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Lucas watched the grime from his skin float away in curling shapes in the water of the hot spring, entranced by the swirling patterns. For a moment his eyes closed. He was so exhausted. Every time he thought he couldn’t be more tired, something new happened that made him change his mind.
His mouth was dry and his head ached from the mushrooms. Why had they eaten those stupid mushrooms? His thoughts were still muddled and murky like the pool of garbage and waste he had willingly submerged himself into only a few hours before. No, no. He wasn’t thinking about that. Maybe he could take a nap here. He leaned his head back on the soft earth at the edge of the hot spring, focused on the clean smell of the water, on the feel of steam caressing his tired face, the shape of the leaves in the trees above him— but when he closed his eyes he only saw his father’s face, grotesquely discolored in the strange neon light, dark dark circles under his eyes.
I’m gonna beat you, boy. I’m gonna beat you.
Lucas opened his eyes with a jolt and sat up.
No. No. everything was okay. It was over.
Boney nudged him with his nose, but Lucas brushed him off. “I’m fine,” he whispered. Boney whined and laid back down on the edge of the hot spring.
Lucas looked across the hot spring at Duster and Kumatora, both in their own corners. Normally they all chatted in the hot spring and splashed each other and laughed, but not today. Kumatora was sitting with her back to Lucas, pulling grass out of the earth blade by blade, her cheek in her hand. He could see a small sliver of her face. Her lip was bleeding. Lucas wondered why she hadn’t healed it. Duster was sitting completely still, slumped over, staring into the water like he was trying to see something far away. Duster always had purple circles under his eyes but they were especially purple today, almost navy. He chewed on the inside of his cheek listlessly.
Lucas could feel himself staring, but he didn’t stop. Duster suddenly looked up and met his eyes. Duster smiled a little, his eyelids drooping tiredly, and Lucas could tell he was making himself smile for his sake. Lucas just looked away, back at Kumatora. She had successfully stripped a small patch of grass and was now piling the grass on top of a rock. She shuffled the pile around until she seemed satisfied with its shape and size. She sat back against the wall and crossed her arms. The patch of grass burst into flames and Lucas jumped. It burned and she just watched it. She was grinding her teeth.
“Kuma, c’mon,” Duster muttered. She didn’t appear to hear him.
They were quiet again. The pile of grass burned down to nothing.
“My cigarettes are at the bottom of the ocean,” Duster mumbled mournfully.
“Y’shouldn’t fucking smoke anyway,” Kuma put in, and he glanced over at her but didn’t respond.
Lucas put his face in his hands, his nose hovering just above the water, feeling the heat of the steam on his face. Why had they eaten those stupid mushrooms. So stupid. He ached and thought of home and then, with a shudder, thought of his brother’s face, freckled and suntanned and burned, nose peeling, eyes grey but not the grey of steel, the grey of a storm cloud just before it begins to rain and how could a hallucination look so exact and, and, and real and—? He hadn’t even known that he remembered Claus’ face that well. He hadn’t forgotten what he looked like— God, how could he?— but he didn’t think he remembered every freckle, the way one of his front teeth was slightly crooked, the way he curled his lip when he talked, the sound of his breath whistling in the gap between his front teeth.
Everyone's waiting for you. Everyone's waiting to throw rocks at you, spit in your eyes, and make your life hell. Who's everyone? Everyone you love.
“Hey,” Duster said, and Lucas looked up. He was talking to Kuma, who was picking grass again. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then said, his voice rumbling low in his chest, “Y’do know people do love you, right?”
She looked at him for a moment, then kept pulling at the grass. “Fuck you, Duster,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, fuck me, okay.” He sighed, sitting back and crossing his arms.
They lapsed into silence. Lucas fidgeted and glanced between them. He leaned his head back again and looked up at the trees. A dragonfly flew overhead. He watched it glide across his line of sight, wings vibrating. Lucas felt like he was vibrating, too, like he was going to tear out of his skin. He thought for a moment that maybe if he quietly slipped into the hot spring he could drown before they would notice. No. No that was stupid, that was so stupid. Stop it, stop it.
“Lucas, check in,” Kumatora said, and he looked up. She was making another grass pile. “How do you feel, bud.” It was a question, but it sounded like a statement. She didn’t look at him, and she was still surly, but he could hear her throat was tight. He had known her long enough now to start to hear soft concern creep into her voice when she was trying not to let it show. He wondered if she knew what he had been thinking, and he felt ashamed. He opened his mouth wordlessly. He didn’t even know how he would begin to describe how he felt. “Scale of one to ten,” she added. The blood from her lip was dripping on her chin.
He paused. “Two or three or so,” he answered quietly. “You?”
“I’d say about three, yeah.” she cleared her throat and set the pile of grass on fire with a snap. The flames reflected in her eyes and she wiped the blood from her chin. Lucas watched her, captivated and a little afraid. “Duster?”
“Um. Seven,” he lied, and Lucas could hear it.
Lucas sighed. “Duster, you don’t have to—“
Kumatora’s entire face wrinkled in disbelief. “Seven?” she spat, interrupting Lucas completely. She laughed. “Fuck you, you aren’t at a seven, Duster Pickett. Have you ever been at a seven in your life?”
Duster paused for a moment, ran his hands down his face, then muttered reluctantly, “Two. And no. Probably not.”
“And it looks like Boney’s asleep, so presumably at a ten.”
“I wish I was asleep. And a dog,” Duster mumbled, half-wistful, half-bitter.
Nobody responded. It didn’t seem like Duster really expected them to respond anyway.
Lucas took a deep breath and let it out, then started to lean forward to wash his face. As his nose was about to touch the water, Kumatora abruptly said, “Lucas!”
He looked up at her. “I’m just washing my face,” he said. Yeah. She’d heard the drowning thing.
Kuma just nodded and ran her hands down her face, wrinkling up her nose. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She returned to the grass.
Lucas paused for a moment, looking at her. He glanced over at Duster, who was sitting with his forehead in his hand now, not listening in the slightest. Lucas ducked his head underwater.
Underwater, he was alone with the faint gurgle of the water and his thoughts. He thought of home, and the soft place in the bed his parents used to sleep in that he curled up in every night. He knew the imprint in the mattress was his own and not his mother’s, but he liked to think it was hers anyway. He slept on her side of the bed. Grief grew duller by the day but a wound from a dull knife still hurt. He cupped his hands around his sharp, bony knees and curled up into a ball.
He opened his eyes underwater like Claus had taught him to one summer when they were eight— even now he could see Claus dragging him into the lake by his collar, shouting about how it was so easy and there was nothing to worry about. Claus was always telling him there was nothing to worry about. He elected not to think about Claus any more— both for the usual reasons and also because when he thought of him now he saw him as he had been in the forest, and he needed to stop thinking about that. The water in the hot spring was blue and dark at the bottom. He stared into it until he saw something move, like a fish or a snake. He kept watching, and after a moment he realized that it was himself, crying at the bottom of the hot spring, like he had been at the bottom of the mailbox, looking up at him and crying out and reaching out his hand and—
Lucas sat up and wiped his face, taking a deep breath as he resurfaced. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. He rubbed his eyes and pushed his wet hair out of his face, trying to focus on breathing. He started counting the things he could see around him, naming things in his mind that he could touch, smell, taste. Real things.
“Hey, I meant that, okay?” Duster said, and Lucas glanced up at him. He was talking to Kuma again.
“Meant what,” she mumbled.
“That people love you.”
“God,” she sighed. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I don’t wanna do this, Duster. I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“That stuff wasn’t real, it doesn’t matter, it wasn’t real,” he said, and Lucas wondered if he was telling Kumatora or himself.
“Stop.”
“Okay, okay, fine. But…” she gave him a withering look and he completed weakly, “Er…fine, okay.”
Kumatora closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the edge of the hot spring. Nobody said anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Lucas looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He closed them into fists, his purple painted fingernails digging into his palms. Stop it, stop it.
“Okay, okay, you know what? If you want to do this, fine,” Kumatora said abruptly, sitting up and crossing her arms. Lucas stared. “Fine. Fine, here we go. How about this? The Magypsies are the only people who have ever loved me and they are dying. And we are killing them, guys.” She took a deep, rattling breath and went on, speaking quickly, tripping over her words and crescendoing into nearly a shout, “I get to watch them die individually and hear them talk about how this is just how it’s supposed to be and everything and feel fucking selfish because I know we’re doing something important here but all I can think about is that when they are all gone there will be nobody left who gives a shit about me!” Her hair was floating and her pupils were dilating, expanding, covering her eyes entirely in black. “How about that? Is that what you wanted me to fucking say, Duster? That a couple of needles from now there will be nobody left for me? My whole fucking family will be dead?” There was a rushing noise and a gust of wind and a sudden burst of fire raced through the grass around her. Adrenaline rushed through Lucas’ body and he reached for his yo-yo out of instinct, without realizing he was doing it or knowing why. When he realized what he was doing he felt ashamed and put his hand back in the water. Kumatora watched him, her pupils slowly constricting back to their normal size.
“Sorry,” Lucas said. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.
She paused and then groaned loudly, covering her face with her hands. “No, shut up, don’t apologize. I’m sorry. Sorry for yelling.” The fire went out. She wiped the blood from her lip again. “Sorry for being a fucking asshole.”
“It’s okay,” Duster said.
“You’re not a fucking asshole,” Lucas added, and Kuma only snorted in response, and Lucas wondered if it was because of his language or because she thought she really was a fucking asshole.
“Don’t say fucking asshole, buddy,” Duster mumbled, but Lucas ignored him. He was gonna say fucking asshole.
“It fucking sucks. The whole thing fucking sucks,” she muttered, surly and boiling.
Duster and Lucas didn’t say anything at all.
Without thinking, Lucas pushed off from the wall and swam across the hot spring. He sat next to Kumatora on the rocks. She looked down at him, thick eyebrows clenched together. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then healed her lip, touching his fingers to her face. Kuma flinched away at first but sat still when she realized what he was doing. When he pulled back his hand, she touched her lip, paused, and then ducked her head, resting it on his shoulder. Her hair still smelled like trash and the shaved part above her ear was prickly on his skin, but Lucas didn’t complain.
She sighed heavily. “I don’t fucking know. I don’t fucking know what I’m supposed to do after all this is over. And maybe. I dunno. Maybe the fucking mushrooms are right. I don’t fucking know.” she groaned. For a moment she was silent. They all were. Kumatora cleared her throat and added, “Ionia is next, you know. I… don’t… I can’t even think about that right now.”
Lucas hadn’t really thought about it as the Magypsies dying. They all seemed so ready to go. Maybe there was something wrong with him, he thought, that made him not even feel it. He was sure that was what it was. Maybe there really was something wrong with him. He had wondered once or twice what Kumatora thought about everything but she had never seemed to care before. She was always solemn when the Magypsies vanished, sure, and then she was quiet for a few hours— at least quiet for Kumatora. Her usually constant dialogue and monologue slowed down significantly but he had never read too much into it. He thought she seemed like the kind of person who would say something if there was something bothering them— he sort of thought Duster was the one he had to watch more closely for hiding stuff from him. But looking at her now, she looked so small and so… he didn’t know. So something. So unlike herself, he guessed. She put her face in her hands and sighed heavily and he wondered if she was trying not to cry. She had never said anything about any of this before. Why hadn’t she said anything?
“You should have said something,” Lucas said, and Kumatora sat up, looking down at him. He looked up at her. “If it makes you upset you should have said something. I didn’t know you felt so… so sad.”
Kuma squinted her eyes and crinkled her nose and shrugged up her shoulders, splaying out her fingers. “I’m not sad, I’m not, I’m not supposed to be sad, they’re— this is the thing they do, you know! It’s kinda what they’re here for, so— I’m just— today fucked me up, I’m fucked up because of today, that’s all. It’s the fucking mushrooms, the fucking… island, don’t worry about me, buddy.” she slicked down the hair on the back of his head and shook him back and forth a little, her hand clasped around the back of his neck. “Don’t worry, you little… worry wart!” She laughed a loud, fake laugh that didn’t sound anything like her real laugh to Lucas. Lucas just looked at her. He could feel worry pulling at his face and wrinkling his forehead. Kumatora’s laugh trailed off and she cleared her throat uncomfortably, squinting up one of her eyes and glancing away. She chuckled softly and pushed at his jaw. “Hey, don’t stare, ya fuckin’ weirdo,” she added weakly, then looked down at the water, running her fingers through it. She glanced over at him once more, and he reluctantly looked away.
“‘Mnot a fuckin’ weirdo,” he mumbled.
“Yeah you are,” she replied with a snort. “Fuckin’ weirdo.”
“If I’m a fuckin’ weirdo you are too,” he said.
Kuma just laughed and pushed him.
“C’mon, bud, don’t say fucking,” Duster put in, and Lucas sighed.
“Oh, come on, Duster,” Kumatora groaned, her nose wrinkling up, before Lucas had the chance to say anything. “Let him say fucking. If he’s old enough to be responsible for the fate of the world I think he can say fucking.”
“Sorry,” Duster said. “Just trying to…” he motioned toward Lucas vaguely. “I dunno. Preserve some kind of innocence here.”
Lucas just sunk into the water a little. Innocence. Kuma chuckled like she thought it was a joke, but Lucas didn’t think it was funny and he could tell Duster didn’t either. Kuma looked between them and then just ran her hands through her hair and cleared her throat uncomfortably.
They lapsed into silence. Lucas leaned his head against Kumatora’s shoulder. She was soft and good to lean on and underneath a general smell of garbage he could smell her scent, like spearmint gum and men’s deodorant. She was starting to smell like home to him now— they both were. If someone had asked him before all this what home smelled like he would have said grass and hickory smoke and sheep and his mother’s perfume. But now he thought about cigarette smoke and hair gel— Duster— and men’s deodorant and spearmint gum— Kumatora. He still thought of his mother’s perfume, too, but it was starting to fade into the background now. That was a different kind of home.
He thought of the hallucination of his father asking where she was. He had taken Lucas by his shoulders. Lucas was crying, and his pa was, too, sobbing hard and twisting his shirt in his hands. “What? She’s not coming back?” he shook Lucas hard, his hands like vice grips on his shoulders, so real that Lucas just sobbed into his hands and shook. How could a hallucination physically hurt?“Why? Did you do something to her?”
Lucas touched his shoulders, expecting for them to be tender with bruises. They weren’t. It wasn’t real. Of course they weren't bruised.
Suddenly he remembered his father— his real father— the night it all happened, standing over the campfire with a stick in his hand, sobbing guttural sobs as Fuel’s dad tried to tear the stick away from him. Lucas could feel Claus’ hand gripping his arm tight under the blanket, hear Claus saying “no” over and over again, hear his own voice pleading with his pa, telling him to stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it—
Goodness. He hadn’t thought about that in a while.
“Lucas,” Kumatora mumbled, and he looked up at her. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then pointed to the bird flying overhead. “What kinda bird is that?”
Lucas squinted and shielded his eyes. “Huh. Some kind of vulture I think.”
“Maybe it thinks we’re dead,” Kuma laughed. She tickled his side and he jumped, laughing and trying to scramble away from her. “Better look lively, Lucas Wheeler! Or they’ll eat your skinny ass right up!” She grabbed him around his middle and pretended to eat his shoulder, making gnawing sounds and shaking him around. Lucas yelped and laughed and tried to break free, but her arms were too strong.
“Ah! Stop!! Ew, you smell like trash!” he shouted, kicking and splashing and pushing at her arms, fat squishy and muscle hard under his long, skinny hands. Kumatora just laughed a big, loud laugh like thunder rolling and threw him into the middle of the hot spring. Lucas resurfaced, sputtering and laughing. “Fuck you, Kuma!”
“Fuck you too, little buddy,” Kumatora said, and she said it like an I love you. Lucas just spat water at her as he swam back to the side of the hot spring. When he rejoined her, she hooked her arm around his neck and shook him a little, humming affectionately. He told her to stop but he didn’t really want her to.
After a moment she stilled, resting her arm on the edge of the hot spring. Lucas leaned his head back against her meaty arm and looked up at her to find she was staring at Duster. He followed the line of her eyesight to Duster’s face, downturned toward the water. Duster always looked tired and kind of gloomy, but at that moment he looked absolutely exhausted— empty— his eyes dull and his eyebrows drawn together. He slowly closed his eyes and for a moment clenched up his face. He drew in a deep breath and let it out and then opened his eyes again.
“Whatcha thinking about, Dust-man?” Kumatora asked. Her big hand smoothed down the cowlicks on the back of Lucas’ head.
Duster looked up as if he had forgotten they were there altogether, dark eyes large. He blinked. “Oh. Um.” he sighed and shook his head, pinching his sharp nose between his thumb and pointer finger. The ring on his pinky finger flashed. “I don’t… I dunno.” He ran his hand down his face and draped his arm over the rock beside him. “It doesn’t matter. None of it was real, so. It… It doesn’t matter.”
Lucas felt Kumatora shrug. “I mean. Some of it matters. Like Missy said, y’know. They play on your weaknesses. The hallucinations do.” She cleared her throat and went on forcefully, “They appear for a reason and shit, you know.”
“Yeah,” Lucas added, and Duster looked at him, his eyebrows wrenched close together, wrinkles forming in his forehead. “It’s not… an accident. The stuff that… showed up.”
Duster’s eyes flickered between them for a moment. “Well.” He cleared his throat and shifted his left leg, cupping his hand under his thigh to help move it. He looked down at the water and didn’t say anything else for a moment. He fidgeted and put his face in his hand. “Ugh, I need a cigarette.”
“No, what you need is to think about some shit, dude,” Kuma put in, and her tone was demanding as usual, but concerned, too, somewhere underneath all of the forcefulness. Her voice was brash and loud as she went on, “C’mon, Duster, you’re not a fucking idiot, I know you know better.”
Duster just hummed awkwardly in response. Lucas could feel Kuma’s tone was making him antsy— he was visibly shrinking away from them, crossing his arms defensively.
Lucas looked at Duster and then up at Kumatora. Her chin wrinkled in determination and her eyebrows knitted together. She inhaled and slowly let it out, then opened her mouth to speak.
Hey, Lucas said, popping into her head for a moment, and she stopped, closing her mouth and glancing over at him. You’re freaking him out.
No I’m not, she responded, her mouth twisting up.
Yes, you are. Just leave him alone for a minute.
Kumatora narrowed her eyes and then looked over at Duster, who was watching the vulture circle overhead and anxiously picking at his thumbnail. Her expression softened, and after a moment she sat back against the rocks. Okay.
They paused for a long moment.
“I think you just don’t… understand,” Duster said softly, mumbling under his breath.
“What?” Kuma said, and Lucas sighed, putting his face in his hands.
“I said, I think you don’t understand,” he repeated, a bit louder. “I mean, I can’t imagine… the magypsies… ever really disciplined you when you were small, they’re all…” he cleared his throat. Kuma bristled. “I’m just saying, not everyone grows up in free-love, free-spirited hippy households where nobody wears shirts around the house and everyone’s alright with the 5-year-old experimenting with magic and makeup and dyeing her hair and there are no rules except love yourself or something.” Lucas looked nervously up at Kumatora, who narrowed her eyes. Lucas fidgeted and looked back at Duster. He shrugged. “Some people’s parents have… I dunno. Rules. Pa… is a disciplinarian, is all. He’s strict.”
“First of all, they’re not hippies, don’t let anyone ever hear you call them hippies because that’s just not accurate,” Kumatora responded in clipped tones, “they’re queer polyamorous trans bohemians, thank you.”
“What is the difference,” Duster mumbled tiredly, rubbing his eyes, “between a hippie and a bohemian, Kuma.” She ignored this comment.
“Second, I really do not appreciate your fucking tone,” Kuma snapped, and Lucas laid a hand on her arm. She shrugged him off, going on, “Please do not talk shit about the people I literally just told you I’m grieving over.”
Duster threw up his hands. “Oh, my god. I’m not talking shit about them, how could you even interpret what I said that way— I’m just saying! It’s different and—“
“Third,” Kumatora continued, putting up her hand, palm facing Duster, and he groaned and rolled his eyes, rubbing his temples. “I know not everyone’s family was like mine but I can promise you I know a healthy relationship between a parent and child— I had six of them—“
Duster started to get out of the hot spring, but his bad leg slipped and he slipped, muddying up his arms and elbows. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, putting his face in his hands and giving up. Lucas’ chest ached.
Kuma plowed on as if she hadn’t seen. “And I can tell you that what I have seen of the way your father relates to you is a bit more than fucking strict. And what we saw in the forest today only—”
“Maybe, just maybe,” Duster interrupted, rolling his eyes and raising his voice to speak over her, “your opinion on this doesn’t matter to me, Kumatora!” Lucas jumped. He had never heard Duster raise his voice before. “I know that must be fucking wild for you but—”
“Oh, fuck you, can you just listen—“
“—maybe it’s none of your fucking business!”
“You’re being fucking irrational, Duster, you’re—“
“Maybe you are not the expert, okay?” He was shouting now.
“Fuck you!” she was shouting back, and Lucas’s hands were shaking.
“Maybe I didn’t fucking ask!”
“Stop it, stop it,” Lucas interrupted, and ripples coursed through the water. Duster and Kumatora stopped abruptly, their voices echoing through the trees around them. Lucas sighed and shook his head, putting his face in his hands. “Please stop. Please, please stop.”
They were all quiet for a moment. Lucas sat back against the rocks, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
“Sorry, buddy,” Kuma muttered, and he just nodded.
Duster didn’t apologize, which was unlike him. Lucas opened his eyes and looked over at him. He was staring off into the forest, his mouth twisted up tight and his eyebrows wrenched together, deep lines in his forehead. The circles under his eyes seemed especially dark. Lucas could see that his hands were quivering.
Lucas sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Duster.”
Duster’s eyes flickered over to meet Lucas’ gaze, but he quickly looked away. “What?” he mumbled, withdrawn again.
Lucas just looked at him. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He paused, looking down at the water. He thought about back in the forest, when the fake Mr. Pickett was yelling at Duster, how small he’d looked. For a moment there Duster hadn’t been himself at all, he’d been a kid— at least kind of, he kept flickering between a kid Lucas’ age and his regular self, shrinking back against the purple trunk of the tree behind him and Mr. Pickett was so big, he was so tall suddenly, and Lucas could feel it, how… afraid Duster was.
You ungrateful child. You would make anyone cry.
“It’s okay,” Lucas said, and Duster looked up at him. “If you’re scared. That’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s okay if you’re scared.” Kuma opened her mouth to protest but Lucas laid a hand on her arm, not taking his eyes off of Duster. He didn’t know where the words were coming from exactly, but they were just spilling out of him. “It’s okay to be sad, too, when people turn out to be someone other than the person you thought they were. It’s okay to be… angry.” Duster was looking at him with large eyes. “It’s just… it’s all okay. We just…” Lucas paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and then went on, “What Kumatora was trying to say… in her way… and what I’m trying to say now… in mine… is that we care about you. We think you’re a good person. And some of the stuff we heard your dad say in the forest—“ Duster started to interrupt him, but Lucas held up his hands. “Let me finish.” Duster sat back against the rocks, stilled by his words. “Some of the stuff we heard your dad say in the forest, and, and some of the stuff we’ve heard your dad say in real life… some of it is really, really bad, Duster.” Lucas heard his own voice shake so he paused and swallowed, willing himself not to cry. For once it worked, and he was able to continue, “And you’re not a bad person. You’re a good person. People should say good things about you. Not bad things.” Lucas opened his mouth to say more, paused, and then sat back against the rock again. Duster just glanced at him expectantly. “That’s… that’s all I have to say about it.” Lucas folded his hands in his lap.
They were all silent for a moment.
“God,” Kumatora muttered, letting out a loud sigh. She shook her head. “No fucking way you’re thirteen. Inside you’re, like, seventy, kid.”
Lucas didn’t respond. He knew she was just filling silence because it made her nervous. She didn’t really expect a response. He was focused on Duster.
Duster sat there for a long time, slumped over, his fingers laced together over his stomach, hands still shaking. He just stared into the water. Lucas watched him, and Kumatora occasionally glanced between them but otherwise kept her eyes fixed on the vulture still circling overhead.
The minutes ticked by and Lucas could feel how tense Kumatora was next to him, but he wasn’t tense at all somehow. He was just… too exhausted to be tense.
“Thank you, Lucas,” Duster said, breaking the silence, and Lucas felt Kuma jump. He was looking down at the water still. He rubbed his eyes. “And… I’m really, really… really sorry for yelling. And losing my temper. I… don’t like to do that. For… reasons that…” his voice lowered to nearly a whisper, “…feel pretty obvious.” he cleared his throat and shifted his weight, cupping his hand under his left leg to shift it. “So. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lucas mumbled.
At the same time, Kuma responded, “No, it’s fine.”
“No, it’s really not fine.” Duster put his face in his hands. He paused for a moment, then sighed and sat up. “Look. I’m not ready to talk about this right now. Maybe soon. But not now. Right now I just want to go in the house and see if K’s queer… polysexual…”
“Queer polyamorous trans bohemian,” Kuma put in with a chuckle.
“Queer polyamorous trans bohemian mom has any cigarettes. And then I wanna take a nap. And I’d love it if you two would join me, because I don’t know how to sleep anymore any way except outdoors and with you two, so. That’s what I’m going to do.” he paused for a long moment, then got up and slowly, carefully, and successfully this time, climbed out of the hot spring. He picked up his towel and dried off his hair as he walked toward the house.
After a few minutes, Kumatora followed, ruffling Lucas’ hair as she climbed out of the hot spring. She walked over to her towel and dried off, humming to herself. Lucas didn’t follow her at first, just sitting still and looking at the vulture circling overhead.
“Luke,” she said, and he hummed in response. “C’mon, kiddo. Nothing to worry about. We’re alive.”
Lucas guessed she was right.
He climbed out of the hot spring and dried off. Kuma twisted her towel into a whip and hit him on the butt with it as they walked back toward the house, Boney trotting behind them. They went inside, changed into dry clothes, and walked through to the back of the house, out into the lawn. They found Duster lying on a blanket in the grass behind the house, a new packet of cigarettes sitting on his chest and his arm slung over his face. They curled up on the blanket together, Boney curling up at their feet for his second nap. Lucas closed his eyes and didn’t see any more hallucinations, just soft darkness. He listened to bees buzzing and Kumatora draped her arm across him, hugging him tight, and Duster turned so he could rest his cheek on the top of Lucas’ head and Lucas fell asleep thinking about the fact that they were alive. They were alive.