Spin Glass

He tells me all the places he went. "I wanted those specific fries from that one place that fell through the world, you know, but I got so caught up exploring, trying to find it. The Red Shack, do you remember?"

"Of course!" And I'm snuggling up against him but I swear I am being helpful, too, I'm unpacking things and putting them where we go. Overwhelmingly the trip was for produce—we need a healthy sum of fruits and vegetables to keep up our cooking. But also there is a lot of pantry stuffing. And sometimes—often actually—Tabi finds things in the Room below the house that are just interesting, and he wants to bring them. Things that the world forgot. Especially with food it can be so easy to forget, but even a little reminder can bring back the sights, smells, tastes, all in crystal clarity. And when he mentioned those fries from the Red Shack it brings back so much, the fact that we ate them burning hot, the fact that they were salted way too much and crispy beyond belief, the fact that I ate them while doing some terrifically silly, kinky things to Tabi. My hands are splendid memory for this kind of thing.

And we retrieve the take-out box from one bag and through methods of magic and the occult, they are still hot. Very hot. Steaming. And our heads are aligned on this, because we dig in without pause.

We are leaned in over our dining table on two four-legged stools and we are eating take-out french fries from a place that doesn't exist anymore. And because it has been a long day for him, and a very drab day for me, we are doing something kinky under the table. We are playing footsie. One foot goes over another, our toes sometimes interlock and push against each other... this is not erotic but it is erotic for me. I am semi-hard and warm, buffeted by waves of embarrassed joy. And eating is only a half-distraction.

"Good pick?" he signs, smiling. His mouth curls along his muzzle. He already knows the answer.

I wave around a fry. "Obviously," I reply. They satisfy the primal section of the human brain that craves greasy junk.

He doesn't want to talk about anything lofty and neither do I. He just tells me, "I have a running theory that French fries get enormously better if the rest of the food at a restaurant is subpar."

He's piqued my interest. "Was the rest of the food subpar?"

"Good question. Let's find out!" And with a laugh Tabi holds up another take-out box. "Burger."

"Burger."

We try the burger—a Red Shack Classic with pickles—in tandem, and then try the fries again and then nibble at the burger again, and decide cumulatively that the burger is subpar. It's actually very below par. The bun is cheap and the meat is—well I think I would describe it as empty, it feels insubstantial. When I was a kid I got bougie burgers at local places all the time, but I also enjoy whatever crummy fast food sandwiches I can get my hands on, and this is significantly more flimsy than even that. Tabi and I trade opinions back and forth like an annoying, nitpicky couple. Of course the Red Shack is not operating anymore so they cannot hear our criticism, so I figure it's okay.

His thesis holds true for now. If the food is bad, the fries get better. "I swear I've had good fries at good places," I sign.

"Then we'll just have to find them." And Tabi has the most enormously sly smile. "Tonight?"

"Perfect."

But it isn't tonight yet. And actually at this moment Tabi breaks my heart a little bit, because he mentions something I wasn't expecting, and simultaneously something I was dreading. And Tabi signs to me, "But it will probably have to wait, actually, because of the ritual. You might still need time to recover."

Ritual, and that word echoes in my mind. And I am visualizing all it entails. Magic and the occult.

I am tentative when I ask him, "What exactly is that going to be like?"

His tone is delicate. When I search his eyes, he is clearly unsure of how to phrase things. What words to use, so as to minimize side effects. "I can't promise you much," he tells me. "I have been preparing for it for a while, in spare time. I know you will be safe, but you might feel pain. We'd have to deal with that if it arises."

And my hands feel a tremble roll through them. "And I'll just be able to hear? Like magic?"

"Like magic," he tells me. It is so direct and reassuring. It is difficult to parse the truth in his words. "How do you feel about it?"

"I'm scared," I sign.



Tabi pauses, and so does our game of footsie. He gives me a little defeated look. "That's alright. Like I mentioned, we can cancel at the absolute last minute. And I can't imagine what any of this is like for you, darling, you've got a lot to consider here." And it is like he is in my head again, in all the many corners of the room, when he says what he says next. "I will never consider you not deaf. You are still who you are."

He has the words he knows I would like to be told. "Alright," I sign, muted, after a few long moments. "So long as I can stop it right before it happens. Classic me."

Tabi laughs a single laugh. "You would certainly not be you if you didn't give it thought, right? Lots of thought."

"No idea," I sign, and I am grumbling under my breath. The air still smells like Red Shack Classic with Fries. "Tabi, my mind is terrible at thinking about difficult things, you know this. I can't decide on anything."

"I suppose." He has been in my head. He has had his hands around my nervous system and felt my pitfall traps when I fall into them. "Okay, that is on me. I don't mean to imply that the waffling back and forth is always something you like doing. This is a big life change and I'm sorry that you can't figure it out for yourself."



"It's alright," I tell him, muted in tone. "It isn't remotely your fault."



He cranes his head down so that I can see him, his smile. His smile is muted and dim. Tired. "I know, but still," he signs, a little playful, but a little run-down.

I actually have something here I would like to point out about Tabi, about his looks, about his expressive nature. In his gaze, I see his feeling of powerlessness. He is glancing a little off to the right now and then and his breath is unsteady and all of him is vulnerable, overwhelmed, embarrassed. He feels like I am inscrutable, that I am broken somehow, and that he has ruined my day. Like I have said in the past, it is his tendency to take blame for all things in his little world. But also it his tendency to take responsibility for the bigger questions, like that of suffering, confusion, trauma. I think he feels as if I am meant to be completely in bliss, and anything less is ugly.

For Tabi, all things are his fault.

I am happy almost all of the time. I am extremely happy extremely often. Why isn't that enough for me? And it is like he is here, asking me this question. Why isn't this enough for you?

And another question is bubbling up right this second. It is an uncomfortable question. Why do I feel bad for him?

Why is it that everything is his fault, and I must feel guilt for this fact? I am partially responsible for any bit of Tabi that feels insignificant. I am responsible for my own happiness. If I am unhappy, it means—directly, really—that Tabi has failed to do something, anything. It's an infinite guilt chain. Where to even begin?

Of course I don't believe this. And I don't think he does either. But I am staring into those eyes that won't really meet mine and wondering what it is that this is.

It is sort of love.

I don't know what love means anymore.

You could, if so inclined, slice it up in many different ways. I have pretty often seen our relationship as transactional. This to me means that we are exchanging something for one another, that we are not actually sharing something. Also our relationship is mutual, from a different angle. We have shared experiences and joy. At times when I gain something, we both gain something. There isn't really a loss—or any kind of expenditure on touch, embrace, sex. And these things could not exist if we did not both contribute.

Of course my existence in his house is a transaction in some ways. If I were not in love with him, if there truly was nothing there, then Tabi would surely not be gaining anything, and giving everything.

Then again he has told me he does not view any aspect of our lives as transactional, as an expenditure. Caretaking is his tendency. His world is its own reward. And also he does not really view it as an optional thing, as something that he would ever voluntarily opt out of—Tabi must have a home and he must have people in it, and he would like them to love him dearly, but he would also like for their lives to be sweet and without agony. And he does not want for anything in return. This is mutual.

What is it that he feels? and I don't have the answer. It is mutual in ways that I will never really know, not without asking. And I am built of the wrong parts to ask.

I am built of the wrong parts to ask him, why are you unhappy when I'm unhappy?

Why do you hold me so tight?

Actually in grade school I was yelled at a lot by a teacher named... well he was named something but it isn't here anymore. And yelling in the ear of somebody with a Cochlear implant really doesn't accomplish much, as I've said. And he was frustrated with me, because I wouldn't stop apologizing.

I am sorry that I couldn't do your homework in time,

and I'm sorry that that terrible thing happened to me,

and I'm sorry for the way that I am.



Here is how the author of Djiban describes this:



She is a little misformed thing... a grad student and a fucking poseur of the arts. Behind her eyes she betrays a sort of malevolence. Between all the ley lines I see her true form. She is stinking, rotting meat, responsible for a great deal of worldly injury. Her battered demeanor tells me all I need to know. When I hear those words leave her lips I am so furious with her... "I'm sorry, professor," and her flesh is telling me she is apologizing, but what for? The answer is simple. She is sorry for the Big Bang, she is sorry for what's happened to my leg. She is sorry for the sacrifice of the women and children in the old days—she is sorry for the storms and the earthquakes and the damn solar flares! She's sorry for it all, but she doesn't know it yet. The trauma runs through her. She is part and parcel... for all what's wrong.



Sometimes I feel this way. Responsibility and blame are odd things and I have been accused of being at fault for a lot of what's awful in the world. Of course this starts with the mundane. I still have a vivid recollection of the first time my dad accused me of being responsible for his shitty mood. Fault.



"Darling?" signs Tabi.

My sheep. I am staring off into nothing and my breath is low, lethargic. I have trouble recalling where we were in conversation. His deep, reserved expression says, simply, that he is worried he's said something wrong.

"Sorry," I sign back, slow. "I'm a little zoned out still. I was feeling shitty before you got back—stomach bug or something."

He exhales. "Relentless. You had that yesterday too. Any idea if it's the food, or...?"

I shrug. It's the shrug of the universe. "If we knew, we'd be solving basically everything."

"Well, I won't insist on trying to find the cause too much." There's a hint of relief and satisfaction that I'm not currently inconsolable, that I'll talk back to him. His world is fine. "Anything fascinating on your mind while you zoned out?"

He has given me the smallest section of rope. And because I am still a little hazy, for some reason I decide to bite down. "...Tabi, do you feel unhappy when I'm unhappy?"

And a moment passes, and he gives it some honest thought. Then, he asks, "Do you feel that way?"

"Often, yeah. I want you to be happy."

He scritches at his long chin, and signs with a sort of reverence. His words are so lofty—so pointed. "One way of looking at it is... to view our boats as entwined. Roped together. When the seas take us, we sink together. We can also doom one another by taking on our own water... though I think this is part of why we got connected. There is some tension in this relationship that makes it electric." And Tabi has the most marvelous, unreadable grin. "It's more difficult than floating alone. We must share responsibility, for some reason, for everything that happens. Counterintuitively we are twice as vulnerable to trauma when together, and hardly more guarded."

"But I like this."

"Exactly," Tabi replies, frenetic. "For some reason I like this, too. Much more than if you were static. Pardon the way this sounds, but I like having reality creep in. I like that you are a complicated person. It's fulfilling."

And when I lean back, I feel a little bit of looseness come into my muscles. I find that this always happens when Tabi talks to me in such frank terms. He is capable of playing multiple angles—sometimes unreadable, utterly sure of himself. And right now he is terrifically un-guarded. His painted exterior is missing. He is not the Tabi in my head, but the Tabi in my view. He is reality.

"I don't always really know how to feel about it," I sign, "the way that we share the same shitty feelings. The fact that my bad mood can cascade into yours."

"And yet it will not," he replies. "We are at once the same boat. I do not believe in sinking."

And I don't know how to reply but to snicker, and he laughs, and we both laugh at the absurdity of such a statement. He dips his head in a bit of embarrassment, but we are sharing it. We are the same stupid vessel. And when it all dies down, I feel we have gone nowhere. Just muted smiles and exhaustion.

I can be sorry for whatever I wish. In the end, it is Tabi who will guide us to shore.

I am little against the waves.



And when all this is done, and we sigh, Tabi pushes his left foot against the top of mine. His toes dig into my stockings, soft keratin against wool against fur, all many layers of wonder.

"Ah, thank God," I sign, hiding a bigger grin. "I thought we were done for good."

Tabi shakes his head firmly, doting all over me with his words. "No, of course not. If not for your sake, then for mine. I've been eager to do this all day, darling."

Kink is sort of a shortcut to my heart. Kink and fetish are core facets of homosexuality, and also all the many other branches of the wondrous tree of queer. It is the sense that we are alone in our fetishes that makes them potent, that makes them special—it is the many years spent being weirded out by myself that makes Tabi so lovely. I have a foot fetish. I am gay. I am a furry. Tabi loves all these things about me. He wants to join me in them.

The world is not full of life rafts, and he is mine, and he is rare. And when he locks his toes with mine, and stares at me with the most devilish glare of all, I am hard again so quickly. I am touched by the significance of this moment. "I've been eager too, but I forgot how easy it is to tell you," I sign.

And Tabi pushes his soles down into mine, forcing us into the carpet. Pause. "Right, so—as a reminder, yesterday you mentioned you'd love a footjob during a meal. This may have been sort of joking at the time, but..."

I stop him there. I can't stop smiling, because it's stricken on me like a scar. "Joking to you, maybe, but I'm always serious about that stuff."

"Obviously. You always like it when I do it, so." He performs a subtle maneuver. From his position he stops clamping down on my shins and instead begins crawling his toes up my calf, sliding with some oomph. He has told me that he practices on the legs of tables, sometimes. He likes to make it a dramatic sort of show for me, and moving your leg like this isn't exactly natural. And he is tightening my stockings as he pushes up, and then his other foot begins doing the same... and all the while Tabi stares into me with this fierce, dominant gaze. It is silly. Of course it's silly. I am not the sort of person that likes humiliation in the direct sense, but I am always made a pleasant kind of vulnerable when he looks at me like this, knowing I am easy to fuck with.

"So should I just keep eating?" I am shaky all over. A relentless erotic need is making my body parts shiver. It's right then that I remember how cold I felt earlier, and how warm I feel now.

Tabi leans back in his seat, but I can tell he's doing this partly to get better leverage with his legs. "Of course! Just eat like nothing's happening. Act natural, so I can break your natural."

"Fuuuck's sake." And I laugh one single, exasperated laugh, lean over the table, and try to focus on the meal he brought home.

A Red Shack Classic comes with fries that are crispy and sooty and Tabi is putting his toes between my thighs and forcing my legs apart to stretch my skirt. And the fries always have too much salt, which makes them luscious, forcing you to eat them one at a time, and Tabi is snickering because he's putting his feet up, like he's using my seat as a footrest, but instead his bare soles reside in the incredibly personal zone of my groin, pressing light against my balls and half-hard shaft, all the while a thin layer of cotton panties prevent the chill from becoming overwhelming. The Red Shack was a place in the outskirts of downtown Portland—it doesn't matter which Portland, one of them—and it was mediocre and bougie but it got by for six years and then eventually it fell through the world when everyone forgot about it because the only good part was the fries. And even the fries are barely a distraction for my mind while Tabi begins to massage me. He puts one toe forth, then two, then pulls my panties down my thighs slow.

"Darling," he signs, not pausing his movement under the table, "tell me you haven't had better fast food than this."

He's fucking quizzing me, all the while turning my crossdress into kink. Crossdress is only kink if you have an erection as needy as this. My balls rest against the hem of my skirt, and not long afterwards, I can feel Tabi extending his soles directly into my genitals. Hot and cold. And I try to focus on just talking, talking. "I'm sure I have," I sign. It's very clumsy and stilted. "Especially places that aren't just burgers and fries. Food trucks are—"

Tabi grips my shaft with two keratinous toes. There's a chill present... deep uncertainty, until he clamps those toes together to put grip on me. He grins playfully, like I'm not in on a joke. "What was that? I missed it."

I shift all over. Choking. I need to grip tightly against the table with my free hand while Tabi gropes me. "Food trucks," I sign, "are the best fast food."

"Oh? Like what?" He extends his knee. He is now stepping on my dick sideways, pressing me against my own stomach and waistband. Screw you.

I shudder. "Mexican food is... good, and you can take it to go easily." I sound like a robot. It takes enormous concentration to sign even a single word. I have been translating my ASL into prose in English and this is even more stilted, hands shaking, I am no longer close to fluent. And after I finish my stiff, stupid sentence, I buck my hips without meaning to. A stream of precum drools from my tip down my shaft and into the space between Tabi's grabby toes, and soon he is using that pre to lubricate his foot. His movements are slow and gradual, but there is still a sense of unwieldiness—it's his feet, not his hands. He clenches tighter than he would otherwise. I have to do some of the pumping.

And Tabi leans forward again. It must take all his concentration to be this way. "Sweetheart, go on. And do not stop until you cum."

In his gaze I see myself spinning around, around, around in his orbit.

Particle spin is not literal spin. It's close but it's not the same. And we are in love or something close. Certainly right now... I cannot imagine anything else but his world. Him.

His eyes.

His hooves.



All my focus is put into my dignity. I am—in a way—stumbling over my words, having to re-sign and re-iterate and communicate my stupid ideas about food trucks and metropolitan environments and Mexican food, and of course it is all nonsense, but Tabi is an irritatingly adept listener, and he keeps asking me pointed questions. You think so? Oh? What about...? and so on. And I am digging into the carpet with my toes to try and focus, to try and even maintain eye contact. He is saying so many things with his gaze right now. He is insisting that I will fail, because he has both legs outstretched under the table, and he is massaging my penis with two feet, locked in half-harmonious rhythm. One foot sits at my base, holding me in place with the soft of his sole. His other delicately massages me, rolling up and down the length of my shaft, his toes wrapped around the top of my dick. I am stupidly sensitive now. This is developing into edging—he slows down the closer I am to orgasm.

At this point I am nearly at tears. Tabi asks me, "do you think any place like that would end up in the Room?" and it is then that I break down. I don't care. I just want to thrust

and pump

all I want is what he is giving me.

"Please," I sign. "Please."

Tabi stares at me a long moment, and then as if on air, he crosses one leg over. He puts my dick between two toes, clenches tighter than ever before, and lets me do the moving.

"Careful, darling," he tells me. "Don't make too much of a scene—you look so beautiful like this."

My movements are limited. Right now I have my hands flat on the table and they are my only real method of moving my body. I have to force myself forwards and backwards, I have to contort my hips in a way that is wholly difficult. My breathing is so labored... but there's a sense of peace. I went on looking as normal as possible for as long as possible.

Now I will try and be beautiful.

Over the top end of the table, just as I decide to be warbly and stupid and thrust into Tabi's toes, I feel him wrap one of his hands around mine. He brings my attention sharply to him. He does not tell me anything I don't already know—he simply looks me in the eyes. He wants to see climax face-to-face. I let my muzzle fall open, I let a trail of drool seep down my chin, and I just pant desperately for air, as I thrust, and thrust, and thrust

and continue thrusting even as I realize I'm going over the edge

fuck

and my breath breaks in half. The twitching is full-body, and I can feel no relief until I let it all out out out—I shoot a line of cum with such ferocity that it aches, and then another, and Tabi's toes tighten around my dick, and all the while he is just looking at me, staring my femme self down. I can't imagine I look dignified. I feel like I have forgotten the world. He slicks his foot along my length as I thrust, every inch sopping wet with pre at this point, and the ecstasy of it just makes me feel light.

I am lifting off the chair. I am desperate to breathe but don't feel like retaining the air. This is the splendid power of kink—nobody but Tabi would let me do this with such glee.

Another few spurts. It is these late shots during climax that feel the best, that deliver the most warmth up my spine. It is simply extraordinary how casual this all was—how unfazed Tabi continues to look as I drool cum onto the top of his foot. Every few moments a shudder goes through me so strong that I squeal again.

I would love to bathe in this forever, as I've said. It is only his touch that brings me out. I think I've been gyrating for thirty seconds now, panting, still humping Tabi's foot, and he caresses me by the cheek—his touch is so, so soft. "My love," he signs, pulling away slow, "you sound at ease."

I am still wriggling a bit when he tells me this, and still rather light from orgasm, but it still makes me laugh. "Yeah. Sort of. I feel excellent."

"Tch. But you probably alerted the whole restaurant."

I don't quite have the energy to roll my eyes. "Tabi," I tell him, "it's the Red Shack. Nobody cares."

He snickers gleefully, and I can feel his laughs all the way down to my limpening penis. The cold is really starting to seep in, mixing with this glorious afterglow. It's discomfort, but a fun sort. "Come on, it's not that playful of an establishment. Either way, darling, you really ought to—"

"—clean it up?"

Tabi curls his toes against the fur of my groin. "Mmm-hm. Exactly."

Amidst all this stupid kink, I still have it in me to sink underneath the table without shame, with my panties around my thighs, with my legs nearly buckling under shuddery joy. This is not my favorite part, but it does sound especially fun when I'm horny. Currently my head is amidst a post-orgasm fog, and so it does not strike me as remotely weird to get on my knees and—lick my cum off of Tabi's feet. It should be the most demeaning part, but it is by far the most intimate.

It is a relationship of power, at least in appearance. It used to be that human beings forced other human beings to kiss their feet as a point of humiliation, as a form of power. This—isn't that. I want this. I want to feel a little humiliated, but also a little bit like I'm being humored. I exist in the point of oddity that kink and queerness allows, and Tabi is more willing than anyone to join me in this singular point. His wool is soft, but now matted with sticky seed, and I glide my tongue across his feet to clean them, all the way up his ankles. Cum is this odd and savory taste and heavy texture, and it's only the fact that I'm still drooling with happiness that gets me through it. Just as I lick clean one foot and move onto the next, glittering wet, Tabi places his hand gentle atop my head—grips my fur, lets me soak in the raw dynamic of this moment. It makes me emit a gentle, crooning moan without meaning to.

I am his; I want to be his.

I must look so ridiculous.



When I am done kissing and licking his feet I am embraced in his space, I am using his body as a seat. He can taste the seed still on my tongue and burger grease and salt. He is so fucking warm. I am forgetting the outer world. Against all of this I can clench his hands, so real, so warm.

It is a soup of emotion and sound and blasting, wide-area shamelessness. I am a black-furred goat and never in my life would I give up the feeling of being in my own skin, and having His against mine. He will never tell me not to be the person that I am.

He will, also, never help me out of the holes in my mind.

What's wrong with that?



The reality of caretaking a house creeps in, and we kiss, and cuddle, but finally I want to get rid of the splatter on the floor, because my cumshot was pretty eager and poorly-aimed, and though Tabi's wooly thighs caught some of the blow obviously nothing is perfect. We crawl apart after one more kiss, and unconsciously finish up chores. I would like to save him at least a little bit of effort, so as he puts away the final bits of the groceries—recall that we interrupted that with our Red Shack detour—I retrieve cleaning supplies from the chemistry closet and soak up my mess under the table. I am not going to change panties—it's just precum.

Tabi looks over to me as I finish up soaking the spots in the carpet with a chemical treatment. We just have a bottle with something... I forget exactly what, but with paper towels it does the job. And Tabi signs gently, "Why don't we do this more often? Is it just nicer to surprise you with it?"

"Well," I sign back, flush in my face, "I don't always want to ask. It feels like a favor."

"You know very well it's not."

I have to scratch my neck. I can feel his heartbeat there, still racing. The excitement is always shared. I can see from here that he is hovering in the kitchen three inches above the ground, and his penis is bobbing up and down excited. He's been excited since we started playing footsie, but he never asked for assistance with it. "Still, I feel strange leaving you to your erection."

Tabi has the funniest look on his face, as in, "oh, this?" He grins. "Darling, if I need that kind of care, I will tell you. I have hands." And of course he does not particularly need his hands, even. Tabi can move things with his mind. It is just a fact of him.

I take a long pause. He never fails to make this afterglow warm, inviting, casual. And yet it is creeping back into me, now that I am far from him. Now that my mind is allowed to wander, as it so often does. I am being met with real cold. Cold in my bones, my framework. I am being met with harsh snow.

This wondrous connection to Tabi is all I've had all day that has made it worth it. I tried reading Djiban and it made me so sick that I threw up and threw up and threw up, and I suppose that's what I get for trying to have a hobby. And even before the fog rolled in I was just thinking of Tabi trying to masturbate.

The cold came in.

Why is it that things got so nauseating?

"Tabi, I need to confide," I tell him, "I was really in a bad space before you got back." And it takes me a second to formulate my thoughts, and sit up on my knees so that I can sign more easily from under the table. "It sort of scared me. It was like having you gone just totally fucked up my mood, made me feel like I was freezing to death."

"Oh, darling, I'm sorry I was gone so long, I got caught up and—"

I have to interrupt. "No, I don't mean it like that! You can be gone as long as you need. That isn't a fault of yours." Again the word fault. Two boats chained to one another. "I just wanted to say it got bad. Maybe I really do need help figuring something out."

I think I am imagining the lights flicker.

Tabi floats over, approaches slow. He offers a hand to help me stand, and I take it. Then, once he has me upright, he retreats just far enough so that I am not in his space. Distance. "That does sound unhealthy," he tells me, plainly. "In a more meta sense. I don't know if it's fully true, but obviously you should not rely on me to be happy, right?"

"Right, and—"

"—and thinking of me will help you, because I will always make you feel better if you think of me. I promise. But if that isn't something you want to rely on, then it could be good to get a hobby, or—"

"—but I did try that today, and I read a book from one of your shelves, and it just made me really miserable."

Tabi nods. "Djiban. I picked up on that. You wanted to know more about the ritual."

"Yeah."

And again my hand goes to the back of my neck. I cannot ever describe this sensation between sections of my spine—it is just a link, it is entanglement. It itches right now. Or maybe it doesn't itch, but I'd like very much to touch it. And all of me is just restless, stirring weakly. A cup in a bowl that can't stop rattling.



And it is now that Tabi tells me something:



"Darling," he signs, "I noticed other parts of your morning, too. I never mean to intrude, but something extremely odd happened. And although I want you to know you are not at fault, that you did nothing wrong, it still concerned me." And Tabi's breath is light, gentle. I have no breath. I feel he has taken my breath. "I know why your morning was so off. For a span of about three hours, you stopped thinking about me."

My heart is beating so fast now. I don't have time to count it, don't have time to look away from his gaze to my watch—I can just feel myself accelerating.

"Your thoughts often drifted to the house, to the books... you cleaned yourself up and ate for some nebulous goal. And you also read Djiban because of the ritual inside, and you knew the ritual was going to happen, but you didn't once think of who was going to perform it. It was like your brain was avoiding the subject of me. And this is extremely odd. It is not something that ever happens to you, not something I've ever observed for more than a few minutes. Especially with all of me plastered everywhere."

Part of me doesn't understand. Part of me does understand... maybe the part so detached from memory, memory... maybe the part trying to tell me I can fix this. I sign, "I noticed, and I tried to brush it off, even though it worried me. Why is it so scary?"

He has the strangest smile. It is like he is trying to reach me through a veil. "Well, you know all I've told you about the Room below my house. The way things sink down there... obviously you can understand how this is all connected."

I nod before I really process what all he's saying. It is overwhelming and sudden—the same as all those times I had people lecture me about something. I feel at fault. I feel at fault. What the fuck is wrong with me?

"Nothing," Tabi signs, and he brings a hand to my cheek. He is so close now. He feels my fur, and I shudder weak under the touch. "Nothing, darling, nothing." He is making me just shaky, just shaky and nothing else. "This is for me to worry about. And even then it should be no big deal. It's just odd. And it probably made you very upset, dear."

"It's making me upset right now," I admit. God, my fucking heartbeat. "Why did this happen?"

"I'd have to ponder it," Tabi tells me. "Knowing what I know now."

Maybe this reflects something about me still, even if Tabi insists that it is not my fault, not my fault, over and over, again and again as we drift further towards the center of the drain. Fault as a word implies intent. Maybe my primal self, my id, had no intention of ignoring Tabi's presence in my mind. After all I love his feeling against me above all else, I love his form—he is art on canvas—and when I think of him, when I truly think of him, it is like he is holding me in return. And he has said sometimes... maybe in direct words he has said that when I think of him, it invigorates him. It is like he can feel me clenching his hand anywhere.

In the Room below his house there are many places that have fallen through the world. They get this way because for a very short time nobody thinks about them, nobody at all—and this is usually a reflection of a failure of that place to stay in the minds of those who used to inhabit it. I think this is almost a naturalistic process, one which resembles a Platonic view on the world, where places and objects have purpose and disappear when they have been made irrelevant.

What, then, would it mean for a person to fall through the world?

What would it mean for Tabi?

And for him to feel this way—to feel and know that I didn't think of him for three hours, that my temporal lobe locked him away from me—I don't know what it would do to him. I don't know what it must have felt like.

For over two years, Tabi has been in my every waking thought, and even most of my sleeping thoughts, too. By choice I have overwritten my old coping mechanisms with him. I have buried my old garbage in the basement in cardboard boxes so I never have to think about any of it ever again, and Tabi has occupied everything fond I have in my memory. And when I speak to my memory it only retrieves Tabi. Relentless.

I would personify my memory as being a very sweet person, but overworked, as I've said. And I do not think it would withhold him from me like this. My memory only keeps me from things that hurt me.

Another part of me—a very recent part—wants to bring me towards things that hurt me.

I can salvage this, it says. It's not too late for me.

It reminds me of my dad.



I will not go into this for very long because it's a tiring subject and, of course, there's no need to overdo the exposition. I like it here in Tabi's home more than in old photographs anyway. But when I was young my dad did some terrible things to my body. And for years afterwards he was my caretaker in all things meaningful about me. He was the one making sure I shaped up 'right'.



I can salvage this, it says. I'm not a lost cause. And this part of me was my caretaker this morning. It made me read Djiban and wash my body and, I think, it made me forget all about Tabi for a while. A long while. Longer than in the past few years, and it has me terrified in a way that is unfathomable. It is a glitch in my cognition, a fault. Fault. Fault. Like stones in the geology of my brain clashing until there are endless cracks in the surface. This is my fault. This is my fault.

"Darling," Tabi signs, and he is bringing me back to reality again. He is so beautiful.

Why did I leave you for even a moment, Tabi?

and he has that wonderful expression on his face, the smile from all angles, the expanse. His eyes look into me dimly. He has lost some steam. "I actually do have one idea."

"Alright," I sign. My arms don't have the oomph. "Shoot."

"The ritual. If I had to point at one thing making the past few weeks so complicated for you, it would be the ritual. Either we simply take it off the table forever or we just get it over with immediately, to stem the bleeding. It has me anxious as well."

A gentle grumble in my throat comes from nowhere. "Getting it over with feels impulsive."

"Obviously. That's the word I would use. But also we want to do it eventually, so why not now?"

"Are you actually ready? Aren't you tired from the trip?" I want an easy out.

He shakes his head vigorously. "The opposite, darling. In your space I feel stronger."

The feeling of this is like being thrown through a tumble-dryer. Eventually I will break. Eventually all these barriers... inhibitions or maybe walls of protection, all these sensible decisions I want to make will be confronted by Tabi. Tabi is surefire. Tabi is endlessly empathetic, but he is also capable of being immensely reasonable. He always seems so very reasonable. And it feels obvious, maybe in the abstract, that I should get it over with. I don't want to do it so I should try and fail. He is right.

God

but I would just like to stew in his wool for a while longer.

Wake me up when the planet is enveloped in the Sun, and Emily finally comes to a rest.

But he is being reasonable and I am a reasonable person made out of semi-reasonable transistors, and I make decisions that sometimes benefit me, so I sign back, "Alright. Fuck it. You're right, let's just try it right this second."

He cranes his head down. "...I hope this isn't the wrong choice. I'm sorry I don't know."

"It's alright," I tell him. "It's not your fault."