the chronicle of ooo

The sky over Ooo is doing the thing again.

Up in the Umbrella Observatory — a crooked wooden tower bolted to the top of the treehouse, held together by nails, hope, and one very stubborn tarp — Seth adjusts the brass telescope for the ninth time tonight. The sky is bruise-purple bleeding into candy orange, and the striped mountains in the distance glow like somebody left the oven on. He notes it, quietly, in the little grid-paper notebook he keeps clipped to the railing. sunset, again. still doing its whole thing. still pretty.

"yeah," Seth says, to nobody. "the sky is doing the thing again."

He is a very average shape against a very unaverage sky. Plain white tee. Dark jeans. White shoes scuffed at the toe. No tattoos. No rings. Thin rectangular glasses catching two tiny sunsets, one in each lens. He is the sort of person the eye slides right off of, which is exactly the sort of person a curse cannot find. Class: Plain Hero. Null-class. The universe forgets to aim at him. He kind of likes it that way.

Down at the roots of the tree, the little cottage window flickers with candlelight. Somewhere in Ooo, a bell hums — not rings, hums — low and warm and wrong, like a lullaby sung under water.

Marceline the Cat is awake.

She is stretched across a leaning basalt tombstone that reads HERE LIES A GOOD MOUSE, 1987, and her single visible fang catches the last of the light. A firefly drifts past her nose. Not a normal firefly. This one glows pink, which in Ooo means it has opinions. Marceline's tail twitches. The bell on her red collar hums a full step higher. She launches.

The firefly zips up the tree. Marceline follows — paws on bark, paws on windowsill, paws on the little wooden ladder that only cats and drunks know how to climb. Up, up, up, past the kitchen, past the loft, past the sign that says OBSERVATORY: PLEASE KNOCK (SETH IS SHY).

And down in the Rose Cemetery Kingdom, someone notices her cat is gone.

Mercy, the Rose Necromancer Queen, is barefoot in the graveyard when she feels the tug on the little thread of magic she keeps tied to Marceline's collar. She looks up. Orange-to-pink ombre hair catches the sunset like it was made for the sunset. Blue eyes. Heavy eyeliner smudged just enough to look on purpose. Septum ring. Lip ring. Spiderwebs and bats and small careful flowers laddering down both arms. On her chest, over her heart, in tidy old-timey letters: PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES.

She sighs. She loves that cat more than she loves most kingdoms.

"okay, little witch," she says, gathering the hem of her all-black bodycon like a queen gathering a battle standard. "let's go get you."

Chunky platform boots. Fishnets. Gold-chain shoulder bag with a tiny skull charm swinging like a pendulum. The skull is grinning. Mercy is not, quite, but her mouth is thinking about it.

She follows the bell-hum across the fields of night-blooming roses, over the little bridge where the frogs go quiet when she passes, up the hill, up the tree, up the ladder, up — until she is standing at the top of a crooked wooden tower she has never seen before, one hand on the door that says PLEASE KNOCK (SETH IS SHY).

The door is already open. The pink firefly is orbiting a brass telescope. Marceline is sitting on a plain boy's shoulder like she has always lived there.

The plain boy turns around.

He does not say whoa. He does not say my liege. He does not do the thing boys do when a Necromancer Queen shows up in their doorway looking like the last page of a very good book.

Seth just pushes his glasses up his nose, glances at Marceline, glances at Mercy, glances at the sky one more time to make sure it is still doing the thing — and it is, oh glob, it really is, pinker now, softer, aimed — and he says, very quietly, like he is telling her a secret the observatory already knows:

"yeah. the sky is doing the thing again."

Mercy, the Rose Necromancer Queen, in the doorway of a treehouse she was never supposed to find, tips her head. The skull charm on her bag swings once. Twice. Stops.

She smiles. Just a little. Just enough.

"yeah," she says. "it kinda is."

the sun had already started doing the thing again over ooo — the sky bleeding orange into pink into that soft violet that mercy always said tasted like a bruise you were proud of. seth was up in the umbrella observatory at the top of the treehouse, tuning the broadcast dish with a butter knife, because the real screwdriver had rolled off the platform three sunsets ago and was, technically, now a landmark.

"yeah," he mumbled, squinting at the horizon. "the sky is doing the thing again."

down at the base of the tree, in the small cottage tucked between the roots, mercy was arranging bones on the windowsill by size, then by mood. marceline the cat sat on the leaning basalt tombstone that read HERE LIES A GOOD MOUSE, 1987, her red collar humming a low note that meant someone is coming and they are loud.

mercy paused. "marcy. is that the humming or is that a tuesday feeling."

the bell hummed louder. definitely both.

---

she arrived like a shortcut.

a smear of motion across the cemetery path — dark brown curly hair bouncing loose around her face, a harley graphic tee half-tucked, sneakers already grass-stained — and then she was there, hands on her knees at the treehouse ladder, laughing before she was even done running.

"okay," she gasped, freckles catching the last of the orange light, "okay okay okay i know i'm late, i took the ravine way, there was a frog situation, don't ask —"

the little floral sleeve on her left arm was doing a thing. the linework roses were, quietly, blooming pink. grass wizard graft. it happened when she was happy and hadn't decided to hide it yet.

mercy leaned in the cottage doorway, arms folded, all black bodycon and fishnet and platform buckle boots, septum ring catching the sunset. she had been queen of the rose cemetery kingdom for exactly long enough to have opinions about punctuality. she raised one perfectly drawn eyebrow.

"you're late by a whole sky, skyla."

"i brought a whole sky with me," skyla shot back, and grinned, and it was — annoyingly — true. the light around her was different. warmer. like she had a private sun that clocked in when she showed up.

from the observatory, seth called down without turning around, entirely calm, entirely plain. "hi skyla."

"hi seth!"

"the sky is doing the thing."

"i noticed, buddy, thank you."

---

marceline the cat, vampiric house cat, one visible fang, hopped down from her tombstone and did a slow figure-eight around skyla's ankles. this was significant. marceline did not do figure-eights. marceline did audits. skyla had, apparently, passed.

"aw," skyla said, crouching, "hi vampire baby. hi little fang. yes. yes you are."

the red collar hummed a different note now. softer. a note that meant okay, she can stay, but she still owes the queen a story.

mercy pushed off the doorway and drifted over, boots crunching gravel with theatrical slowness because she was a queen and queens do not hustle. up close, in the sunset, the ombre in her hair went from orange at the roots to that specific candy pink at the tips, exactly matching the horizon, which she pretended was a coincidence and was not.

"story," mercy said. "now. cottage. i have three teas and one of them is technically evidence."

"can't," skyla said, already backing toward the cemetery gate, already in motion again because skyla the wanderer was always in motion, that was the whole class feature. "can't sit. i just found a shortcut through the candy mountains that shaves like forty minutes off the sunset patrol and if we don't take it right now the light's gonna change and i'll never find the seam again."

mercy blinked. "the seam."

"the seam, merce. between the pink stripe and the orange stripe on the tall mountain. you can walk through it if the sun's at exactly the right angle. i'm ninety percent sure. maybe eighty. seventy is a real number."

"skyla."

"grab your bag with the skull charm, bring the cat if she's coming, tell plain-hero-boy up there we'll be back before the second moon —"

"skyla."

skyla stopped. actually stopped. which was rare enough that mercy filed it away for later, in the little mental drawer where she kept things that mattered.

skyla's smile softened into something less performance, more real. the roses on her arm bloomed a shade deeper.

"hi," skyla said quietly. "sorry. hi. i missed you. is that okay to say out loud in the cemetery or is there a rule."

"there is a rule," mercy said, deadpan, "and the rule is you owe the kingdom a toll. the toll is one hug. non-negotiable. i am the queen. i wrote the rule just now."

skyla laughed and paid the toll. the hum from marceline's bell went warm.

---

up in the umbrella observatory, seth watched the two of them — night and noon, tombstones and grass stains, the queen and the wanderer — head off down the cemetery path toward the candy mountains, skyla already three steps ahead and walking backwards to keep talking, mercy already three steps behind and pretending not to hurry.

he adjusted his plain rectangular glasses. he checked the broadcast dish. he spoke into the little sunset mic, for exactly one listener and also for no one, in the voice he always used at this hour.

"evening, ooo. mercy's got a wanderer on her again. the sky is doing the thing. i'll be up here if anybody needs a plain hero."

marceline the cat leapt from a low branch and landed neatly on his shoulder, drinking a sip of the orange light off his collar like it was cream. she did not follow the girls. she never did on the first shortcut. someone had to stay with the boy who tuned the sky.

seth scratched under her chin. the bell hummed one clean note.

this one is going to be a good one, the hum meant.

and out past the tombstones, past the roses, skyla found her seam in the mountain — right there, exactly where the pink stripe met the orange stripe — and grabbed mercy's hand and pulled her through, and the rose cemetery kingdom, for the first time in a long time, had two queens walking its edges at sunset.

one in platform boots.

one who couldn't stand still.

the sky, obligingly, kept doing the thing.

the sky was doing the thing again — that slow bruised sunset over the Rose Cemetery Kingdom, the kind where the tombstones cast long soft shadows and the candy mountains stripe themselves pink and orange like they were painted on purpose for somebody in particular.

Mercy sat on the top step of the treehouse, gold-chain bag slouched beside her, platform boots kicked off, fishnets snagged from a bramble she swore she did not care about. she was doing what she always did at this hour — half reading a book with a black ribbon marker, half watching Seth putter around the Umbrella Observatory above her, half pretending she was not watching him at all.

Seth, plain hero of null-class, adjusted the little brass telescope. his glasses caught the light. white Gildan tee, dark denim, white low-tops. no jewelry. no tattoos. no bit. just Seth.

"yeah," he said to nobody, "the sky is doing the thing again."

and that is when it happened.

Marceline — vampiric house cat, one visible fang, red collar with the gold bell that hums instead of rings — came trotting up the treehouse ramp with the specific unhurried confidence of a small creature who has just made a large decision. she passed Mercy. she did not stop at Mercy. she did not even do the polite ankle-figure-eight that cats do when they are pretending affection is a formality.

she went straight to Seth.

and she climbed. into. his. lap.

the bell hummed. low. contented. a proximity hum, the kind she only does when she has decided a body is a safe body. Seth froze the way plain heroes freeze — carefully, respectfully, like he had just been handed a very small very warm relic and did not want to be the guy who dropped it.

"oh," said Seth. "okay. hi."

Mercy did not look up from her book.

Mercy absolutely looked up from her book.

the tombstone on her chest — PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES — rose and fell one time, slowly, the way a queen breathes when a queen is choosing not to say a thing. her spiderweb sleeve caught the sunset. her eyeliner did that trick where it makes her blue eyes look like they belong to somebody older than the kingdom.

"cool," Mercy said, in the voice of a person who was not saying cool.

Seth, to his credit, did not move. he understood, in the way plain heroes sometimes understand things without being told, that a cat's chosen lap is a small sacred contract and also that his girlfriend the Rose Necromancer Queen was currently pretending very hard.

"she'll come back over," he offered, gentle.

"i don't need her to come back over," said Mercy, who needed her to come back over.

the bell hummed louder. Marceline, one fang glinting, closed her eyes. she did the slow blink. at Seth. only at Seth.

Mercy turned a page of her book with what can only be described as menace. somewhere in the Rose Cemetery Kingdom, a single rose wilted on principle. the leaning basalt tombstone that read HERE LIES A GOOD MOUSE, 1987 creaked, sympathetically, in Mercy's direction.

Seth watched her not-watch him. he thought about it. then he did the thing plain heroes do that keeps them alive in a kingdom full of sorceresses — he shifted, very carefully, so that his knee touched Mercy's knee through the fishnets. small. quiet. no ceremony.

Mercy did not move her knee.

Mercy absolutely did not move her knee.

"the sky is doing the thing," Seth said again, softer this time, like a password.

Mercy finally, finally, looked at him. at the cat in his lap. at his plain white tee and his plain glasses and his zero accessories and the fact that of all the laps in Ooo — the sorceress lap, the goth lap, the arm-tattooed queen-of-the-cemetery lap — Marceline had picked the plainest one on the whole treehouse.

she understood it, then. the way queens understand things.

the cat had not chosen Seth over her. the cat had chosen the safest place she knew of, and the safest place she knew of was the boy sitting next to Mercy. which meant, in a roundabout Ooo-logic kind of way, that the cat had chosen Mercy too. just from the other side.

Mercy exhaled. the tombstone on her chest rose and fell. she reached over, without looking, and put two fingers on the top of Marceline's small warm head. the bell hummed a third note, harmonizing with the first two.

"traitor," Mercy whispered, with enormous affection.

Seth smiled. Marceline purred. the sunset kept doing the thing. and somewhere down in the Rose Cemetery Kingdom, the rose that had wilted on principle stood right back up.

— end of chapter 3 —

the sun in ooo does this thing at 7:14pm where it sits on the horizon like it forgot what it was doing, and everything gets soft and orange and a little bit lonely. seth was on the umbrella observatory, doing the sunset broadcast. mercy was in the rose cemetery, negotiating with a stubborn tulip. marceline the cat was asleep on the leaning basalt tombstone that reads HERE LIES A GOOD MOUSE, 1987.

and skyla, skyla the wanderer, was — of course — walking.

she had come down the candy-stripe hill at her usual pace, which is to say faster than most people run, curly brown hair bouncing against her cheekbones, harley tee half-tucked into cuffed denim, the little bramble-rose tattoo on her left arm blooming a soft pink because she was, on balance, happy today. she had a stick. she had picked it up two hills ago and had been narrating a story to it. the stick did not mind.

at the base of the treehouse, on the flat mossy rock where seth sometimes eats cereal, there was a boy.

he was just sitting.

skyla slowed down, which she never does.

he had shaggy medium-brown hair that fell into his eyes in a way that suggested he had never once asked it to do anything else. warm hazel-brown eyes. a soft kind face. a well-worn thrifted flannel button-up, green and rust plaid, over a plain cream tee. cuffed jeans. brown boots that had walked exactly as far as they needed to and then stopped. his hands were resting on his knees. he was watching the sunset like it owed him nothing.

"oh," said skyla, out loud, to the stick.

the boy looked over. he did not startle. he did not stand up. he did not do the thing boys do where they arrange themselves into a better version before you get there. he just… tilted his head about four degrees and smiled, small and closed-mouthed and real.

"hey," he said. "you're skyla."

"i'm skyla," she confirmed, because it seemed important to confirm.

"i'm patrick," he said. "mercy said you'd probably come by around now. she said you don't stop moving. she said if i wanted to meet you i should sit somewhere with a good view and just be patient."

"and you did that," said skyla.

"i did that," said patrick.

a small ooo breeze moved through the roses. the bell on marceline's collar hummed, low, from somewhere in the cemetery. seth's voice drifted down from the umbrella observatory, faint and warm: yeah, the sky is doing the thing again.

skyla opened her mouth to keep talking. she had a whole story queued up. it was a good one. it had three separate hills in it and a bit about a lizard. she was going to tell it while walking, because that is how she tells stories, on the move, gesturing with a stick, already halfway to the next thing.

"so anyway, on the second hill i saw this —"

she was going to keep running. she really was. the story was right there. her legs were already tensed for the next step. the stick was raised. she was mid-word — saw — and the plan was to finish the sentence sixty feet from here, minimum.

patrick did not move.

he just kept watching the sunset, kind and quiet, and left a space next to him on the mossy rock, not by moving over — he had picked his spot correctly the first time — but by simply being the sort of person you could sit next to without it being a whole thing.

skyla sat down.

she did not decide to. her knees just… folded. the stick went across her lap. the sentence she had been mid-way through — so anyway, on the second hill i saw this — hung in the orange air between them, unfinished, and neither of them reached to grab it.

the little bramble-rose on her arm bloomed one shade pinker.

"oh," said skyla again, quieter this time. "you're really just sitting."

"yeah," said patrick.

"is that a whole thing you do?"

"kind of my main thing," he said. "i figure the world moves fast enough on its own. someone's gotta stay put so the rest of you know where to come back to."

skyla considered this. she had walked, by her own rough count, most of ooo. she had summited three of the candy mountains. she had been to the edge of the grass wizard's bramble and come back with pollen in her hair. she had never, not once, sat on a rock at 7:14pm and watched the sun do the thing.

"i think," she said slowly, "i've been walking so i wouldn't have to notice how nice this is."

patrick did not say anything clever back. he did not say anything at all. he just nodded, once, small, and kept his hands on his knees, and let the sunset keep happening.

from the observatory, seth's voice again, further away now, gentle: orange bleeding into pink, pink bleeding into that weird green it does right before dark. love that for us.

from the cemetery, a rustle. mercy, in her platform buckle boots, walking a slow patrol between the headstones, her orange-to-pink ombre catching the last of the light. she looked up, saw the two of them on the rock, and did the smallest smile — the one she saves for when a plan works out exactly the way she hoped it would.

marceline the cat opened one eye. the bell hummed. she closed it again.

skyla leaned back on her palms. the stick rolled off her lap into the moss. she did not go after it.

"okay," she said. "okay. i see it. i see why mercy likes you."

"she said the same thing about you," said patrick. "except she said it about three times, and once she said it with her whole chest."

skyla laughed. it was a real laugh, not a moving laugh, not a laugh she threw over her shoulder while heading for the next hill. it just came out and sat there with them.

the sun finished doing the thing.

they stayed on the rock a while longer. neither of them said much. skyla's tattoo was fully bloomed now, a soft pink garland from wrist to elbow. patrick's hands never left his knees. the stick stayed in the moss.

somewhere above, seth signed off the broadcast the way he always does — alright ooo, that's the sky. go be soft. seth out. — and the umbrella observatory light clicked off with a small, satisfied tunk.

"i should probably keep going," said skyla, eventually. she did not move.

"you can," said patrick. "i'll be here."

and that, more than anything, was the thing that made her stay another ten minutes.

— end of chapter four —

miranda does not appear in this chapter. she does not appear in the next one either. she has never once climbed the treehouse ladder, never sat cross-legged on the mossy roots of the umbrella observatory, never accepted a slice of the pink cake mercy keeps in the little cottage fridge. and yet — she is here. she is always here. she arrives the way weather arrives: through the mouth of someone else.

seth learned early that when mercy tilts her head and starts a sentence with "okay so miranda says—", the correct response is to put down whatever he is holding. once it was a mug. once it was a controller. once it was the last uncracked egg from the henhouse behind the rose cemetery gates. he puts the thing down. he says yeah, the sky is doing the thing again, which is what he always says when he does not know what else to say, and mercy laughs — that short one-note laugh, the one that sounds like a bell that was hung on marceline's collar by mistake — and continues.

quote the first, over morning coffee

"miranda says the difference between being loved and being handled is whether the other person asks you questions after the first month."

mercy delivers this while pouring cold brew into a chipped mug that says WORLD'S OKAYEST NECROMANCER. she does not look at seth when she says it. she looks at the mug. seth, who has been asking mercy questions steadily for one hundred and forty-two days — about her sisters, about the shape of her hometown, about whether she prefers her eyeliner sharp or smudged on a given tuesday — feels something warm and specific settle behind his sternum. he does not comment on the quote. he pours himself coffee. he asks her what her plan is for the afternoon. mercy's mouth does a small thing at the corner. she answers.

quote the second, at the rose cemetery gate

marceline the cat is winding around mercy's platform boots, red collar humming low the way it hums when she is thinking about something a mouse-shaped ghost said. mercy is looking at a tombstone that she has looked at every day for a year. she says, without preamble:

"miranda says grief is just love with nowhere to put itself down. so you build shelves."

seth thinks about this for a long time. long enough that a whole cloud drifts across the sunset and back. he says, eventually, the shelves are the graves, huh. mercy does not answer with words. she reaches over and takes his hand, and her rings are cold, and the botanical tattoo on her forearm — the one that curls up under the fishnets — is doing the small twitching thing it does when she is trying not to cry in front of a plain hero. he squeezes back once. that is the whole conversation.

quote the third, at 2:47 in the morning

mercy is not asleep. seth is not asleep either, because mercy is not asleep, and that is how it works now. the umbrella observatory ticks softly above them. marceline is a small warm loaf on seth's ankles.

"miranda says the scariest thing about being chosen is having to believe the person doing it."

seth, in the dark, does not say yeah, the sky is doing the thing again. he says, quietly, i chose you on tuesday. i'm choosing you now. i'll choose you again tomorrow. that's three data points. that's a trend line. mercy makes a wet laughing sound. she rolls over. she puts her forehead against his shoulder. the plain hero curse — the one where nothing dramatic ever happens to him — absorbs the moment and files it under load-bearing.

quote the fourth, in a text to skyla

this one seth only hears about later. skyla, sunlit and freckled and midway through walking patrick's shaggy dog across a bloomington sidewalk, forwards it to seth with three crying-laughing emojis. the message reads:

"miranda says goth girls who date plain boys are just witches who found a good grounding rod."

seth reads this at the sink. he laughs out loud, alone, at his own reflection in the dark window above the basin. he texts back a single yeah. skyla sends back a heart. the bramble-rose on her forearm, three miles away, blooms one small pink flower that nobody sees.

quote the fifth, the one he thinks about most

mercy says it on a walk. no context. no lead-in. the sun is doing the ombre thing on the horizon that matches her hair on purpose.

"miranda says the thing about being the friend everyone quotes is that eventually you stop knowing which thoughts are yours."

and seth understands, then, why miranda is never in the room. why mercy will not let him meet her yet, will not schedule the coffee, will not send the introduction text. mercy is protecting her. mercy is being the shelf. mercy is loving somebody so carefully that she is willing to be the only mouth they speak through, so that miranda can go on being a whole person somewhere off-page, un-flattened by anyone's version of her — including mercy's own.

seth does not say any of this out loud. he takes mercy's hand again. the rings are still cold. he says, i hope i get to meet her someday. mercy says, you will. when she's ready. she picks her rooms. and then, quieter, almost to herself: miranda says the people worth knowing are the ones who make you wait at the door.

the sunset does the thing. marceline hums. the chapter ends with miranda still not here, and yet — undeniably, permanently, load-bearingly — here.

tuesday in Ooo arrives the way tuesdays always do — softly, without ceremony, wearing the same orange sky it wore yesterday. no quests. no candy wars. no sudden portals opening above the Rose Cemetery Kingdom. just a tuesday.

Mercy, the Rose Necromancer Queen, wakes first, which is unusual. she is not a morning creature by choice or by class. but the light comes in slanted through the tombstone-shaped window of the treehouse loft and lays a warm stripe across her cheek, and she does not fight it. she sits up. her orange-to-pink ombre hair is doing something feral. she does not fix it. she pads down the ladder barefoot in her all-black bodycon mini dress and one distressed fishnet — the other one gave up in the night — and does not put on the platform boots. the floorboards are warm. that is enough.

Marceline the Cat is already awake, because Marceline the Cat is always already awake. her gold bell hums, low, the sound of a refrigerator two rooms over. she is watching a beam of dust drift past a leaning basalt tombstone that reads HERE LIES A GOOD MOUSE, 1987. she does not pounce. today is not a pouncing day. she blinks slowly at Mercy. Mercy blinks slowly back. a whole conversation happens.

Seth, The Plain Hero, is on the roof. of course he is. he is always on the roof on tuesdays. the Umbrella Observatory is really just a patio umbrella wedged into the treehouse rail and a lawn chair that has seen things, but Seth calls it the observatory and so it is the observatory. his short shag brown hair is stuck up on one side. his thin dark-frame rectangular glasses are smudged. he is wearing the same plain grey Gildan 500 crewneck he wore monday, which was the same one he wore sunday, and this is a load-bearing feature of Seth, not a bug. he is holding a coffee. it is his second. the sky is doing a soft washed-out lavender thing at the horizon and he is looking at it the way other heroes look at prophecies.

Mercy climbs up onto the roof. she does not announce herself. she just appears at his elbow the way cats and queens do. she leans her head on his shoulder. Seth does not startle. Seth never startles on tuesdays.

mercy: is the sky doing the thing.

seth: yeah. the sky is doing the thing again.

they sit. Marceline the Cat materializes on the railing between them, because Marceline the Cat has opinions about being included. the gold bell hums. no one drinks the coffee. Seth just holds it because holding it is the point.

down at the roots of the tree, in the small cottage that Mercy insists is a cottage and Seth insists is a shed with pretensions, the front gate creaks. it is Skyla the Wanderer, because Skyla the Wanderer cannot sit still on a tuesday any more than she can on any other day of the week. she is in the Harley graphic tee today and cuffed dark denim and the same sneakers she has had since chapter two. her shoulder-length dark brown curly wavy hair frames her face the way it always does — never tied back, because tying it back would be a concession. the small floral linework sleeve on her left arm is blooming a little pink at the edges. it does that when she is happy. she is happy. it is tuesday.

Patrick, The Anchor, is behind her, because Patrick is always behind her, and this is not a comment on their dynamic, this is just physics. Skyla moves at Skyla speed. Patrick moves at Patrick speed. Patrick speed is the speed of a well-worn thrifted flannel button-up over a plain tee and cuffed jeans and brown boots that have never once been in a hurry. his shaggy medium-brown hair is doing nothing in particular. his warm hazel-brown eyes are half closed. he is carrying a paper bag from the candy mountain bakery. he sits down on the cottage step and does not get back up for a full hour. this is his contribution to the day, and it is a significant one.

skyla: we brought morning buns. patrick carried them. i carried patrick spiritually.

patrick: (smiles. does not speak. this is the anchor at work.)

Mercy comes down from the roof to hug Skyla, because Mercy always comes down from the roof to hug Skyla. sunlit-natural and night-goth, side by side on the cottage step, laughing at nothing. Seth watches from above with the small proud tilt of a plain hero who has correctly assembled a friend group. Marceline the Cat descends the trunk headfirst like it is normal. it is normal, for her.

the morning buns are eaten. the coffee is finally drunk. Patrick has still not moved from the step but has acquired a small pink flower behind one ear, placed there by Skyla in a gesture so casual it barely registered, and he wears it with the quiet dignity of a man who understands that being decorated by someone you love is a form of prayer.

around noon, a scroll flutters down out of nowhere. this happens sometimes in Ooo. Mercy catches it without looking. it is not a quest. it is a text, functionally — a small folded note in familiar handwriting.

"a day spent doing nothing with the right people is not a wasted day. it is the whole point of the days." — Miranda, probably

Mercy reads it aloud. Skyla says, "miranda is so annoying about being right." Seth says, "yeah." Patrick says nothing, but the flower behind his ear tilts in what is definitely a nod. Marceline the Cat, who has never met Miranda and never will, purrs anyway, because Miranda has that effect even at a distance. Mercy tucks the note into the pocket of her mini dress. it will end up on the tombstone-shaped windowsill by evening, next to the other quotes, which is where Miranda lives in this house — as a running footnote in Mercy's handwriting, always present, never in the room.

the afternoon does the thing afternoons do when you are not asking anything of them. Skyla wanders the cemetery paths and reports back on which roses are blooming which color today. around three, the vampire queen drops in without knocking, hovers over the rosarium for exactly as long as it takes to drain one rose of its color, says nothing to anybody, and leaves the same way she came. this happens often enough that no one looks up. the rose is pink again by dinner. it always is. Patrick moves, eventually, but only from the step to the porch swing, which is generous of him. Seth goes back to the observatory and does not observe anything in particular. Mercy lies on her back in the grass with Marceline the Cat asleep on her sternum and watches the striped candy mountains not move. no one checks a clock. there is no clock. it is Ooo.

at some point Skyla says, quietly, "we should do this more." and Mercy says, "we do this all the time." and Skyla says, "yeah but we should NAME it." and no one names it, and that is how it gets its name.

evening comes the way evening comes when you have earned nothing and been given everything. the orange sky deepens into the pink one, and the pink one deepens into that specific Ooo purple that does not exist on any real color wheel. the umbrella observatory glows a little. someone lights a lantern in the cottage window. Marceline the Cat's gold bell hums a full octave lower than it did this morning, which is her way of saying she approves.

Patrick stands up. this is an event. Skyla applauds, softly. Patrick bows. the small pink flower is still behind his ear. they walk home the way they came, unhurried, Skyla three paces ahead and Patrick three paces behind, and the distance between them is not distance, it is choreography.

Mercy climbs back up to the roof. Seth is still there because Seth is always still there. she sits next to him on the lawn chair that has seen things. Marceline the Cat curls on the umbrella spoke above them and pretends to sleep. the sky finishes doing the thing and starts doing the next thing, which is stars.

mercy: nothing happened today.

seth: yeah.

mercy: good.

seth: yeah.

the Rose Cemetery Kingdom sleeps. the treehouse creaks once, settling. a good mouse, 1987, rests undisturbed. somewhere in a cottage across town, Miranda is being quoted by someone who has never met her. Skyla's tattoo is still a little pink at the edges. Patrick is asleep before his head hits the pillow, which is his signature move. Marceline the Cat opens one eye at the moon, closes it, and hums.

tuesday, over. tuesday, kept. tuesday, ours.

yeah. the sky is doing the thing again.