Chapter Text
As the festival wound down, Sebastian watched Fox saddle up their horse and trot back towards their farm. He wondered if he should follow them, but they said to meet by the community center, so he walked there instead.
He waited outside, not wanting to enter the dilapidated building by himself. He shivered a bit. From nerves of course, he was never cold. He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t.
He heard Fox before he saw them, the telltale shuffle of hooves on snow. “Sorry to keep you waiting, I just had to grab some stuff.” They dismounted and patted their horse, “Hold on Pikachu, we’ll be back in a bit.”
Sebastian couldn’t help but laugh, “You named your horse Pikachu?”
“It’s a perfectly respectable name!” they retorted, then pushed the dilapidated door open with suspicious familiarity.
The inside of the building was more worn down than Sebastian anticipated, floorboards peeling up and dead weeds tangled everywhere. He felt a strange eeriness, as though they were being watched.
The silence felt unnatural, which was odd considering how much he appreciated a good silence. “So you and Leah are a thing now?” he blurted out without thinking, just to fill the quiet. Yikes, he thought to himself.
They shrugged as they picked their way across the hazardous floor, “I guess. We have a lot in common and I like spending time with her.”
Sebastian followed them and swallowed the realization that he didn’t have things in common with Fox like Leah did.
They continued, “But it’s not a big deal. I’m polyamorous and just want to make connections with other people, to appreciate the person I’m with in any given moment. Do you ever feel like your capacity for love just grows and grows? Like it can’t be limited?”
“Not really,” Sebastian felt like he was seeing some part of Fox that he hadn’t before, and a part that kind of confused him.
“Oh sorry, of course you wouldn’t. Forgot who I was talking to, I guess.”
Sebastian wasn’t sure if that was an insult, “What are you insinuating about me?”
“Just that people are different. I may like to connect with other people but I know you don’t as much. You have a few close friends. And you also focus a lot on your internal landscape. I really admire that about you. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in town who I can just be quiet with.”
Sebastian’s uncertainty melted away, “So it’s like, different people bring out different aspects of you? I can see that.”
Fox just smiled at him and turned into a room. It appeared to be a kitchen pantry but was so broken down that it was barely recognizable. “I haven’t shown this to anyone else so I’m trusting you here, okay?”
“Okay.” Sebastian braced himself to ask the only thing on his mind, “Why me though?”
Fox took a deep breath and sat down on the floor. “It’s hard for me to explain my own impulses, but I guess I understand how hard it must have been to work with Demetrius, just to make a gift for me.”
Sebastian shrugged, uncomfortable with the candidness of the topic, “He’s not a bad person, he just doesn’t get me.”
“I know,” said Fox, and Sebastian saw the understanding in their eyes. “And I guess I wanted to show you that there’s more to this valley than there seems to be.”
At that, Fox rummaged through their always-present backpack and pulled out what seemed to be an old sheet. They laid it on the floor and put upon it two jugs of milk and several eggs.
“What’s this for?” Sebastian asked as Fox began to tie the sheet up into a bundle.
“Shhhh, just wait and watch.”
Fox stood, taking a few steps away from the bundle. For a moment it seemed as though nothing would happen. Then, there was a blinding flash of light and several dozen round creatures were bouncing up and down in the room.
Sebastian was too shocked to do anything except grab the back of Fox’s shirt and whisper, “Fuck, shit, what the fuck!! Fox are you trying to murder me?!”
“Shhh! Just listen!”
Sebastian was too distracted running through possibilities in his mind. He may have flaws but he was a self aware man. He knew his weaknesses. One of which was weakness. Physical weakness. And he knew that if these things were going to attack, he would not be able to defend himself, but Fox might have a fighting chance. He gripped their shirt even tighter.
But then he began to listen and it broke through his internal calculations. These… things… were not aggressive. They appeared to be singing.
It was a song like none other Sebastian had ever heard. It sounded like the wind through the branches. Or like birds chirping. Or rather all the sounds of the forest in tandem.
Fox was listening intently and it made Sebastian wonder, “Fox, can you… understand them ?”
“Yeah,” they said in a low voice. “They’re singing about how the trees moved into this building and they did too, because they go wherever the trees go.”
All at once, the song came to an end and there was another big flash. All the creatures vanished, save one, which was dragging the bundle out of the room. And the room… it was no longer the vague impression of a pantry with broken shelves but seemed to be an entirely new room.
Sebastian found himself without words but struggled to ask anyway. “Please explain…” he trailed off and gestured vaguely to the room. And the least relevant question was somehow all he could ask, “ Why can you understand them? ”
“Oh. Um. The wizard gave me a potion. It was right after I moved here.”
“You just took a potion that a random wizard gave you?”
Fox shrugged, “Yeah. It was really trippy.”
“Okay fair. I guess I would too.”
Fox rolled their eyes at that, then said, “Well I guess there go all my plans of what to do with the money I’ve saved.”
“What?” Sebastian remained in the realm of severely confused.
“Oh. The junimos said they would fix my greenhouse but that means I have to go to the sewers tomorrow and buy sprinklers for it.”
“Uh. What? Nothing that you’re saying is clarifying anything.”
“Um. Junimos are the cute little forest spirits we just saw. Also there’s a shadow guy, Krobus, who lives in the sewers and sells sprinklers.”
“Why are you buying sprinklers from a shadow guy in the sewers?”
“They’re really good sprinklers!” Fox said defensively.
“Okay. Okay,” Sebastian said, coming to a conclusion. “This is all way over my head and I need to, like, I don’t know, go to sleep.”
“Oh. Okay. Shall we go?” asked Fox, leading the way out.
If Sebastian started to ramble a bit it’s just because he had absolutely lost every marble, but it’s fine. “Here I was, I was going to ask if you wanted to play Solarian Chronicles with me and Sam But it Turns Out that you have your own Real Life Adventure and you don’t need to play a Fictional One.”
“Hey! I still want to play Solarian Chronicles with you! My life is exactly the same, you just know more about it now.”
“You know Fox, I thought you were normal-weird, but it turns out that you’re weird-weird.”
Fox looked a little hurt and said quietly, “I’m sorry, okay. I shouldn’t have shown you this.”
Sebastian needed to fix this, pronto. “No! It’s just a lot to take in and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I still--” where was he going with this sentence? I still care about you ? I still love you ?! What the fuck. He really was losing his mind. “You’re still my friend. I just probably need to be alone right now. To process things.”
“Oh. I understand now. I felt the same way when I first found out about the junimos. I probably should have warned you, but I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
They were at the door now. “Yeah, no, I wouldn’t have.” Sebastian took a deep breath, “But you’ll come play Solarian Chronicles with us, yeah?”
Fox grimaced a bit, “I’ll probably be busy until like the second week of spring? With planting? But yeah.”
Sebastian felt the cold air outside bringing him more to himself. It was snowing again. He smiled, “I’ll see you then.”
Fox gestured to their horse, “Are you sure you don’t want a ride home?”
“No, I could use the walk.”
“See you around, then,” Fox said as they mounted up.
Sebastian watched them ride away. Even with all the bewildering events of this night he felt calm from having been with Fox. He didn’t really understand how a person could make him feel calm instead of anxious, but, as he breathed in the cold, he decided not to question things for once and just appreciate the ways in which Fox was in his life.