Extras/Lore

“Whats the ocean like?”
Sweetpea tries not to be alone with the kid too often, honest. It’s not that they are horrible or something, its just….something in them makes him uncomfortable. He hates the way they run their mouth to anyone around them, the way they ask questions with no shame and share everything like that kindness will ever be returned. They’re naive. He finds himself wanting to shake them sometimes, look them in the eyes, yell. Dont you know better?? Dont you know how to be quiet???? But they dont.
Maybe he’s jealous. But he hadnt planned for today to be just him and hawthorn, and he wasnt prepared for their endless barrage of questions. He especially wasnt prepared for that one. He freezes, trying to let the question sink in, wondering if maybe he can just brush it off, stay quiet long enough that hawthorn gets distracted and he wont have to say anything, because he isnt sure what to say. Its the most amazing place in the world. Its safe, it holds you, it drowns you, its bigger than anything and more terrifying, how to explain that to a cat that hadnt stepped foot outside its cage until a 6 months ago is beyond him. “Its……blue, and cold, most of the time.” hawthorn is hanging onto his every word, and maybe the thing that hurts the most is that sweetpea hasnt been in the ocean in years, doesnt remember what its like himself. “The salt hurts?” he scrunches up his face, imagining the days as a child, when he was still whole, when he still had his parents, when they would all three of them go down the short walk to the beach and spend the whole day there, back and forth back and forth human and seal.
“Theres seaweed and stuff along the bottom, and it can kind of scare you if you cant see it coming.” he’s getting lost in the memory now, and the ever present frown is being replaced with something softer. They are both sitting on the curb waiting for ruby to get back from her class, and sweetpea runs his hand along the concrete, lost in pretending its a wave for the millionth time. Hawthorn watches, enraptured by the rare occurrence that sweetpea isnt pissed off. “Maybe we can go sometime?” thats hawthorn, their tail twitching at the idea of getting to share something that he clearly loves so much. Sweetpea pauses, holding back tears as he knows that that will never happen. He nods. “Yea, maybe.”

The sky is cloudy, air thick and heavy and hard to walk in, hard to move hard to stand, every breath in sticking to your lungs like peanut butter. Despite the abundance of greenery surrounding the bus stop eele electric is currently waiting at, it feels like theres nothing new about anything around them. Of course, eele is the brightest thing there, if not in stature than in clothing, sparkling glittering metal spikes and mesh and clashing patterns, whatever they can get their hands on, whatever they can tie onto their already over abundance of accessories. Its a contrast to their face, their eyes, the way they hold themself in this moment beclaws in this moment they are anything but exuberant, or electric, or on fire, anything but themself. This bus is their last ride, the one taking them back to the city they worked so hard to get out off. This bus feels like giving up. Eele feels like giving up. The lone streetlight buzzes on overhead as the sun finally sets and eele is illuminated in artificiality yet again. The only sort of light they can exist under, at this point.