Stardust

     The indignities were mounting; then again, perhaps “indignity” was too gentle of a term for what was, in Caspian's view, a total revolution of the established order.

     “She does not keep secrets from me,” they said curtly. Rhea, from her position knelt on the floor, her back ramrod-straight against Caspian's bed, made a noncommittal noise—then Cas tugged on a section of her thickly-textured hair a tad more sharply than intended and she followed up with a low, pained yelp. They winced in contrition and brought their free hand to rest on her shoulder, thumb rubbing a few apologetic circles into the tense line of her trapezius.

     Several feet away, Nina hung upside-down from Caspian's desk chair, which she had dragged out to the middle of their room and was slowly rotating by walking her palms along the floor below her. “How would you know?” she said, voice a little nasally from her position. “They're secrets.”

     Cas refocused their attention on tucking puffy sections of hair into the tight braid they were forming snug against Rhea's scalp. Still, they couldn't help but twist their lips into a wry grimace. “Yes, I suppose there's the rub.”

     “It's not like you're being totally upfront with her,” Rhea said.

     “Is that relevant?”

     With a particularly aggressive spin of the chair, Nina cackled and swung back around to reveal the child's utterly unbrushed mat of hair dangling from her soft brown face, eyes crinkled up in an expression of sticky puerile condescension. “Duh. You're being a massive hypocrite.”

     They felt rather heated. “I—”

     With a hyperbolic huff, Nina dragged herself upright and spun around in the chair several more times; her tone was infuriatingly patient. “She told you about that dream stuff 'cause she knew you'd want to know, but you know she'd want to know about the—” and here she paused in her endless circles to gaze dramatically at the closed door, before dropping her voice to an exaggerated whisper that would have escaped no-one, if there indeed was anyone around to hear, “—escape plan.”

     “We do not have an escape plan.” Cas rolled a hair elastic off their thumb, where it had been pinching off their circulation, and snapped it around the end of Rhea's final cornrow.

     “We don't technically have an escape plan yet,” Rhea said warmly, “you pedantic bitch.”

     Nina looked disgustingly smug beneath her veritable birds' nest of hair. Cas beckoned her over with a quiet “Your turn;” she obliged promptly, scrambling out of the chair to practically body-check Rhea out of the way and take her place kneeling between Caspian's legs. Once she was settled, they began carding their fingers gently through her tangles, carefully separating entwined mats of hair from their neighbors. There would be no point in bringing the comb out until they could run it through without forcibly breaking her curl pattern (if one could even refer to waves as loose as Nina's as “curls”).

     Despite the initial mess, it wasn't long before they'd done enough untangling to retrieve their thick-toothed wooden comb from where it lay on the bedclothes and begin sectioning off locks of hair. Hair care, Cas had found, was a meditative process—even more so in Vellum's absence, as the reminder that they may potentially never see her again caused them to reflect, deeply, on the process, on Vellum's dark fingers skimming deftly over Rhea's scalp, and on her low, throaty voice walking Cas through a braid for the first time. Shimmering memory-wafts of spicy incense slowed their pulse; the clatter of beaded curtains and the texture of embroidered upholstery rang bronze circles around their skull.

     “I suppose,” they said, with great difficulty, “it may be time to include July in our… intentions.” It did not escape Caspian's notice how quickly Rhea leaned forward, one hand resting on their thigh, and took an audible breath—before she could get whatever-it-was out, they added, sharp and fast, “I do not need you to chastise me. I doubt either of you have been perfectly honest with your friends.”

     Beneath Caspian's hands, Nina's shoulders squirmed from side to side.

     “Quit wriggling,” they said. She did not reply; she drew her knees up in front of her and wrapped her arms around them, one hand clasping the opposite wrist. Her index finger tapped repetitively against her skinny forearm, however, she did stop squirming.

     Meanwhile, Rhea had moved to rest the side of her head against Caspian's thigh. They spared a glance to admire their handiwork; her cornrows were perhaps the cleanest and straightest they had achieved to date. She cracked a small smile as they made eye contact, her thick eyebrows tilted in amusement.

     “What?” they said.

     “I wasn't going to dunk on you,” she said. “I like seeing you work shit out.”

     Their chest and cheeks went warm. Hurriedly, Cas returned their full attention to Nina's head and began swooping back large sections of hair with the comb, pulling it all into one central point at the back of her head.

     Nina's silence persisted as her fingers played erratically along the skin of her arms. Cas withdrew her thick scrunchie from the pocket they'd tucked it in earlier—before they'd even started Rhea's hair—and wrapped it around her untidy locks, watching her fidget. They began to worry they'd been too sharp with her; once her hair was up in its typical bouncy ponytail, they pressed a hand to her shoulder and said “I'm sorry for snapping at you.”

     The child rocked back-and-forth on the floor, fingers tapping faster and faster. Suddenly, as if bursting through a dam, a flood of words spewed forth from her mouth, fast and sloppy: “Okay so I have been hiding something and please don't get mad because I didn't know how to bring it up and even Baz doesn't know and you can't tell Ophelia or—”

     Rhea's hand fell on her shoulder, stopping her breakneck babbling in its tracks. Wide-eyed, Nina stared at the older girl, one hand hovering just below her chin as she gnawed on her index finger.

     “I'm not telling the Dusties jack squat,” Rhea said, quite seriously. This prompted a nervous giggle from Nina, and her small shoulders went slack; Rhea gave one a friendly pat before withdrawing her hand.

     Their task complete, Caspian took the opportunity to slide off the bed and to the floor; they rested their forearms solidly on their knees and propped their chin up on their folded intersection of limbs, looking Nina over with a curious eye. She'd returned to gnawing on her fingers—a thumb this time, the knuckle pressed firmly between her thin lips, her thick brows furrowed anxiously as she watched Cas.

     “What have you been hiding?” Cas prompted.

     Her brows delved even further down the expanse of her forehead. The knuckle between her teeth turned white with the pressure she was applying; fitfully, she withdrew her thumb and shook her hand out, not quite meeting Caspian's eyes. “I, um… you know the window?” They both nodded. “Sometimes, right before curfew, if there aren't a lot of people in the common room, I… um… I go out the window and wait for a bit and then I… uh…” Her face screwed up and she mumbled something so quick and low, Cas found it nigh incomprehensible—“godensaresandexlore.”

     “Nina,” Rhea began, but her wheedling proved wholly unnecessary.

     In a great rush, and so forcefully Cas was mildly impressed she could store so much breath in those small lungs of hers, Nina said “I-go-downstairs-and-I-explore.”

     There was a movement in Caspian's guts—not ominous or distressing, but light and bright, like one of their organs had performed a leap of joy. They raised their eyes above Nina's head to meet Rhea's; the two exchanged a long, significant glance while the child breathed laboriously between them, chest and shoulders rising and falling in unison, as if forcing that sentence out had drained all her energy in one swoop.

     “That,” Cas said, and here they reached out to grasp both Nina's hands in their own; her eyes snapped to theirs, wide with surprise, and they kept their gaze perfectly steady, “is wonderful.”

     She blinked several times in quick succession, lips ever-so-slightly parted.

     “I have been speculating as to whether I could do the same, but I have not had an opportunity to test it yet.” Cas squeezed her hands reassuringly before releasing them. “I have been trying my hand at sketching maps from above, but they are mere gestures at the true shape of the space—I haven't left this building.”

     “Have you seen anything interesting?” Rhea said. “Anything that seems important?”

     “I don't know.” All the tension had left Nina's spine at that point, her torso slumped into a sagging arc over her knees; in place of gnawing her thumb, she'd moved to thoughtfully nibbling at her jagged fingernails. Cas resisted the urge to pull the girl's hand from her mouth. “It's… confusing. It's like it changes?”

     It was spoken as if it were a question. Unfortunately, Cas did not have an answer.

     “Yeah, that adds up. Stuff's weird around here,” Rhea said genially.

     Cas was not satisfied. “Nina.” Once the girl's attention was fixed firmly on them once again, they leaned in conspiratorially. “The next time you want to embark on one of these excursions—may I come with you?”

     “Yeah, duh.” Nina's face broke out into a wide grin, the mole by her bottom lip disappearing into a deep dimple.

     The conversation was then aborted as Rhea slugged Nina on the shoulder and said “Thanks, weeb,” which prompted Nina to shriek in abject humiliation and launch herself violently at the woman.

###

     Time passed and you sat. Your spine was ramrod-straight, your legs crossed and your toes tucked into the crooks of your knees, as you waited at the shore of that endless black sea, sifting piles of silver sand through your palms and fingers. The sky, so overwhelmingly vast, dripping under the weight of its enormous field of galaxies, gradually darkened with every night you spent on the beach; as the stars winked out, you watched the ocean progressively freeze, first the waves kissing the shore turning sludgy with half-melted crystals, then spears of thick, dark surface ice reaching inward toward the open waters, growing every night.

     When you opened your eyes that particular night, the ocean was covered entirely by a smooth sheet of grayish ice, pale white frost dusting its lustrous surface. The stars were dim and few in number; they hung hazily over your head, dotting a sky of pitch-black, as if obscured by a layer of dense, aphotic fog.

     A delicate sussurus crawled through your ears to wind sleepily around the caverns of your skull. It was not wind; it had depth, like a voice just out of earshot, enigmatic murmurs through a closed door; it had a rhythm to it, a rise and fall not unlike verse. You strained to seize its specifics, tilting your head from side to side in a vain attempt to track its origin—the sound grew as you leaned toward the shore. This did not surprise you.

     You unfolded your legs and stiffly contorted yourself down to all fours, palms sliding over the silver sand, straining toward the crisp line of ice that now formed the border between land and sea; the whispers tugged at your mind, stroked the inside of your skull and sensually pulled against your lobes, cool and slippery beneath your skin.

     The whispers grew louder. Somehow, you were right up against the shoreline, your nose mere centimeters from brackish ice that radiated chill and smarted your flesh.

     The voice-without-voice continued to tug at you, more feeling than words; the feeling was go, was continue, was come to me, and you were awash with the feverish need to follow its call. You rose up on your knees and cast a look around; the beach was endless, gleaming and perfect, naught but glowing sand as far as you could see; the ocean, too, was endless, ice thick and dark, glinting cruelly under the half-light of the obscured stars in the moonless sky.

     The need to understand curled in your gut, spiked shoots of itself through your body and drove you to your feet. The murmurs hummed and sang, almost choral, as you stepped out onto the ice.

     You began to walk across the ocean.

     Frozen sheets crackled gently under your feet, delicate spiderwebs radiating out over the surface from where your boots pressed into it. Your breath hung in clouds of crystallized vapor in front of you.

     You walked.

     Stars winked coyly down at you. A glance behind you showed no silver shoreline; you were surrounded by infinite black ice in every direction, no shore near or far, no break in the murky flat horizon.

     You walked.

     You walked for so long, your feet grew numb. They felt like useless slabs of meat stuffed into your boots, like you'd taped raw steaks to your ankles and were balancing on them. The crunch of your boot soles became erratic as you began swaying, stumbling, arms windmilling pointlessly in the air as you struggled to maintain traction. The dim pinpricks of light over your head wheeled mockingly.

     You walked.

     You lost all comprehension of time, the frozen sea all you knew, all you could ever begin to know. There was nothing but slick black ice in every direction; as far as you were concerned, there had never been anything but slick black ice; the entire world compacted down to the sting of frigid air and the slippery crack of your soles, and there was nothing else to be seen.

     Until there was.

     Out of the corner of your eye, a mountainous ink-black shape loomed against the scattered remnants of stars; when you turned to face it, the whispers sang out in one long, sustained note, breathless and bright.

     A massive hunk of ice—an iceberg—jutted from the frozen water's surface to tower over you in a disconnected series of angular chunks, gloomy shadows draped over its humongous bulk, pooling in water-lines carved deep into its face; the pale ice seemed to almost glow in the pitch-black, a queer, barely-there blue-green luminosity that stood out like a flashbulb in your Stygian surroundings. It was asymmetrical; on one side, there was a gentle slope not unlike a hill of earth, on the other, a ragged, spiky face of ice that was near entirely vertical, a sheer drop to the ocean below.

     You knew it was where you needed to go.

     The trek to the foot of the glacier was over in a blink; the trek up its gentle slope, more taxing, but ultimately meaningless in your quest for understanding. Murmurs and mumbles continued filling your head, louder with every step—they rose in volume, but not in comprehensibility, cramming your skull with an incoherent, rhythmic drone, forward, forward, forward. You began passing piles of snow on the ground, more numerous as you progressed uphill; your boots dragged through drifts and crunched footprints into the loose powder.

     And then—

     —then—

     —then your climb reached its apex, and—

     —and you looked down.

     The glacier peaked in a large, near-flat semicircle; the far edge, with its dizzying drop-off, was a mere few dozen feet away, but it was not what caught your attention.

     No, what you were instantly captivated by was a massive, dark hole dominating the center of the glacier, many times the size of your body—two of you could easily have laid end-to-end across its diameter, and its depths disappeared into murky black so quickly, you could not even begin to guess how far it went down. The ice around it shone with a smoothness that led you to picture pressing your cheek against its impossible gloss, rubbing your skin over its silk, and there was a strange, euphoric twinge in your gut.

     You knelt at its edge, just where the ice began to turn a delicious, inviting sapphire-blue, and pressed your palms to its soap-slick surface; it felt cool and tantalizing, somehow not cold at all. That twinge in your gut spread, filling your abdomen with an odd, buzzing energy; you drew your fingers along the ice, skimming them along the smooth transition from blue-to-navy as you approached the event horizon of the crepuscular opening, then shied away, tracing its rim, feeling all-too-aware of your own skin.

     Limbs caressed every fold and winkle of your mind, gently pressing, pulling, tugging, whispers of kinship flooding through you. As you gazed into the moulin, lips parted and breath coming in short pants, you found yourself leaning further and further, til your head and torso protruded out over its depths, til you swayed gently over its tenebrous free-fall, only kept from tumbling headfirst into the darkness by your palms pressed against the ice.

     So went the first time I sang you the song of myself.