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“Cress?” Clementine’s voice is wavering. “I can’t change.”
“Have you considered getting good?” asks Cressida, distracted, sounding like her beak’s full of feather.
“I’m serious,” says Clementine.
She has been in hell for at least three weeks.
“I can’t – this feels big, this feels final, I think I’m done now.”
“What, you settled? ...Again?”
“Shut up. Yes. I think so. It's like last time but more.”
“Last time it turned out you weren’t really settled, though."
“Yes I was. But some shit happened and then I got de-settled.”
There’s the flutter of wings, and horror suddenly strikes Clem hard. She’ll never be able to fly again. She can’t see now, so she must not be able to echolocate, or glow, so… she’s blind now, forever. At least conceptually, before, settling sounded exciting. It sounded good and real. Now it just feels like loss. Not having Tommy around to know he could make up for any of her disabilities helped – having the sky helped – having real sensation helped -
“Look at you,” Cressida coos. “You know, if something stops changing except for when it changes later, it sounds like it didn’t actually stop changing - ”
“Cress, shut the fuck up and tell me what I am.”
Cressida pauses. “You can’t tell?”
“Why the fuck would I ask if I could tell?”
“...Oh, that’s interesting.”
“Don’t that’s interesting, ooh interesting, you featherheaded bitch, you, you - ” Clementine has to cut off.
“You’re doing the thing where you breathe all funny,” Cressida notes.
“Shut the fuck up. This isn’t funny. This isn’t fucking funny. I don’t – I’m settled, Cress, I’m settled! I can’t see shit.”
“Why don’t you - ”
“If you say ‘get good’, Cresstibule, I swear to Prime herself - ”
“ - Why don’t you figure it out?”
“Why won’t you fucking tell me? I will kill you and you will be double dead - ”
“Go on a voyage of self-discovery with me, Clem.” says Cressida. “Also it’s the first thing that’s happened since you got here, so it's the second thing that's happened since Schlatt’s gym opened, so if you think about it, it’s the second thing that’s happened since a long time, so I’m inclined to draw it out - ”
“I will rearrange your feathers into an intricate work of art and then take a shit on it because blue is dumb - ”
“Clem, Clem, Clem, Clem, Clem,” Cressida coos, and Clementine yelps in surprise as Cressida alights on her back. Then she settles. The touch is vague as everything is here, but it’s there, and it’s definitely touch, from another sentient being, and it’s what’s been keeping Clementine even vaguely sane since she arrived here, literally the only thing aside from the sounds – god, and that’s so little, imagine if there was less – Cressida is preening her, firmly and methodically, a very intentional comfort.
“I mean it. It’s good. It’s exciting. Time passes, yeah? You grow up? You only get to do this once. Really feel it. What do you feel?”
“I don’t like feeling things here. It’s all fakey. If I think too hard it turns into nothing stew.”
“Yeah, but you can feel, right? Don’t think, just tell me what you feel. Start basic. It’s like you’re a detective, yeah?”
“Like, what? There’s an annoying bitch on my back. I possess the power of senses.”
“Good. Go on.”
Clementine breathes in. “I have four legs. I have lungs.”
“Okay. Good start.”
“I can’t see shit. So I’m not a glow worm, or a weird fish, or a firefly, or any of that shit.”
“Nope. Can you echolocate?”
“I said I have four legs, I’m not a bat, birdbitch - ”
“I don’t know,” says Cress, “Dolphins can echolocate too, I don’t know if you can but it’s obviously not just bats — ” She disappears from Clementine’s back, and as usual, her abstract heart seizes with the total disappearance of contact. Unlike usual, perhaps since she’s way more freaked out, she blurts out, “Wait can you stay there?”
“I’m always here, Clem,” Cressida sighs, sounding put-upon, but she obliges and the abstract weight settles against Clem’s back again.
“I can tell – oh! I have whiskers.”
“Yes you do,” Cress confirms.
“My neck’s not too long. Nor my legs. Am I short, Cress?”
“Well, you’re bigger than me.”
“You are tiny. … Not as tiny as Cons. Or Hope. But everyone else is bigger than you. So that’s not surprising.” Clementine thinks about it. “Wait, you’re on me. I can – okay, I can, I can deduce, I can inductive reasoning this fucker. I guess I’m… I don’t know, christ, this is advanced maths, I’m like half a meter long?”
“Excellent process,” coos Cressida. “Thereabouts, yeah. I don’t have a ruler handy.”
“Um. Hm. Wait, what were you – you were, I’m a mammal, I have fur.”
“You already knew you had whiskers,” Cress points out, but she still sounds pleased.
“Maybe I was some kind of horrible whiskered frog. I could have been an abomination, Cress.”
“There’s still time.”
“Fuck you.” That’s a relief, being a mammal, she likes being warm and pettable. (By whom?) Also, she’s used to it. She stretches and wiggles her limbs experimentally.
“Oh, I have a tail, that’s pog – I have – what are these – oh, I have big claws. These are fuck-off big claws. My god, Cress, I’m a killer. I’m like Wolverine.”
“Are you a wolverine?”
“No, because if I were, I would be tall and cool and muscley and have metal bones. Get good.”
“Eat shit,” says Cress affectionately. She starts preening Clem again.
“But seriously, though, this is poggers. Do you hear that? I can hear them clicking!”
“It’s fucking tight.”
“Am I a badger?”
“You have three guesses.”
“What the fuck. Was that one of them?”
“Of course.”
“Am I… am I a wolverine?”
“No.”
“You’re such a bitch. What happens if I don’t guess it?”
“Guess you never get to know.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Clem, between the two of us, which one would you describe as being more patient?”
“Aaaaaargh,” hisses Clementine. “But you’re not forever patient.”
“Nah,” Cressida muses. “But I can wait long enough for it to be obnoxious. Maybe you’ll give up and change again -”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“We’re fucking dead, how much wronger can you get?” She’s been tugging harder at Clementine’s fur for a bit now, and finally pulls hard enough that Clementine yelps. She rolls over, and Cressida jumps off her back. The absolute absence is terrifying, again, but this time Clementine can’t bring herself to ask Cressida to come back. She can do this on her own, she’s big and ballsy. While Cressida moves around playing cards with her beak, Clementine rattles through all the animals she knows in her head. She really needs to inductive reason the shit out of this fucker.
“There’s a bunch of anteater-type guys with big claws,” she announces, hours later. “I know that – will you tell me if I’m close – if it’s something like that? Pango-lions, or the aardvark, or anteaters, all of them have real big claws and are sort of the right shape.”
“You want to know if you’re, if you're in the anteater family.”
“Yes.”
“Say ‘the aardvark’ again.” Cressida sounds deadly serious.
“Just tell me!”
“Do you want to know or not? Say it.”
“… The aardvark.”
Cressida laughs, long and bright. It bounces around the non-existent walls. It wasn’t that funny.
“I was fucking with you,” Cressida says. “You’re a badger. Right in one. Attagirl.”
The silence around them is as loud as Cressida’s echoing laughter, and the darkness is constant. If Clementine ever meets god, she has some real, serious bones to pick with the concept of eternity.