Work Text:
1.
The very early morning sun brings with it gray clouds to hide behind, blocking the sky’s undoubtful blue. Gura watches with heavy eyes as that mass of gray clouds shift ever so slightly, first here then there, like the rise then drop of a beast’s belly—like the rise then drop of her own.
How long has she been here? Gura doesn’t know. She feels like time is melting altogether, slipping through her fingers like the sand scratching at her raw and bloodied palm. It’s any moment now, she thinks. Any moment before her numb body becomes one with the ground, her being mingling in the spaces between those fine grains of rock and the ocean will take her away in its familiar yet cold arms, to carry her back home.
She takes in a deep breath, her chest rising then falling with the motion. Foggy memories play in the back of her mind: a woman whose face was lined with smiles and laughter; a strong man whose appearances betrayed his gentle touch; a city that trembled as Atlas lost his grip on the world; her strangled voice scratching her throat raw as someone carried her away, a blanket of dust draping over the city she once knew, green tendrils exploding the crust of the earth.
Darkness creeps into her vision. It takes her a moment to realize her eyes are closed, fatigue weighing heavily on her body. She thinks the tips of her fingers and toes are beginning to grow cold. She’s fading, isn’t she? Evaporating into little mists of fog, swirling and dancing with the ocean breeze before eventually becoming nothing.
Another breath. Nothing thuds inside of her chest or her skull—she wonders if she still has a heartbeat.
Another breath, then another. Then another. And then an—
“Hey, you good? I’m Amelia, can you hear me?” A soft voice asks. The smallest beam of light cutting through the darkness.
Gura weakly opens her eyes, just enough to let that light in. Against the dreary backdrop of gray, Gura pieces together fragments of a puzzle: blonde hair, blue eyes, a small smile. Like an angel flung from heaven.
The voice—Amelia, is it?—takes the space Gura was supposed to fill. “Well, I guess that answers my question.” A gentle laugh coils in the air like wisps of clouds, before confident hands cradle around Gura’s hand and neck in a comforting warmth, easing her aching body up into a sitting position.
“Let’s get you patched up, okay?” Amelia’s voice is soft. Like a lone hymn echoing in temple halls, tiding over weary souls and tired bodies.
Gura allows herself to slump into Amelia’s body. She takes a breath, her chest rising then falling, catching the pretty scent of vanilla and the familiar comfort of the ocean. And gently, oh so gently, she feels something thudding inside of her temples.
She breathes out in amusement. Maybe she does still have a heartbeat.
2.
Amelia used to hate the estate.
She hated returning to that barren shell of her childhood. Empty halls led to empty rooms. Dust animals frolicked in the gray corners. Oil paint flaked off portraits of great-great-great whatevers. The wood was the only one who creaked greetings and croaked farewells whenever Amelia rummaged through the old archives she stashed into cobweb-lined guest rooms.
Honestly, if the estate burned down save for her study, the kitchen, and the bathroom across the way, Amelia wouldn’t have cared. No one lived in the estate anyways—just apparitions of simpler times that deserved to be laid to rest.
Then she found Gura, bloodied and broken and beached.
Her injuries should have been fatal. Amelia thinks it’s a miracle she didn’t die. Gura insists it’s because she’s “built different.”
“Is it ‘cause you’re an Atlantean?” Amelia asked once.
“Exactly.” Gura winked and finger-gunned in her direction.
The detective retaliated by eating Gura’s last dumpling.
By the time Gura’s injuries healed, Amelia thought it was only going to be a matter of time before Gura headed out. Days passed, then weeks, and then by the time months were beginning to crawl by, Amelia realized that Gura wasn’t going anywhere. If anything, the Atlantean was making herself more and more at home: she swept the floors, organized the archives, and dusted each room. Eventually, she claimed one of the guest rooms on the ground floor as her own.
“You…sure you wanna stay here?” Amelia asked when she was helping Gura assemble her bedframe.
“Where else would I stay?” Gura said it with a laugh.
The both of them knew the sad truth lurking underneath her words.
Eventually, the months began to melt together, summer breaking way for fall, which eventually tidied itself away to have winter take its place. Amelia found herself rarely leaving home, save for the times she needed to. She found herself telling Gura about the pocket watch her family guarded and the Warden that entrusted the artifact to them, two secrets that Amelia once swore to herself that she would hide underneath the bed sheets of her heart.
After all, who would believe her, right? Amelia was the only one that knew—everyone else was gone. Wherever they went.
But Gura, beautiful and curious and excitable Gura, believed her. Her tail swishing behind her, ocean sparkles inside her eyes, she asked one question.
“Yo, can you take me somewhere?!”
Amelia could only grin. She wound up the hands of her watch, their surroundings blending together into an incomprehensible blur, melting like clocks draped over trees, the gears of her body simultaneously pulling forward and backwards until she swears her stomach is going to turn inside out and—
A seabreeze. An ocean. Rustling palm fronds overhead. Sand underneath her feet.
And then they meet Ina.
3.
The view is the same as always. The lone palm tree on the shore sways in the salty breeze. The sea-green ocean laps at the shore. The seafoam whispers to itself, hushed and temporary. The sun is suspended just above the horizon, its golden arms painting that eternal sky a permanent orange, forever grinning at its own reflection.
It’s beautiful. Or rather, it used to be—even beauty can feel mundane when it’s all you see.
But it’s all Ina has, all that she has known for the years and years she’s been stuck here, a lone sailor drifting on an unmoving boat, complacent in being nothing but a speck in the grandest blue of the ocean, cursed by the Book she was forced to carry.
She sits on the shore of the island, looking over that same horizon, sketchbook in her lap. Her pages are filled with variations of the same scene—some are watercolors, some are sketches; some are acrylics, some are ballpoint. But all of it has the lone palm tree, the sea-green ocean, the seafoam, the sun, the sky.
Ina’s head is bowed as she draws in her sketchbook. Charcoal dust coats her fingers as she streaks black against the stark white page, scratching away to make shadows and blending to make whites, carving shapes using the rounded end of her shrinking eraser. Not once does she look up to take in her reference. She doesn’t need to. Not anymore.
Nothing ever changes here, anyways.
Something catches her ear. An almost imperceptible shift in the air Ina nearly misses, like the soft thrumming of a clock. The flaps on her head twitch as she turns her head, towards the swaying fronds of the tree.
Nothing.
She blinks.
Then there’s something.
Two somethings, really, both of them women. One of them has silver hair that shimmers brilliantly in the eternal sun, wearing a drooling blue hoodie far too big on her. A stitched shark tail swishes erratically behind her as she doubles over, clutching her stomach, silent laughter shaking her shoulders. The other has blonde hair that looks like liquid gold, so handsome and charming when she runs her fingers through the flaxen locks, throwing her head back for gasps of air, tears streaming down her grinning face. A pocket watch hangs from her coat, swinging like a pendulum.
“H-holy shit, Ame,” the sharkgirl wheezes. Her stuttered laughter sounds like bombastic fireworks. Old and muted memories of forgotten festivals ripple in Ina’s mind. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Gura, if I knew, I’d tell you, dummy.” The blonde—Ame?—wipes her face with the back of her hand and looks around. She catches Ina’s eyes. Ice-blue meets charcoal gray.
“Hey!” Ame calls out, cupping a hand around her mouth. “Do y’know where we are? What’s your name?”
Ina stares. A wave crashes against the shore, and the ocean sprays her with flecks of foam. They fizzle and pop on her skin like firecrackers. She hears voices in the air, and for once, they’re not the ghosts living inside of her head.
“Ina,” she says. Her own voice sounds foreign to her ears when it stumbles from her lips. She forgot she had one.
“That’s a pretty name!” The shark—Gura—exclaims with a grin.
Ina’s face moves. It takes her a moment to realize she’s smiling. It’s a small smile, but one nonetheless.
She hasn’t done that in years.
4.
Gura’s question crashes into Ina’s body like a high tide.
“Do you get scared when you look at Ame?”
Ina looks over. Gura is kicking at the crawling foam coating their feet, holding her shoes in one hand and keeping her balance with the other.
Ina gives Gura a question of her own. “…Do you?”
The usual response would have been a roll of her eyes, a laugh, and then an “I asked you first!”
Instead, she answers with a very honest and very quiet “Sometimes.”
The sea yawns, filling the space between them. Ame’s shriek of laughter rides the ocean breeze, followed by the peppered yips of two excited puppies beside her. She sounds so far away, Ina thinks to herself, even though the detective is only a few meters ahead of them, just a shell’s throw away.
“Why’s that?” Ina asks.
“Because she reminds me of sunshine,” Gura says. “Golden rays just a hair away, liquid gold pebbling on water surfaces. So beautiful yet so temporary because the clouds come to take it away. And there might be a time where it won’t come back. And I’m scared of that. Because I….” Gura’s voice trails off, shushed by the ocean.
“You don’t want to lose her?” Ina finishes for her. Ina’s heart thuds inside of her chest. She’s never heard Gura talk like this before.
Gura doesn’t respond. Her silence says everything.
Eventually, Gura whispers, “I’m tired of losing things. And I…really, really don’t want to lose her. And you, too.”
And in the graveyard where Ina’s past self is buried, memories roll in their caskets. Faded visages of what were once her parents, her family, her sister. Night walks on the village shore. Blurry images of favorite meals. Explosions of festival lights. Shrine bells pealing in the distance. A white-robed priest holding the Book. The Book. The Book. The Ancient Ones. The Book. The Book of th—
A particularly strong wave crashes into their legs. Cold water sinks its teeth into Ina’s legs, soaking her skirt. Her thoughts scatter like critters, hiding in the crevices of her mind.
Ina takes a breath. She tastes the tang of sea salt in the back of her throat. When she looks up, she sees Ame’s figure against the horizon, leading Bubba and Mikki with their leashes, grinning brilliantly and wildly against the undoubtful blue of the sky.
Ina’s throat ties itself into a knot. Ame’s figure looks farther away. Just a little bit.
She reaches out for Gura’s hand. Their fingers find each other and seamlessly twine together, a practiced motion that now comes naturally.
“I don’t want to lose you two, either,” she quietly admits.
Gura squeezes her hand. She squeezes back.
5.
Sometimes, when Ame looks at Ina and Gura, she gets scared.
Not because they’re, in essence, creatures. Honestly, she thinks that part of them is cool—where else can you get first-hand accounts of a fallen city or the traditions of an island cult?
No, Ame gets scared because she knows she will one day leave them.
She’s on borrowed time, after all. There’s only so much she can do until the countless rewinds and fast-forwards catch up to her, the entropy of her actions finally pulling her apart. It’s only a matter of time until the Warden takes what She lent out because as beautiful and (somewhat) kind as She is, the Warden must also abide by Her own rules.
So every day, when she wakes up and she sees the murals Ina has painted on the once-beige walls of the estate or when she smells the coffee Gura is brewing from the kitchen, the pit in her stomach grows. Larger and larger it grows, all-consuming and fearful, a black tar pit of an abyss she stares into when she’s alone in bed at night, the maw of a creature that promises her the inevitability of her end. It tells her she is nothing but a speck on a dot on a smudge on a stain hurtling through the cosmos; it tells her nothing matters.
And yet, even in the grandest schemes of the universe, even in the all-knowing eyes of the unknown, a part of her has the audacity to believe her time with Gura and Ina matter to her.
How long has she waited for the estate to be filled with warmth? Ame feels like it might have been centuries. And maybe it was.
Gura and Ina—they’re precious. Far too precious and beautiful and lovely. Far too kind for turning Ame’s estate into a home. Their kindness and love scare Ame, but it also gently cradles her in its arms, peppering her face with feather kisses and mingled breaths, even in the vast coldness of the universe.
Maybe it’s selfish—no, it is selfish, Ame admits that much. But maybe that’s what love is. Just mutual selfishness. Giving and taking on a whim, small acts of something against the grand space of nothing. Folding neat little memories of Gura’s laugh or Ina’s smile into the boxed chamber of her heart and tucking it away, only to take it out in the privacy of her inevitability and admire just how beautiful it felt like to be in love.