Chapter 32. Skin and Bones

Ydoc sat on a twisted stump at the edge of the Divide, where the forest grew thick with grief. The ground no longer held color—it was gray, sickly, and yet… painfully familiar. Like childhood bruises. Like the smell of an old house you barely remember, but dream of often.

The spirits had all fled.
The festival was a smoldering wreck.
And he—he was still here.

Talking to himself.

“So,” he muttered aloud, rubbing one arm with the other. “Let’s catch up, shall we?”

His voice cracked. Not from age or weather—just tired.
Above him, the first slow drops of ink began to fall. Drip. Drip. Drip.
They always did this. Rain, just for him. Always here, always now.

“I left the town,” he said to no one. “Ran back here like a coward. But what else was I supposed to do? Ruby was crying. Edwards made a scene. And Aleon—he…”

Ydoc leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His legs were thin. Skin and bones.

“He declared war.”

Another drop of ink fell—on his shoulder this time. It stained his shirt like spilled wine.
He didn’t bother to wipe it away.

“Said it was the Hound. That old beast. The one from the stories. Said he’s killed too many.”
“Ruby didn’t agree. She defended the damn thing. The Hound. Why? I… I don’t know. Maybe she’s scared. Maybe she’s right.”
“Maybe she’s so wrong it hurts.”

He sighed.

“The spirits—gods, they think they did it. The fire, I mean. The whole festival. They’re down here crying and scratching their faces like it’s their fault. Saying they weren’t good enough. Like they’re little kids who broke a vase.”

He closed his eyes.

“I wanted to hug them. Every single one. Tell them it’s okay. Tell them they did their best. I—”
“I wanted to be someone to them. But instead I just watched. Just like always.”

The wind stirred, sharp and damp. The rain picked up—thin black trails down his arms, across his knees.

“Today sucked.”

He said it like it was a joke.
But he didn’t laugh.
He just curled forward, arms wrapping around himself like a child hugging a ghost.

Far away, in the Mortal World, the sky was preparing for its own tears.
The monsoon was coming. Just as planned.

It would flood the town. Drench every rooftop. Drown the festival grounds in rain and memory.

Here, the Divide wept ink.
--------

The Divide had grown still around him—silent, except for the soft patter of ink‑rain splashing against the warped roots. It ran down the bark like veins. It clung to Ydoc’s hair, his coat, his hands. It seeped. It stained.

He hunched forward on the stump, fingers pressed to his temples, muttering half‑formed thoughts about yesterday. Lucy’s tent. Ruby’s voice. Edwards laughing somewhere in the distance. The festival burning. The word monster whispering from every tongue.

The rain did not stop.
It deepened, like wet velvet, like a curtain falling.

His voice cracked:

“I just… wanted to be happy. Just a guy in the woods…”

But the Divide heard him differently.
It was not a prayer. It was a confession.

Something in his back shifted.
First a twitch, then a slow unfurling—like branches pushing up through winter soil.

His coat, the proud black‑feathered thing he had worn like armor, began to molt. One by one the feathers peeled away, dissolving into ink that dripped between his fingers. Beneath it, no skin. No gray. Only a deep, oil‑slick blackness like the sky between stars. A silhouette turned alive.

His hands trembled. His knees buckled.

“No… no, please,” he muttered, voice cracking again. “Not like this…”

The ink‑rain streaked down his face, but his tears were clear. Clear, against the blackness blooming across his body.

His shoulders narrowed as if carved from shadow. His torso elongated. The shape of a man slumped into the shape of something older, thinner. A thing starved of sunlight and warmth.

From his temples pushed antlers—not bone, but wood, gnarled and twisted like dead branches in winter. They rose crookedly, clawing at the ink‑choked sky. Little rivulets of black sap oozed from where they pierced his scalp.

Only his eyes remained. Pure white. Trembling with sadness.
They shone out of the blackness like two distant moons—small, soft, but unblinking.

His breath came ragged. Each exhale was a hush of fog. His fingers dug into his face as if trying to hold himself together, but the Divide was revealing him, peeling away the last pretense.

A silhouette.
A confession.
A monster.

Around him, the thorns thickened.
The fairies had fled, their dresses dragging trails of ink like broken wings. In the far trees, unseen things clicked their teeth, watching, waiting.

Ydoc sat slouched on the stump—no longer man, not yet beast—his antlers dripping black sap, his eyes the last scraps of light.

----------

Ydoc did not fight it anymore.
There was no flinch in his fingers, no tremor of shame.
He sat there—black and thin as a shadow pinned upright—his antlers curling up and out like winter’s roots. His coat was gone; his shape was bare and honest.

A low murmur spilled from his lips. Not words. Not a prayer. Just syllables with no home:

“first time… last time…
the roses…”

He blinked once, slowly. The sound of the music from the festival—muffled by trees and distance—stabbed his ears like needles. Every drumbeat felt like a memory being hammered shut. Each faint guitar string vibrated inside his skull.

He looked up. The Divide’s thorns parted just enough for him to see them—creatures lurking at the edge of the ink‑rain. Multi‑eyed, bone‑clad, jaws bristling with teeth that had tasted nothing but fear. True monsters.

They had been creeping closer.
He could smell their hunger.
But as the last of his color bled out, as his eyes burned white and his antlers dripped sap, the creatures stopped.

One hissed—a thousand little tongues clicking. Another twisted its neck like a broken hinge.
And then, as one, they withdrew.
Slipping back into the thorned gray, vanishing into the ink.

Even the Divide’s horrors feared this shape.

The ink‑rain fell heavier. It slicked his antlers. It pooled under his knees like an open mouth.

A sigh escaped him, too soft to echo.
Too tired to be a growl.

“For the last time… smell the roses…
for the first time…”

He lifted a hand—long, black fingers tipped like twigs—and wiped at his face.
An inky tear welled at the edge of his eye and rolled down, trailing a faint shimmer as it slid from white iris to black skin, falling into the wet soil below.

The thorned forest bent around him, hushed and waiting, as if even it could feel the weight of what had just been born.
------------------

Ydoc blinked slowly.

The monsters were gone. The Divide was quiet again. He should have felt relief. Should have moved, risen, done something to mark the moment.

But he didn’t.

Instead, his head tilted up—not high, just enough. His chin lifted like he was about to greet a cloud or ask the sky a question.
The corners of his mouth—those dark, ink-wet lips—twitched softly. A smile.

A strange one. Not sane. Not cruel.
But like the worn smile of someone remembering a place they’ve never been.

From somewhere inside, music.

Not heard. Not truly. But felt, like a vibration under the ribs.
A gentle pluck of something stringed. Something old.

The darkness of the forest peeled back—not literally, but in his mind—and before him was a hill, so far away.

Atop it stood a tree.

Its branches stretched up like porcelain antlers, full of iridescent pink leaves, petals so fragile they dissolved into drifting motes as they fell.

Beneath the tree, swaying lazily in a handmade rope swing, was a Sahash.
A male. Softly glowing. Wearing long sleeves and smiling wide. His legs curled up as he rocked gently back and forth, one toe trailing the grass.
The wind made the swing creak slightly. A sound that was not sad…
…but peaceful.

Ydoc’s pale white eyes glowed faintly.
He had never seen this place.
He knew he had never met that Sahash.
But something inside him clenched and loosened again, like a pulse beneath ancient scar tissue.

He wanted—longed—to call out.
But his mouth didn’t move.
His body wouldn’t move.

He didn’t notice the change until it was too far along to be worried.
His legs had begun to fuse with the ground. Not with pain or horror—but with slow resignation.
His form bled into the stump beneath him, as if the ink of his body had sat too long and become part of the page.

Moss curled around his ankles like fingers.
His arms, limp and resting, had hardened with bark textures in places.
But it didn’t matter.

Because on that hill,
in that place that didn’t exist,
under that impossible pink tree,
a swing moved softly in the wind.

And the Sahash boy smiled at him,
as if to say:

"It's okay to rest now, if only for a little while."

And for the first time in days…
…Ydoc felt.

Not joy. Not grief.
Just the weight of having felt anything at all.

His smile deepened—tired, cracked.
Another inky tear slid down his cheek.

And still,
he stared at a tree
that wasn't really there.
------------

The wind around the dream-tree shifted.
The petals no longer just fell—they danced. Each one seeming to shimmer with its own tiny gravity, orbiting the Sahash as he rocked slowly in his swing.

Ydoc’s body could not move.
His limbs were part of the stump now.
But his mouth,
his soul,
still sang.

It was no performance. No cry for attention.
It was a calling. A thread of thought wrapped in melody.

His voice was low, hoarse, almost broken—
like a child singing to a grave…
or a man lost in space.

“It’s overwhelming sometimes
When you’re all alone…”

The words carried on the wind like a ribbon,
trailing through the Divide’s ink-stained trees.

“And you can’t tell if you’re floating or falling out of place—”
“Like the astronaut calls a little dot a home…”
“Like he can tell from outer space…”

The hill shimmered.

The Sahash boy stopped swinging.

He looked up—toward Ydoc.
His hand rose.
He placed it softly on his chest.

And then, gently, he sang back.

“And all you can do is try to reconcile the ways you help me feel…”
“With all the things you know you need…”

It was not just a reply.
It was a connection.
A line of sound across an abyss.

Ydoc’s head quivered.
A flicker of recognition—his mouth opening just a little.
His lower lip trembled, and he gasped.
He knew this voice.
He loved this voice.
He didn't know why. But his bones remembered.

And the Sahash—
with a voice so gentle it could melt frost from stone—
finished:

“Try to remember sometimes…”
“That you’re skin and bone…”
“Make it harder on ourselves…”
“Than it needs to be…”

And then—

A sound.

Soft. Wet. Round.

A single bubble floated in front of Ydoc.
Then another.
Then another.

They glowed pale mint blue and violet, swirling with faint melodies.
The notes danced in slow plucks, like lullabies in glass spheres.
They drifted upward. Some popped gently.
Each one played a note as it disappeared.

Fingertips touched Ydoc’s cheeks.
Small. Cold. Tender.
But he didn’t feel them—not truly.

Instead, he saw them.

Two delicate hands, like carved ivory and fog, cupped his face.
A whisper of something else—a friend?
The fingers didn’t match anyone exactly.
They were simply kind.

And for a moment…
just one fleeting moment…

Ydoc was not a silhouette.
He was someone.
Someone who was loved.

And in that aching silence,
the final echo of the dream-song whispered through him:

“Try to remember…”
“You’re not just bones…”
“You were never alone…”

-----------------------

Ydoc gasped.
His eyes shot open.

He was no longer fused to the stump—no longer a weeping silhouette in a phantom dream.
His limbs were feathered again, his coat a patchwork of grays and soft blacks, sleek and birdlike, falling around him like a cloak of mourning doves.
His antlers were gone.
The black ink had retreated…
though his throat burned, and his jaw ached.

Something sweet filled his mouth. Too sweet.
He gagged slightly.

“Mmmgh—hckk—ptoo!”

One.
Two.
Three pastel-pink globs of gum came out, glistening and sugar-wet.
He coughed, spat again—
a little river of drool and bubblegum trailing down his chin.

It was soft.
Creamy.
Like melted cotton candy that tried to smother him in his sleep.
Gods, he couldn’t breathe.

“What… in the spiral… was that?”

And then—
a tiny gasp.

“Oh! You’re awake!!”

Ydoc blinked, his vision still fuzzy—
and there before him stood the most ridiculous and lovable thing he’d ever seen.

------

A Britter. A creature of winter dreams.

He stood no taller than a child’s shoulders, covered in snow-white fur, so pristine it shimmered with the light of the trees. His face was soft and vulpine, with beautiful gray eyes—eyes that held more emotion than seemed possible for something so small. A hint of sadness lingered in them, like a long winter looking out from behind a windowpane.

A thick fox tail nearly half his body length wobbled behind him—quivering at the tip with excitement like a dog mid-wiggle.
But what truly betrayed his strange fey nature were his legs: long, thin, almost birdlike.
Knobby in the knees. Bare.
The way they ended in pawed, almost avian-like feet made it clear—
this wasn’t a creature made by biology.

This was something born of snow and glee.

He held a tiny bag full of pastel sweets—gums and soft chews and wrapped caramels spilling out like a greedy child’s dream.

Froosta giggled as Ydoc coughed one last chunk of gum out of his mouth.

“Good morning~!” he chirped, bouncing just a little.
“You swallowed, like, six of those! You kept making this tiny squeaky sound like—”

Froosta squinted and puffed out his cheeks in a horrible imitation of Ydoc’s choking.
He puffed and held it, before letting out a theatrical sputter and falling to his knees in the grass.

“Bleghhhh~! Oh nooo~!”

Ydoc stared.
Still dazed. Still fogged.
Still not sure where the dream ended and the Divide began again.

“...What... the actual... hell is happening?”

Froosta stood back up and dusted off his fur with a flick of his tail.

“You were dream stuck,” he said plainly.
“Tangled in one of those sad ink nests. Happens sometimes when you’re all… mysterious and glum.”
“So I fed you sugar!” he beamed. “Because sugar wakes people up!”

He looked very proud.
And then, slightly sad.

“But… now I’m out of candy.”
“...You owe me. Big time.”

Ydoc stared.
His lips were raw.
His feathers a mess.
His mind still trembling at the memory of the swinging Sahash and the sound of bubbles in music.

But before he could speak—

Froosta gently walked forward…
and with the softest, shyest movement—
brushed a tiny bit of sticky gum off Ydoc’s cheek.

“You okay now?”