Kano & Cabbage

　　Kano opened his eyes. He had the impression that he was still sleeping, despite how vivid the dream was. Cabbage hovered above him, though his wings were folded and he appeared to be sitting.

　　"Hey!"

　　The voice rang as clearly in Kano`s mind as Quan`s had, but he knew it came from the cat-owl, even though Cabbage`s mouth was still, and he didn`t have the right sort of lips to speak words anyway.

　　"What&?"

　　Kano blinked away the crumbs of sleep. Then it hit him - Cabbage was there, alive! But wasn`t this a dream? Did it even matter?

　　"Cabbage!" he cried, sprinting towards him, though he swore he`d been laying on his back.

　　"Stop that," Cabbage said, hopping out of the half-human`s path. Then, with no further exposition, he turned and kicked off, taking flight in a wind that seemed not to exist.

　　"Wait! Where are you-"

　　"Hurry up," Cabbage`s voice echoed, no farther than it was, despite his growing distance.

　　"But I can`t-"

　　Before he could comprehend what was happening, Kano launched into the air, catapulted by some unseen force. He screamed and flailed at first, but after being suspended for long enough without crashing into anything, he began to adjust to the feeling of flight, and his screams of terror turned to delighted laughs. As he found control over his limbs, he learned to glide, to flap, to hover and to bound, taking to the air like a fish to water. Before long, he caught up to the cat-owl.

　　"Cabbage, look! This is amazing-"

　　But his thoughts were cut short as a vast portal opened up before them, swallowing them whole.

　　*******

　　The portal spit them out unceremoniously, and Kano landed with a harsh, painful thud on the other side, wisps of pink and blue mist still clinging to his form like smoke trailing from the crushed butt of a cigarette. He stood up shakily, powering through the vertigo.

　　"Oh my god&"

　　Before him sprawled an endless, mind-bending expanse of sound and color, scent and texture, and senses he didn`t even have. The more he struggled to understand it, the more incomprehensible it became. He felt the borders of his mind cracking, his psychic matter seeping into the ether. His body was disappearing, dispersing like fine grains of sand on a blustering wind-

　　"Stop that."

　　Cabbage`s stern thought-voice snapped him out of it. The cat-owl appeared just before him, a focal point for his eyes to grasp, rooting him to whatever existence he retained in whatever body he occupied.

　　"Cabbage&" His lips tingled, numb, as if waking from death itself. "Where are we?"

　　"The Dream," Cabbage said curtly. Kano felt a twinge of recognition, a flicker of a memory, perhaps from a class he`d slept through or a book he sort-of read, but it wasn`t enough to make it make sense. Cabbage sighed heavily.

　　"Follow me," Cabbage said, then turned and waddled away. The ground shifted into something recognizable in the cat-owl`s wake, though it flickered in and out of different sorts of paths: cobbled, dirt, beaten, wild, sandy, rainbow, glass. Kano took a few hesitant steps after him, then stopped in his tracks as Cabbage`s head rotated owlishly, eyes wide and serious, though they were always sort of wide and serious.

　　"Don`t look."

　　"Don`t look at what-?"

　　"Anything," Cabbage said, feathers ruffling. Then, just as abruptly, he teetered off. Kano followed, baffled, but did his best to obey.

　　Rorri

　　Rorri spent the morning of the Spring Equinox on the chamber pot as Adar gathered all they would need for their booth at the Gala. Adar promised Rorri it wouldn`t be as cheap and trashy as he was imagining it, but Rorri was still dubious, if only because he didn`t trust Adar to know cheap and trashy` when he saw it. But he couldn`t do anything about it, anyway. So he spent the morning evacuating his bowels - not by choice, but necessity, for his anxiety would hear no argument to the contrary, even as it simultaneously alerted him that they would be late because of it, compounding upon the stress in his intestines - but once he had no more to give, he groped his way back to his home from their alley`s shared outhouse, still gurgling and covered in a thin film of sweat. He stubbornly refused to let Adar help him into his fancy new clothes, despite his friend`s reasonable protests (it wasn`t as if he`d never done it before, and what if he stumbled and got it dirty or put it on backwards?), but Adar relented, and Rorri dressed himself behind his own closed door.Stolen story; please report.

　　He didn`t tell Adar why he wanted to dress himself so badly, nor did he explain what took him so long. He accidentally pricked his finger on the Snow`s thorn as he retrieved it from under his bed, later blaming the small spot of blood on a splinter from their shabby wooden floors (he told Adar not to fuss, he`d yanked it out already). He had nothing with which he could safely de-thorn the stem, so he chose to bite the head off entirely and spit it out without chewing, stowing the flower deep inside his pocket, over where his leash-wielding hand hovered to obscure the suspicious lump. It was only Adar from whom he had to keep the Snow secret. Once the flower left the stem, it would only remain potent for so long - long enough, Rorri estimated, to last the length of the carriage ride - and when Adar stepped out to unload the booth, Rorri traded Poppy`s leash to his other hand and popped the flower into his mouth, giving himself no window to dither. He had to be clear and focused for the event, he told himself. And besides, didn`t it seem divinely ordained that Nico would appear with such a gift, without him ever asking?

　　The flower`s nausea and sickly sheen was easily explained away. He was at the Palace! For an art show! He was so nervous! Poppy persistently pawed at his leg and meowed, as if to say he noticed something amiss, but the poor cat could do nothing about it.

　　As the Snow set in, and Rorri waited for Adar to come retrieve him from the carriage, the void swam with the multitudes unloading on the Palace grounds. The Palace was built atop the river that led into the waterfall, nearly flush with the edge of the Plateau, and the waterfall`s hiss thrashed in his ears, causing the void`s hallucinations to constantly vibrate just enough to provoke a sense of motion sickness. The crowd`s chattering manifested as a vast ocean, with the steady waves one might find just preceding a storm. Isolated bits of birdsong conjured fishes attempting to fly. All that rooted him to the world was Poppy kneading his thigh, his soothing, painful little pinpricks. He fidgeted with the Rosari seal he`d kept from their invitation to the manor, seeking the magpie in its smooth, waxy surface.

　　"So-"

　　"Oh, dear god!" Rorri jumped, clutching his chest, sending Poppy off his lap with an agitated chirp. Thankfully, he had a firm grip on the leash.

　　"Sorry," Adar said with genuine contrition, though Rorri sensed a dab of irritation underneath. "The booth is set up. Just have to put out your paintings."

　　"Mmhm," Rorri murmured absently, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

　　"I had another thought," Adar said. "About the thing that happens, you know, with your eyes and the trees and all that&"

　　Rorri`s eyelashes scraped the inside of his blindfold.

　　"I noticed that it seems to happen in crowds," Adar continued. "That`s the only common factor I can think of between that tavern and the market. Maybe something about the noise triggers it. If I`d thought about it sooner, we probably could have prepared better, but it`s too late now. It`s bound to be noisy and crowded in the Palace. I figure, if it happens, just keep your blindfold on and don`t freak out."

　　"W-wonderful advice. Never would have thought of it m-myself."

　　"Yes, well, you don`t have to be a dick about it."

　　"I`m not w-worried," Rorri said, foot bouncing rapidly enough to wobble the carriage.

　　"...Clearly."

　　"I think I understand it s-some, now," Rorri continued, chewing his cheeks. "The lights are p-people, and birds and cats and plants and things, I guess, and the t-trees aren`t real because they disappear when I touch them, like illusions, so if it happens I can h-happily walk through the trees and try not to touch the lights except P-Poppy, and you, I guess, if I have to, and I still can`t s-see tables or, you know, other things - objects, I guess - so it`s n-not like I can just go around n-normally or anything-"

　　"Rorri," Adar interrupted sternly, hushed. Rorri stopped.

　　"W-what?"

　　"You`re obviously on something." Adar`s voice darkened the whole ocean inside Rorri`s mind. "I don`t know how you managed that, but I suppose it was only a matter of time, wasn`t it?"

　　"I`m s-sorry," Rorri said. "Nico saw me at the m-market and gave it to me as a present - he said h-hello, by the way, I forgot to mention that-"

　　"Anything else you forgot to mention`?"

　　Rorri`s face flushed hot. He`d never heard such disdain in his friend`s voice, at least not directed at him. Adar was always so forgiving&

　　"No," he mumbled.

　　A long silence passed. He felt Adar`s disappointment viscerally, as if it had been mixed into paint and slathered all over his body. The ocean, its waves and the fishes trying to fly all receded into the void, smothered by his own purple-red shame, like a fresh bruise behind his eyes. For a moment, it muted the sounds outside, so all he could hear was his own racing thoughts: He shouldn`t have done it. He knew better. The Ruiner of Everything strikes again. Like Adar said, it was only a matter of time.

　　"Just don`t turn it into a habit, please."

　　"I won`t," Rorri said. "Don`t think I could if I w-wanted to."

　　"Well, I hope you don`t want to." Adar`s tenor softened. "Can you still do the Gala?"

　　"Of course," Rorri chirped.

　　"Mau?"

　　"It`ll just be a few hours, anyway," Adar said. "If you don`t have anything else on you, I`m sure it will be fine. Just don`t run into the crowd swinging your fists or anything weird like that."

　　Rorri chortled. "Believe me, if I`m r-running, it won`t be into the crowd."

　　"Let`s just swear off running altogether, then," Adar said. "I`m sure there`s rules against that in the Palace, anyway. But let`s get on with it. I`m really looking forward to that light supper."