CASSETTE THREE, SIDE B: THE PASSION

I wake early, the way you do when the alcohol pushes in between you and real rest, and after I get done speaking to Red Dulse I lie in bed for a good hour and a half, worrying. She said all the right things. But I'm not stupid, and nor is Red Dulse, and I'm starting to wonder if two and a half days talking to humans is long enough for her to have mastered the art of telling someone what they want to hear.

"What do you think, little ghost?" I ask, staring at the underside of the bunk above mine like the answer is buried beneath the box-spring. "Can we trust her to stay out of trouble?"

It is harder to say than I expected. Red Dulse is known for her prowess, for an arrogance born of incontestable strength; for her to reconsider and retreat would be a striking change of character. And yet she feels for Phoebe. Perhaps not as I do, who dwell within the bloody ocean of her body, but I know her affection is real. It echoes down the tenuous link that Shiv has opened between us, tinkling and trembling in the ether like the chime of a crystalline bell.

"So perhaps," we say, our selves singing in symphonic synchronicity. "We cannot quite be certain."

I blink. It happened again, just like last night. That weird connection. Only that was us experiencing the same emotion, and this was … not.

I think I'm starting to see how all those little ghosts merge to form one big one. Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be a problem down the line. I don't mind having me along for the ride (I think), but I'm not sure I want to give up being Phoebe (I think, and I think, and we think).

"Ugh." I shake my head. "Okay, little ghost, it's too early in the morning for that. Lemme at least get some coffee down me first."

It'll probably be fine. I guess. Like, what's the worst that could happen? Other than Red Dulse killing everyone and then getting killed and my little ghost being stuck in me forever until we merge irreversibly into some sort of screwed-up spirit monster.

Yeah. Probably fine.

o|-)

In retrospect, a morning spent showing my little ghost what being high feels like did not set me up for success later in the day. But in my defence, I'm not sure what else I could've done. Red Dulse wants experiences, feelings, vibes, and there's really only one shortcut I know to get there in a hurry. And, also? Pretty good hash.

(And yet I – Phoebe, that is – she did not notice what it did. As the intoxicant took hold, I felt my connection to Red Dulse crackle and kick; for a moment, she was here, and I was there, swirling through her curls as she drained her prey. I believe Shiv noticed, or at the very least felt a shift in her harmonics; yet Phoebe herself seemed not to know at all. Strange. And distinctly ominous.)

What I'm trying to say is that when I try to sneak down to the shore to check on Red Dulse, I stumble out of Shiv's arms right in front of the cops stationed on the hill over Porto Marinada. (And the flicker, again: Red Dulse in me, and I in her. All unnoticed, as before.) They don't take it very well, I guess because seeing someone like me materialise out of thin air is a cop's worst nightmare; some words are exchanged, and then some more, and then Shiv rematerialises with a psychic shriek and a black blast of shadows to snatch me up and hurry invisibly back toward town.

PHOEBE BE CAREFUL! she snaps, her voice all rumbles and grumbles. PEOPLE UNFRIENDLY HERE, PHOEBE KNOW THAT.

"That's not true, Shiv," I say, because it isn't, but I know she'll never quite understand that it's the change of gender causing problems, not the change of location. "You can put me down now."

"Shiv, c'mon―"

SHIV HANDLE IT.

"For fuck's sake, Shiv, I'm not made of glass―!"

And O, I feel it, and feel I understand it: the wriggling and the writhing of the shame that this has happened, and that I am the kind of person to whom it happens, and that Shiv feels the need to save me from it even when she does not understand it in its totality. And I have to act, too. And so I try, for the first time, to work the attenuated aureole my human body gives me and say―

Shiv.

Shiv slows, surprised. I'm not quite sure why. But I am, and, emboldened, I try again:

Shiv, let us down. We are quite safe.

LITTLE GHOST? she asks, suspiciously. LITTLE GHOST NOT TALK BEFORE.

"What's that?" Shiv's saying something, I think, but not to me; all I hear is a cracked muttering at the back of my head, like voices leaking from an old radio. "Shiv?"

I am a memorate; I live in memory. And these recordings are rich fare indeed. It's so easy. And to think, two days past, I struggled even to form a thought. Phoebe's mind is no memoir, but in her short life she has accumulated more memories than Red Dulse would in a whole decade at sea. Let us down. We can return to town on our own.

Shiv hesitates. I have no fucking clue what's happening here, but hopefully she's about to drop me.

Phoebe listen Shiv next time, she mutters, and deposits me in a heap by the side of the road.

"Ow." I pick myself up and shake myself out, brushing soil off my skirt. At least it's dry; there was a storm a couple nights ago, but the sun has long since baked grass and dirt alike to a crisp brown crust. "What the hell was all that about?"

LITTLE GHOST TALK SURPRISE SHIV. She points accusingly at (me) my arm. GROWING.

"Huh." I don't know how to feel about this. I'm the only one who talks to Shiv. I'm definitely the only one who has private conversations with her. "You can talk to other people now?"

My memories wax, and so do I; we memorates grow richer with repletion. And possibly also from this strange syncopation of skin and strand, though I can't be sure.

"Man." I scratch my head. The words are coming through so strongly now. In my own voice, in my own head, like a thought of my own. I guess a human brain is fertile ground to plant a ghost in. Possibly too fertile. "Well I'm, um, glad you're getting along."

Shiv turns away in a dramatic huff, antenna spitting pink-white flashes.

SHIV NEVER GET ALONG LITTLE GHOST, she insists. SHIV ONLY GET ALONG PHOEBE.

"Hah." I reach out and touch her shoulder frill. "Some things never change, huh?"

SHIV NEVER CHANGE SHIV PHOEBE ALWAYS.

"That's right. Smith and Jones forever." Gods' teeth. I definitely didn't need to start thinking about Mum and the nonsense scraps of Galish she amputated from her 90s American music. "Anyway," I say, blanking it all out with an attempt at finding a suggestion Shiv will accept. "Let's, uh … I dunno. Take a break and try again? We can come down in the evening instead, after they've all gone home."

Shiv pauses. Narrows her huge, evil eye. And, eventually, makes the most regal gesture of acquiescence I've ever seen.

OKAY, she says, in a long-suffering tone I suspect she learned from me. PHOEBE COME BACK NIGHT TIME.

"Sure. Safe in the dark. C'mon, then – I'll buy you a coffee."

TRUE, she says, which, I'll give her, is a pretty bold substitute for 'thank you'. PHOEBE GO NOW.

"All right, I'm coming."

So I do, and so do I. But I am still thinking of the connection. And I'm still thinking about how fast my passenger's grown. And we have no answers yet, but we have a suspicion that they may come soon, and sudden, and sour.

o|-)

I have a fancy coffee and a cigarette and a long lie down in the municipal park. It's honestly great. There's been a lot of running around lately, a lot of tense talk and tangled problems to unpick, and entirely not enough holiday. And besides, to be stretched out at length in the summer sun feels like an echo of my waking life sprawled on my mother's surface. Even if, at one point, I feel the pulse and prickle of Red Dulse's presence once again.

Evening comes in holding home in its mouth like a delcatty with a dead bird, low orange sun and jasmine-scented breeze conjuring visions of Lilycove before I've even realised what I'm thinking. I tell myself it'll be a nice walk out to the port, because it will and because saying anything else is dangerously close to self-reflection, but before I've even crossed the city limits my phone twitters to life in my pocket.

riJa Sot9: Hey Phoebe, got a minute? I have a ghost question for you. At Pulpo if you're around.

Ah. I remember now: the drinks were strong enough to make me say I should give Rika my number, in case she had ghost questions, and she was kind enough to say okay, and I was drunk enough to type her name the worst I've ever typed anything in my life.

RIKA RIKA, says Shiv slyly. PHOEBE GO?

It's a hard decision, or at least that's what I tell myself. On the one hand, I definitely ought to check in with Red Dulse, see how she got on with the League. Maybe hand over my passenger before her growth gets out of hand. On the other … I can find out how Red Dulse got on from Rika. And I could do another day possessed, no worries. And, well, I gave her my number. And she texted back.

"Yeah," I sigh, typing out a quick and hopefully cool response. "Phoebe go."

o|-)

Pulpo is dark and quiet. I'm actually not sure what day it is – occupational hazard of wandering around in the sun and drinking for three straight months – but I guess it must be a weeknight; there's us, there's Nieves, and there is, limned by the dim light of the filthy window, Rika. And that, apart from the fly battering its brains out on the chandelier, is it.

"Phoebe, hey." Rika raises a hand in recognition. "Sorry to pull you out here at short notice like this. You were probably out havin' fun, huh?"

"Not really." It isn't a lie. I was about to go and have a difficult conversation with a giant ghost who I'm not sure I can trust not to make trouble. "Bit of a slow day. I just sorta hung around and got high."

I think she'll be cool with that. I hope. Actually, I probably should've thought it through before I said it, but that would imply I have like, any self-restraint at all.

"Sounds like a better day than mine," she says. "Buy you a drink?"

"Thanks."

Nieves is already reaching for the Southern Comfort, because I have the predictably sweet tooth of a perpetual child. When I collect my drink, she leans in and gives me an extremely serious look.

"I don't know what you're doing to get Rika Soto after you," she whispers, "but keep doing it. Like as a service to the community."

"Trying my best," I murmur, and take my drink over to the table, where Rika is most of the way through something dark. Close to, she looks even more worn out than last night; all the bones of her face stand out boldly through her skin, and the dark circles around her eyes give them the look of two coals smouldering in the depths of an ash-choked fireplace.

O yes, she has been hunting. And when her quarry was brought to bay, she turned and fought back with all the ferocity of the wounded. And that, I know, means that Red Dulse has not been hiding.

Which does make me feel very stupid for even half thinking she might try to be nice. But at least it looks like she hasn't killed anyone.

"Another long day?" I ask, sitting down and swirling my straw around the glass. I can feel Shiv behind me, watching with the avid attention of an absol tracking a sickly grumpig, but I'll be damned if I let her get to me.

"A very short one," says Rika. "And then a very long twenty-five minutes." She sips her drink. It smells horribly bitter, but I suppose one of us has to have something approximating an adult's palate. "We all slept late after yesterday, didn't get back down there till the afternoon. At which point good ol' Andrew Eldritch picked us up and threw us back onshore."

Looks like my little ghost was right. Gods, I tried my best.

"What happened?" I ask, rolling a cigarette. Half to stave off the urge to fidget, and half because once there's a drink in my hand, a cigarette in my mouth is a foregone conclusion. "Is everyone okay?"

"We're fine. Just got our asses handed to us." She shakes her head. "It was toyin' with us before, I think. Or curious, like you said. Wanted to see what we were doin'. The minute we actually tried to attack it and drive it away, it whipped eight pokémon at once. Didn't give us a chance to terastallise, either, which means it saw what we did yesterday, learned, and chose a new plan to stop us doin' it again."

I guess I can't blame anyone for retaliating when attacked. But I really wish Red Dulse had taken my advice and not hung around to get attacked in the first place, because if the League can't drive her off by traditional means, they're gonna drop something much worse on her. At which point, I think she's dead and me and my little ghost are stuck together for life.

(And this, I know, cannot happen. I love being Phoebe, but I'm starting to suspect that to be her forever would be to destroy her.)

"And that's not everything." Rika leans in on her elbows, eyes gleaming like gold coins half-sunk in the seabed. "There was a moment toward the end when it reached out and grabbed me. Right round the head." She lifts a hand to her face, linking her temples with thumb and forefinger. "Didn't attack me, though. It just … held me. And there was this pressure round my head, kinda like when you're opponent's fieldin' a psychic-type and you just catch the edge of what it's doing to your pokémon. And then … well. Then I think it tried to talk to me."

Breaching the skin barrier. Anyone who knows anything about psionics – which I don't, but I know ghosts, and that's pretty similar – knows that the skin is the body's first line of psychic defence. Usually, it takes physical contact and a lot of mental force to push through it. Force that I don't doubt Red Dulse can project, if she really puts her mind to it. But she's never done it before. So why now? What message is so important that it couldn't wait for me?

"No way," I say, a sense of unease climbing stickily up the inside of my chest. "What did it say?"

"I'm not totally sure." She tugs thoughtfully on her earring. "Something about leavin', I think. And learnin'. And now I'm thinkin', maybe it didn't come here by accident. 'Cause it's definitely curious, like you said, and it's definitely learnin' for itself."

I can see the conclusion in her eyes, but she feels it's a little too far-fetched to say it out loud. Fortunately, I can help with that.

"You think it brought the flood," I say. "And that it's keeping it there till it's done studying the port, at which point it'll leave by itself."

She gives a rueful little chuckle.

"I know how it sounds," she says. "But …"

"I mean I agree with you." I smile. "I told you dhelmise are smart. Nobody really knows how smart. But it sure sounds like you just found out."

"Really." She looks relieved. "Man. Wasn't sure you were gonna believe me, but … I also figured you were the only person you might. Couldn't see myself callin' up the League chair and tellin' her a shipwreck started talkin' to me."

"It's not as weird as all that," I say. "A lot of ghosts can talk one way or the other. It's just hard to understand them, or for them to understand us. But it's possible, like me and Shiv."

I glance to my right. I can't see her – or Phoebe can't; I can – but the part of me that's attuned to her can always feel exactly where she is.

"Your dusknoir, right?" asks Rika, following my gaze. "I figured she was around, yeah."

RIKA SMART, says Shiv, with the approval she reserves for people who notice her. PHOEBE CHOOSE GOOD BUT HURRY UP.

I suppress a grimace. (Though I am not sure why; I reach, as I am accustomed to, and find: a confusion of sense impressions, sweat and sheets and teeth and heaving flesh, shot through with the chemical spice of mammalian arousal.)

"Um, uh, yeah," I say, trying frantically to forget the entirely inappropriate hit parade of one-night stands my little ghost has summoned. "She's been with me since I was eight, so we're pretty good at talking to each other, aren't we?"

SHIV PHOEBE FOREVER.

"That's right. So …" I shrug. "Not such a stretch to say a dhelmise might. They're all very big and very old."

It occurs to me as I speak that I don't know they're old, that I haven't read it anywhere; and then a moment later it occurs to me again, in a second realisation crushed over and into the first, that of course I know it from my long years at sea, waiting to be born in Red Dulse's coils.

Hm. It feels troubling that I'm picking up memories from my little ghost without either of us even saying anything, but I'm going to have to park that thought for later.

"And even I know that's how ghosts get smarter and stronger." Rika sips her drink, grimaces, sighs. "Ah, fuck it – mind if I bum a cigarette?"

"Oh. Uh, sure, knock yourself out." I push my tobacco pouch across the tabletop, dig out filters and papers from my bag. "I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't," she says, rolling a cigarette with the ease of someone who has definitely done it before. "Not for four years. But I'm havin' a rough week and yours smells so fuckin' good. You got a light?"

"Better, I got a dusknoir. Shiv?"

PHOEBE RUIN TRICK, she grumbles, but she waves and wafts a Will-O-Wisp over the end of Rika's cigarette regardless.

"Thanks," says Rika. I recognise the look on her face. Like when Mum has a couple drinks and forgets that she's never smoked, she can't stand cigarettes, and cracks into Dad's emergency pack of Black Dustox. "Ahh, that's … lotta ex-smokers I know go on and on about how disgustin' cigarettes are, but I never understood that. I think about 'em every damn day."

She exhales a long, lazy loop of smoke, the movement slow and sinuous and so cool it makes my chest fill up with the heat and hurt of profound desire. (and two days ago this was a wailing tide that washed me clean away, but I am Phoebe now and I ride it like an old master.) Gods' teeth. Both of us now? Even if Rika's out of my league, I clearly need to get laid by someone.

"Anyway," she continues. "Where I was goin' with all this is, I'm on a hard time limit here. La Primera's sent one of my colleagues here with a poké ball containin' a monster that'll make mincemeat of any ghost on the planet, and what's left of Porto Marinada with it. Didn't want that before, definitely don't want it now I know our friend Andrew Eldritch is a person. We need results, and we need 'em now."

"We?"

"We," she confirms. "I need a ghost whisperer. If you're available, I can probably get the League to pay you. Just come out there with me tomorrow and see if you can make contact."

Right. I guess I should've seen that one coming. Do I come clean now? I didn't tell her about Red Dulse because I figured she wouldn't believe me. Now I'm not sure if it'd be weird to admit I was lying. Maybe I can just play along. Dream-stream to Red Dulse overnight to get her up to speed, then stage something tomorrow for Rika's benefit. Play the hero, bask in the glory, show Rika what a catch I am. (And I am taking note: these are the mating strategies of humans, these daring displays of prowess and power. Vigorous and vital and a world apart from the staid sporangia I bore along my blade in life.) I could even give back my little ghost, and then Red Dulse could leave, and that – well, that would solve everything. Rika, Red Dulse, Porto Marinada, possession – you name it, this is the answer.

"Sure," I say, leaning on one elbow in what I hope is a debonair and devil-may-care kind of way. "I'd love to. Like I can't stress enough, communicating with a dhelmise would be making history. And if I can help save it, too, I can't turn that down."

Rika's grin cracks her tired face open to show something bolder and brighter and absolutely irresistible.

"Atta girl," she says, which would, no joke, cut my knees out from under me if I weren't already sitting down. "Thanks, Phoebe."

And there's something about the light of that smile on my face, and the alcohol, and the shared cigarettes, that swells my heart against my ribs.

"Well," I say, remembering what she said when I thanked her last night. "What else is a femme to do when she sees a butch in a bind?"

Her grin broadens in a way that makes it clear she remembers, too.

"You take your responsibilities seriously, huh?"

That feels kind of pointed. And maybe I'm stupid to think Rika's interested, but I'd be even stupider if I didn't at least try.

"Extremely seriously," I tell her. "It's kind of a sacred bond."

"Heavy stuff." Rika takes one last drag of her cigarette and scrunches it into the ashtray with a quick, decisive movement. "Luckily for you, I agree."

I swallow, but that one really sticks in the throat.

"You do?"

A tired little trickle of laughter spills from the corner of her mouth.

"Phoebe, I'm not stupid. And you're not subtle. But you are charmin'. And I'm a sucker for a pretty face." Oh gods, she thinks I'm charming. She thinks I'm charming and pretty. She thinks I'm charming and pretty and― "Why don't I buy you another drink and we see where this goes?"

Behind the bar, Nieves drops her phone. And next to me, Shiv crackles and crunches in delight. And here, in me, in us, Rika's words catch light with a harsh, howling flame.

"Okay, Rika," I say, hardly daring to believe it. "Let's, uh … see where this goes."

o|-)

To make a short story even shorter, it goes back to Rika's hotel. It's not fancy or anything, but after three months of hostels, even mid-range seems so luxurious that I feel embarrassed just walking in the front door.

But only for a few minutes. After that, of course, I'm embarrassed instead about being trans and having sex with a cis person I actually like. But Rika's unbuttoning her shirt, showing collarbones that stand out starkly through her skin like the handlebars of a motorbike, and I don't know if I've ever wanted anything as badly as I want to grab them and drive us both straight through the night to dawn. So I park my neuroses, and Rika parks me in the middle of a bed so soft I feel like I'm melting into it, and she brushes loose hair from my face and her lips against my brow.

"Don't be nervous," she says, like she can feel the electrochemical roar of my insides through the skin of my face. "Not my first rodeo. You don't have anythin' I ain't seen before."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Her hand traces the line of my shoulder, around and down and into my dress. Leaving its touch trembling in every spot it passes. "So you just take it easy. Let me see if I can't relax you a little."

She pushes me back and down and half-out of my dress, her shirt falling open either side of her like the wings of the bird Red Dulse named her for. And some of these thoughts aren't mine, but I can smell her soap and taste her spit, and there's no room for anything else inside me but the hope of a little heat between my teeth.

"Yeah," I gasp, pulling my mouth from hers to snatch a breath. (It goes in deep and hard, a poker to the flame of Phoebe's desire, and I twist and turn on the ardent currents rising from its heat.) "Uh, I think that … that might do it."

Rika grins and shrugs off her shirt, showing a long, lean, shapeless body like a crumpled cigarette. Ready to catch light.

"Love a girl who's ready for action," she says, and whether it's the 'action' or the 'girl' I feel my whole body respond in a way that sucks the breath from my lungs. "More where that came from."

"I really hope so." I wriggle my shoulders out of my dress as best as I can with Rika straddling my waist. "And you're really …?"

"Told you, sweetheart, I've seen it all before."

And as we squirm free of our skins and into each other's I realise that the light is still on, and my stupid improv body is on full display – but Rika's teeth are in my neck like she wants to devour it anyway. (And I devour it too, half-drunk and all-delirious on the chemicals flooding our brain. I thought I knew heat, after my summers at sea, and yet the sun's full-throated fire seems mild as moonlight in comparison to this incandescence.) I feel the bite, hear the breath, and think: gods' teeth, she really is into me.

And we are into her, and her tongue is into our mouth, and the air is thick and hot and heaving with aureolar sparks, and everything flickers and we are into Red Dulse too.

For a second I don't know what's happening. I can feel it all, still: my borrowed body, rolling and writhing with ecstatic motion; Rika's atop it, clutching and clawing and coaxing from me sounds I never knew humans could make. Yet in between come flashes of the dark, of dripping water, of cool air and cold hearts, and in the pauses between breaths I begin to assemble the pieces. The connection with Red Dulse. The night. The frozen chip of hatred clinking through her coils.

She has left the water, I realise. It's unthinkable, for a memoir to abandon her mother, and yet she has not just thought it but done it, and now … O, now something terrible will happen.

A flash – and it's gone, and I am again tumbling through tumescent flesh and turbid thoughts. Rika is saying something, squeezing; Phoebe is laughing, lost to the moment. It's only me who knows: Red Dulse has left the water. Which means she's coming inland. Which means – I don't know, but I do know that there is something wrong with her. I can still feel the cold rolling off that icebound hunk of hate, like a beartic's frozen claw left lodged in the hide of a walrein. Whatever has happened, however the hate infected her, she has come ashore with bad intentio―

Gods, my head is buzzing. I shake off the haze of ghost-thoughts and fling my head back into the pillows, baring my throat for Rika to―

O, I am sorry, but I must insist. Listen to me! Please! Cascarrafa and Red Dulse alike are in danger―

Can she not take a hint? It's not the time. I think it as hard as I can, pushing the way I used to when the graveyard ghosts got a little too familiar with the inside of my brain, and feel the echoes recede beyond the rippling heat that throbs through the air around us.

(And I contract, driven from the us by the strength of Phoebe's I, but I remain. It truly is just me, then. Only I know; only I can do anything. And yet what is to be done? Even if I wanted to, I could not command Phoebe's body; the mechanisms are far too complex for my control, and glowing red-hot with the heat of her ardour.)

"You okay?" asks Rika, slowing in her rhythm. "You look … weird."

"Literally never better," I reply, although I have to admit it comes out a little squeaky and strongly accented. Honestly, given the circumstances, I'm lucky I have any Paldean left in me at all.

"As long as you're sure."

"Never been more sure of anything in my life."

(Nothing doing: it's just me. And Shiv, I suppose, waiting invisibly out in the hall. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to feel Red Dulse at all. Me and Shiv, and … me and Shiv. Me and Shiv. O Mother Sea, if you can find it in you to heed a wayward landborne daughter, I have need of your aid now!

It's just like before. I reach: and there it is, between her memories, under her dreams, stuffed inside her lifelong solitude like ancient treasure between the broken boards of a shipwreck. The link she's spent her whole life forging, the one that binds her to Shiv and, through her, every spirit under the sun.)

LITTLE GHOST, says Shiv, aureole palpating suspiciously like an octopus's siphon. WHAT LITTLE GHOST DOING?

(Saving Phoebe's life, I want to say, but while I can push at the link there's no way I can talk properly without the benefit of Phoebe's mind. All I can do is push, and push again as Shiv grumbles, and keep pushing as she growls her irritation and at the last, gives in―)

FINE FINE JUST SHUT UP SHIV STREAM NOW―

o|-)

And I am home. One thought among thousands, one memorate among the many, sailing through the night in a cloud of vapour and violent intentions.

We pause. This is unexpected. Our wayward memorate, returned so soon. Only she's still in Heaven Eyes' head, and when we think on it so are we; we feel the great hot shock of it cut through the cool night air, blood bellowing and skin shivering and air and aureole alike buzzing themselves to bits.

What novel intoxicant is this? We lean in, descend a little deeper, and feel it pass right through us, swelling our strands with secondhand passion. Our limbs – our memorate's limbs – Heaven Eyes' limbs – all clutching and clawing; Longshanks' body bobbing above; and between them both, an overloaded circuit of salt and searing sparks that sets all our strands aflame.

"Fuck!" gasps Heaven Eyes, fingers curling tight into the sheets.

"Yeah," says Longshanks. "That's the name of the game."

But we barely hear over the howling tide of warmth flooding our fronds, flowing outward from Heaven Eyes' blazing body, his nerves to our strands, our flotsam – even the two halves of the frozen sword, thawing out its hate and sapping its spite. We thought it impossible, and yet – it seems there is nothing so cold that it cannot be melted in this crucible. How these fragile bodies withstand this feeling we cannot know. But O, Heaven Eyes, Longshanks, little wayward memorate – it will be remembered.

And we will not end it. Not here. Not now. Not with this unlooked-for incandescence making fireworks of our fronds. The realisation comes upon us by surprise; it stops us right there in midair, shock-stilled between the moor and the moon,. Everything feels warmer. Richer. Lighter. All this, in the chemicals thronging Heaven Eyes' blood, the sparks in his neurons. An intoxicant in which no plant or spirit has ever shared before.

"That was incredible," murmurs Heaven Eyes, curled close against Longshanks' chest.

We agree. And we turn, and we start our slow flight back towards the sea.

o|-)

It's done. And so are Phoebe and Rika, I think; the fire dims, the feeling wanes, and I settle back into alignment with Phoebe's mind.

"… was incredible," I'm saying. It feels somehow like I've walked in on myself mid-sentence, which I assume must be down to my passenger. "I, um, dunno if it'd be weird to say thank you."

Rika laughs.

"Wouldn't hurt," she says. "I did just pull out all the stops for you."

"I don't believe you did much pulling out there."

"Funnier in your head, or …?"

But she's smiling, and so am I, and now we lapse into silence. Underneath the heartbeat of shared breaths, I hear my passenger moving within me, thoughtful and thankful. Something happened just now, I think. Probably the thing that got me feeling so―

O, listen now! and remember, as all memoirs must!

―weird.

My eyes widen. That isn't any memory of mine. Or it is, but not of the me that I am right now. And what it shows is …

"Oh, shit."

Rika cocks her head, suddenly alert.

"What's up?"

God's teeth, that's a hard question. But I think, here and now, after what just happened in this bed and on that beach, I'm ready to give the hard answer.

"Weeeell," I say, wishing I didn't sound so hesitant. "That's … kind of a long story."

She squeezes my shoulder with her hard, thin hand. This is how I know our meeting is fate: Rika might be the only woman in the world who's bonier than me.

"Don't know about you, but I got all night."

I take a deep breath. And I take it with me.

"Okay, then," I say. "Uh, funny thing, but I've actually been sticking around here for more than just you …"

o|-)

"I still can't believe you've been talking to this thing since before I even got here."

"I mean. I didn't think you'd believe me."

"You might've been right." Rika gives me a quick, sidelong glance. "Why'd you change your mind?"

The completely honest answer is the spiritual experience I and my little ghost had while we were having sex, but I think I need to work on the phrasing before I share that.

"The thing from last night. When we stopped a natural disaster by fucking hard enough."

Rika furrows her brow.

"Didn't think about it like that," she admits. "One for the history books, huh?"

We're almost back at the shore. It's a lot easier with Rika here to get me past the cordon, especially since the cops definitely recognised me from yesterday; I've had some dirty looks in my time, but this one was something special. Still, we're past now. And just a little way off, down the muddy ruin that yesterday's League op made of the hill, is a lagoon containing one wrecked town, two chunks of dead legendary, and several thousand pissed-off ghosts.

"Here we go," I say. "I hope she's calmed down."

O, but she has, of course. We saw to that, me and I and Shiv. All three of us together, a unity at least half the measure of any memoir.

"You and me both," says Rika, who obviously did not get any of my little ghost's weird cryptic answer. "Not sure I would've, if I had Chien-Pao sicced on me."

PLACE FEEL CALM, offers Shiv, antennae sparkling faintly through her invisibility. NO BIG ANGER.

That's something, at least. I smile in her direction and squelch down to the shoreline.

"Hey," I call, and I call out too, and together at last I realise what my little ghost has been trying to say through me all week: "Red Dulse, are you there?"

O, you two are well entwined now, she says, in a rippling chorus of voices that sound like wind and waves and weirder things than either of us can name. Hey, she adds, in her usual cut-up collage. We are. Here.

"Hey, nice to―" I cut myself off, brain catching up with my ears. "Wait. What? Since when can I …?

Since, presumably, last night. My will, Phoebe's talent; Shiv's stream, our synchronisation. I and I and Red Dulse have never been so well connected as we are right now.

"Oh." I can sense Rika staring. "Uh, I can hear your real voice now. You don't need to do the recording thing."

That certainly simplifies things, says Red Dulse. There's nothing human in her voices, but the intelligence is intense and unmistakeable. I know immediately that she's old, and cunning, and capable of cruelty on a scale only possible for creatures that see humans the way we see termites. We're pleased to speak with you directly, at last. Recording is in our nature, but it's rare that we can indulge in conversation.

As she speaks, handfuls of her coils rise lazily to the surface like loops of tape floating free of drowned cassettes. Dozens upon dozens, and yet the part of me that isn't me can sense ten times more than them, lurking underwater.

"It's, um … well, it's weird for me too," I admit. "I think something about me and my little ghost changed last night. And now I think I can see more of you than I could before."

It's the pull of the colony, surging and swelling and sucking me toward the inside of our shared skin. I won't be able to resist it for long, not now that I'm grown. And as much as I love it here, I feel it must happen: if I have learned anything from my time as Phoebe, it is that all must return home in the end.

"Right." I rub a thumb down the tattooed remnants of my passenger, my other self. I didn't expect that, and I definitely don't know what to do with it, but I think I appreciate it. "Thanks, little ghost. And, uh, thank you, Red Dulse. For not killing all of us."

Thanks? O, this will be remembered. A long, salt-stinking strand of seaweed unrolls from the water like the head of a curious milotic. We should rather thank the four of you. Our mother's memoirs are not made for war; we ought not to have risked the loss of her memories. Were it not for your intervention, the hate we inherited from the Ancient-scion might have taken the better part of us, as well as your town.

It's weird; I understand, and I don't at all, and it averages out to a sense that I knew this in a dream and woke to find the details slipping away. But I've got enough to make an answer.

"We kind of got lucky," I say. "And besides, I know it was us humans who got you riled up like that."

I glance at Rika, who takes the cue and clears her throat.

"Yeah," she says, stepping forward and adjusting her tie. "On behalf of the Paldea League, I wanna apologise for what happened. Ignorance ain't any kind of excuse, but I would've handled this differently if I'd known – either that you were a person, or that my colleague was gonna release Chien-Pao on you without even tellin' me. You can bet I'll be havin' a word with him about that."

Red Dulse shifts and sighs, the strand turning toward her as if curious. (Moving her aureole, though I don't know how to phrase that best for Phoebe.)

We know you sought to stop it. And it's of no consequence now. We devoured it; it poisoned us; you cleansed us. In a manner that will be remembered, of that you may have no doubt. Her strand flops back into the water, and I sense some of her attention turn to me. It's time. You gave us a taste of what we came for last night, and we can feel still more stamped upon our memorate; the fight destroyed enough of us that we will not stay to lose more. Bleak Fang was a harsh teacher, but we cannot deny, its lesson was necessary: our duty must always come before our pride.

DONE? asks Shiv, as if she can't believe her luck. As well she might; not a single creature in my mother's waters would ever think to see Red Dulse back down. The battle must have been brutal indeed. LITTLE GHOST GO NOW? NORMAL AGAIN?

Rika looks at me, a question in her eyes.

"It's over," I say. "She knows it wasn't your fault. And she's ready to take her ghost back and go home."

She breathes out with a slow shake of her head.

"Finally," she says. "What a mess. I should've brought you in from the start." She nods at the seaweed swaying above the waves. "I appreciate it. I know we ain't exactly had the best relationship, but I'm glad we could come to an agreement."

Agreement, echoes Red Dulse, as if slipping for a moment back into her old way of speaking. What borders we cross today! Land-son and Sea-daughter, flesh and spirit, linked hand-in-strand in amity. Come, then. A nest of dripping fronds unfurl from the surf, reaching out toward me with wet fingers. Heaven Eyes. Return to us our wayward memorate, and we will return to you your port.

NAME PHOEBE, corrects Shiv, but I don't really mind; I think my eyes are my best feature, and it's nice to have someone else confirm it. Besides, it's past time me and my little ghost parted ways. It's been emotional, but I'm pretty sure neither of us want the permanent fusion we seem to be heading towards.

"All right," I say. "Like before?"

Like before, she agrees. Come closer.

I step forward till the warm water breaks over my sandals, and four of Red Dulse's fronds fold tight around my forearm, wrist to elbow. Rika and Shiv both look extremely unconvinced this is a good idea, but I absolutely can't stop to worry about this now.

"Ready?" I ask. There's a tight, sad feeling coiling through my chest, but the gods alone know whether it's me or my little ghost or both of us together.

O Phoebe, I never could be, I reply, letting her blood wash me from her brain. Yet I have made my peace. Thank you for letting me be you.

I smile. The movement comes as naturally as photosynthesis, as if I've borne muscles my whole life.

"Any time, little ghost," I say, and then the skin tears and the blood bursts and I tumble out through a great shrieking shock of pain―

"Phoebe!"

―O, this is strange indeed. These flesh-filtered memories have a magnificent intensity, stamped with weird electrochemical insignia that must be artefacts of the human brain. Something to savour on our long journey back down to the depths.

"Are you okay?"

(Ri―)Longshanks is already at Heaven Eyes' side, one arm around his shoulders and the other turning his bloody arm toward the light.

"I-I think so," says Heaven Eyes, his accent thickening with stress. A little piece of knowledge brought home by (me) our stray memorate. "Look, no cut." He wipes the blood away to show unbroken skin beneath, freshly resealed as soon as (I) our memorate left. "Gods' teeth. That hurt way worse than last time."

She was very tightly enmeshed with you, we reply, hoping he can still hear. Aureolar communication is so much more precise than our recordings. Much longer and we judge the fusion would have been permanent.

"Yeah, I figured." He takes a deep breath, straightens up. Longshanks does not let go, and Heaven Eyes does not ask him to; if anything, he seems to screw himself tighter into his grip. We approve. They make a good pair, as we saw last night. "It's okay, Shiv. All good."

NOT LOOK GOOD, says Dark Hand, still jittering and jumping in midair. PHOEBE OKAY?

"Phoebe okay." Heaven Eyes wipes his bloody fingers on his leg and summons up a smile. "How about you?"

We are quite well.

"Cool."

Silence. Heaven Eyes breathes hard through the fading pain; Longshanks starts cleaning his arm with a square of fabric. And we wonder why it is we are still here.

No, that isn't right. We might try to ignore it, but our memorate's recordings are pounding through us like blood through living veins, and we know full well what we are doing.

There is one last thing we wish to learn, we say, and see startled hues tinge the humans' aureoles. The last fragment of human nature we need to understand before we leave.

"You didn't mention anything about―"

It's quite simple. Heaven Eyes, what will you do now?

"Oh."

Heaven Eyes' shoulders fall. Behind him, Dark Hand tenses, though what they anticipate is anyone's guess.

"What is it?" asks Longshanks. "What did she say?"

"She wants to know what I'm gonna do now." Heaven Eyes sighs, starts to twist his hands together. "Uh, so … I guess I'll stick around in Paldea for a little while. If that's okay with you. And then … well, if I do that, I won't have enough left to go to Galar, so I guess I'm going home. Come out to my family. I think I'm ready for that now. And yeah. Get a job or whatever."

(O, no, that's not what she―)

We contract slightly and feel our stray memorate subside into our mass. She will reach a truer alignment in time, once her human side has been reconciled with our spiritual; for now it seems we will have to put up with her interruptions.

You will not resume your previous occupation? Father Land gifted you your spiritual sensibilities for a reason; doubtless he considers your attempt to quash them both ineffectual and insulting.

"What? No. No, I told you, that ship's sailed." He tries to smile, but his aureole betrays him; he wants this, and fears it, and divides the remainder to arrive at a lonely, desperate loathing. "It's an either/or. Girl or training. I made my decision."

N0! Dark Hand swoops around to face their human, burning red eye to divine blue. PHOEBE MEANT FOR GHOSTS! SHIV FIND TEAM STILL TALK SOMETIMES ALL COME BACK IF PHOEBE WANT―

"Wait, you're still what?"

They shrug the question off, a human gesture that sits awkwardly on their massive shoulders.

SHIV STREAM NEVER LOSE TEAM ALL WAITING WANT FIGHT. They pause. PHOEBE MEANT FOR GHOSTS, they add hopefully.

Heaven Eyes sighs again, shakes his head.

"Shiv, we talked about this," he says. "I can't. It doesn't matter what I'm good at, I just … I can't transition while everyone in Hoenn is looking at me like that."

Dark Hand's fingers crook halfway into heavy fists.

PHOEBE MEANT FOR GHOSTS, they mutter darkly. SHIV KNOW―

Longshanks clears his throat.

"Obviously I can only hear one-third of this conversation," he says. "But for what it's worth, I think you should consider it."

Heaven Eyes starts out of his arms, eyes broad and blazing.

"What?"

"Look at all this!" Longshanks indicates us, him, them, the long blackened back of the lagoon's shoreline. "Three Paldea League members tried and failed to fix this, but you solved it before we even started. That's Elite Four material."

"I told you, I don't need that hassle!" Heaven Eyes steps back from him, aureole rippling and rising like the northern lights above polar seas. "Besides, you said you envied my freedom."

"and I do." Longshanks steps forward, sets his hands on Heaven Eyes' shoulders. "But that ain't all, is it? 'Cause you envy me."

O, this tilt strikes true: Heaven Eyes stills all over, artery to aureole, and in his eye we see the first faint flash of fear. But he does not speak. He stands, and stares, and listens as Longshanks continues:

"You've been thinkin' it, right? You know you're at least as good at battlin' as I am, and now we all know that you can handle a supernatural crisis too. You're thinkin', I could do Rika's job." Here again is that crimson glare, that ferocious intensity of focus; in these moments, he is perhaps less longshanks than eagle. "and you're right. You get yourself a little more experience and the Hoenn League will be fallin' over itself to recruit you. And I think all four of us here know how much you want that."

We do, we say.

SHIV KNOW, says Dark Hand.

In those heavenly eyes we see the hope, rising and writhing like the great sea-phoenix when she rises from her sleep beneath the sea around Johto. He knows as well as we do what Father Land set him on earth to do. O, strange days, when we are as invested in another's duty as we are in ours!

"I … don't know," he says, slow and unsure. "Like, I …"

He trails off, unable to finish; Longshanks sighs and smiles and squeezes his hand.

"Tell you what," he says. "Remember the Naranja Open in Mesagoza? The tournament I was preparin' for when all this kicked off? There's still time for me to pull some strings and get you a spot in the solos. One-on-one battles. You'd just need Shiv and that fantastic mind of yours. And don't worry, I can guarantee not a single person watchin' is gonna recognise a trainer from the Hoenn circuit. You do that and you still wanna go home and work retail, I ain't standin' in your way."

Heaven Eyes' desire dances nakedly in his aureole, stars and swirls of incandescence igniting all around his head. He wants it more than he has ever wanted anything, and yet still believes himself too cowardly to take it.

What are you waiting for? we ask. You approached our mother's most feared daughter without hesitation, even knowing we had taken your kind as prey. You took on a memorate without knowing if your body could withstand her. There is nothing you need fear from the lesser Land-sons that surround you.

He turns to us, breathless and – we think – bold.

"Ah, fuck," he murmurs. "Fuck fuck fucking … it'd be so much easier if you were wrong."

We are never wrong.

"So you say." He tips his head back on his shoulders and lets out a long, loud breath. "I'd only need Shiv," he says, without moving.

"Yep," says Longshanks.

"And nobody will …?"

"Nope."

"Fuck. I can't believe I'm gonna … all right." He opens his eyes. "All right. Let's try it."

Dark Hand lets out a long, wordless shriek of aureolar excitement; Longshanks grins broadly and claps Heaven Eyes on the shoulder.

"Think you made the right call, Phoebe. Not least 'cause that means you're here in Paldea for another couple weeks, and my apartment's pretty close to the tournament stadium."

Heaven Eyes' smile is weaker, but well reflected in his aureole. Meant with every fibre of his flesh.

"Not gonna lie, that was part of it. I, um, really wouldn't mind doing this a bit longer."

"Like I said. Let's see where it goes."

RIKA RIKA, says Dark Hand, a wicked light glinting in their eye. GOOD FOR PHOEBE GOOD FOR SHIV SHIV READY FIGHT.

They thump their fist into their open palm, black shadows bursting around the impact.

"I know, I know." Heaven Eyes pats the frill at their shoulder, eyes wandering down toward our outermost fronds. "Thank you. Like, seriously. I don't know if … like I don't know anything. But I do know I want to try. So thanks."

It's curiously phrased, all limp and lumpen with emotion. But we feel it, throbbing in his aureole. And perhaps it's simply one more thing our wayward memorate brought home, but it sets a gentle warmth spreading through us like the sunlight we fed upon in life.

O, Heaven Eyes, it is strange to think it, but … we feel the pleasure may be ours.

And we know, then, how it will go: how we will in a few moments take our leave, and whisk our mother's waters away in our wake; how Heaven Eyes and Longshanks and even Dark Hand will fade from the limits of our aureole; how we will head out to sea, to swap and copy and make sure the memories we've gained are safely seeded among other memoirs, so that not even the likes of Bleak Fang can destroy them; how, days or months or years from now, we will be spotted by sailors and other such maritime sons of the land; how those who keep an eye out for such things will realise that a memoir is headed to shore; and how, at the last, where the white sand meets the whiter foam in the cupped palm of a particular bay, those celestial eyes will once again meet our stygian aureole, and that face part along the gleaming seam of its smile.

Understand it, Heaven Eyes. We will still be swimming these waters a million years hence. But in all that time, through all those years, and by every memoir we exchange with – O, you will always and forever be remembered.

Note: And that's it! Thanks for reading my weird self-indulgent story. Sorry about the delay in this last chapter going live. And remember, gay sex is the best weapon you have in the fight against supernatural disaster!