Beach Day

57: Tiff Fills The Void

She's alone again. It's just Kepler and Tiff, the way it has been for just under a year— the way it's going to be forever. They're joined, aren't they? By some bond of something. Not fate, but choice. He chose her; she chose him over and over again; and now she knows he's the only person that can stick around her forever.

Until he dies. And then she'll be fucked.

Isn't that the defining factor here? What she has chosen to do? Who she has chosen to be? How she has chosen to carry herself?

Did she make a choice in her rebirth, she wonders? No, she corrects, tramping through the woods with the plastic bag rustling and Kepler at her side. Not a rebirth. A reinvention.

Did she have a choice, though? When she stepped out into sunlight and held her head high? When she cut her hair in the mirror for the first time? Was diving off the deep end something she chose to do— or was she pushed? Did she forget how to keep her balance? Did she forget how to swim? She landed on concrete, she thinks. Never had a fighting chance. Fought anyway.

She fiddles with a tube of black paint she took from the toolbox while Matt was splinting her arm. She isn't sure why she brought it with her until they're at the concrete walls again and she's staring up at the painting from days ago. They haven't gotten rid of it yet: a shadowy figure of tentacles and uncouth proportions, a demonic ax, an angelic trident— and a blank space.

Well, she knows what goes there. She just didn't want to admit it. A portrait of a girl; she paints herself in silhouette; she paints herself in homemade flamethrower shades of black. Nothing.

She tucks the paintbrush behind her ear and steps back. It looks right now. It doesn't feel quite as frightening.

She sighs. "Time to go, then. No more stalling. Time to face the master at the end of it all."

There's no point in walking herself all the way out there. She can take care of it on her own— can find her way back through the void between planes, shortening the space between two points in the Mortal. She can wrinkle time as much as she wants.

She tucks the tube of paint into her bag and reaches for her aunt's sword at her side. It's still jagged, still thorny— most definitely not hers, not adapted to the wielder. If she thinks about it too hard, she's liable to go insane. She raises it instead, uses some of the blood from one of her bandages to trace the runes around the knee of her jeans, and cuts into the air.

Nothing happens. She frowns, does it again, pours everything she can into it— and fails. The air does not split; time does not wrinkle; she's as stuck on the ground as she ever was.

Except her nose is bleeding. That's new.

"Shit," she whispers. "Shit."

She pinches the bridge of her nose and leans forward. That's what you're supposed to do, right? It goes down your throat otherwise. She remembers all the lessons from Scouts and from lice checks; all the times Eddy gestured frantically for napkins or tissues. Even so, a little blood in her throat might do her well right now. She isn't sure how— but it might.

"We just need to wait for it to stop," she says, still eyeing the grass, "and then we'll just... walk there, I guess. Since I can't brute-force the portal."

Kepler hisses, clearly disapproving of that.

She turns her head to look down at him. "What?"

A look; a gesture. He wants her to sit down and eat something.

"I'm not going to sit here and rest. I have shit to do."

Another disapproving look.

She sighs, annoyed. "You take such good care of me, Kep. I wish you cared less than I do."