Chapter 1: EggsChapter TextThe cafeteria smelled like boiled starch and recycled air, which was a significant improvement over the last year of his life. Sunny arrived an hour before the rush, same as yesterday, claimed the corner table with his back to the wall and a clear line to both exits, he placed down his cup of coffee and a plate of eggs that he'd requested specifically.
The eggs were terrible. His nose shrinked, it was not like they were inedible, he had eaten things on the Forgotten Shore that made these eggs look like a religious experience. But still bad. Gray at the edges. Faintly smelling of something yellow. They had been cooked by someone who had never personally experienced joy.
He looked at them and they looked back.
One week since returning. He was now an SS class awakened citizen, he found it more exhausting than useful, scratch that, it was extremely usefull. Sunny could not suppress a grin whenever he thought about all his perks, being an awakened sure was great. He even had a crap load of credits due to his exploration report of… that place. He wanted to buy a house, his own house, though for now he was in a temporary room in the Academy dormitory underground.
He ate a forkful of eggs and stared out the window.
In the park below, someone had left candles at the memorial again. A small cluster of them near the stone marker, the one with Nephis' name and the names of the others who hadn't come back. The candles were fresh; someone changed them every day. He'd looked into who. He hadn't found out, and after the second day he'd stopped looking, because whatever he was going to feel about it when he did find out was a thing he could defer.
He had visited her pod twice this week. The coffee was on its third attempt to be drinkable and failing. He was contemplating pouring it over the eggs as an improvement to one of them when someone sat down next to him.
Not across. Next to. The chair to his immediate left, pulled out with a scrape against the floor, occupied with a complete absence of ceremony. He had a half-second to process this before his shadows shifted, he almost summoned the midnight shard, he looked up.
Orange hair pulled back loosely, a few strands catching the cold fluorescent light of the cafeteria. Green eyes, so clear, moving from his face to the plate with flat attention. She was wearing a cloak that sat wrong at the shoulders, its fabric straining against the folded lines of something underneath it, the shape suggesting-
He looked at the table.
She reached for the coffee cup without asking and poured herself half a cup. Her hands were steady. There was a small scar on the back of her left one, thin and pale, old enough to have settled in.
'A sleeper? No… an awakened. Maybe she just returned…"
He had seen similar people like her, looking lost or forgetful of human interactions and ceremony. Sunny sighed.
She looked at his eggs.
Her expression confirmed his assessment. They regarded the eggs together for a moment in silence.
"You look angry at your eggs," she said.
He did. He was. "They're bad eggs," he said.
She pushed the salt toward him without looking up from her cup. Their cup?
He hadn't reached for it yet. He'd been thinking about it, at some point in the last five minutes, his hand had moved slightly in that direction and corrected toward coffee instead. He wasn't sure which. He took the salt, used it, and neither of them made anything of this.
They ate in silence that was almost physically harming him. He ate. She drank their coffee and broke pieces from a bread roll. He tried the eggs with salt and they were marginally less bad. Outside, the candles in the park caught the morning light, tiny warm points against the gray stone of the memorial. He looked at them for one moment and then looked elsewhere.
His shadow had drifted. Toward her side of the table, the way it sometimes moved when it was following something interesting. He pulled it back. It drifted again, slow and idle.
She was watching the window now, the park, the candles. Her expression hadn't changed. There was no grief or recognition, it looked rather idle. He thought about asking if she'd known any of them and decided against it.
A man sat down at the next table with a tray that had notably less food on it than it probably should. She glanced at him for half a second, assessed something, and held out the remaining half of her bread roll sideways in his direction, not looking at him, not saying anything.
The man stared.
She waited.
He took it. Said a startled, slightly confused thank you.
She was looking out the window again before he finished the second syllable.
Sunny looked at the man. The man looked at Sunny with a small expression before avoiding eye contact. Sunny looked back at his eggs.
She stood up after she was done, gathered her tray cup, and pushed the chair back in. The cloak moved with her and for one moment when she turned, just one, the fabric shifted at her back and he caught the shape of white against the gray lining, folded close but not entirely invisible.
Her retreating back was–
He looked at the window.
He sat there another ten minutes for no specific reason, finishing the coffee and not touching the remainder of the eggs, watching the park below where a student in a school uniform stopped at the memorial and crouched down to straighten one of the candles that had tilted.
The eggs had not improved.
'What was her name again? I'm sunny by the way'
He stood up and brought his tray to the return counter and went back to his room. The shadow that followed him was in an unusually good mood. He told it to shut up.
It did not shut up.
Chapter 2: TakeoutChapter TextJet knocked twice and opened the door before he answered, her dark hair was loose, her icy eyes significantly softer than when they had met, She was carrying a paper bag that smelled heavenly.
"Ah, you're awake, good good" she said.
"Yes?"
She came in without being invited, set the bag on the desk, and looked around the room. His few possessions were arranged neatly all around, it looked rather comfortable here, he even had a bean bag which someone left behind.
"I brought food," she said.
"I can see that."
"From Hana's. Near the east gate." She paused. "You probably don't know where that is."
He didn't. He also didn't know most of the city he technically lived in now, which was a strange thing to be true about a person. He had citizenship yet didnt feel like one. Sitting at the edge of the bed, he let her unpack the bag onto the desk, dumplings, something wrapped in paper that smelled like sesame, a small container of soup, yeah, life was good.
He was….. a little glad she was here. He wasn't going to say that.
"You look terrible," she said, sitting down in the desk chair and crossing her legs.
"I look fine."
She tilted her head. "So, terrible. What, haven't you had your spa session yet? What happened to the flower boy i met a week ago"
Sunny grumbled something under his breath then reached for one of the dumplings.
"I wanted to check on you," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You've eaten in the cafeteria every day this week at five-fifty in the morning. Dont ask how i know though"
He paused. "The eggs are very good."
"Sunny."
"They're not good," he admitted. "They're actively bad. I keep going back thinking they'll improve. They don't."
Jet looked at him for a moment with an expression he couldn't quite figure out. Not pity, yet a soft expression was present. She'd been like this when he first came back too, during the citizenship debrief; she'd done the whole official thing, the documents and the classification and the explanation of his rights and benefits, and then at the end she'd just said I'm glad you're alive like it was a normal sentence and moved on before he could figure out what to do with it.
He appreciated that about her. Not making things into a moment.
"I also have questions," she said, pulling out her communicator.
"Of course you do."
"Housing."
He'd been waiting for this. The dormitory room was temporary — everyone had told him so, multiple times, in tones that suggested they expected him to care more than he did. He did care, actually. He cared quite a lot. He had a very specific vision for what he wanted and he'd been quietly thinking about the cost for days, well that was before he got the crap loads from the exploration report.
"What are my options," he said.
She pulled up something on the screen, she began walking him through each and every option. He ate a dumpling while she talked and tried to look like he was considering it. He was not considering it.
"No," he said, when she finished.
"I know." She swiped to a different screen. "There's a residential agent named Lanard. Specializes in Awakened clients. She takes fifteen percent above market."
"That's a lot."
"She delivers what she promises and she doesn't ask questions." Jet looked at him. "You strike me as someone with specific requirements."
He had a mental list. Quiet street. No shared walls if possible. Ground floor with a basement, not optional, the basement. A room large enough for a sleeping pod, good integrity, far enough from the Academy district that nobody would drop by unannounced.
"Fine," he said.
"She'll want a list of requirements."
"I'll send one."
Jet made a note. He ate more of the food, which was from somewhere near the east gate according to her, he would need to visit.
They finished the food. She told him two things about the Chained Isles, things he already knew, like Saint Tyris and the white feather clan. She also told him to cut his hair, and he had suddenly turned deaf. She put her communicator away and stood.
"Are you alright," she said.
He had about a second.
"I have citizenship, a ceiling to stare at, and a beautiful master who just brought me dumplings," he said with a Grin
Jet looked at him, he was expecting to get hit, at least a glare. "Contact Lanard," she said. "Tell her I sent you."
She left.
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Academy common room at midnight looked like the aftermath of a wild party nobody had bothered to invite him to. Mismatched furniture arranged in clusters, scattered around, he was pretty was a chair did not belong on the table. A screen on the far wall cycling through news nobody was watching. Three Awakened at separate tables doing their own things, at least they were quiet.
Sunny had claimed the corner seat by the east window two nights ago and was operating on the quiet assumption that it was his now. It had the right angles, back to the wall, full sightline across the room, window to the left showing the park and the memorial and the city beyond it, all dark and still. He had his communicator. He had been on the same article for twenty minutes. The article was about soil erosion in the northern agricultural districts and he had no idea how he'd gotten there, yet he couldn't stop reading it. Doom scrolling, was what Kai said.
He was not brooding. He was simply reading about soil.
His shadows were being strange again. Restless, drifting slightly further than they should have toward the other side of the room without any particular reason. He pulled them back. They drifted again. He pulled them back harder. They drifted immediately.
He followed the directions.
She was in the armchair by the bookshelf, the one at an angle to the wall that most people walked past without sitting in because it faced slightly wrong. She had a book, a physical one, with paper, which almost nobody used and she was reading with quite a focused expression. The cloak was draped over her lap instead of her shoulders. Her wings were out.
'Wait wha-'
Sunny did a double take, he rubbed his eyes again to be sure. Two white wings extended from her back, not fully extended, folded against her back, the tips curled inward, but out, visible, white enough in the low light that they caught it softly. She didn't seem to notice though, reading without a care in the world.
The line of her neck where the wing met the shoulder was—
Soil erosion, he thought. Northern agricultural districts. A very interesting topic.
He read the same sentence three times just because, why not.
She turned a page without looking up. He looked back at his communicator. His shadow was now approximately forty centimeters from her chair and he told it, internally and with great firmness, to come back. It moved another ten centimeters forward. He stared at it. It settled innocently on the floor and looked like it had been there the whole time.
Gloomy was in his room, sitting near the bed, just in case. Sunny would look quite odd without a shadow if anyone noticed.
'Damn bastards'
He gave up.
The room thinned out over the next hour. One Awakened left, then the other. By one at night it was just the two of them and the screen cycling quietly through weather forecasts for NQSC. She was still reading. He had advanced to an article about dreamscape, a viral game, or something similar. It was the manifestation of a Saint's ability, a bizarre thing truly.
She shifted in the chair at some point. Pulled her feet up under her. The book lowered slightly, then stayed there, when he glanced over her eyes were half-closed, the page no longer moving. Her wings had relaxed further, one tip resting against the armrest, feathers ruffled slightly at the edge.
He looked back at his communicator.
"I think I'd like to have sex with you at some point."
The room was very quiet.
Sunny choked on nothing, going into a coughing fit.
'Damnation! What the hell!'
He looked up. She was looking at the middle distance above her half-closed book with a concrete expression, like she had finally decided something. Not looking at him. Not performing the statement.
He waited for the rest of it. There was no rest of it.
"Right," he said.
"Not right now," she added. "I'm reading."
"You're asleep."
"I'm resting my eyes."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the window. Looked at his shadow, which had absolutely no business being as smug as it currently appeared. He pointed at it. It did nothing because it was a shadow.
She had gone back to the book, or back to resting her eyes above it, and her wings shifted slightly as she resettled, white feathers catching the low light, his brain was not quite working, something strange was happening, alarms were ringing, and there was also a large red label saying
"Warning! Get the fuck out of there".
He had prepared responses for most social situations. He had responses for aggression, for manipulation, for flattery deployed as a trap, for people trying to get leverage, for people trying to form alliances, for people who wanted something from him and were being circuitous about it. He had responses for Nephis, who said nothing and meant everything. He had responses for Cassie, who said everything and meant several different things simultaneously. He had prepared responses for the full spectrum of human interaction on his own intelligence and had developed over twenty-plus years of careful, necessary observation.
He did not have a response for this.
She turned a page. He silently watched her do it. She was reading again, her big eyes tracking the lines, one finger resting at the edge of the paper, the slight movement in her face that meant something in the book had her attention. She had said the thing and moved on from it completely, either she had no idea what she'd done to the air in the room or she had noticed and said Sunny's problem, not mine.
He put his communicator down and looked out the window at the city. The memorial candles had burned down. The park was dark. Somewhere across the district a PTV hummed past, its running lights blinking slow and patient.
The silence was awkward, if only for him, slowly his mind had begun to waver, going back to the article, his eyes ever so slightly taking a few glances, he would have preferred to do that with his shadow but it was being rather stubborn today, turning around and not letting him spy.
'Maybe she meant it as a joke… haha, well done sunny, she made you fluster'
He looked at her.
She had fallen asleep. For real this time, the book was still open and her chin had dipped, one wing having fully unfolded against the back of the chair like it had opinions about where it should be. Her breathing was slow. She looked younger when she wasn't paying attention, which was a strange thing to be true about a person who already didn't look particularly old, but it was the relaxation of it, every line of her face that usually had some amount of focus in it going quiet all at once.
He sat there for another fifteen minutes doing absolutely nothing.
Then he got up, retrieved a thin blanket from the rack by the door that was kept for anyone pulling an all nighter or something, came back, and draped it over her without touching her. The shadow watched this entire operation with an expression he refused to interpret.
He went to bed.
He stared at the ceiling.
He had gotten through a year on the Forgotten Shore, multiple horrors, starvation, betrayal, and a divine curse that made lying physically impossible, he survived neph's awkwardness and effie's cheeky suggestion, so why was he was lying awake staring at ceiling plaster because a girl had said six words to him, as a joke at that.
I'm resting my eyes, she'd said.