"Can't even look at me, huh?"
Too late. Now Cruz was entangled.
"Can't speak, either?" Tami prodded. "Nothing to say? You had plenty to say earlier."
"Ditto…" Cruz murmured, wondering if he'd just made mistake number three.
"We're not done," Tami pressed. "If you recall, one of us stormed off like a child before we could finish."
A torrent of barbed retorts immediately roared into Cruz's mind, each retort displaying their unique brand of wit, each bragging how they would piss Tami off the most, each clamoring to be the one selected to escalate the argument. Yet as he surveyed his choices, he found himself dissatisfied and reluctant. His mind grew very still and quiet, and he could hear the rest of the conversation ringing in his ears, the feverish back-and-forth, the defensiveness-
"I don't have to do this."
Cruz spoke the words in a daze, still mildly surprised he was actually saying them aloud.
"What?"
"I don't have to argue." Cruz rose from his seat. "I'm leaving."
"Close the airlock hatch behind you," Tami muttered.
Cruz bit back another retort, ducking into the cockpit and sealing the door behind him, fully aware of how abysmally temporary this solution was.
The cockpit was larger and more spacious than Cruz expected.
Abigail Tarrant sat in the pilot's chair at the very front, nestled right up against the viewscreen, intently studying a readout on her console of the shuttle's current trajectory.
Chela Arevalo leaned over the console, observing the readout, hand on Abigail's shoulder, quietly suggesting a course correction to compensate for the potential drifting of several asteroids into the shuttle's path. She glanced back to see who'd just walked in. "Something wrong?" she asked. "You look like a wrung out dishrag."
"I'm fine, Abuelita, I just need some space."
"Scarce commodity on a shuttlecraft," remarked Abigail from the pilot's chair. Then she snickered quietly to herself, adding, "Not so scarce outside the shuttlecraft, but that doesn't really help unless you have magnetic boots to keep from flying off. Besides, Tami would probably just find some magnetic boots of her own and follow you out there."
Cruz blinked in surprise, his ears burning red. "How did you-"
"I'm not stupid, Cruz," Abigail said. "I have perfectly functioning eyes and ears. And believe it or not, I used to be a teenager too."
"You don't say?"
"I most certainly do say. And I will also say that whatever issues you two have won't magically transform to sunshine if you keep avoiding her."
When Cruz looked to his grandmother for support, all she offered was a smile. "This is your mess. Like your bedroom. It is yours to clean or neglect."
"Look, I didn't come here to avoid anything," muttered Cruz. "I just need a breather. A few minutes of no one telling me how to think and what to do."
Abigail shrugged. "Fair enough."
"Come have a seat, then." Chela motioned to the unmanned communications console built into the starboard bulkhead of the cockpit. Her smile widened when she considered what she'd just said: "Does that count as me telling you what to do?"
"No." Cruz sat down behind the console. "Well technically yes, I guess, but… I wanted to sit down anyway, so it's moot." He took a deep, slow breath, visualizing the tension in his body loosening and floating away with the exhale. "This is just absurd."
"Absurd?" Chela prompted.
"We're the last humans left alive, and I'm more afraid of getting into another argument with Tam than I am about…you know…extinction? I mean, the whole extinction thing is real fuckin' terrifying to think about, don't get me wrong, but it's abstract. It's not fuming in the adjacent room. Extinction is not fantasizing about slapping the shit out of me."
Chela frowned. "Has she harmed you?"
"What? No, no, no, she hasn't actually slapped me. I said fantasizing. Just look at her eyes next time we're in the same room. Fucking daggers." Cruz shuddered. "I've always known how intense she gets, but I've never had that intensity directed against me before. It's frightening." He noticed his grandmother smiling at him. "What?"
"My little Cruz is no longer my little Cruz." Chela caressed the side of her grandson's face, brushing a lock of hair behind his ear. "You're growing up, mejito."
"Well growing up blows."
Abigail snickered.
"What's so funny?" Cruz asked.
"You said growing up blows when you haven't even paid taxes yet," Abigail explained. "Then I woke up and realized you'll never have to pay taxes. Ever. Any idea what a lucky little shit you are? Then I imagined the IRS dying spectacularly in the meteor storm. Even the apocalypse has silver linings."
"You're definitely Adam's sister."
Tami seethed inwardly as the cockpit door hissed shut behind Cruz.
How dare he slink away and cower in another room?
She produced a wallet from the back pocket of her pants, opened it, started thumbing through the stack of captchalogue cards within, muttering darkly under her breath.
Anna watched Tami rummage, eyebrow slowly climbing her forehead.
Tami selected a card, glanced at it, then put it back and continued to search.
"Um…" Anna broke the awkward silence. "Watcha doin' there, Tam?"
"Stress ball."
"Stress ball?"
"Yes, I need my stress ball, and I need it now." Tami pulled out another card and extracted the object it contained: a small green bouncy ball.
"That's not a stress ball," Anna pointed out.
Tami glared at her. "It's a ball I use when I'm stressed. Stress ball."
Anna took the hint and did not retort.
Tami stood, dropped her wallet on the bench, and lobbed the little green ball against the floor, allowing it to rebound off the cockpit door before snatching it out of the air. She promptly hurled it a second time, catching it on the rebound before throwing it a third time.
Anna's eyes tracked the bouncy ball's path through space, lazily following its cyclical motion from floor to door to Tami's hand.
When Anna's own hands began to tremble, she quietly hid them between her legs, focusing on breathing deeply and slowly.
How long had it been since she'd last tasted Captain Morgan?
Of course she never drank it for the taste, which was actually quite terrible, but rather for the promise of temporary blissful deliverance from the internal hollowness-
Nope.
Anna blinked twice, inhaling deeply once again.
Enough of that.
She exhaled slowly.
The bouncy ball continued along its hypnotic cycle: bounce-bounce…catch.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
Anna eyed Tami's wallet, sitting abandoned on the bench next to her.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
She fished through the captchalogue cards in the wallet.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
Success! Anna plucked the card she was looking for from the wallet, extracting the item contained within.
Bounce-bounce…
"Does this really de-stress you?" Anna interrupted.
The little green ball struck Tami's hand and fell, rolling to the back of the cabin, thunking against the airlock hatch.
"Making me fumble certainly doesn't," Tami muttered, crouching to retrieve the ball. She stood back up and held the ball limply in her hand, waiting for the inspiration to throw it again and restart the cycle. Only then did she notice what Anna was holding. "Where did you-"
"Left your wallet on the bench." Anna held the violin out to Tami. "I think this'll de-stress you better than that silly ball."
"Are you kidding?" Tami wrinkled her nose. "I spend half my time awake on LOCAS playing violin for a Salamander maestro hell-bent on getting me to resonate his people out of limbo. I don't need more violin while I'm on dream self time. There is such a thing as too much violin – the concept has been conceived and I am planting my flag on it."
And with that, Tami resumed throwing the bouncy ball.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
Anna rested the violin in her lap.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
Anna drummed her fingers quietly against the stained wood of the violin, absentmindedly plucking one of the strings, listening to the note it strummed.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
"Fine." Anna nestled her chin into the violin's chin rest. "Guess I'll just have to play it myself. It's just a chin guitar, right? How hard can it be?"
Tami's cheeks twitched, the only visible sign of how tightly she'd just clenched her jaw.
Chin guitar?
She took a deep breath, chucking the bouncy ball on the exhale.
Bounce-bounce…catch.
Anna drew the bow across the violin while working her fingers up and down the strings like a spider on cocaine, producing an awful dissonant screech.
"Holy goddamn shit. Okay." Tami pocketed her bouncy ball and snatched the violin away from Anna. "If you're going to mercilessly abuse a violin, at least hold it properly. See where I'm holding it?" Tami showed off the fingers of her left hand, each resting on a different point of the D string, index finger just shy of the tuning pegs. "This is first position. This is where you want to start from."
"First position. Got it."
"And for the love of fuck, rest it on your collarbone, not your shoulder," Tami added. "The weight of your head will stabilize the violin, but only if you relax your neck. Otherwise you'll fidget, the violin will slip, and your perfect tone with its beautiful vibrato crashes and burns in a fiery inferno of fail. Here." She passed the instrument back to Anna. "Try again. Keep your wrist straight."
"All right." Anna took the violin. "Challenge accepted."
"Loosen your forefinger and thumb," Tami advised. "Your left hand should be supporting the violin, not gripping it."
"No grippage here." Anna adjusted her left fingers and drew the bow across the strings a second time. While the music produced was still quite dissonant, it no longer sounded screechy and ear-twisting. "Well, listen to that! It's gone from shitpocalypse to shittastic."
"You're holding it well. Now you just gotta practice for an eternity or two and you'll be golden. C'mon, stop hunching…" Tami placed her hand on the small of Anna's back, supporting her spine and encouraging her to stand up straight. "You kill your breathing when you hunch. Then everything will start tensing up and the music'll sound like crunchy fucksauce."
Anna pealed with laughter. "Tam, don't make me blush! You say the sweetest things."
"Um." Tami quietly withdrew her hand from Anna's back. "Try a single note. Take a break from mangling the scales. Want to learn how to do vibrato?"
"I was born for vibrato."
"We'll see. Go to first position. Pick a note, any note, and play it."
Anna complied, producing a rich D which started quavering awkwardly about halfway through the downstroke.
"Well that sounded like ass fudge. You're not supposed to jitter your hands like that, it's more of a wrist movement," Tami critiqued. "Don't worry about the vibrato, yet, just play a sustained note."
"Yeah, um." Anna held out her involuntarily trembling hands. "Can't really help it. Body wants booze."
"Oh."
"Come on, Tam, see how profusely I'm suffering? Will you play now, please? Pretty pretty please?"
"Anna Carrero, you are so full of shit." Tami took back the violin and brought it to her chin and collarbone, playing a quick arpeggio to warm up. "Any requests?"
"Can you make it up as you go along?"
"Can you make it up, she asks."
Tami began to play, starting slow and meditative. Although her eyes remained open, she did not see the cabin of the shuttlecraft. She gradually tuned herself into the visions, swirling colors, voices, the ever-shifting patterns and shapes of the music as it existed before reaching her violin.
Anna swayed gently to the music, closing her eyes and allowing herself to be carried away.
Cruz's mind wandered through glazy memories of playing the bongos for onlookers on the streets of Prospit, his fingers quietly tapping to the beat of the music seeping into the cockpit from beyond the hatch.
He was snapped back into his body by a rapid high-pitched beeping.
"We're here," Abigail announced, silencing the proximity alarm. "I'm bringing us in."
Cruz looked out the front window as the view was slowly dominated by the pockmarked surface of an oncoming asteroid. "Where exactly is 'here'?" he asked.
"One of the oldest asteroids in the Veil," his grandmother replied. As she spoke, a cluster of gray metal buildings appeared on the asteroid's not-so-distant horizon. One large building stood in the center of the compound, an epicycloid symbol identical to the Seven Gates emblazoned on its walls. Two smaller buildings branched out from the central structure. "It may not be much to look at, but this is a very special place."
"I'm about to fire up the retro thrusters, Chel," Abigail warned. "You should sit down."
"Go ahead and land, dear." Chela steadied herself against the bulkhead, gripping the edge of the communications console. "I'll be perfectly fine."
"If you say so." Abigail hit an intercom button, patching herself through to the cabin. "Girls? Much as I'm loving the music, we're about to land. Stay seated and put away the violin if you don't want it getting broken. Thank you for flying Air Skaia."
The violin music stopped.
As the retro thrusters engaged, the shuttle rocked forward, heaving Cruz over the communications console. If he hadn't braced himself beforehand, he likely would've smacked his forehead.
Abigail guided the shuttle to a gentle landing barely a hundred meters away from the compound, settling into a large crater with a reasonably flat surface.
"No hangar bay?" asked Cruz.
"Nope." Abigail powered down the shuttle's engines. "Free crater parking, though. First come first served."
Cruz rose from his seat, taking a deep breath as his grandmother opened the cockpit door, feeling horribly exposed without the safety of the door separating him from Tami's murderous glares. He forced himself to take a step forward, followed by a second, then a third.
When Cruz stepped into the cabin, inevitably he made eye contact with Tami once again. Would've been exponentially more awkward had he tried to avoid it. Probably would've led to another spat. Nothing to do but buckle down and get through the experience.
This time, however, Tami's gaze was no longer trying to eviscerate him. The anger from before seemed to have dissipated. Now she just looked tired. Sad, even.
Cruz felt he should be relieved, but relief did not come. Why wasn't she yelling at him? Not that he wanted her to, of course, but-
"Now will you tell us what's going on?" asked Anna, interrupting Cruz's thought and bringing him back to reality. "If this is supposed to be some sort of vacation, that's cool, but I'm not really digging the desolate asteroid aesthetic. Why couldn't we visit Gwen's planet instead? Tropical beaches, floating prisms, and more tropical beaches. How can you beat that?"
Chela smiled, laughter in her eyes. "I admire your humor, Anna. It brightens our world at a time when there is precious little light remaining." She touched a spot on the control panel set into bulkhead next to the airlock, opening the inner doors and stepping through. "You have all been very patient, which I thank you for. I know you want answers, but you must wait a little longer."
Cruz instinctively held his breath as his grandmother opened the outer doors, exposing the interior of the shuttle to the outside.
Outer space within the Medium was quite breathable, but this was very easy to forget after a lifetime of being taught that exposure to space would cause a plethora of unpleasant side effects, followed by an equally unpleasant death.
Out the corner of his eye, Cruz saw Tami and Anna discreetly release their own held breaths, which helped him feel a bit less silly.
Chela walked down the retractable metal gangplank, first to set foot upon the asteroid's bleak gray rock.
Cruz, Anna, Tami, and Abigail followed close behind, walking towards the nearby buildings.
Having solid rock underfoot felt particularly strange to Cruz after spending so much time aboard the White Shadow. He'd grown very used to the reverberating clang of walking on metal, and now his footsteps suddenly felt dense and dull as the rock dampened and absorbed the sound.
Cruz wondered for a moment why he was so put off by his own footfalls before realizing the asteroid was completely silent. No life, no wind, not even the mechanical whir of technology. No wonder footsteps were so loud here. Even his heartbeat seemed deafening in the sonic void.
Thousands of asteroids loomed quietly in the sky. Most were relatively small rocks around the size of houses, but they were dwarfed by the giants. The biggest asteroids could hold small cities on their surfaces.
Beyond the Veil, the sky was utterly black and empty, save for Skaia – a solitary little point of bluish-white light winking in the far distance. Cruz found himself missing his bedroom on Prospit, where the rays of Skaia were warm and soothing. He could not feel that same warmth all the way out here.
"I miss the stars," Cruz murmured, primarily to break the claustrophobic silence. "Everything is so dark here."
"Mm," Anna hummed in agreement. "Really sucks without 'em. Kinda wish I'd stargazed more, you know?"
"Do we need to lose something before we can really appreciate it?" asked Cruz.
Tami cast Cruz a furtive glance.
"No, mejito," replied Chela. "But loss certainly helps us learn what appreciation even means."
"Can we please lighten the mood?" Tami interjected. "I don't need to be more depressed than I already-"
A thunderous rumble ripped through the asteroid's cloying silence, throwing everyone off-balance as the ground violently quaked. Chela tumbled to the rock in a heap, crying out as she struck her hip on the way down.
"Abuelita!" Cruz instantaneously found himself at his grandmother's side with no memory of how he'd gotten there so fast, taking her hands and supporting her. "Are you alright? Can you stand?"
"Yes, I-" Chela winced as she struggled back onto her feet. "I will be fine. Please, we need to keep moving. We are out of time."
As abruptly as the earthquake arrived, it dissipated. The ground stopped its tremoring and a tentative quiescence returned, but by no means had the Veil returned to normal.
"What the fuck?!" Tami exclaimed, wide-eyed, pointing to the sky.
Cruz looked up just in time to see one of the smaller asteroids suddenly zoom away into space, accelerating from zero to insane in less than an instant. After a few seconds, another small asteroid followed suit. A third and fourth whizzed off into space shortly after the second, followed in turn by a fifth.
All the asteroids were hurtling in the same direction: Skaia.
"Well that doesn't make me want to piss myself at all," Anna remarked.