It’s been a month since Rivin returned home.

  His wounds had closed; his days now filled with soot, sweat, and salvaged scrap — a miner again, if only to keep them fed.

  He felt older, yet stagnant — still kicking up dust from a pothole on the same beaten down road to nowhere.

  Some days he dreamed of the sun, the one in the pits of the Earth, the echo of a deity he had never even let himself imagine.

  He couldn’t remember what warm felt like, but he kept it alive in copper irises and snarky morning intrusions.

  He’d so quickly become lost in her again. Filthy, fast, peculiar Roach — The strange and devilish girl who so rarely wore shoes even when the landscape was all glass and sharp.

  He followed her like moths or other insects with wings, chasing innocence like fleeting light. He didn’t want her to go again, because when she did, all the colour went too and lately, it was becoming more and more difficult for Rivin to part the grey.

  He’s finding his strength again but there’s a hollow in his chest filling up with fungus and grief and he’s not sure if it’s going to bloom or die.

  He has to keep his head on straight. His foot one step in front of the other. He can’t afford to be weak. He can’t afford to be innocent.

  She challenges him with a smile, a dare, he can’t keep biting.

  Time to grow up.

  It all happens on the day that he’s busiest, when he finally has the sense to return to ritual over entertainment. When the rations get low enough and the bellies start rumbling, Rivin sets about being the provider once more.

  He’s mostly healed, mostly able to do what he could before. Everything is back in its place save the gape in his heart where a little girl once lay — she still visits in his dreams, blowing kisses of blood and sharing sticky secrets that leach his soul of tenderness.

  Roach doesn’t mind jamming her toes into the cavity, wrestling away the bitterness.

  “I still think she hasn’t forgiven me over the whole surveillance fiasco. She’s very private. Lesson learned.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find her, Roach,” Ricket offers.

  “Still looking for that gross little cat?” Slink taunts.

  “What?” Rivin glances up, thin lipped. Three sets of eyes stare back at him blankly. “Oh, yes. The cat.”

  The drone of responsibility drowns out everything else. He’d almost forgotten where he was. Where he needs to be.

  He’s meeting with Matteo in the Spine later, potentially trading some tinker and scrap for half a roast something. He needs to remember to bring the new schematics — something to entice the old bastard into something more lucrative than burnt game.

  Roach gasps, offended. “Insolence so openly in the courtroom.”

  Rivin doesn’t look up from the ledger he pawing over. A deep line has carved itself between his brows, and it doesn’t ease, even when he presses his fingers hard against it.

  The last of the rations cards are gone. Salt still clings to the back of his throat, sharp as the mines. Blood — his own — tastes better. But he can’t go back to the Flossa.

  Not yet.

  Not again.

  He’d promised her.

  He’d promised her he’d find another way to fight.

  His back is hurting, but what’s new? Even Roach is becoming old news — fading into the background like a crack he’ll patch when he gets to it.

  “This isn’t your courtroom— Rivin, does she just live here now? Because I feel like there should have been a vote—” Slink begins, throwing his hands up.

  “Hey listen, I feel like we’re hot on her stump.” Roach clicks her thumbs for emphasis. “Today’s the day, Riv.”

  “Slink— what are these numbers? Are you soft in the head?”

  Slink shrugs.

  “Rivin, the black mold in the pit is getting real bad,” Chip informs them as he enters the room, ducking under the low-hanging doorway.

  “I thought you handled that?”

  “Slink was supposed to.”

  “I was on itinerary!”

  “Ricket then—”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  Rivin groans. “Fine. Fine. I’ll sort it out.”

  “But Riv—” Grey eyes flicker towards copper, where the girl rocks on the soles of her feet, bright eyes pleading but expression too proud to match.

  “Duty calls, brat.” He shrugs, but he feels the flicker of guilt curl hot in his stomach.

  He’s been helping her search for days now. For as long as he could stomach the distraction. He’d left it too long, let it all pile up in favor of escapism and now they were out of time, out of food, out of childhood.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Ricket, you get ahold of Scyro?”

  “Yeah, Lav got there first. Wasn’t interested.” Damn.

  Roach scrunches her nose and waves him off. “Fine. You’d only slow me down anyway.”

  When the chaos ebbs and the crew slink away to orders barked or murmured, the golden eyed girl hangs back, rapping her knuckles against the cold steel of his desk.

  “We can check the collapsed pier again, you know how she loves the smell. I have a feeling this time.”

  Rivin barely looks up. “I don’t have time today, Roach.” She doesn’t press further but he catches her halfway out the door. “Hey— let me know how you go, okay?”

  She doesn’t smile this time, just salutes with two fingers and turns to leave. He sees the hurt evolve into something else before fading away entirely— but there’s too much to do.

  Too much to carry.

  She’ll be fine, he tells himself.

  She’s always fine.

  The rest of the day panders to cleaning up mess. Rivin sometimes forgets that the crew are just children, but there’s no reminder like a fatal vacation.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard if he wasn’t a kid too.

  It’s hours before he retires also, swiping the sleep from his eyes. The tram cart is filled with resting sounds.

  Slink dreaming, Ricket snoring softly, Chip pretending.

  But she’s not there. Roach.

  The corner of his cot is vacant and his heart twitches before the regret hits him hard and fast.

  “Fuck.” he exhales, heart thundering.

  This is how you lose things, Idiot.

  Guilt is his least favourite of the feelings.

  He sprints out the door, runs through the Lowrealm with surer feet — clearer direction.

  He hadn’t realized how much terrain they had covered over the search for her cat but his grip is confident now; he doesn’t stumble, even when his ankle drags.

  Once unfamiliar streets and roads recollect in his memories as he passes them. Flushed. Breathing hard. Fists clenched.

  He think, foolishly, that he might find her there, waiting by the filthy water with an equally filthy story of her cat.

  Stubby caught in a pipe. Stubby tangled in wire. Stubby safe because she always comes back.

  The pier is where he heads first — the one in Drowner territory. The one with the collapsed wood and carvings etched into the rot.

  The smell.

  It’s abandoned, save two Drowners who sit with their legs over the edge, toes skating the water. He can only see their silhouettes and the sharp inclines of jewelry made of deep-earth beast and bone.

  They whisper beneath their breaths, hushed but nigh on urgent.

  No Roach.

  No Stubby.

  One of them points into the distance where something small and black burns solitary in the center of the Marina. Plumes of dying smoke puffing into the wet air.

  Rivin follows their gestures, although he has to squint to understand what they’re looking at. He realizes quickly that it’s a pyre, one nearing the end of its journey.

  “Fuck..” he says again as the guilt tightens its coil around his gut.

  He paces around to the other side, knuckles bone white. Roach is sitting on the pebbled shore, knees pulled to her chest, chin resting atop them.

  She’s so small he almost misses her, almost glances right over the top.

  It’s dark, save the faintest glow of artificial light from the fishery across the water.

  When he walks closer, there’s no point in trying to be quiet. The ground crunches beneath each step. Roach doesn’t look back, only forward, tired eyes fixed to the dying flames in the surf.

  “Hey..” his voice is soft. Careful. Concerned.

  She doesn’t greet him, only curls more tightly into herself. “Found her,” she says simply. Low.

  He takes a seat beside her, follows her glassy gaze to the water. To the embers of the funeral pyre dying in the waves. She doesn’t say it again and yet he hears it — as though whispered over waves:

  She’s the only thing I’ve ever lost that comes back.

  He exhales, gesturing to the ash. “You make that?”

  “Only the best for the best,” she says — like daisies dipped in tar. Suddenly heavy. Suddenly not so bright. “Or so I thought…”

  There’s a long pause before Rivin finally turns to look at her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  “I wasn’t either,” she shrugs, but he can see her pull in tighter. Tremoring arms locking around her legs.

  “..What happened?” He’s hesitant to ask.

  Roach grits her teeth, and glares hard at the building blinking with lights. “I… think I scared her away. Maybe she was real mad about that drone.” She sniffles. “I thought I was taking care of the rats too, y’know?”

  He wonders if he should touch her. Gently. Like he might if she were Ricket, but his hands stay glued to his side.

  “Found her in a Drowner trap. Wasn’t much left— of Stub or the trap,” she laughs a little, bitterly. Out of place like a girl in the dirt. “Never liked a cage but always liked a challenge.”

  A gust of squalid air causes the hair on her arms to stand. She shivers. Rivin removes his coat and drapes it tentatively over her shoulders because he doesn’t know how else to tell her that it wasn’t her fault— how else to shield her from the cold of it.

  She looks at him then. Her freckles have cousins in the dirt and ash on her nose and cheeks. There’s a streak of blood under her eye, where she’d wiped roughly at a tear.

  “You think your friend will take care of her?” It’s a simple question and yet it pinches him in half.

  Rivin sucks in a breath. “Mouse? Yeah, she loved animals.” He swallows the lump forming in his throat.

  “Mouse?” She tilts her head, and a small, wicked curl tugs at her lips. “Huh. No wonder Stub went after her.”

  “Do you think she’ll be disappointed to find that Mouse is a human girl?” He asks.

  “Depends what her pats are like.”

  Rivin smiles. “She’s a quick learner. She’ll get the hang of it.”

  That appears to appease her. Perhaps it appeases both of them for there’s something warm again, something softly breathing to life.

  The quiet settles between them. Comfortable. Less cold and biting. Less chilly like ghostly fingers.

  “D’you miss her?”

  Rivin doesn’t answer right away. He stares down at his palms. “I don’t know.” He admits and the confession feels like acid. “She doesn’t feel gone. I keep waiting, even when it doesn’t feel like I’m waiting.”

  Waiting. They both know a thing or two about that. She pulls his jacket tighter around herself, curling thin fingers into the sleeves. Her fingers brush a yellow stitch.

  “I’m glad you came,” soft, soft as breath.

  He furrows his brow, shakes his head. “I..” he looks away. “..Forgot about you.”

  The regret makes his throat sting. It’s a confession he’d rather not make, but it’s hard to accept her gratitude when he wasn’t there.

  Roach blinks. Once. Twice. “You remembered,” she offers him her hand. When he looks to her again, she shrugs her shoulders slowly, grins sheepishly. “That’s what counts.”

  He doesn’t feel like he deserves it, but he takes her hand anyway. She doesn’t let go when they turn back towards the water.

  He plans to stay like that for just a while longer, her small fingers threaded through his own, but for a fleeting moment, he thinks of Mouse again.

  Of the pyre he never watched burn. Of the life lost and held onto. He thinks about the vacancy in her bunk, where the skirts and jackets lie dormant, where the face paint gathers dust.

  He thinks of the moment she stepped into his world, shepherding a tiny sparrow that had somehow worked its way into the depths. She’d had a cut on her cheek — in the same place she’d drawn one on a month ago.

  He’d thought about kicking her out, and then she’d grinned, spat blood right onto his floor, and introduced herself.

  Her hand was filthy when she’d offered it*, ‘I’m Irene’,* he can still feel her palm, the deep gouge that had healed heaping over flesh. Her eyes sparkled.

  Rivin can feel the tears building — working their way up from the pit in his stomach where the dam has overflown.

  He remembers the way she’d thrown herself into his jackets, tried them all on and taunted the dead and gone tailors. She fixed the hole in his sleeve, in the jacket Roach now clutches tightly. She’d fixed so many things.

  The tears feel like relief when they fall. Like poison being sucked out.

  His breathing hiccups in his throat and Roach squeezes his fingers but doesn’t look — neither tear their eyes from the ash smoldering on the water.

  They stay for hours.

  Waiting.

  Until both of them are certain that the ghosts will not be coming back.