Bleeding overfollows the events of eyes like a shrike.
part of rylan's life in the midst quest.He got home in a bit of a daze, mind still turning the events of the past hour over and over without relief. There was a lot that Rylan didn’t know, and the firefighter would be the first to admit it. He’d never tried to pretend that he was the smartest cookie on the block because he’d always known he was the muscle, not the brain. Being aware, understanding the endless chains of events, that had always been Chris Vallorin’s job—or the job of whoever else was steering Rylan’s boat. His only responsibility had been to move it forward, and that was what Rylan was best at.
But now, he understood, a lot more was coming his way. A lot of information that he’d hear and not understand in the slightest, and this time, the information came with a responsibility to find out. Because this was not the same as school. There were very real consequences now for apathy.
“Hey, Fidge,” he said tiredly, collapsing into the couch as the dog came padding over, tail wagging.
Reluctantly, Rylan pulled the wallet out of his back pocket—the second wallet, the one Imp had snatched out of the ocean. It was still wet and had left a damp spot on the back of his jeans, the leather mushy from being soaked in saltwater. He flipped it open and slid the ID out of its slot with his thumb, pondering it as he turned it over twice. It was old, alright, dating back to the sixties. Most importantly, it had his face on it. But somehow, it wasn’t his face. There was something… off.
“What’s got you all confused?”
Rylan looked up at the sound of Cas’ voice and the front door shutting.
“Well. Look at this,” he said, gesturing for his friend to come over. Someone else might have hidden the ID, might have tried to spare Cas from getting caught up in this magical mess, but that wasn’t their way and Rylan didn’t think himself qualified to decide what other people should or should not know. Cas was involved, one way or another, by virtue of being physically present in Ashdown. If the magic spilled over, he was screwed anyway.
“And old ID?” Cas said, reaching for the card, and then, “Whoa. This is you?” He looked up with a puzzled frown. “Would’ve thought you were a bit too old to need a fake, Ry.”
The weight of the world couldn’t stop him from laughing. Leave it to Cas to make light of a dire situation but that, more than anything else, was exactly what he’d needed. Rylan shook his head and shrugged. “Me too.”
There was a brief pause, and then he nodded at the open seat on the other end of the couch. “Alright, I have some crazy s**t to tell you. Mostly, I’m using you as a sounding board because it’s confusing as all hell.”
Cas took the seat without hesitation. “Hit me.”
“Remember the news about the kid whose body was found in the bay?” A nod. “This was one of the teens that went missing earlier this year. What happened was… they were taken into the Otherworld—a gray, rainy, horrible version of this world, and I just learned, they were apparently doomed the minute that happened.”
If any of this sounded crazy to Cas, he didn’t show it.
“And what else I’ve heard: the Burning Man, Spinel, and Lady have something to do with it—don’t ask me who those people are. If they’re even people, because Sunny, the one who told me this? I saw her through Imp’s eyes and she was most assuredly
not human,” Rylan continued. “She was… eyes, and swirls, and impossible geometries and just… beyond the scope of human or animal comprehension, apparently.”
Cas couldn’t rightly imagine any of these weird geometries, most likely because he’d never seen them for himself and everything that had made up Sunny in Imp’s eyes was decidedly alien. Past the power of imagination. Just… brain-hurtingly alien.
“Anyway. According to Sunny, they wanted the kid dead because he tried to close some cage. Which means the other two are going to die, and this Otherworld is slowly bleeding into the real world, and… she told me to check out the Otherworld library.”
Rylan fixed his amber eyes on Cas’ colorless grays, knowing that he sounded about as crazy as anyone could. But this was Cas, which meant the man would take his words at face value and help him riddle through these impossible mysteries.
True to Rylan’s expectations, Cas nodded and quirked his brow. “What’s your take on all of this brand new information?”
“I’m worried,” Rylan admitted, fidgeting with the mushy wallet in his hands. “I don’t know what half of it means, but I feel responsible for finding out, if for no other reason than that I knowing there’s some impending doom. I don’t think this is something I can just opt out of.”
“So go find out,” Cas said, running his thumb along the edge of the old ID, peering curiously at the face in the picture that felt at once familiar and strange.
“What worries me the most, though,” Rylan said after a pause. “I don’t think I’m clever enough for all this. I’m not a detective. I’m a firefighting
for a reason, and I hate puzzles. I hate riddles. And it’s not like the fate of this town is on my shoulders alone, but I think I might fail, and if I do it’s not just me who gets screwed.”
“But you don’t seem too scared about the being screwed part,” Cas pointed out, his usual smirk gracing his face again. “Or the fact that you just saw an alien.”
“The world’s always falling down,” Rylan responded with a quiet shrug. “People are always picking it up. The weirdness doesn’t scare me. Possibly failing everyone does.”
“So give it a shot,” Cas said, handing the old ID back giving Rylan a pat in an ill-fated attempt to ruin his wicked flow. “Go to this crazy library, see what you find. Maybe you’re not destined to fail.”
“Or maybe I am,” Rylan said, a little more gloomily than intended. “Maybe we all are.”
