CASSETTE TWO, SIDE B: THE TOURISTS

There is the screeching―

There is the light―

& there is me.

I think that was sleep. It's hard to say; I have so little experience of it myself. The closest I came was when the Ancient slipped me from myself into Red Dulse's eternal embrace, & that was nothing like this: that was a void, a vacancy, a vanishing, & this was simply a muting. After I was finished speaking with Red Dulse & slipped back into slumber, I echoed through my own emptiness for what felt like hours. Stray thoughts & thin streams of consciousness, clumps & clots of the day's feeling, floating through us like flotsam through Red Dulse's tide.

"Whose fuckin' alarm is that?"

"Sorry," I mumble, fumbling my hand across the carpet by my bunk. "Sorry, got a … got a call I think―"

"Can't understand a word you're sayin', just turn that fuckin' thing off. Too early."

I wake the rest of the way up all at once. I'm pretty good at Paldean – it was my foreign language in school, & combined with some cobbled-together internet Galish it's got me through Europe just fine – but I know my accent's a lot stronger when I'm not concentrating on it. (Accent? I reach for memory, & find a great groaning rush of shame: stammering at an uncomprehending human behind a desk; someone talking loud & slowly as if at an infant; turning away from a sneering face to hide the silent fury in my eyes. I am a stranger on these shores. & I will never be allowed to forget it.)

"Sorry," I say, more clearly. "Call. Let me, um. Yeah."

I smile apologetically at the boy in the bunk across the room & find my phone at last. Dad, it seems. It's early here, but he'll be on his break now. I can see him standing outside the pharmacy, sleeves rolled up & shirt soaked with sweat as the summer reaches savage new heights. People are worried about the future in Europe, but in Hoenn climate change is already here & hitting hard.

PHOEBE ANSWER, says Shiv, her eye just barely visible in the air beside the bunk. DAD WORRY.

She's right. & I guess it has to happen sometime. Otherwise they're all gonna think I'm dead.

Deep breath. &―

"Hi, Dad."

I keep my voice as low as I can, though there's no privacy here, not in a room with six bunk beds housing eight people. At least I'm speaking Hoennic. I'm pretty sure not one person in Paldea has that as a second language.

"You answered," he says. I hear the shock, hate that I caused it. I'm the worst son, & when I finally run out of money & come home I won't be much better as a daughter. "I – I really wasn't expecting that." He pauses. I don't say anything. "Are you there?"

I have to speak. I have to – but I can't – but there's Shiv, with the faintest tap of her finger against my forehead.

"Yeah," I say, scrunching myself up in the sweat-sticky sheets. "Yeah, Dad, I'm … how are you?"

"I'm all right. We all are." He pauses. It is so hard to make out his meaning; the magic brings voice, but no aureole. I wonder why Shiv couldn't simply stream to this Dad the way she did to Red Dulse. "Hope I didn't wake you. You're in, uh, in Kalos now, right?"

"Paldea. It's prettier than Kalos. Better food, too." I was excited to try the famous Kalois cuisine, but it turns out it's just the mildest, least adventurous flavours you've ever had. At least in Paldea they're not afraid of using spices. "Obviously not a patch on yours."

"Sure." I can hear him smile. It makes me feel a little better, even if old in-jokes are a pretty cheap victory. "Wish your mother agreed. I'm running out of allies at the dinner table with you, uh … gone."

Ah, there it is. Just in case we managed to go thirty whole seconds without splitting the scabs on our shared wound.

"I'll be back before you know it," I say. It's kind of true. Money's getting tight, & it's gonna be tighter after I call the number Nieves gave me for hash. I definitely wanna hit Galar – I desperately need to see a runerigus for myself – but that might be my last stop. "As long as you're cooking."

"Definitely." Another pause. I think I hear an indrawn breath. Is he smoking again? After everything the doctor said about his heart? "And, uh … maybe we can talk when you are, yeah? About everything."

About everything. About me dominating two tournaments & tossing out my team like cold bathwater. About me taking the prize money that should've let me kick-start my career & throwing it all at three months doing shots & taking pills on the other side of the world. About the fact that I didn't have anything to say for myself except I'm done with this, I think I need to get away.

I roll over. I know this can't last forever. I just don't know what else I can do.

"Sure," I say (memories rippling through me in bright, bold bursts: a Land-son with a bristly face & spice-stained fingers, another in full floral array with a gold gleam at his throat). "I know it's weird. I just really have to do this."

"I believe you," says Dad, like every time. "I believe you."

Silence. I wish I knew what to say. I wish, selfishly, that he knew what to say, that he'd speak some spell to summon up the opening for me to spill all my stupid secrets.

"I better go," he says. "I can hear our phone bills creaking."

Some things are too sharp to bear holding. Who else would say that? Send me home right now & bury me alive in my childhood.

"Yeah." I sigh. "Love you, Dad."

"Love you too, son. Come back soon, okay?"

(& O, it hurts! I can't understand; I am healthy, I am whole, & yet my shared body burns with false fires. What landlocked torment is this?)

"Yeah. Soon."

Click. & the silence spreads out so soft & suffocating I think it might just kill me. Right up until the train roars past & rattles the window half out of its frame.

o|-)

No, I'm not having this. No moping. Moping is for people who don't have towns to save & ghosts to manage & breakfast to buy.

"So, little ghost," I say, heading out into the heat-hazy street & checking my reflection in the window. I look great, for me, which is to say that if a cute boy has taken something at the club he might want to fuck me & he might not. The jury's still out on whether a hot Paldean butch would do the same. "I guess you heard all that with my dad, huh."

My dad? Perhaps not a name, then. I reach, & find: a tall, shapeless Land-son, worn & wiry, with a hand on my shoulder & another spread against the sky. What do you think of the new, improved garden? Compromise between me & your mother. My herbs here, her flowers there.

O, I see it now. He's a sire, the immediate mortal kind that plays Father Land's part in the mating. Dad. A new word for Red Dulse's collection, when I become her again.

"That's … you know, you're the first ghost I've ever been possessed by who speaks through my own internal monologue. But I think I'm getting the hang of it." Train station, launderette, phone shop. There's a café on the corner where I bought coffee & porras yesterday; that seems like a decent start to today's tourist shit. Show my passenger something sweet. "Anyway. Dad. I sort of sprung this Europe trip on him & Mum. & we had a big fight about it 'cause I sort of threw away my career for it, so I went to stay with my ex for a week." Lucy was really nice about it. She was the first & only person I came out to; it's why we broke up, but not in a bad way. We stayed friends. I just couldn't stay a boyfriend. "Then they calmed down & got worried & honestly that's been worse."

I push open the door to the café. (Warm metal on my warm palm, so different to the rub of algae over anchor. I don't know if I understand all I'm being told, but I feel it, deep in my borrowed bones.) Inside, the air is rich with coffee & hot oil, & I know I'm about ten seconds away from Shiv starting up the usual whine.

"Anyway, don't worry about it," I finish up, under my breath. "It's just weird, is all. I'll sort it when I get home."

I do not sound sure. Do not feel sure, if the electric prickle in my brain is anything to go by. But I & I have been 'we' for near enough a full day now, & I can tell this topic is closed.

COFFEE, Shiv pleads, from her invisible spot beside me.

"You can share mine," I tell her, approaching the counter.

SHIV WANT SHIV COFFEE.

"You won't even drink it!" The server is looking at me like a white guy looking at a brown person yelling at themself in a foreign language. I need to walk this back, now. "Uh, sorry," I add, in Paldean. "Lemme see here …"

Everything tastes better dipped in café con leche. I sip & eat & set the cup to one side so Shiv can huff the fumes like a teenager hunched over model glue. (& I can hardly blame her. Taste is new territory, a garden of rich & riotous delights that I struggle to withstand.) Something about eating alone in a foreign country always makes me feel smart & sophisticated, like a real adult. Like someone who has a plan to part a dhelmise from her newfound territory.

"Hope you liked the food," I say in Hoennic, putting my phone to my ear as if on a call. "I'm gonna take you around town now. Show you what life is like on land. Then we'll see if we can sneak back out to Reh …" Again. Why does that keep happening? What word am I even trying to say? "… to the dhelmise & get you home. Hopefully we can fix this before Rika's even ready to launch her plan. That kinda geomancy isn't quick."

Home. Blue water, blended at the edges into a bluer sky; the coils & curls of other memorates. This is where I'm from, where I belong. & yet in my day as Phoebe I have lived twelve times over what I did in all my years of slumber. Call it cowardice, call it capitulation, but I can't help but crave a little more heat between my borrowed teeth.

My brow scrunches in confusion.

"Not quite sure I got that one," I say. "But don't worry, little ghost. I'm pretty good at being a tourist by this point, & I'm ready to hit the road."

o|-)

I actually haven't had a chance to look around Cascarrafa yet, but I can Google with the best of them. It stands on a stepped hillside like a ream of paper stood on end & slipping loose in sheaves, connected by very slow but very beautiful funiculars or very fast but very weird dragons that look like motorbikes. We take the funicular & I delete some pictures of sparkly cocktails off my phone to make space for skyline snaps instead.

White limestone, deep blue murals. The rooftops are the peaks & troughs of a bone-coloured ocean, undulating with ultramarine jetsam. I look, & wonder. I've heard that even Father Land's sons are born of Mother Sea, in the end. & so it seems they've rebuilt her here, as if they still hear her sighing through their souls.

Fancy restaurants in La Cocina, where Kofu & his protégés took a square mile of city & made it Paldea's premier dining destination. Old temples – all Christian, so unlike Hoenn where no two villages share a pantheon. Parks & ponds & piles of coins glistening at the bottoms of the fountains.

"You're meant to make a wish," I explain, rubbing a ten-cent piece between my fingers. "Anything come to mind?"

(O, nothing but a few hours more to see―) But I'm thinking about my own wishes, about Red Dulse & Rika & everything I came to Europe to forget. Would it be too much to ask for me to drive Red Dulse away so effectively that Rika falls for me hard enough I can avoid going home and live out my days as her stoner trophy wife? Probably. Not gonna stop me, though.

"Here goes nothing," I murmur, & let the coin fall like a spent star dropping from the winter sky.

o|-)

Five hours touring one medium-sized town is a lot. Apparently it's not enough, though. I show the little ghost all the sights & Nieves's improbably gorgeous dealer & even five or six books in the library – history, poetry, fiction; I can practically hear Lucy saying the full range of human endeavour in her sarcastic drawl – but Red Dulse isn't having it. Which is fair. I knew she was smart. I just didn't know she was smart enough for that kind of abstract thought. Most ghosts are curious, but it's always about stuff: they like weapons & houses & coins & other things strongly stamped with human emotion. Usually only the ones who used to be people go for more abstract things, & no dhelmise has ever even been an animal, let alone human.

(Although she came quite close, in me. I am not sure I liked that. I feel something flowing between us still, a frisson fizzling through Shiv's antenna; I don't think she can quite close the valve she opened. Red Dulse is my past & future, but she sees the world as hers to be taken. She wouldn't baulk at taking Phoebe, if the chance presented itself.)

So here we are. I'm sitting on a stone by the shoreline; Red Dulse is somewhere out there, underneath the waves. & I have to fill at least another half hour before Rika's team comes back from their siesta.

Tell. Us. More, Red Dulse says, in her stolen, stop-start voice. I hear others in there now, not just mine. That 'more' might even be Rika's.

I think about it for a moment. She wants human nature, right? & I've been sifting through the ashes of my life back home ever since Dad called.

"I wasn't supposed to be here," I say, readying a cigarette for Shiv to light. "I was one of those kids. You … uh, you don't know anything about that, obviously. But in a lot of places, they send kids out to be pokémon trainers for a bit while they're teenagers. Most of them muddle along & have fun travelling, but a few of them get super into it & walk all over everyone. I was one of those. The least fun child to be around in Hoenn." I almost smile, despite myself. It's only now, having left that all behind, that I can see myself & the other prodigies for what we were: annoying kids who didn't have a single brain cell to spare for anything that couldn't be taught moves & tossed at opponents. "That kinda person usually turns pro eventually, if they can afford it. Which my family could, just. & so I went pro, & I actually did really well. All the trainer mags wanted to interview the boy wonder."

I can feel all the old feelings climbing up into my throat, clawing at my voice. (So much! More even than last night, than this morning; more than any memorate can manage―) Normally I'd try to fight them, but I think Red Dulse wants to feel it, & if it'll stop her killing or getting killed I guess I don't have a choice but to be a little vulnerable.

"Except I'm a girl," I say. "A – I dunno what you'd say, a daughter? & I started thinking like, if I transition, I'm doing it with every single pro battling fan in Hoenn watching. & I worried about that for like three years, so much it made me sick. Like I had these horrific tension headaches & broke a molar grinding my teeth & got scary thin." I think Red Dulse might be saying something, but there's something in my ears, a kind of fuzzy ringing like I felt at that last tournament when I nearly fainted on the podium. "So, um. I quit. Like three months ago. I cleaned out my savings account & ran away. & it really helped, I'm so much better. But also it ruined everything. & now I don't …" I'm not crying. I refuse. "I don't know how to … to go home."

The words come out thick & sticky, but there are no tears. There's just me, & Shiv, & the crumbly corpse of my cigarette.

Oh, says Red Dulse. She puts a little reverb into it somehow, in a way that makes it sound like the word means much more to her than me. (…) Remarkable. This is. What. We need.

It's hard not to take that badly. I feel my hackles rise, but with Shiv already bristling beside me I need to be the adult in the room.

WET GHOST, she begins, her voice glitching & staticking with anger, & I have to put a hand on the soft frill along her shoulder.

"No, Shiv," I say, easing her back. "It's fine. She just doesn't understand." I force a smile. "Wait till your friend here gets back. Think she can help you see."

We'll. See. She pauses. You are. An. Gree. One of those weird psionic record scratches, & she takes her second shot. Angry.

"Yeah," I say, because she absolutely won't buy a 'no'. "I am. But it's fine. Part of being human is keeping control of yourself. You might be able to just hang out at the bottom of the sea & smash everything you don't like, but we have to live with each other."

Live with each other, she repeats. We. See. In this pause, I hear something small & scratchy, like her constituent ghosts are debating, but I'm pretty sure that's not something they do. You know how. To live. Then.

"Uh, I guess? That's what I just―"

So you. Know how. To go home.

Oh. That one hits hard & sticks there, like a bullet lodged in bone.

"Wow." I take as deep a breath as I can with that jammed in my chest. "Um. Yeah, I dunno. But, uh … thanks. I guess."

My instincts say she's wrong. She doesn't know me; she's just drawing weird parallels. But I already know that that this is going to be the last thing I think of before I fall asleep tonight.

o|-)

Or not. Because that evening I set up at Pulpo again, & after a couple hours spent assaulting my lungs & my liver, who should walk in but Rika Soto.

She looks tired, but she smiles when she sees me. I guess I didn't do too badly last night after all. The Southern Comfort makes a beeline for my heart & thumps it hard against my ribs, like a sentret tail pounding the prairie.

"Hey," I say.

"Hey, Phoebe."

She remembered my name. That doesn't mean anything, but also it means everything.

"What are you drinking?" I ask.

Her tired smile broadens out for a moment. I know she thinks it's funny or cute or whatever, but when she speaks she treats it totally seriously.

"Scotch," she says. Spirits tonight, then. I'm guessing today didn't go well, especially since Grumo isn't with her. "Thanks."

"No problem." I look past her at Nieves, who is currently giving me the most intense holy shit, get in there look I've ever experienced. & she is right to. This is not an opportunity to pass up. "Nieves?"

"You got it."

Rika collects her glass & comes over to my table. Close to, she looks damp & drained, her hair hanging limp & lustreless down her shoulder.

"Long day?" I ask, as she sits down.

She smiles mirthlessly & knocks back half her whisky in one go.

"I think I got played by a dead plant."

Red Dulse is okay, then. But so's Rika, at least. I arrange my face into something sympathetic.

"I guess it didn't go well?"

"No." She sighs. "I think. Honestly, I can't figure it out, so I was hopin' I'd run into you. Our ghost-type expert – sister of the gym leader up in Montevera – is on tour overseas, & I can't think of anyone else who might know."

"Know what?"

"How smart a dhelmise really is." Her eyes are half-lidded, as usual, but there's nothing sleepy about them at all. "'Cause I've been over it a dozen times, & I think it's up to somethin'."

O, she's a wily one. I do not understand all of the hormonal symphony sounding & resounding through Phoebe's blood, but I can respect cunning when I see it. Rika would be a formidable predator, despite her frail form. All bones, perhaps, but all brains too.

I blink aside whatever the little ghost was saying & try to look confident. What the hell has Red Dulse been up to today?

"Okay," I say. "Why d'you ask?"

"It was holding back." Rika leans forward on her elbows, all business. Her face is like a foot and a half from mine, which is a lot to deal with but we're gonna have to power through. "I know it was. Every other time someone's gone down to the water, it's popped up & attacked 'em. But this time? It held back. Hid further out, where our veluza couldn't sense it, watchin' us to see what we'd do. It even let us push the water out a bit before it pushed back. & when it did, it KO'd five of the toughest pokémon in Paldea with one hit, two of 'em terastallised, & brought the floodwater two metres higher up the hill."

Shit. What? Gods' teeth, I asked her not to hurt anyone!

"Is everyone okay?" I ask. I'm sure a little of my panic shows, but Rika takes it well.

"Sure, just a lotta broken phones & a couple lost earrings. Which is also suspicious. It's never held back from killin' anyone before. This time, though? It watched, it waited, it threw us off & dared us to try again." She sips her whisky, the amber fluid a hazy reflection of the red spark in her eyes. "Here's my point: if it could do that after we washed it halfway outta the bay, it could've killed all the veluza & got the drop on us before we even set up. But it let us try all the same."

It's kind of weird. At this point, I might be the world expert on dhelmise. I'm pretty sure that no one else has ever spoken to one, & absolutely sure that nobody's ever been possessed by part of one. I can answer this question, but I don't know if I ought to.

I pause. &―I see no harm in it. I understand that I don't wish to bring trouble down on myself, or myself, or myselves in Red Dulse, but there is no danger in divulging our daughterly mission.

Hm. Is it me, or is my passenger really into alliteration? That's a thought for later, anyway: right now, Rika's looking at me like she wants an answer.

"I have a theory," I say. "I dunno if anyone's ever said it exactly, but like … if you look at where & when they're sighted, I think it's about curiosity. They show up to look at ships 'cause they're strange & different, & they sink them because they want to see the insides & all the people closer up. So … I dunno. Maybe this one got washed in here by mistake, but she's definitely stayed by choice. I guess when all of you showed up with your geomancy equipment, you probably looked really interesting."

Rika's eyes narrow over the rim of her glass.

"She?"

Gods' teeth. A real rookie error there.

"Like a ship, you know?" I say, which is not a great lie but which maybe sounds a bit better if I put enough confidence into it. "I dunno. Most ghosts don't have the same kinda gender as humans. Shiv – um, my dusknoir – she insists on being called 'she', but only because I transitioned & she felt left out."

It feels a little scary to talk about transitioning so openly, but Rika already knows, & also I might or might not be doing the thing I do after a couple drinks where I overshare to strangers. ('Overshare'? I reach, and find: my arm draped around a Land-son's shoulders, voice spilling in spits & spurts to the sticky floor. How do you feel about biting? Oh I mean I love it, like my ex used to―)

"Sure," says Rika. "Think you're onto something about its curiosity. But there's a big difference between a rookidee pokin' her head in at the window & a ghost destroyin' a whole workin' port just to see what's up on land." She taps her fingers against her glass. Her nails are short – obviously – & one is freshly broken, the skin around it patched with purple. "You figure all that out yourself?"

She sounds impressed. & every drop of blood in my body bursts up through my cheeks like it's trying to pop my face right off my skull.

"I mean." I shrug awkwardly. "It's, um, you know. I'm good with ghosts."

PHOEBE MEANT FOR GHOSTS, chimes in Shiv, but I can't spare any brain to deal with that right now.

"You know a lot." Rika hesitates. "You really gave it all up?"

I freeze, then deliberately unfreeze & take a calm, cool pull on my drink.

"I don't need all that hassle. It's an intense career to start at sixteen & carry on for fifty years."

She raises her eyebrows, which might be her buying it or might be polite disbelief.

"I hear you there. Sorta stumbled into this gig before I knew what I was doin'." A lazy half-smile. "I do envy you, y'know."

Envy me? What, a loser currently in the process of turning a promising career into a heart attack in forty years' time?

"Really?" I ask, & I guess my shock must show because Rika actually chuckles.

"Sure," she says. "The Paldea League chair is a hard woman to work for. She's already talkin' about the nuclear option. Not impressed that two of Paldea's toughest trainers couldn't beat one wild pokémon."

"Nuclear option?"

I don't think I like the sound of that, but Rika waves it aside like it's nothing.

"If we can't scare it off with our next push, she'll have us drop one of her nasty little pets on the place. Somethin' from the containment centre. It'll tear up the port somethin' fierce, but I'm pretty sure there ain't a wild pokémon in Paldea that can take it out. Guess she figures it's worth it to make sure the dhelmise is put down."

I can feel Shiv tensing, the air twisting & trembling around her antenna. Looks like our deadline just got that much tighter. If we can't get Red Dulse out of the bay in the next few days, she might not be getting out at all. & I, even lost in this Land-son as I am, would be no kind of memorate if I let humans set their murderous magic on my memoir.

"She'd kill it?" I ask, trying to shake off the little ghost's commentary.

"She's, uh … what is it Larry's always sayin'? 'Results-oriented'. Kinda why I've been tryin' so hard to make a non-lethal approach stick." Rika sighs. "Look, I won't let it come to that. What I was tryna say was, I'm gettin' beat up by a dead plant with La Primera on my back & you're flyin' round the world, free as a bird. I know which of those sounds like the better deal to me." She lifts her glass as if about to drink, then pauses to speak again: "Kinda romantic, you know?"

All thoughts of Red Dulse fly from my head at once, startled birds billowing from the branches.

"R-right," I say, hearing myself stammer & cringing internally. "I mean. It's. Like I bet being an Elite Four member is pretty cool too."

Rika smiles & sips her drink. Past her shoulder, Nieves gesticulates frantically in a way that absolutely does not help the situation.

"Thought you didn't need that kinda hassle?"

"I, uh, don't. But you seem to handle it pretty well."

Her smile lengthens & sharpens like a knife being drawn from the sheath.

"I do what I can," she says. "It's not all bad. Get to meet all kindsa people. Course, you get to meet a whole lot more if you go roamin' the world. How does Paldea compare? Other than the giant ghost currently ragin' on our coastline."

"It's pretty good." I think I mean that. Paldea is weird, & often kind of hostile, but for every asshole here there's always a Nieves, too. Only one Rika, though. Probably the only one the gods ever made. "I've met a lot of cool people. Present company included. And I like the food, too. The heat's kinda dry for me, but the light has this really nice quality. Reminds me of …"

The ciné reel of my memory unspools unstoppably behind my eyes: Lilycove County Coastal Park, leaves & loons & lumps of seaweed all aglow with a brittle, luminous beauty. Just like the shoreline out at Porto Marinada. (Just like the warm, windswept waters where I died.)

"Home," says Rika, when I don't finish. "You miss it?"

& it all comes crashing loose, just like that.

"Yes," I say, & yes, I say, & "But I'm not sure I can," I say, & go home, I say. Our voices dancing through one another, two notes hand in hand as they whirl through one harmonic interval.

"It's like that, huh?" says Rika, unaware that she is not speaking to me but to us. "I feel you. There are some places I won't go back to, either."

"Not like that," we say, embarrassed to think she believes our lives bleaker than they are. "I think it'd be fine, I think they'd … I just don't know how to … I don't know how."

She takes a beat. We can see the realisation ringing through her head, her reassessment of the situation. We must seem so young & stupid. This little taste of life has been so sweet, & to return would be a death we know not how to bear.

"You will," she says. "You're just not ready yet. But the time will come." Her eyes are all the way open, for the first time since we met her. "Still gonna be awkward. No gettin' around that. But it'll happen." She sets down her glass, reaches over & squeezes our hand. The contact is brief, but sends sparks spiralling through our spine that tear me loose & sublimate me back into her spirit. "Till then … I mean, I knew a guy who couldn't figure out how to come out & decided he had to get really into ketamine instead. Your European tour honestly seems like a fairly healthy way of workin' through it."

"Right." I smile weakly. "I, um … yeah, that's kinda more of a special occasion drug." This is a terrible, terrible response. But in my defence, I'm still recovering from the hand thing, & also whatever it was that just happened between me & my little ghost. "Uh, thanks. Is what I'm trying to say. Thanks, Rika."

Her smile is better than mine. But that's fine. I'm the one who gets to look at it.

"Couldn't live with myself if I didn't turn out for a femme in need, could I?" she says, finishing her whisky & literally stopping my heart. "I'm beat, but I think I can have another before I go pass out in my hotel room. My round this time. Southern Comfort?"

"Um … yeah. Please."

Off she goes, over to where Nieves is grinning unsubtle encouragement at me, & I get a moment to breathe. This is going well. I'm going to have my work cut out for me if I want to sort all this out before one side or another ends up dead, but … hey. I have no right to expect anything of Rika at all, & yet for some reason she wants to keep this going. Even after a day as long & hard as the one she's had today.

RIKA RIKA, cackles Shiv.

"Oh, fuck off," I mutter, but she's right, & when Rika turns around with a drink in each hand & her mouth full of questions, I could swear the hot air balloon of my heart slips its moorings & rises high into the heat-sick Paldean night.

Gods' teeth. I thought I was getting better. But now, as my chest floods with real joy, I realise I haven't tasted this in years.