“Just don’t tell ’em you keep your runes near your gnomy bits, amigo,” Gonzo jokes. “’Cause that is seriously off-putting.”
We drive down a few miles to a quiet part of the beach. No college revelers here. Just a few families with their kids, a handful of old people camped in their beach chairs facing the late-day sun. We move far away from them, not that they’re watching us anyway. They’re enjoying their own paradise bubbles.
Balder’s back in his surfer uniform. He pulls up the leggings, takes off his flip-flops, and wades out to the edge of the water. A wave nudges his toes.
“Oh my,” Balder says. I’ve never seen him so happy. “That is … wonderful.” He cups his hands over his eyes to cut the glare and keeps watch for his ship.
A piece of driftwood has washed up on shore. I take it and write my name in the sand. The water rushes over my name, makes it into some new word, then erases it completely. Using the driftwood as a walking stick, I hike along the shore, thinking about Dulcie, about the way her wings felt, smooth and soft except for the spines in each feather. Nestled into all that velvety down was something solid but supple, something hard to break, hundreds of them fanning out around me like the softest, most improbable shell. It makes me smile to know she’s in the world. That’s all.
A feather drops onto my head, followed by another, and another. Feathers fall like snow from the sky. A great big pillow fight of feathers coating my skin, the beach, the water, till all I can do is twirl and laugh in them, a character in my own broken snow globe.
We stay longer than we should, probably. The day is spent talking and building badass sand castles, taking Balder for rides on the waves. It’s all been so nice just being together that I haven’t wanted to leave. Now the sun’s low in the sky, and Gonzo and I sit in the sand while Balder finishes constructing a moat around his castle, waiting for Ringhorn, which he assures us will come with the evening tide.
“Thirty more minutes,” I tell him.
“It will come,” Balder insists, and goes back to looking.
“Hey, you wanna see if we can crash that shit by the taco stand?” Gonzo nods in the direction of a small party that’s sprung up off to our right.
“Nah,” I say.
A wave rushes over my toes and back out. The sand goes soft and sucks at my foot. Seagulls congregate on a dune, pecking at a piece of bread. An old couple parks their chairs near the boardwalk. The wind shifts, carrying the sounds of a volleyball game down the shore.
“Seems like we should be doing something,” Gonzo says.
“We are doing something.”
“Yeah. Guess so.”
We sit staring out at that vast ocean, Gonzo and I, just watching the sky colors drip into the sea like a giant percolator, making something sweet and strong, something to keep you going when all you’ve got left are fumes.
Maybe there’s a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we’ve ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we’re an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we’re still hardwired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we’re all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again—each of us playing our parts in the others’ plot-lines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it.
Or maybe there’s something to what Junior said about those black holes singing. That B-flat? Maybe that’s the last sound we make when we join the universe, something to say, I was here. One last “Whoo-hoo!” before we’re pulled into the vast, dark unknown and shot out into some other galaxy, some other world, where we have the chance to do it differently. I don’t know. It’s something to think about, though.
“This is pretty f**ked up, dude,” Gonz says, giving me that big, lovable lopsided grin.
I know what he means, and I want to say something back, but I can’t find the words for how incredible this is any more than I can pin the sky in place. I’m happy to be right here, right now. And I know, even as I’m surrounded by this feeling, that it will take its arms away soon enough. Tears sting my eyes. I turn my head so Gonzo can’t see.
“Hey, new bumper sticker,” Gonzo announces. “This car powered by the Dwarf of Destiny!”
I wipe my face against my shoulder. “Everyone says you’re paranoid.”