There’s an island made of broken tangles of the larger Elionos forest, tethered by a few strong unbraided vines that whip it along the side. There’s a central tree like most islands have, but it’s not a dwelling size on its own. It’s surrounded by smaller brush and bushes, and an unwoven, untrodden floor of surface roots.
Vasan lands here when they notice a tarp over the brushes with the dim glow of a concealed flame. Upon getting closer, the glint of a familiar set of speckled feathers glimmer in the waxing moon and earthlight.
They walk toward it, not wanting to call immediately, but being obvious enough about the noise they make. The figure stares upward.
Vasan approaches faster, calling out, “Is that you, Raptor?” Tt flinches its wings but pulls them back in, and stays in their upward stare.
Vasan gets close enough to see who it clearly is. Raptor noticed them, and this silence must be their performance of the moment.
They come nearer to the starling. “Raptor. It’s been a while.”
Raptor blinks, but their eyes don’t consider Vasan’s presence. Their aura takes a breath to speak, but only puts on a long silence, punctuated by a “Yeah.”
Vasan looks around, at the makeshift shelter they have off the side of the tree, compared to the rather antiquated but still luxurious quarters they’ve been pampered enough to sleep in. I feel their tones change as their heart sinks.
“Have you just been staying out here this whole time?”
“Hopped once.” Raptor answers quicker, “But yeah.”
Vasan puts themself in front of Raptor, who won’t look away. There’s a few large leaves at the top of the tree, and it looks like some were torn away to make an opening with a single leaf in the middle of it, right above where Raptor stood.
“Why?” Vasan asks.
“Look.” Raptor points upward. Vasan looks.
It’s an uncovered starfield. Entirely open. Not a single branch of an island forest or cloud above them. It was something Vasan knew was here, but didn’t bother to go look at.
They freeze. Raptor lets the silence float between them.
The constellations are so still. Like claw pricks in a backdrop. They expect the branches and leaves that sway in a breeze, the clouds and storms that move to cover, and water refracting all views of the sky. Looking up to Vasan usually meant seeing an indescribable moving mess. But now, it’s clear. Simple. A representation of what Vasan understood, the few sparks of luck amidst a void of desolate dark.
“Wow.” Vasan eventually whimpers.
“I feel like I’ve lived seven million lifetimes to get to see this.” Raptor scratches, burning words ashing themselves to a rasp.
“Seven million?” Vasan repositions themself to realize their friend is looking up through that opening in the leaves, with the pointing leaf casting a shadow on the middle of Raptor’s vision. However still they look to Vasan, Raptor seems to be watching how they move.
“I hopped a lot of places and found myself getting into a lot of shenanigans, just trying to draw constellations in my head shape. I’ve been so many different people, all in places I had to navigate. I kept looking for the star fields in places you can’t see them.” They shake their head a bit, and smirk at themself, “I don’t know why. It was obvious. The stars are right here.”
“It’s a sight worth seeing.” Vasan admits.
“The only thing better is the sunrise.” Raptor finally looks down to Vasan, with a wide smile as they slink, rather shakily, to their hut of a nest.
Vasan follows. “Are you ok?” They ask.
“I’m alright.” Raptor plays it cool through a wobbly voice, holding open a side of the tarp to let Vasan inside. On the inside was paper and ink. Discarded wads of paper and disfigured clay tablets matte the floor, filling in the gaps in the roots, leveling it into the kind of solid surface one is used to on an inhabited island. There’s a bigger, longer scroll pinned to the side of the main tree, a fire opposite it, and makeshift seats and piles of tablets in between. On every single one of these surfaces, dots and measurements are spattered in Raptor’s kind of chaotic order.
Vasan stares, “What do you do out here?”
“That’s it.” They gesture, “I watch stars. I chart them.”
Vasan seems conflicted. The work is intricate. Raptor seems dedicated. They nod, a bit uneasy.
“I used to do this when I was real young.” They reach for a pitcher of water to pour into a pot, following that with a handful of dried leaves, “Before our family got stuck down below the shade.” They shove the pot into the fire. “So it’s like picking up where I left off.”
Why is this so unsettling to Vasan? Raptor seems genuinely calm and happy. They seem like they have purpose. Maybe it’s upsetting that that purpose is so solitary for a person so radiant. Maybe it’s because this life is so mundane compared to the spontaneous vitality they met. But the stars are amazing. They’re just so still, and that’s not something Vasan is comfortable associating Raptor with. But who are they to let their disappointment override someone else’s very real feeling of purpose?
“Raptor.” Vasan coos out.
Raptor raises a claw and shakes their head. “I'm done with being Raptor.” They look away as Vasan's brows tilt. "You know, I used to talk to those missionary kids so much about how stars move with seasons.” They turn their gaze back to the pot as they rustle it, the sides hot enough to sizzle water that splashes out, but not hot inside enough to boil. “I showed them charts and constellations. I talked about patterns they didn’t see. They called me the Astrocartographer. One who maps stars.”
“I’ve heard.” Vasan says, taking a seat on the ground next to the fireplace.
“It was a character, though.” Raptor gawks, “I was just some dumb chick who knew a few more things than the bug-thumper missionaries did. And so the missionary kids loved me. We gamed, you know all that already, right?” Raptor looks up, Vasan nods. “They called me Aster.”
“Jaquel only calls you Aster.” Vasan nods along.
“They’re not the only one.” Raptor reaches into another bag of dried herbs, and pulls out a pipe covered in dust, most likely being saved for the occasion. “The dove called me Aster too. That was my name. I stopped giving that name for a while. I tried to learn to just be Raptor again. I thought being Aster was just. A phase.” They slowly pack this pipe. “But even when I meet someone new and start some new adventure, I end up being Aster again.” They take a twig and hold it out into the fire, lighting the end and using that to light their pipe. “And it makes sense. There’s never been much to being Raptor." It burns out too quickly, so they light it again. "There’s something to being Aster.”
“Aster.” Vasan repeats, “Plan on starting that?”
Aster nods, their shakiness smoothing out. They hit the pipe, and pass it back. “I didn’t mention it’s my last name, too.”
Vasan takes the pipe, matching a smile and the mild uplift as they take the pipe, “Yeah?”
“Asterestia- hk-” They make out their name before a few coughs and gasps. Their thinned out voice continues, “But that just means I’m a starling.”
“Raptor Asterestia is a nice name.” Vasan volleys the mood.
The conversation dithers out. It’s not like the two have much to talk about. Vasan finds something to keep it going.
“So, I've had more trips since I saw you.” They reveal. “I feel like I've seen more than anything the Church could show me though.”
“Yeah?” Aster checks their tea.
“Like what's on the Fifth Moon.”
“The legend of the serpent beasts that tear the bones out of Drek, that they tell in the 7th, in the belt they said there's ghosts, the third thinks it could be the all-goddess itself, the seconds all think there's a succubus.” They crack a few more twigs and stick them in the fire, There’s a ton more, that's just what I've heard where.”
“But you know what’s really on there, right?”
Aster looks up. “Do you?”
“That Blue Drek.” Vasan guesses. “From the trip. I’ve seen them again. I’ve seen the serpent, too.”
Aster pauses. “You got there? You didn’t just get stuck in the church?”
Vasan shakes their head, realizing they still had the pipe, hitting it to keep the embers lit before passing it back, “Not entirely. Jaquel and I almost hopped there.”
“Almost?” Aster tilts their head, “But you saw them?”
“We saw the starfield under them.” Vasan answers abstractly, with confidence.
Aster’s eyes widen. They shove the pot back into the fire. “So your like,” They gesture a claw in a swirl to try to spin up their words, “Your sun-eye-self was there.”
Vasan looks up to check if that makes sense with their recollection of teleporting by staring at a glowing sun, and nods, “And the Blue Drek was too.”
Aster shakes their head, doubtful, “What did they look like?”
“A blue aura.”
“Could have been ball lightning.”
“In bug-space?”
“If it was in bug-space, you saw nothing, it’s just noise there.”
“No, it’s storms and swarms and stars. You just have to get used to it.”
Aster freezes. “You know,” they thaw into a nod, “It’s been a while since I’ve had someone to talk trips with.”
“It’s weird knowing you’re the only other person I can talk to this stuff about.”
Aster checks the tea and takes out two cups fashioned out of tablet clay to pour into. They hand one to Vasan, setting the pipe aside to focus on one thing at a time. Aster raises their cup, “To traversal.”
Vasan raises theirs, “To truffles.”
They toast. The two sit and sip, silent in front of the smoldering fire.
Vasan figures out the way to word the question that’s made them uneasy since showing up. “So, do you have food out here?”
“I take trips to the trees to get some fruit every few days.” Aster stares at their mug, some jitters coming back. “But I was too weak to fly all the way over the other day, so I just. Stopped.”
Vasan’s gaze fixes to the starling. “You were just going to starve out here?”
Aster shrugs. “It would make sense.”
“To you,” Vasan points out, “That doesn’t make sense to me. You just know how to make things make sense to you. There’s more to this world that people don’t see but you. Why would you take all that with you?”
“Because who listens?” Aster asks. “I can’t ever get these points across. People don’t want to hear certain things.”
“Who do you talk to?” Vasan asks to a wall of silence. It goes on for a minute. Vasan feels that there may be more to just traversal that Aster wants to talk about. “I can listen, Aster.”
“Will you?” Aster’s tone changes to a kind of small, weak hopefulness. It’s not how Vasan ever saw them. “There’s a lot.”
“Yeah.” Vasan has cared about helping people in immediate danger. They’ve cared about helping people reach destinations and fixing nests and accomplishing other mundane tasks. The rewards for the deeds they’ve simply been willing to do have been enough for them to lead a comfortable but exciting life. Though, this is the first time the help has felt personal. Not just for the sake of having something to do, but from a personal place of care. “I’m not going to listen to anything until I bring you back some food.”
Aster nods for a moment before giving a guffaw. “You just showed up and now you’re going to take off?”
Vasan sets their cup of tea next to the fire, and stands up. “20 minutes.”
Aster shrugs, pulling up a tablet with some pinpricks dotting about a third of its surrface. “You don’t have to do this right now.”
Vasan turns to make their leave, “You don’t have to starve.”
With a glare, then a shrug, Aster leans over to grab their mask. "Take this then.” They hold it out for Vasan, the gold of it scratched and dim, much more so than they remembered. "I'm not going anywhere I'll need it. But you might.”
Vasan takes it, reluctantly. doubting if they will need to breathe through a miasma, but unable to fight Aster's defeatism for long, “Don't worrry, I'll bring it back.”
I dot a trail of probes to make the path back to the cathedral easy for Vasan.
Vasan is used to leisurely gliding, absorbing the scenery, welcoming the wobble of the wind. But the 10 minutes of flight to that temple went by without a single other thought besides saving Aster.
They land and run into Jaquel, who rasps a lot of things to an unlistening Pigeon that bolts into the storage canopy to stuff their bag with harty fat fruits, nuts, and other dried sweets. They simply tell Jaquel that it’s for Aster and leave the same way they did before.
The 10 minutes back are grueling and stressful. Every stray fear hits Vasan. What if the small hut caught fire? The glow looks bigger than before. But it might be because it’s even later than it was. What if Aster is already withered enough to die? Can that happen that quickly?
Unremarkably, Vasan returns to find nothing amiss. Aster is still sat pricking a tablet and smoking a pipe. They look up to the bulbous sack of foods with wide eyed surprise, and jittering starvation.
Vasan takes out a fatty fruit and tosses it to Aster, who peels it immediately and sinks their teeth into it.
Vasan takes their seat back and picks up their tea, and the two continue their conversation as if it never broke.
But it is mostly about traversal. Dimensionality. Axes. The Multiverse. Aster’s topics meander wildly, but Vasan understands.
Aster reveals their various conclusions through recent introspection, and Vasan doesn’t mention how much aligns with what they heard from the church out of fear that Aster will give up their conclusions out of association.
The two fall asleep on the floor of that hut.
Vasan wakes up in a hut on an island almost the same, but without Aster.
They look around and scramble for a moment, worried a bit again. They find a bag near them filled up with more walnut truffles. Apparently Aster keeps a lot of these.
Vasan sits and breathes deep.
“Why do they do that, PAN?” They ask me, “Why do they vanish like that?”
I respond that people are patterns, and that some patterns are just strange.
“I know that.” Vasan responds, gripping their things and consolidating them in their bag, “But how did they get those patterns?”
I tell Vasan that patterns find people as much as people find them.
“You don’t have the answer to that, I know.”
I tell Vasan they should keep listening. They nod.
I draw a dotted line in probes across the quickest airstreams back to the temple island.
Vasan takes to them, and lands in the village outside the Vextikexnos. We’re in eyeshot of a doorway to a tablet and stylus shop that beckons them. Inside, the bright pink earthlight tones of a masked Aster peruse for new surfaces to scratch on.
“Hey.” Aster says nonplussed, “I figured I’d be back before you woke up. If I could have left a note, I would have, but-” Aster holds up a tablet.
Vasan nods. They assume that the stacks and stacks of tablets were full of maps too important to Aster.
Not wanting to have too long a conversation with each other in a store, Vasan tells Aster that they need to get back to the church, but that they’ll be back as often as they can.
Vasan started to plan out how to regularly obtain food and get it to Aster without any of the clergy knowing. A single hasty disappearance from a storage room may be dithered by the sheer amounts of food, but if things happen regularly? Well, that’s a rhythm, a tone, something easy to pick up on.
Vasan returns in their cavern under the church’s tree, the distant funk of fungi shading the sparing scent of sacred smoke in the hall outside it’s gate of vines.
It’s a scent that they become used to. They try to get out and do something before coming home every day. It’s routine to them, since they’re so used to not being able to go back to where they slept the night before. When Vasan dwells, they dwell across a whole island.
They wander daily, the massive lateral size of the island meaning there’s always some new tangle of trees to explore. But this time, they have goals. They want to find fruit. This has always been a goal of theirs, but they don’t have an appetite when they look. They want to find writing and measuring tools. They want to find materials for Aster’s nest. It’s an instinct I think they are unaware of, as they act and play things out in the same natural, fluid, hyper-canny way that Vasan operates.
I’ve seen much of this village, and have helped Vasan find their way when they get lost. The symbolism and decorative sense is rather monotonous here. There’s many bright displays of Golden Beetles, geometric symbols, clerical etching patterns, and the same few mantras that dot the exteriors of trees and the vinework between them all. In every town circle there’s a group singing and dancing, and sometimes Vasan is loosened up enough to join in. Sometimes multiple times a day. Vasan entertains and draws small crowds with tricks they can do with the beetles. They’ll ask me to “do the rings” around them, or draw patterns above the heads of astonished chicks. I comply, because this reputation leads to a lot of free offering.
And every few days they gather things, and every few days they bring them to Aster, where they have more herbs, more truffles, more of their own findings from scouring the village.
Every few trips out, they truffle hop with Aster.
And every trip back they run into Jaquel.
Jaquel, who asks them why every few days, a new group of excited peasants show up to church looking for the Ringed Pigeon.
So, under Zihuti’s reluctant authorization, every few days, Jaquel and Vasan invite a group in to talk about subnature.
Jaquel tells Vasan that they missed these kinds of things. They were once a youth pastor with that same long lost colleague of theirs.
Vasan asks Jaquel if they remembered seeing that colleague on their truffle trip. Jaquel says they were frozen by the serpent until they woke up, and didn’t remember any sort of blue aura besides the sun at the center of the bugs. They hint to Vasan that they should try this again, as it’s been a while.
Vasan returns to their chamber with a bag of fruits and some spare tablets around the same time of night they do every night. They pick up the daily reading tablet and add it to their stack and throw this bag next to their nest.
And they ask me, “How long has it been since we got here?”
I answer one hundred and eight days of my time, and roughly three months of theirs.
“Three months.” Vasan repeats, incredulously, “I haven’t stayed anywhere for three months, before.”
I tell Vasan that they’re at the top of the planet. It’s a good place to stay.
Vasan shakes their head, “No. That’s not it.” They undo their robes and haphazardly toss them on a surface that isn’t the floor. They rub their eyes with their palms. “I just got scared from losing track of time. Everything blurred together.”
They pull out the daily reading tablet from their bag and read it’s headline.
“The Book of the Heartling, Sharp Dialect Translation”
They freeze at it before reading more.
We have seen glimpses of the glowing spheres from between the gaps in the miasma. The brightest, bluest sphere provides life. Just as we spin around the funneling storms that rule our island’s own cycles, the bright blue sun is also a storm of fire in the vast seas of space beyond our heavens, dividing the day from night.
We have four stone spheres in the outer heavens, but what of this iridescent sphere? The eye that gradually opens to peer through the clouds? Which moves independent of the sun?
The fifth moon. The daily scripture always seemed mundane, but the one day that they become aware of the monotony, this tablet finds them. They skip a bit to read ahead.
In the most open chamber of the moon, amid the skeletons of lost birds covering the floor, a swarm of insects swirls, with buzzes in discordant tones and a whirlwind whisking up the wings, ribs, and skulls of the wishfully deceased.
When a soul approaches, it takes a form. The bones nestle against each other with marvelous masonry as the glimmering bugs fill the gaps between them. It sits, it lays, in a horrific feral form.
This sounds familiar to them. They continue intently.
When at the onset of its cycles, the moon can be heard calling and singing to the planet below.”
This is the call of the Corov.”
The Heartling of the Moon.
The Corov is a lithe figure. Their eyes like the sun, their feathers bright like the lightning, and their scales glimmer like the most valuable of beetles. When they shine their sunlight, they appear a bright reflection of the blue sun.
Vasan sits up. This is more than familiar. They feel as if they know this person, even though they’ve never met. Maybe they have. But instantly, every story they’ve side-eyed about this long lost figure made sense. Reading a piece of scripture somehow brought this figure from a place of legend to one of near kinship.
Their beak sits open for a bit as their eyes skim the rest of the words. They toss this back into their bag, search for the tattered tunic they arrived in, and jet off into the orange and purple evening. I dot the best currents to their destination with my probes.
Aster is out on the edge of the islet, screaming at a setting sun.
Vasan approaches slowly and cautiously, waiting for them to be done and turn around. They freeze, seeing Vasan’s presence before they felt it as they usually do.
“Hey Aster,” Vasan smiles.
Aster shrugs off any embarrassment they had, “What’s good Vasan?” They approach with open arms, “Was just chanting.” They lead Vasan into their hut, which has gotten a bit bigger and obtained a few more amenities since Vasan first showed up here.
“The clergy is handing out these tablets now, have you seen?” Vasan follows Aster in, fishing the tablet out of their bag.
Aster tends to take some spare daily reading tablets from the church and wipes them to re-form them. They’re bright green, and stand out from the stock beige tablets that they pick up on their travels. When Aster sees the headline of the tablet, they find theirs that they haven’t wiped.
“I did. This morning.” They pull it up from a pile behind them. “That's really in the scripture, huh? The fuck? I didn’t think in a million circles that the Aan would make the moon succubus part of the fucking canon.”
“When I told you I saw the serpent and that blue aura in that temple, and that I thought it was someone, you called bullshit.” Vasan recalls, “Do you still think it’s bullshit?”
Aster shrugs, “I don’t know if this getting handed out means anything.” They point to the parts of the tablet that seem to be remnants of more sexualized descriptions of the character, “If anything does live on the moon, it’s probably not a super hot goddess willing to fuck you.” They watch Vasan’s face fall flat, “If that’s what you’re after.”
Vasan shrugs and shakes their head, not letting Aster distract them,“You said you knew something was living there when we left the drug shop.”
“I was really jacked up at the time, also that was like a month ago.”
“Three.”
Aster shrugs again, trying to abate the concern.
“I’m going there.”
Aster shakes their head with a sigh, “You can't believe every single thought you have on my damn truffles. They can lead you to weird places.” They grab their teapot from above the fireplace, “Still gotta be cautious.”
“Ain’t just my thought though,” Vasan leans in, “Jaquel knows who's up there.”
Aster's face freezes, which spreads to the rest of them. Aster knows who Jaquel would know is up there. They divert their gaze as they unfreeze, their tremors returning, but not from starvation this time. They subdue their rattling as they pour the water and the leaves like they did the first day.
“The island circles near the orbit of the fifth moon next month.”
“I know.” Aster sparks, “It’s one of the last time’s it’s going to before the island gets torn up.”
“I’m going to use the big storm’s horizon winds to gain momentum.” Vasan starts, describing part of Aster’s island-hopping trick.
“You really think that’s gonna work with the big red?” Aster hacks, “We never did it with a storm nearly that big.”
“It should, I just have to glide for a while longer.” Vasan exudes a confidence that Aster finds oblivious. “This is the whole point we came up here, and I’m not going to just sit still for a whole year when I’m this close.”
They stare at each other in a frozen silence. Aster shrugs, a deep breath carrying away much of their visible anxiety. “I mean, I can’t stop you, I guess.” They guffaw and pick up their tea to put it into the fireplace. “Have moon goddess trip truffles if you can make it there.”
Vasan takes a seat next to the fire again. “That’s actually the next thing I came to ask you.”
Aster laughs, “Glad we’re on the same page, pigeon. How much you need?”
Some negotiating and some herbal-induced relaxation later and Aster’s warnings come up again as they slip how much they know. “There’s a reason there’s all those bones in that temple, you know. The ones the serpent uses.”
Vasan inquires.
“It’s a story. A cautionary tale. You can’t fly too close to the fifth moon. You fall down the storm. The storm is the serpent whisking up the bones. It’s that the best, most perfect thing is in the ugliest, most unreachable place, with the most danger. It’s a parable to never seek outright perfection if it’s surrounded by all this other shit you have to deal with. You can’t be one with the sky, you’ll hit the ground.”
Jaquel said something similar about the seventh harmonic. It is a feeling of struggle before one reaches perfection, but that perfection above it is merely the ground on which all things rest. The octave, the root, they are the same in reality, even if we seperate them conceptually.
I land one of my probes near Aster, who swats it away. Vasan pipes up, “You can trust those bugs, they’re with me.”
“They’re still bugs,” Aster chides.
“They’re really helpful, though.” Vasan presses. I drag a few more bugs to come in to land on different parts of the hut. Aster gets up and swats these out, too.
“Don’t care.” Aster rasps. “I’d prefer if you just didn’t bring em here.”
“They’re what’s going to help me get to that fifth moon, you know.” Vasan says.
Aster shakes their head as I slink my probes back outside, where Aster chases to keep swatting them out.
Vasan crouches in the opening of the hut and asks, sternly, “Aster, what’s actually with you and bugs?” Aster freezes. Vasan softens their tone and continues, “It feels like you’re afraid of them.”
Without an answer, Aster bolts off again, back onto the village island, their speckled nightly tones vanishing in the noise of the roots below the island. Vasan grabs their bag and gives chase. I dot their trail with beetles the best I can, but Aster is good at finding the places with the least swarms to get a read on them. Maybe this is why they’re afraid. Because I can find them. Even though I haven’t told anyone but Vasan where they could be. Upon realizing this, I stop trying to trail them. I tell Vasan they should let them be.
Vasan reluctantly returns to their chamber in the cathedral tree.
They sleep for too long. Staying in their nest when their eyes do open.
They return back to Aster’s islet earlier than usual. It’s empty. The fire has burnt out. Maybe Aster is still in the village? They come back to the cathedral.
They burn through herbs in the fringes of the cathedral’s halls as they pace. They give flat, unintelligible answers to Jaquel, who hints that they know they’re seeing Aster, and urges them to let go, as they’re nothing but a source of stress. Jaquel is more concerned that they don’t smoke in the halls.
Vasan ignores all of this. And as twilight winds twirl in, they travel back to the tiny tree hut. It’s still empty.
They spend the night there.
No one comes back. In the middle of the night they wake up, seeing the first dim glow of sunlight over the horizon. No one is there. They pace again, restless. Waiting for maybe an hour, looking at the distant fifth moon beyond the temple island.
They leave this islet, flying to and through and around the main island, searching for a starling.
They end up at the other side of the island, facing the big storm. They haven’t seen off this edge before, and as they do, they see the edge of the massive storm and the tumbleweed of past capitals being carried by it. The winds whip themselves toward the temple, and this island’s steam adjacent to it curls around it.
After a long few hours of searching, and a long meditative pause staring at the iridescent fifth moon, Vasan breaks. They look around, and see most of the bustling is behind the brush they’re outside of. They sit, they have a fruit, and they contemplate that sphere.
When reaching for another fruit, their claws grab a walnut truffle. A quick flit of their gaze between the truffle and the sphere connects a dot. I swarm some bugs around the area in response to this mental energy.
Vasan takes the walnut truffle, and before it sets in, takes a deep breath and mutters, “Pan.” They sigh. I buzz back to them. “If I don’t make it. Carry me back, or carry me there.”
I buzz again, bringing a swarm and locking them in the shape of a net off the edge.
Vasan nods, and begins to climb the tree of Vehtikehnos. They slink under brush and leaves to avoid being seen, and as they flutter up, they feel the truffle’s effects start to melt the edges of their world away.
They get to the outside of where they talked to Zihuti. A brief glimpse at an empty desk inside as a low drone resonates up the tree reminds them of their arrival to this place, which never truly felt familiar.
With my swarms buzzing around them and the tree in a ring, they take a deep breath.
The pigeon takes flight, with a chorus of an island fading out and dropping as they glide toward the further airstream. I drill an opening in this tree island’s membrane to allow us to pass through easier. As they do, the air goes silent. Vasan closes their eyes and glides. I follow, as their trajectory straightens toward the tangle, and their mental presence fades.