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Abstracted Jax was sleeping in the back of the tent. Pomni could barely see the huge silhouette in the dim light. She looked… peaceful. The erratic energy that used to run through her body was gone.
Pomni visited every day. At first, the jester hoped seeing Jax like that would get easier. It did, but not in the way she expected. The sadness didn’t go away, it just shifted in her. Instead of a flash of pain, it was now a slow and steady emotion that infused her body.
Something buzzed in Pomni’s ear. She jilted up and looked around.
Her eyes searched for something unusual in the vast space around her. They found nothing. Pomni was alone. After a few instants, her breath slowed down.
She was not the only one to visit of course. The others did too from time to time. Their lives were becoming busier and busier. Gangle and Zooble were planning their wedding with Caine’s help. Kinger got back into programming, trying to understand this place better. Ragatha started to create a world of her own, some kind of ranch.
Pomni on the other hand, had no idea what to do now. The circus was built. Nobody needed her now. She would usually sit by Kinger when she was not visiting Jax. She found his dark working space rather soothing.
Her last exchange with Jax played on repeat in her head most of the time. She wished she could have said something else. Maybe then she could have prevented…
She heard a noise again. It sounded like a glitch in her ear.
“Hey,” Ragatha said.
Pomni turned. Her friend had a gentle smile on her face. The jester blinked to make sure she was real, hoping it wasn’t too visible. She then greeted the ragdoll with the brightest grin she could manage.
Ragatha looked great, Pomni realized, slightly blushing. The ragdoll was still a bit nervous most of the time, but it didn’t paralyze her like before. In fact, she was almost shining.
“Do you want to talk about… her ?” Ragatha asked as she sat next to Pomni.
They had settled on the new pronouns when real Jax - Jane now - announced hers on social media. She looked so happy in the picture, right next to Riley - real Zooble. The memory made Pomni even more miserable. Riley had been better at helping than she ever was.
The jester tried to find the words to answer Ragatha, but couldn't settle on anything.
Silence fell between them for a while. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Pomni could feel her pain recede ever so slightly. They watched Jax sleeping in her corner.
“You are here everyday, right?” Ragatha said eventually.
Pomni nodded. Sometimes, she even hoped a persistent friend could bring Jax back. Then she found herself foolish. As far as they knew, abstraction was not reversible. No amount of power of friendship would change that. If anyone had a chance, it was certainly Kinger.
“How do you feel about all this?” Ragatha asked cautiously.
“I can manage.” Pomni responded curtly.
She didn’t want Ragatha to worry for nothing.
“Hey, how about we get out of here?” the ragdoll asked after another pause.
Pomni nodded.
It was always summer in Ragatha’s ranch. They arrived at golden hour. The warmth on her skin took Pomni by surprise. The sensation felt more real than in the circus somehow.
“I’ve spent so many hours tweaking the parameters”, Ragatha explained, as if reading her mind. “It was worth it though.”
The house looked like one from a movie in technicolor. There were so many sounds around them, insects and ruffling in the bushes. The hot air was filled with the smell of the sun and the dry grass.
“It feels so… real.” Pomni whispered.
Ragatha felt so at ease here. Something relaxed in her voice and movements, as if a burden had been lifted right from her shoulders.
They sat on top of a small hill, looking at the sunset together. The landscape was full of fields and forests and dotted by farms. Above it, the sky was a symphony of pinks and oranges. Pomni tried to remember the last time she had seen something so beautiful.
“I wanted this to look like an old movie,” Ragatha mused. “ We watched so many of them with my nana when I was a kid. She was… a wonderful person.”
The ragdoll smiled awkwardly. For the first time since they entered this place, Pomni noticed something uneasy about her.
“What would your perfect world look like?” Ragatha asked eventually.
Pomni thought for a moment. It was not immediately clear but nothing was rushing her here. Suddenly, something came to mind.
“A giant aquarium. We used to go to a place when I was little, but the small tanks made me sad. I began to dream of an aquarium where the fish would have all of the place in the world. I imagined staying there for hours, just looking at them in the water. It was… peaceful. Oh and the aquarium could have an abandoned area to explore.”
That made them both giggle.
“How did you pick up urban exploration anyway?” Ragatha asked.
“It is weird right?” Pomni shrunk a little.
“No, no, no.” Ragatha corrected quickly. “To be frank… I find it rather impressive. I was never at ease in an old building. Always too chickenshit, even when it was for work.”
“You are putting yourself down again, aren’t you?” Pomni fake scolded.
“Guilty.” Ragatha admitted. “So the urbex?”
She said the last word with a strange inflexion, as if it was in another language. Pomni found it charming.
“I started in high school.” Pomni explained. “It was a stupid dare with people I didn’t even like that much. We chose that house that had been abandoned for years. It felt like I was going to die that very night. Instead, I found a place frozen in time.”
Pomni smiled. She could still remember this experience with vivid details.
“A family had lived there, in the 70s I think,” she continued. “Some of their stuff was still there, toys, old magazines, a few postcards. I looked at it all until morning, wondering what their life looked like now. Years later, I thought about this night again. My life felt like a stupid repetition. Sleep, work, retry. It was like my soul was being slowly taken out of me. Amidst the routine, this experience stood out as something… interesting. The rest is history I guess.”
Abigail’s videos were so much better now. Watching them made her both sad and happy.
The sky was turning dark now. A cold wind had risen, and Pomni was starting to freeze.
“Let’s go to the house,” her friend suggested.
The inside matched the outside. It looked like a movie set, with an old-timey kitchen, uneven floor and a quilt covered bed. The most modern thing was the cathodic TV set.
“It is way more practical than it looks,” Ragatha explained quickly. “I conjure most of the things I need anyway. And the TV has everything you want. The perks of being connected to the internet.”
They sat in front of one of her grandma's old westerns with a cup of hot cocoa. Pomni recognized some elements of the house on the screen. She had not watched an old movie in a long time. She lost herself in the desert landscape. Some scenes made her feel nostalgic for a time before her parent’s birth. Others made her adult self cringe audibly.
“Yeah,” Ragatha confirmed. “Some parts are quite… hard to watch. For good reasons.”
“How do you do it then?” Pomni asked softly. “Still see the good parts of it amidst the bad.”
“I see all of it, I would say. A movie, an experience… a person even can be both good and bad. We are all on that spectrum, whether we want to see it or not. I try to be aware of it and check where boundaries lie. Some people would not want anything to do with this movie, and they would not be wrong.”
Everyone processes harm in their own way, Pomni thought.
Gangle came to her mind. How she always looked on edge around Jax’s tent. As if she expected something to hurt her again.
The credit rolled. The jester's head laid on Ragatha’s shoulder, in comfortable silence. Analog snow appeared on the TV.
Then amidst it all, a figure. Pomni recognized her bunny ears instantly.
“Jax.” she cried as she rushed near the TV.
She had her big fake smile, like a looney toon character.
“Jax, is that really you ?” Pomni asked. “Are you trapped ?”
She started banging on the TV.
“I am so sorry Jax. I failed you. I…”
She kept on banging, harder and harder. Jax's smile was unflinching and cruel. Like it used to be in the circus, at times. Pomni did not mind that the bunny was making fun of her. She just wanted her back.
The screen of the TV broke against her fist. Jax disappeared, and they were plunged in darkness.
“You saw Jax ?” Ragatha asked.
Her voice was white. Pomni’s heart started to race.
“You… didn’t.”
“No… Pomni…”
Pomni didn’t stick around for the end of the sentence. She teleported back to the circus in a second.
A few minutes later, she heard a soft knock on her door. She recognized the ragdoll instantly.
Pomni was curled in a fetal position on her bed.
“Hey Pomni.” Ragatha called.
“I’m sorry about your TV,” Pomni responded.
“It is fine.” Ragatha assured. “Can I come in?”
It took all of Pomni’s strength to come to the door and open. Her friend let out a relieved sigh.
“I am so happy you are here,” she exhaled.
Something broke in Pomni’s mind. Before she knew, the ragdoll was holding her tight. She felt heavy tears pool in her eyes. They started rolling down her cheeks. The jester hugged her friend back.
They ended up lying together in Pomni’s bed. Ragatha had offered to stay. Abstraction watch, the jester thought dimly.
That thing she could not do for Jax.
“Do you want to talk for a bit?” Ragatha asked.
“Yeah, it could be nice,” Pomni responded.
It felt intimate to be so close in the dark. The thought made her blush. Again. It was becoming a bit of a trend. There was no way the other girl could tell, she reasoned.
“Hey, it is a slumber party.” Ragatha cheered. “People talk about boys at these right?”
This fell flat.
“Sorry.” the ragdoll shrunk after an awkward moment. “I have never been to a slumber party when I was a teen.”
“I have not been to many either.” Pomni responded. “But yeah, people talk about boys, dates, all that stuff. It is… fun.”
They looked at each other, both confused about how to make this conversation fun. Being together in this made them relax.
“So,” Ragatha started. “How was your love life before we got here? If you are comfortable talking about it of course.”
“I was single.” Pomni recalled with a slightly shaking voice. “I just had a big breakup that left me pretty isolated. He was not a bad guy, just anxious about stuff. Afraid I wouldn’t love him enough, you know. It became too heavy so… we split.”
“Oh, how long were you together?” Ragatha asked.
“Three years. Almost four actually.” Pomni said.
Silence fell after that.
“So… how many people have you dated?” Pomni asked.
“Not many.” Ragatha laughed awkwardly. “My mom had a strict no boys rule at home. It wasn’t as smart as she thought. Turns out the first person I fell in love with was… a girl.”
The ragdoll glanced sideways.
“I hope that's okay, right?” she whispered.
“Ragatha, I am bi,” Pomni laughed.
“Good to know,” the ragdoll responded.
“Never actually dated a girl, but I had some intense crushes.” Pomni continued. “My ex was insecure about that, though.”
“He thought you would leave him for a girl?”
“Twice the competition, he used to say.”
“What a jerk.” Ragatha muttered.
That shocked Pomni. The ragdoll did not say words like that.
“No,” Pomni cleared. “He was just insecure about himself. An ex had cheated on him before, so it was very triggering for him. I think he just thought he wasn’t good enough.”
“Well, it was his problem to deal with, wasn’t it?” Ragatha said.
Pomni did not really know what to answer to that. She changed the subject :
“So, what about this girl you had a crush on?”
“She was my best friend and super straight,” Ragatha laughed. “I became a pinning specialist after that. I met Emma at the end of college. I was not ready to come out to my mother, though. We broke up because of that. After, I dated here and there, and eventually I ended up here.”
“You never dated a guy then?” Pomni asked.
“Once,” the ragdoll sighed. “My mother had set me up with that dude. It was right after the big breakup, so I thought “fuck it, why not?”. It was terrible.”
They laughed together. Then they suddenly realized how close their faces were. Pomni wondered if Ragatha's eyes - well eye and button - had ever been so large. They had a depth to them.
Then she heard it again. The glitch sound. She jilted up, looked around, and found nothing.
“What did you hear?” Ragatha asked.
“This weird sound.” Pomni explained. “I heard it a few times right after Jax abstracted, but now it is almost every day.”
“I’m here.” Ragatha said.
Pomni felt her hand on her shoulder. It grounded her.
She slept peacefully next to the ragdoll that night.
After that, there was always someone next to Pomni. Ragatha had passed the word. Wherever she went, she would find Gangle, Zooble, Kinger, even Caine. That was when she was not with Ragatha.
The ragdoll slept in her room almost every night now. They thought about installing a spare bed, but decided Pomni’s was big enough in the end.
Being helped like that felt both comforting and horrible at the same time.
It made the guilt toward Jax even harder to handle.
As she was thinking that at the edge of the abstraction tent, Zooble said :
“She would not have let us help her like that, you know.”
They usually sat in comfortable silence. Zooble felt grounded. Something inside them seemed unshakable. It was sometimes hard to remember they were younger than Pomni.
“I hate being helped too.” Pomni whispered.
“Yet you didn’t insult me or try to hurt my feelings, did you?” Zooble asked.
Jax had done that. That thought made Pomni pause.
“She pushed us all away, methodically.” Zooble said “She hurt some of us in the process. Of course, she did all of that because she was in pain, but it was also her choice to walk that path. It would not be fair to take that choice away from her. It would not be fair for us either to pretend it was only on you to help.”
“What would be fair, then ?” Pomni articulated.
“That you live your life,” Zooble said softly. “Find something you want to do, something you are passionate about.”
Pomni heard the buzzing. It sounded more muted than usual. In a few instant, it had stopped altogether.
“Thank you,” the jester whispered.
“Don’t mention it,” Zooble smiled. “Without you, I don’t know if you could ever have accepted a life in this place.”
“Do you need help with the wedding?” Pomni asked softly.
That took her comrade by surprise. They paused and smiled.
“Only if you do something for yourself missy,” they stated.
That made Pomni giggle. She was laughing more and more, she realized.
Pomni had not the first idea of something she could do for herself. She had no purpose when she came to the circus. Bonding with others was the first thing that made sense, so she stuck with it.
She started watching Abigail’s videos, but stopped after a couple. The woman on the screen was not her, not anymore. There was an ease to her that Pomni did not have. She wondered what had happened in her life to give her that. Anyways their experiences had diverged too strongly. What applied to her did not apply to Pomni.
Then the jester remembered the aquarium. The place she visited as a kid still existed. Pomni started looking at security cameras. She then realized the tanks were really too small and looked for better aquariums.
That led her down a rabbit hole. She would look at aquarium feeds and divers’ cameras for hours. After her daily visits to Jax, Pomni would watch otters or seals or abyss creatures. Ragatha would watch along when they were together. She squinted sometimes and asked questions with a confused and adorable expression.
The ocean had a suspended quality to it that Pomni loved. The sound stopped there and slowed. Everything was floating. The rhythmic sound of the water washed away her issues. Her digital hallucinations were getting rarer and rarer.
She went diving in the digital sea next. She had left the ragdoll on the side with the energy of an anxious parent.
Compared to the ocean she had virtually explored, the place was disappointing. It was almost completely empty. She was floating in a monochrome void. The only perk was that she could breathe normally down there. She decided to close her eyes and float for a bit.
“What is the matter ?” a deep voice interrupted her.
Pomni feared a new hallucination and found one of those ugly fish in front of her. Its texture was disturbingly smooth and its color reminded her of pigeon shit.
“You lost?” the fish asked again.
He had the demeanor of a grumpy but well meaning old neighbor. Pomni looked around. She could still see the shore.
“Just went in for a swim.” she answered. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Pomni.”
“Paul,” her new friend grunted.
He seemed to hesitate there for a bit.
“Not to be blunt, Miss, but you have the eyes of a dead fish.” he uttered eventually.
That was blunt. And surprisingly, it felt good. Everyone had been nothing but nice to her. Only one person would have been this blunt.
Before she knew, tears were streaming down Pomni’s eyes. In this fucked up world, they came out as bubbles, floating to the surface.
Her mind was blank. Her world was reduced to what was just in front of her, that greyish blue of the sea.
“Miss? Miss? What is the matter? Shall I call for help?” Paul cried helplessly.
Then it did hurt. Her whole ribcage caught on fire.
Jax would never tease her like that again. She would never call her an idiot, or laugh with her, or joke around with her. That time was over and there was nothing she could do about it.
As Pomni started sobbing, she was only dimly aware of something bigger diving next to her. Two chiffon arms closed around her. Part of her observed this from outside. How crazy she must look. How she was letting herself go. How nobody could ever love her like this.
The arms wrapped her in a tight hug.
She kept crying, more and more softly, until she was silent again. The sound of the artificial wind and Ragatha’s breath was all that was left in the world.
“Let it out,” the ragdoll whispered. “You are okay. You are safe.”
The glitches almost entirely stopped after that day. The grief was still here, but it became more managable.
One day, as she was visiting Jax, Pomni started talking. She had never done that before.
“Hello Jax. I hope you are okay. It doesn’t look painful at least. “
The words dropped in the silence. Jax kept on sleeping in front of her.
“I am sorry I wasn’t there for you, you know,” Pomni continues.” The circus is such a good place now. I wish you were there to see it, though you felt you did not deserve that.
I miss you so much. I miss you jokes, your smile, how you would always prevent me from taking myself too seriously. Every day I wake up, I am somehow still surprised that you are not there. As if you have to be a part of my world.”
A tear fell down her cheek. A single one. The words kept on flowing through her mouth. There was no stopping them now.
“I also wanted to talk about how… you hurt me. For the longest time I thought it was my fault. You said all that shit to me because I didn’t manage to say the right thing at the right time. But that would not be fair, I think. So yeah.
I still love you though. If you were to come back, I hope we could be friends again. I would just… put my foot down a bit more.”
The speech left her gasping for air. Her body was expecting something to retaliate. Any minute, the universe would collapse on her because she had been unfair, or mean.
Time went by. Several minutes. Nothing happened. Jax was still sleeping in her corner. Pomni looked at her breathing softly and felt gradually more at ease.
Then she started to sing softly.
“Daisy, daisy, give your answer do…”
The melody echoed through the huge space around her.
“Sweet dreams.” Pomni concluded as she left the tent.
A soft knock on Pomni’s door. Even after months, Ragatha would always knock. It was so like her to be too polite to not let herself in even after Pomni told her countless times that it was okay.
The jester was almost out of abstraction’s watch. The sleepovers were coming to an end. Pomni felt a pinch in her heart thinking about it. She had grown used to her presence. Sometimes she even let herself imagine what it would be like to get closer with her.
“Can I come in?” the ragdoll asked after a few instants.
The jester had already reached the door at this point. She opened to a slightly changed Ragatha. She wore a new dress, green and not patched, and had her hair up in a sophisticated braided bun. She looked lovely.
“Woah,” Pomni let out. “You look… different.”
The ragdoll shifted on her feet.
“I wanted to try something new,” she said, not meeting her gaze. “Hey, I have something I would like to show you.”
She did a small hand gesture and a door appeared next to them. It was made of bright steel with round edges and held together by voluminous round screws. For a few instant, neither of them moved. Then Pomni took Ragatha’s hand.
“Lead the way ?” the jester asked.
She made the tiniest nod back and opened the door.
They arrived in a big, dimly lit room. The walls were semi transparent. Pomni took a second to understand where they were.
It was an aquarium.
It had everything a proper aquarium should have, from the light to the muted sounds to the ambient cold. Fish were swimming all around them, floating in this huge space.
Atlantic salmons, Iceland catsharks, blacksea bass… After her months or research, Pomni could name almost all of them. They looked nothing like the fish of the digital sea. The colors were spot on, and so were the reflections. Their mannerisms, the way they interacted with each other. They looked… real.
A huge silhouette appeared behind, hidden by the depth of the tank. A North Atlantic right whale. She approached the glasses with majestic slowness and stopped to look at them both. Then, with a thrill, she turned back.
“She has space,” Ragatha said softly. “Miles and miles. I made sure of that. The perks of creating this here.”
They sat on the bench for a while, looking at the ballet of the marine creatures. It was as if time stopped there. Everything that had hurt them before seemed distant. In an unplanned movement, their hands brushed. They stayed that way for a moment.
“There are so many more possibilities,” Ragatha then said brightly. “Other biomes, that abandoned area you spoke of. We can work on them together.”
Her hand had moved over Pomni’s as she was speaking. When she realized it, the ragdoll blushed and promptly retrieved it.
“Sorry,” she uttered.
Her embarrassed look made Pomni smile.
“It’s okay you know,” she said reassuringly.
It was her turn to feel at ease. In her element, like a fish in water.
“I like spending time with you Ragatha. I like your kindness, your bravery, your awkwardness too. It is so easy I feel like I’ve done it my whole life. And I feel like, whatever happens, you will be there for me. I want to be there for you too. I want to build these other biomes… and more. I would like to talk to you about urbex, about marine life, and learn about all of your favorite things.”
She bit her lip.
“You don’t understand, Pomni,” Ragatha quickly said. “I like you. Actually like you. I don’t want to ruin what we have with… or betray your trust.”
“I like you too Ragatha.” Pomni interjected.
This brought the conversation to a standstill. Then Pomni started laughing softly.
“I didn’t want to say anything either, because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship… God we are so useless Ragatha.”
The ragdoll hesitated and then started laughing along. The sound echoed in the large room.
“So, what do we do now,” Ragatha asked when they were done.
“How about we figure it out together ?” Pomni responded.
She moved her hand on the ragdoll’s. The softness of the fabric against her hand felt warm and reassuring.
After blushing profusely, she looked up and saw the fish. The whale was back among them. The majestic animal looked at them, and, in a magical moment, started to sing.