Chapter 258: Calvyn

"Two things," she said, very close to my ear. "First…. explain to me how she knows that word. Second!" a pause, "why is she coming with us. Right now. In clear terms."

She let go of my collar and stepped back, arms crossing again immediately, the pout settling in somewhere around her mouth that she clearly wasn't doing on purpose but was doing anyway.

The combination of the frown and the pout was— it was something. I was not going to say what it was out loud.

"It's complicated," I said.

Her eyes went narrow. "So we're keeping secrets now, Hon."

"I'm not keeping a secret."

"Then tell me—"

I reached out and took both her hands before she could get the next sentence fully assembled, my fingers pressing over hers, and she made a small startled sound— barely audible, quickly controlled— and went still.

Not fighting it.

Just still, looking up at me with the frown reconfiguring itself into something with more confusion in it and less anger.

"Can I explain later?" I said. "Not now, not here. Later. It's— there's a lot of it and I need time to say it right. I'm not hiding anything from you."

She looked at my hands over hers. At my face. Back at my hands.

"Okay," she said. Quieter than before. "Yes. Okay, I understand."

She didn't pull her hands back. I did eventually, carefully, and her face did the small drooping thing— just briefly, just the edges of it— before she composed herself and turned her attention to Alex with the studied neutrality of someone being reasonable on purpose.

Alex, to her credit, had been standing slightly to the side through all of this, looking at the vine platforms with great interest.

She turned back when Jisoo's attention arrived on her. "So! You talked to Kaia, right, Unnie Jisoo?"

Jisoo blinked. "Kaia."

"Blue hair. The one who acts like everyone's being an inconvenience to her all the time." Alex tilted her head. "You talked to her?"

"Oh." Jisoo processed the name. "Yes. She said the ship moves at night. Something about the things in the water being less active after dark."

Jisoo walked toward me. "She also said there's a current they follow that reduces travel time by a significant margin, and that the route they've mapped avoids the sections of the flooded city where the water is—" she paused, picking the word, "—wrong. Her word. She didn't elaborate."

"She never does," Alex said, with the familiarity of someone who had met Kaia before or had access to memories that told her what Kaia was like.

"Mm." Jisoo nodded. She glanced over my shoulder, and I followed her eyeline. The red-haired crew member— the one who had been waving at everyone on the boarding plank— was currently doing a circuit of the vine platforms, talking to every person she passed with a specific enthusiasm of someone who was fully charged and had decided to share it with the surrounding area.

Several villagers had already been absorbed into what appeared to be a very animated conversation near the fishing platform. One of them was laughing.

"She said that girl—" Jisoo pointed, "—would show us where we'd be staying on the ship. Once you came back."

"She's been waiting for me to come back?"

"I too. Have been waiting for you to come back," Jisoo said. The correction was immediate and slightly pointed. "She was just—" a gesture, "—doing that."

We watched the red-haired girl spin around to demonstrate something to the fishing platform crowd, nearly lose her balance, catch herself on a railing, and continue explaining whatever she was explaining without breaking stride.

"She has a lot of energy," I said.

"She has a terrifying amount of energy," Jisoo said.

"I like her," Alex said.

Jisoo and I both looked at her.

"What," Alex said. "Cmon, she looks energetic and waved at me earlier, like… when I was shaking you. I felt seen."

"She waves at everyone," I said.

"She waved at me with intention," Alex said, with complete confidence. "I know the difference."

The crowd around us was beginning to thin slightly, people returning to their routines now that the ship's arrival had been processed as a known event rather than an emergency.

The Chief was still at the platform edge, talking to someone from the ship's crew, I don't know what they're talking about but they're talking.

The blond crew member was sitting on a vine knot nearby, watching the water with a careful attention of someone who was always slightly braced for something.

I looked at the ship. The scale-covered hull. The masts. The worn bulk of it sitting heavy in the water with a confidence that came from having made this crossing before.

We're going further west, I though. We're going to the wall. On that ship. With Jisoo and Alex and a crew of people we met a minute ago in a floating vine village in the middle of a flooded trial.

I had come here to cross a region and find an exit.

I had not expected any of the specifics.

"""***

HOurs LATER…

The hours before departure had their own texture.

We sat on the outer vine platform while the village moved around its final preparations— supplies being carried to the boarding plank, the Chief going back and forth between his people and the ship's crew with an unhurried competence of someone who had done this handoff before.

The red hair girls… who's name is actually Cal had been absorbed into a conversation near the fishing platform that kept expanding, new people joining at the edges while the original participants tried and failed to extract themselves.

We watched this happen from a distance.

"Hey." I looked at Alex. "Does this place have a name?"

She glanced up at me. "Vinehaven."

"Hm." I processed this, then patted her head once without thinking about it. "Thanks."

She looked at my hand. Then at me. Then she looked away, not mentioning it.

Jisoo was on my left going through something in her head that I couldn't fully read yet, the kind of quiet she got when she was deciding the order of things she wanted to say.

I got ahead of it eventually— sat down beside her, kept my voice low enough that it was just for her, and told her about Alex's ability.

The broad version. How it worked, what it cost, what had happened in the cave.

I did not tell her that Alex had copied everything. Well because she'll probably kill her. I told her enough to explain why Alex knew things she shouldn't know, and enough to explain why she'd come running across the platform like the world was ending.

And I watched Jisoo's expression move through the information carefully, assembling it, filing each piece into whichever category it belonged in.

She was quiet for a moment after I finished.

"She won't use it on you," I said.

"She'd better not," Jisoo said.

"She won't." I paused. "She told me herself she wasn't dumb to wanna have 4800 regression memory. "

"I said she'd better not." Jisoo's tone was mild. Final. Not a threat, just a fact.

From slightly behind us, Alex's voice arrived at a careful volume. "I would also just like to say, for the record, that I would not want to personally experience 4800+ regressions, and therefore would not be copying anyone's memory who has that many, at any point, for any reason." A pause. "That's all. I just wanted to say that."

"See? she even said it herself."

Jisoo looked over her shoulder at Alex.

Alex looked back with a expression of someone who had said what they came to say and stood by it.

A moment passed.

Jisoo looked back at the water. Something in her posture had settled, slightly. Not resolved— she'd filed it under pending rather than closed— but settled.

We waited.