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There was a rumor that a coffee shop in a secluded alley in Downtown was where one should go if one discarded a thing too precious to discard.
If one happened to, say, take the aetherial twist of bonds exposed on one’s chest, pull it off, and then discard it.
It was almost certain death to discard one’s bonds. They were firmly affixed to one’s chest for most people—a circular twist of aetherial fibers that seemingly bared the connections of one’s heart, where the fibers snaked away into the Lifestream just under the surface of the skin. The fibers could be pulled away from the skin with an ease which belied its importance to one’s person: the twist of delicate aetherial fibers could exist away from their counterpart soul for some amount of years, but there was the very real chance of one’s bonds getting accidentally and irreparably damaged—it is very difficult to see the bonds of others, especially strangers, and thus very easy for someone to accidentally sever the bonds.
And a soul whose bonds have been severed was never long for this world; if a soul’s deep, base connections to the world and to people and to the Lifestream were lost…
There was a rumor that a coffee shop in a secluded alley in Downtown was where one should go to get one’s bonds back.
He didn’t understand how this could be: although the soft aetherial glow was visible to others, actual fibers were only clearly visible to one’s strongest and firmest bonds. Even if the shadow of the bond from another life were present, one had to have reestablished the bond with the other soul in order to see the fibers clearly. While the soft glow was perceptible, it was easy for the glow to be lost in any sort of light and so he wondered how in the world anyone couldn’t have found it...
Still, he stood alone in an alleyway hoping desperately that the rumors were true.
If he was recognized—if it got out that he had been so deep in a mental darkness that he’d torn off and discarded his bonds out of despair—if his friends and family found out—
That he was still alive was a fact that he couldn’t count on for long.
He pulled his hood down further and made sure to zip his jacket all the way up to hide the absence of the glow on his chest.
It had taken him some time to track down just which secluded alley in Downtown had any form of coffee shop in it. And now he had found it: an unassuming sort of shop that was indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill coffee shop apart from its peculiar location. He peered in through the corner of the front window and found the shop nearly empty, occupied by similarly run-of-the-mill people on their computers or reading.
With an anxious twitch of his tail and a deep, trembling breath, he entered.
“Good afternoon,” said the Miqo’te barista without looking up from her task at the espresso machine. “Be right with you.”
He cast his eyes about for any sign that the rumor could be true, and with each passing moment, his dread and anxiety only grew. This was a normal coffee shop—almost aggressively so—and this realization brought on an almost hysterical despair. It was ludicrous to think he could have ever found his bonds again after hurling them into a canal...He was sure to die at any moment now, alone and consumed with regret for his foolish actions—
“What can I get for you?”
The barista’s voice startled him out of his spiraling thoughts, and he looked up to find her peering expectantly from the register.
“Er—cappuccino, please,” tumbled out of his mouth.
“Anything else?”
“N-no, that’s all.”
His hands were liable to drop his wallet if he tried to pay with cash, so he paid with a tap of his phone instead and quickly hurried off to find a seat in a corner with his hands stuffed firmly in his pockets. He surreptitiously examined the shop from his corner in an effort to find something—anything—that might indicate that he was in the right place. There was nothing of note that he could see from the inside; everything pointed to this being a normal, if slightly weathered, coffee shop. And with this distressing revelation he wanted nothing more than to cry there in that corner. The only thing holding him back was the overriding desire to not draw attention to himself.
A cappuccino in a small mug appeared on the table before him, followed by a slice of banana bread.
He looked up in confusion to find the barista standing there with a sort of half smile on her face. “The bread is on me—you look as though you’ve had a terrible day.” And before he could get a word out to thank her, she turned around and made her way back behind the counter.
The idea of putting anything solid in his stomach was wholly unappealing, but in an effort to be polite he nibbled at the bread; it was good but he still couldn’t bring himself to do much more than sip at the cappuccino and anxiously wait for the moment his soul was severed from its mortal existence.
“Was the bread not to your liking?” asked the barista a bell later.
“No, no, it’s delicious! I just—I just have no appetite at the moment…” The smile that had appeared on his face slowly faded as he trailed off.
The barista gave him a thin, fleeting smile before turning her head toward the counter. “It would’ve saved you the anxiety of waiting if you’d just asked when you came in. Put your mind at ease until I close.” She said this without looking at him and walked away with a swish of her tail without waiting for a response—he felt the hairs on his neck stand on end in the wake of her words, and his heart pounded in his chest.
Did she say what he thought she said?
He did his best to, as the barista put it, “put his mind at ease,” but where there had been awful anxiety about his impending death, there was now intense curiosity: just who was this barista, and how did she know why he was here? There wasn’t anything outwardly remarkable about her, and perhaps the only things of note were the subtle bags under her eyes and a few streaks of white in the hair she kept clipped up and out of her eyes. He couldn’t quite figure out how old she might be; she looked quite young despite the bags and white streaks, but there was also something inexplicably old about her. Or perhaps old was not quite right.
Timeless, perhaps.
He did his best to nibble the bread and distract himself with mindless games on his phone to keep himself from anxiously picking at his scales.
Time stretched on and one by one the patrons of the shop took their leave, until finally, just as the sun disappeared behind the city’s massive buildings, he and the barista were alone. She didn’t say anything after flipping the Open sign on the door to Closed and went about what he supposed was her usual closing routine.
The anxiety which had faded to tolerable levels was now back in full force, and he couldn’t bear the silence and the wait.
“Erm...would you like some help?” he offered hesitantly, scratching one of his horns.
She looked to him over her shoulder, eyebrows and ears raised in mild surprise. For a moment he worried that she was about to refuse, but her expression softened and she turned and disappeared into the back kitchen area. She returned with a spray bottle and a towel and held them out with a smile that looked almost amused.
“Clean the tables then, if you wish to help.”
He nodded gratefully before taking the spray bottle and towel. He worked at a restaurant once upon a time and his mind immediately went into autopilot; he was able to forget his anxieties for a time, but he quickly ran out of tables and chairs to clean and he found himself wanting for more things to do.
“Well, well, you’ve clearly done this before,” the barista chuckled. “I trust you also know how to mop?”
He nodded—perhaps a bit too eagerly—and overturned the chairs onto the tables whilst she retrieved the mop and bucket. This, too, kept the anxiety at bay, and in no time at all he had the entire customer area clean. The barista reappeared at his side as he stood and surveyed his work.
“Well done.”
He glanced down and found her peering up at him, and he bit back the urge to shy away from her piercing gaze.
“Now, the reason you’re here,” she said, a thin smile on her face.
He saw her hand move, and before he knew what was happening, she reached up and tapped gently on his sternum.
Right in the spot where his bonds ought to be.
“You want to get this back.”
His voice had all but shriveled in his throat, and it was all he could do to nod. Her head bobbed in a small, knowing nod and she turned to enter the kitchen, pausing at the door and glancing back at him over her shoulder. “Come with me,” she said simply before slipping past the door.
He didn’t need to be told twice—immediately he was following on her heels with his jaw and hands clenched. She led him through the kitchen and out the back into another alley, and after locking up, she continued down the alley to the main thoroughfare, now bustling with the activity of people that were recently off work. As they walked, he couldn’t keep from thinking on the sensation of her touch in the bare spot where his bonds should have been. How had she known? If she knew that, what else could she possibly know? Did she know that he was a desperate wretch who had nearly given up on his life?
They walked for half a malm in silence into the older part of the neighborhood, and eventually up into an apartment building that wasn’t exactly in disrepair and wasn’t exactly dirty, but had a dusty and antiquated feel common for this part of the city. Up the stairs they went—five flights of them—until she stopped at a door and unlocked it.
Was this where she lived?
She gave him a sidelong smile and stepped inside.
He followed and couldn’t stifle a soft gasp of surprise.
From the ceiling hung what must have been fifteen or twenty glass containers—open jars, spherical terrariums, even glass milk bottles—and each vessel twinkled softly, bathing the living room in a warm, gentle light. The room was filled with an almost surreal pulsing that felt almost as a heartbeat deep within, and he found himself transfixed in the entryway by the sight before him.
The barista shut the door and made her way to a jar hanging just beside the arm of a small couch. He watched numbly as she untied it, and after a short pause with her back to him and the jar in her arms, she turned and held it out.
The aetherial fibers that ought to have been affixed to his chest glowed gently in the jar.
He took the jar with trembling hands and tears welling up in his eyes. And before anything more could happen to the bonds he had so impulsively discarded, he tipped the bundle into his hand and pressed it to his chest. The aetherial twist settled into its rightful place and the relief was immediate; he exhaled long and slow as though letting out days worth of breath. And as though there was now more room in his chest, he felt himself filled with a deep, tearful gratitude.
“Thank you,” he choked, unable to stop the tears of relief from rolling down his cheeks. He hastily wiped them on his sleeve with a hoarse, “Sorry.”
She smiled and pulled a tissue from the box on an end table, holding it out to him. “No need to apologize. I’m just glad you found me in time.”
He wiped his tears and sniffed. “How did you…?”
She gestured at the couch for him to take a seat.
“Most evenings, I spend a few bells searching for stray bonds,” she said, taking a seat on the other end of the couch. “I hold onto them to keep them safe so I can return them should I manage to find their rightful souls.”
He glanced around at the glowing glass containers suspended from the ceiling and found that he could discern nothing distinct within. With his brow furrowed in confusion, he looked back to the barista.
“How can you see them well enough to find them?” he asked. And after a small, hesitant pause, he added, “And how did you know this one was mine?”
She smiled a slightly smug but still kind smile. “Very rarely, people are born with the gift of Sight. I’m one such person,” she said. “I can see bonds and souls clearly enough to find them and to know whether they match up with one another.” She paused, and the faint hint of smugness disappeared from her smile. “I like the color of yours.”
The words felt surreal in his head—what did souls look like?—but he found himself blushing nonetheless. “Th-thank you, I suppose?”
“You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want, but I can’t help but ask: what made you throw away such a beautiful thing?” she asked.
And though this person was a complete stranger, it was obvious she cared, so much so that she went to great lengths to rescue people’s discarded bonds. He somehow felt at ease in her presence—almost strangely so, as though they had known each other for far longer than five bells—and soon the words were spilling out of his mouth. More tears were shed and more tissues offered, and though he was making a fool of himself by blithering about his woes, she listened patiently. And, when his tears and anxieties were spent, he found himself asking about her—she who hunted for stray bonds and tried to reunite them with their souls.
She seemed oddly startled by his interest. Evidently most people were so embarrassed that they hurried away after thanking her, and the more he talked with her the more he thought that to be quite a pity. She seemed somewhat aloof at first glance but her droll sense of humor was unexpectedly enjoyable. Also unexpected was the fact that she’d been doing this for many years now out of a deep instinct to “help,” and an even deeper instinct to help as a way of atoning for some indistinct sin that her mind had likely concocted after a stint in the military as a field medic. She never took payment for her services even though his humble opinion was that he and many others owed her their lives; it would have been so easy to turn all this into a way to extort people and he was in awe of the purity of her mission.
Eventually, once all his questions about her Sight and souls and bonds were exhausted, their conversation turned to other things—to life experiences and hobbies and food—
It wasn’t until bells later after dinner and further conversation that he made his way home with a smile on his face.
~
He was so taken by her and her efforts and so utterly grateful for the life she had gifted back to him that moons later, he was regularly helping her in her work to find stray bonds and their people. He didn’t have the Sight, of course, but he found he was able to see bonds just a bit more clearly if she was near.
Sometimes helping meant rifling through garbage or debris with her, or acting as a visual deterrent in the bad parts of town with his imposing, pointy body, or even minding the coffee shop for a bell or two whilst she took people to her apartment to retrieve their bonds.
He liked helping. It felt natural and good to be doing—well, good—for people who were down on their luck and desperate, and the longer he helped the more he understood why she felt no need to ask for payment. The smiles of utter relief of those people who were reunited with their bonds—in this bleak world of theirs, the sight of those grateful, relieved smiles was enough. And her own smile—the thin one that always seemed amused by something or other…
He surprisingly looked forward to that, too.
One weekend a few moons later, helping meant going on a short camping trip. A Lalafell had arrived at the shop at the end of the week, desperately trying to find anyone who could help his friend. Said friend had apparently discarded his bonds in the nature reserve some sixty malms away, but was still alive and so it meant the bonds were still intact.
And this was how he found himself hiking into the woods with camping gear strapped to his back.
“You must do this often,” he said on the eighth malm of their hike, carefully doing his best to keep his breaths quiet and even. She seemed none the worse for wear despite having a pack that was nearly the same weight as his on her far smaller frame.
“Often enough,” she chuckled. “You’re not getting tired, are you?”
“Not even a little bit.”
She hummed in amusement and he grinned.
Finally, after a total of sixteen malms, they arrived at the clearing where the Lalafell said his friend had camped. While he was actually quite tired—it had been years since he hiked like this—it seemed she was perfectly fine and immediately began casting her eyes about the area in search of the discarded bonds. He put his pack down and rolled his shoulders to loosen them whilst she peered off into the distance. A glance in that direction revealed nothing of note—he couldn’t see anything other than the surrounding trees and vegetation.
“It’s not in the immediate vicinity,” she concluded after a few minutes.
“Good time for a snack, then!” he said, taking a seat on a convenient log and opening his pack to retrieve a bag of jerky.
He offered her some, which she took gratefully before sitting beside him on the log. They ate in a comfortable silence; it was nice to be outside the confines of the oftentimes suffocating city and he could tell she felt this too, and so they sat here, eating and breathing in the nature around them.
“Thank you for inviting me out here,” he said once he finished his piece of jerky.
“We’re here to work, not have a vacation,” she said with a laugh, and he could just see the wry smile on her face. “Does this look like the kind of place one takes vacations in?”
“Certainly not. Look at all the dirt around us.”
They both snickered without looking at each other.
“I’m glad for the help,” she said after a moment. “No one has ever offered before...You’re an odd one, but you have my thanks.”
He scratched the side of a horn in embarrassment and turned away lest she notice the tinge in his face.
“It seemed like the thing to do.”
She said nothing for a few silent moments before getting to her feet and shouldering her pack once more. “Off we go, then. The stream is nearby...we can follow it and see if it caught on anything.”
It was only another ten minutes of hiking until they reached the stream, a relatively slow and shallow one with many rocks and fallen trees and branches embedded and protruding from the stream bed. He supposed this was why the Lalafell’s friend was still alive—the water wasn’t fast enough to immediately destroy the bonds, especially if they managed to get caught in a dead spot.
She scanned the vicinity with a furrow in her brow. “Well, it doesn’t seem to be here...Let’s get walking.”
They followed the stream down for an increasingly worrisome half bell. The terrain alongside the stream was growing more and more difficult, and it wouldn’t be long until travel along the stream would be too cumbersome on foot. The dark thought that the bonds had already broken slowly began creeping in, and he had to shake the thought from his head. It was no use thinking about that now.
“I see it!”
She scrambled over a small ridge and pointed at a pile of branches in the water, and when he concentrated, he could see the faint glow of the bonds caught on the end of a branch protruding into the stream. Here there was no real stream bank—the land rose up on either side of the stream, such that it was a nearly four-fulm vertical drop to the water. Even he wouldn’t be long enough to reach it without getting into the stream…
He’d just opened his mouth to ask her opinion on the situation when she suddenly raised a hand and squeaked in dismay. “It’s coming loose, if we don’t get it now—” she began, but that was all he needed to hear and without a word he hurriedly waded into the stream, hissing at the cold but pressing on toward the bonds.
The water was just past his knees by the tangle of branches holding the bonds, and he waded slowly and carefully as he approached so as not to dislodge them. Just before he got within reach, he realized he had nothing to put the bonds in—the jar was with her back on land. He could hold it in his hands, but that was precarious as he could drop it or crush it as he waded back, but there was no time to turn back for the jar. But the thought of the jar reminded him of another jar-like item he did have within reach: his water bottle, a wide-mouthed one which he carefully pulled out of his backpack and equally carefully emptied into the stream so as not to disturb the current by the bonds.
Slowly he approached with the now-empty water bottle in hand, holding his breath as he very carefully scooped the bonds into it. He only allowed himself to breathe out in relief once the bottle’s lid was firmly screwed on, and once it was he turned around and held the bottle up with a grin.
“I got it! I—AHHH!”
The rocks he’d been standing on shifted as he turned—he sputtered in dismay as he stumbled backward and lost his balance, and with a loud splash he found himself sitting in the middle of the stream and soaked completely through. His one solace was that reflex had kept his fingers tightly clamped around the water bottle and its delicate cargo, and with a grimace he got to his feet and began wading back to the stream bank.
“Well done,” she said once he was back on dry land. “You’re soaked now, though...”
“Ugh...” He shook water from his arms, not that it helped all that much. “Should we just go back home?”
“Let’s get back to the campsite first and see how your things fared after your little trip into the water.”
Most of his things had actually fared rather well despite getting dunked into the stream. His backpack had kept most of the water out, which was a great relief; if his extra clothes had gotten wet too, he would’ve been miserable whether they hiked the sixteen malms back to the car or camped for the night. The one thing that didn’t make it out of the water safely, however, was his sleeping bag. It was quite an old one whose bag he’d lost and hadn’t thought to stuff into a dry bag as it was the dry part of the year—he hadn’t exactly expected to give his things a bath in the stream.
“My sleeping bag is soaked,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe I can wring it out and it won’t be too damp…”
An amused laugh drifted through the air.
“No need to sleep in a damp bag. Mine should be big enough to cover the both of us if I unzip it.”
His face was suddenly burning and he hastily turned away.
“N-no need, I’ll be just fine for a night,” he sputtered.
“You may be fine, but you will certainly not be comfortable,” she said, a hint of a laugh on her voice. “I don’t want you to get sick and then I have to drag your arse back sixteen malms.”
“Ah—right, right…”
While he initially wanted for something to do to keep his mind off the idea, it turned out that gathering firewood by himself whilst she cleaned up the fire ring left by previous backpackers did nothing to distract him. Neither did starting the fire with the armful of fallen sticks and branches he’d gathered, nor the idle talk of how his (boring) day job was going or of interesting customers she met at the cafe during the day, nor the dodo tacos she cooked with the inexplicable spread of taco supplies she produced from her pack. Nothing could distract him from the fact that to share the unzipped sleeping bag he would need to be close and she might hear the thunderous beating in his chest.
Nothing could distract him from the realization of that plain fact which he had been obstinately side-eyeing for moons now but could no longer mentally ignore:
His heart yearned for her.
But he had only known her a short while and he couldn’t be certain that his feelings weren’t simply his mind very unhelpfully reinterpreting the deep gratitude he felt after she’d saved his life. It would probably be for the best if he tried to keep it out of mind as best he could—a task which proved impossible with the impending setting of the sun.
“I’ll really be fine, you should keep yourself warm,” he tried to tell her as she unrolled her sleeping bag in her tent in the quickly waning light.
She paused and gave him an unimpressed glance, her ears turned back slightly. “If I smell bad or am otherwise unpleasant, just say it.”
“N-no, that’s not it at all!” he said quickly.
“If you truly don’t want to share, I won’t force you,” she said, and he may have been imagining it but she sounded somewhat dispirited. “You’re going to be cold, though.”
He bit the inside of his lip. He didn’t know what to do—
—he didn’t know what to do—
But finally, he threw caution to the wind.
“All right, then,” he finally said.
And as he pulled his shoes off and clambered as carefully as he could into her tent, it felt as though his entire body was blushing and he silently thanked the heavens that the tiny electric lantern illuminating the tent was far too blue to show it. Once he was settled, she reached over him to zip up the tent flap and his heart nearly leapt out of his throat when her arm brushed his knee, and again when she sat back and pulled the unzipped sleeping bag over his legs. She lay down and pulled her side of the sleeping-bag-turned-blanket up to cover her shoulders, but peered up at him questioningly when he didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied hastily, and to show that indeed nothing was wrong, he carefully lay down himself. The tent was meant for two but he was so tall and his shoulders so broad that he had to scoot himself against the outer wall of the tent to keep himself from pressing against her.
Her amusement was evident as he pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin with his horns peeking over the top.
“Good night,” she said, and there was a silent laugh on her lips. And with a crinkle in her eyes, she turned the lantern off and the darkness of the night descended upon them.
There was the brief rustle of the sleeping bag as she settled in before the silence of the night set in. He dared not move for fear of his body trembling uncontrollably. It was silly to be so worked up—it was silly to agonize over it overnight—he really ought to just say something and get it over with, whether or not she felt the same—
In spite of the inescapable, spiraling thoughts clamoring in his mind, the promise of the eventual morning and an end to the silly agonizing slowly lulled him to sleep.
~
a web of delicate lines crisscrossed above and below and through the space between, stretching out from nothing and into everything and from everything and into nothing, from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning
and motes of color, the greens and blues of emotion and existence and everything in between, danced between the lines joining the everything and the nothing
the lines were innumerable but some were more substantial than the others which were as mere suggestions
and one such line glowed brightly, its suggestion stronger
so much so that it drew all attention
a line whose suggestion had been there the entire time, but now was calling out and crying out and rejoicing in the joy of acknowledgment, in the joy of discovery, in the joy of rediscovery
and he followed it
slowly at first but it called and he responded
he responded
and he followed
and above and below and in the space between, old new experiences and new old ones spiraled around it,
beautiful ones, terrifying ones,
and joy and happiness and suffering and pain,
and more than once the world fractured
and more than once the world and all reflections and replicas and facets of it was brought to its knees
sometimes by his hand
and other times by hers
the sky fell
the beasts came
time split
and by his hand and by her hand the sky was made whole,
the beasts vanquished,
time brought together
all through one constant in the myriad of lines pulling their lives along
their line shone through it all
and it pulled and called
and sometimes the line was not answered
and sometimes the line was soaked with blood
but when they answered and when they met
the line showed them all that was
showed them all that had been
showed them all since the time they were mere unmet souls walking past through the myriad of lines
showed them all that came from the moment their eyes met through the masks
showed them all that came the moment the bond was made all those eternities ago
and he slowly woke
and she slowly woke.
There in that tent under the unzipped sleeping bag, they woke with a glowing aetherial line wrapped around their clasped hands.
They woke and their eyes met with the recognition of a thousand thousand eternities—
And they smiled.