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Pomni made her way down the stairs, rubbing her thumb on her glove. She didn’t look up from her hands until she reached the bottom of the stairs. She was in the aquarium, with all the abstracted people swimming above her head, she had no idea how to figure out which one was which.
She noticed Kinger, sitting on one of the benches in the center of the room. She wasn’t sure what to do once she saw him, she felt safe being around him, but she didn’t know if Jax would be comfortable with Kinger seeing what Pomni was about to do. But she had been putting off coming down here for too long, she was too afraid to really let herself accept that Jax was gone, and there was no bringing him back.
So she walked over to Kinger. He didn’t even notice her until she sat down next to him. He didn’t have a mouth, but Pomni could tell he was smiling at her.
“Are you here to see Jax?” he asked. Pomni was a little surprised that he immediately knew what was going on with her, but after a little bit of thinking, she knew it made sense for him to pick up on it.
“Yeah, I am,” she answered.
“I haven’t seen you down here any, are you okay?” he said.
“I just didn’t think I was ready,” she kicked her feet, not touching the ground, still a little annoyed that the form Caine gave her was so short.
“You know that it wasn’t your fault Jax abstracted, right?” he put his floating hand on Pomni’s shoulder.
She didn’t know what to say to that. She knew deep down that it wasn’t her fault, it was never her fault, but it still felt that way on the surface. She had hugged him, she had seen inside his brain, she had seen exactly why he had pushed her away during the guns adventure. And she talked to him right before he abstracted, and when he started to walk away from her, she didn’t pull him back. Even though she knew it wasn’t her fault, it felt like it was.
“Pomni?” Kinger interrupted her thoughts.
“Yeah I know,” she finally responded.
“Do you want to be left alone with him?” he asked.
“If that’s okay,”
Kinger patted Pomni on the shoulder before he pulled himself up from the bench and walked up the stairs. Pomni didn’t get up from her seat until she was sure Kinger was in the main room and couldn’t hear her.
She stood up and walked over to the glass of the aquarium. She placed her hand on it and slid it open.
The abstracted people immediately swam away from her, clearly startled. All but one. Pomni didn’t know how she knew, but she could instantly tell that one was Jax. The way his eyes expanded when he looked at her, and the way he swam closer to her, like he somehow recognized her.
Pomni couldn’t help but shiver as she looked up at him. She knew that it was dark enough in the aquarium to keep the abstracted people mellow, but she still couldn’t shake a nervous feeling. It reminded her of seeing Kaufmo slam Ragatha against the wall just on her first day of being at the circus.
But she managed to calm herself down after a couple seconds. She held her hands together, intertwining her fingers. She shut her eyes and tried to focus her breathing and clear her mind. It was a little hard at first, she had almost forgotten how difficult it was to generate objects from just her mind. She and the other circus members hadn’t really needed to since Caine returned and started creating whatever they wanted. She knew she could’ve asked Caine to do this for her, but she felt it was something she needed to do on her own, and she wasn’t sure Jax would be very comfortable with Caine knowing all his business. So she took matters into her own hands.
She finally managed to see the object she wanted to create in her head. When she opened her eyes and looked down at the palm of her hand, she saw a bow sitting in it. A small, pink bow, just like the one she had seen on Ribbit’s neck when she had gone inside Jax’s mind.
She glanced up at Jax, who was still staring at her, wide eyed. She could sense he was happy to see her.
“Hi Jax,” Pomni started after taking a long breath, “How are you doing?... Probably not very good, you know, you’re abstracted and all. But I think I know how to make it feel a little better for you,” she extended her hand out into the aquarium, Jax moved a little closer to it, intrigued.
“You want it?” she asked. She could almost swear that he nodded, but she knew it was just her mind playing tricks on her.
Either way, she reached deeper into the aquarium and placed the bow on top of Jax’s head. His eyes drifted up to his head, and Pomni could tell the moment he noticed it, the way his eyes lit up with joy she had never seen from him.
She stepped away from the glass and slid it shut, even though it hurt her heart to do so. And she stood there, admiring Jax, and realizing how beautiful she really was.