It was pleasant, Eles thought, to listen to the soft chatter of two friends intermixed with the soft shiff, shiff of his pencil across paper. It felt welcoming, informal in a manner so different from spending time with Malory. That boy was so very look at me, perceive me, want me, love me, and while Eles was always ready to oblige him those whims, it was not an ask he could answer for anyone else. That boy wanted all the love for which his heart held capacity. Chrissie and Kandi did not.

They invited him to the call for his company. For permission to simply be, however he wanted to be, so he knew they liked him despite his inability to chat with them verbally. Perhaps far more to their credit, Chrissie had the patience and wherewithal to show him how to answer such a call, how to unlock his phone, and how to make calls. She said he needed to know for his own safety, though she'd spent far more time setting it up for him than he expected and she wore quite the smile on her face while doing so.

They called because Rose was on vacation again. Eles answered because he couldn't invite Malory in on this little project of his and he'd rather have company than think his own thoughts. It was their strange tradition, he understood, that when Rose was on vacation, Chrissie and Kandi would give her hell on return. They'd concoct some preposterous story full of treachery and intrigue and it would be Rose's responsibility to disprove their allegations with her vacation photos upon return. It was, Eles thought, a very unusual and convoluted way to ask a friend to talk about her trip, but it grew on him quickly. And as he listened to them chat back and forth about an undercover CIA operation, Eles thought he quite liked being looped in on these friendly jousts.

"No no no, you've got it all wrong. She went to Italy to dig up Mussolini's dead body. They need whatever's left of it to make a DNA profile, you know?"

"Oh. My. God," came the other tinny voice. "Can you imagine that girl lifting a shovel? Cuz I can't. She complains that shaking her a** on a stage is too much work!"

Eles smiled to himself for their banter. It carried through the room easily, undisturbed by the sounds of shifting staff beyond the shut door. Seldom did he lean into frame to interrupt, though he did often look over to see their expressions on the call. Chrissie wasn't as outgoing or expressive as Kandi, but she could manage tricks with her eyebrows that said volumes more than Kandi's on-stage stunts.

The first sketch was already done, though it looked more like a word tree than a sculpture. They were but ideas connected to one another, humbled by eraser marks and rearranged by arrows from here pointing there or vice versa. Eles had placed a second sketch beside it with every piece of material he intended to involve in the project and their respective weights. It had to balance, of course.

Leaning into frame with his pencil still in hand, Eles signed a question to the two of them. He stayed on for a moment longer, smiling just so as Chrissie translated for Kandi.

"He wants to know if we're sure Rose wasn't there to conceive Caesar's clone-baby."

"Like, Augustus Caesar?"

"That's the only Caesar worth sleeping with, right?"

Eles stifled a chuckle. He returned to his drawing, where he triangulated out three distinct threads of Malory's life: himself, his jaunts with the mirror, and the amnesiac boy he'd picked up and folded into his affairs. The top, he decided, would be a hook no different from a coat hanger. The wide body of it an isosceles triangle borne of fractured glass and mirror shards, cemented together in gold, as a recreation of the reclining, luxurious boy. That part was largely done, of course; he need only wait for it to dry.

But the rest still needed a proper plan. And a balance. Because it was a balance, wasn't it? Malory's time and devotion spent on himself, spent on the Dark Mirror Court, and spent on Eles. and All of those threads fed back into the whole that was Malory, for it would be a slight to say that his boy was in service of anything but himself.

"I could see it, honestly? But I think I'd only bring that up if she came back from Italy and was like, Definitely Not Pregnant. I'd feel pretty horrible making that her CIA mission if she came back pregnant and was like, freaking out about it."

"It'd be pretty ******** up if that actually happened. She isn't even into guys like that."

"Wait, you mean she's gay?" Eles didn't need to look at his phone to imagine Kandi's optimistic excitement following that question.

Chrissie just chuckled. "No, I mean she's ace. Maybe demi at best? It's why she's had such a horrible time finding a boyfriend that actually sticks around. If it's not her night job, it's that she's not interested in putting out."

"Damn! She definitely had me fooled."

Eles nodded, far beyond the scope of the phone camera. That pining was all their quiet tragedy to mourn. He'd thought about making a triptych of those two, but that project was backburnered for this one. After making a few more lines and connections, Eles decided he was at a stopping point. Those threads would braid together, he decided, coming to a singular distillation of the boy. What better to symbolize the sun, fresh air, clean water than a blazing pearl of orange? Sun and end-stop, all in one. Beginning and end.

Their lives together comprised the between, the bends in the sentence, the ups and downs, for as long as they chose to know each other wholly and fearlessly.