Eysin: The Giggling Curtain | Ch. 23 - The Big Bloing
Solaris: Confectionary. Extwa cwispy Eysin gets a soft landing. Middle fingers exchanged, nerves knit, everybody eats. Let's finish this song on Moist Pastoral Romance. Shall we?
Back in the sea, every engine powers down at once.
Something truly spectacular, bigger than war, told the war to shut up.
No pursuit.
No freaky demon shit clashing with a ghost of Mars.
Just Cassius fussing about, then halting. Then staying in a hum (he’s probably saying bloing in the slowest of motions. Cuts himself short with a laugh. Then remains humming.
Others stare in awe at real clouds and a normal moon again.
Quiet.
No threat.
Someone whispers, “Unreal.”
Alexander pokes his foot against Bartel’s side on Scorpio’s deck to see if he’s alive.
Bartel groans, “Never… Letting anyone… Carjack my condensers again.”
“Arkion in there?” Alexander keeps walking, poking sacks with his boot. “Where is that little piece of shit?”
The water begins to rise.
“Something’s coming up!”
A gigantic pale pink cube surfaces — city-block size.
All the ships in the area lift smoothly into it.
No quake. Just… elevator.
Alexander slides down from Scorpio, runs into the vastness.
He can’t see the end of it.
Drops to his hands, sniffs the surface.
Touches the new floor.
Dares to give it a lick.
Sits back up.
Thinks.
Sweet. Sticky. A little like victory.
Then shouts like the next phase of war just started:
“IT’S MARSHMALLOW!”
Alexander licks again, slower this time.
Eyes narrow.
“Getting… warmer.”
He presses his whole palm down.
The surface yields, soft, sticky, clinging just a little too eagerly to his skin.
He pulls his hand back with a wet schlup.
Looks at the glistening pink strings stretching between fingers and floor.
Grins, “Marshmallow’s getting… friendly.”
Then—dead serious—yells at the pink expanse:
“YOU’RE NOT EVEN THE WEIRDEST THING THAT’S HAPPENED TODAY!”
The cube gives the tiniest, embarrassed bloing.
Alexander nods, satisfied.
“That’s what I thought.”
Eysin crashes like a comet, rolls over and collapses back first into the marshmallow.
“Oh sweet sugar!” The caramellization scent hits his nose.
He’s standing in a blackening crater.
Alexander investigates, hovers over her a second, then turns: “Bones seem fine. HEEEY—we need a little help here!”
Eysin’s face bleeds through the zerk’s mask, silver skin turned pale gold and bony, nervous system fried keeping her from dissolving into a rainbow. She’s stunned, clutching a purple glass vase, still chuckling.
A moment later Isolde kneels beside her, mixing pinks and yellows, muttering (fond but scolding):
“You put on too big of a show, you’ll pay for it like this.”
“Yeah, extwa cwispy,” Eysin chuckles, “would do it all over again, heh heh.”
*
Arkion hauls himself out of Scorpio’s side like a drowned cat—black rags streaming, salt and ink running down his face, eyes wild with the afterburn of whatever hell he just crawled through.
Whatever he just fell on—white, melting, slippery.
He sits up, one palm sinking with a wet schlorp.
Stares at the pink goo stretching between fingers and deck.
Mutters, “Of course it’s sticky.”
Cracks his neck once, twice—loud enough to make nearby crew flinch.
He sees people can walk on this new floor.
He jumps up and starts walking.
Then he spots Alexander cutting across the field like a man who’s already written the eulogy and is pissed he didn’t get to deliver it.
Alexander’s mouth opens—probably for something poetic and devastating—
but Arkion just lifts one hand, middle finger first, casual as breathing.
Alexander stops dead.
Then he mirrors it.
Two middle fingers, held up like trophies, locked eyes for one heartbeat.
Just the old salute: fuck yeah you’re still here, you absolute menace.
They pass each other without slowing, fingers still raised, grinning like idiots who’ve been pulling this shit since they were eight and blew up tree houses in their dumb Dago war.
“You heard she’s there?” Alexander calls back.
“Yeah,” Arkion answers without turning. “I heard her.”
*
Arkion finds Isolde with Eysin. He kneels at her head—cups her face.
Eysin opens her eyes, “your bells blew… Me away!”
Arkion chuckles, “yours were pretty too.”
Eysin tries to feel her head with her hands.
Just her head now.
Arkion instead of the Anvil.
He holds her hands.
Eysin tries to listen, head noisy… fingers trembling toward his chest. “Your heart…”
He takes her hand and places it over his heart,
“Still beating. I’m okay… But you—I did not see that coming.”
Eysin coughs, frail, chuckling through the discomfort, pats his cheek. “Oh, you saw me coming… Even backwards.”
He laughs—wet, relieved—but his eyes are storms. He leans in and hushes into her ear.
Isolde hums low, pressing marbles to Eysin’s chest. The tune catches—soft, familiar.
Arkion joins, whispering, not daring to scare the bird with his gravel voice:
“We gotchu, we gotchu
Dreaming the dream
Healing the nightmare seams…”
Isolde weaves in, melodic and high-pitched like a catholic babushka, yet still soothing:
“We gotchu, we gotchu
Awake and free
Sailing the cosmic seas.”
Eysin’s eyes flutter, pain easing.
“Yahu,” she whispers, slipping into rest.
Veils null and void, darlings.
The marsh is moist enough for everyone.
See you in the morning.
EPILOGUE:
Some SeaSons Later
Eysin stands at the mirror, fingers drifting through her hair, untangling and smoothing it back from her face with gentle care. The motion is slow—still tender after the long recovery—but her eyes are bright and alive. She catches his reflection behind her and smiles, small and private.
He answers with the same flicker—shared mischief, shared memory, shared presence.
She shoulders her pack, adjusts the straps. Pauses. Glances at the empty cup on the counter.
“What was in that drink?”
Arkion zips the last pocket of his own bag, slings it over one shoulder, and steps closer.
She bumps his shoulder with hers as they move toward the door—soft, careful, the way you bump someone you’re still afraid of breaking.
He bumps back, just as gentle, a quiet promise.
“A blend of Shakti and Shiva.”
She bumps his shoulder again, softer.
“Elaboration received.”
Outside, the midsummer air is thick with pine resin, distant frog song, and the faint smoke of a bonfire already crackling down the marsh path. Friends from Osel and Dago have claimed the biggest hummock: laughter drifting across the water like warm smoke, accordion trading verses with a battered guitar, someone roasting sausage, someone else losing spectacularly at cards. Every now and then a howl rises, lasts for a whole song, then fades back into the night.
The sky forgets to get dark. It just turns the colour of pale cherry mead and stays there, too stubborn to leave the party.
Eysin and Arkion slip away.
She walks ahead, barefoot, dress hem already dark with marsh water from the odd step submerged too deep.
“Careful,” he calls, pretending concern. “It’s extremely moist out here.”
She glances back, eyes wicked. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
He catches up, hands sliding to her hips. “I’ve been reliably informed the local ecosystem is very… welcoming?”
“Self-guiding tour?”
“Very hands-on.”
They snuggle on the roots of an old twisted pine, moss soft as a promise beneath them.
Eysin closes her eyes, listens to the frogs, the laughter, the soft pop of burning pine, the smell of pine needles and cider on their breath.
“Cold?”
“It’s kinda nice, actually,” she whispers, guiding his hands under the wet hem of her dress.
He laughs into her neck.
Fireflies drift between the trees like tiny lanterns looking for the party.
A cuckoo calls, late and drunk.
The reeds whisper secrets to the water.
From the bonfire someone shouts their names, half-teasing, half-invitation.
They don’t answer.
Somewhere down the path the accordion wheezes into another verse of the same song they danced to under a different moon.
A wolf howls once—long, lazy, content.
The marsh keeps giggling.
Yahu.
Awoo.
The softest, dampest, most alive kind of peace.
Stay tuned for extra act 4 for the nervous system repair aftermath & it’s b-side in the Kraken’s Anabath for e-pub etc release.