Chương 22: i…miss my mom

The suns started to set in the late afternoon. The yellow one went first. The blue one held on longer. The light went the orange-blue color it had gone last night and then it went a deeper blue and then it went black and the stars came out. The stars were beautiful.

The stars were truly fucking beautiful, because they were not the right stars, but the system, for whatever reason—possibly because the system was generated by something trained on millions of photographs of night skies and could not help itself—had rendered them with too much love. There were too many of them. They were too clear. There were constellations she did not recognize that had been arranged with the unmistakable intention of looking pretty, and it worked way too well.

There was a faint cloudy band across the sky that was this world's version of the Milky Way. There was a small bright cluster near the eastern horizon that pulsed slightly. There were two moons coming up, one pale and one slightly pink, which was apparently the rule. She hated that it was pretty.

She hated that the system, this fucking AI slop garbage system, had bothered to make the night sky beautiful, because the night sky was beautiful and she was looking at it and she was, against her will, being made to feel something.

She was lying on her back in the straw and Ben was lying on his back next to her and the caravan had stopped for the night and they were sharing the wagon as their bed and a small fire was burning somewhere outside the wagon where the merchants were sitting around and laughing about something. Lefant was somewhere out there too. Eating. Or sleeping. Whatever Lefants did.

"It's pretty," Ben said quietly.

"Yeah."

"It's really fucking pretty."

"Yeah."

"That's annoying."

"It's so annoying."

"I want to like it less than I do."

"Same." A pause. The fire popped outside.

"Ben."

"Yeah."

"What do you miss the most? From Earth." He thought about it. He thought about it for longer than she had expected him to. He was a guy with a quick answer to most things and the not-having-a-quick-answer was its own data point. She let him think.

"My friends, I guess," he said.

"A bit. But like…I didn't really see them. I'd see them once a month if I was good. My parents either. I'd call my mom on Sundays sometimes. Sometimes I wouldn't. So like. I know I'm going to miss them eventually, but right now it just all feels…surreal. It doesn't feel like I'm not going home. It feels like I'm just on a long trip."

"Yeah."

"What about you?" She looked at the stars. He already knew. She knew he knew because she had said it in the bath and he had mind reading powers, possibly, or because he had been around her for two days, or because it had been in the air the whole time, but he had asked anyway, which was the move. He had asked anyway.

"My…mom."

"Yeah."

"My plushies."

"Right."

"My friends. In that order."

"Yeah." A pause.

"Did your mom know," he said.

"Like, uh… about the OnlyFans." This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it It came out quietly. She felt her shoulders go up about a half inch. She felt the small reflexive shame that always came up when this topic did, which was its own thing, which lived in her body like an alarm system. She had not told a lot of people. She had told Ben, in the inn, after one ale, in a moment of weird trust she could not fully account for. Her mom knew.

Her mom was the only family member who knew. Her friends knew, two of them. The rest of the world she had compartmentalized like a Tetris board. But Ben had asked it gently. Ben had been chill about most things.

"Yeah. She knew."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"That's a hard talk."

"Well. It was a hard talk."

"How'd it go?" She breathed.

"She didn't shame me. She didn't even, like, get mad. She just got quiet. She made tea. The no name yellow brand. You know. Well you probably don't but. She sat at the kitchen table with me and she let me explain, and she nodded a lot, and when I was done she said okay, I love you, we'll figure it out. And then she just kept loving me. She didn't bring it up again. She didn't make me feel weird at Thanksgiving. She didn't, like, look at my chest weird or anything. She was just my mom."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

"That's a good mom."

"Yeah. She is." A pause.

"There was this one time," she said. She did not know why she was telling him this. She was telling him this. She was going to tell him this and figure out why later.

"I came home from class and the door was open a little. The bathroom door. And my mom was sitting on the edge of the tub. Crying. Just sitting there, fully dressed, crying. And I freaked out. I was like, oh my god, she found out something, she—I don't know—she's ashamed, she—and I started crying too, because she was crying, and I went in and I sat down next to her and I started saying I'm sorry, mom, I'm sorry, I can stop, I can figure something else out, I'm sorry, and she looked at me like I had…

three heads or like fucking cancer on the three heads."

"…oh."

"Yeah. Well she wasn't crying about me."

"What—""She was crying because she felt like she failed me. Because she didn't make enough money. Because she couldn't pay for the engineering school I wanted. Because I had to do this to pay tuition. She was ashamed of herself. Not me."

"…oh."

"And I just sat there next to her on the edge of the tub for like an hour. And we cried about completely different things at completely the same time. And then we ordered pizza. From Mike's pizza. Uh. It's a place we liked. With my OnlyFans money."

"…yeah."

"Yeah."

"Damn."

"Yeah." He didn't say anything. He let the silence sit. The fire popped outside. Lefant made a small noise from wherever Lefant was. The two moons were both up now, the pale one and the pink one, and they were sitting in the sky at slightly different angles because, urgh. Fuck off. They just were there. And they looked pretty.

"That was weird of me to say," she said.

"What."

"That was—I'm sorry. That was…I don't even know why I said that. I'm just venting. Sorry. I'll—" He reached over. He didn't make a thing of it. He just reached over in the straw and touched the back of her hand for a second. His hand was warm. He left it there for maybe two seconds and then he took it back.

"It's fine, Maddy. It's really fine."

"…yeah."

"It's good. It's good that you said it."

"…yeah."

"…" He looked up at the stars.

"I think it's cool," he said. Quietly.

"What you do. Like—not the riding-dildos-in-front-of-discord-mods part. That part can go. It's like, logistics. But, like. You're doing all this. School. The stream. The fucking… weird ass engineer classes I can't pronounce. You wanted to be an engineer and you went and figured out how to be one when the money wasn't there. That's like…actually a thing. That's an actual thing about you."

"…it's not even—I don't even know if it's my dream to be an engineer. I just like…solving things."

"Whatever. Yeah. Whatever your thing is. You're doing it."

"…"

"I never had to do that."

"…yeah?"

"Like. My parents paid for everything. I get a fucking check every month. I just kind of…went to school. I wrote essays. I read books. I had hobbies, which Anna said I didn't have, but I had them. I just wanted to write a story people would like. And I never had to fight for it. Like, ever. Money was never a thing. Time was never a thing. The hardest thing I've ever had to do was, like, finish a thesis on time."

"…"

"So like. I think what you do is cool. Maybe inspiring. I don't know if I get to say inspiring. That feels like a stretch. But. Yeah. That's what I think." She looked at the two moons for a bit.

"…Thanks. Ben."

"Yeah."

"…"

"Yeah." The fire popped. She blinked at the stars for a while. The talisman pulsed once against her clavicle, lightly, like it was saying don't get too soft, we have items to acquire. She told the talisman to shut up.

"Hey," she said, after another minute.

"Yeah."

"We should take watch."

"…yeah."

"Like for real."

"For real."

"Because the system might ambush us during the night because nights are spookier," she said.

"Or it might ambush us during the day because days are more unpredictable. I don't know what the system thinks is cooler."

"Honestly, day is more unpredictable. As a beat."

"Right?"

"Yeah. Night ambush is the cliché. The system might subvert and go day."

"The system isn't smart enough to subvert."

"…maybe."

"It's not."

"…okay. Night."

"Probably."

"But just in case."

"Just in case."

"I'll go first."

"Maddy."

"What."

"Last time I said that I fell asleep."

"I'm not you."

"…fair."

"I'm going to actually do it."

"Okay."

"And you're going to actually sleep."

"Okay."

"And if anything comes, I'll wake you up."

"Okay." He turned on his side. She sat up against the front of the wagon with Bolt in her lap and the Monster Tube uncorked beside her, just in case, watching the fire flicker outside through the canvas opening, watching the merchants slowly turn in for the night, watching the two moons drift across the sky at angles that did not match. Lefant snored somewhere. Lefant snored a small soft snore. She loved Lefant. She kept watch.