Chapter Text
A signalscope lies on the ground, picking up the signals of the travelers – Riebeck’s banjo, Esker’s whistling, even the uncanny sound of Feldspar’s harmonica sometimes. Chert enjoys this setup; it makes them feel as if their fellow astronauts were right next to them even when they’re all alone on Ember Twin, so impossibly close to the Sun that they can almost hear it.
When Chert became part of the Outer Wilds Ventures program years ago, this very same view from Ember Twin had left them slack-jawed with awe. Back then, they didn’t think they’d ever get used to it – but that’s what years of being an astronaut does to you, they muse. Eventually, even the Sun’s terrifying majesty becomes an old friend.
Today Chert plays their drums, harmonizing with the other travelers, adding a beat to their shared song. Every now and then, they stop so they can actually do their work: science! Launching probes to study Ember Twin from the comfort of their encampment, scrutinizing images of the sunspots, and, most importantly, staring into the starry sky.
They built their telescope themselves, and they’re proud of it. It lets them see such wonderful things. Pinpricks of light are magnified through a set of lenses, showing themselves for what they really are. The one they’ve picked this time happens to be an entire galaxy. This had blown their mind like a geyser, back when they were just a hatchling on Timber Hearth. Even now there is undeniable glee and wonder in their eyes, hidden underneath their egg-shaped spacesuit.
As they gaze upon the myriad stars, their mind mulls over the sheer size of the universe – millions of stars, and each of them, for all they know, could have their own planets orbiting it. Even in their star system, there have already been two civilizations: the Hearthians, and the long-dead Nomai. Many mysteries still surround the latter – such as, did they evolve here? Or were they visitors from another star system? In one case, sentient life is common enough to evolve around the same star twice, and in the other, there’s interstellar travelers out there, Chert reasons.
(Perhaps they’ll find out soon; Hornfels told them via radio that Hal and Pumice got a working translator, nowadays, and they’re eager to use it.)
Whichever theory is true, it still fills them with hope that one day the Hearthians may actually meet an alien species – whether visitors or visited. What a portentous moment that would be! They’d have so much to share, and the universe would feel a lot less lonely. And if they didn’t get to see it… Their descendants would, they supposed. They felt a twang of jealousy for possibly being born too early for that.
They look at star after star after star, from red dwarves to rare, massive blue stars. A supernova pops into view – it’s bright enough and close enough that it’s less of a single point of light and more of a firework, or a shower of sparks, viewed through the telescope’s magnification. As small as it looks in the night sky, Chert knows that it’s actually a terrible thing: a gargantuan cosmic fireball that envelops what unlucky planets the star had and utterly incinerates them. Chert thinks to themselves that they got lucky to catch sight of it – it’s a short-lived thing.
Not a minute later, they witness another supernova. And then, another. And another. It’s quite unusual to see two in the same day, but this is quickly starting to beggar belief. They crop up again and again, twelve of them, seventeen…
Chert gives up on counting them. The number of them is unimportant; what’s much more pressing is their desire to understand what on Hearth could cause so many to go out at once. It goes beyond coincidence, clearly. But if there’s something that could cause them to be snuffed en masse like this, Chert has never heard of it. Perhaps the stars are simply older than their calculations had expected? But it’s one thing for that to be the case, and it’s another entirely for so many to be going out at once.
Chert’s mind races with theories and worries. If so many stars are going out, then… Surely not. It wouldn’t happen to their Sun, to their awe-inspiring cosmic companion, the source of all life on Timber Hearth! A chilling sense of horror seeps into Chert’s thoughts like poison through groundwater. The sunspots – clearly those would let them know if there was something wrong with the star. Or the solar flares would, perhaps. They put the white-light filter onto the telescope and pay close attention, looking for anomalies.
Only when they take their eye off the eyepiece, minutes later, do they realize just how angry, red, and swollen the star looks.
They stare, mouth agape, at the red giant in front of them. After a moment of shocked silence, they begin processing what this means.
All their science is rendered useless, just as much as it’d be if it were written on Giant’s Deep’s sand and wiped clean by the stormy waves. The Outer Wilds Ventures program is the first and last of Hearthian space exploration. They’ll never learn the Nomai’s history. They had just managed to build half-decent spaceships and a couple satellites, and, as it turns out, the cruel cosmos has decided that’s as far as they’ll come. There’ll be no Hearthian descendants meeting aliens, no grand shining future ahead. Just a quick, searing death for all of them. A funeral pyre for all that they’ve ever loved, courtesy of an uncaring universe.
Their Sun is dying, the universe’s probably ending, guessing by the carnage of dying stars by the dozens, and all they got was a few minutes’ warning. If it’s night-time on Timber Hearth, no one else might even notice. They’d all be reduced to ashes while going on about their day, utterly unaware. Perhaps that’s lucky for them, and Chert is just the one unlucky idiot who happened to be doing astronomy at the end of everything, cursed to spend the last minutes of their pointless existence having a damned mental breakdown thinking about the future their civilization will never get to have!
Chert lies down on the ground, looking up at the sky, trying hard to breathe. If they’re about to die, they might as well try and do so calmly. Their brain feels like it’s a stone sinking into cold molasses.
Then they start hearing footsteps coming closer, and they stand up. It’s a traveler, but their outfit is unfamiliar. Chert connects the dots: it must be Pumice! They’ve finally launched, then. Pumice waves hi, then takes off their suit’s golden helmet. They’re wearing a concerned expression behind it. Did they choose the least fortunate day possible for their first voyage? It doesn’t matter. Chert is just glad to have company.
“Oh, hello… Come, sit with me, my fellow traveler. Let’s sit together and watch the stars die.”
After a bit of terse chatting, Pumice whips out a stick and a can of marshmallows, and begins roasting one over the bonfire. Chert gives out a small laugh. Why not? Why not eat marshmallows at the end of everything?
The signalscope is still playing the flute, instrument of choice of lackadaisical Gabbro, who probably has no idea any of this is happening, especially with the thick cloud cover on Giant’s Deep.
Still feeling a pit of ice in their stomach, Chert accepts a marshmallow. They sandwich it between a couple of their favorite pine nut cookies, made with love by Gneiss. It tastes like home. That would normally be comforting, but right now it really, really isn’t. Chert sobs, then looks at the terrifyingly large red sun through four eyes overflowing with bitter tears.
“Shhh. I know. I know.” Pumice says, comfortingly, wiping Chert’s eyes with a cloth, and enveloping them in a hug. “It’s okay.”
Chert stares at them. “I have no idea how you can stay that with a straight face. I appreciate it, but–”
“Would it help if I told you this is a time loop? It’s true. We’re not actually going to die.”
“Is that how you’re coping with this? A lovely thought, I suppose. Is it helping?”
Pumice doesn’t reply immediately. They simply look at Chert with a caring, concerned expression, lips tight. “Yeah. It is,” they eventually speak.
“Good for you.”
“... Why don’t you just play some music?”
Chert suppresses the reflex to scoff at that. It seems pointless, but then, isn’t everything pointless, right now? Indeed, why not? Pumice is just trying to be helpful.
Chert sits up, picks the drums back up, and listens to Riebeck’s banjo strumming. They close their eyes, and just play in harmony with them. It’s blissfully mindless, the motions of the drum pattern drilled into their motor memory through a lot of repetition. Chert closes their eyes, confident in their playing skills.
“A time loop, you said? I like that idea…”
The supernova’s blinding blue light penetrates the darkness behind their eyelids.
–o0o-
“I visited Chert again last loop.” Pumice says, sitting cross-legged on the damp ground.
“Again, hm? Any reason in particular?” Gabbro replies, interrupting their flute playing. Their hammock is swaying in the gale-force winds of Giant’s Deep as per usual, but they never seem to mind. Perhaps they’ve even learned to enjoy it. Pumice really envies how imperturbable they are, right now.
“They keep… realizing the Sun’s about to die, and freaking out really bad. Full-blown existential panic.”
“Oh. That’s not good,” Gabbro simply replies, almost deadpan. It’s a little more than just ‘not good’ if you ask Pumice, but at least they’re a good listener. The only one they really have left.
“Yeah. I keep feeling pretty bad about it. If I don’t visit them, I feel guilty about leaving them to their predicament, and if I do visit them it’s almost worse, because I can’t actually do much to comfort them. Not with the Sun dying in front of their face. And it just keeps happening over and over again!” Pumice explains their thorny dilemma, gesticulating wildly in frustration at being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
After a bit of thoughtful silence, Gabbro replies: “Yeah, but they don’t remember anything, right? So it’s just the one freak-out, at least from their perspective.”
“I don’t know about that. Philosophy was never my strong suit, but if the Ash Twin Project sends memories back in time, doesn’t that mean those events still happened?”
“Iunno, did they? …I mean, would it even really make a difference?” Gabbro shrugs. It’s arguable whether philosophy as a whole is Gabbro’s strong suit, but stoicism definitely is.
“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. I just wish I could, you know, do something about it. Maybe it’s selfish, and it’s just about the fact that it makes me feel so crappy and powerless.”
“That’s called empathy, you know? I think it’s nice that you care,” Gabbro smiles at them through half-lidded eyes.
“Thanks, I guess. Still, it doesn’t feel good, not being able to actually do anything about it!” Pumice complains, stomping a foot onto the ground.
There’s a prolonged silence where Gabbro just looks at them, and the only sound is the wind’s howling.
“I mean… Hmm. This might be a crazy idea, but hear me out. If Chert remembered the loops like we do, they’d stop freaking out repeatedly, right? They’d be aware that it’s a loop, and all that, yeah?”
Pumice was taken aback by that idea, eyes wide open in realization. Was it even possible? Maybe. There were a handful of other Nomai statues scattered throughout the solar system, eyes still closed, potentially waiting to pair up with someone. Oh, stars…
“That… sure is a crazy idea, but… may be worth considering. Would Chert appreciate it, or would it just make things worse? Making them even more aware of what’s going on…”
“I mean, how do you feel about being in the loop?”
“I’ve died a few dozen times by now, and a chunk of them were pretty painful. And it’s lonely, having only you who understands…” Pumice sighs.
“Is there a ‘but’?” Gabbro asks in a sing-song tone.
“... But I think I’m ultimately very lucky. I’ve learned so much. Plus, can you imagine what would have happened if my first voyage was a day earlier, or later?”
“You’d be in the same boat as Chert. Same spaceship, I guess.”
“... Yeah. And I guess I’m realizing I really dread that thought,” they reply, rubbing their nape anxiously.
“I mean, if you’re worried Chert would have a poor reaction, you can maybe try asking them for their opinion and consent and all that. If they say no, they’ll just forget it by the next loop, no? No harm, no foul.”
“Assuming they don’t laugh in my face for spewing out insanities.”
Gabbro shrugs. “Worth a shot.”
-o0o-
Chert was just pondering the statistical unlikelihood of spotting not one, not two, but three supernovas in one day, when they heard approaching footsteps. A visitor! Riebeck, perhaps? They catch a far-away glimpse of the figure. It can’t be Riebeck, far too slim for that. (Riebeck was always the textbook definition of a gentle giant.) The mysterious figure takes off their helmet and reveals themselves to be…
“Pumice?!”
“Hey there, Chert,” they reply. Their expression is certainly warm, but there’s a layer of melancholy visible in the way their lips are pressed together. Ah, perhaps they’ve just missed them! That’d make sense, it’s been a good while since they last actually saw each other.
“Goodness, it’s you! Hello! I take it your first launch went well, then? Welcome to the Hourglass Twins. Mind the sand, now.”
“Yeah, you could say it went well.” Pumice says, with a tone of voice that sounds almost like there’s an inside joke in there somewhere. “I’ve actually already found a lot of things, and there’s one in particular I’d really like to show you.”
“Oh? Please, do tell!”
“It’s a pretty impressive piece of Nomai technology, on Ash Twin. If you hop onto my ship, we can go right now.”
“Well then! I suppose I can certainly take a break for you. Are you sure you don’t want to let me fly, though? I’ve–”
Pumice interrupts them. “Please, Chert. I insist.” Their voice has a peculiar intensity behind it. Urgency, perhaps. Is this time-sensitive?
“O-oh! Sure, I guess there’s no sense denying you the piloting practice.”
Chert swears they heard a humorless chuckle, small enough to be barely audible, come from Pumice’s throat. After that, Pumice escorts them to their ship’s location.
“It’s going to be a short trip, since Ash Twin’s right next door, but… Why don’t you check out my ship log, in the meantime?”
“Ah, showing off, are you?” Chert humorously replies, before obliging the request.
What they see after that leaves them stunned. The logs are a dense, tangled spidergram of notes on every single planet in their solar system. How the stars’ blazes would Pumice have seen this much?! Perhaps their ship came preloaded with information gathered by the other travelers? Chert skims frantically through the small mountain of information, searching for an answer, but getting none. It doesn’t make sense…
“Grab onto something, we’re landing now.” Pumice warns them, interrupting their search.
Chert anxiously holds white-knuckles tight to a couple of handlebars made for exactly such a purpose, but they’ve very surprised by how unnecessary this actually ends up being. Pumice’s piloting is immaculate, and they land graciously onto a big flat plane on a metallic Nomai structure on one of Ash Twin’s poles. From there, they descend, breaking their fall onto the white sand using their jetpack with what looks like practiced ease, and Chert follows suit. They then make a beeline towards a crumbled pair of towers, and into the rightmost one, which seems to be in worse shape. Then, once they’re hidden in an alcove, they just slump against the wall for a minute.
“Those ship logs… How did you…? That's just far too–”
“I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’m hoping it will, real soon, okay?” Pumice replies. There’s that tension in their voice again. It’s almost desperate.
“... How soon? I think I hear the sand pillar approaching. Why’d these towers have to be built on the equator of the planet…”
“You see that purple thing on the floor? It’s a teleporter. But it needs a specific alignment with its destination to work, so it's got to be on the ecliptic plane.”
“Ah, I see. That makes some degree of sense.” Chert says. Indeed, the Little Scout retrieval system was based on this exact type of technology, and it was perhaps Slate’s second biggest point of pride that they’d managed to reverse-engineer it. (The spaceships, of course, took first place.) It was still always amazing that the Nomai managed to make people-sized teleporters.
Chert’s train of thoughts was brought back to their immediate surroundings by the increasingly loud noise of flowing sand. “U-um, Pumice, the sand pillar…”
“Right, so. Weeee’re… going to have to jump into it, when it’s perpendicular to the teleporter pad. Otherwise it sucks you up, because the protective glass is broken.” they explain, matter-of-fact, pointing at the shattered ceiling.
Chert’s face turns a very pale sky-blue tint. “Are you crazy?!”
“I know what I’m doing. Please, Chert. Trust me.” Pumice replies, voice tired and stern.
Chert isn’t a stranger to craziness – they remember the stunts Feldspar used to pull. But there’s a key difference here: Feldspar would risk life and limb and then admit that they’d had no real certainty it’d pan out, just pure bravado, whereas Pumice exudes calm, practiced confidence. It doesn’t even sound like them; it sounds like a different person wearing their skin, almost. Chert gulps.
The sand pillar is finally upon them – literally. Pumice raises a three-fingered hand, and uses it as a countdown. Three… two… one… “JUMP!” they shout, and Chert yells out as they jump together, and then their field of view distorts and wraps in on itself thousandfold.
A moment later, Chert is… somewhere else. They look up, and see a long, skinny stone structure, curved on itself to form a ring. It’s spinning wildly against a background of shining motes of light, which looks a lot like Timber Hearth’s own mines, actually. And then, at the center of it all, a huge mechanism that Chert utterly ignores the purpose of.
“What the stars’ blazes – where are we?! Is this somewhere on Ember Twin? You said the alignment–”
“This, my friend, is actually the core of Ash Twin. They called this the Ash Twin Project.” Pumice replies. “Now, come, I’ve got some stuff for you to read. Steer clear of the statue, though.”
Chert is beyond baffled at this point. At least Pumice seems to have a very clear idea of what to do, though Chert has no clue whatsoever as to how. In the end, they decide to just follow their instructions. They’re led past a circle of eerie Nomai masks, and then in front of a very long stone wall with several blue spirals of Nomai writing on it, and then Pumice hands them their translator.
“It’s pretty easy to use. Just point at the text and press the left button, and it’ll take care of the rest.”
Chert does so.
In a matter of minutes, they’ve read enough to blow their mind into terrified smithereens multiple times. The statues, the orbital cannon, the plan to blow up the Sun using the Sun Station, which would provide energy for the Ash Twin Project, which they’re standing inside of this very moment , to send memories back in time –
A realization hits Chert like a meteor strike.
“You– Is that… how you know so much? Your memories were sent back in time?”
“Ah, you already pieced it together.” Pumice replies with a weary smile. “You were always a smart cookie, Chert. I guess I should have expected nothing less of you. Indeed, they were. Many, many times, by now.” They sigh, heavy and shaky.
Chert stares at them. If there wasn’t so much obvious evidence to support the claim, Chert would disbelieve it in a heartbeat. Perhaps they’d think it’d be one of Pumice’s infamous pranks, like the time they gave Arkose a marshmallow filled with carpenter’s glue. They were quite the scamp! But no, this is real, as absurd as it seems. How long has it been for them? A week? A month? A year? More?
Pumice fills the awkward silence. “I got caught by the statue in the observatory’s museum, right as I was getting my launch codes from Hornfels, and then… I launched, and I saw the Sun blow up. And then I was back at the campfire, right before my launch, like nothing had happened. And that’s happened a lot of times since then.”
A suspicion creeps onto Chert. If this hysterical situation is in fact real, and silly little Pumice has essentially become a time-traveler , of all things and all people, then…
“Have we had this conversation before?”
“No, nonono. This is the first time. I’m not cruel enough to do this to you more than once, Chert. You think I don’t hear the horror in your voice? I knew it’d be… hard for you, going into this,” they say, audibly pained, their voice as frail as Brittle Hollow crystal.
“Then why tell me at all?! I could have been blissfully ignorant–”
Pumice breaks out in sorrowful laughter, and it’s an ugly, broken thing.
“Blissfully ignorant?” they say, their voice quavering with barely-contained emotion. “I’m so sorry, Chert. I wish you had that luxury, but… that’s exactly why I’m here. Every single time, you look into the sky and you start noticing the signs, and then the Sun dies and you’re there , experiencing the horrible realization that we’re all dying! ” Pumice’s fist hits the wall in a gesture of anger and frustration. “ And you realize it over and over again, every single time as traumatic as the one before it. If I didn’t bring you here, if you’d just stayed at that campfire on Ember Twin, you’d already be panicking like there is no tomorrow, because, to you, there literally isn’t one!”
By the end of that monologue, Pumice is kneeling on the ground, and tears are streaming down their face. What had previously sounded like unshakeable confidence has suddenly shattered into an emotional mess. That’s a much more familiar facet of Pumice’s personality, to Chert. They remember their tears, when Gossan lost an eye. Just a scared hatchling, vulnerable and raw.
Looking at them in this state, Chert’s bewildered fear gets overridden by the empathetic instinct to just comfort them, and make it all better. Short as they may be, Chert wraps their arms around their sobbing friend.
It’s surreal, to be comforting someone who just told them that they’ve panicked at the Sun’s untimely demise a thousand times, but, here they are.
They stay like that for a while, Chert never breaking the hug and never stopping to do their best to speak comforting words as softly as they can, while Pumice slowly recovers from a pretty intense bout of crying. Their sobs slowly dissolve into just shaky breathing as their tears dry up. They’re left calm, with only a sniffly nose to show for the moment of crisis.
Pumice finally pats Chert’s shoulder, in the universal gesture for ‘that’s enough, thank you’, and they stand up.
“I’m sorry about that,” they manage to speak, still a bit high-pitched. “I was just saying I didn’t want to cause you distress if I could help it, and then–”
“Shh. It’s okay. Or rather, you aren’t okay, and that’s okay as well.” Chert says, trying to channel their inner Gabbro. They always knew how to handle emotions better than anyone. “Now… You didn’t want to put me through the wringer, and yet you brought me here. I take it you have a reason?”
“R-right!” Pumice says. “Stars, I’m sorry. I lost track.”
Chert smiles at them. They like them better now that the cold, hyper-confident facade from earlier has been broken, and behind it, they see that Pumice hasn’t changed all that much after all. Not even this crazy temporal odyssey they’ve allegedly gone through has managed to make them into something that’s no longer the Pumice they know and love.
Pumice fake-coughs, to regain some focus. “I couldn’t bear to see you go through that all over again, and… I guess I wanted to offer you a way out. Or rather, a way in, to the loops. With me. And Gabbro too, they’ve been part of it since day one. Loop one. Whatever. So that you’d understand what’s going on, and you wouldn’t be repeatedly blindsided by… you know, the Sun suddenly going all red and dying on us.”
Chert’s eyes go wide. “That’s… quite the offer!”
“I know, right?” Pumice chuckles. “‘Hey, you wanna join me in my temporally-challenged misadventures? On the bright side, you won’t panic a million times without remembering! On the not-so-bright side, you’ll die a million times and remember every single one, too!’”
“Oh stars. No wonder you broke down like that, earlier. That’s… kind of a lot to go through.”
“Right. ‘Kind of a lot to go through’ about sums it up,” Pumice smirks. “But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Once you have the agency, the thought of being stuck doing the same things over and over again just sounds… worse than the alternative, I guess. I was about to say ‘worse than death’, but that doesn’t apply here.”
“I guess I can understand that. The feeling that you’re actually able to react to what’s happening, and learn through… your memories getting sent back in time, I guess.” Chert replies, without mentioning how bizarre the thought of time-traveling memories still sounds to them.
“Yeah. Because it’s either that or being reduced to ashes with barely any time to freak out about it, let alone do anything about it. I’ve been learning an insane amount about the Nomai, as I think you saw, and… I guess that’s what I dedicate most of my time to, nowadays. Nowaday? Whatever, you get it. And here we are, at the core of the very thing that’s making this all work.”
Pumice pointed at the stone statue of a Nomai’s head, hidden in a little alcove near the wall they’ve been reading from.
“If I’ve got it right, all you’d need to do to join us would be get close enough to that statue there, and it should activate.”
“And if I were to say no?” Chert asks in return. “Would you just, what, come back another time and see if you can convince me to give you a different answer?”
“What?! Chert, stars, no. I told you already, I’m not that kind of person. It’d sting, obviously, but… I’d respect your wishes and let you be.”
“Even if what I’d say isn’t necessarily what another me would say?”
Pumice gives a deep sigh. “Guess so.”
“Good,” Chert says, satisfied, and then steps close to the statue as Pumice watches, clearly pleasantly surprised.
The statue’s eyes open with a noise of grinding stone, and they pierce Chert’s very soul with their impossibly saturated light. Memories flood into Chert’s brain with an intensity that reminds them of what it feels like to stand underneath a waterfall. For a moment, they can’t breathe. All they can do is stare into the statue’s eyes, and be stared into in turn.
Nearby, one of those Nomai masks flares up with brilliant light.
They take a moment to recover from the overwhelming experience, while Pumice patiently waits, grinning with what looks almost like pride, or otherwise profound joy.
“Let’s go,” they say, giving them a pat on the shoulder. “The loop’s almost over.”
“Where are we going?”
“To watch the Sun die together. One more time.”
“... Oh. You know what? Sure.” Chert replies, letting the absurdity of it all wash over them.
They emerge from the relative darkness of the Ash Twin Project and back onto that crumbled tower’s teleporter pad, and quickly run towards the pole Pumice parked their ship at. From here, they can see it: the Sun is red, and it’s enormous, with solar flares so big they can feel the solar wind as actual wind standing on Ash Twin’s surface, now almost entirely devoid of sand.
Pumice wastes no time. They lead Chert into a gravity funnel, and from the top of the Nomai structure, they descend back to the ship. Within less than a minute, they’ve achieved liftoff. With the uncanny grace that Chert now understands the origin of, they quickly land on Ember Twin, very near the little fireplace camp Chert made themselves on the planet’s north pole.
“Why here?”
“I dunno, it felt right. Now you can do what I’ve been doing for a while now. You can look at the Sun, and even if it dies, you know it’ll be okay. You’ll wake up here again before you know it, and I’ll come find you again.”
Pumice whips out a stick and a can of marshmallows, and begins roasting one over the bonfire. Chert gives out a small laugh. Why not? Why not eat marshmallows at the end of everything? Not that it’s actually really the end of everything, if they’re to be believed. They take out a stick of their own, and join in.
Soon after, the Sun collapses into a yellow ball of incredibly dense plasma, then explodes outwards into a terrifying expanse of blue light.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Pumice asks, with a smile.
“Yeah. I suppose it is.” Chert barely has time to reply, smiling in return.
They die together, holding hands, carbonized alongside their marshmallows, and everything else good that Hearthians ever made.
-o0o-
Chert’s idle thoughts get interrupted, and they feel like they just woke up from an insanely lucid daydream, right there at their little camp. Pumice isn’t there. The Sun is still the same golden yellow hue they’ve grown so accustomed to.
Chert curses out loud, then laughs until they run out of breath.