Archive of Our Own ^beta

Yuuma stopped walking. He had come to a place in the woods where a conch shell as big as a house was embedded into the ground.

Overhead the gray clouds, the tangle of empty black branches.

The air, that was caught, in the space, between the trees, and their branches.

The conch shell had two eyes like human eyes, but so large. Yuuma could see that inside of the conch shell, there was a hole in the ground.

On top of the conch shell an ANGEL was standing. It was standing with its BACK to Yuuma, and it had both of its wings stretched out, and they were...

wrapped in tinsel...

baubles...

some ornaments...

Yuuma wondered how this angel had ever gotten off of the ground.

He put both of his hands together to make his voice louder, and called out to him, “HELLO!”

The angel said hello back.

Yuuma said, “Have you seen Astral?”

Who is that, said the angel.

Yuuma said, “He is my friend.”

“He is like a boy, if a boy were all clear like a moon jelly. We were drinking tea, but he has gone.”

“Have you seen him?”

LO BEHOLD THE ANGEL SAID: no, he had not seen any body like that.

“Okay, thank you.” Said Yuuma.

But the angel said it in a very quiet and far away voice, as if he were sad about something.

But Yuuma didn’t hear it, because he was thinking about finding Astral.

(And when you are thinking about some body you love... no, I don’t have to write it. Ha ha ha, you already know what I was going to say.)

(Does this part matter as much.)

And then Yuuma went down the hole. And for the whole rest of his adventure he never saw that angel again.

He never . . .

wind chimes . . .

First Yuuma fell out of the ground, then Yuuma fell out of his body.

When he opened his own eyes again he was standing next to a lighthouse on a golden cliff. The cliff looked over a vast and shifting pink sea. When he looked above himself he could see that he was in some kind of a cave.

That is, vaulted high up above his head, either where the sky would be or perhaps lower, was a CEILING. It would appear that it stretched over the whole ocean and the lighthouse and the sea, so that all necessary things were contained by it.

The ceiling was also golden which made sense if it were a cave since caves Yuuma thought are pretty much made of similar material throughout.

Near the top of it there were some faint and foggy white mists.

Well, Yuuma thought, at least I am not at home.

Because home was where he had been drinking tea, and Astral had been there, and then he... oh, I explained this to you already.

Underneath Yuuma’s eyes, there were some dark gray half moons. He pressed on them with his cold finger tips.

Visible through one of the windows about halfway up the lighthouse an indistinct silhouette moved.

Then, as Yuuma watched, a balloon rose out of the sea some place away. It rose up from the surface like a bubble coming free.

Like a bubble coming free from pink lemonade soda.

That way was better because it could get happier that way.

It was floating very slowly.

Oh, Yuuma thought. He should try to talk it at least. Maybe it would know where Astral was.

It was still floating very slowly. The string at the end of it was very very long, and had not risen all the way out of the water yet.

As it went, it rose up more and more out of the water, but the string, just seemed to keep getting longer and longer. . .

But of course that was an illusion. Of course it only seemed that way because of the parts of the string that were still underwater.

Yuuma brought up his hand to shield his eyes and, like he had called out to the angel, he called out to the balloon.

“HELLO.”

The balloon looked at him, as though it were confused. But the balloon made no reply to Yuuma.

Yuuma thought, perhaps he had spoken too quietly; perhaps the gentle, rushing sound of the waves had drowned out his voice.

But he was tired of waiting so instead he went into the lighthouse.

He would come back later, to check on the balloon.

He went into the lighthouse.

Inside of the lighthouse there was a wood room with some big curling stairs.

Standing partway up the stairs, with his hands behind his back, Yuuma found Tron Arclight. Tron was, at that time, a child.

They regarded each other.

“I have made some morally questionable decisions in my life time.” Tron said.

“You’re tellin’ me.” Said Yuuma. “But that’s all in the past now, right?”

Tron shrugged.

This wasn’t what Yuuma had come to talk about, so he said:

“Have you seen Astral?”

Tron tilted his head to one side. “That depends. What is an ‘Astral’?”

Yuuma made a low growl in the back part of his throat (the lion part).

He did not have time for this...

“You know him. Astral. You have met him before.”

“I do not recall.”

“Are you Tron?” Yuuma said, in slight disbelief.

“I am Tron Arclight.”

“Then, who am I?”

Tron said, “You are Tsukumo Yuuma.” But,

a shiver went through Yuuma as he said this, because he was smiling in the way that he did when, he was seeing something which most people could not see.

As if he were seeing right through Yuuma, like one sees right through a diagram of nerves...

through a nervous map of the human body...

For the first time since the beginning of this business, for the first time since he had gone looking for Astral, Yuuma felt something move inside of his head. It moved just one time.

Yuuma did not carry on the previous train of conversation.

“I have to go,” Yuuma said, without going.

He was not finding Astral here, so the logical course of action was to leave.

He thought that he should at least search the lighthouse completely before he left.

But, Tron was standing on the staircase, and the air around Tron

was beginning to glitter very faintly.