Chapter 1

Launch Day

---

It was the third sunrise of the day when Hal was pulled out of their sleep. Letting a grunt fester and die in their throat, their first conscious thought was to make a mental note to themself that they would have to remind Marl to close the blinds before they left the cabin for their daily attempt at sneaking past Rutile and Moraine and trying to get a hit or two against that tree.

Granted, it was an immutable fact that Timber Hearth’s rotation (alongside every type of rotation of every astral body in their solar system, really) was objectively forcing upon them a sunrise every sixty minutes; but it also was an immutable fact that, in spite of the too rapid celestial dance of the star they were orbiting, there surely had to be a reason why their ancestors had evolved to require a minimum of six or seven sunrises of good sleep in a row.

Some had even theorized that this reason might be related to the fact that this amount of time was the average required in order to maintain the level of intelligence that their species had managed to reach, and Firn had… perhaps, sometimes, unkindly made sarcastic barbs about Marl and waking up early when they too were paying the price of the lumberjack’s disregard for others’ sleeping schedules.

Oh well. They were up now, four eyes bathing in undesired sunlight, and they might as well make some use of these unexpected extra forty minutes or so that the sun had so graciously forced into their hands.

Hal was almost surprised to not hear Firn complain about the blinds being left open as well, but then they remembered: this night, their cabin had sheltered one less Hearthian than usual.

Today was Firn’s launch day. How could they forget that this was the day their best friend would finally fulfill their lifelong dream?

Hal wondered whether they had a good night. Sleeping under the stars surely wasn’t by a long shot the most comfortable way to have a good rest, for more reasons than one. The founders of Outer Wilds Ventures and Firn themself said that it was a tradition, but they wondered whether it was a good tradition to have their astronauts depart in a state when they were bound to be in less than optimal shape.

They remembered Firn’s first attempt at using a jetpack. They tried not to think about Firn’s ship crashing the same way, but with even more power and momentum. Their attempt was unsuccessful.

…No, they needed to have more faith in them. Firn had passed the tests, they had convinced Gossan that they were ready, Gossan had even come to tell them in person that Firn was ready and that there was no need to make themself needlessly nauseous with worry about it, and among the founders, Gossan was the biggest stickler for safety.

Firn was going to be fine.

…

But what if they weren’t?

---

About twelve minutes past the sunrise, and Hal was stepping outside, taking in the scent of pine trees and the sight of a village much calmer than they were used to.

Part of them considered seeing for themself how Firn was doing, but they instantly reconsidered. They knew they would come to bid their goodbyes once they were ready, and from what Hal had been told, Firn would have to traverse the crater and visit Hornfels before their departure. Under these circumstances, making their way to the observatory and waiting for them up there thus sounded like the most convenient plan.

That being said, it wasn’t long before their train of thought had to be interrupted.

“If it isn’t the little Hal!” Gneiss called out with a smile. “Out early today?”

The hatchling rolled their eyes. “Marl forgot to close the blinds. Again. I just thought I’d try getting out of bed, for a change.” A nervous flick of their ears punctuated their frown as they soon added: “Also, I’m not little–”

Gneiss gave a soft, warm laugh. “Well, maybe some day you and Firn will finally adapt to waking up at adult times, and I’ll then start considering you like one. Any elder will tell you that the village needs more hands, and the earlier they are fresh and ready to get the job done, the better.”

Hal hummed, looking down. Both Firn and they were now considered in age to drink sap wine, even though they had only grown enough to stomach it four weeks ago (and even though, out of the two, either Firn was still struggling with digesting it, or they simply hated the taste). However, with this ritual of adulthood came not just the slow and progressive shedding of a nickname, but also new responsibilities in regards to sustaining the village’s comfort and lifestyle. And as much as they wanted to contribute, Hal was not quite certain how ready for it they were just yet.

They had the Nomai and their many years of hard work poured into deciphering their language, and they would gladly continue doing so their entire life if they could; this was the sort of path that someone like Riebeck had chosen, in a way. But… aside from giving Slate some extremely vague hints about the purpose of this or that rock and then seeing them recycle eons old debris into exploding contraptions, their research simply did not… feel directly useful or special. Not when their village had so many mouths to feed, and not enough hands to gather the food.

And so, albeit reluctantly, Hal wanted to be a part of the village proper. It was not so much about making a difference… More so about simply looking out for each other, and showing their care for the crater as a whole. It was a sense of duty. Gabbro went to space, Riebeck went to space, Firn was about to go to space… Someone needed to stay down here and keep the village alive, even if it meant that they could not afford to spend all of their waking sunrises figuring out more about the Nomai. It wasn’t like they even cared about space, anyway.

“Speaking of, while you’re here,” Gneiss continued, and Hal startled as they wondered whether they might have been dozing off, “I’ve seen you having fun with your whittling lately, and I thought I might ask for your help with a little something.”

Hal blinked, ears perking up. “Oh, of course,” they nodded reflexively.

“Agreeing before I even told you what it was?” the elder chuckled, raising an eyebrow.

They shrugged, also smiling along. “I mean, if you ask for my help, I guess it’s going to be something I can do, right? And aside from waiting for the next sunrise, well…”

There came another deep and warm chuckle. “You are such a sweet one. Firn should have tried to learn a little bit of that from you.”

“F-firn can be nice,” Hal retorted defensively as they followed the elder inside their cabin and to the workshop. “They’re just… blunt.”

---

Gneiss had been working on a new fishing rod. As it turned out, Spinel’s last big catch had done quite a number on their favorite one, and despite the fact that they did have spares, it was undeniable that their efficiency had been lacking during the past few days.

Hal had only been enlisted for the finishing, most delicate touches; with the elder sitting by their side and blowing on the last spots of fresh varnish which still remained on the head of their latest unfinished instrument, the sunrise flew by and sunset came without either of them noticing.

Hal did not mind. This was by no means an activity they would call nearly as enthralling as diving their head in copies and photos of Nomai writings and trying to make any kind of sense from it all, but this was calming; stimulating enough that they would feel engaged in their work, easy and repetitive enough that they could let their mind wander without causing any mistakes. It was… pleasant enough. And the result was going to be useful, so hey, that part felt good.

And, well, anyway, they knew that nothing in their entire life would ever top the sheer excitement and joy that they had experienced during those long, yet far too short years spent on building the translator with their best friend. They already knew that the happiest days of their life were now likely behind them.

They heaved another sigh. Stars, they would miss them.

…Their mind wandered back to reality when they found Gneiss’ hand coming to them and asking for the fishing rod. Apparently, they had judged that they were done adjusting the guide rings…? Hal was not sure they were attached quite well enough, but with a shrug, they hesitantly complied.

“Your help truly is appreciated,” the elder hummed with a soft smile, putting the nearly-but-not-quite finished banjo away. As they did so, they gave a melancholic sigh to a different incomplete craft of theirs, which had been sitting in the same shadowed corner of their workshop for the past few days. “Alas, I was hoping to finish Firn’s instrument before their launch, but I was caught by all those impromptu delays.”

Hal looked down. “Sorry, if I’d known, I would’ve—”

Gneiss exploded in gentle laughter. “Hatchling, I just thanked you for your help! Whatever do you feel the need to apologize for?”

Hal stifled a laugh as well, only letting one short breath come out of their nose as a shy smile took shape in the corner of their lips. “Just a force of habit,” they shrugged.

Gneiss shook their head, looking up at the ceiling with a caring but exasperated sigh. They soon turned their four tired eyes to the hatchling’s work, studying the details of the carving and mounting alike, and smiling with pride while they tested the tool’s durability.

“I know you are far more interested in diving your head in books that were written before our species was even born,” (Hal decided against telling them that, as far as they and everyone else knew, the Nomai didn’t have books per se, just weird magical stones with information somehow directly imprinted into them), “but I’ve seen how delicate you are with your own crafts.”

Hal frowned upon seeing that the elder was no longer looking at them or the fishing rod, and frowned deeper when they followed their gaze and realized what their attention had turned to instead. Their ears gained some light shades of purple as they opened their satchel and took out their latest work in progress… one which, well, they had barely gotten started on the day before, during their last sunrise before sleep.

“What, this? It’s just a stick I picked up and started carving when I was bored.” It did not even look like anything yet, just like a stick with a barely pointed end. It could just as well be used as a bland stake to pitch a tent or grill a fish.

Gneiss stifled a laugh, deciding against pointing out all the other far more elaborate sculptures they had seen in their hands during the past few weeks, and which they were certain were hiding inside this very same satchel in this very moment.

“And the care you put into it would go quite well into helping the village with shiny new tools, if you wanted me to teach you the ropes. My hands aren’t as steady as they used to be, you know, so your talent truly could be put to good use.”

“Heh, thanks… I guess. All of them still need a lot more work, though–”

“Balderdash,” the elder huffed softly, “you worry too much. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you to keep learning.”

“And they’re not particularly useful for the village, they’re just little unfinished trinkets to keep my hands busy—”

“Come now, hatchling,” Gneiss scolded, “you know that isn’t true. You think my instruments are any more useful to the village?”

“At least your instruments bring everyone together during the campfires,” Hal shrugged.

The elder’s gaze deflated in patient and quiet exasperation. “Sigh… Whatever are we going to do with you if you keep putting yourself down like that? It’s like if you’re ruining your self-confidence on purpose.”

Everybody knew Hal could do a lot of great things, with some more polishing that would naturally come with gaining the experience of age. Everybody, except the Hearthian themself.

And for this, Gneiss decided to stop fooling around. “Just show me one of these from up close. If you want criticism this badly, I’ll tell you how much better than you think they truly are. I know you’ve got a couple on hand.”

Ears dropping, Hal took a shy step back. “B-but…”

“Don’t make me pull them out of your bag myself, hatchling,” the instrument maker threatened with a heavy and deliberate emphasis on the infantilizing designation, and Hal cowered a little more with a tiny, barely audible yelp. Those eyes did not look like they were bluffing.

Reluctantly, the young Hearthian opened their satchel again, searching for the least ugly one they could find, and cringing at the sight. Who were they kidding, they were all ugly, the anatomy was all wrong and they could never get the neck right.

Unbelievably, Gneiss did not seem to give a single care in the world for that. “You have quite the wild imagination,” they chuckled softly as they let the wood shine under the sunlight phasing through the pine trees. “I’ve seen you carve quite a lot of these lately.”

“Y-yeah, that was when Gabbro came back with a new finding, a few weeks ago… It was a statue– a complete, intact statue!”

The elder hummed. “A statue made by those… kodai, was it?”

“Nomai,” Hal corrected with a sheepish smile. “I just… all my life, I’ve been trying to imagine what they could look like, and then they made that huge discovery. It just makes me wish even more that I could see a real, live one, but… Well, th-that’s just wishful thinking.”

Seeing their fiddling hands and nervous twitching, Gneiss finally caved in and handed them the little sculpture back. Hal, blushing even more than before, seized it hurriedly and buried it back where it had come from with both haste and, somehow, still delicate care to ensure that it would not be damaged in the process.

“Hornfels told me yesterday that they were almost done prepping it for display,” Hal mumbled. “The– the statue, I mean. Should’ve said that first. Uh, I mean, m-maybe they need help with the final touches, or…” Or maybe they were already done with it by now, it was likely even, but they were not going to mention this out loud when they had finally found a way out.

The elder nodded with a tired chuckle, catching on their attempt at a cop out and choosing to play along. “Well, in that case I won’t hold you back any longer. You can send them my regards.”

With a sheepish and strained nod, the young Hearthian twiddled with the latch of their satchel and turned around mechanically, before trotting away.

Gneiss sighed. They would come around eventually, they told themself. They had a lot of potential, if only they could be convinced of it and accept that potential did not mean instant perfection. One day, they would realize that experience did not have to be gained instantly and that the only expectations they were currently disappointing were their own.

Hopefully.

---

It was already well past sunset when Hal started climbing up the stairs to the observatory, and they were half cursing the elder for having taken so much of their time giving unwanted attention to their unfinished meaningless works, half berating themself for being rude about it when Gneiss had, all in all, been nothing but nice to them. Mostly.

As they reached the fenced patch of ghost matter and looked to the left, their ears perked up in surprise. If there was one Hearthian they had not expected to see at such high altitude, it would be none other than their older cabinmate.

“Marl?” they called out. “What are you doing up here?”

The swing of an ax was swiftly interrupted, ending craftily hidden behind the lumberjack’s back instead of between two grooves on the trunk. “Oh– Hey, Hal, good morning. Early riser much, today?”

“Yeah, all thanks to you,” they replied with a huff, rolling their eyes. “You forgot the blinds again.”

The taller Hearthian blinked in surprise. Then they brought a hand to their neck, pursing their lips. “Ooh… yeah. My bad.” They paused for a second, then tried to save face: “But you know I have to raise them during the night! Can’t look outside and make sure the road is clear if they’re in the way.”

Deciding that they would ignore any and all discussions about their increasingly convoluted schemes, Hal squinted, studying the shape of the wood from afar despite the low visibility. They only saw one or two haphazard marks, not nearly deep enough to cause any trouble, perhaps even shallow enough to avoid being noticed. Good.

It was in fact rather intriguing, just how little damage was done. Either Marl had been surprisingly holding back (unlikely), or this specific tree truly was noticeably sturdier than any other (much more likely). Maybe the tree did hold a grudge just as much as Marl did, somehow.

Hal internally snickered at the thought. As if a tree could maintain a feud. “And has it ever occurred to you to just… You know, let it go? Cutting down that tree will cause far more harm than good. You know Rutile means it when they try to tell you that.”

“And Rutile only says that because they can’t stand change. They can’t imagine how good a big tree-less crater would be! Less shade, more sun, a lot more wood. What’s not to love about that?”

Unfortunately for their ears and sanity, Hal had long given up on trying to bring up the argument that cutting down such a large tree was bound to cause a lot of panic and destruction once its massive trunk would fall upon at least a good half of the village’s cabins.

It did not mean that Marl had failed to notice that the thought had again crossed their mind and simply refused to leave their lips, though.

“I know what you’re thinking,” they mumbled, “and you know what? That’s the point. You do realize that this tree keeps growing, right? Each day that passes, it becomes an even bigger hazard. I’d be doing everyone a favor by getting rid of it as soon as possible.”

“Go tell that to Rutile,” Hal sighed while rubbing their lower eyes and glaring with the other pair. “I’m not getting involved in this.”

“I gave the whole thing some thought, you know,” Marl continued anyway. “You all make a fair point about it being dangerous to try getting rid of the whole tree at once. Buuut, have you considered the alternative? What if I got rid of it little by little, starting from the top.” The ax came out of their back and was sent straight into the tree, accompanied with a grunting oomph; if this newest attempt had left a dent on its surface, Hal failed to find it.

Then, turning once again to their cabinmate as they readied another swing, they concluded with a proud grin: “Sounds much safer now, doesn’t it?”

Hal deadpanned. “Marl. Go home before I send Moraine after you.”

The lumberjack pouted, but begrudgingly retracted the ax from the trunk and attached it to their belt before they crossed their arms. Walking away, they grumbled something about thinking that they’d said they wouldn’t get involved and that they were no fun.

“And don’t forget the blinds, next time!” Hal warned with a hand curled up around their mouth to let the sound of their voice reach its target.

As they watched them stomp their way down the mountain road and back to the village below, Hal’s ears caught the sound of laughter coming from behind.

“They’ll never change, will they?”

Hal looked up the path they had intended to take up to the observatory, and found that Gossan was currently walking down from it, having likely witnessed the scene from afar on their way. The flight coach sent them a friendly wave right after their quip, and with a small tired smile, Hal waved back.

“Never mind them,” the hatchling sighed. “You know they’ll be right back at it before the next sunrise.”

There was another amused chuckle as the elder crossed their arms and looked down; but soon, they turned their attention back to the Hearthian next to them, and studied them up and down. “So, today’s the day, huh?” they started as a non-sequitur, yet fully expecting Hal to know exactly what they were talking about. “Not too nervous?”

Hal did not need any reminder as they grew a worried smile. “W-well, I’m not the one going in space,” they shrugged awkwardly. They could not prevent a hand from trying to rub away the tension in their neck, and Gossan’s gaze softened upon noticing.

“Don’t you worry, Hal. I told you countless times, Firn is ready.”

They closed their eyes and heaved a long, pained breath which might as well have been a muffled scream. “I know. But still, I just can’t stop imagining all kinds of things that could happen to them, and they have a tendency to be careless, and…”

Gossan let them trail off in silence, lost in thought. After a short moment, they closed their eyes as well, head lowering ever so slightly. “Just like our first astronaut was,” they said with solemnity and a distinct restraint in the display of their emotions.

Hal gave these words all they could, in the form of a respectful moment of silence.

It was not a warning; it was not a wish, nor a wish that things could be different. It was simply a statement.

Somewhere in the sky, in the perfect silence brought by the distance and emptiness, an explosion occurred. Neither Hearthian took notice.

“I don’t want Firn to end up like…” Hal caught themself and bit their lip before they could finish that train of thought. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying that.”

The flight coach regained their smile, bittersweet. “You are a great friend, Hal. Firn will miss you as much as you’ll miss them. It’s just that… Well. You know where their eyes have always been.” Their head turned upwards, watching as Giant’s Deep was slowly leaving the zenith.

Hal nodded sadly, following the founder’s gaze. “The stars.”

“Just like Feldspar,” Gossan sighed with the same expression, of both regret and longing. “You just couldn’t keep either of them on this rock for long. Their dreams belong out there, and they’ll never stop chasing them.”

Silence fell again, as for a few moments, the conversation was only being maintained by the hiding crickets. The night sky was pretty.

A deep breath. “I made them promise they wouldn’t be trying any crazy stunts,” Hal mumbled.

Gossan laughed softly. “Then that’s one more reason I trust they won’t, not unless their life depended on it,” they assured– only to notice that the second part of their sentence made the hatchling’s ears flicker in fear. “…By which I mean they are going to be cautious on their first launch, Hal. It’s not as if they were going to try landing on that contraption orbiting the sun. Their first destination is going to be a safe one.”

With yet another sigh, they nodded in silence; convinced, yet not at all reassured.

“Tell you what,” Gossan chuckled again with more enthusiasm, “Tektite told me yesterday that a piece of mining equipment broke in the Zero-G cave. I was considering asking Firn to take care of it, as a last-minute refresher. Should convince you that even if they ever get their ship in trouble, they’ll know how to handle it just fine.”

All of the hatchling’s four eyes perked up, as they shifted down to meet Gossan’s face. “You would do that?”

The founder raised their helmet to return their gaze with mischief. “You’re looking at me as if I’d broken that machine on purpose,” they barked in laughter. “It just happens to be a lucky opportunity. I’ll go wait for them here, they better say their goodbyes when they pass by.” And with another knowing look, they specified with fondness: “To the both of us.”

---

Somehow, by some miracle, Hal reached the observatory before the end of the night, having encountered no other obstacle.

Just from approaching the entrance to the museum, their eyes widened. Hornfels had warned them that they would be done prepping the statue today; but seeing it for themself, no longer within a dusty crate in the backroom, but as a fully fledged exhibit highlighting all its splendor and majesty, made their heart flutter with excitement.

The Nomai statue was towering far above them, and Hal would not have had it any other way. Or, well, perhaps they could have had it just a little lower so it could be easier to study its shapes for their attempts at whittling them into little sticks, but– the thought was still there. This statue radiated the eons of hidden History it possessed, and Hal had nothing but deep reverence for everything it was embodying. Hornfels truly had found the best way to give this masterpiece the respect it deserved.

Speaking of the Hearthian, Hornfels was standing just behind the statue, dusting their hands while heaving a deep sigh, admiring from the other side a completed work well done.

They called out happily, and the curator instantly perked up at the sound of their voice. “Hal! Why, good morning! Your timing could not be more fortunate, I’d just asked Gossan earlier to go look for you– This statue is finally ready for display!”

“Yeah, I can see that!” the hatchling squealed in turn, completely ignoring the other remark about the flight coach they had run into on their way, too busy counting the stars of wonder which shone out of their eyes. “You did an amazing job, it looks fantastic.”

Long ago, Firn, and then later Riebeck, had asked them why they were not wishing to apply for the Outer Wilds Ventures training, if they were this fascinated by the Nomai. But Hal did not care about space, they could leave the thrill and motion sickness to those who sought it.

They were excited, yes, but they were also patient; and as such, they were quite content to make do with what those who had opted for exploration would bring back home. Who needed to chase the stars out there in the sky, when they could be brought down here, right into their palms and surrounded by all the tools they needed to study them? If they’d ever feel the urge to go to space, it would only be for the sake of the Nomai, not for space itself. Riebeck surely could relate with that feeling, they simply had found in themself the decisiveness to actually go through with it.

Looking up with a similar expression, Hornfels breathed in satisfaction; then, reluctantly, they detached their eyes from the sight and turned them to the youth by their side. “Ah… It pains me to leave this statue, but I do have a first launch to supervise,” they announced with a teasing wink.

Hal sent them a smile, trying to tame their worry. “Is the weather going to be okay?”

“It has been all day yesterday and up until the first sunrise this morning,” they assured confidently. “I will ensure nothing has changed, but I trust you have seen the sky yourself: not a cloud in sight. The flight conditions could hardly be any more ideal for takeoff.”

Hal gave a nod, confirming that they had seen as much.

“I’ll be upstairs,” the founder announced happily. “You can tell Firn to go find me once they arrive. Have fun admiring the statue in my stead!”

After these last words, Hal burst into honest laughter. They would do that all day if they could.

---

Even the sound of footsteps resonating on the same planks of wood they were standing on failed to pull Hal out of their reverie. Instead, as those footsteps quietened all the while sneaking dangerously closer, what brought them back to reality with the subtlety of a cold bucket of water was the discomfort of someone blowing a small but perfectly aimed puff of air right into their ear.

Jumping almost a full meter above the ground (maybe the Attlerock was passing by and its tidal pull helped a little bit), Hal squeaked while plastering a hand against it and turning towards the source of this assault; then, as soon as they identified the risk, their face melted into laughter. “Firn, how old are you to still make these jokes?”

Ignoring their question, the newcomer crossed their arms with mock jealousy. “I see you’ve found a new best friend to replace me while I’m gone,” they teased with a toothy grin.

From anyone else, such remark would have been met with flushed cheeks and fumbling apologies. From Firn, though, Hal had long learned to reply with a roll of their lower eyes and a half-amused, half-annoyed snicker.

“It is beautiful, though, don’t you think?” they sighed dreamily as they once again turned to it. “Can you realize that we can finally have an idea what the Nomai used to look like? And– I’m still not over it even if I’ve seen it weeks ago, but do you see all that fur? Silkmoths have fur! That’s so weird!”

“You think they had a larval stage too?” Firn laughed, finding the sight quite hard to imagine, yet willing to indulge in it just for the sake of being able to call the mental image funny.

“We have yet to see any of their writings describe anything of the sort,” Hal shrugged. “But who knows, maybe you will once you’re out there.” Marking a pause, they blinked in sudden recollection and studied their friend up and down, evidently searching for an item in particular. “Speaking of, where’s the translator? Did you have someone prep it inside your ship already?”

With a smirk, Firn reached into their back, pulled out of their belt the tool in question, and made its tiny, thin and light shape whirl between their fingers for a full rotation or two before they grabbed its handle and held it firmly.

This latest stunt wrested an anxious hiss and two pairs of bulging eyes out of Hal, who just barely calmed down upon seeing a second later that everything was in control. They still bit their lip and frowned. “I-it’s fragile, Firn! Please don’t handle it like that. Geez– If you break it, I swear I’ll…”

For the first time this morning, the cadet’s smug expression softened ever so slightly. “Hey, relax, I’m gonna protect it with my life,” they said instantly with determination, and Hal knew they were being sincere. It was almost a shame that the smug grin instantly came back: “I mean, you’re not the only one who’s spent years of your life perfecting it, you know. I don’t want to see all that hard work go to waste either.”

They were met with a deadpan look. Firn be thrown into the depths of Dark Bramble if they so much as let any genuine kindness whatsoever be seen by others for more than five seconds. It was no wonder most people were so easily fed up with them.

“You’re insufferable.”

“And owning it with pride.”

They really would never change, would they? It somehow was this constant blend of masquerades and incongruous sincerity that Hal could never understand, and yet found so fascinating. Firn knew that they were one of the few who could see through their jokes, and… In a way, that made Hal feel special in their eyes. Firn had never called anyone else their best friend, and Hal could hardly imagine the prospect that they ever would.

Hal sighed, eyes going back and forth between their friend and the statue. “So, any plans while you’re out there?”

Firn pouted, looking at the ceiling and shrugging with a disinterested tilt of their head. “Ehh, I’m supposed to be starting small with the Attlerock. I’m still not sure how safe those retro rockets are, anyway,” and their expression had already turned into closed smug eyes and a cocky smile. Opening their lower eyes again, then their upper ones, they dared shed their brashness, and instead let their genuine excitement shine as they whispered and exclaimed at the same time: “Besides, I bet you’re dying to know what kind of device the Nomai were calibrating there! I know I am.”

Hal’s eyes lit up just as much at the sound of these words. Years ago, Feldspar had brought back from their first successful expedition a wall with the very first Nomai writings to be found in outer space; the very same wall that had given both them and Firn a wave of wonder and awe, and the determination to one day decipher its secrets.

The idea that on this very day, Outer Wilds Ventures would finally get to find out what these Cassava and Filix were talking about… Oh, they were so excited that it made them feel nauseous.

“Anyway,” Firn concluded with their usual detached and smug tone, “it’s not that I don’t like your company, but I’ve got some launch codes to fetch. Can’t figure out the secrets of the Nomai if I don’t get off this rock first.”

With a sad blink, Hal’s smile turned bittersweet. “Right. Almost forgot you had to go.”

Tentatively, with pleading eyes, they dared raise their hands and ask for one last hug. Firn pursed their lips, looking around their surroundings nervously, before stepping forward and accepting it.

For what had to be the sixth time or so, Hal rolled their eyes. “Relax, burnt mallow, nobody’s watching. Your reputation isn’t gonna crumble just by letting some caramel ooze out instead of carcinogens when you bid your heartfelt goodbyes.”

“Tsh. And you say I’m insufferable,” the cadet snickered; but their embrace tightened, and for but a short second, there was one small insistent shake of their arms as they squeezed tighter still.

Both childhood friends remained like this in silence, taking in their last moments together; but alas, this magical moment could not last eternally.

Pulling out of their embrace and sharing one last fond glance with all four eyes, Firn’s smile softened. “Hey. If you ever miss me, you know you can just go ask Hornfels to radio me, I’m sure they won’t mind. I promise I’ll pick up. I’ll try to keep you updated on what I find on the Attlerock ruins, too, in real time! …Assuming I’m not too busy jumping around and having fun with the low gravity.”

Closing their eyes and shaking their head, Hal crossed their arms and smiled. “Yep. Insufferable.” With one last look, they sighed deeply, before concluding with a twinge of regret they tried their best to stifle: “Go on, don’t let me hold you back. Just make sure to take care of yourself, you hear?”

As sole answer, they received a single, tiny but sincere nod. With one last shared wave, Hal watched as their best friend walked out of the room and up the stairs to the observatory. They took a few steps forward, only stopping at the edge of the door leading to the rest of the museum’s exhibits, and their eyes followed from a distance until the ceiling hid them from view. And then… only then did the realization truly hit.

In this instant, for the first time in their life, Hal felt true loneliness; and with it, there came a pang in their stomach as a feeling of inexplicable dread grew in their heart: the feeling that it would be a long, long time, until they would ever truly see them again.

Far was it from their mind to know just how true both of these statements were going to become.

---

Thinking that Firn would have to step down those very same stairs anyway in order to walk out of the museum and reach the launch tower, Hal had decided to stay right where they were, and to go back to admiring the statue.

No matter how many times they looked, they could never get tired of the sight; every new second of observation seemed to reveal yet another detail they had missed before.

With a hand to their satchel, they plunged their fingers inside and felt the carved wood of their previous ongoing attempts at trying to recreate it. They couldn’t help it, perhaps they were indeed obsessed with this statue, almost as much as Hornfels was.

Looking down, they pulled out the stick they had picked up on the evening before. If they were going to wait for their friend’s return, they might as well busy their hands with something in the meantime.

Their knife started digging into the wood, but then they stopped and frowned.

Right. It simply wouldn’t do to proceed with the whittling here, they’d be getting sawdust all over the place. It hadn’t been much of an issue before in the workshop since it already was a mess anyway, but this was a museum, and Dark Bramble take them if they would be even the last Hearthian to dare soil this room.

Raising one last glance at the statue, they tried to memorize its shape as best they could, then lowered their gaze towards the exit and went on their way — not suspecting a single second that a long-awaited discovery from the furthest reaches of their solar system was about to be made, and that in less than a minute, its image would be indelibly carved not on wood, but directly into their own mind.

Hal was just passing by the exhibit when their ears caught the clang at the start of a mechanical whirr– or rather, of the gritting and inexplicable sound of stone scraping against stone.

Jumping in surprise, they tilted their head around and looked over their shoulder, then spun their entire body and opened their mouth, ready to scream—

The statue opened its eyes.

Chapter 2

9,318,054

---

As much as all the intricacies of the Nomai’s greatest technological achievement had attempted to take such basic parameters into account, the process of pairing with a statue had never been expected to be a particularly enjoyable experience.

In this regard, never had Phlox or Daz ever intended to imply or pretend the opposite — provided, alas, they could ever be given the chance to be inquired about it.

Had the circumstances been any different, both would have graciously shared the forewarning with any Nomai, or even any other lifeform who might end up involved in their project, willingly or otherwise; and naturally, they would have put in all the necessary hard work to ensure that the latter case would be a risk fully secured into the realm of impossibility.

After all, it simply was a well-known fact, or at the very least a quite intuitively conceivable one, that nature had never felt the need to prepare any species in the entire universe for the eventuality that a living, conscious observer’s brain, would one day be asked to share with an alien contraption the surprisingly immense amount of information and cerebral stimuli that could be amassed and recorded during the past thirty-two minutes of a regular Hearthian’s casual morning, and to then process it all over again in reverse within the span of no more than three seconds and seventy-eight hundredths.

Adding to this the inevitable margins of error brought upon by the subtle differences in biology which could only be expected of two species with vastly diverging anatomies and metabolisms who originated from two respectively foreign star systems, as well as the entire multi-planet-scale device’s old age in spite of its remarkably close to intact state of preservation… It was not particularly difficult to come to a very simple conclusion:

Hal’s next three seconds and seventy-eight hundredths following the exact moment of the statue’s eyes opening were far from pleasant.

Linguist as they were, Hal found themself unable to find words to describe whatever had just transpired in the confines of their mind; though, admittedly, this predicament may have been related to the fact that for the next few instants, they found themself already busy attempting to remember how to comprehend an abstract and artificial concept as profoundly complex and unintuitive as recognizing up from down.

The next moment, they heard loud steps running in their direction. Every ounce of intelligence and awareness they had been gifted at birth and proceeded to actively nurture ever since came back in a flash — including the now inherent knowledge that, a few seconds ago, those footsteps had been running downwards, and had therefore at some prior point originated from upwards. Upstairs, even.

“Hal, are you alright!?”

Hal forced all four eyelids closed, then open, then closed and open again, hard. Their light-headed neck rotated towards the source of this panicked sound, not unlike how the statue had done just a moment before.

It was Firn. Judging from their bewildered expression, they must have finished walking down the stairs just in time to witness the same strangeness that they just had. Which meant…

“Did… did you see that?” they asked weakly, pointing with a quivering finger at the three golden orbs which an instant prior were shining bright and sucking in their mind somehow, but had now gone extinguished.

“Almost missed it, but yeah! That statue just moved on its own!” Rushing to it without a single thought, Firn placed a hand on the empty eyeballs, poking the central one tentatively. “Weren’t its eyes closed before!? Did you know it could open them?”

With their best friend’s swift curiosity and enthusiasm, Hal could feel a small but rapidly growing headache fill their brain. Describing their mind as cloudy would be a mistake, as in fact, they could feel their thoughts as far more lucid and almost tangible as they had ever been before, but… Well.

It would be more akin to the sensation that something had dug straight into their head, like a young misbehaved hatchling sneaking into Hornfels’ records and stealing one specific cassette whose contents would be related to the past half sunrise or so — then unwound their thoughts memory by memory the same way this same hatchling would enjoy themself seizing the end of the tape and pulling it all out of its casing, little by little, in reverse, with ignorant yet cruel glee — and finally, once finished, left the whole thing for the recorder’s owner to sort out the mess and carefully coil the tape back into the neat black cylindrical reel it was supposed to be left as.

Hal found themself wincing in confusion when they reluctantly tried to seize the metaphorical tape and do just that: indeed, the moment they tried to focus on putting their latest memories back in order, it was almost as if they could feel themself be there all over again, standing simultaneously inside the museum looking at an excited Firn, and somehow also outside, on the path between the patch of ghost matter and the Zero-G cave, talking to a Gossan that they thankfully could tell did not truly exist.

The only solace they found was that they had just enough awareness to remember which of the two settings was the real one, and the fact that the imaginary Hal standing outside by the cliff was talking to Gossan regardless of their present self’s intent helped a lot in this regard. Still– never had reminiscing ever had any right to feel so real.

Just when they thought that Firn would remain completely oblivious to their state of mind and be enthralled by the Nomai statue just as deeply as they themself once had, another pained and slow blink conveniently hid the moment during which the young cadet turned around, their curious and excited smile having turned upside down. “…Wait, no, sorry. Hal, are you okay? You look awful.”

Hal blinked again, the gesture becoming progressively less strained. The tape of their memories was being recoiled carefully, and they felt immense relief when they realized that those related to their conversation with Gossan had now been put back in order, with the next ones being their quiet past self walking up to the museum. But far too soon came the turn of reviewing their enthusiastic moments spent with Hornfels instead, and again they closed their eyes and sighed, trying their best to ignore both the curator and their past self, and to focus on saying out loud the words they actually wanted to say, instead of those they had already spoken at some earlier point. Admittedly though, keeping their silence altogether was actually the safest bet.

This was such a confusing, and most distressing feeling — the feeling that they could go back and observe their own memories with excruciating detail, as if they were back in the past living through them a second time, all the while feeling like a distant observer trapped within their own body, incapable of interfering with events which had already been set in time. That they could not shake the precognition that it felt as if something else was taking the role of an observer at the same time as they did… Both truths left them struggling to focus proper, and struggling even harder not to let their body tremble in panic, or their nauseated and stressed out stomach churn and turn upside down, their breakfast along with it.

And then came the part they had been dreading the most. To their own despair, Hal now felt themself standing in two different parts of the same room, talking to two different versions of Firn at the same time.

One of the two waved an arm in front of their eyes, filled with concern. “…Hal? Hello?”

They were pretty sure that this Firn was not from the memory. They were asking a question, and they looked progressively more worried.

Right, if this was the real one, they probably should be answering.

“You’re insufferable,” their lips sluggishly let out by instinct, before their eyes widened and they instantly recoiled in embarrassment. “N-no, wait, wrong one–”

While the echo of the other Firn responded with a smug ‘And owning it with pride’, the worried one turned from concern, to confusion and triple the concern. “What?”

“S-sorry, just–” Deep breath. “Give me– just a minute.” That would have to do, hopefully.

They decided to close their eyes firmly, inhale loudly, and go back to silence until it was finished. They were almost there, thankfully the memory replaying seemed to be going much faster than the event they represented once had in the real world.

They could not fully tell what present Firn was doing now, but they considered the fact that they only heard a single set of Firn voices playing in the back of their mind in speed motion as a sign that they had probably listened to their plea and fallen silent.

After what had been both a dozen seconds or two, and felt like sixty times that amount, Hal’s mental vision finally aligned with that of their actual eyes: that was to say, the pitch black of their closed eyelids. Letting their head fall backwards, Hal gave a long sigh, then slowly opened their eyes. They felt something on their left shoulder and looked down: Firn’s hand was pressed against it, gentle but insistent. Too embarrassed to break the silence just yet, Hal sent their friend a shy look accompanied with a small grateful smile.

Firn’s eyebrows twitched, staring intently. The light grip on their shoulder gave a small squeeze. “Feeling better now?”

Hal opened their mouth, taking in one last breath. “Yeah… Yeah. Sorry for all that,” they sighed in relief. “That was… wow, that headache felt like a whole dozen of geysers going off at once.” Probably better to call it a ‘headache’ than a… whatever that had just been. Raising a sheepish look at their friend, they quickly added: “But it’s over now, I-i think.”

After a short hesitation, the cadet frowned with uncertainty, gave a small nod, and freed their shoulder, retracting their hand. “Any idea what all of that was? First the statue moving on its own, and then… Well, even from you, that was quite the reaction, don’t you think?”

Hal nodded weakly, stifling a strained laugh. That sure was one way to put it.

Indeed, what even had happened? Hal tried to find so little as a semblance of an answer in recalling what had transpired in this very room barely two or three minutes ago, and — oh no.

Hal saw mental images and sounds surfacing in the back of their mind, and for one moment, they feared that it would be the whole experience of reliving the past and present simultaneously all over again. However, to their greatest relief, they immediately realized this time that, with those memories being now put in order instead of floating away from their proper place, it had become much easier to keep them under control and make them fade at will. As easy, in a way, as it should be to press play, reverse, forward, and pause, and then put the whole cassette back on its shelf in the records room.

Nonetheless. Trying not to think too hard about the utter strangeness of it all, Hal searched for the metaphorical cassette they were looking for, finding it in an instant almost before they even had realized that this was the one they were looking for — almost as if something else had first found it for them and shoved it into their hands, responding to their request before they could have found the time to even phrase it.

With an entire body shaking in barely controlled panic and a deep focused breath, they put the recent memory under close, analytical scrutiny, feeling once again as if they were assisted in the process by some external force. Whatever it was, if it existed at all, it sure was insistent – steadfastly bent on making them keep a greedy grip on those moments, on never allowing themself to let them slip away from their mind, on having them dissect every detail of it, for fear that something could possibly erase them soon.

Anyway.

Firn had described the statue’s movements.

Nothing about the eyes glowing, or the… the glowing in general, or the everything else.

Logically speaking, there was only one explanation as to why anyone with an iota of common sense, but especially someone like Firn, would express surprise for the former, but not even bother acknowledging the latter’s existence, save for the external effects it had on Hal themself. And so, this reasoning led to one disappointing conclusion:

“…So you didn’t see it,” they mumbled weakly with a twinge of sadness.

Firn frowned again. “See what?”

To be fair, they themself were not certain that they had quite seen any of these floating purple strings, or the eyes’ purple light swallowing them all, either. Not with… not really with their own four eyes, that was. Rather with whichever mental eyes were the ones responsible for making them relive their memories with this amount of vividness which nature should have, and probably did have rightfully prohibited.

Still. Linguistics be thrown to the bramble for just five minutes, because they truly needed at least some amount of leniency, ‘seeing’ would have to do. “I… I think I… saw my own memories replay before me? Backwards?” Yeah. That sounded good enough. This sentence sounded crazy enough on its own, there was no need for even more words that would only make it sound sixty times worse.

Firn’s eyebrows were raised at first; but soon, their gaze softened instead, as a gentle but teasing smirk appeared in the corner of their lips. “Saw your life flashing before your eyes, huh?” They laughed with their usual sarcasm, though they still gave a genuine attempt at not sounding condescending. “I mean, yeah, I bet seeing that huge thing move on its own just to stare you down would scare the living daylights out of anyone. …Especially you. No offense.”

Nevertheless, despite the light dismissiveness of their words, there was a twinge of doubt in the corner of their upper eyes; stupidly easy to startle as Hal was, surely they should have handled this jumpscare better than that… Right?

Hal looked to the ground, humming unconvincingly. That was… a decent enough explanation, perhaps? They replied with a strained chuckle. “Heh… You’d think it was just that. That’d… make sense, I guess.” Turning their eyes to their friend, they tried to replicate their relaxed laugh. It came quite a little bit broken. “Still, I can’t help but feel like… there was more to it?”

Taking a deep but tense breath right in the next second, Hal tried to appreciate the fact that their mind had finally been allowed to store all the metaphorical cassettes inside their proper metaphorical shelves, and then closed the metaphorical doors to the metaphorical records room, and that with this, their headache was slowly but surely starting to fade in turn.

Now that their thoughts could fully focus on living through no other event than the present, though… The more seconds slipped by, the more distant and outlandish their previous sensations became, fading into none but the blur of a dream in the back of their mind. And as a consequence, with those same seconds slipping by… the more they questioned the possibility that all of this had been nothing but a particularly potent nauseating hallucination caused by their own tendency to scare themself to death at even the tiniest little things.

They did not know whether trying to reminisce yet another memory on purpose would trigger it again, but truthfully, something they did know was that they did not want to find out. The thought that they had simply had a very weird episode of their own brain turning against them somehow felt more comforting than the prospect of this kind of thing… being permanent.

Feeling the pressure of Firn’s skeptical eyes boring four holes of extreme doubt directly into their skull, what little confidence they had in that ridiculous theory finished crumbling to dust.

“…Ugh, what am I saying,” they sighed tiredly, bringing a hand to their forehead and rubbing away the last trails of tension on their face. “Did the Nomai even have mind-reading technology? Is it even possible?” With another sigh, their other hand went to follow the first so they could rub both pairs of eyes at once. “Forget I said anything. Maybe I just need to lay down for a bit.”

The last remaining traces of Firn’s already fake smirk faltered completely, letting their ears drop with the smallest signs of guilt. Crossing their arms and regaining a determined expression, they turned their eyes again to the latest museum exhibit and huffed with disgruntlement, mind scrambling for any trail which could lead to even the beginning of an explanation.

In the end, they decided to drop any jokes and jump down into the realm of the steady and rough solid grounds normally called evidence. “Well, whatever happened, what’s for sure is that this statue did something. It’s been on this planet for weeks and you’ve been standing here all morning for all I know, so why’d it only act up now? You didn’t touch it somewhere new or anything, did you?”

Hal shook their head. “Absolutely not, I even was on my way to leave.”

Firn’s lips opened instinctively, ready to offer the sarcastic hypothesis that perhaps the statue was just feeling lonely and did not want its greatest admirer to abandon it; but just as quickly, they found the physical restraint to close their mouth before it came out.

Tapping an index finger against their elbow with increasingly faster velocity and stronger impact, they pursed their lips and grunted with the frustration of facing a roadblock. A short moment later, they looked Hal up and down one more time, assessing their state, before turning again to the statue. “Where’d you say it came from again?”

Hal’s hands finally managed to stop trembling, they just noticed after looking down. Raising their head back to their best friend, they frowned, then replied with decisiveness: “Giant’s Deep. It was Gabbro who found it.”

Firn nodded. Their back was still turned to them, but they rotated their head just enough for Hal to see that they were sending them a mischievous grin. Mischievous not out of ill intent at the prospect of them preparing another nefarious plan, or at least they did not believe so… But rather, this mischief appeared to have found its spark in the hope of finally having a thread to start with.

“Forget the Attlerock. I know which planet I’m crashing my ship into.”

Hal’s ears twitched nervously, face crumpling in worry. “D-do you have to say ‘crash’?” they cringed, trying all over again to dismiss the mental image. Fortunately, it was the mental image of something that had never happened, so it seemed like their brain would not suddenly try to go look for a cassette that did not exist and force them to witness it. “Also, that’s not… You think Hornfels would agree to let you go there on your first trip? From what Gabbro said, it sounds pretty dangerous, with the current, and the storms, not to mention the—”

Firn rolled their eyes in annoyance. “I’ll make them agree. It’s important to you, and it’s related to the statue they’ve been obsessing over. With reasons as big as that, I’m sure they’ll allow a last-minute change of plans.”

They tried to argue, but by the time their mouth opened, their friend had already grabbed their wrist, looking at them with four eyes filled with determination.

“Come on,” they said with a much softer tone and an encouraging smile. “You’ll even get to scold me over the radio if you feel like it. Sure Hornfels would like for that to happen.”

With an anxious sigh, Hal reluctantly let their friend guide them to the observatory. Before they turned around and aimed for the stairs, they gave one last glance at the statue — this time, not with awe, but with disdain and apprehension.

Even now that they had broken eye contact with it… Somehow, they still felt distinctly observed.

---

The moment Hornfels heard that the statue’s eyes had opened, their ears closed to any other potential detail to that story, and their role as ground control had been all but forgotten. With only one idea in mind, the one who had now put on their museum curator’s hat instead wanted nothing to do with the observatory, and everything to do with the statue room.

Which was precisely why Firn did everything in their power to stop them from leaving their post.

“Firn, how can you share such news and not even let me study it!? I’ve spent night after night for weeks trying to get those eyes to open, and now that they have, you won’t let me go down and find out why they did? Just go to the Attlerock like we all agreed, surely you don’t need me for that!”

“And that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Hornfels, that’s exactly why I’m going to Giant’s Deep!”

“You can’t just change your flight plans at the last second, let alone on your first launch! Why would you even want to go this far off-planet when I already have all the tools I could ever need inside the workshop?”

Firn rolled their eyes. “And I say it’ll be much more useful to investigate directly the place where it came from! What are you going to do, stay in the museum, point your signalscope at it, and look for brain waves all day?”

The curator frowned, leaving their desk and making their way towards the stairs. “I’m not sure why you would mention brain waves specifically, but I will have you know that using an encephalogram under these circumstances would be a far more relevant approach—”

The astronaut crossed their arms and frowned deeply, deliberately blocking the path. “Hornfels, I’m getting off this rock today, and I’m gonna figure this whole thing out right from where that statue came from. I have the translator and a radio, I can report everything I find in real time!”

“Firn, as much as I value your interest in solving this statue’s mystery, you really shouldn’t change your flight schedule at such short notice,” the founder tried to reason with cautious concern. “This is your first launch, you need to understand that Giant’s Deep might remain a little more than you can chew for now. You will have all the time to investigate there on later expeditions, and perhaps find more statues to study—”

Firn’s fists clenched. Barely controlled boiling blood coiled into a thick ball inside their throat. “It’s not about the statue, Hornfels!” they finally exploded. “It did something to Hal, and I’m going to find out what it was, you hear me?”

Hal gasped, looking wide-eyed at their friend. They were not sure what to think… Had Firn actually believed their story about the statue reading their mind? But also, were they even planning on convincing Hornfels as well…?

Speaking of Hornfels, their eyebrows fell at once, gaze now jumping from one hatchling to the other back and forth, as they startled as well — albeit, for a different reason. “What exactly do you mean by ‘did something’?”

“I said I was going to find out,” Firn repeated angrily.

The curator turned to their friend with confusion and concern. “Hal, what are they talking about? The statue turned to you and opened its eyes, that much I understand, but– there was more to it?”

Hal took a step back, unsure how to describe their experience and make it sound anything other than utterly mad and nonsensical. “It’s… it’s complicated, I didn’t even think Firn would– believe me.”

Firn crossed their arms. “Which is why I’m saying I’m not sure what happened,” they stated coldly.

Hal’s ears dropped at the same time as their eyes turning to the ground. That made more sense; of course they wouldn’t accept something so outlandish just like that.

They were, however, quite surprised to feel Firn grabbing their wrist and squeezing lightly, as if to try and somewhat comfort them. When they looked up at their face, they found the expression that had truly earned Firn’s place in the Outer Wilds Ventures program:

The expression of a dedicated, analytical and thorough investigator.

“Something happened alright, I was right there,” Firn continued. “But Hal says there was more to it, something only they saw— something to do with their mind, or memories, right?” The cadet gave a quick look in their direction; Hal gave them a tiny nod, and they nodded in return with a hum. “Point is, it’s hard for now to tell how much of it was just Hal trying to recover from the fright, and how much of it was the statue really doing something. But I’m willing to believe that if a however-old-that-thing-is statue just moved on its own to specifically turn towards them— I hardly think the Nomai would create that kind of thing just for the sake of scaring people out of their skins. It had to have another purpose.”

It had been a whole minute or two since Hornfels had fallen silent, listening to their reasoning; their face made it hard to tell whether it was because they were actively listening and agreeing with this train of logic, or if they had simply given up on trying to stop them.

Firn let go of their arm so they could go back to crossing their own, and with one last head tilt upwards, they brought their demonstration to its conclusion: “And now I’m getting to my real point: even if whatever happened was all in Hal’s head and the statue did nothing else, I still believe the statue was meant to do something else; and if it didn’t do it, it means either that it’s broken, or that Gabbro took it away from the rest of the mechanism it was supposed to be a part of, which also means that it’s technically broken. In both cases: we have zero chances of figuring out what the statue was meant to do by staring at it downstairs, and our only way to find any answers is to explore Giant’s Deep.”

And with those last words being uttered, the young cadet fell silent and stared defiantly, wordlessly daring Hornfels to so much as try to think of a counterargument.

Hal was impressed, that was for sure. Impressed by what, however, was far less certain. Were they more impressed by the apparent flawlessness and fluidity of their reasoning, or by the fact that at the end of the day, the sole objective behind said reasoning had been nothing but the self-centered motivation of making it impossible to stop them from doing what they wanted?

Hornfels stared for what had to be almost an entire minute. Then, they brought an exasperated hand to their lowered face and started rubbing the bridge of their nose. With a heavy and loud defeated sigh, they conceded: “Fine, have it your way! But I am not letting you do this alone. Go meet up with Gabbro first, you are going to need someone who has the field experience.”

Firn’s smirk turned insufferably triumphant. It was not a complete victory, but it was good enough, and just about the best outcome they could have hoped for. “Deal.”

And without any other word, the newest astronaut turned around and practically ran down the stairs, barely sending Hal one last wave with a distracted hand.

Hal so dearly hoped that Gabbro would manage to keep them safe.

Somehow.

---

Taking off had been easy. Firn remembered their training, they had located and memorized all the buttons on their dashboard weeks ago down to their size and color, and they had no reason to stay a single second longer than necessary on the soil of Timber Hearth.

Locating Giant’s Deep while out of the atmosphere had been a little more difficult. Firn remembered that it was high up in the zenith when they woke up, but that was just about a whole sunrise earlier; and in this span of time, the planet had been granted enough time to get to the other side of the Hearthian sky.

Locating Gabbro became even harder when Firn realized that they probably should have remembered to turn on their ship’s signalscope before entering its atmosphere and having to suddenly keep all four eyes not on trying to find the signal of a barely audible flute (were they even playing at all? They could not pick up any signal on planet), but instead on the dozen of cyclones raging all around them.

Firn did not want to admit to Hornfels that maybe their training had not quite yet taught them how to time last-second dodges between moving walls of wind and water.

And Gabbro— What were they doing? They couldn’t pick up their signal anywhere!

Another cyclone had to be dodged— and as they were forced to turn around in a full half circle in order to evade yet another, they sputtered in shock as they saw an entire island fall from the sky, and right back into the ocean.

Wait… A black trail seemed to be coming out of it. Was that smoke? A campfire!

Their signalscope finally decided to pick up a sound coming from the Outer Wilds Ventures frequency. Gabbro’s flute was always the hardest to listen to due to its low volume and pitch, and the surrounding howling winds certainly did not make it any easier now… But if on top of this the island had not even been on the surface of the planet until just a few seconds ago, then of course trying to locate it was a plan bound for failure.

Still, that was not all. Firn instantly noticed that this time… Gabbro’s playing sounded a lot more strained and tired than usual.

To be fair, if Firn themself had been the one being thrown up into orbit and then back down like this, they likely would not be playing at all… But still. This kind of playing was not by a long shot the most Gabbro-like, and they could only try to imagine why.

Well, whatever was happening, it was no use trying to play guessing games when they could simply find out upon landing. A minute more, and their ship made physical contact with solid ground, landing in an area which was mercifully as flat as wild terrain could ever hope to be.

Firn unbuckled, checked the airtightness of their suit just like Gossan had taught them, then opened the hatch and jumped down.

…and instantly regretted their thoughtless leap, as their knees sent shivers up their spine with what felt like the closest thing they thought they would ever get to breaking their legs.

They frowned at the ground, attempting another jump only to barely manage not to collapse under their own doubled weight, and to barely fail at repressing the instinct to flail their arms around to maintain their balance upon landing.

Right. Giant’s Deep was a giant. Gravity was on average double that of Timber Hearth. Ow.

So much for looking forward to the Attlerock’s low gravity and the fun prospect of magically losing two thirds of their usual weight.

With an exasperated sigh, Firn reached out for their signalscope and followed the music, minding the patch of ghost matter that they soon noticed nearby.

And then, finally, there stood Gabbro. And by ‘stood’, it would be far more appropriate to specify that they were, in fact, not standing at all, unless ‘standing’ horizontally inside a hammock could be a grammatically correct wording. Firn instantly frowned and let a groan resonate inside their throat, because of course they would.

Turning on their helmet’s radio emitter, they called out with the most polite tone and hand wave they could muster, and the flute instantly stopped. From the hammock, a helmet ever so slightly turned and peeked out, looking around somewhat groggily until their eyes could pinpoint the source. Cons of having to rely on radio for communication even when both parties were barely a dozen meters apart: you could not trust your ears to locate the other’s spacial position relative to yours.

“Firn? Oh hey, it’s really you,” Gabbro greeted, voice still crackling through the receiver despite their proximity. “Good to see you made it here in one piece. The first solo launch is a doozy, isn’t it?”

Firn hummed deep in thought as they walked closer, finally making it to their side.

As much as ‘Gabbro is Gabbro’ was a well-known rule in the entire village, the young cadet could not fail to notice how much more… out there they sounded. As in, even more than usual.

“Let me tell you, the past ten minutes sure have been a doozy for myself too,” they continued, words coming out almost sluggish.

“Oh yeah? …Well, I mean, I guess I did see your entire island fall from the sky.”

Firn’s radio picked up on a tired, unenergetic snort. “Heh, nah, I’m used to that. Island’s only up for a minute at most, the real crazy thing started a bit earlier.” There was a short pause, as if the astronaut was actively struggling to find their words, or almost even to do so much as remain aware of the fact that they were supposed to be part of a conversation. “Another island drifted by, so I thought I’d take advantage of the proximity to do some field work and explore… but I was there for barely a minute or two when I found that… something… and then that happened. Don’t laugh, but I think I sort of, uh, had a spiritual experience with a rock shaped like a face.”

Firn tensed up. “You mean a statue?”

The older astronaut snapped their fingers and pointed in their direction with short-lived gratitude. “A statue, yes. Got uh, some words mixed up right after it happened, heh. That sure was something, felt like getting my whole brain turned upside down for a bit. After that I figured it’d been more than enough emotions for the day and that I’d frankly deserved some rest to, uh. Get my thoughts together before trying to go back and take a better look.”

Firn squinted, openly disappointed. “So you came back to lie in your hammock.”

Gabbro turned their helmet towards them, eyeing their visor with an unreadable look. “Got a problem with that?”

“You don’t want to figure out what that was all about?”

Gabbro somehow managed to dig themself deeper inside the hammock. “As I said: later.” A pause. They raised their flute. “Probably.” They sighed. “Not gonna lie, it’s been really tempting to remove my helmet and get something done about that headache, but I don’t wanna take the risk of that fury over there coming for another visit.”

Gabbro started playing again, music once again far more strained than usual. Firn wondered why they kept playing if they could barely even keep the rhythm right.

Their hands clenched into fists. “Remember the statue you brought back to Timber Hearth? That happened to Hal too.”

There was a wheezing, far too high-pitched note, then the music stopped again. And then, silence and stillness came, as if Gabbro was pretending that this bum note had been all in Firn’s imagination. Then, a dozen seconds later:

“…Ah,” they mumbled flatly. Silence again. “They, uh, doing alright?”

“They’re holding up. They should be with Hornfels, I’d planned to radio them soon after landing.”

Gabbro nodded. “Good. Good. Kinda surprised they wouldn’t have, like, thrown up after this. Sure is a trip, and not the fun kind.”

Firn let an audible grunt resonate and die in their throat. Gabbro turned their head again.

“…So that’s why you’re here even if it’s your first launch, huh. It went after Hal, so now it got personal.”

“And you should be taking it personally too!” Firn scolded. “Hal’s gotten better after just a few minutes. Gonna put my mallows on you exaggerating it as an excuse to take the day off.”

A pause. The elder astronaut stared at their flute.

“It really was that bad, buddy.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen Hal, and now that I’m seeing you too, I’ll believe you on that. Just saying— emphasis on was. Hal was completely back to normal just a few minutes later, save for the part where they’re obviously still freaked out about it.”

Gabbro mumbled something about Hal being logical and good at sorting their own ideas, and about their own brain already being messy from the start even before their statue friend threw a cyclone out of its eyes and into theirs to instantly get back out and suck basically all of their memories straight into orbit, and that stars above it was not fun to try maintaining a conversation when it felt like all their memories were still somewhat scrambled and vivid in their mind, so frankly they would be extremely thankful if they could leave and let them meditate as an attempt to chase all that away.

Firn raised an eyebrow at all that, but decided not to take any of it at face value, given the amount of evident metaphors and the lack of any solid, tangible evidence in their words.

“Welp,” the cadet sighed, “I’m radioing Hornfels. Thanks for the warm welcome,” they added with an annoyed roll of their upper eyes.

“Sure, knock yourself out,” they sighed with a dismissive wave of their hand. “Just tone it down a bit. You’re loud, it’s hard to focus. The cyclones are bad enough on their own.”

With another grunting sigh, Firn walked a few steps away (not that the distance would change much regarding the volume of their voice in Gabbro’s receiver, but the thought was there) and pointed their signalscope at the sky.

“Firn to ground control, do you copy?”

“Firn!” Hal’s voice immediately rang out in both relief and panic, somehow. “Y-you didn’t crash, did you?”

They stifled an amused laugh. “Well thanks for the vote of confidence. Yeah, I’m good. I found Gabbro too, as we agreed.”

From many kilometers away, another sigh of relief resonated, this time more likely coming from Hornfels.

“Say, Hal? About the statue— Gabbro said that something similar happened to them.” Then, turning to the astronaut in question: “How’d you phrase it again?”

“Spiritual experience with a rock shaped like a face,” they tiredly recited without hesitation. Blinking, they perked up in surprise: “…Huh. I actually remembered the exact wording.”

“You said it, like, two minutes ago,” Firn deadpanned.

“Yeah, well, with how backwards my entire brain is right now, forgive me for being happy to find something even remotely coherent in it,” Gabbro deadpanned right back.

Hal’s voice crackled again through the radio. “Can I, uh— Gabbro, do you remember how it was like?”

“You’re saying ‘was’ as if it were over for me,” they grumbled weakly. “Honestly, I think ‘brain backwards’ is a good enough summary.”

“…Ah. Uh. How long ago did the statue do the— you know, the glowing eyes thing?”

“A bit more than ten minutes ago. I think. Kinda hard to tell how fast time passes when I’m trying to tell apart which cyclones are real and why I’m somehow seeing and hearing double, with half of it being in fast motion.” A pause. “Unless it’s the other half going in slow motion. What if we were all living in slow motion, and we just never realized it? …Does ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ motion even make sense as absolutes, or do they only make sense once put in the context of a different speed? But then, what could the ‘absolute’ speed even be…?”

This time, the voice that came out of the radio was that of Hornfels, and they were audibly displeased. “Gabbro, did you get alien algae fumes in your oxygen tank? And Hal—”

“What? No!” Gabbro cried out, hurt by the accusation. “…Not this time, at least.” Geysers, they did not dare imagine how much horribly worse that would have made this whole thing, given the fact that this was an already far too upsetting experience.

Hal’s voice thankfully came to their defense: “N-no, I, uh, I think that sort of makes sense. It did feel like that too for me, for a little while.” After a quick pause which was certainly spent trying to quietly convince Hornfels that they were not completely out of their mind, they added: “At least I do have good news, Gabbro, it should be over soon. I’m pretty sure it’s all back to normal for me by now. Sort of.”

Gabbro closed their eyes and took a deep, relieved breath. Usually, they were all for new experiences; but the fact that this one was forcing them into lucidity instead of allowing them to embrace the hypnotic trance instigated by the twirling cyclones was something that they found not only odd, but also actively against the flow of everything they enjoyed.

Was it weird to say that they did not enjoy that lucidity? Probably, unless they could specify that there was such a thing as too much lucidity. Having your own brain make you process and relive your latest memories in the back of your mind at the same time as you were trying to hold a normal conversation definitely counted as too much lucidity.

“Cool. Nice to know,” they nodded, already feeling calmer from that news alone. “Kinda wish your friend could’ve made it here after that point, then.”

There was silence, as Firn turned to the older astronaut with an uncertain look. Hal’s voice soon pulled them out of their thoughts: “…Ah, uh… Yeah, Firn? Please don’t be too hard on them if they’re still, uh. Putting things back in order.”

“Putting what in order?” Firn frowned. “Their brain?”

“…Sort of…? —Look, Hornfels, I know how crazy this sounds, okay? You don’t need to tell me that it’s not normal to feel like you’re living through two different moments at the same time, and it sure isn’t fun trying to hold a conversation when you’re already having another conversation happening inside your head at the same time.”

Firn kept their silence once again, struggling to believe it, yet also now accepting the fact that two Hearthians had separately developed the same symptoms from the same experience on two different planets, and that what Hal had just described provided a reasonable enough explanation for their earlier behavior in the statue room.

“Yeah, now we really have to investigate these statues and where they came from,” they still stated gravely. Then, with another glance at the hammock: “…as soon as Gabbro’s up for it, I guess. Hope it won’t take long.”

“Mneh, you can just go without me,” the astronaut in question waved with a tired hand before they once again brought their flute to their helmet. “Knowing you, I’d just slow you down even if I were in top form.”

Unfortunately, Hornfels instantly disagreed with this mindset. “Gabbro, this is Firn’s first launch, and they chose as their first destination a planet filled with thunder, a raging ocean with drifting islands which render any attempts at mapping it futile, and cyclones. Having an experienced astronaut to keep an eye on them will prove extremely valuable, all the more when you already have visited the place they intend to investigate.”

Firn grunted under their breath. They were hoping that ground control would rather put an emphasis on the latter half of that argument and skip the patronizing part.

Gabbro begrudgingly put the flute down, letting it rest on their chest for a while. “Fine. You’re the boss, Horns.” Their helmet turned to Firn: “Think you can turn down the signalscope and get prepared now. Will join you in a sec.”

But they did not move a muscle. Firn stared, then crossed their arms. Their finger started tapping their elbow again. They tried to keep in mind Hal’s words about giving them some space and quiet, and decided to grant Gabbro the same patience they had given Hal when it had been their turn to momentarily shut them down.

Then, finally, after a long pause: “…Okay, I think I’m good. Emphasis on think.”

And with a tired sigh, Gabbro sat up and unceremoniously threw their legs over the hammock, jumping down and letting their knees bounce down and back up as they landed, evidently well-practiced in the arts of dealing with the increased gravity and knowing how to efficiently cushion the strain on their legs.

Firn watched as the older astronaut set their flute inside the hammock, gave it a little pat, and took advantage of their momentarily free hands to stretch. “So, while you’re getting ready,” they questioned with their impatient finger still tapping ever faster, “where do you think we should investigate? Did you also fish your other statue from the ocean, or was it standing somewhere specific?”

“Somewhere specific,” Gabbro answered without hesitation as they stopped walking towards their jetpack and raised their head high up, looking around and over the horizon. “Let’s see if it’s still… Aha.” They pointed at a different island, and Firn squinted as they tried to take in its dual shape, blurred by the distance and the fog in-between. “My statue was on the beach of that island. It was practically a jump away when I decided to go take a quick look, but then my island was tossed up in space soon after I was back, and…”

Firn’s mouth gaped. “You said you found that statue like, ten minutes ago,” they heaved in shock, “and it’s already that far away!?”

“Yeah, well,” there was a huff as they tightened their jetpack’s belt, “the current’s pretty strong, in case you hadn’t noticed. Islands drift apart and into each other all the time. Kinda why we gave up on trying to chart the planet.”

With their jetpack now firmly in place, Gabbro then turned to their hammock and reached out; but before they could pick up their trusty companion, Firn’s arm grabbed theirs from behind their back and pulled away.

From under their visor, Gabbro’s eyes widened in sudden haste. “Wait, my flute–!”

“—isn’t going anywhere,” the cadet interrupted while tugging with even more force, “so let’s launch before that island gets any further!”

And with that, Gabbro found themself dragged away from their hammock and soon right into the beam of Firn’s ship, with the new astronaut closing the hatch a second after their landing inside, and then jumping straight into the pilot’s seat before they even had the time to blink.

At least there was oxygen in there. Gabbro removed their helmet and gladly let their gloved hand run through their entire face, thankful at least that this small ship’s walls protected them all at once from the rain, the roar of the wind, and the risk of running out of breathable air any second a cyclone would feel moody.

And then, the moment later the ship took off, and despite the gravity crystal being perfectly intact, Gabbro was taken off-guard and fell flat on their face with a pained grunt. Their first fully headache-free thought was something related to the fact that they were pretty sure that ‘hatchling-sitting’ was not on their job resume.

This was going to be a long day.

Chapter 3

The Rock That Looks Like a Face Rock

---

In the defense of the newest astronaut to enter the Outer Wilds Ventures program: out of all astral bodies in their entire solar system, Giant’s Deep clearly was on the lowest tier in terms of orientation and flight maneuverability. Dark Bramble set aside for reasons that none needed to elaborate, a close second would likely be Ember Twin, and that would be solely if you were enough of a lunatic to deliberately bring your ship down inside the equatorial canyon and play tag with the column of sand.

In comparison, Brittle Hollow was a cinch as long as you could look out for the Lantern’s constant but predictable and relatively tranquil clouds of falling ash (it was only recently that a note from Riebeck mentioned that it had started spouting actual blobs of lava at the planet, but such spike in the moon’s volcanic activity had still gone largely undocumented given the fact that it was barely a few days old) and were not crazy enough to try and fly a ship underground. Provided you could even find a hole big enough to fit it through the crust, that was.

And finally, good old Timber Hearth was more or less out of competition for ‘Rutile has threatened to shut down the program if any astronaut were to dare fly too close to the village for any purpose other than launching or landing’ reasons. The only other difficulty that could be noted with this planet would be the geysers, but it simply was a matter of keeping an eye on the ground and looking out for their locations in order to very simply not fly right on top of them like a…

…Well, there was a reason why the Hearthian language had many generations ago come up with the term ‘geyser-jumper.’

And so, yes. There was not that much competition to begin with, granted, but this did not change the fact that usually, when looking at the recommended order in which a still-learning astronaut should visit the outer wilds’ various planets… Giant’s Deep was pretty close to the bottom of the list.

This planet was two things: powerful enough to hijack your ship from the outside, and dangerously unpredictable. It went without saying that this did not amount to a very beginner-friendly combination.

Again, Gabbro had to hand it to them: despite the giant’s constant mood swings throwing their ship around like a disgruntled hatchling would kick pebbles into ponds at the smallest inconvenience, Firn was doing a surprisingly fine job not falling into panic. Perhaps because they were already too busy falling into anger instead.

It was unfortunate, but… Gabbro could not in good conscience refer to their piloting as ‘cut out for the job.’ Their constant tendency to overcompensate, fighting against the rain and winds for control instead of letting them guide their hand towards an alternate path, showed their definite lack of field experience; and if the raging gales had anything to say about it, patience and compliance were precisely what this planet demanded from its visitors.

It was a shame that any time Gabbro tried to approach a hand to the controls for a slight and smooth adjustment to what was going to be a rocky trajectory change a second later, it was instantly slapped away without a second thought.

To be fair, Firn had been promised a first solo launch. It wouldn’t be much of a ‘solo’ if they were just going to act like a surrogate Gossan, and nobody enjoyed being on the receiving end of broken promises.

…Even though their barely recovering brain was now stuck pondering how it was even possible to feel this many tremors from inside the ship, when this was precisely what the gravity crystal was meant to mitigate down to nonexistence.

Another cyclone almost threw them into orbit, Firn barely succeeding in escaping its pull at the last second, but the force of nature had nonetheless managed to tilt their altitude upwards enough to momentarily make them kiss the clouds. For perhaps the twelfth time or so since they had embarked and launched, Gabbro heard the young cadet grit their teeth and grunt at the frustration of losing control of their own ship — at the frustration that they so dearly wished they could keep pretending to be more competent than they truly were.

Gossan had given them the permission to go, that was for certain, and Firn’s piloting skills did show that they had everything down theory-wise, memorized and perfected, ready to jump into practice. This level of skill was definitely enough for a first launch to go smoothly… had they stuck to the original plan of simply following the same schedule as every first launch: landing on the Attlerock, roasting a mallow or two with Esker, and then having some mindless fun walking around in low gravity.

All in all: Firn surely would make for a great pilot, someday. They simply needed practice.

A lot more practice.

Firn glanced down with concern at the thick and opaque upper atmosphere blocking all sunlight from view — glancing down indeed, as this occurred during a fleeting second when their ship happened to be upside down. After a short seething inhale, they asked: “Should we be worried about that storm?”

Not nearly as much as the likelihood of your piloting sending us straight into the nearest island sooner or later, Gabbro did not say. Instead, with a light unbothered shrug: “Eh. Not really. I’ve yet to see any bolt reaching down, they tend to stay up there doing their thing from within the clouds. And even when you’re in there, it doesn’t seem like they’re interested in hitting our ships,” they explained nonchalantly. “The real danger you’ll want to look out for are the cyclones, but—”

“I’m already aware of the cyclones, thank you very much.”

“—Yeah, was about to say. Pretty hard to miss.”

---

It took much longer than both astronauts would have preferred, but Firn eventually managed to catch up with the island they were looking for, with Gabbro confirming that it was indeed the right one. It wasn’t long before they spotted the glow of a gravity beam, radiating off the ground from what appeared from afar to be a circular platform. The young cadet went straight for it without hesitation, relieved to finally find something in the wildness of this planet that would hopefully reveal itself to be helpful — disregarding the fact that this Nomai construct was, by definition, not truly part of the ‘wildness’ per se.

The sudden pull took Firn by surprise, far more than they would ever want to admit. The angle at which they had brought their ship to it was close enough to verticality that both astronauts feared for a moment that the artificial gravity would pull them to the ground upside-down; but thankfully, despite landing only half of the ship on the pad and the other half on the beach, resulting in a noticeable and uncomfortable tilt, this was overall an acceptable success.

A second later, the clicking of unbuckling resounded, and yet another second later, Firn was pushing Gabbro to the side, opening the hatch, and jumping down, this time being more mindful of the strain the giant’s gravity would subject their legs to. By the time Gabbro jumped down after them, the hatchling was already three dozen meters away and not showing any signs of stopping, as they had instantly noticed amongst the rocks and sand what appeared to be a flight of stairs.

“Slow down, buddy,” Gabbro called out into their radio, only for their tired request to be royally ignored.

Hardly turning around for a split second, Firn’s only response was to retort “Wanna figure out what happened to you and Hal or not!?”

With a sigh, Gabbro gave up on trying to remind them that their impatience and enthusiasm should not prevent them from keeping an eye on their resource levels. Fearing that they would soon lose sight of them, the older astronaut was forced into a little jog — refusing to go any faster than that. Just walking on this planet was supposed to be exercise enough, thank you; not to mention that more exercise was also synonym to an increased oxygen consumption.

Firn climbed eons old stairs, walked along a clearly set path that the Nomai had undoubtedly constructed and followed long before them… and soon faced a broken bridge across the ocean.

Brilliant as they were, even the Nomai could not defy nature for this long. It truly should be unsurprising that time had taken a toll on their architecture and machines; and in fact, it should have been far more surprising that the damage was ultimately so limited — almost as surprising as the sturdiness of trees in outer space, and their inherent resistance to ship thrusters and atmosphere reentry despite their innate property of being flammable.

Firn walked up to the edge, looking down into the rather intimidating drop, then assessing the distance between them and the closest part of debris they could hope to reach. They were now all too aware of the increased gravity’s impact on their movements, and expected its effects to reach out to their jetpack as well; it was fortunate that their brand new suit came with a fuel tank filled to the brim.

They took a few steps backwards, carefully calculating their next actions all the while, then decided to walk all the way to the other end of their platform for good measure. And then, just as Gabbro’s head was peeking over from behind their back, they darted forward without hesitation and activated their thrusters at full force the moment they reached the edge, jumping as high and far as they could, and preparing themself for a heavy landing on the other side.

They made their jump, landing almost at the center of the other platform, and took a second to press their hands on their knees and take a breath, mentally patting themself on the back for this little achievement. They stopped panting after a few seconds, and raised their head again to look forward…

…only to notice that there was another gap to cross. With a groan, their eyes immediately fell right to the ground once more.

Gabbro landed next to them with the grace of years of practice and experience, gave them a little pat on the back — a real one this time, with the tiniest wordless snicker to boot — before taking the next leap and landing on the other half of the island, waving at them from there.

In this moment, Firn decided that Giant’s Deep sucked.

---

When Firn made their second jump, Gabbro had turned their back to them. They had decided to wait for them by standing in the same position as they had just a dozen of minutes or two earlier, transfixed by the same sight they had witnessed then — by the statue which had, technically speaking, pretty much assaulted their mind without permission or warning. Just like the previous time, it was lying in the sand, motionless and half buried in it, only difference being its now fully open eyes looking vacantly at both nothing and everything.

“So that’s the one that opened its eyes at you,” the young cadet asserted, nodding at their own words with confidence.

An accurate guess, not too difficult to conclude from the context and clues lying around; still, Gabbro nodded and hummed in return, thinking that they would nonetheless appreciate the external confirmation.

Gabbro caught the sight of some shuffling around in the corner of their upper eye, and when they turned to look at Firn again, they had started to make their way closer to the statue, scout launcher in hand. There were a couple bright flashes of light as they used the photo mode all around, at both the statue and its surroundings, from all relevant sides they could think of. Many photos were taken with little to no pause in-between them, with Firn stopping only once or twice overall when it appeared that the result displayed on their helmet’s hud gave a satisfying angle.

A dozen seconds later, and Firn lost interest in the statue, turning instead to the carved cliff to their right — and more specifically, to a small pillar with what appeared to be some Nomai writings carved on its top, standing beside a closed door of sorts.

In silence, Gabbro had a double take, blinking a few times as they took just a few steps closer to the epigraph. Was that wiggly spiral glowing the last time they were here?

Whatever the case, Firn did not seem surprised by it. They simply pulled out a shiny new tool which certainly had to be that translator they and Hal had been working so hard on perfecting up to the last time Gabbro had visited Timber Hearth, and they pointed it at the carving without a word.

A few fancy lasers came out to scan multiple spots at once, soon displaying a short text on the tiny screen; and with another confused blink and a pair of raised eyebrows, Gabbro noticed that the glow had partially faded in response. Weird. Also kind of weird that Firn paid it no mind, but chances were that they simply were used to it, what with the whole thing around having built the device to begin with and all that.

At any rate, the scout launcher was out a few seconds later, and again there were a couple of pictures taken. Then, the cadet turned to them and, for lack of being able to cross their arms because of the bulky equipment keeping one of them busy, Firn opted instead for gluing their free hand to their hip. Their index finger instantly started tapping against it.

“So,” they said decisively, breaking the silence at once. “The sign reads ‘Statue Workshop.’ That sounds encouraging.” They turned their head to the door, adding flatly: “Except the path is blocked, because of course it is.”

Gabbro took a few relaxed steps forward, nodding. “Yeah, I think it’s one of those Nomai airlocks. As you can tell, that one’s busted.” They watched as the new astronaut, undeterred, walked forward anyway and scratched at the edges of the stone, if only to try and see if they could take a peek at the other side; and after a few seconds, Gabbro shook their head and sighed. “Good luck trying to pry it open by force when it weighs twice the amount it already would on Timber Hearth, buddy. If you get squashed, I’m not pulling you out from under it.”

Firn let go and turned around, all four rolling eyes somehow radiating even past their visor. “I wasn’t gonna.”

“You were considering it.”

The hatchling let a grunt resonate inside their throat, but decided to drop both this conversation topic and their grip on the wall cracks. Instead, they reached for their signalscope and pointed it upwards:

“Hal,” they called out, “are you still there?”

Their radio picked up an almost simultaneous mixture of “Firn! Hi again!” and “We can hear you loud and clear, Firn.” The cadet repressed a tiny chuckle at the ground control’s enthusiasm.

“I must take it that you and Gabbro landed safely on this other island?” Hornfels added immediately, still keeping some barely audible traces of worry and likely trying to pretend that they had not spent the whole time hoping for a crash-less day.

“You’ve found something interesting?” Hal asked right after, voice brimming with hope and excitement.

“Hey, hey, one at a time,” Firn snickered. “Yes we made it there, and yes we’ve got some news — kinda disappointing, though. Gabbro’s statue is right in front of an airlock, and the room behind it should give a ton of info about how they were made, and maybe what they were for.”

The radio seemed to transmit what had to be a barely audible murmur of confusion, before Hal could be heard again: “Wait, those are good news. What’s the catch?”

“Airlock’s broken. Gotta find another way in.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Talk to you later.”

Firn then put away the signalscope and readied their scout launcher. Sending one last glance at the broken but far too sturdy wall, they then scanned the rest of their surroundings down to the smallest branch of coral they could see, looking for something else to continue investigating. Alas, it appeared that there was nothing more to find on this beach which could be of any use.

“Come on,” they soon instructed to Gabbro, with a tilt of their head pointing towards what seemed to be a path up the cliff lined up with gravity crystals, and their feet soon following their own advice. “There’s got to be another entrance somewhere.”

With a heavy jump coming off with an audible oomph and a powerful upwards thrust of their jetpack which was completely unnecessary if Gabbro had anything to say about it, Firn soon landed on the vertical surface surrounding the nearest gravity crystal, then turned around briefly to insistently repeat their command, waiting for the other Hearthian to follow in their trail.

Both explorers cautiously followed the path in silence — or, well, almost in silence:

“New entry: Giant’s Deep. Statue isla̷͗ͅn̷̞͠ḋ̶͈̺ ”

If Gabbro had been startled by the unexpected words that were evidently not directed at them, they were even more surprised by the abrupt ending. Perking their head up towards Firn’s in a slight hurry, as theirs had been the voice to utter what they had just heard, they instantly noticed that the young cadet’s hand was tinkering with the base of their helmet’s aerial and that they had just turned off their radio; and when Gabbro gave a tentative tap on their shoulder, the hatchling’s reaction was to give them a dismissive wave and accelerate their pace. Their radio being turned off mid-sentence explained what they had just heard, and the body language along with the fact that Firn started walking away from them confirmed that it was intentional.

The elder astronaut’s curiosity was piqued. Walking closer nonetheless (if only because they were following the same narrow path anyway), listening in this time not through the radio, but through the thickness of two helmets and a stormy atmosphere, Gabbro could almost associate the movement of their lips with concise and specific words. They could almost catch a whole sentence, thinking that what Firn said must have been something along the lines of “…used to lead inside the island.”

And then Firn raised the same hand to their helmet again. With the flick of a finger against the same button at the base of their aerial, their radio was turned back on; and along with the many connections it brought back, was the connection with their ship and the order to save the new file which had just been created. They gave a satisfied hum when their hud displayed the words ‘ship log updated.’

The elders and not-so-elders all had a lot of gripes with a lot of things regarding Firn’s general attitude; but one thing they could not ignore, and one of the main reasons that got them into the program along with their invaluable contribution in helping Hal make the Nomai translator a reality, was the fact that Firn was exceptionally thorough and methodical.

They were a sarcastic brat who questioned authority more often than they listened to their answers, they were dangerously reckless, they were obnoxiously stubborn; but when it was about exploring the outer wilds and piecing together the mysteries their solar system harbored, they were taking the matter with the utmost solemnity. Where Hearthian society had failed to teach them respect, the universe itself had by proving to them how small of a pebble they all were, floating in the vastness of a whole lot of nothing.

Now finished with their note-taking, Firn turned to them and gave a sheepish laugh. “My bad, I almost forgot to mute my transmitter. Didn’t want to bother you with my ramblings.”

“Turning off your radio is dangerous,” Gabbro warned, “even if it’s temporary. Why did you feel the need to do that?”

“Can’t risk having someone else speak through my comms while I’m editing,” they mumbled with a shrug, “that’d mess up the whole entry.” They marked a pause, noticing that the trail of gravity crystals had ended and led to an open path back to horizontality, and therefore to the regular definitions of up and down. With another jump and, again, far too much fuel being burned for such a tiny leap in Gabbro’s personal opinion, Firn landed on the exposed path and continued their walk. Then, they resumed: “Also, it helps me focus.”

Gabbro left the gravity crystal trail in turn, simply by stretching a laid-back leg away from the vertical path and planting it on the horizontal one, and then repeating those steps with their other one with just as much nonchalance. All the while, they gave a light hum and nod. “And then you turn it back on to send the file to your ship.”

“Uh-huh. All I have to do after that is turn on the computer and profit.”

Gabbro blew an impressed whistle. “Slate sure got you spoiled with all those fancy gadgets.”

Firn’s laugh was this time an unrestrained bark of excitement and mock-offense. “Hey, the coding part was all me! Slate didn’t want to show me how they programmed the autopilot, and I’m pretty sure it’s ‘cause they were jealous, heh.”

They raised a surprised eyebrow. “Wait, really?”

“Yep! It was a bit last minute and they were reluctant at first, but in the end they let me include some work of mine for the ship log. Text-to-speech was a prototype upgrade I was thinking about for the translator, but when I offered Hal to use their voice for the database, they said it wasn’t necessary, so, oh well. Reversed the whole thing and got it added to my ship instead. Been wanting to make sure I’d be able to write log entries even when I have my hands full, and now that we’re here…” They let their tirade trail off and blend into a smug snicker full of pride. “Heh, I’m gonna have so much fun with that featu—”

Firn was not given the chance to finish their sentence.

It started with the wind picking up at once, sweeping them to the side with a violence far too fierce and sudden for them to resist. It was only thanks to their quick thinking in using their downward thrusters that Firn managed, for a few seconds at least, to maintain their feet glued to the ground and not fall over the cliff entirely. These same few seconds had them simultaneously busy with putting their scout launcher away in order to free their hands, but to their dismay, they had already been pushed too far from the rock wall to be able to reach for it and take a grip — not that there was much of a grip to take in the first place.

“Uh oh” were the only words Gabbro uttered into their radio, both cryptic and unhelpful, as they realized the reason why neither of them had seen it coming: the large cyclone which was currently thinking about swallowing them whole had been treacherously coming to them from the other side of the island — a perfect blind spot.

Before Firn could process what was even happening, they fell to their knees as the ground shook and rose at high speed, feeling crushed under a doubled gravity which, because of the upwards acceleration, had been multiplied even further. Against their better judgement, Firn screamed.

“Firn! Buddy!”

Gabbro may as well have been coming up with actual advice by this point; but despite their efforts, Firn’s flattened and buzzing ears heard none of it, and with their four eyes shut tight, the hatchling was blind to the fact that they were trying to slowly crawl to their side and reach out for their hand. Gabbro was too slow for the latter step to be successful.

Wind turned to silence, green turned to black.

Going in an instant from quadrupled gravity to none, feeling solid ground evade their feet and hands and knees, seeing it grow smaller, then bigger and bigger, ready to collide with their face, Firn flailed about helplessly. Too disoriented to pay attention to the voice in their receiver, they only had a split second to finally notice Gabbro reaching out for their hand, only to immediately after see their faraway blurry figure get accidentally kicked in the ribs and sent flying dozens of meters away and up in the air by their own panicking limbs.

With a gasp of guilt and panic, Firn flared up their thrusters at full power to catch up after them, only to forget that during these few seconds, the gravity they had to fight against was no longer twice that of Timber Hearth, but falsely nonexistent — and further than this, that any momentum they were to gain from then on was not so easily subsided.

They collided with Gabbro, hard. With an “Oomph” and a “Firn, wait—” which entered one of Firn’s ears only to instantly come out the other, Gabbro was flung even further away in the process. In trying to catch up again and reach out to them with continuously growing panic and an equally continuous trail of “Sorry!”, Firn’s grip on the joystick controlling their jetpack came loose. In turning their head violently in order to find and catch it again, their whole body started rotating uncontrollably into the vast void of space.

And then, finally, Gabbro blasted their way to them with a single calculated thrust of minimal force, succeeding in slowing down enough to avoid collision this time, and grabbed their leg. In a matter of a few dozen seconds, both astronauts were back at eye level again, standing upright again relatively to each other, and…

…far up in orbit, at a high enough altitude to see Giant’s Deep’s curvature.

The island they had been investigating, briefly turned into a lift straight up to space, was nowhere to be seen. It had most likely already made its way back to the surface, back to floating like a buoy, following the whims and fancies of the planet’s flows and currents.

Gabbro brought a hand to the side of their helmet and, orienting their visor towards Giant’s Deep, they locked on to it… Yep, they were pretty far up.

Judging by the velocity displayed on their hud, they had embarked on a very, very slow descent, following the nearby gravitational pull; but if Gabbro’s estimations were to be trusted and no island were to coincidentally come to them in the meantime, they would both have ample time to die through suffocation long before they would through colliding with the ocean. Maybe even twice over.

Gabbro clicked their tongue, reaching for their signalscope. “…Okay. Maybe we’re in a little bit of trouble.”

Firn turned their visor away from the sight of the planet and towards their face, eyes wide. “A little bit!?” they exploded.

“Tone it down, radio’s picking up your voice just fine.” They only needed to adjust the frequency, find where to aim, and… “Um. Hornfels? You still here?”

There were a few seconds of silence; but soon, the receiver crackled with static and worry. “We can hear you, Gabbro, and I am not liking this tone. What happened?”

“Yeah, well…” the older astronaut sighed, trying to explain their predicament to a Hearthian who did not have the luxury of seeing what they were currently looking at. “Giant’s Deep has a lot of cyclones, you know? And they’re powerful enough to pull out entire islands right into space for a few moments. Happens sometimes.”

“Only ‘sometimes’!?” Firn parroted with a deadpan look and a nearly hysterical shriek brimming with sarcasm. “I’ve been here for less than a half sunrise and the whole planet already kicked me out!”

Hal’s voice resonated nervously: “I’m… I’m not sure I understand. You were kicked out of…? What’s going on?”

Judging from the volume of their voice slowly decreasing near the end, it seemed like they were gently pushed away from the ground control desk’s microphone. And indeed, Hornfels soon took over instead, tone sharp and straight to the point: “Gabbro, just tell us where you are. What is your current position?”

“…About sixteen kilometers from the center of mass. Currently in orbit.”

With Giant’s Deep’s water surface standing on average at a radius of roughly five kilometers, this meant that this would be more than a whole ten kilometers drop. From this height and accounting for the increased gravity, even landing in water would likely be enough to cause at the very least a severe concussion; and being concussed while floating in the middle of a raging ocean was begging for the universe to end their life with slow and painful drowning, not even accounting for the chance of cyclones picking them up and flinging them around a few more times for good measure.

Hornfels let out a grunt filled with frustration and concern. “Fuel and oxygen?”

There was a second of heavy silence. “Bad.”

“Gabbro. I want numbers.”

There was an inhale through Gabbro’s nose audible enough to make it through their transmitter. “Twenty-one percent fuel, fifty-three minutes oxygen,” they relented tensely. They knew they had forgotten something when leaving camp (well, one of two things, really, but only one of the two was because of their own negligence), and that something had been to refuel their jetpack. Turning their helmet towards their fellow astronaut, they gave an inquisitive nod: “Firn?”

Gabbro could almost hear the hatchling’s lips trembling before they spoke. “…S-six percent, forty-five minutes.”

A few seconds of muffled swearing crackled through the radio. Then:

“Stay right where you are. Await instructions.”

“Not much of a choice,” Gabbro shrugged before lowering their signalscope.

---

To say that Hal was panicking would be an understatement.

The moment Hornfels had pressed a button likely meant to deafen (but not mute) their connection to Firn and Gabbro’s radios, the tall Hearthian started dashing around the observatory, looking at charts and more parts of the many screens and buttons on their dashboard, and Hal was struggling to find any place where they could stand and have their panic attack in silence without being an obstacle to their work.

There was nothing they could do. They hardly understood what was happening, Hornfels’ actions were swift and precise and full of a meaning that they had never seen or learned. Hal so desperately wanted to help, but they had no clue how; and with no purpose or knowledge to grasp, only fear remained.

Hornfels ran to the model of the solar system standing at the edge of the staircase, and pulling a measuring tape out of their pocket, they inched closer to the moving spheres and assessed some distances. The model had been crafted to be to scale, and thanks to the deep space satellite and some quite brilliant work from Slate, the relative positions of each tiny replica were calculated to reflect those of the actual astral bodies in real time.

Sadly, the current alignments Hornfels could see were far from ideal. Both Timber Hearth and the Hourglass Twins were standing opposite to Giant’s Deep, as far away from it as they possibly could get — and with this, it was clear that they did not have enough time to even consider them as options.

Which left…

Well, the good news was, this planet was on the other hand as close to their target as it could possibly be.

Nevertheless, Hornfels brought a hand to rub their nose bridge and took a deep inhale. This was not going to be easy.

They stood up and swiftly turned to their dashboard, only to see a hatchling standing right next to the controls; without thinking, they started to call out for their help: “Hal, give me—” But the next second, their eyes met with their distraught and terrified face, and they remembered that the poor thing had no idea how any part of this apparatus worked. “Never mind, just let me through.”

Hal staggered away from the desk as Hornfels pounced on it, and with a few swift button presses, a connection was established with Brittle Hollow. Instantly, the calming notes of a banjo resonated in the room, instilling an unwelcome eeriness due to the unexpected contrast with the ambient feel of urgency.

“Ground Control to Riebeck,” they reached out with a surprisingly steady voice, “do you copy?”

The music’s volume slightly lowered and slowed down, but did not fully stop. Soon came a cheerful greeting: “Oh, Hornfels! Hello!”

“I fear the circumstances are far from ideal, and we do not have much time,” they continued, trying to find the best way to summarize the situation as concisely as they could. “Gabbro and Firn are stranded in orbit around Giant’s Deep, with no ship or fuel, and we have barely forty minutes before they run out of oxygen.”

A timid, uninvited yelp went to complete the harmony of their tune, ending the melody on an abrupt note. “A-a-and you want me to rescue them!? Hornfels, I’m sure we both want them to be rescued, not to end up with a third stranded astronaut! Where do I even land my ship? What if I c-crash into something somehow and kill them? Along with myself!?”

“Riebeck, you are scared, not incompetent,” Hornfels insisted gravely. “Neither Chert nor Esker could arrive before they start suffocating. Brittle Hollow is currently the closest planet to Giant’s Deep, you are the only one who can make it in time.”

There were more ruffling sounds. This time, none of them could be identified as a banjo string being plucked. “O-okay. Okay. I’m— I’m coming. T-t-tell them to hang on tight. …Ooh, why did I leave my ship on the south pole…” And as the sounds of quick pacing were picked up by the receiver, followed by a low gravity attempt at running, Riebeck added: “I have a spare tank of oxygen here, and I think my ship has one or two more. Also fuel for their jetpacks. Just in case.”

“That should be more than enough,” Hornfels nodded. “Thank you, Riebeck.”

“But, Hornfels— H-how am I even going to find them? We can play in any atmosphere, but we still need at least some air, no? There’s nothing to play with if they’re in orbit! Can my signalscope even detect them?”

Hornfels bit their lip. Admittedly, they did not know the answer to that question, as they had yet to recall any occurrence where one of the travelers would attempt to play anywhere other than at their camp, safely sitting around a cozy fire burning in a well-maintained pocket of breathable air created by their good old pine trees.

“…We’ll figure something out. Just focus on making it to your ship as fast as you can.”

“G-got it.” There were a few seconds of heavy breathing, likely caused by the archeologist’s hurried pace. Then: “Wish me luck. We’re all going to need it.”

---

Firn looked down at the tumultuous clouds twirling below their feet from afar. The sight sure was terrifying, albeit quite impressively beautiful, too.

Still, aesthetic was not what the young cadet had been looking for.

“We’ve still got some fuel left. Can’t we just… try giving a small boost downwards and landing on Giant’s Deep again? That’ll be a big plunge, but it sounds better than staying in orbit. Both our ships are down there anyway.”

Gabbro crossed their arms and sighed.

“If you want to gamble and think we’ll somehow be lucky enough to land in water rather than directly crash on land, to not be taken by another cyclone right after, to somehow be close enough to my camp so we can swim to the trees and refill, without using our jetpacks, and before we suffocate,” they detailed, raising one finger at each condition necessary for their survival to be even remotely conceivable (and uncrossing their arms as soon as they realized that one hand would not be enough), “then yes. Maybe. That’s one plan, I guess, but I really don’t like our chances.”

Firn gave a sarcastic huff. “And you think we have better chances staying up here till our oxygen runs out?”

Before Gabbro could respond, the sound of static finally came back through their receivers. “Riebeck is on their way, their ship should be in view in about thirty minutes,” Hornfels’ voice soon rang out sharply. “Stay put and focus on saving your resources.”

Firn’s arms dropped to their sides as they simply stared in disappointed shock. The visor made it impossible to see their face, but Gabbro’s head tilt in their direction made it quite clear that they just had to be giving them a smug, patronizing expression.

‘And that’s how you do it the Gabbro way, rookie,’ Firn could picture in their mind. Ah, yes, of course, the Gabbro way: making others do all the work in your stead.

“So— are we really just gonna— stay like this and do nothing!?”

“It’s just thirty minutes, buddy, it’s not the end of the world.”

Not the end of the world, but definitely the end of their patience.

There had to be something to do, and they would get that something done — if only out of childish spite.

With a sudden flash of inspiration, Firn gasped: “Gabbro, can’t you use your flute for Riebeck to pick up on?”

Gabbro raised their hands and showed their palms, both empty. “What flute? You didn’t let me take it when we left camp.”

After a long second of silence, Firn momentarily felt a great urge to slam their helmet against an open palm. Before they could act upon it, however, the full gravity of the situation fell upon them; and thus, only their chilling remorse was expressed. “…Right. Sorry. Not my brightest moment.”

And so, defeated, the cadet looked down in shame and regret.

Their first trip should have been exciting. Their first trip should have been all about exploring space and translating words that no Hearthian had ever read before.

Their first trip should have been about proving that they were competent.

But they had barely gotten started on solving the mystery of the statues, and the planet itself had laughed in their face.

---

It was a well known fact amongst the village that Firn was neither one to contemplate, nor one to surrender. Their four eyes may have been spending the time staring down at Giant’s Deep, their fingers may have been spending the time twitching in impatience, their mouth may have been spending the time trying to chase away all the sass their brain was coming up with, knowing full well that Gabbro was hardly the Hearthian to give satisfying reactions to it.

But this was time spent bubbling with rage and intent to fight against the boredom and frustration to be asked to stay in place while the adults would fix their mistake, and this was time spent thinking more and more that, after this, no astronaut would trust them to ever go back to space and not turn it into disaster.

This was time spent getting progressively more convinced that, somehow, against the odds, they could still fix this. That they had to fix this.

And so, after a dozen minutes or so which felt like so much longer, Firn spied with their four little eyes… a change. A solution, in the form of a strange apparatus.

They recognized the shape. No Hearthian had figured out what it was, for no astronaut had ever landed on it before, but there was no mistaking it: this massive rocket-like structure was the enigmatic satellite that Outer Wilds Ventures had long spotted orbiting Giant’s Deep.

It was hovering close, less than a kilometer away below their feet, with its orbit faster than theirs by a small margin.

The window of opportunity was small; but only a fool would refuse to take it.

Firn seized Gabbro’s arm without warning and instantly pressed the joystick of their jetpack to blast downwards and to the side, carefully calculating their trajectory.

Gabbro protested loudly, because of course they would; Firn ignored them entirely, just as much as they ignored the tiny message soon displaying at the top of their visor — some kind of warning ending with the word ‘propellant,’ but their eyes were already too focused on their target to pay it any mind.

Less than a minute passed by, and Firn could touch with satisfaction a transparent, broken wall slashed in its center, and see a blurry mess of debris floating on the other side. Only then, as they knew that their velocity was aligned with that of the eons old satellite, did Firn finally pay attention to the astronaut they had dragged along with them; and by paying attention to them, they rather interrupted their objections with a long-overdue, but smug and prideful explanation:

“See? I gave Riebeck a landmark to see from afar! I’m sure this thing’s big enough for their ship to be able to lock on to it too, perhaps even land on it.” Reaching for their signalscope and pointing it outwards, they asserted proudly: “You heard that, Hornfels? I found us a better spot to wait on. Riebeck will have a much easier time finding us now.”

Hornfels sounded like they were choking, and their equally suffocating sentence was far less constructed than was usual for them. “You did what!?”

“That huge thing that orbits Giant’s Deep!” they explained cheerfully. “It’s big, it’s visible from far away, there might even be a way to land a ship on it, and it’s orbiting Giant’s Deep. Hardly changes Riebeck’s plan, it just makes their job easier.”

Turning to the other stranded astronaut to their side, Firn felt like it was their turn to be smug.

Instead, Gabbro’s inexpressive helmet stared right into them, eerily still. “Buddy,” they scolded with what sounded like frigid terror, “your oxygen.”

They froze. Tilting their eyes to the top left corner of their vision, they looked at the tiniest chart displayed on their visor’s screen:

Nineteen minutes left.

Chapter 4

Probing for Clues in Orbit

---

Nineteen minutes left.

Firn could hear their own breathing more than they ever had before. Had it always been so loud? Had the cloud of condensation forming and vanishing on the glass always been there? Had that glass always been so thin and close to their face?

“Buddy, you’ll want to calm down if you want to have enough oxygen left by the time Riebeck arrives,” Gabbro advised with an unusually serious tone.

Firn gritted their teeth with a huff. “I know that, I’m not a rookie!” they shouted, taking full offense to what they were certain sounded patronizing.

But then, they realized that they were panting, and that knowing was not enough to actually apply their knowledge to practice. It was now as if they could feel their oxygen run out of their throat, all of it wasted by this stupid body who was breathing too fast to make any good use of it.

They were not even able to follow the most basic rule, the very first one Gossan had taught them — the one about staying calm under any circumstances.

Yes. Yes, they were a rookie. They were just a rookie, they were on their very first launch day, and they were about to die.

“Oh geez. Ooh geez.” Firn grabbed their helmet, as if their hands could pass through the visor and block their mouth, as if this could somehow prevent them from hyperventilating. They had just enough sense left into them to remember that removing it was about the last thing they wanted to do under the current circumstances.

Gabbro seized both of their shoulders, giving a gentle but decisive shake. “Buddy. Look at me. Deep breaths,” they instructed, taking one themself as example. “Deep… breaths. There’s this meditation technique, it’s good for minimizing your oxygen consumption. Follow my lead.”

Firn, miraculously, heard and understood these words. Raising their eyes to look out of the confined space defined by their helmet — which they were certain appeared to be shrinking, with an ever smaller window and a growing darkness surrounding it — they managed to catch the sight of another helmet, and through that other visor, barely visible but still glinting with care, were four other eyes looking back.

Deep breaths. They were asking for deep breaths. Focusing on the breathing which crackled through their radio receiver, rather than on their own, Firn slowly managed to synchronize their rhythm.

“You’re doing good, keep at it,” Gabbro assured calmly. “Close your eyes, forget about everything else. You’ll see, rescue will be here before you know it.”

Closing their eyes fully felt like a relief, as they had somewhat started to sting – as though the air itself was starting to eat at them even past their inner transparent eyelids, trying to solve their growing emptiness by consuming anything it could.

Forgetting was also something they did gladly, without question: forgetting that they were in outer space, forgetting that the sound of their breath against their visor was becoming uncomfortably lower and slower, forgetting that, as their oxygen resources were getting closer to depletion, the air pressure inside their suit was automatically lowering in turn – a last resort feature meant to favor survival with possible health consequences to a faster death.

The rhythm of Gabbro’s breathing had something mesmerizingly soothing to it. With more and more ease as time flew by, Firn let themself lose everything to it; and it was not long before their consciousness faded, letting their mind doze off and wander to temporary nothingness.

---

Riebeck had every right to be exceptionally proud of themself; alas, the urgency of the situation combined with their own fear of space and failure alike, even after they had succeeded, would forever prevent them from realizing it.

Gabbro had told Hornfels, and Hornfels had relayed the information to them: they were to search for the two stranded astronauts not by blindly looking for two minuscule black dots standing in front of a roaring green scenery, but by landing on the much larger device orbiting it, and then by looking for, apparently, a part of it made of glass which had a large horizontal hole in its center.

On the one hand, this made the task of finding the two far easier, as the contraption soon became visible even as their ship was standing some fifty kilometers away from the core of Giant’s Deep. On the other, this made the likelihood of crashing into something tangible infinitely larger.

Yet, to the surprise of nobody but themself, landing had been smooth and uneventful — in large part thanks to what Riebeck had soon recognized with unexpected amazement to be a Nomai landing pad in perfect working condition.

At first, as soon as they opened the hatch and jumped out of their ship, Riebeck looked down and into the hole at the center of it: but all they found was a closed Nomai airlock pointing outwards, sign that the astronauts in need of rescue were definitely not waiting on the other side of it.

Riebeck called once, tentatively, and was immensely relieved to hear Gabbro responding — proof that they were finally close enough from each other to be within their respective radios’ proximity radius.

Gabbro’s subsequent indications were extremely helpful in guiding them to their exact location; and so, with two tanks of oxygen and fuel under each arm, and a relatively short yet far too long itinerary of spacewalk to carefully and anxiously go through, the archeologist slowly made their way across the structure and towards the side their friends were waiting from.

As they approached, Riebeck noticed more and more evidence that the structure was of Nomai origin, and part of them pondered why no one had ever wanted to explore it; but it was not long before they reasoned that only one astronaut could possibly have been bold enough to attempt it, and… said astronaut had disappeared before they could set their mind on anything other than a planet. The planets had been big and full of discoveries enough on their own, with even so little as the Hanging City being far more to explore than Riebeck could have ever imagined before they could catch sight of it for themself.

Well, that and the fact that the only entrance they had found so far was a closed Nomai airlock. No Hearthian had yet figured out how to open those: it was clear that the spheres embedded within those stone rails were involved… But just like Hornfels had (according to Hal) spent sleepless weeks trying to pry open a Nomai statue’s eyes to no avail, never had Riebeck succeeded in getting those spheres to move either. Admittedly, it was in great part because they refused to put in too much force into those eons old structures for fear of breaking their mechanisms… But still. Riebeck had long accepted with disappointment that those airlocks might as well be solid, impassable walls.

“Riebeck, over here. Look down and to your left.”

Startling at first at the sound of Gabbro’s voice suddenly brightening their tone, they soon did as asked, and caught sight of an astronaut waving at them from about fifty meters away.

Gabbro was holding something under their arm… Oh dear. Firn’s body looked limp.

“O-oh no! Am I too late!?”

“Relax, they’re still breathing,” Gabbro reassured with a soothing voice, but still with some underlying tones of concern which urged Riebeck to hurry. “Showed them some meditation trick. They’re in it deep, who would’ve thought that they’d be so good at it with all the, you know. Firn-ness.”

Gabbro decided against specifying out loud that the lowered oxygen pressure inside their suit most likely contributed a lot, and might even be the actual culprit responsible for knocking them out the moment their adrenaline rush had started to recede. Riebeck was bound to panic at the reminder, and the last thing all three astronauts needed in this moment was a Riebeck trembling too much to properly control their own limbs.

Riebeck finally made their way down to their level, and Gabbro instantly reached out for the tanks under their right arm in order to free them of the voluminous burden.

Riebeck tried to reach out for Firn’s oxygen tank, but the fact that they only had one free hand, that Gabbro was holding them around the waist like a sandbag, and that they both had to remain mindful to not let the lack of relative gravity distance them from the Nomai structure, made the task far more difficult than it had any right to be.

With a panicked sigh, Riebeck looked around them, trying to find at least some way to get a better grip on the alien space station; and after a few seconds, their eyes lit up. They immediately pointed at a dim and diffused light emanating from the floor on the other side of the broken window.

“Gabbro, I th-think those are gravity panels,” they instructed. “Let’s go there, it’ll be much easier to refill when we’re not in zero-g.”

Gabbro followed their gaze, then raised an intrigued eyebrow. “Huh. First time I hear of those. Is that floor made of ground up gravity crystals—”

“G-Gabbro.”

“—Right. Coming.”

---

Firn was awoken by the sound and sensation of oxygen rushing into their helmet in a rapid burst, slightly but suddenly increasing the air pressure and making their head and ears buzz in turn.

Faster than their mind could think, their chest jerked forward as they desperately gasped for air, lungs feeling far emptier than they ever imagined they could possibly get — only to instantly so, so happily find something to fill them with again.

In the instant when their lucidity came back, somewhere between two loud and throat-wrenching coughs, Firn made their mind in silence, forming an opinion which would never leave it due to both limited time and personal pride:

This felt like coming back to life.

Multiple hands came on their chest and shoulders, gently but firmly pushing them downward, and they realized that, somehow, they had been lying on what appeared to be solid ground. Their now open eyes went from blurry and dispersed to focused, and soon locked on to the sight of a flashlight uncomfortably directed straight into their eyes, and of two astronauts bent over their face in worry — worry which instantly turned to two sighs of intense relief.

“You made it, buddy,” Gabbro complimented with a calm pat on their shoulder. “You can thank Riebeck for literally saving your life. We both owe them a big one.” They briefly looked to the side with an amused snort, before adding: “And, only you this time, you also owe a certain someone a big apology.”

“No stunts, Firn!” came out the hysterically sobbing disembodied voice of Hal, and Firn realized that one of Gabbro’s hands was holding a signalscope. “You promised!”

“Firn,” Hornfels scolded with a stern but immensely relieved tone, “you had better make the most of your time up here while you still can, because the moment you come back to Timber Hearth, you are grounded until further notice.”

“But—” they started whining, only to get interrupted by their throat demanding another cough, “that’s not fair! The cyclone wasn’t my fault!”

“The constant waste of jetpack fuel, the failure to keep an eye on your resource levels, the disregard for orders, the lack of warning and refusal to ask for ground control’s approval when you took your own reckless initiatives, and the whole dragging us here against what everyone else had planned totally were, though,” Gabbro retorted with a light shrug and nonchalant tone while, again, raising a finger for each instance being listed, and sticking the signalscope between their upper arm and chest when their second hand became necessary to continue the count.

Firn decided not to mention that, in part because of the surrounding darkness, and in other part because Riebeck’s torchlight flashing into their face was not making that darkness any easier to see through, they were absolutely not able to see most of their fingers anyway.

They did, however, make a mental note to themself that having your torchlight directly attached to the side of your helmet had to have a ton of advantages, but that social interactions with your fellow travelers were certainly not one of them.

“S-so now, if you don’t mind, after we’re done exploring we’re going home. And staying on breathable, non-brittle ground, for a while,” Riebeck stated with a strangely calm voice — albeit calm with some form of hollow light-headedness. “Gabbro can take my ship if you want to bring yours back later and– and risk your lives again, without me.” They heaved a few pained sighs, before lowering their tone: “…No, for real though, please d-don’t risk your lives like this again. My heart can’t take it.”

Gabbro gave a quiet and amused chuckle, but then turned to them and raised an incredulous eyebrow, lowering the signalscope in the process. “…Wait, ‘done exploring’? I thought we’d get to your ship straight away.”

Riebeck waved their hands in big circles, looking up with excitement (and therefore finally moving their flashlight away from Firn’s face and towards literally any other target, to their own relief) and starting to pace giddily. “Gabbro, just look around you! Those are Nomai ruins! While we’re here, we might as well— W-we even have Firn’s translator, now! Who wouldn’t take the opportunity? My ship is right outside, we’re all refueled, a-and—” Their sentence trailing off, they suddenly stopped and lowered their arms sheepishly, eyeing both astronauts and putting a stop to the chiaroscuro’s eerie dance on eons old debris. “Y-you’re both doing okay, right? You don’t need urgent medical help, do you?”

Now that both astronauts had given them enough space to do so, Firn sat up, hiding their thankfully quieting coughs as best they could. Eyes lighting up with curiosity, they took a second to quizzically pat the floor which they had been laid upon and was dimly glowing with the radiation of artificial gravity; then, after searching for and switching on their own flashlight, they stood up and illuminated one by one the floating debris around them, recognizing them to be unmistakably Nomai architecture.

A huge grin now plastered on their face, they raised their head towards the archeologist. “Totally fine and ready for another lap,” they assured cheerfully, only losing their smile when their chest once again tried to force out another cough and they struggled to silence it. “I’m all for exploring the place too. Totally was part of the plan when I led us here, actually.”

Gabbro squinted at them with a tired, deadpan look. “…It absolutely was not.”

“Was too,” Firn pouted. “Secondary objective. Totally would’ve spent the time waiting for Riebeck taking a look around if I…”

“…If you hadn’t forgotten that your resources aren’t endless,” Gabbro sighed, rolling their upper eyes. “Alright. Fair enough.”

Taking another quick second to have a better look, they noticed that Firn’s chest was slightly trembling in small outbursts, and they realized that the real reason why they had let their own sentence trail off had been most likely because they were trying to repress another coughing fit.

Frowning, they added: “…And, yeah, a visit to Porphy’s probably wouldn’t hurt either. Even if they just end up giving you some herbs or something.”

The young cadet annoyingly waved them off, all the while trying to fight against their own crying chest. “I’m fine,” they insisted with a too little too raspy voice.

“No offense, but it sounds like your lungs are trying to climb out of your mouth, pal.”

“I can wait till we’ve explored at least this place!” they groaned stubbornly. Then, turning a more sheepish face and probably forgetting that the sight of their puppy eyes was going to be hidden by the surrounding darkness and their visor alike: “Please. For Riebeck.”

Gabbro snorted. “For Riebeck,” they parroted. “Totally not because you’re trying to drag on your last moments of freedom in space even if it could kill you.”

Firn crossed their arms and grunted. “It’s not gonna kill me, I’m not that dumb. I would’ve said it if I thought it was that bad.” And even if it weren’t for their own sake, they could never do that to Hal either, anyway. …Not again. Not on purpose.

Gabbro’s eyes were raised to the ceiling as they shook their head and sighed in disbelief; but they decided to drop the matter, hoping that the fact that Firn’s coughs had started to be less frequent and quieter was an encouraging sign that, indeed, they did not seem to be aggravating their case.

Instead, their attention was soon overtaken by an orange and purple glint radiating off something small amongst the floating debris above their heads, and they squinted.

This kind of light was… strange and foreign to be sure. Vaguely familiar too, somehow, but for the most part, it gave them nothing but the gut feeling that something was fundamentally different with it.

It felt… unnatural. ‘Unnatural’ not in the sense that its source’s Nomai origins were artificial, but rather ‘unnatural’ in the sense that its… destination, somehow, was the true unnatural element.

Perhaps mystical, or spiritual even, felt like the proper words to describe it, they pondered.

Looking to their side, they found that Riebeck had for the past minute or so completely abandoned Firn and them to their argument, and had instead been fully focused and invested in studying every squared millimeter of the room with blissful joy, slowed down by nothing but the limitations of what their flashlight could reach. By now, they seemed to have stopped near a pair of waist-high pillars standing at the center of what seemed to be a squared cavity in the middle of the room, appearing utterly fascinated by the whole setting.

Raising their head again at the strange glowing item they had noticed, Gabbro jumped high enough to evade the floor’s artificial gravity, then pushed around a few unrelated tree pots and pieces of broken stone before they could take hold of it, and push their way back to the ground.

In passing, they also made a mental note that Firn could benefit quite a lot from learning that navigating in varying gravitational fields did not always require the use of a jetpack. But that one would have to be for later.

“Hey, Riebeck,” they called out while looking for the tip of their flashlight, then landing next to them and handing out their new find, “that thing looks important.”

Riebeck lowered their helmet with curiosity and bathed both the item and its discoverer’s hands in the light of their torch; then, they lit up after a few seconds and reached out for it with a pair of shaking hands, gasping in excitement. “A projection stone! I– At least I think that’s how the Nomai called them in their writings…? I’ve always wondered how they worked, and now— Oh stars, I can’t believe we might actually be able to find out!”

Firn walked up to them both, pointing their own light and staring at the flat stone, then up at the place where they had seen Gabbro take it. “What made you think it ‘looked important’? Anything in here could be worth taking a look at, but you pushed away a lot of other stuff around it without even looking. You didn’t even…” With their sentence trailing off, the cadet soon squinted dubiously. “Gabbro, do you even have a flashlight?”

“…I may have forgotten it at my camp,” they shrugged nonchalantly. “But in a way, that made it easier to find, I guess. It wasn’t that hard to tell apart from the rest, with it glowing in the dark and all.”

Following their words, silence fell for a few tense moments. Riebeck eyed them, then the stone, then Gabbro again. So did Firn, except they did not look back up, and instead crossed their arms with a silent and dubitative hum before raising a hand to tinker with the side of their helmet.

Just when Gabbro was about to ask what the awkward silence was for, Riebeck broke it with a cluelessly dismissive shrug: “Well, I guess it stopped glowing when you picked it up.”

From beneath their visor, Gabbro’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. It was harder to see with Riebeck’s flashlight illuminating it from up close, but that stone plate’s symbol and middle slice were clearly luminescent.

…But, oh well. Whatever. This day had been long enough as it was, so they decided that arguing was not worth the effort.

Considering the fact that Riebeck seemed to have already forgotten the matter anyway, Gabbro thought they might as well stand back, take a break, and leave them to their own devices, while they would in the meanwhile both relax and ponder this new mystery in silence. Turning away from the square cavity and looking at the rest of the room, they soon spotted…

Well, they did not fail to notice that another similar-looking and similarly glowing stone was sitting horizontally on something which appeared to be slightly above knee-height, and upon calmly making their way to it, they soon saw their guess confirmed: the structure that this stone was standing on turned out to be, indeed, a bench. They sat comfortably, thinking that they would warn the others about that second projection stone later, once they would be done having their fun with the first one.

Firn had kept a distracted eye on Gabbro at first, but lost interest after a few seconds. Instead, they raised their head to give an inquisitive nod towards Riebeck, nudging them to share their knowledge: “So… A ‘projection stone,’ you say. Any idea what those are for?”

“Hasn’t Hal told you anything? They helped me translate a few writings that mentioned them,” Riebeck started with mild confusion… only to realize that, most likely, even if they had, Firn simply had not been paying attention at the time.

It truly was a shame, but aside from Hal, Hornfels, and themself… Not that many Hearthians even were all that interested in the Nomai to begin with. Slate technically was ‘interested’ in the Nomai, but it was far more because they were interested in getting their hands on scraps of their technology so they could find out in how many ways duct-taping them to wood and thrusters could lead to cool-looking explosions.

They were quite certain that Firn was interested in the Nomai as well, though it was indisputable that their interest was not nearly as profound as theirs or Hal’s. If Riebeck had to take a guess, it was likely that though Firn had been there for most conversations revolving around Hal’s musings and research, they might have spent a lot of that time tuning out whenever Hal became too little too invested and would go into tangents about linguistics and the intricacies of the Nomai language, only to end up accidentally not listening when the topic would switch to finds they would have wanted to hear about in the process.

They sighed with audible disappointment. “Alright. From what Hal and I managed to translate, projection stones seemed to be meant to connect two different locations for instantaneous communication — which means that they can’t do anything on their own.” Then, as they pointed an excited finger and the beam of their torchlight towards the double pillar by their side, they felt an overjoyed grin expand on their face: “They need to be paired with another one that would be linked to our current location, and I believe this right here is one way to use it!”

“It does seem to fit in the hole,” Firn shrugged jokingly as they looked down at the flat dent present on the top of one of the two pillars, and compared it with the flat stone carried by the other astronaut’s hands.

Riebeck nodded, helmet jumping up and down in a blur. “I know! And– and look at this!” They pointed at the simple motif carved on top of the other pillar: “This one can’t be removed, so I suppose this symbol here is meant to represent our current location.”

Firn hummed pensively. “Two hexagons branching off… and the stone you’re holding only has the first one. Are those Nomai words?”

“No, they don’t look like any words I know,” Riebeck replied with a shake of their head. “I believe they’re rather meant to be pictograms representing the locations they’re related to… Even though I have no idea what one or two connected hexagons could be for. Are we standing inside some kind of ‘Space Station Number Two’ and there would be a ‘Number One’ somewhere else?” Eyes widening, they gave a loud gasp and bent down to meet the young cadet at eye level and send them a thrilled look sparkling with delight. “O-oh, oh, oh stars– W-what if that ‘Number One’ could be the other station orbiting the sun!?”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Firn quickly stated with an amused and curious chuckle, before they snatched Riebeck’s arm and guided it until the projection stone was placed just a centimeter above what had to be its intended place. Grinning, they looked up and asked teasingly: “Ready?”

Despite not appreciating the breach of privacy and controlling gesture, Riebeck decided not to complain. Instead, their fingers trembled with trepidation as their grip on the stone wavered and tightened in turn, on and off. “Ooh, am I!” they exclaimed all the while, before they finally managed to control their tremors and fit the eons old artifact inside its intended cavity, with both care and purpose.

Just a few seconds later, and both Hearthians realized that they were, in fact, very much not ready. After all, out of all things that could have happened, what did occur was entirely beyond the scope of their imagination.

It had started in a quite encouraging and exciting way: both pillars rotated and twisted in order to connect the two projection stones, a motion which was simultaneously entirely within the realm of their expectations, and yet still very much impressive and awe-inspiring to witness firsthand.

Neither, however, had predicted the sudden eruption of this strange, dark and viscous liquid, menacingly emerging from the base of the two pillars and rapidly rushing for their feet.

Firn jumped back with a yelp and flared up their jetpack by instinct, escaping at once both this unexpected threat and the reach of the artificial gravity. The few layers of alien slime which had taken hold on to their legs instantly stopped climbing up, instead going still at once, then rapidly receding back down to the bottom of their boots and, in one long drooping filament, eerily finding its way back into what had become a small black pond.

Riebeck was not so lucky. In an instant, their entire suit was submerged, to the extent that even the powerful torchlight’s beam originating from the side of their helmet appeared fully extinguished, and their transmitter did not fail to share with the two other astronauts their terrified scream — a scream which, to make matters worse, soon died down inexplicably.

Gabbro jumped out of their seat and ran to the edge, not daring to come any closer but still trying to think of ways to help. Firn, still floating above and amongst the debris and pointing their torchlight at their darkened shape, called their name in panic.

Riebeck’s silhouette, entirely covered yet still fully recognizable, went from flailing about in horror, to freezing in place, before slowly lowering their arms in silence.

Just as Firn was starting to think that this awful substance must have sneaked its way through their suit somehow and fully immobilized them by force, if not entirely smothered them, Riebeck turned their head around, then their whole body, in what seemed to be a mixture between slowly and surprisingly receding fear, intense confusion, and what seemed to be a growing sense of wonder.

“Uh… Gabbro? Firn? Are you two still here?” were the first questions they seemed to successfully come up with, if only because they felt like they probably needed to let their two friends know that, if those were their first words, and if their tone was calm enough, then perhaps the situation was not as horrifying as it first appeared.

“I can hear you,” Gabbro responded with a voice which wavered just enough to know that, for Gabbro standards, they were absolutely not calm. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah! Yeah, that was really freaky, but– uh, it didn’t leak inside the suit, at least. I can’t see you, though—”

“Riebeck, I’d be surprised if you could see anything right now,” Firn deadpanned with far less audible confidence and sass than they had originally intended.

“—No no no, that’s the thing!” they countered, head shaking and arms waving horizontally with vehemence. “I still see this room, you’re just not in it! Or… No, wait, I think that could be… a different room? …Y-yeah! Yeah, that’s a different room, it just looks very similar. Except that one doesn’t seem broken at all, everything’s on the ground and not, uh, all smashed and floating in zero-g. It also looks like it’s lit up, too.”

“But you didn’t move from here, though, did you?” Gabbro asked prudently – by this point, they were admittedly unsure whether this question was meant to be rhetorical or genuine.

Riebeck’s helmet slowly rose up, as they let a fist fall into the palm of their other hand and their radio transmitted a gasp of realization. “Of course!” they exclaimed, “This is how they could connect multiple people across two entirely different places! Th-this was far more advanced than just radio, they had– they had visual means to communicate in real time! A-and even more than just visual, oh stars, this is— Th-this is incredible…!”

Firn gave a low pensive hum. After a few seconds, they reached out for their scout launcher, aimed directly at the pool, and fired, their projectile landing right next to Riebeck. In an instant, the liquid seemed to detect its presence and devour it, defying the local gravity just to ensure that not a squared millimeter of its surface would be left in sight. Soon after, Riebeck turned around and looked down, stepping back in surprise with a small yelp—

“So you can see it?” Firn called out in excitement. “Don’t worry, that’s just my scout,” they soon added for clarification.

“O-oh! Oh. Y-yeah, it’s… I mean, it’s more like I can see its shape, but it’s still covered in…” Riebeck paused for a few seconds, pondering a few hypotheses, then decided to share the most likely one: “…Actually, I think it’s more like I see the liquid taking its shape. And… my shape too. All the way there, to the other location. Th-that must be how the communication could be two-ways, I guess? The Nomai would step in here and the projection stones would– w-well, project a reflection of their movements in another pool in the other location? Even though they never actually moved there?”

“Huh.” Gabbro raised an eyebrow, unsure whether they should feel amazed or appalled. “That’s… weird. And interesting. But mostly weird.”

Firn repeatedly pressed a few buttons on their launcher, taking a few photos; but soon, they frowned and deflated, cursing under their breath. “Seems like it only captures the goo,” they stated with a disappointed grunt before recalling their scout.

They hesitated for a few moments, but eventually decided to reluctantly push their way down, let the gravity panels’ reach pull them to the ground, and land in the pool themself. They tensed up as the viscous liquid reached for them, surrounding and covering every part of their suit with a thin but tight layer; but contrary to what they would have expected at first, the substance exposed a quite limited resistance to their movements.

In a matter of seconds, their helmet’s visor was covered in turn; and despite the fact that they knew what to expect this time, the impression of the darkness somehow becoming translucent – yet also not really translucent, since translucence would rather imply that the landscape they would be offered to see would be the one they were truly standing in, rather than one located somewhere else entirely – still took them aback.

The first thing Firn could notice, aside from what Riebeck had described, was the Riebeck-shaped pile of liquid standing by their side, which soon turned to stare back for a short moment, before going back to gazing and gawking at everything else.

They could no longer see them, but Firn still remembered where the third astronaut was supposed to be standing relative to their current position. And so, they turned around and placed their hands on their hips jokingly: “You’re not coming, Gabbro?”

The Hearthian in question did not bother shaking their head, knowing that they would not see it, and instead went back to sit on the bench, arms crossed. “No thanks. You can have fun without me.”

Also, they sort of wanted to ponder whether it was worrying or fortunate that, since both torchlights were currently muffled by the creepy liquid and leaving the entire room in close to total darkness save for the sunlight reflected by the upper atmosphere of Giant’s Deep, the only reason they had been able to find their bench again in the first place was thanks to the weird totally-glowing-yet-absolutely-not-glowing Nomai stone which just so happened to have been conveniently sitting on it for perhaps the past few hundred millennia.

One thing which Gabbro could far more easily define as unfortunate was the fact that the young cadet was not deterred yet. “What, scared to take a dip with us?” they teased.

“I’m already ‘taking a dip’ every day on Giant’s Deep, buddy,” they retorted with a calm but amused snicker. “Just let me enjoy the change of scenery, will you?”

“In that case, maybe you could get ground control for us?” Riebeck asked. “This is an incredible discovery! But I’m not sure my signalscope could handle the, uh. Black thing.”

With a shrug, Gabbro took their signalscope in one hand, the projection stone by their side in the other, and placed the latter on its edge, keeping it in place between the signalscope and the bench, before they came to lean against the backrest, arms behind their neck acting like a makeshift pillow. “Gabbro to ground control,” they announced coolly, “how’s it going?”

As always, the answer did not wait. “Gabbro!” Hornfels called in relief. “We were just about to consider calling you. Shouldn’t you be close to landing on Timber Hearth by now?”

There was an awkward silence. Riebeck raised their hands to their chest and started nervously fiddling with their fingers. “O-oh. Uh. N-no, we’re still, uh. Th-that may be my f-fault,” they apologized sheepishly. “W-weren’t you listening when we said we’d stay a bit to explore the s-station because they’re Nomai ruins nobody ever went to b-before today?”

Hal’s voice soon answered that question by the negative: “The, uh… Whoever was holding the signalscope must have put it down around that point. We thought you’d done that because you were on your way back.”

Despite the fact that neither could see them, Gabbro knew that both astronauts were now trying to give them an accusing look. With a sigh, they raised their arms up in defeat. “My bad. I got distracted.”

The long-distance radio went silent for a few seconds. Then, after a sigh deformed by static, Hornfels shared their cautious yet optimistic opinion: “…Hm. Unexplored Nomai ruins, you say…? On the one hand, this sounds irresponsible given the circumstances. On the other— If you were the one behind the idea, Riebeck, then I’ll trust that you are all doing alright?”

“Yep,” Firn asserted, “I’m fine, everyone’s fine, everything’s fine. We’re all refueled and Riebeck’s ship is nearby and ready to launch whenever we need it. All prepped up for making major discoveries in here! They’re not related to the statues, but oh well. Good enough, I guess.”

“That’s great!” Hal exclaimed with relief which soon turned to excitement: “So how is that research progressing?”

“Swimmingly,” Firn smirked, a smug grin in the corner of their lips. Riebeck’s arms dropped to their sides in silence, as they looked down in their direction with four invisible and unamused eyes.

When their best friend replied, Firn was delighted to almost be able to hear their tired, deadpan look. “…Why do I get the feeling this was a pun?”

“We found a working projection stone, Hal!” Riebeck decided to reply before the other astronaut could get in another word. “And a, uh. I guess it might be fitting to call this a projection pool,” they sighed with the tiniest annoyed grunt.

“A projection– ‘pool’?” Hornfels parroted in confusion; but after just a second, they changed their train of thought: “Never mind that, you found a projection stone! Were you able to use it?”

“Yes!” Riebeck exclaimed instantly, “And, oh, stars,” they heaved in awe, “Hal, Hornfels, I wish you could see this. This is absolutely incredible!”

It was not long before the archeologist’s enthusiasm pushed them to entirely overtake the conversation. Firn watched for a few moments at their thrilled movements, spinning around, pointing at things and only remembering halfway through that their radio would not let them share the sights…

With a small silent chuckle, the cadet soon tuned out the excited and curious exchanges between the three Hearthians, trying to instead focus on what they could see themself, and swiftly turning off their radio when they felt like adding an entry or two to their ship log.

“From the looks of it, that other location is also orbiting Giant’s Deep,” they eventually added when it seemed like ground control was all caught up and Riebeck had nothing new to share other than long trails of giddy squeals. “It seems like it’s just another compartment from the same Nomai station.”

Riebeck nodded. “I saw that there was another glass chamber just like this one when I was looking for Firn and Gabbro,” they announced into their transmitter. “I suppose my first guess was wrong, it’s just that this projection stone is meant to connect the two.”

“And as intriguing as this is, I don’t think we’re going to find out a lot more about either room just by standing here,” Firn sighed, partially disappointed, punctuating their sentence with a fitting gesture, as they walked out of the pool.

Unsurprisingly, but still to their relief, the dark liquid instantly let go as soon as they made their first step out of the pool’s radius. Part of them was impressed by the fact that not a single drop seemed to remain stuck to their body, and that whatever this substance was made of and however it was being controlled by some kind of ancient device, the whole system appeared capable of tracking down every part of itself and not let a single one loose.

Firn looked around, searching on the walls with their flashlight for what could be an access to the rest of the space station: after all, surely, since it possessed multiple compartments, there had to be a means to navigate between them.

They were intrigued to eventually notice a circular cavity halfway to the ceiling; but after escaping the artificial gravity once more and making their way to it, they faced another disillusionment. Indeed, while the airlock which was supposed to be there was open, the path was not traversable for all that, as massive debris blocked the corridor standing after it, only leaving barely enough space to send a scout through.

Oh well. At least, they still had a lot to do in the chamber they were already standing in; and when they floated their way out of the broken tube and back inside, they saw that Riebeck had left the projection pool as well – if the reappearance of another torchlight’s beam was anything to go by.

As soon as they landed on the gravity panels and aimed their own light near the two older astronauts, Gabbro gave them a small wave of their hand from their seat on the bench, and Firn saw that Riebeck had just found a different pillar to insert their projection stone into. Just a few instants later, Riebeck indeed proceeded as such, then took a step back and gasped in awe, witnessing the flat wall before them carve itself on its own into ancient spirals full of meaning.

Before Riebeck could take a single step forward to attempt reading it, Firn ran to them, translator in hand:

AVENS: Mallow, my better 50 percent! Cassava is sending the last of the cannon components. Soon (relatively speaking), we’ll know the Eye’s precise location!

Both Hearthians exchanged a silent look, mixed with such a large number of emotions. With only one sentence, there were so many things to unpack! Riebeck was vibrating in place, physically trying to restrain themself from snatching the translator off Firn’s hands so they could read everything at once.

“Ooh, it really works! And it did it so fast, too!” they heaved with a massive curious grin. “And now– So they were building a cannon, and something about locating an ‘eye’…”

Firn squinted, seemingly focused on an entirely different part of the message. “…‘Relatively speaking’?” they read in confusion. “That’s an… odd thing to say here. You think there could be something lost in translation?”

“Don’t you trust your own hard work?” Riebeck asked with a raised eyebrow; but they instantly stepped closer to the wall, hesitantly bringing a finger to underline the carved scriptures, then mumbling some foreign words to themself for a few moments. Eventually, they called out into their radio: “Hal, if I say– Litaly · mænæfa-sisivm · Mot nonærj Hinoi lilutædæ-zanatu… How would you translate the mænæfa-sisivm part? The translator reads it as ‘relatively speaking,’ but… That sounds a bit out of place, without context. O-or at least Firn finds that weird.”

“I’m not saying the translation’s inaccurate,” they corrected quickly. “All I’m saying is that maybe its meaning is clearer when it’s read in its original language. I don’t know, maybe there’s some subtlety that’s taken out when it’s translated to Hearthian or something.”

All the way back from Timber Hearth, the linguist took a few moments to ponder their options. Soon, their answer came out with a sigh: “…No, I’m pretty sure this is as accurate as we could make it. Now that you say it though, I do wonder what they meant by that. They must be referring to something you didn’t read yet, assuming it’s written at all. What does the rest say?”

Answering with a dubious hum instead of words, Firn moved their translator to read each reply to this first message, one after the other. When Riebeck started reading each sentence out loud for ground control to hear, Gabbro felt obliged to listen in as well:

AVENS: Cassava tells me he and the Construction Yard crew have determined a power setting we are not, under any circumstances, to go above.

MALLOW: I see! And am I right to think that, consequently, we’ll be ignoring that setting?

AVENS: I can posit with nearly 100 percent certainty our friends have accounted for our natures, so I suggest we do!

At first a little intrigued, they soon ended amused by the idea of this couple of Nomai being so excited to push their invention beyond its intended limits, and tried to imagine Slate and Feldspar in that situation.

For the third astronaut overall to have joined the program soon after Chert, and for one of the Hearthians who had seen for themself the duo’s progressively more grandiose contraptions and their subsequent equally grandiose explosions… Sometimes, even they still pondered how they had still agreed to be launched into space without fear.

Paradoxically, the appeal of calmness and loneliness, and the desire to contemplate the wonders of nature, were what they had been seeking; and in the end, the moment they had been able to leave their ship, they had found exactly that on their planet of choice.

AVENS: Giving the Orbital Probe Cannon all the power it can structurally withstand creates the greatest chance of finding the Eye of the universe.

MALLOW: Yes, the probe must travel as fast as it can, as far as it can. I’ll make some adjustments!

“The ‘Orbital Probe Cannon’…” Riebeck repeated slowly. “Do you think this is the name of this place, then?”

From their seat on the nearby bench, Gabbro snorted. “It’s in orbit, and from what I remember it does look a bit like a cannon,” they shrugged. “Seems fitting.”

“And so the purpose of those ruins… They were looking for something called the ‘Eye of the universe’? Whatever that name was supposed to refer to,” Hornfels summarized, deep in thought.

For the past few minutes, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, Firn had remained uncharacteristically silent. It was only when they pulled their flashlight away from the wall of writings and aimed it haphazardly in multiple other directions that Riebeck noticed, briefly sending them a curious look, before ignoring them once again.

“Judging by what this Mallow said, it seems like that search had been going on for multiple generations,” they mused instead, going back to studying the second part of the overall exchange. “Can you believe it? They were trying to send some kind of probe, then, somewhere…” they pondered while reading every line for the third or fourth time. “I can only imagine what its destination must have been, or how far it must have gone by now. This cannon seems to have been fired already, but that must have been done ages ago.”

From inside their receiver, a short gasp resonated. Then, a confident assertion: “No. Not ‘ages ago.’ I’ve seen that thing fire.”

Both older astronauts turned to Firn in surprise: fists clenched, the cadet had turned to them in return, determined expression hidden only by their visor and the surrounding darkness.

It had taken them some time to ponder it, then to accept it; but after looking at all the evidence under their eyes… Finally, it all clicked and came together; and finally, they had managed to convince themself that this was the only remaining hypothesis they could consider relevant.

“This morning, the first thing I saw was a big flash of light right above me, that’s what woke me up before the sunrise,” they reasoned carefully, deep in thought. “From my perspective at the time, it was just in front of Giant’s Deep. I was wondering if it could be something in low orbit.” They raised their eyes to the other two astronauts, sparkling with curiosity and purpose: “I think— that could be it. We could be standing right inside the thing I saw blowing up, just a few sunrises ago.”

Even with their helmet on, disbelief could be read all over Riebeck’s spacesuit. “That’s impossible, and you must know it,” they replied simply. “The Nomai are long dead. Who could’ve possibly sent the order to fire it today?”

“But— I know I saw something,” they insisted, bringing a hand to their forehead only to meet their visor in the way. They tried their best to remember what it had looked like… “It was right in front of Giant’s Deep, and it was something small that shot a purple light. I know I saw it.”

“Couldn’t that have been some kind of thunder?” Hornfels offered. “Giant’s Deep’s storms often ionize its atmosphere, and those storms result in pink or purple flashes of light on a regular basis.”

“Yeah, maybe you just saw a particularly big one?” Riebeck added with a gentle tone and a light shrug. “I’m not calling you a liar, I do believe you saw something. I just think… I-it’s just impossible for the source of that flash of light to be abandoned Nomai ruins that nobody in sight could’ve possibly activated, don’t you think?”

“You say it’s what woke you up, right?” Hal reasoned. “Maybe, you know, you just weren’t awake enough to see it all that well.”

Firn’s sense of logic tended to agree. At least at first glance, they were all correct: even they simply could not think of a way or reason why this cannon could have just fired on its own, hundreds of thousands of years after the civilization which had built it had died out. Any Nomai construct they had seen so far could only activate if there was someone nearby to use them, even when the Nomai statues had activated—

The statues.

Gabbro had found these statues weeks ago. They had been able to bring one back to Timber Hearth without it ever doing anything. Even when it had been accidentally chipped and the fallen chunk had been repurposed into their ship’s information storage and secondary processor at the heart of their computer, it had never given any sign of reaction to any observation or tinkering, by anyone.

And then, one day, it had just… acted out on its own. Done something to Hal, whatever it was. Done something to Gabbro too, on the very same day, less than a sunrise later.

The cannon had been fired first, though. The statues had not activated the cannon — if there truly were any correlation between these two events, and there had to be one, then if anything, the cannon had been the reason why the statues activated, not the other way around…

…Which still left the lingering question of what had triggered the cannon, then. And unfortunately, this was where Firn ran out of ideas.

Reluctantly, they thus came back to the wall of writings and brought back their translator, reading every line word by word yet again, as if those could somehow bring some new hints; alas, they found none.

After a few instants, they teared their eyes away from their translator with a confused hum, and raised them up to the other side of the windows, frowning. Looking at the black shadow of Giant’s Deep, they asked the other two astronauts: “…Did everything just get darker all of a sudden?”

Riebeck shrugged, assuming that what the cadet meant was that they also thought that distinguishing the carved words’ details seemed to have become somewhat harder, for some reason. And so, they simply opted to point their flashlight in the same direction as theirs and bend forward a little bit, in order to bring more light to the writings on the wall. “This structure is orbiting Giant’s Deep,” they reasoned, “we must have reached its dark side. I sure can’t see the sun from here.”

Gabbro frowned in turn, mumbling mostly to themself: “But we already were in the shadow of Giant’s Deep.”

That, and even when they were on the dark side, its atmosphere still reflected at least some of the sun’s light, coloring the planet’s shadow in dark green instead of pure black. Now that Firn was saying it… It was true that the dark side currently looked much darker than usual. Unnaturally so.

From pitch black, the echoes of the sun then turned bright blue. Alas, none of the three astronauts were in a position to notice, fault of the gas giant blocking the view; and back on Timber Hearth, the rotation of the planet on its own axis had decided that, in this moment, sunset had passed and sunrise had yet to come.

And so, all Hearthians from ground control and in orbit remained unaware up to the very moment when the end would claim them, each in turn.

---

Suspicion rose once more when all three travelers’ radios picked up a fleeting, but loud screeching sound – only followed by ominous silence.

Riebeck was the first to find their words again. “W-w-what was that?”

“Did someone’s radio malfunction?” Firn called out, looking at one of their companions, then the other.

“I can hear you two just fine,” Gabbro stated instantly.

Six pairs of eyes turned to the signalscope. It looked in normal shape.

“Hal?” Firn called out tentatively, trying not to sound anxious.

“H-hornfels?” Riebeck followed, absolutely not hiding the fact that they were starting to worry.

Silence.

“Must be a problem on their end,” Gabbro deduced with a heavy shrug. “Who knows, maybe Mica’s model ship crashed into the comms. Heh.”

And as they were saying these last words, they picked up their signalscope with another shrug; but in the process, the eons old Nomai artifact they had been using to keep it in place could no longer stand upright: and therefore, it lost its balance and unceremoniously fell to the ground.

Because of the sight rather than the absence of sound, Firn turned their head curiously, then squinted as they bent down to retrieve it…

“Wait– Is that another projection stone?” Riebeck exclaimed, wide-eyed.

Gabbro raised an eyebrow, then looked to their side. “…Oh yeah, right,” they suddenly remembered, “I’d found it on the bench. I was meaning to show it to you, but then I forgot. Totally my bad.”

Riebeck rolled their upper eyes, but kept their silence. Instead, they simply bent down and pointed their flashlight at the stone’s definitely-glowing-and-yet-not-at-all-glowing-apparently side — something which, again, put Gabbro on edge.

“This one has three branched hexagons,” Firn stated. “Does that mean there’s a third chamber on this station?”

Riebeck hummed thoughtfully. “I only remember seeing two, though.”

“Given how broken the whole place is, maybe it’s just gone,” Gabbro shrugged.

Riebeck deflated. “You think so…? That would be a real shame.”

Firn gave a nod of their helmet in the direction of the projection pool: “Well, quite convenient that we have a way to find out right here. I’ll be right back.”

As the archeologist cheered in anticipation, Firn trotted their way to the pillars at the center of the chamber, then instantly inserted the projection stone: indeed, what they saw at first looked extremely similar to the two rooms they had already found from the station, with the notable difference that the landscape outside of it did not look at all like Giant’s Deep. At least its interior still looked intact.

They looked around for a few seconds, until their eyes fell upon a sight which sent a shiver down their spine:

Less than a dozen meters away from their perspective, the three stone eyes of a Nomai statue were staring back.

Firn opened their mouth wide, ready to share the news with a shocked gasp — but before they could utter a single word, the three second-to-last Hearthians in existence were burned alive in an instant.

Chapter 1²

Good Morning

---

“And don’t forget the blinds, next time!” Hal warned with a hand curled up around their mouth to let the sound of their voice reach its target.

Somewhere else in the universe, courtesy of the Ash Twin Project’s core objective and most impressive feat, a white hole opened, flaring up with streams of information.

As they watched Marl stomp their way down the mountain road and back to the village below, Hal’s ears caught the sound of laughter coming from behind.

Out of any Hearthian’s sight, yet from not too far away, a Nomai statue, marvel of eons old technology, remembered three very important things.

“They’ll never change, will they?”

First, its orientation was wrong. Clockwise, it was exactly two hundred and forty-one degrees off.

Hal looked up the path they had intended to take up to the observatory, and found that Gossan was currently walking down from it, having likely witnessed the scene from afar on their way.

Second, its eyes were not supposed to be closed.

The flight coach sent them a friendly wave right after their quip, and with a small tired smile, Hal waved back.

And, third: it, alongside its associated mask, had a fundamentally crucial job to do.

“Never mind them,” the hatchling sighed. “You know they’ll be right back at it before the next…”

Their sentence trailed off. Going from an amused chuckle to a surprised, then concerned frown, Gossan stared as Hal’s eyes slowly turned empty and unfocused.

The founder first attempted humor, as a corner of their mouth was nervously and unconvincingly tilted upwards: “Uh. Yes, Hal? The next…?”

This valiant attempt soon proved pointless. Hal remained entirely still, unwavering.

Getting more and more worried, they put a hand on the hatchling’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze, then shook with more vehemence as they yelled their name multiple times, louder and louder.

No response.

At a loss for what to do, Gossan turned to the village below and called for help, their voice echoing over the cliff and into the crater.

At least they were still breathing, they sighed to themself; but the fact that they could only observe it for certain after they had removed one of their gloves, through feeling on the back of their hand the light and slow, barely noticeable air current going in and out of their nostrils, instead of through any visual or audible cues, did not reassure them in the slightest.

Marl had heard the cries from their current position a few meters below, and a dozen of seconds later, they were running to them, asking what was wrong — although they were soon able to see the problem for themself.

“What do you mean, they just… froze? Just like that?”

“I don’t understand,” the elder stated as they slipped their glove back on, struggling to remain calm, “you know as well as I do that they were fine a minute ago. Unless you saw something strange when you were talking to them?”

“Nope,” they shook their head. “Grumpy, but completely normal.” Crossing their arms, they added: “If you ask me, that’s another of Firn’s stupid jokes.”

Gossan frowned. “Hal’s never been roped into their pranks willingly. And even if they were faking this somehow, they would’ve cracked by now.”

Marl rolled their upper eyes, mumbling smugly that oh, they knew how to make them crack and that there was no way they could possibly keep it up for long.

Pursing their lips, they cautiously came closer, slightly bent down to reach Hal at eye level, squinted as they tried to meet their gaze – and gave a light flick against their forehead.

Not even a blink.

Their mouth dropped, blood draining off their face in an instant. “Spawner of all anglerfish they’re good.”

Gossan gave a low and nervous grunt, fists trembling. “Marl, it was already obvious that they’re not responding to any stimuli.”

“Yeah yeah, let me just try real quick–” they mumbled to give themself some courage, preferring to hold on to their last threads of denial over accepting defeat and openly falling into panic as a consequence. “Trust me, there’s no way they’ll ignore that one.” They slowly came a little closer to Hal’s ear, took a sharp breath…

“Marl!” Gossan hissed, rushing ahead and grabbing their arm before pulling away with force, then shooing them with stern worry.

“What?” they shrugged tensely, “Firn does it all the time.”

“Stop fooling around and go get Porphy,” the founder growled. “Whatever this is, it’s serious!”

As the younger Hearthian stepped backwards with a frown and a reluctant nod, then turned around to start leaving, Gossan came closer to Hal’s face themself, studying it from up close and cupping their chin as an attempt to take a better look at their glassy eyes.

Unbeknownst to them, a few more moments of waiting were necessary – for even though the Orbital Probe Cannon had long finished calculating its newest randomly defined trajectory, the process of physically reorienting its entire structure could not be accomplished in the span of mere seconds.

But then, finally, the requisite position was met: and so, with the confirmation that the Ash Twin Project had successfully synchronized all databases and that this exact moment was the perfect window for the probe to be fired along the path it had settled on for this loop, all active statues’ most important duty was completed with two last orders, executed in quick succession.

Firstly: create a savestate, for the main purpose of making subsequent data transfers more efficient, but also for the secondary purpose of having a safe point to return to, in the event of possible corruption or other unlikely incidents which could always occur during the following loop.

And secondly, now that all preparation steps had been executed without a hitch, and now that the time to fire the probe had been met: switch back to data collection.

High up near the zenith, a flash of light briefly illuminated Giant’s Deep; and at the exact same time, with a burst of sudden awareness, Hal gasped awake.

---

A part of Hal forgotten by all, even by themself, had wished to never see the metaphorical records room ever again.

This part of Hal once had, in a future that longer was, naively thought that, strange as their initial experience had been, it only was a single occurrence which would not be repeated.

But as immutable past and uncollapsed future merged to become one, Hal was forcefully confronted to their previous fear of permanence, in one rather ironic way — for the Ash Twin Project was about many things, yes, but if there was one thing it was hardly intended to be delving into, it was set in stone certainty.

From somewhere in the back of their mind, an uncomfortably familiar, yet definitely foreign observer, opened its three mechanical eyes once more and established a link with its securely protected database: but this time, it had not come to absorb more of the information it had been greedily hoarding. Instead, it forced open some metaphorical doors, filled all at once a few rows of a metaphorical records room’s metaphorical shelves, reached out for a metaphorical tape deck in the midst of it all — and, all at once, it returned everything it had amassed.

At first, Hal was far from having a single clue as to what was happening. In fact, in the very first few instants, far was it from them to even be capable of realizing that the conversation they were having with Gossan was naught but a figment of their imagination being forcefully replayed inside their mind: for the memory was far too vivid for the Hearthian to be capable of identifying it as a dream, and for the Ash Twin Project had chosen a different approach to its previous intervention. After all, the algorithm for first pairing with a statue was distinct from the one meant to synchronize data at the beginning of a loop: and contrary to the former, the latter was asked to help the paired person tune out everything which was either irrelevant or bound to hinder the progress of the current, crucial task of reminiscing.

Hal had indeed felt something reach out, briefly, before it started; but by the time their senses had been cut off and the metaphorical tape deck had started playing as a temporary replacement, this sensation had become all but an afterthought — not unlike the inconvenience of having been bit by a mosquito in the back of their head while they weren’t looking, but of being unable to do anything about it now that the void-forsaken thing had already taken off and vanished into the night.

By the time the memory of meeting and getting stared at by the museum’s statue came, Hal felt an additional layer of intrigue: somehow, this reminisced sensation was supposed to be new, and yet it felt familiar, as if they had experienced it a few dozen minutes ago – a few dozen minutes which were, in reality, two seconds and nine hundredths.

And then, as the metaphorical tape reel met its end with a sudden and burning finale, the Ash Twin Project returned the last thing it had taken: in an instant, Hal regained their senses – in the most literal meaning possible.

The image of Hornfels’ ground control panel disappeared with an eerily bright and burning flash of light; and as their true vision cleared, Hal startled to the sight of Gossan’s face, too little too close to their own for comfort, and to the touch of a glove holding their chin. As soon as this realization set in, the unexplained and unexplainable breach of their personal space caused them to jump backwards with a high-pitched yelp.

Gossan’s hand remained still and stuck in midair for a second or two, cupping something that no longer was there, as they stared back in shock; but soon, they brought their arm down to their side and sighed.

“Finally,” Hal heard the founder exhale, eyes briefly rising to the stars. The three eyes lowered instantly to meet theirs again, and the next words they heard were clearly destined to them: “Oi, hatchling. You good?”

Hal tried and failed to stop themself from taking a few more steps backwards and away from them, uncomfortably rubbing their chin in confusion.

“Wha… What happened?” they wondered aloud, unsure whether they were consciously asking, or merely voicing their befuddlement to the void of the universe.

There was the sound of quick footsteps approaching, then Hal jumped again at the touch of a hand clasping against their shoulder from behind.

“Welcome back to the living,” they heard Marl huff in their back, their dark humor failing to conceal the immense relief in their voice.

Hal frowned hesitantly, mindlessly yet politely removing the uninvited hand of their cabinmate from their personal space. “Living…? What? D-did I just… die, or…?”

Gossan stopped staring for a second or two, just long enough for them to instead send the lumberjack a dark glare and wordlessly berate them for their indelicate and distressing statement, which evidently had no business whatsoever being uttered in such situation. “Of course not, since you’re still with us,” they clarified as soon as they could regain their soft tone. “But you sure gave us a good fright there.”

None of this made any sense. Hal still felt disoriented and in some form of daze, and yet all at the same time, everything felt so lucid– not just the present, but also what they were so certain had only occurred mere seconds ago. Hornfels, the observatory, the long-distance radio connection with Firn and Riebeck and Gabbro — where had it all gone?

Courtesy of that blasted metaphorical records room, it felt as if a specific tape was jammed inside the recorder, stuck repeating on loop an instant so short that it could almost be mistaken for a still image, but unfortunately just long enough to maintain its overwhelming vividness in all five senses; and now, they just could not quite shake away that feeling of intense, seething and burning heat which was replaying in the back of their puzzled mind, right between their last moments at the observatory and their first moment of Gossan’s face obscuring ninety percent of their field of vision.

They were internally pleading for peace and an end to this pain, yet all at the same time, desperately scrambling for answers which only their most recent memories of the events marking the transition between those two sceneries could provide: had Phlox been warned and given the chance to give a tip or two regarding how to debug such dilemmatic situation, he most likely would have sighed and explained that, of course, it was no wonder that the memory processing software would be confused if it were given such mixed signals in the form of two fundamentally opposite requests, and that since this alien youth had chosen to use a library of magnetic tapes as an analogy, then… Well, surely they could understand that trying to press the ‘Stop’ and ‘Play’ buttons simultaneously was, quite frankly, rather idiotic.

After about a dozen seconds, Hal mercifully found out how to remove their metaphorical finger from the metaphorical ‘Play’ button, mostly thanks to their desire to both get rid of the phantom pain and focus on what Gossan had just told them in the present, rather than on whatever had happened prior to… ending up here. Wherever ‘here’ was.

They looked around. It was nighttime. They could hear crickets. All three of them were standing near the patch of ghost matter, and even closer to the entrance of the Zero-G cave.

No, really, what were they doing outside of the observatory? They had no memory whatsoever of walking out, and they least of all could think of any reason why they would have done so at such a crucial moment, when Firn and Riebeck were so kind to let them discuss their findings in real time.

After a few more seconds of looking around in stunned silence, Hal found themself with less answers and even more questions than they started with; and so, lips and all four eyebrows trembling, they asked again: “…What happened?”

“You tell us,” Marl scoffed in disbelief. “You’re walking off like normal, Gossan says you started talking to them, and then just like that, you’re…”

Their sentence trailing off, Marl’s hands were raised as they seemed to search for the proper words. In the end, they gave up with a noncommittal shrug and remained silent for a few short moments, their head slowly shaking from right to left and their hands only conveying their support to their face’s full display of confusion and disbelief, punctuating their performance with a “You know?”

Hal squinted and shook their head slowly, having understood absolutely none of it.

Marl crossed their arms and pouted. “Yeah, well, I was already on my way to fetch some help. One more second of whatever that was, and I was too far away to hear you scream.”

Hal gave a tentative but still disoriented hum, staring at a firebee flying by as some kind of attempt to, paradoxically, remain focused and grounded in reality.

The comforting presence of Gossan was brought back to their attention when they slowly came into their field of vision, mindfully ensuring to give them space this time, now that they trusted the young Hearthian to not collapse on the floor or crumble to dust any moment.

“You have been completely unresponsive for at least a whole minute, perhaps even two,” they stated, putting as little worry into their voice as they could, but forgetting to conceal the distress radiating from their three good eyes. “Nothing we did could snap you out of it.”

“Didn’t even pass out or anything, you really just stood there, upright, staring at nothing.” Evidently, by this point Marl had completely given up on trying to lie about the fact that the event had left them utterly freaked out.

Hal lowered their eyes to the ground, frowning as they tried to take in this new information. When they realized that they had no idea what to make of it, they slowly mumbled with a noncommittal shrug: “Well, I’m… fine now. I guess?”

“Sure you’re not gonna pass out or anything?” their cabinmate insisted with concern. “You need some water?”

They simply shook their head. If anything, in this moment, they somehow felt fresher than they had ever been: the vividness of their memories had felt unreal – in the sense that they appeared far too aware, just as tangible as their current perception of reality was.

This was confusing to be sure, confusing enough to make it hard to focus all their thoughts on being distressed or horrified by it. But confused as they were, and incapable as they were of identifying just what was happening, or perhaps even what was what in general… This was not by any means a confusion born out of physical or mental weakness.

Or at least… They didn’t think so? They slowly let their eyes squint into a trembling uncertain frown as they looked around once more, incapable of reconciling their observations with what they thought they knew.

“I… I don’t know why I’m here, but I should go back to the observatory,” they eventually mumbled. “Firn and Riebeck were exploring those ruins orbiting Giant’s Deep, and—”

Gossan stared in disbelief. “Giant’s Deep? What are you talking about? Firn hasn’t even launched yet.”

Right after a shiver running down their spine in one swift vertical movement, the hatchling returned their stare right back at them, wearing the same expression. “…What?”

The flight coach looked past the cliff, then pointed at a wooden structure in the distance – and more specifically, at a white contraption standing on top of it. “Their ship’s still there,” they stated flatly. Then, turning back to stare with even more concern than before: “Are you sure you’re doing alright?”

Eyes widening alongside their gaping mouth, Hal stumbled forward, soon stopped in their tracks when one of the founder’s gloves was pressed against their chest and prevented them from stepping too close to the cliff. “B– b-but how? There’s no way they could’ve come back so fast… A-and what about Riebeck?”

Marl deadpanned. “Yeah, I’m fetching Rutile, sounds more like their thing than Porphy’s,” they announced – sending in the process a quick knowing glance at Gossan, and expecting that their preference for the local cook and improvised apothecary was based on at least some level of bias related to personal feelings, more than actual relevance to the situation. “Maybe a meteorite conked their head and it was just too small for us to see it. I’ll be right back with a real doctor.”

“T-to the observatory,” Hal blabbered quickly. The other two Hearthians gave them a confused look, and they soon added with an unsure voice: “P-please. You can get them if you want, maybe I do somehow need some kind of medical attention, but— There’s something I have to check there.”

Marl looked at Gossan expectantly, waiting for their input. Gossan looked at Hal’s pleading eyes, and their melting heart soon caved in. “…Fine. Marl, bring them to the museum. I’ll make sure Hal makes it there in one piece.”

Hal released a breath they did not realize they were holding. “Thank you,” they heaved in relief.

---

The walk to the observatory, while usually short and uneventful for any taking the route, was this time tense and awkward. There were questions to be asked from both sides, concerns to be shared, ponderings about the nature of the universe on the one hand, and about the possible presence of a concussion in a certain hatchling on the other. Short glances were exchanged and then quickly ignored, as neither found the courage to proceed with an actual conversation – for the ice encasing them was at first thicker than that of the Interloper.

Thankfully, after a while, the silence became too heavy for Hal to bear; and the Interloper somehow found its way close enough to the sun for its casing to melt, if ever so slightly.

“Gossan…” They gulped. They needed answers, but there simply was no way to voice this question in a manner which would not raise even more concerns. “What was I doing before I, uh— before it happened? When did it start?”

“You’d just told Marl to leave that tree alone,” they soon answered. Then, after a short pause: “Please tell me you remember that.”

“Oh– o-oh yeah, yeah, I remember that,” they nodded eagerly. They decided not to mention that, from their own perspective, they remembered this having happened at least a couple sunrises earlier, rather than the few minutes it had presumably been since they somehow woke up back there. “And after that you came down the path from the observatory and we started talking.”

A single, decisive nod. “And then you froze mid-sentence.”

Hal bit their lip. “I thought we had a full conversation… before I woke up and realized it had all been in my imagination somehow, that is.” The whole conversation and the couple sunrises, apparently.

Gossan gave a small, nervous smile. “So you just kept talking inside your head and forgot to say any of it out loud?”

“Yeah, and I guess I even hallucinated your answers too,” Hal chuckled tiredly, “with all that stuff about Firn’s launch day and your idea to make me feel better by giving them some last minute training with some mining equipment that broke, or something.”

Gossan’s eyes widened at once. Courtesy of their lowered guard and missing eye combined, they slipped on a misplaced and treacherously unstable rock, and almost lost their balance. Hal turned to them in alert, ready to help but coming after they had already regained their footing on their own.

The coach raised a hand to gesture that they were fine physically speaking; but their look of sheer confusion and shock indicated that this was, indeed, only physically speaking.

They strangled a weird noise. “I– beg your pardon?”

Hal’s ears dropped nervously. “Uh– Heh, yeah, I know, that would’ve been a funny coincidence, if something had really broke on their launch day, haha, I guess that was just some kind of weird wishful thinking– I-i mean not wishful thinking, it’s not like I’d actually wish for something to break, but— Uh, a-and hey, later when I thought I’d met with Hornfels and they said they’d sent you to fetch me, that just doesn’t make any sense, right? Since in the conversation I dreamed about, you didn’t get to bring that up at all—”

Gossan looked like their missing eye wanted to magically grow back just so it could be given the chance to open wide enough to pop right out of its orbit all over again. “Hal—”

“Yeah, I know, I sound completely insane,” they sighed dejectedly. “Honestly, I think my plan is just to take a quick look at the museum, let Rutile inspect me, and go straight back to bed with maybe some– whatever herbs Porphy can find for that. You think it could’ve been the sap wine from yesterday evening? Maybe we were all wrong, and I can’t stomach it properly just yet.”

Sap wine won’t make you read minds, came a strained whisper too quiet to escape past Gossan’s gritting teeth. With their fists clenched tightly enough that they were visibly shaking, they pressed their lips shut and took a deep inhale through their nose. “…So what do you expect to see at the museum?”

“I’m gonna find the statue. In that whole hallucination, or whatever that was, it felt like it’d done something to my head, so uh– Y-yeah. Don’t worry, it’s just for me. As soon as we get there, I’ll see that it’s all normal, just like Hornfels wanted to prep it, that it didn’t move on its own to stare into my brain, and that’ll be the end of it as soon as I see its closed eyes and it proves me wrong.”

---

The statue did not prove them wrong.

Jaw falling to the ground as soon as its shape became clear enough to show its golden, open eyes, Hal made Gossan cry out a quiet surprised yelp when they suddenly gasped and sprinted forward, leaving them behind. The founder initially wanted to gently but sternly scold them for the sudden change of pace; but the next moment, their three good eyes met in turn with the ancient sculpture, and they had a double take of their own.

“It wasn’t like that the last time I was here,” they heaved with incomprehension the moment they stepped inside the wooden room. “And I was here less than ten minutes ago.”

“I-it’s just like— it’s turned, too, just like how it did when it looked at me,” Hal blabbered in panic. They seemed about to say more, but their head had turned to the side for a brief moment; and when their eyes met those of the other Hearthian next to them, their mouth slammed shut. Instead of sharing any further thought, they cowered and fiddled with their hands, avoiding their gaze. “G-gossan, I…”

“Hal, you can stop pretending that you’re the problem,” they called out in a low tone, shaking their head nervously. “It’s not sap wine, and I hope we both agree that you’re not crazy. It’s the third time you’ve talked about something you shouldn’t be able to know— Something is going on, and that something isn’t you being unwell. I’ve seen enough evidence to at least take you seriously, and because of that, I need you to tell me what really happened.”

Admittedly, it would have been a lie to say that they were fully, blindly trusting their words, or even that they would be naive enough to take them at face value. As much as they had told Marl that the likelihood of this situation being yet another elaborate prank from Firn was infinitesimal considering the fact that Hal had never before been a willing accomplice, and that they most likely would never be… Hal had many times been an involuntary accomplice.

Gossan could not begin to fathom how any kind of scheme capable of explaining Hal’s behavior and incongruous knowledge could have been set up, let alone without having Hal themself figure out that they were somehow tricked into seeing things; but if only because the alternative somehow sounded even more dubious than this already far-fetched idea… They still thought that, far-fetched and evidence-lacking as it currently was, it was a little too early to rule out this option just yet.

Firn’s pranks were either imperceptible or confusing until it was too late to stop them, and given the fact that they tended to happen weekly or even biweekly on average, they also became paranoia-inducing rather quickly. And yet… In this current situation, it sounded almost like a comforting thought, while compared to the idea of being confronted to the utter inexplicable.

Firn’s pranks were charted territory – the familiar kind of unpredictable chaos. This, on the other hand… If Firn had nothing to do with it, then the sheer impossibility that remained felt darker and deadlier than even Brittle Hollow’s black hole.

All the while… Regardless of Gossan’s words and invitation to share their experience, Hal had remained silent, shy and anxious, guiltily staring at the ground.

And so, eventually, the founder closed their eyes with a sigh. “…Alright then. Stop me if I’m wrong,” they muttered, breaking the silence themself. “When it looked like from outside that you were frozen in place and unresponsive, what happened for you instead was that… Life just seemed to carry on as normal for a while?” Hal sent them a brief look, soon looking away and pursing their lips. They gave a tiny nod, and Gossan immediately added: “And you didn’t even realize that something was off up until you came to?”

Another nod. “It felt like I had just… I don’t even know. It just felt so real, like I really was there! And then it just… stopped? One second I was in the observatory with Hornfels, then there was a burning flash of light, and then I was outside with you and Marl. And then you both tell me that the past few sunrises never existed.”

“What do you mean by ‘the past few sunrises’? Just how long did it last from your perspective?”

Gossan realized too little too late that their tone must have been more severe and urging than it should have, because Hal’s anxiety spiked once more, as their eyes darted away and their hands came to clutch their chest as a desperate attempt not to fall into panic.

“I c-can’t tell for sure, nobody was really looking at the time,” they stuttered. “Firn and Riebeck and Gabbro were making huge discoveries about the Nomai, we were way too excited to think of anything else! But… It definitely felt like it’d been long enough for most of the morning to have passed. Maybe it was even just around time for lunch? I thought I was starting to feel hungry… b-but I’m not anymore? I don’t… I just don’t understand.”

Lunch time was about three sunrises from now. All things considered, this was quite a long time for someone who had only been frozen in place for a minute or two.

Gossan pinched their lips together, squinting in order to try hiding their disbelief. It was time to finally stop beating around the bush and call the situation for what it was: “So… you saw the future, then?”

Hal pouted, mouth and eyebrows crumpling into indecision. “Some future that d-didn’t happen, I guess?”

“But a future I could imagine happen if you hadn’t been frozen to see it in the first place,” Gossan mumbled dubiously, unsure themself whether they should trust their own words or listen to their instinct to discredit them as pure and simple insanity. “I think we’re past questioning whether that vision you had was accurate – and at the stage of questioning how it could’ve shown you things you couldn’t possibly have known.”

As well as, perhaps, at the stage of actually experimenting further and testing whether Hal would be able to predict even more events or details they should not be able to know normally. Three sunrises was quite a lot of time, given the circumstances; and even though Gossan had heard enough to have their curiosity piqued and their disbelief heavily challenged… Well, this tale simply was too outlandish, and as such, they certainly would appreciate seeing more evidence to further prove their version of the events.

Though, of course… For this to happen, they first needed the hatchling’s cooperation. Unfortunately, in the current moment, their anxiety made this far more difficult than it needed to be; but they still had to commend them for their attempt at remaining calm… and could only fathom just how distressing their experience must have been for them to be left in such a state.

Hal was trying to take deep breath after deep breath, keeping their eyes closed in silence; and Gossan soon recognized it as the breathing technique Gabbro had taught them so long ago.

Precisely because they were such a worrywart, this technique was one of the first things Gabbro had shared with them, perhaps as far back as the very first time the two had met, when Hal had to be barely taller than Tephra. As much as the saying ‘Gabbro is Gabbro’ went in the village… If they often invited Hal to follow them to some kind of secret spot in the woods every once in a while, and if Hal came back afterwards feeling far more at peace than they had upon leaving, then this certainly had to account for something.

Gossan had found Gabbro to be somewhat difficult at times during their training, notably due to their tendency to be easily distracted and dismiss conversations as a result, and more generally speaking, due to their tendency to forget about teamwork. However, they would always admit that somehow, sometimes, there were some things that only they could do right: and finding a magical way to teach Hal how to better manage their anxious nature definitely was one of them.

All this to say that, lonesome and carefree as the Hearthian themself was… The years following their first launch had left a mark somewhere else. It was not quite obvious enough to be visible – but impossible to miss for those who knew where to look.

As skeptical as they wished they could be about this entire situation, from Hal’s concerning symptoms to their impossible knowledge, Gossan could not change a very simple fact: Hal, the sweet, honest hatchling who had never once told a lie in their life, could be wrong about all this – and Gossan wanted them to be wrong, wished for them to have somehow been tricked into seeing things. However… they were not lying.

They were not lying, and for all that Gossan knew, if they were not wrong either, then this entire situation was quite simply breaking all known laws of physics.

Gossan grew too tense and guilty to maintain the silence. They brought a hand to the hatchling’s shoulder as an attempt to ground and comfort them, only to wince when they cowered further instead, losing the count in their breathing and briefly opening their eyes to stare back in fear and shame.

Hal’s eyes were forcefully closed again, as they tried to steady their breathing once again. “I don’t know what’s going on,” they heaved tensely. “None of this makes any sense, but I know what I saw— It’s just, I wouldn’t ever believe it if it’d happened to anyone else, I’d be thinking that this has to be staged somehow— all this is just so…”

“Hal, listen,” Gossan muttered tiredly. “Maybe the statue having moved on its own could have been staged. But what you told me before that? Geysers, I hadn’t even made up my mind yet about giving Firn some last minute training. I didn’t mention the idea to Tektite, or to Hornfels, or to anyone– nobody could have told you about it but me. And I didn’t tell you anything.”

With their hand on their shoulder, Gossan slowly rubbed their thumb in small circles. They were no Gabbro, but they hoped this would be enough.

“I’ll believe that much: somehow, you saw something impossible,” they continued. “Either you saw the future or you read my mind, it’s one or the other. I have no clue what happened either, or how it did, but I’m here to help you figure it out. Alright?”

There was a loud breath, as Hal raised their head and filled in their lungs as much as they could. A few more moments of stillness and silence followed; but when their eyes opened again, to Gossan’s relief, they seemed a lot more peaceful. The two exchanged a glance, and Hal’s eyes seemed to finally reflect the acknowledgement that, regardless of the circumstances, Gossan trusted them; that in this moment, they would doubt the integrity of the entire universe before they would believe Hal to willingly tell a lie.

Part of them felt guilty over the fact that, technically, Gossan had been trying to make that clear for a while already; but this entire situation was just so unbelievable and incomprehensible… More than being believed, hearing the words that they were not alone were what truly, finally brought them some solace.

Hal took a deep breath, mouth open with a small, shy but worried smile showing in the corners of their lips; but before they could exhale with words, hurried footsteps stomped their way into the room — and both Hearthians turned around in alert to find two others coming straight for them.

“Marl gave me mixed messages,” Rutile stated urgently with a serious frown the moment they thought they were within both earshot and conventionally acceptable distance for a civilized conversation. “Was it a syncope or a seizure? And for the love of the Hearth, please don’t call it a stroke.”

Without any other word, just as less than a dozen seconds ago they had yet to even be inside the room proper, the mayor rapidly stomped their way to Hal and plastered a hand against their forehead, staring at it in silence for a moment. The hatchling blinked several times, mouth hanging open in surprise, but they made an effort to remain motionless.

With a few more seconds passed, Rutile let out an annoyed huff through their nose. “No fever,” they grumbled, instantly turning around towards the exit and regaining their previous pace. “Honestly, Marl, I don’t know what you were on about. You know it isn’t a first for Hal to get various ‘symptoms’ because of their anxious nature alone. With Firn’s launch day, it’s no wonder it would get worse than usual.”

Marl caught up with them in large strides, stopping in front of the open door and waving their arms in panic. “No no no, you don’t get it,” they pleaded, “this time it was something really weird!” With a fast blink, the young adult diverted their eyes away from the elder and pleaded to another: “Gossan, you can vouch for me! A little help? Please? You saw it just like me! They just stayed frozen for a whole minute, like a statue!”

Gossan’s mouth twisted into a conflicted frown, as they sent Hal a quick, apologetic glance. It had been their initial request to fetch medical help after all, even though they were now unsure just how useful it was supposed to be. Panic aside, Hal indeed appeared to be in perfect shape physically speaking, and spending time examining them would be time spent both distressing them and not solving the actual problem… But still, what could be made of their previous state? Could there be undetectable, lingering consequences?

Regardless of what their eventual decision would have been, they would not have been given time to act upon it, as Rutile was faster than all:

“Syncope it is, then,” they sighed while rubbing their upper eyes. “Look, the fact is that whatever happened, I don’t see anything unusual here. So if you don’t mind, I have a first launch to watch and buckets of water to prepare, and then Tektite said they would give me some news about that smoke they saw in Youngbark Crater — speaking of, Marl, be on your guard because your help might be needed there.”

The lumberjack’s ears deflated. “But…”

“Look, Porphy can give you something if they think it’ll help, but really— I’d wager they just worried themself to death all night and didn’t have enough sleep,” the elder grumbled with a wide eye roll. “What else do you want me to say? Eat more sugar, don’t climb up harsh slopes when you’re feeling tired, and Hal,” they concluded as they turned to point a stern finger at the hatchling in question all the while stepping backwards and out of the museum, “stop being so void-numbingly scared of everything.”

Had the museum been built with a working door, Rutile would most likely have punctuated their harangue with a peremptory slam, asserting both the authority of their final say and the unsaid “Stop wasting my time, you all know that I have a whole village to maintain in a non-burning state.”

A few seconds of dismayed silence passed; then Marl, who had been closest to the door all the while to watch them half stomp, half run their way out, turned a betrayed and angry face towards the two remaining Hearthians.

“Seriously? You didn’t even try to say anything!?”

Gossan gritted their teeth awkwardly. “I’m sorry for all this, Marl. You did well, you couldn’t have known. It’s just that… the situation has evolved a little bit since you left.”

Marl raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Evolved how? You found the meteorite that conked them, or Hal admitted that their whole delirium thing was a prank?”

Hal’s lips pressed shut into a thin line, ears drooping anxiously. Gossan closed their eyes and brought a gloved hand to rub their forehead. “…Let’s go with neither,” the founder sighed. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

At first, Marl frowned in confusion, struggling to comprehend how there could somehow be a third option; but then, as they studied their faces one by one, as well as the embarrassed but knowing glance they exchanged in silence, their mouth hung open in bewilderment as they finally understood what this third option seemed to be – a third option which, evidently, did not deserve to be considered as such even for a single second.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t tell me you actually believe them? Gossan, they thought Firn’d already launched! And that Riebeck was on Giant’s Deep, for some reason.”

“I know what they said,” the coach sighed tensely, struggling to think of the way they could come any close to even begin to explain and justify their choice. “It’s just… Listen, hear me out, but they said some other things while you were gone, things that should be impossible for them to know—”

There was a humorous huff, followed by an exasperated roll of their eyes. “What, they told you about your ‘secret’ meeting from two days ago? Sorry to break it to you, but the fact that you and Porphy have a thing for each other is a secret to absolutely nobody.”

Gossan’s ears promptly gained a purple tint, mouth slamming shut in shock and embarrassment. After a few seconds of stunned silence, they slightly shook their head with a grunt as an attempt to regain their senses. “—A-alright, you know what, this is– this isn’t important right now.”

“Oh no, really, if anything I’m glad someone finally bothered to unplug the geyser in the room. Quite surprised Hal would be the one to do it, though. And even more surprised that you’d take that as proof that everything else they said makes any sense! I mean, really, Gossan?”

The founder took a deep breath through their nose, rubbing their forehead as an attempt to hide the fact that the red value of their face’s overall color was rapidly increasing. “Hal, this might… take a minute. Go see Hornfels in the meantime and tell them about the statue, okay? I’ll be there soon.”

Marl huffed, offended enough to let their disbelief resonate like shocked laughter. “Oh, oh, so now you’re just acting like I’m the problem to deal with!? Gossan, if whatever got them’s contagious or something—”

As the flight coach tried to defend their pride and explain the situation at the same time, unsurprisingly ending up failing at both as a result, Hal shyly stepped backwards and out of the room.

But then, as they were about to reach the stairs leading to the observatory… They paused for a short instant.

When they had mentioned Hornfels’ name, Hal realized that Gossan had just brought up a rather intriguing, perhaps even worrying point:

Where was Hornfels?

In this future that had never been, from the very moment when Hal thought they remembered stepping in this room, Hornfels had been standing right here, looking at the back of the statue. While, evidently… This time, they were not.

Hal had a very clear idea as to where else they could be, this was not the question. With Firn’s first launch, actually, it should have been more surprising for Hornfels to be anywhere other than at their post on ground control, making sure that everything was ready… and, perhaps, making sure that Firn would be kept away from the launch codes all the way until the right time came.

If Hornfels had been done prepping the statue at least a sunrise or two before they had made their way to the museum, then what had they been doing downstairs the first time, that they would not be doing the second?

As Hal resumed their climb up the stairs, they could not help but ponder yet another question, under a different angle: if they had indeed seen the future somehow, and nobody else had, then why would their memory of Hornfels be off? Was the future supposed to be deterministic, or was every person given enough free will to act differently despite being set under the exact same circumstances, even without knowing it?

Or, perhaps more simply, were they and Gossan wrong, and had this vision truly been some kind of partial fluke, in part impossibly accurate, but for the most part utter nonsense?

---

In truth, there was no such thing as truly unpredictable behavior: for behavior was defined by one’s choices – even the choice to leave things to ‘chance’, ironically, provided ‘chance’ itself could count as true randomness, which it most often could not; and for no choice could ever be made without an aware consciousness to collapse their own uncertainty into a set decision.

True, unaltered and unbiased randomness could bend matter to its absolute unpredictability, born out of the simultaneous existence of all possibilities at once, perhaps; but rarely ever could it be enough to impede on an observer’s choices, for it was not supposed to choose in their stead. Quantum objects were meant to be everything at once, so that conscious observers alone could ultimately decide upon which reality to forge – in the current universe, as well as in the next one.

This simple rule was an integral part of the laws of this world, and still applied even in a solar system in which the Eye of the universe’s influence had spread, as a result of its initial cry into the void of space having been muffled for too long. Save for the hypothetical scenario of a direct confrontation with the truly random fluctuations of a quantum object, no conscious mind could be swayed so easily: indecision was, after all, what the Eye needed to avoid, for its purpose to be fulfilled safely – most of all the kind of indecision which would be caused by its own uncollapsed nature.

Therefore, how indeed could a Hearthian’s mind be changed enough for them to spontaneously behave in such a vastly different way, so as to no longer be in the same location? Was it truly so self-centered of Hal to instinctively believe that every detail should have remained strictly identical to their memories, and that only their own actions should be enough to cause change on a macroscopic scale?

It could be naively hypothesized that, courtesy of the museum housing a quantum shard with a tendency to appear in a truly random state upon each new observation, it somehow was to blame for this discrepancy. However… This hypothesis was incorrect.

Instead, strangely enough, the answer to this mystery lied somewhere else entirely: in a place so very far from the small museum on Timber Hearth, and in a time some sixteen minutes and forty-five seconds earlier.

Chapter 2²

Cyclone Riders

---

Through the thick stormy clouds, a massive explosion from orbit was reflected in purple flashes amongst the sky of Giant’s Deep.

With a short gasp and a blink, Gabbro startled at the sudden change in both gravity and, most importantly, in luminosity – the second to occur in, well, less than a second.

There were many reasons for Gabbro to feel disorientation and panic, in this moment; but, on the one hand because ‘Gabbro is Gabbro’ and Gabbro doesn’t panic, and on the other because there were so many reasons to panic that they could not even set their mind on which one to panic about… For a moment, they simply remained still, assessing one by one every element they could see.

A second ago, they had been in almost complete darkness – behind the shadow of their favorite planet, sitting on a bench inside one of the two (three?) chambers of the Orbital Probe Cannon.

Less than a second ago, their eyes had been burned by intense light brighter than their imagination could have fathomed – though it was not long before more than just their eyes were burned away.

Then, even less than less than a second ago, the light vanished into not darkness, but bright green skies – the familiar and normal amount of bright, caused by Giant’s Deep’s lack of day-night cycle, courtesy of the sun’s light being reflected and refracted within the atmosphere until the electric clouds themselves became a source of light in their own right.

And instantly after, with barely enough time to even process that their location had somehow changed, here had come this second flash of light, purple and dim this time, but noticeably distinct from the eternal storm’s usual thunder strikes.

The first thing Gabbro realized and found all at once curious, incomprehensible, and terrifying, was the fact that they were not sitting on a bench anymore. Somehow, they had not just been transported from one location to another — their body had been moved. They were standing up, an arm pointing at the sky, signalscope in hand, frequency adjusted for requesting a connection with… ground control?

As though they had been suffering from some kind of sleep paralysis, and only now were able to fully regain control of their limbs, Gabbro finally displayed a rare and uncharacteristic external sign of distress: they opened their hand and stepped back rapidly, expression of fear beneath their helmet looking for a split second like they expected their signalscope to explode.

Then… they simply stared at it. Nope, not going to explode. Not going to magically move on its own and turn to them to finally explain what in the void brambling geysers had just happened, either. Not that the latter would have been any more reassuring, mind you.

Gabbro, legs trembling, looked around proper, recognizing their current location to be their favorite island, the one they had set up camp on.

No, really. What in the world had just happened, and most importantly, what were they even doing with their signalscope in hand?

The instant this last question was being formed inside their mind with enough insistence, it felt as though a cyclone was coming around and sweeping them away – even though, all at the same time, no wind was currently here to so much as rotate their helmet’s anemometer.

Overlaid on top of reality, they saw their own hands holding the signalscope once again, even as they could still feel their arms lying by their side and their fingers being fully extended into anything but a grabbing gesture, their eyes staring at the sky, and yet their true head simultaneously staring down at the very same signalscope which was lying on the ground instead, definitely away from their grip.

Mouth agape and throat tightening, they were silent;

Coy smile plastered on their face and vocal cords humming, they were speaking.

“Hey, Horns, you still here? Gossan must’ve left by now, right?”

Gabbro felt a shiver run down their spine when they finally understood: they had, after all, experienced this once before. They recognized these words, just as much as they knew where the soon-to-be conversation was going to go — for this entire upcoming scene, too, had been experienced once before – technically twice, even.

Amongst the winds of the past and present alike, Gabbro heard what they now remembered to be naught but a far too vivid memory: “Gabbro, I really need to focus on Firn’s first launch. What is it? Do you have a problem with my request from earlier?”

The past Gabbro marked an awkward pause. The present Gabbro knew exactly why. “Yeah… Yeah. Yeah, it’s about that statue again.” Another pause, even more awkward than the last. Void did Gabbro sometimes wish they could lie properly. “Sooo… Just how badly do you need another one?”

A loud, not-truly-existent sigh. “Just say it if you’re too lazy to get to work, will you?”

For once, both past and present Gabbro wished that ‘laziness’ could have been the culprit; but alas, the cyclone which had swept away their ship and launched it out of their sight at some point during the night was, in fact, the real reason.

Not that either version of Gabbro felt like admitting it, because admitting it would make them look even more irresponsible than just pretending that they didn’t want to get the job done. They normally knew better than to spend their nights at their campfire instead of inside their ship, or at least to not do so before having securely attached all struts to the island beforehand, specifically so as to avoid being separated from it while asleep. But…

Well. Um. The previous evening might have involved a few alien substances they had dug up during the previous day’s exploration which Porphy likely would have classified as ‘not recommended for Hearthian consumption, especially not when coupled with the carcinogens created upon roasting it like one of Gabbro’s regularly burnt marshmallows.’

So, yeah. Gabbro largely preferred sticking to the laziness excuse instead.

“Gabbro, as incredible as your discovery was, the fact that you chipped it… I’ve been thinking that it may be the reason why it won’t open its eyes. I am starting to believe that you must have damaged it more than we initially thought.”

Both in the past and in the present, this remark made them exhale a silent, tired sigh, alongside an eye roll. It felt surprisingly nice, for just one moment, to have both their body and the illusion of it find at least one or two actions to agree upon, small and fleeting as they were.

“Come on,” their past self started,

“Come on,” they voiced in sync— and their real mouth slammed shut, eyes instantly widening in terror. Even as they did so, they could still feel their lips tremble, and with a shiver they realized that they still felt the urge to keep talking, repeating the words they once had before.

“—it’s not that bad,” they simultaneously said and tried their hardest not to. “I bet you couldn’t even find where it’s been chipped.”

Scary how even their current body felt subconsciously compelled to re-enact the past as it played out, even if there was no Hornfels to talk to this time, and no signalscope in hand for their fingers to nervously tinker with. So much for having been glad a moment before to have this exact thing happen – just, out of the pleasant surprise to have their past self behave in a similar enough way to their current thoughts as to give the illusion of following their own present self’s volition, not by having it somehow happen in the exact reverse.

They quickly found solace in the fact that stopping their body from copying their past self’s actions was not too difficult, quite easy in fact: after all, they had been doing it perfectly at first without even trying, and it had only become a problem once they had made a conscious effort of noticing the similarity… Nonetheless, their positively horrified state of mind definitely made it much harder than it needed to be.

Even as a memory, Hornfels’ eye roll was almost audible. “Gabbro, the broken part you gave Slate was gigantic,” (No, it absolutely was not, Slate even had complained about it being too small to do anything worthwhile with – until they found out just how much more powerful of a processor and storage unit it was than they had first assumed, that was), “of course I know where…”

But then, the illusory Hornfels trailed off, and Gabbro felt an equally illusory smug grin make its way on their illusory face. “Nope. You don’t. You’ve been staring at it for weeks and you couldn’t tell the difference.”

“I will find it,” the curator grumbled stubbornly, “just you wait.” And then, instead of words, the memory of their radio transmitted the sounds of a microphone being picked up, then of footsteps stomping down the observatory’s staircase.

“Had to be somewhere within the mane, I think,” they said helpfully and condescendingly at once. “With the alien anatomy and all the fluff, I’m sure it’s hard to tell what part of it is supposed to be missing anyway. If even you can’t tell, you can be sure that no one will notice.”

The radio from inside their head shared some annoyed grunts and unintelligible grumbles of protestation, and for a little while, this was all that Gabbro could experience: themself standing upright near their camp, on one side looking humorously at the sky with a signalscope in hand, on the other trying to remain composed with clenching and unclenching hands, trying not to think about the fact that one of them was distinctly itching to hold something that wasn’t there.

“So, having any luck down there?” their past self prompted jokingly when they started to think that the silence was getting overbearing, only to receive as answer nothing but more grumbles, of which Gabbro could barely distinguish something about wishing Slate hadn’t taken the broken part before they were given the time to see where on the statue it used to fit. “…Actually, you know, Hornfels, I’ve also been thinking… It wouldn’t be very nice of me to just start looking for another, especially today.”

Gabbro could so perfectly picture Memory Hornfels’ exasperated glare into the void, for lack of being able to glare at them directly. “…Would you care to elaborate? Do I even want you to?”

“Today’s supposed to be the first one’s big day, right? First day as a museum exhibit, biggest star of the whole place, and you already want me to look for a replacement to steal its spotlight? I can only imagine how betrayed and jealous that must make it feel.”

Silence resumed for a moment more, this time full of bafflement at the audacity. “I don’t even know why I bother,” the curator eventually grumbled in a frankly appalled whisper. Then, changing their tone to a far more annoyed and stern one, they soon spoke some more… and Gabbro understood that they may have gotten past the limits of their patience. “Gabbro, you think I don’t know what you’ve been playing at here? You’ve wasted enough of my time stalling and looking for the stupidest excuses you could think of! So now, I want you to get out of your camp and go back to work. Understood?”

Then, the radio from the past was turned off at once, and the illusory Gabbro found themself alone with the uncomfortable realization that they had somehow managed to get themself in even more trouble than they had started with.

They found themself hoping that the planet would take pity on them and have the politeness to give them their ship back, sooner rather than later, if only so they could avoid another earful from ground control now berating them for two problems rather than one.

And then, with this last thought from past and present alike trailing off into nothingness…

Just as abruptly as a real one would, the cyclone finally left and vanished: and instantly after, Gabbro’s mind was once again dropped and drenched into full reality, freed from the grip of the winds swirling within.

Left all alone in shock, now back to only having to deal with one very real body and no urge to move in ways they only had wished to some time in the past, but no longer in the present… Gabbro simply stared vacantly for a while.

What was this whole sequence? What had triggered it in the first place?

Instantly, the answer was dropped onto them from the skies, in the form of the unclear memory of a thought they had once formulated: ‘What were they doing with their signalscope in hand?’

Understanding that this question from the past was supposed to be their answer, Gabbro… kept staring for a while longer, not even knowing how to react to this.

They had to hand it to whoever, or whatever had been responsible for this: what it had done seemed to have successfully provided at least some kind of answer to both of their questions. It had not answered with words, but it had rather… given context to a past event they remembered having lived through a few sunrises ago, during which they had indeed been standing upright with a signalscope in hand, in what was (probably not so) coincidentally the exact same position as the one they had found themself in upon being… somehow sent back here.

This just happened to also raise an unhearthian amount of other questions – if only the one related to how and why their own memories had started replaying before their eyes just now, especially in such a vivid way, and the one trying to identify who was behind this – but they instantly felt another cyclone coming, somehow some kind of triple cyclone with the mental and blurry image of three closed eyes opening to stare straight into their brain, this time; and before they could be thrown into the orbit of their own subconscious again, they vehemently shook their head and stepped back, as if walking further away from the signalscope could let them escape their own mind.

…Strangely enough, their loudly and squeakily voiced “nope” seemed to successfully chase the cyclone away. Huh.

So it seemed like… something was listening to their inner questions – listening to their mind – and somehow thought that it would be a perfectly acceptable idea to provide answers by forcing them to relive their own recent memories?

If so, then Gabbro guessed that they… might need to watch what kind of thought they were going to have, from now on. Joy. Not horrifying in the slightest, not at all.

Deciding to try not to linger on their questions — for more reasons than one, seriously what on Hearth was– no no no stop asking — Gabbro tried to instead focus on what clues they already had.

Too bad staying focused was, uh, not really their strong suit.

So. It was pondering time, which meant that they needed the proper equipment; thankfully, they reassured themself as they walked down the path to the beach, everything should be already there, since they had prepared everything earlier this morning—

—Gabbro looked ahead, and saw no hammock waiting for them. Bummer.

This also added yet another question to the pile: the mystery of the vanishing Personal Pondering Equipment (PPE for short). It did not seem to be the work of a cyclone, because if it had, clearly the trees they had attached it to would have shown far more obvious signs of tear, and likely lost quite a few leaves in the struggle.

With a dejected sigh, Gabbro turned back around to walk up to their campfire, hoping to find their spare hammock; but once they reached it and their belongings, both their mouth and eyes opened wide in shock when they discovered that everything had somehow found its way back inside their bag: hammock, flute, lantern, canned rations… All of it, inexplicably tucked in their protective cases away from the danger of the cyclones – exactly the way it would be at the beginning of each morning, after they would have lit up the camp for breakfast, but before they would have gone to work proper.

…Exactly the way it had been before they had radioed Hornfels, they finally realized.

Was this a ridiculous idea? Maybe. But everything lately had been pretty ridiculous to begin with. This idea warranted its stay, Gabbro decided as they begrudgingly carried their equipment back down to the beach and started prepping their hammock all over again.

One tree was attached, then the other; balance between softness, flexibility and durability alike was rapidly tested, then adjusted; and once satisfied, Gabbro hopped in. End of the flute went to the specially built-in part of their helmet, and with a few seconds of calm breathing as warm-up, the music started. Playing was an integral part of the pondering process, after all, given the fact that its repetitiveness and relative simplicity helped them focus.

Alright. Finally, they were set, and ready for the pondering.

The weirdness had started with that first impossibly bright and lethally hot light. Perhaps it had even started a bit before, actually, if the mysterious and coincidentally quite close to the end disappearance of ground control had anything to do with it.

That light had hurt so much, for how brief it was. Lethally so, they were certain, it had hurt way too much for it not to be. Which meant…

Had they… died?

And yet, now– they were fine. Physically speaking.

When they had pondered why they had just found themself standing up near their camp holding their signalscope, whoever or whatever had taken control of their mind had forced them to relive a recent memory from a few sunrises ago, which had started with them standing up in this exact spot, holding their signalscope and radioing Hornfels.

So… They had died, and now they had been sent back in the past, at that exact moment? And there now was a mysterious thing hiding inside their mind forcing them to relive their own memories every once in a while?

Gabbro stopped playing, having reached… some sort of conclusion. Their flute dropped on their chest, as they simply stared at the clouds.

Their thoughts wandered around for some more time, an amount that they soon lost track of.

They had died, and they were no longer dead… maybe? It wasn’t like they knew what being dead was supposed to feel like. But the part about having been sent back in time did seem to be the only explanation they could think of to fully explain their sudden… transportation from the Orbital Probe Cannon to their island on Giant’s Deep – as well as the undone hammock finding itself tucked away for the night.

Well. Now, see, maybe someone else would have done something other than keep lying in their hammock, but them… What could they possibly do about it?

…

For once, the mental cyclones did not come this time around to answer that question. Of course. It seemed like it was too much to ask, for them to be actually helpful.

Their thoughts eventually went to their signalscope, unceremoniously dropped on the ground like a freshly caught fish trying to flap around and jump at their head for a bite.

Crazy thought, but… They might as well use it? Surely, someone else would have noticed if time had just had some kind of hiccup and sent the entire universe a few sunrises back.

They would have to give their signalscope a short but genuine apology for the rough handling, too. It wasn’t its fault, the poor thing. Gabbro hoped they hadn’t damaged it.

---

Hornfels sighed in satisfaction, smiling at a work well done. The weather could not be more optimal, all communications were set, the tower was in perfect shape, and most importantly, the launch codes were secured.

Not that they expected Firn to have been able to find them ahead of time, mind you, not with all the precautions all founders had decided upon unanimously. It had taken them quite a while to find a plan which all had judged infallible, but it had been done – up to the final precaution that not even Slate or Gossan knew the launch codes themselves, and that Hornfels technically would not either if it weren’t for the sole fact that they, as ground control, had needed to be the one to change those codes themself, and that they currently were the guardian of the only slip of paper in existence which could reveal them.

All this, just to really hammer in the fact that, if Firn wanted to get that elevator to move, there was only one Hearthian in the entire universe who could make that happen, and that in order to get said Hearthian to cooperate, they too needed to abide by Outer Wilds Ventures protocol.

Nonetheless, it still was a relief to find the tiny slip of paper exactly in the same location and position they had left it before going to sleep, down to the millimeter; and even with all that, Hornfels buried it even deeper yet, under a few more dozen sheets of paper, before closing the drawer once again. Just for good measure.

Mission “Firn’s Launch Day” had to go without a hitch. No excuses, no unforeseen events, and most of all: no shenanigans.

For their first launch, Firn had promised that they would be sticking to the protocol down to the last comma, sure; but Firn had also promised a lot of things in the past — such as promising not to touch Tektite’s static scout launcher in their absence on the day Slate had finished installing it, only for Tektite to later find out that, indeed, Firn had not touched the launcher, they had gone directly for the scout itself and used its powerful flash to startle Tuff into getting close enough to the Zero-G cave for the poor Hearthian to feel nauseous for the rest of the day. Firn saying that they had not expected it to be so effective did nothing to alleviate the shaking of their limbs.

The founder’s thoughts were interrupted when they heard footsteps coming their way. At first expecting to see the troublemaker in question, they were surprised to find instead a different hatchling, one who was far more pleasant to spend time with:

“Hal! Why, good morning!” they greeted happily. “Did you see the statue downstairs? It’s finally ready for display!”

Hornfels’ smile faltered upon seeing the expression on their face. It already looked troubled before; but following their greeting, when Hal raised their eyes to them, it reshaped itself into a distraught, shyly widening stare. The glint in their eyes seemed to be begging for something – something which should have been expected, or at least something they had hoped to find – and to have collapsed into despair as soon as Hornfels failed to provide it.

They turned to them fully, frowning with concern. “Is something wrong, Hal?”

The hatchling startled as their eyes widened even more, this time in sudden realization as they seemed to be pulled out of their thoughts and back to reality. Their hands were raised to their chest, fingers fiddling nervously. “Y-yeah, well– I mean, n-no, I’m fine, I think, but…”

Their gaze softened, smile coming back with relief. “You’re nervous about the launch, is that it?”

Hal did not respond, uncomfortable stare plunging back to the ground. Had the fear going through their eyes not been so deeply impenetrable, Hornfels would have thought nothing more of it; but they could see that it went further than just their usual anxiety.

“Bad dream?” they thus offered instead, patting the desk to their side as an invite for the hatchling to come closer and lean against it next to them.

Hal strangled a humorless chuckle, corners of their mouth distorting into a nervous, trembling smirk. “I… guess you could say that, in a way.”

“Come on. Everything is ready, all that I have left to do now is kill some time. You can tell me.”

At first, they remained still, even looking as though they instead wanted to distance themself as far away from them as physically conceivable.

But then… Their lips were pressed together, their eyes were shut tight as they took a tense inhale, and they finally stepped forward, watching them warily all the while.

Hornfels could not begin to fathom what kind of nightmare could have possibly caused such turmoil within them, let alone when it appeared that, somehow, Hal seemed to believe that they were the problem.

There was another tense breath. “So… Firn had already launched, but they’d gone to Giant’s Deep,” the hatchling mumbled with sorrow. “They’d met up with Gabbro, and together they explored an island with another Nomai statue – but then there was a cyclone that threw them into orbit, they were stranded without any fuel and just over half a sunrise’s worth of oxygen, and you had to send Riebeck to rescue them – Riebeck! Heh…”

Hal paused. They turned their neck, looking up into their eyes, once again searching for something, whatever it was. Hornfels tried to understand what this could possibly be, and kept their silence as they were pondering; but when they could not find anything, they softly tilted their head with a tiny nod, encouraging them to continue.

“That sounds like a very eventful first launch indeed, and a terrifying one for you to be sure. So then… Did Riebeck not make it?”

Hal winced, clutching their chest and turning their head away. Evidently, this had been the wrong thing to say.

Hornfels brought a hand on their back, giving a sad smile. “Oh, Hal… Firn is still on Timber Hearth and promised they would follow protocol. I spoke to Gabbro less than two sunrises ago, and Riebeck— Well, if it can help, we can radio them together, they will tell you in person that they’re all right.”

“No,” they instantly snapped with force– instantly biting their lip upon realizing that they had raised their voice. They had not raised it enough to make it a shout – but definitely enough to sound like an out-of-control cry of despair. “S-sorry. I know they’re alright. They had made it, it’s just… You don’t…”

Hornfels gently moved their hand to wrap their shoulder, silently waiting for Hal to finish their sentence; but they never did, and for some unfathomable reason, it almost seemed like they were trying not to recoil from the touch.

“‘I don’t’ what?” they soon prodded. “Understand, perhaps? I’m trying, Hal, even though I can tell that there is something I am failing to see here. Could you enlighten me?”

Hal turned their head away, heaving a pained sigh. “Forget it. It was stupid of me to hope you might’ve… N-never mind. I already know it didn’t really happen.”

“You don’t look like you do,” Hornfels murmured quietly. “I did not actually expect you to come here so soon, with you and Firn being such late-risers. Perhaps… you just need some more sleep?”

Hal’s ears twitched violently, practically drooping low enough to brush their cowering shoulders, as their eyes quickly sent them a betrayed look.

Their hands grabbed the edge of the desk as they pushed themself forward; but before they could leave their side, Hornfels softly but insistently seized their wrist, forcing them to turn around; and thus, Hal’s distraught expression met Hornfels’: stern, but apologetic.

“Unless there is something else you are not telling me, Hal. I’ve never seen it this serious before, but I know that face.” Gently releasing their grip, they instead focused all their efforts into trying to find the least upsetting way to ask their question: “Do you… have bad news of some kind?”

Ever since the moment they had made their way up in the observatory, it had been obvious that they had come to tell them something in particular — something they so desperately wanted to say, but for which they were perhaps too scared or anxious to find the right way to so much as bring up the topic.

This was far from the first occurrence; sadly, it was quite typical of them to remain frozen and silent whenever they were the bearer of unpleasant knowledge. This resulted not of a desire to hide the truth – instead, it simply came out of their inability to find the words to share it.

Normally, the best way to get them unstuck and let them share what troubled them so was, unfortunately, for the other party to either successfully guess at least part of the issue, or happen to tackle the relevant topic. Alas… if this went deeper than just a nightmare or the anxiety related to Firn’s first launch, then Hornfels frankly had no clue what the topic could be this time around.

Hal closed their eyes again, opening their mouth wide and taking another deep breath before speaking. “S-so, uh– It’s c-complicated, but I guess maybe it starts with the statue…”

Footsteps resonated behind their backs, coming from the staircase. Hal turned around and perked up, wondering if Gossan had finally decided to join them; but instead, when a different Hearthian head sprouted out of the hole and came into view, they froze at once.

To Hornfels’ disappointment, this interruption could not have chosen a worse moment to distract them from their conversation – for they knew far too well what this meant for the amount of time they would have to wait before finally obtaining their answers.

Whether Hal being just about to mention a statue was meant to be foreshadowing or unlucky coincidence was a question only a Hearthian such as Gabbro would bother to ponder about; but the fact still was that at the exact moment when the hatchling had caught sight of the newest astronaut, they promptly turned into one.

“Hey Hal! Hornfels,” Firn saluted with a cheerful wave and a polite nod. “Don’t mind me, I’m just here for the launch codes.”

Chapter 3²

An Ocean of Doubt

---

The observatory, courtesy of being a large circular room standing on top of an already large and unfrequented museum, usually was a place for peace and quiet, ideal for reflection.

However, for more reasons than one, this morning was anything but usual; and one of the many habits this day would break was how the dim emptiness, starting from this moment, would suddenly start brimming with activity and chaos.

Given the nature of this very special day, Firn’s arrival was entirely planned – and if anything, surprisingly for someone who was supposedly so eager to go to space, they were running late; but many, many more visits to come would be anything but expected.

As they reoriented their body but not yet their head towards the newcomer, Hornfels sighed tiredly. “This will only take a minute, Hal. You can use this time to find your words.”

The founder’s eyes were turned away too fast to notice that Hal had not even heard them, too focused on staring at their best friend with frozen shock.

Firn cocked their head to the side, frowning ever so slightly at them during the split second when they thought Hornfels might not notice. “Did I interrupt something? You two look busy.”

“It’s already done, we might as well get this over with,” Hornfels grumbled as their eyes and hands were lowered to the pouch attached to their belt.

They rummaged quickly through it, carefully pushing aside the many rolled up sheets of paper and other notes all the while, until they pulled out a small key; then, turning towards a shadowed corner of the ground control’s main desk, they pushed aside a small crate, revealing an equally small cupboard containing a few drawers, and swiftly unlocked the middle one.

Firn had been looking at them in silence, disbelief growing on their face in the form of a slowly expanding smile, until they finally snorted and exploded in laughter. “Wow, so you really went out of your way to even camouflage them and everything, huh?”

Hornfels did not bother turning to them, still struggling to find and dig up the single, tiny slip of paper on which they had written the codes, since they had deliberately buried it under so many unrelated books and unbound sheets beforehand. It took them about a dozen of seconds to finally get their hands on it; then, when they stood back up, they exchanged a quick confused glance with Hal, who happened to be standing closeby and to have been staring at them during their search, always in the same stunned and silent daze.

Nonetheless, they subtly shook their head and finally, with a sigh, they handed the tiny yet so crucial slip of paper to the soon-to-be newest astronaut. “You may be the only Hearthian in existence who would want a repeat of Riebeck’s launch day,” they finally retorted with a low grunt.

Firn eagerly but politely seized the note, securing it within their hand before they pouted and spoke any further. “In my defense, they actually appreciated the fact that it gave them one more day in the village. And honestly, I could’ve gone with far worse, like crickets or –ew– fish. Silkmoths don’t do anything but stand around looking cute and fluffy, they don’t even eat or poop, they just exist to lay eggs.”

Hornfels deadpanned, glaring at the piece of paper in their hand as if they wanted to snatch it right back. “Yes, and speaking of eggs–”

“I thought Slate would’ve been more thorough in cleaning up and I didn’t know the cracks between the wall planks were wide enough for them to crawl behind,” Firn quickly slipped in before the founder could finish their sentence. Then, tilting their head to the side and diverting their look, they mumbled with a small pout: “…Also, at least that gave Esker a new hobby. And I’m pretty sure Riebeck got to keep one as a pet, too.”

Hornfels crossed their arms sternly. “Firn. You spiked their mallows to make sure that the sound of the elevator wouldn’t wake them up. Do you even realize how dangerous it would have been if they had launched regardless?”

The hatchling was about to mumble with an actually apologetic undertone that they had made sure not to give them too much, that obviously they did not want both them and Slate to collapse near an unattended campfire, that they had stood around in the bushes to ensure that they would fall asleep normally instead, ready to intervene if not, and that, just as planned, everything had gone smoothly and well with nobody getting hurt. And also that, come on, Riebeck’s launch day had been, what, three years ago? They had grown and matured since then, if they were to try it again with their new training, of course they would have skipped the spiking the mallows part and instead used the Zero-G cave’s jetpack to make their way to the launch tower without using the elevator, meaning that they would not even have needed to infiltrate the observatory to search for the launch codes in the first place.

However… before any of these many words could leave their mouth, hurried footsteps resonated behind them.

“—At least let me talk to Hornfels,” Gossan’s scolding voice soon resonated from within the staircase, long before their head could rise into view. When it did, it was full of exasperation and embarrassment.

“Hey!” Marl’s soon came after them with similar stubbornness, “Am I really the one who should tell you that they must be super busy with space stuff and all? Gossan!”

Hornfels’ eyes bounced from one Hearthian to the other, gradually frowning with more and more confusion as time went by. “I’m sorry for the rude wording, but what are you two doing here?”

“It’s about Hal,” Gossan started—

“Nothing worth troubling you about,” Marl interrupted with an eye roll, “they just refuse to accept that even the hatchlings know about them and Porphy.”

Firn turned around and instantly grinned smugly, adding with a nod and a shrug: “Oh yeah, as much as I want to get off this rock, I just couldn’t abandon Marl in their rightful quest to bring them up to speed. Again, Gossan, you totally should tell Porphy to reconsider what they should label today’s batch after.”

The coach took a deep inhale through their nose. “How many times do I have to tell you that this is not about Porphy–”

“Great, it’s good that someone finally told you,” Hornfels sighed with a dismissive wave of their hand, “but please, one distraction is more than enough. Already before Firn came, Hal was trying to tell me something really important.”

“Yes, I know,” Gossan wheezed while throwing their arms in the air, “I’m the one who asked them to tell you—”

Firn took a look at the launch codes and snorted loudly. “Oh geez– Marl, you’ve gotta check this out,” they said as they rushed to the Hearthian in question and showed them the note’s contents, laughter progressively making it harder for them to equally speak and breathe. “That is hilarious.”

The lumberjack’s eyes fell on Hornfels’ scribbles, then widened with disbelief, and they finally sneered in turn. “Wait, are you for real? Hah, not even one character’s a letter!”

“It was Slate’s idea,” Hornfels huffed sternly while crossing their arms, eyes furrowing with an ever thinning patience. “We all thought you wouldn’t be able to guess a password that isn’t anywhere close to looking like a word, on the off-chance you would manage to find time to give it a try during the night.”

The cadet gave a large nod with a wide smirk and a proudly impressed snicker. “Good job. Glad you’re all getting smarter, that makes it more fun.”

Hornfels’ furrow dug itself on their face even deeper, and deeper still when they briefly glanced at Gossan, who was currently busy burying their crimson head inside both of their hands and trying their best not to let it explode. “Don’t make us regret sending you into space, Firn.”

“Come on, don’t act like you’re not glad you’re getting rid of me,” they shrugged with always the same smirk and a roll of their lower eyes. “The village’ll finally get to be boring again.”

“Won’t be the same without you, that’s for sure,” Marl asserted, expression comprised of a large cocktail of emotions which, in all honesty, even they were not sure they could identify.

Gossan rubbed their face painfully. “Firn, now that you have the launch codes, would you mind?”

The hatchling snickered again, raising their hands in mock defeat. “Heh, alright, alright. I should go, yeah, Slate’s retro rockets aren’t gonna break themselves… Oh wait, they probably will, actually.”

As Firn smugly stepped backwards on their way to the stairs, they scanned one last time the face of each person in the room – stopping on Hal’s for an instant to have a double take, and frowning as they only now realized that, somehow, their best friend had remained so entirely frozen in place that they had managed to forget that they were here, currently staring back into their eyes with the most distressed look they had ever seen.

A half-nervous, half-amused breath flew out of their nose before they sent them a smug smile.

“Aw, Hal. Can you not give me that look until after I’ve actually crashed?” they asked with a discreet head tilt. “No, for real, I’ll be fine. I’ll even keep you updated in real time! …Assuming I’m not too busy jumping around and having fun with the low gravity, ha.”

Too dissociated within their own thoughts to know how to even react, Hal barely managed to respond with a silent awkward smile and the tiniest noncommittal hum.

While Firn had not uttered this exact sentence word for word before, they definitely remembered them saying something far too similar to it, just a few sunrises ago, perhaps less than ten minutes before the statue had opened its eyes. Somehow, this felt almost more uncanny than if they had repeated themself entirely.

“Actually, for once, you may not be the issue here,” Hornfels stated tensely as they too sent a concerned look at the quiet hatchling. “They haven’t yet told me what it was about, but it doesn’t seem related to—”

Something on the ground control’s dashboard started beeping, and Hal jumped with a loud yelp. Everyone’s heads turned at once to the tiny red light bulb which was now blinking and waiting for a response, and Hornfels immediately exploded with an exasperated “What is it this time!?” instantly followed by Gossan sending one very specific Hearthian a fulminating “Firn, just have your launch already!”

“Whoa, okay I’m going, I’m going,” the astronaut in question assured with an insolent chuckle, which had just now started to echo with some sparkles of nervous embarrassment. Nevertheless, committing to their attitude until the very end, they jokingly patted Gossan’s shoulder one last time as they passed by the path to the stairs, and whispered in their ear with a giant grin on their face: “Seriously though, don’t forget to tell them about that batch name idea, yeah?”

“Off with you two!” Gossan barked, entire face flushing in saturated violet.

Removing their hand from the founder’s shoulder with the same swiftness as if they had been struck by static electricity, Firn ran down the stairs in a hurry with Marl right behind them, both half wheezing sheepishly, half snickering like a pair of hatchlings a decade younger than they really were.

Hornfels’ eyes widened and they considered calling out after them one last time, extending a hand in protest, but the two were both already long gone, the ground control light bulb was still beeping impatiently, and they remembered that they really did not want those two to actually stay here even a second longer; as such, they instead brought this same hand to rub the bridge of their nose as they sighed painfully.

Hornfels turned back to the ground control dashboard and finally activated a few buttons which settled the alarm back to peaceful silence, soon causing the sound of radio static to replace it and start resonating in the observatory. Hal nervously tip-toed to Gossan, who shared a tired and saddened look with them before sighing.

“I’m sorry for the wait, Hal. I wanted to come much sooner, but I was… distracted,” they grunted quietly while glaring at the spot at the top of the stairs from which the two young Hearthians had been standing up until not too long ago. “I tried my best, but Marl wouldn’t hear any of it, and when Firn arrived, I couldn’t get a single word in edgeways to bring the conversation back on topic.”

Just a few meters away, Hornfels readjusted their microphone and transmitted across outer space a very tired and impatient grumble. “What is it, Gabbro? Do you have a problem with my request from earlier?”

For a moment, the radio crackled with nothing but stunned static. It seemed like they had somehow said something wrong, but Hornfels themself sure could not imagine what.

“O…kay, uh, just gonna ignore that you asked that exact question before… So, Hornfels, bear with me for a sec, but do you remember dying?”

The elder’s mouth remained stuck as an opened frown distorted with sheer disappointment and disbelief. “Gabbro, if this is about the time when you asked me whether each moment is the death of our past self and the birth of our future self, then you already know my thoughts about this kind of metaphor. You’re in space to do some field work, not some philosophical ponderings like these.”

Somehow, as they answered, Gabbro’s voice sounded rushed and genuinely confused. “No, wait, I wasn’t…” But their sentence trailed off; and soon, with a sigh, they concluded: “…Never mind.”

With an eye roll, Hornfels brought a hand to the dashboard, ready to sever the connection. “Well, in this case, if that is all—”

“I remember,” Hal blurted out.

A silence more chilling than ghost matter itself fell upon the room.

Gossan looked up into the hatchling’s eyes, eagerly waiting for them to continue.

In spite of a still frozen body, Hal’s pupils were now buzzing around in all directions, studying every corner of the room, looking into the face of each founder with dread, trembling with the erratic speed of a firebee trapped in a jar.

Hornfels turned around and away from the microphone with four shut slits instead of eyes.

“What… are you talking about?”

Breath slowly picking up speed, Hal sent them a quick glance, but soon ignored them completely, instead making their way towards the microphone with haste all the while staring at it with an expression overtaken with some kind of chilling, incomprehensible desperation. “Gabbro. Firn’s first launch. The statue workshop. Riebeck– The Orbital Probe Cannon– Do you…?”

The radio sent back something which sounded like a mixture between a whistle and a sigh of relief. “Oh, cool, so it wasn’t just me.”

Earlier, Gossan had been wishing for more evidence to further support Hal’s claims, just so they could trust their outlandish story fully. They had been hoping to find an opportunity to test their possible capability to predict some future events which, perhaps, would not have been altered by what was bound to be a massive change in everyone’s behavior compared to what they would have allegedly lived through the first time around – something which, alas, they knew would not have been so easy to find.

Well… Luckily for the hatchling, what was currently unfolding was just what Gossan needed to be fully convinced. For all they knew, these two had not been in contact even a single time for multiple weeks – not without Hornfels necessarily knowing about it. They thus had been kept apart for more than sixty days… and yet both could testify of the same impossible events, on the exact same day.

Hal’s grip on the ground control dashboard was shaking. “Gabbro, you… You called it dying? W-why did you call it ‘dying’? Do you know what happened?”

“Not really, I’m still trying to figure things out. But if you’re asking whether anything starting from their launch ever happened, then I take it my guess was right and we… really went back in time somehow?”

Hal startled and stiffened when Hornfels’ hand came to rest on their shoulder, barely acknowledging that they once more tried to question the sheer sanity of what they were saying. The two Hearthians exchanged a tense look, one filled with confusion and distrust, the other quivering with fear.

“I’ve talked with Gossan and Marl, and Hornfels, and– a-and Firn themself, they don’t remember anything,” Hal blabbered quickly without turning back to the microphone, feeling incapable of looking away from the curator even as they felt a lump growing ever bigger inside their throat, and moisture rising ever closer to the corner of their eyes.

Gossan walked into their field of vision, calling after Hornfels with calm, but determined decisiveness. “I know how this sounds, but this is what we came here to tell you,” they explained gravely. They took a few steps closer to the microphone, and as Hal nervously stepped back from it, their face melted into sadness as they silently gestured them to stay close.

“Gabbro, this is something you may want to hear too, especially if you know more than we do for now,” they voiced into the radio before turning their head briefly towards the other two Hearthians in the room. “Hornfels, to give you the short version: earlier this morning, Hal and I were talking outside, until they simply – froze all at once, and became completely unresponsive for a minute or two. And when they came to, it’s like they had just… Let’s call it ‘remembered the future’?”

Hornfels frowned with intense skepticism, evidently not ready to believe any of it. “Remembered the future,” they parroted dubiously.

“Again, I know how it sounds,” Gossan continued, “but I also know what I saw. I was already convinced when Hal told me things they couldn’t possibly have known, and I am even more convinced now that Gabbro seems to have gone through the same thing.”

A pondering hum crackled through the radio, nonchalant. “Remembering the future… I like the sound of that. Seems accurate enough. After all, I don’t think my body was sent back in time, only my mind. What you just said about Hal supports that theory too.”

Hornfels shook their head stubbornly with a short, humorless huff. “All of you have either lost your minds, or decided to collectively pull my leg. You cannot be seriously suggesting…”

“What are you suggesting, Hornfels?” Gossan shrugged heavily. “Firn was more focused on joining Marl in making fun of me than on asking Hal why they were so upset. If this were their doing, don’t you think they would’ve drawn our attention to their state instead? And what about Gabbro?”

“Come now, Gossan, you know Firn’s specialty is misdirection,” Hornfels retorted, eyes raised upwards disapprovingly. “The same way whatever they told you right before leaving was just so they could snatch some kind of note without you noticing.”

“Wha—” Gossan looked inside a pocket only to find it empty, pat themself everywhere else, searched through the pouches on both sides of their belt, then threw their arms down and their head to the ceiling with an exasperated grunt. “Firn!”

“Knowing them, they must’ve hid it somewhere downstairs on their way out,” Hornfels sighed. “Hopefully not inside the anglerfish’s tank.”

“N-not the anglerfish, they wouldn’t do something that mean…” Hal mumbled shyly.

“They haven’t yet,” Hornfels corrected with a roll of all four eyes.

Deciding to once again try to disregard the constant breach in their private life, Gossan buried their head in their hands and let the rough gloves painfully rub their face.

“Hornfels, listen. Firn aside, do you really think– just look at Hal,” they sighed, emphatically gesturing two open palms towards the hatchling in question, “does this read as a joke to you?”

Instead of following their request, Hornfels closed their eyes tightly and took a sharp breath, shaking their head — albeit the rhythm was turning unsteady and conflicted.

“I… I am not calling them a liar, of course not, but— This is absurd, they have to have been tricked somehow. After all–” Their eyes snapped open, sending them a gradually more lost and distressed look – a look which turned even more distressed still as they realized that Gossan’s head just so happened to align nearly perfectly with the very first photograph their telescope had once taken, a photograph which Hornfels certainly did not want to think about too hard in this very specific moment. “What else do you think this could mean, Gossan? That time travel is real? That the entire universe jumped back and that for some reason, they and Gabbro are the only ones who noticed?”

A deep, exhausted sigh distorted by the distance came out of one of the ground control’s microphones. “Horns, let’s not make this the quantum debacle all over again, shall we?”

Hornfels huffed, shaking their head again and keeping their silence for a few seconds as they tried to stifle a nervous laugh. “Don’t remind me that you and Hal were also the two most adamant about your position on the matter,” they warned tensely. “An interesting coincidence, now that you point it out, don’t you think?”

The radio crackled with an even louder sigh, talkative enough to share the fact that Gabbro was definitely rolling their eyes. “But I can remind you that our experiment proved us right once and for all,” they retorted right back.

“Firn’s experiment,” Hornfels corrected gravely, trying to shake away the quivering tones in their voice. “Really, using water of all things to somehow prove that the shard was anchored in all three stumps at once…”

“They were replicating what Hal and I had both seen at the Quantum Grove after a rainy day, that’s why.”

“Stars above, you want me to believe you on something so outlandish, but all you are managing to do is make me question whether that time was faked too all along—”

Before they could continue, Gossan grabbed their arm and squeezed tightly. “Hornfels. You’re letting the fear talk instead of the astronomer. I get it, we all do, but you need to face the facts.”

“What facts, Gossan? There are no facts! There is…” They paused, finally taking notice of their own breathing and its progressively increasing rate. They shook off the hand holding them and stepped back, but they kept their silence for a moment longer. Their arms were soon crossed into a tight grip, and eventually, their right hand was raised to their mouth as they started biting their nail. “I’m sorry, there is no proof,” they stated with a quiet, carefully controlled tone. “As much as I do want to trust that you are not lying to me, I simply cannot accept– You do realize how utterly insane—”

“Yes, I do,” the coach assured with a pained sigh, “but I have seen enough to believe that this is the only logical explanation.”

Teeth digging into the hard edge of their thumb, Hornfels’ eyes once again fell involuntarily on a certain black circle standing on the other side of the observatory – a photograph showing the sheer vastness of space, the so tiny yet oh so gigantic oases of light swimming within, drifting away from each other and from any observation, giving signs that before long, they would be too far and too dim to ever detect again, giving signs that there most likely were so many others for which it already was too late…

Hornfels was not blind to what they had already seen. They had not witnessed what Gossan had experienced, not received enough details to gain proof that Gabbro and Hal indeed recalled the exact same events. But thinking again about Hal’s bad dream and their overall demeanor prior, during, and after telling it…

Hal had not been disappointed that they would not understand. Hal had been distressed that they would not remember. Could… could this be it? Could they have been truly hoping that they would somehow know of events which had never occurred?

This was impossible. Their dream must have been so vivid, and the events they described certainly were stressful enough to leave someone like Hal shaken to their core. This had… But how could they have possibly convinced others that a dream could truly have been real, even against the obvious?

The universe had always been so full of mysteries. Hornfels knew this – liked to pretend that they accepted this. Mystery was exciting! Mystery meant that there were so, so many things left to learn, so many experiments yet to be made, so many conclusions yet to be reached.

Yet mystery was terrifying. There was comfort in being confident in what they had already discovered; comfort in looking at the hard earned discoveries they had made, at the beautiful models and theories they had crafted throughout the generations, in a long lineage of History.

There was fear in finding something unexpected. If even one single aspect of what they knew was proven wrong by more advanced and accurate measures, then what else could be wrong? How much did they really know, if their knowledge was based on false axioms?

New discoveries were meant to make science progress. So why did some of them instead make them feel like they were falling several steps backwards…?

For yet another time and for more reasons than one, Hornfels felt the urgent, nauseous need to find a chair and sit down.

A hand blindly went searching for the edge of their desk as support, and they closed their eyes once again before taking a deep breath. “Even if it were true… Why would they be aware of it and not us?”

From the corner of their eyes, Hal’s quiet and still silhouette slowly cowered even more. As much as they refused to believe in such preposterous hypothesis, the poor hatchling’s distress was undeniable, and Hornfels wanted nothing more than to comfort them; but how could they possibly do so when the true source of their anguish was neither the one they thought, nor one that they could identify and explain just yet?

Gossan shifted uncomfortably as they evidently wished they could have an answer, only to find none to give. However, as they turned around to give Hal another look full of sadness, they froze at once upon seeing their expression.

All four eyes were wide open in shock and dread; and soon, they murmured shakily: “…The statues. That— It has to be the statues.”

With both founders now staring at them in confusion, the microphone was the first to break the silence. “That could be it,” Gabbro replied with a quiet gasp of realization. “Hornfels, remember your request from earlier this morning? How you asked me to look for another Nomai statue? Well, before time went back, I’d found one. And it opened its eyes at me.”

Gossan’s eyes widened in turn, finally catching on. “And Hal– Didn’t you say that the statue downstairs looked at you, too? Or at least, its eyes are open now.”

Hornfels startled and turned to them in one swift movement, sputtering in shock. “What– Are you serious? Why didn’t you say so earlier!?”

Sending Hal a questioning look at first, Gossan wordlessly asked them the same thing; but the moment they fell on their distraught face, their expression melted into compassionate concern instead, understanding that the poor hatchling must have been overwhelmed with far too many thoughts and emotions to find the strength to give the curator the one crucial piece of information they had assumed should have been the first to share.

As they turned back to the other founder, Gossan frowned gravely with a stern nod. “Come downstairs. You have to see it.”

---

The hurried footsteps of three Hearthians soon reached the floorboards of the museum’s newest extension, built a few weeks prior specially for the purpose of housing the one relic which was at the center of this fateful day’s troubles, yet all at the same time, not yet to their knowledge, their only salvation.

Hornfels arrived first, having only remembered to bring down with them their portable radio when Hal shyly requested that they avoid excluding Gabbro from the conversation; nonetheless, they completely forgot up to the existence of this very same conversation as soon as they laid eyes on the sculpture’s awoken face.

“This is incredible…!” they heaved in a light-headed tone. “Did either of you see it happen?”

Hal scratched their arm nervously, slowly recovering the strength to find their voice back. “Well… I did, it’s just… It’s just that it was before time went back, you know? Th-that’s what we were trying to tell you.”

The memory of the exact reason why they had come down to this room in the first place flooded back all at once. With a twitch of their hand, then of their entire body, Hornfels took a single step backwards. Their eyes were still on the statue; but all sparks of wonder had been twisted into horror and swallowed into an endless abyss.

“So?” Gossan piped in. “I take it this helps convince you that something else is going on?”

The nail of their thumb came once again to meet with their clenched teeth. “This isn’t… This can’t…”

Head still shaking, they brought their trembling hand to the statue’s eyes once more, lightly scratching at the edges. They vainly hoped, even against their better wishes as a curator, that someone with no regard for History or the value of such relic could have faked this by cutting the eyelids clean off, just for the sake of proving a faulty point; but there was no mistaking it.

The open eyelids’ edges were too smooth and clean in their current state for some amateur to have sliced them away, and they maintained the exact change in width it always had: the thicker ends were undeniable proof that the eons old mechanism which they had never managed to trigger in spite of their best continuous efforts… had, in fact, been activated during their absence.

“When the other statue I found on Giant’s Deep opened its eyes at me, it made me relive my most recent memories,” Gabbro shared sternly. “And from what we discussed last time, the same thing happened to Hal. Seems like we finally get to understand why.”

Hornfels glared down at the transmitter in their other hand, lips trembling in silence and untold resentment.

“But what does that mean?” Hal blabbered nervously. “Did the Nomai know that this would happen…?”

The Nomai had died out hundreds of thousands of years ago. They could not possibly have predicted that such blatant affront to the laws of physics could ever happen so long into their future, let alone planned a response to prepare for it, or even, stars forbid, caused it themselves on purpose. They– they simply could not…

Gossan took a step forward, reading their expression just as well as they always did, frowning with the same apprehension as they always did, as they knew exactly what kind of turmoil was currently blaring through their mind. “Hornfels—”

“Forgive me.” The radio was pressed against Gossan’s chest in careless hurry, and before anyone could object beyond surprised cries, they had already disappeared.

When Hal nervously rushed forward, not even asking themself whether they even were ready to confront them yet, the flight coach raised an arm to stop them. Hal did not insist when their betrayed feelings caught up after their reflexes and firmly nailed their feet to the ground as a result.

With a tired sigh, Gossan simply handed them the radio in turn. “Here, you two can catch up in the meantime. That might take a bit.”

---

Unsurprisingly, Gossan found their friend and fellow founder as soon as they passed the open door. Hornfels was not one to run far off with the intent to hide; instead, it was simply an expression of their urgent need for space and quiet, to ground themself and collect their thoughts…

…And perhaps, at times, it was an expression of wounded pride, in small amounts. Gossan could certainly imagine that the last thing they wanted in this moment would be letting Gabbro know that they were on the verge of tears.

Taking quiet steps, but intentionally letting each one creak on the floor so as to not appear too furtive, Gossan tiredly made their way past the deep space satellite exhibit and through the open door leading to the quantum shard’s designated space. Just as they had guessed, Hornfels was leaning against the wall right outside: hands brought together under their nose, they were heaving loud and pained breaths while they actively stared at the unexplainable rock, occasionally blinking and instantly after shifting their pupils to adjust to what Gossan assumed to be its new location.

Their eyes slid in turn in the same direction, indeed finding the dark and alien material anchored within the rightmost stump. When they heard a weakly annoyed grunt, they knew that Hornfels had given one more blink, only this time for the shard to have remained immobile; Gossan therefore turned back to look at their face instead.

“Want me to help you keep it in place?” they joked softly.

Hornfels closed their eyes and let their hands fall to their sides. “You know you’re already doing it,” they simply sighed.

Gossan nodded once. This question had been more a distraction than anything, much as they knew Hornfels was aware. Just a grounding technique of sorts, while fully knowing that the pressure had kept building up until now, and was in dire need of release.

Hornfels’ sharp heaves soon came back. Three, two…

“I don’t understand,” they started breathlessly. “I can’t— Why would the Nomai…? How could we all forget— I can’t just accept this!”

There it was.

Coming to face them and cranking their neck up to do so, they grabbed both of their arms and gave a sharp squeeze. “Hey. Hornfels. Sit down. And breathe.”

Shaking them off nervously but without force, Hornfels grabbed their head with both hands; but they attempted to follow their advice, and slowly let their back slide down against the wall. Then, with a much weaker voice, they sent their friend a pleading look: “I’ve been trying to get its eyes to open for weeks, Gossan— What if I’d… What if I’d succeeded? Would I have caused…? No, it can’t…”

“No point in hypotheticals. What happened happened, what didn’t didn’t. Okay?”

“But what if I’d—?”

Gossan crossed their arms sternly. “Hornfels.”

Silence. Hornfels’ hands fell on their lap. A loud, slow inhale flowed through their nose. Then, finally: “…Okay.”

With a quiet sigh, Gossan turned around and came to lean against the same wall by their side, though they did not sit down. Admittedly, the moments were rare when they could afford to rest their neck while looking at them. “How many sunrises of sleep did you get last night?” they asked nonchalantly.

Hornfels kept their silence for a few seconds. “Four or five… probably.” They always refused to show guilt for it, yet had stopped long ago complaining about the feeling of being patronized. That, and in this precise moment, they actually appreciated the change of topic. The least they had to think about near-universal amnesia and potential breaches in causality, the better they would feel.

“Excited about prepping the statue, or paranoid about Firn?”

There was a short huff, simultaneously annoyed and, somehow, harboring the tiniest glints of exasperated amusement. “Both. Definitely both.”

Silence came back. Hornfels vainly hoped that nothing would break it, all the while being painfully aware that such thought was puerile and based on nothing but a desire to deny reality.

Alas, Gossan cared little about letting the world stand still for too long. Looking up and forward to lock their eyes on the quantum shard, they decided to collapse two different sets of possibilities at once: “Speaking of Firn, you think they already made it to the Attlerock by now? A certain someone might need to supervize their first launch. Or at least make sure that the other travelers are doing alright, since they must be keeping Esker busy.”

Hornfels knew that tone. They never liked that tone.

On the one hand, Gossan was reminding them of their most important role. Yes, indeed, both Firn and the other travelers always needed someone to stay in contact with the ground control radios — when they were asleep, which was admittedly not often enough but did in fact happen, Esker usually took over for them from their own outpost on the moon’s north pole.

Emergencies rarely ever occurred, especially nowadays with Slate’s ships being more and more reliable, but the fact that one could occur any moment was what mattered; which was why, just like Rutile had learned to sleep with a bucket of water close at hand, Hornfels had grown used to sleeping in the observatory, ready to be woken up by an alarm letting them know that an astronaut was in danger.

(They had felt especially encouraged to move their bed and most of their belongings in here ever since their actual cabin had become so dreadfully empty, following… that one time when ground control should have detected a possible emergency signal that never came, and they could never shake the feeling that maybe this cabin would not be one Hearthian short permanently if only they had taken this habit sooner, or if only they had scolded a certain pilot a little more about making sure that their radio would always remain functional under any and all circumstances, even though there still was the possibility as well that perhaps their final destination simply had not allowed any signal through at all, assuming they had not been incapacitated or died on impact before they were given the chance to even suspect that they would soon need external assistance…)

Hornfels took a sharp breath. On the other hand, this tone was not meant to offer distractions. This was a tone setting up a challenge. Gossan had just given them a way out – a means to forget the fact that the laws of physics had been broken, a means to pretend that everything was fine, a means to go back to the routine and intended plan. But… ‘Is this really the right thing to do?’ this tone asked. This tone was nudging them, forcing these memories to linger in the back of their mind, all the while daring them to take this escape route to blissful denial with their head high.

And so, perhaps because of pride, perhaps because of guilt, or perhaps because of curiosity and their inherent drive to search for the truth…

“…No. If this statue truly did something, then– I must look into it. There has to be some kind of explanation to all this.” After a sharp breath, their hands went to push against the wooden wall as they slowly picked themself back up. “Firn can… They don’t need me specifically, do they?”

Gossan raised a surprised eyebrow. “So– What, you want me to be ground control for today?” they huffed with soft humor.

Hornfels marked a long pause, face contorting into multiple fleeting and conflicting emotions. Perhaps they had overanalyzed their words after all? But even then… “Contacting them now is a diversion, more than anything. You planned to offer Hal and Gabbro to attend as well, to take their minds off this whole– thing, didn’t you?” they eventually asked in a low tone. Hanging their head, they crossed their arms in hesitant remorse. “After all this… Something tells me that they would prefer your company over mine.”

Gossan instantly opened their mouth in reflexive protest; but no sound came out other than an eventual sigh.

Hornfels nodded, trying to crack up a tiny smile. “I’m sure you will do a great job.”