Chapter 53. ...calling.

The booth was a cage of glass and hums.

Ydoc stepped inside and the air tightened.
No breeze.
No birds.
Only the soft, electric buzz of the orange light overhead.
It flickered once—
and he flinched.
Something about that flicker burrowed into the side of his skull.

The telephone rested like a black altar before him.
Old rotary.
No fingerprints.
Not a speck of dust.

The rest of the booth was dust.
A skin-thin coat on the walls.
Corners filled with lint and dead wingless flies.
The receiver cord curled like a limp noose.

There was no phonebook.
No note.
No directory.

Just a small blue ceramic bowl, dulled from age.
Inside: three coins.
Dented. Cold.

Three.

Only enough for three calls.

Ydoc didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.

His chest tightened as if his ribs had sealed shut.
He didn’t want to call anyone.
He didn’t know who to call.
He wanted to turn around.
Walk away.
Forget—

But his body didn’t listen.

Fingers moved.
Slow, like being underwater.
Like something else moved him.

The static returned.
That fuzzy rim on the edge of his eyes—
like a bad dream starting, and you know it’s a dream,
but the door’s already closed.

His hand reached out.

It touched the rotary.

“No—”
His voice was so small. So human.
Too small to stop it.

He began to dial.

The numbers came as if etched into bone:

5
4
…
4
1
…
6
5
2
…
0
0
1

Click.
Whirr.
Click.
     ==--Dont Do this...--==

The dial spun back with a dying wheel’s groan.
And then…

He did it again.

0
0
1
…
8
5
…
0
1
0
1

He didn’t know these numbers.
He didn’t have numbers.
But his body remembered.

Like a child calling a mother.

Like a widow calling a ghost.

Like a soul trying to reach the place where it was broken.

And the phone—

The phone responded.

The dial tone shifted.
Gone was the emptiness.
Replaced by a low, living hum.
Like breath through a flute.
Like an old house whispering through the pipes.

Ydoc’s eyes dulled.
He wasn’t here anymore.

He was becoming a passenger.

A boy on the line.
Calling across lifetimes.
Calling across hurt.

Calling
to remember
what hurt him.

The receiver pressed to his ear like a cold memory.

His breath crackled through it—
like radio static fed through bones.

And then—

White noise.
Thick.
Spilling in from somewhere far too vast for any booth to hold.

It wasn’t silence.
No, never silence.
It was full.
Churning.
Alive with distortia and birdfray.
Those weren’t sounds you’d know.

These weren’t chirps.

They were chyrrows—
birdlike glimmers wrapped in wires, fluttering just on the edge of recognition.
Notes caught in a belljar.
Scraps of language from a winded world beyond the sky.

The line stretched far.

Far beyond the mountain.
Beyond the clouds.
Past the blue sphere.
Into some ionowomb above all gravity—
where prayers could not reach,
but grief still did.

And it hummed with grief.

Ydoc heard himself—
but it wasn’t him.

It was a version of him
echoed
through distortionglass
and old tape.

It sounded younger.
It sounded worse.

And somewhere, tangled in the static,
were faint sounds like pages turning underwater.
A kettle whistling far too long.
A lullaby with no words.
A child yelling, "I'm sorry," in reverse.

The noise shimmered with intent.
But it had no voice.
No reply.

Only the ocean between.
   ==--Hang up--==

An ocean of birdglass and whistlewind.
A cage of ringing chimes and voices that almost say his name
but never do.

This was not a local call.

This was a grief signal.
Sent to a place that no longer exists.
Or perhaps—

Was never meant to be reached.

The cord pulled tighter.
Tighter.

But still—
the line did not answer.

And Ydoc,
within his own skin,
began to fade…
                             

                           Calling.
                               Calling in the night.
                                           Calling still—

The booth shudders with each word the static makes.
The orange light trembles above, dimming,
pulsing like a slow heartbeat in glass.

Ydoc’s hand grips the receiver so hard the cord creaks.
His palm is wet.
Sweat. Rain. Fear. All the same.

calling…

His breath runs rough through the mouthpiece—
every exhale a grain of sand on metal.
The sound inside the phone stretches thin—
a long horizon made of noise.
And then—

A breeze.

Salt.
Air.
The distant cry of seagulls breaking through the static.

It isn’t the Divide.
It isn’t the woods.
It isn’t anywhere he’s been in years.

It’s a shore.
It’s water lapping at a pier’s posts.
It’s the sound of a line swinging in the wind—
a flag? a rope? a memory.

He closes his eyes.

And he can almost feel it.
Grainy boards under bare feet.
A radio humming somewhere behind an open window.
A smell of iron and kelp.
The soft tremor of a train far off the coast.

                       calling… calling…

The word itself begins to lose meaning,
becomes a pulse,
a rhythm between heartbeats.

And still—
no answer.

Only the sea,
and the breath of something listening
from far,
far away.

                   Calling....
                                                          Calling still....
....
.......
       ==--Im sorry.-==

A crackle.
A sigh.
A shift in the line—like the ocean leaning closer to listen.

And then—
Her.

A voice like a glass bell touched gently in the dark.
Soft.
Lonely.
So sweet it didn’t belong in a world like this.

"…hello?"

Ydoc twitches.
His fingers tighten on the receiver, chest heaving—
but it isn’t him who answers.

Not anymore.

“…your voice… is so beautiful.”

The words drip with reverence.
Spoken not from a mouth,
but from a crack in the soul.

She stirs, confused. Sleepy.
The phone shuffles against her cheek.

“Wh… no… Kodic?”

His heart stops.
His eyes dull again.
The colors return to gray.

Kodic—
through Ydoc’s lips, broken and trembling—answers:

“…who is this?”

But she only purrs. A sound so warm, it cuts.

“It’s me… silly… did you forget me again?”

The name.
He doesn’t know it.
But his bones do.
His chest tightens. His eyes leak without permission.

“I miss you.”

That’s all he can say.

And she—
She laughs.
A sound like honey over old piano keys.
Soft. Airy. Delighted.

“Are you crying again? Don’t you know heroes don’t cry?”

The jest is gentle.
Not a tease.
A memory.

“But lovers do,”
he replies,
and his voice is so small,
you’d think he was afraid to break it.

Silence.
A pause so long it nearly murders him.
Was she gone?
Was it over?

But—

“What happened to you?”
She asks it with fear.
As if she already knows.

His lips are cold.
His eyes sting.
He opens his mouth—

“…I—messed up.”

And the line holds him there.
In truth.
In love.
In grief too heavy for a second call.

Outside—
The world is gone.
Not dark, but hollow.
Like the beach was swallowed,
like the night turned inward.

The Divide is gone.
The woods, forgotten.
Even Ydoc’s face…

Unimportant.

Only the booth remains.
Only the bulb inside—
a weak, amber halo clinging to the ceiling like a dying sun.

The number “0” glows above the dial.
Ydoc stares at it.
Kodic stares at it.
As if it were her face.

As if it could blink.
Smile.
Apologize.

The world breathes only static and salt.

Then, her sigh—
Quiet. Withered.
Like someone laying down their sword for the last time.

“Kodic…”

A pause.
It aches with what she won’t say.

“…please.”

He grips the receiver tighter.
His thumb trembling against the plastic.
Words catch like brambles in his throat.

“Ah—how’s… how’s the kid?”

She doesn’t shout.
Doesn’t scream.
She just says it:

“Kodic… please.”

Like a warning.
Like a closing door.

He tries to joke. To wear the mask.
To become the clown again,
the man who spun joy out of sorrow.

“Can’t I know how my son’s doing?”

A pause.
Not angry.
Just… low.

A voice like someone petting a ghost cat,
half-laughing, half-crying.

“Please… let’s not fight.
I… can’t do this.
Not anymore…”

Something breaks.
Not a sob.
Not a crack.
Just a fracture of the soul.

Kodic whispers.
The last real thing he owns.

“I miss you.”

And in the silence that follows,
he hears it—

Them.

Whispers in his mind.
Gentle. Familiar.
The choir of his broken selves.

Let her go.
She’s gone.

He closes his eyes.
Sinks deeper.
And speaks—not to them,
but to the world.

“Let her go?
She is the Princess of the World,
the innocence of love.
The jewel of hearts.”

His voice is holy.
Cracked.

Desperate.

And then—her.
Barely there.

“Why do you even want to cling to me?
We don’t…
We just don’t have time.
Another time, Kodic?”

A click?
No. Not yet.

But the pause before the cliff.
----------------------------------

The number 0 blurs.
Becomes her face.

The edges of the booth dissolve until the whole world is only her—
drawn out of memory, built from the ache behind his ribs.

She stands in the glow where the bulb used to be.
A young cat‑folk woman, her brown fur catching light like silk,
a single white dot of fluff beneath one eye,
as if the gods had brushed her there to say remember me.

Her ears are tall, soft with pale down.
Her silver gown ripples like moonwater;
tiny trees embroidered at the hem sway in a breeze that isn’t here.
Around her brow: a bronze wreath, little diamonds scattered in it like captive stars.
At her throat, a pendant shaped as a blue moth—the sigil of every promise he ever made.

On her hand, a ring glints:
an emerald, deep as forests that never knew winter.

She smiles—
and the whole booth fills with that single act of mercy.

“I have to go,”
she says, voice soft, royal, weary.
“The train is waiting for me.”

From somewhere far beyond the line,
comes the hiss of wind over docks,
the hush of tide rolling against pylons.
A whistle—long, mournful.
The world of the living, calling her back.

Kodic’s words tremble out of Ydoc’s lips.

“Where are you going?”

She looks past him, eyes already shining with distance.

“Away,”
she whispers.
“Far, far away… to another world, really. It’s over.”

The sound breaks him cleanly in two.
A knife, quiet, patient, sliding home.

He reaches out.
His hand meets hers—soft as fur on snow.
She doesn’t pull, doesn’t push,
just lets the contact die between their palms.

“Why are you leaving me?”

Her sigh is a whole lifetime exhaling.
The sea sighs with her.
She turns her face aside; even her crown dims.

“I’m sorry,”
she says, truth carried in the gentlest ruin of a voice.
“I have to leave you.
I can’t stay in limbo.”

A pause—
a heartbeat caught in salt and wire.

“You must stay here…
in Hell.
Where you belong.”

No hatred.
Just sorrow.
The kind spoken by someone who has already forgiven you.

And Kodic—
Ydoc’s trapped reflection—
understands.

He had chosen this.
Chose to remain among ghosts and memories.
A prisoner closing his own cell door
because he couldn’t bear to step into the light that forgot her.
               ===---But.. i love you.. i thought Love cured all pains?--==

he looks down through the static between worlds,
eyes soft, mouth trembling on mercy.

“You’re not the hero anymore…
let me go.
The train— I’ll be late.”

The line hums.
A faint click‑click, the wheels of a train that isn’t here.
“Calling…”
“Calling still…”
The handset buzzes, thin as a dying insect.

Her smile remains—so tender it hurts.

“I… moved on now.”

And the booth begins to burn.
Not with color—no red, no orange—
but with memory, curling off the walls in waves of lightless heat.
Paper curls.
Posters melt into ink.
The bulb flickers like a heartbeat ready to stop.

Yet the flames never touch her.
Her fur remains perfect,
her gown silver and weightless,
every thread preserved by love that refuses to let even fire near her.

Kodic doesn’t move.
He doesn’t care.
He never did.
He had walked through the deepest pit of the Divide,
battled hunger, demon, despair itself—
so what is flame?

What is pain,
when all he wants is her?

He breathes in smoke and salt and grief.
And with a voice broken open to the core, he says—

“I love you.”

The world inhales with him.
Her dress flutters.
The wind of another city passes through her hair.
And for a heartbeat, the stars appear in daylight.

She smiles, the kind that ends worlds gently.

“Don’t let me burn…
let me go.”

But he cannot.
He never could.
It is his inability to move on that keeps her chained,
a soul tugged back from peace each time he calls.

Her fingers slip from his.
The ring slides free—
a tiny, perfect sound:

clink

Then nothing.
No gown.
No sea.
No docks.
Only the booth, collapsing under its own memory.

The receiver drops from Ydoc’s hand,
glass cracking under the fall.

The tone hums on—
flat, endless, mechanical.

The sound the living hear
when they’ve been speaking to the dead too long.

No one answered.