The Heist at Cordia Aquarium

Sophia kneels near her desk. A massive, wooden monster weighed down by a computer tower and four mechanical arms. Each one holds a monitor. A two-by-two grid of black bezels and screens, all blank.

Arms deep inside a drawer, Sophia glances at Avery. "Come in, yeah? Don't just hover there."

Avery takes a few tentative steps toward Sophia's bed. "Do I— do I just— sit?"

Sophia unearths a black-white speckled tome — journal, rather — and chucks it onto her desk. "Yeah. It's not going to eat you."

She slaps journal after journal down atop the first. One, two, three; a hushed "No" or "Nope" accompanies each. At ten tall, she goes for eleven, but falters. Something about the cover. She stumbles over with it and plops onto the bed, her eyes never straying. Avery can see it now; the writing across the cover in big, black marker: January 2335; nearly four years ago.

There's a burbling in Avery's gut — a series of pangs in protest of her inadequacy. "You've been bullet journaling for that long? I'd never manage to be that organized." She says.

Sophia doesn't face her; she stays staring at the cover. Color drains from her knuckles and, for a moment, her hands tremble. "That's what I wanted to show you. What I wanted to tell you. When you asked me something, I didn't tell you the truth. Back at the café."

"It's nothing bad, is it?"

With the slightest tilt of her head and a dart of her eyes, Sophia steals a glance at Avery. Her voice comes after. Unsteady. "No. People are allowed to keep secrets, huh?"

She kills people and puts them into books. Maybe you should run.

A weak attempt by Avery's supposedly sophisticated mental illness. Yet, it's enough to mess with her addled mind, being filled with parental sex talks and the general anxiety of romance. "Ha, yeah. As long as it's nothing serious, I guess. Like secret murders or something. It's not that, right?"

Eyes locked to her journal, Sophia lists about before settling onto her bed. "Nah. Not that." She pats the bed beside her. "Sit with me?"

With a jolt to mind and body, Avery realizes she never sat down. She waddles over. Penguinesque and awkward in her mind, but likely worse in reality. She drops next to Sophia.

The bed near swallows her up. It's soft; warm. A cloud of stuffing and fabric that threatens to drag her to sleep. She can feel her aches now: the heat in her calves, the pricks in her knees — too much walking and worrying and ice skating. She closes her eyes and lets the bed leech away her pain.

"Are you ready?" Sophia says.

Avery's eyes snap open in a violent return of her wavering consciousness. Ready for wha—

Birds and bees dart through her mind. Her heart thunders; her thoughts rush; her face betrays bare-naked shock. What do I do? What do I do!

No answers come. So, she sits there, wide-eyed and as quiet as her thoughts.

Sophia fingers the compressed pages of her journal, teasing it open. "Hmm? You okay?"

Right! The journal; not the other thing!

"Y-yeah, I'm fine. Just didn't realize how tired I was! I'm ready. Ahem— well, is it something I should be getting ready for?"

Sophia opens to the first page. "Just promise you won't laugh. This is all early stuff and I didn't know what I was doing."

Inside, it's messy. Top to bottom and side to side, sketches of all kinds populate the pages in no apparent arrangement. Animals, landscapes, and portraits. Everyday objects in everyday situations. The only connection between them is that they're all terrible. Objectively bad, like the wall scrawlings of a child.

Yet, Avery doesn't laugh. She studies every sketch. Their misshapen, wandering lines; their warped proportions. Their changes. How, over time — over pages separated by days — the lines smooth; flat doodles develop form and perspective.

Then, Sophia closes her journal and it stops. "Well?" She says, tone distant and eyes locked onto the cover's black-white speckles.

Avery doesn't know what to say. Nothing. A bad choice, but she's stuck here making it, insides abuzz with bees and butterflies. Her heart thunders in her ears as if yelling "Say something, you dipshit! Say something!"

Beside her, Sophia shifts. Nothing descript. Her fussing with her bed's quilt, maybe. It doesn't matter. Avery works her mind, desperately forging words. Though, it's an impossible order. One that calls for strength beyond what can be wrought by a mere mortal's tongue.

She needs mithril: the supportive-girlfriend version of it.

"Uhm— Wow." She says.

That isn't it. So far from it that — as if deploying a verbal smokescreen — Avery yaks up whatever comes to mind. "Oh, uh, it's great. All of it. Amazing!"

Sophia glares, eyes fit to roll into their sockets. "Don't lie. This isn't me asking for an opinion."

"Sorry. I didn't— don't— I—" Avery scrabbles hands through her hair. "Gah! Sorry, I didn't know what to say. This is a lot. More than I'd thought you'd show me."

Sophia gives her a look: one that could kill, but not in a bad way. "And what did you think I'd show you?"

Avery's cheeks flush. She averts her gaze, fixing upon an oval rug and its alternating rings of pale-red and beige. "Not that. Something. Just, not something as meaningful as this."

"Oh."

"Y-yeah."

"Well? Want to see more?"

"Yes. Please."

An hour passes in ethereal bliss. Silent, yet full. Both women exist at the intersection of knowing and being known. Neither needs the other to speak. So, they turn pages. And when they run out in one sketchbook, Sophia pulls another out of the stack. And when the stack runs out, Sophia pulls more from closets and boxes and bookshelves.

It's a journey through years, slice by slice. Each moment struck to page with growing confidence. Each something unique. If not in subject, then in atmosphere or medium. Pencil-drawn dandelions; a television news broadcast in charcoal; and a grocery store blotched out with thick, colored markers.

Avery's heart is aflutter. She lets each illustration flow in front of her. Sitting there entranced by the shifting lines, she wishes had a power other than her own. The ability to stop time or to leap inside memories — anything that'd make this moment last longer. Somewhere in the middle of her wish, the lines become... different. They take on new meaning. The view from the center of a cafe; swing dancers spinning about a church's hall; the cafe again. And again and again.

All separated by pages of unfamiliar things, but they carry a similar air. An unequaled care whispered by the shadows of erased lines.

If butterflies could get rabies, whatever Avery's heart is doing would be it. Uneven, desperate. As if it's gasping for breath. Thump, th-thump, thump.

Her thoughts run wild. Goodness. Should I ask for a hug? Should I—

Ask for forgiveness? You're not anything; you're useless. Look at everything she's done: her willingness to share, her commitment to be better, her ability to hold down a job while doing it. Unlike you. Come on, apologize already.

It's less a compulsion and more reality. A dreadful, unyielding fact. She wants to fight it; she has to; and she can't. All she feels before going under are waves of realization crashing down.

"I'm sorry." Avery says, words empty. As hollow as the figment of herself saying them.

Sophia rolls her eyes onto Avery.

Beneath her mind's surface, Avery floats around, confused more than anything. Depersonalization. Derealization. She knows that, but— Why can't I do anything to stop it? She thinks. I should be happy, shouldn't I? I should be present. Here, with her.

But she's not, so Avery's figment speaks in her stead. "What?"

Sophia slides the journal off her lap and leans back, propping herself up by her arms. "I'm waiting for you to tell me why you said that."

"I— I don't know."

"Yeah. You do."

"Yes. I don't know if I should have, though. What if I'm being ridiculous?"

"Then be ridiculous. Nothing wrong with it."

"But everything feels so far away now; small. Like an echo. None of what I felt makes sense any more. How am I supposed to tell you about it?"

"Are you going to remember later?"

"I guess not."

"Then get going before you forget more, yeah? If you don't trust yourself, I'll take what you say with a grain of salt." Freeing one hand from her weight, Sophia rustles the buzzed bristles at the back of Avery's head. "That work?"

The contact is brief; a couple seconds, but it felt real. Like the Astral Sea and Material Plane coalescing along a singular axis. Avery's figment shudders and flickers and — as Sophia takes her hand away — reforms.

"Could— could you do that again?" Avery says.

"This?"

At Sophia's touch, she feels... something. A pinprick of light piercing through the water's surface. Avery closes her eyes and focuses on that. On how her scalp tingles wherever Sophia runs her fingers. Avery forces herself to feel the bed supporting her; to hear its creaking springs; to smell sweat. Her sweat.

And she's back; whole. Cheeks flush. She reaches up, takes Sophia's hand into hers, and rests both atop her lap.

They sit, holding hands and not talking for a while. Until Avery's hand begins to tremble. "I'm scared. It feels like I've got nothing to give you. You're so persistent. Strong-willed or whatever. You know what you want to do and you do it." She says.

Stifling a snort, Sophia waves a hand to her scattered journals. "That's what you took from me showing you all this? Really?"

"What else is there?"

"That I'm stuck. That I've not figured out what I want to do. Never will, probably." Sophia lifts the last journal off her covers and strums its pages with a single finger. "For now, I enjoy this. Might not forever. Who knows, huh? Parts of me wish we could swap. I didn't go into school to write software. I wanted money; enough to stop caring about it. If I had people supporting me and willing to give me time to figure something else out, that'd have been the dream."

Guilt pangs in Avery's chest and she sandwiches Sophia's hand between both of hers. "You really don't enjoy your job? At all?"

"Sometimes. It's fucking confusing, yeah? One hour I'm happy to pluck away on a keyboard, the next I'm dreading the next keystroke. I want to learn more about art, then I don't. I want take care of house plants, then I don't. Freezing-drying fruit sounds neat. Until it doesn't. It's fucked. Why can't I commit to it all? Why do I have to try so hard to fight past indecision and lethargy, only to feel trapped anyways?

"It'd be easy if I didn't have to worry about time, I think. Not enough for everything; only so many decisions I can make. So, got to suss out which are the good ones. It feels like it should be simple. Does any of that make sense?"

Face contorting, Avery chokes back tears. "A little too much."

Sophia let's go of Avery's hand and beckons with open arms. "Come here."

She's pitying you.

Avery hesitates, but the momentum of her emotions carry her forward. She cries out and collapses into Sophia. Arms wrapping around each other, the pair fall back upon the bed.

Tears.

Sophia's shirt wicks them away into maroon splotches. Avery squeezes; she squeezes, buries her face into the crook of Sophia's neck, and cries.

Sophia squeezes back.