Writing Portfolio

Wouldn't It Be Nice
1890 • 2021-07
If Soda were used to indulgences, maybe things would be different. In the meantime, Rome's making it her own problem to take Soda to the boardwalk and find her something sweet to eat.
Original characters based in the Splatoon universe, written for the prompt “a sweet memory”.

Untitled
1607 • 2022-04

Moment's Silence
1222 • 2022-04
Captain Lie stops by for a routine inspection of his rogue Commander, because, somehow, Marlo getting stranded on a Class-L planet in the Delta Quadrant and almost dying of heat exhaustion has become all but par for the course.
Original characters based in the Star Trek universe.

Midsummer Night's Drone
613 • 2022-07
It's a hot summer's night in Inkopolis, he's got a pack of cards, and, for better or worse, Marlo's here to stay.
Original characters based in the Splatoon universe.

"But the bad part is at some point she didn't notice anymore."
1060 • 2024-04

Good Morning
162 • 2025-02
Sunlight dawns over the junction. Character sketch exercise.
Original characters based in the Splatoon universe.

Wouldn't It Be Nice

“Here.” Rome offered a paper tray piled high with a trio of corn dogs. “You're Amerikan, right? This at least should be familiar.”

Soda gaped first at the food, then her, breathless from running to catch up across the boardwalk. “Wh— yes? But I,” she added helplessly, “I've never had corndogs, they're like— they're a fair food, we never went to fairs.”

Rome blinked. “Oh.” A pause. “I thought— nevermind.”

“Ain't sayin' I'm mad about it,” Soda protested, expression creasing, shaking her head just enough to send her short tentas bouncing and keep her eyes on Rome. “I— I, uh— thanks.” She took one off the top and stuffed it in her mouth to avoid further conversation, and pointedly looked away from Rome's amused half-smile.

Truthfully, she appreciated it, so much it embarrassed her. Rome was always doing things like this; it had been her idea to come to the boardwalk in the first place, but even still she'd offered to go back home after seeing how much the place overwhelmed Soda. She could've been a better judge of character, but it wasn't like Soda minded; she couldn't remember the last time someone had offered her that kind of courtesy.

Neither was it like Soda wasn't delighted to take in the sights: the boardwalk was soaked with hot afternoon sun and ocean salt-spray, crowded with attractions and tourists and local kids starting their summer off with a bang. A section of ocean had been cordoned off with buoys and dense nets for swimming, monitored by lifeguards and a Geiger counter; pale beaches encircled a broad crescent around the shallow bay, and waves beckoned by the strong sea-breeze beat up against support beams where the platform hung over the water. It might as well have been a city itself if Soda didn't know better; there were clothes shops and restaurants and plazas shaded with colorful canvas, rollercoasters and arcades, hotels and a casino, even something that looked like an amphitheater positioned in the center of the bay.

Walking off from the food stand, Rome caught her line of sight. “It's a construction project,” she supplied. “They're thinking of building a stage here, but it's still in development.”

“How d'you know?”

She thinned her lips in poorly-veiled annoyance; Soda opened her mouth to apologize, but she just said, “My sister. She's important enough to be told the broad strokes of that stuff, even if she doesn't get the details, or like, a say.”

Soda didn't have anything to say to that; she just took another corn dog.

“…Do you like them?” Rome asked, a little awkwardly.

She nodded hastily, swallowing. “Pl— plenty, yeah.”

So they stood in silence.

Despite the breeze, the tropical sun beat down on them, and the fresh hot food hadn't helped. Soda levered herself onto the bottom rung of the railing, being otherwise too short to prop her elbows on top and intent on squishing the cool surface of her tentas against her cheeks. She'd grown accustomed to their new length, and even though it made her face look even chubbier it was more than made up for by the literal weight off her shoulders. Rome had the benefit of extraordinarily thin tentas, a match to her wiry build, and therefore little weight to contend with.

Her ink was bright, hot pink at the moment, stark compared to her light skin and Soda's namesake—their team's signature, thanks to Lyn's not-insignificant trouble with changing color. Her face was slim, with a sharp chin and shallow nose, her thin lips set in a brooding frown. Soda thought she was the prettiest person she'd ever seen.

Not that she was going to tell her that.

“Um, what kind of food did you have?” Rome asked, glancing over. Soda managed to wrench her gaze off her just in time to look natural.

It took her a moment, both to remember and, more frantically, get her thoughts in order. “Well, stuff we grew and found mostly. Ma would go to the market once in awhile and home-cook with whatever she found, and specially we'd get Da's olive oil cake.”

Rome's face twitched. “You mean a farmer's market?”

“In some places it was a store,” Soda answered, oblivious. “But ‘sides from the city it was mostly open-air, yeah. Da called it the agora.” The word sounded strange in her mouth: like augur with an extra a, and its vowels strained; she paused and looked to Rome from the corners of wide round eyes, chin propped between her palms, weighing her reaction. “The folks from around would come in to sell their farm food, milk and fruit and meat and stuff, but to get anything else you had to take a car to town.”

She watched as Rome went from perplexed onto tenterhooks and then settled for polite dismay, trying not to make her floundering for which question to ask first too obvious. “Oh,” she said, eventually, and then left it at that.

Soda kept her mouth shut, for lack of anything to add. Instead she hooked her foot around one of the railing's beams and turned to study the boardwalk. Maybe Rome would ask about the car. She'd seen much fewer cars since arriving in Inkopolis, but there were a lot of bikes and an expansive monorail, so she guessed that made up for it. There were a lot of food stands, too.

“What's olive oil cake?” Rome asked finally.

She hadn't prepared for that one; her face flushed cold with surprise. “Like— it's a dessert from where Da grew up? You make it with olive oil instead of butter so it ain't so sweet.” An embarrassed beat. She continues, slower and pulling hard on her shirt with one hand, “We— um, it was too wet to grow olives where we— we were, so we didn't get it often.”

Rome nodded, slow and deliberately. Soda doesn't notice her following her gaze, still pointed very much not on Rome, across to the refreshment stands littering the scuffed boardwalk.

“...Did you not like sweet things?”

Soda scratched her arm absently. Rome had made her put sunblock on, but it still itched. “Um, we didn't get those much. I dunno? Ma didn't make... like... pastries or anything. And Da didn't cook very—much?”

She'd hardly got the words out before her wrist was caught in Rome's long calloused fingers and she's being pulled across the boardwalk, headed for a stand labeled with a bright flag emblazoned with a vaguely star-shaped symbol.

“Kakigōri,” Rome pronounced for her, offering a small triumphant smile and letting go of her wrist much too soon for Soda's tastes. She turned to the vendor and ordered rapid-fire, too fast for Soda to keep track of when she's never heard of the thing; when she turned back it was to explain, airily, “It's finely-shaved ice, and a really popular treat in Inkopolis. Let me know if it's too sweet for you, okay? I got strawberry.”

“Okay,” Soda answered, because what else was she supposed to do?

It wasn't as strange as she'd worried it'd be, thankfully. She scraped at its milky topping with the proffered spoon while Rome counted out G to the vendor. It looked a little like the shaved ice cups her dad would request in the other city across the ocean, though much taller, and less creamy. She might've mistaken it for cotton candy if Rome hadn't told her otherwise, and if it wasn't so blissfully, wonderfully cold.

She definitely would have been content to just stand there and devour, the cup sticking to her hands, but Rome pointed her toward a two-seat table near one of the many small docks jutting out from the main walk. It was quiet at this end, opposite the majority of attractions, so almost all the seats were open—periodically, the orange coaster would roar above them, its legs plunging into concrete on the inland side. Rome smiled again, leaning forward a little over her own melon-flavored cup: an orangey-peach color this time. “What about this? Do you like it?”

All Soda had to do was glance up looking like a deer in headlights, her serving half-gone.

Rome laughed, honest and for some reason a little relieved, and Soda thought her hearts were going to melt straight out of her like a weird mint-flavored milk topping.

“Yes, then?”

“Yes,” Soda managed, nodding emphatically. “Th— Thank you, so much. Really.”

“It's nothing.” But she glows, almost literally, her freckles reflecting the sunlight. “I get it all the time when it's hot. There's stands or stores around almost every battle stage; they make it pretty obvious.”

Still. Saying thanks didn't feel like enough. Rome was so pretty, and kind, and patient, and she couldn't figure out why this all felt wrong. It was the sweetest thing she'd ever had, but she liked it enough. She liked being here. Soda stared down at the kakigōri, unsure of what to say, for the trillionth time. “No, it's... I didn't... get to do stuff like this. Ever. So it's really nice. You're really nice.”

Rome drew in a breath. “...Oh. Thanks.”

Silence with her wasn't uncomfortable, Soda noticed. It wasn't anticipatory, or expectant, like waiting for her brother to interrupt or waiting for her mother to tell her what to do. It was just quiet.

“I used to get it with my sister,” Rome mumbled, almost too low for Soda to hear. “It was a tradition. I took her with me to battles and we'd get kakigōri after.” She paused. “So... it's nice for me, too.”

Soda smiled gratefully, a little sadly, drawing her shoulders in—the ache in her chest cinched tight, almost unbearable. Rome gave a light little laugh and pressed her own serving across the table. “Here, try mine. And let me have a bite.”

After that, they talk about the rollercoaster. Rome frowns about Soda's fear of heights but doesn't push it; they compromise with the Ferris wheel. She takes her in the tourist shops and the arcade with its blacklights and retro music. Soda spends at least two hours trying to win a big fat stuffed animal, to Rome's eventual pity, dwindling funds, and one-hit knock-out success. She turns out the last of her pockets to finance dinner under the pavilions. Construction on the amphitheater resumes as the sun starts to sink, and under a sky turning brilliant orange and blue, they stand on the boardwalk and theorize possible layouts.

When the stars come out, they take the monorail home.

Soda tucks her knees to her chin and leans her head on Rome's shoulder, eyelids heavy, watching her scroll Skitter. Tournament season begins in earnest tomorrow and the app's already alive with debate and predictions. She can still taste her candied dessert on her tongue.

“Hey, Rome,” she mumbles.

“Yeah, sleepyhead?” Rome answers.

“Thanks.”

“Of course.”

In their lull, the monorail hums.

“We should, um... do that again.”

Rome glances at her, amused. “What? I need more money before we do that. Did you forget everything so soon?”

Soda doesn't have the energy for anything but a half-hearted raspberry. “Naw, silly. I think I'll remember it forever. I just... enjoyed it a lot.”

She watches Rome from the corner of her eye. “Yeah, why not? We have all the time in the world, Soda.”

Midsummer Night's Drone

“You're better at metaphors,” Marlo grouses. “Gimme somethin' colorful for this god damn heat.”

“It's hot,” Ness supplies, helpfully.

“Fuck you,” Marlo bats back, a half-step ahead of the beat. “Gimme a king if you're gonna be an asshole about it.”

Ness flicks his eyes from his hand to Marlo to the stock stacked on the patio table they lean on, opting not to move a muscle and therefore generate unnecessary sweat. “Go fish.”

Marlo mutters to themself, but obliges. Otaku Journalism's patio light flickers under the wings of half a dozen moths and paints them both in dim, pale light and heavy shadows. Across from him, behind Marlo and nestled in the damp grass of his lawn, the resonant drone of cicadas fills the empty space in Ness' head and drowns out whatever sluggish thoughts the heat may've allowed him.

Marlo wipes the condensation off their face with the back of their hand, bare skin paled and shimmering with sweat; the vestigial chromatophores inlaid in it dilate and shrink again in a faint, hypnotic rhythm. Ness pulls, self-consciously, at the loose collar of his black tank, and stares at his cards without processing them.

“Your turn,” Marlo reminds him, so lethargically it's almost a drawl.

“Um,” he thinks aloud. “Got any threes?”

No answer. He doesn't glance up until he hears Marlo's chair scrape—thick and metallic, eugh—across the concrete patio. They lever themself up on the table, heading toward him, toward the screen door left ajar behind him and back inside…

“Where are you—?” he starts, until they crouch down beside him, face entirely neutral in that dead serious way of theirs.

“What—” and then it clicks.

It must've registered on his face, because Marlo immediately cracks an impish grin and crumples into laughter. For his part, he gives up in the spectacular fashion of tilting his head over back of the chair and huffing out a sigh, despite the smile in it.

“Okay,” he says. “Heat's rotted your brain.”

“I don't have a clue what'choure talkin' about,” Marlo says back, except it's punctuated by a series of very self-satisfied chuckles. They place a hand on the arm of his chair to push themself back up, offering no apology except the lilt in their voice and an obligatory, “Go fish, love.”

“If I were not a holy man—” He draws a card with a flourish of the wrist and sinks back in his worn wicker seat. Seven of clubs. Unfortunate. (Chances are Marlo's got one of those, though.)

“Yeah, yeah.” Marlo drops themself back into their seat with a grunt and leans back, crossing their legs at the knee. “Getting ahead of yourself. Let's make sure you can beat me at the card game before you get caught up in the rest of me.”

Ness watches himself unstick a card from his palm, listening for the pseudosilence of the summer night and letting it settle, heavy and dull, back in. He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “Don't count your chickens. You'll make yourself predictable.”

Marlo hums their perfunctory acknowledgement, and again drags their hand over back of their head, drawing momentary trails through the faint steam rising off their tentacles. Already, sweat gathers at their temples again, where they've tied their tentacles back; Ness' fins fan out a little in sympathy. He finds he doesn't mind them so much like this—their absentminded tapping of a claw against their cards—or at least not the moments where they've got enough courtesy for that so-called sense of humor.

He still won't thank them for coming down, but he doesn't have to.

“Alright. How 'bout a seven?”

After Cuttlefish gives her the hat, she stays there for awhile.

Well, he doesn't really give her the hat. He takes it back with him, but they both understand it to be hers, now. She isn't holding it, but she's wearing it. It doesn't make sense to her either, but she can feel the weight of it.

She stays in the Valley. She's used to it. He gives her the hat in the morning after a night spent in the domes. It's cold and misty on the surface, the air thick and dense with the humidity of an impending storm, just the way she's used to, just the way she likes it. It's that reason she ever fell in love with the Valley to begin with—it reminds her of the forests she grew up in, the hideaways nestled in natural formation. Someplace to be wonderfully, rapturously alone.

It's an old haunt. Where the world slowed down and stopped for awhile. Nothing else had to matter, here—just the old weeping trees and the chipped concrete and Octavio's fractured globe, still with the stickers on it, to keep her company.

('Keeping an eye on those Octarians?' the Captain'd asked her.

'You could say that,' she'd answered.

It's the clean way of not telling him she's trying to sleep with the one next in line for the headdress.)

In the morning, he gives her the hat, and she stays in the Valley. She likes to lean on Octavio's old dome and stare out over the landscape. It isn't anything more than junk at this point, but she'd gone to all that trouble and brought it back to where it belonged, and it's important to her.

He gives her the hat, without really giving her the hat, and she stays in the Valley. Even after all this time, and everyone moving to Marie's cabin in Canyon, the shack still needs its upkeep. There are still Zapfish plushes and old photographs, all of which she'd taken for archiving and replaced, which Cuttlefish had never noticed. There are canisters of power eggs she'd never used and the bench where she'd put on her Agent equipment both quilted with dust. She wipes it off.

She used to spend days in the Valley. She used to watch the sun rise and with it the mist disperse. It got warmer as the days wore on, when it got suffocating in the shack, especially in summer. For awhile the air isn't so heavy. Outside there was almost always a breeze blowing off the sea, and in its aftermath the scent of rust and salt suspended in the air.

Weathering like that was inevitable in an outpost as old as this. She polishes the railings and drags the frayed electrical cables back into piles, her steps resounding on the grates and blacktop. Sunlight glitters off the metal. No sound comes out of the kettles anymore.

She used to watch the sun set with her back to the tree and her notebooks sat in her lap, occasionally watching Octavio twist his limbs around themselves in the globe. She never could exactly get right the colors of the red-gold sunset and the way it glowed off his headdress.

He doesn't really give her the hat—not literally—but she stays in the Valley till nightfall.

Octavio liked the stars. He didn't get to see them underground. He had an interest in astronomy, she'd learned; the stars in the domes' sky were his design. She used to sit on his saucer, almost a mile into the air despite her fear of heights, to try and figure out what he saw in the space between. It was cold and quiet up there, just the way she likes it; a place to be wonderfully alone.

Octo Valley had become a hideaway. It was the place to run from itself, if that made any sense.

It used to be that, after it got dark, she either went underground or left. Sometimes, moreso in the later days, after she left Rome, she would make a pallet on the shack's floor and sleep there.

('Don't you have anything better to do?' Octavio'd asked her, gruff and annoyed.

'Sure don't,' she'd said, totally cheery.

It was the kind way of not saying she'd miss him otherwise.)

Jumping to the saucer is too much trouble, old and tired as she is by now. She folds herself in upright form into the remnants of his globe, even still swallowed in the cavern of broken glass, and stares at the stars. She isn't holding anything, but she can feel the weight of it. She stares at the infinite space between.

What she loved most about the Valley was how it existed in its own pocket of space. It was a place where the world slowed down and stopped for awhile. Nothing else had to matter here. It's quiet. Entirely silent. Not even the insects are out in a cold like this.

On all sides of her, the ground drops away into a void. The night is wide and endless, reaching far over the shining black ocean and the warm distant lights of the city. She watches the flickering light of an airplane as it makes its way from Inkopolis, and remembers too well the dim blue-and-white cabin of the one that brought her here—the strange sensation of being in-between places, both alone and in company.

There is not a single other soul for miles around. She is wonderfully, horribly alone.

She tucks her worn, scraped knees to her chin and starts crying.

She doesn't know the last time she cried. She screws her face up, makes it ugly, and sobs like a child. She presses her broad shoulders back into the curve of the dome and the calloused pads of her fingertips into her calves until it hurts and it still doesn't hurt the way it has to. Her face is sticky, the saltwater smudged on her nose and chin itchy, pressure built thick and distracting behind her eyes.

Octavio's globe is heavy and hard against her shoulders. Her hands are empty. Cuttlefish doesn't even really give her the hat and she can't find it in her to leave. She spends everything she has left to do and she's still left with her empty hands and the weight of it.

He'd asked her: Don't you have anything better to do? No, of course not. She had never wanted anything else but that fucking captain's hat.

That's the funny thing. She'd started to want something else.

Now there is an infinity in the space between that she can't reach. There's a place anywhere but here. It's starting to get cold again, and the first thin haze of rain begins to fall. Her skin is thin enough that a downpour poses an actual threat, but she doesn't care right now.

She loves the Valley. She loves the smell of rain and the translucent fog that gathers at her feet. She loved the long autumn days during monsoon season when she listened to the rain on the corrugated roof and spent her time studying the begrudging appreciation in Octavio's expression.

She drags the back of her hand against her dripping nose and swallows a sob.

She hasn't cried like this since she realized her brother wasn't coming home.

She loves the Valley. It's the last place that ever felt like home. Where nothing else in the world mattered or held weight, a place suspended in time and ephemeral childhood nostalgia, despite the thick blood on her hands. She could always come back just as she left.

Cuttlefish gives her the weight of it and leaves her on her own. He gives her a place no one in the city so much as knows about and tells her, in so many words, to keep her mouth shut. He gives her a place where she is alone and he leaves and he doesn't think twice.

(Octavio watches her warily, but he still listens.)

Cuttlefish all but fucking shoves her off a ledge into that beautiful void.

(She knows it's still her fault, of course. She sniffs and grins sardonically to herself.

And breaks into another sob.

It's pathetic. It makes her feel like a child coming home to her ma with scraped knees and wildflowers, scolded for staining her best white dress. At least then she could understand what she was doing wrong.)

She's kept the shack stocked with tissues for a few years now. Even after all this time, the rain still stings against the old scars on her ankles. She braces herself against the wall, levering herself down onto the crowded bench, flanked by vacant-eyed stuffed Zapfish. Her head is pounding. Ever since the sanitization episode, her ears haven't stopped ringing.

She doesn't think she's leaving, tonight.

'Ha-ha,' Ness says flatly, the next morning. She's invited him out for coffee just to get his roommate off her back and he's halfway through a hot chocolate and his third pastry. 'Unfortunately, I know. He got to me first, being that I've got the title now, and had no idea who I was.'

He picks at the lid of his to-go cup. Glances at her out of the corner of his eyes. She puts on her best insouciant grin.

He frowns in that worried way of his, brows knit and eyes closed for a moment. It's spring. He's wearing a yellow t-shirt with the Firefin logo and pastel-purple jeans. His palms are pressed flat to the plastic tabletop.

'Don't look at me like that, Marlo,' he mutters, 'I know it doesn't change anything. But I'm so sorry.'

Moment's Silence

He tells Tanaka not to let anyone disturb him, but there comes a trilling at his door anyway. Rather, there comes a Trill at his door. He leaves one hand light against the table as he stands and snaps, “What now,” but lets it fall to his side when the door hisses open and Wednesday Lie steps over the threshold.

“I brought you water,” he says, entirely neutral. “CMO's orders.”

Marlo frowns, but steps clear of the curved divider and further into his line of sight, placing that one hand on the white metal. There's a concern in the back of Wednesday's mind his face doesn't betray, as it never does. Typical. Always one to sweat the small stuff.

“Well, come in,” Marlo amends, gesturing across the great red rug in the quarters' center, spread wide over the Federation emblem seared into the floor. Wednesday's pristine boots sunk into it—an old thing, frayed but thick, a sign of goodwill from a Talaxian freighter—as he crossed, stopping just short of the edge, and Marlo's own boots, cracked and still caked with pale brown dirt.

In the stark white light of Marlo's captains' quarters, the dark speckling on Wednesday's skin stands out in sharp relief against the brown when he inclines his head; he does not offer out the water.

“Your CMO,” Marlo says, after a moment, without lowering his gaze to Wednesday.

“My head nurse,” he returns, “and your CMO.”

“I was doing just fine with the EMH,” Marlo snaps.

Wednesday stares at him, brows almost imperceptibly raised. “No, you weren't. Your Achilles' tendon never did heal correctly.”

“Your point.”

Wednesday's eyes soften, all but imperceptibly again, at the same time a guard goes down in his mind. “Take care of yourself,” he says, the thick snaking of a genuine affection coiled deep in his belly, only the surface exposed. “You know how to pilot this ship better than my own crew. I would prefer to have you at the helm when we return—but that requires you to stay alive.”

Marlo smiles, all teeth, even as the space between them opens itself into a chasm within him, eager and waiting for an excuse to gnaw. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you were concerned.”

Wednesday doesn't laugh, of course; he doesn't even smile, but Marlo knows the leaping sensation. He takes Marlo's hand, Marlo's broad, weathered palm and roughened fingers, and presses the canister into it; wraps his own hand over Marlo's fore and middle fingers, soft by comparison.

Oh, how tempting the rope bridge is, wild and swaying over the canyon.

“You shouldn't be here,” Marlo says, as quiet as he can make it.

“I am only here to ensure everything is still in working order,” Wednesday answers, and withdraws his hand, steps back in the same motion. He turns to face the mounted viewscreen, still glowing with the schematic of a Class-L planet, its broad deserts and quartzite mares outlined in blue.

Marlo waits, feeling out the shape of Wednesday's worry as it deepens. He knows what Lie means to say before he puts the words to it. “We picked up a supply of freshwater a week ago. I'll have some sent over. Computer—lower temperature in this room, ten degrees.”

“Don't bother telling me to lie down; I heard it already,” Marlo says over the answering chirp, but there's no venom in it.

Wednesday casts him a glance over his shoulder. “Lie down, and stop making a habit of getting trapped on strange planets.”

Marlo grins something fierce, and barks a laugh. “Nah, I'm just tryin' to relive the good ol' days.”

Wednesday turns again, but not before Marlo catches the ghost of a smile on his mouth, and he can't do anything to conceal the rueful amusement lapping in the base of his throat. He knows as well as Marlo the hundred emotions entwined in that sentence, a braiding of fear and resentment and warmth; the familiarity earned in long black nights in an alien home and the lingering weight of his fingertips on Marlo's skin. A memory of a memory.

Now he stands in the bitter white light of a stolen starship, the long black night at his back and a silver floor colored red before him. Wednesday lets his eyes rest on Marlo's desk, a curved silver thing, lined with terracotta fragments from some Delta Quadrant ruins and a sleepy, pine-green houseplant.

“You've made quite a home of this place,” he says, and Marlo can shape the width of the chasm within him.

“You'll want a report,” Marlo says, instead.

Wednesday inclines his head, again, and there the guard goes back up in his mind. “When you can,” he concedes. “I want you in your right mind first.”

Marlo sets the water canister on the table with a metallic clunk and steps across the room to him, the old boots leaving pale dust to mingle with traditional Talaxian patterning, to stop just short of his side. “Your nurse told me I should work on getting my fine motor skills back up to par,” he says. “I've got this big knit blanket I'm working on for the bed. You should come see it when it's done.”

Wednesday says nothing at first, his face entirely neutral. Marlo can't trace his breathing over the hum of two transwarp engines in tandem—he doesn't hear anything else at all, but traces the thing that spreads itself wide in Wednesday's chest. And then he laughs, a huff of breath, ruefully amused again.

“You know when our night shift begins,” Wednesday says, and turns back to face him, raising his hand to Marlo's face: the pads of his fingers to Marlo's jaw, cheekbone, temple, catching on the curlicue ends of his pitch-black hair. “A few thousand kilometers should be enough of a buffer.”

“I'll be turning left,” Marlo confides, trying not to smile.

“I know,” Wednesday says, as quiet as he can make it.

“You should stop by the mess hall before you beam over,” Marlo says, lifting Wednesday's hand from his face and gathering them both within his. “I think some sand might've got in the replicators. Did you know Harmon's trying to pick up cooking? Says I was an inspiration.”

He pulls a face placed somewhere between a grimace and unrestrained delight; Marlo knows the leaping sensation. “Infecting the rest of the crew with your anti-replicator rhetoric, are we? I shudder to think—but in the interest of thoroughness…”

And there neither of them have to say anything—there's a thick, nauseating coil wound over itself in Marlo's belly, even as Wednesday draws his hands back to himself and smiles. Almost imperceptibly: just a twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“I'll see you soon, then,” he says.

“In eight-thousand light-years it is.”

With that, he's gone, the door hissing shut and the clicking of his boots fading down the corridor.

Marlo's own make no sound over the rug; he unscrews the lid of the canister and drinks without tasting it. He sinks, finally, into the black leather cushion, picking idly at the topline of one boot.

In the long window behind him there is only an endless black night, and a birds' eye view of an alien home, and no sunrise left to keep him company.

But the bad part is at some point she didn't notice anymore.

Her couch is very short. That much she does notice, over and over again. More of a loveseat than a couch, but the most that would fit in her labyrinthine excuse for a living room and a very nice antique she'd found for cheap. Shiloh is also very warm, which she does notice, over and over again, draped into the couch and dozed off across from her. By which she means he makes a nice cushion for her aching head, because her couch is very short. She would sincerely like to follow his example, if she can manage, already.

It's late in the day; the only thing she's done is play video games on their new old GameCube and the pain is getting worse. Sore. Itching—badly. Her leg is hardly half-regrown, a thick gelatinous mass of pitch-dark blue ink, her skin on fire where it frays at the end. Into... whatever used to be her limb.

The rush of a maws through ink, the ceramic click of its jaw interlocking. The sequence plays in her head without her asking for it. She knows the sound on instinct, a rhythm, a melody she autocompletes faster than her own heartsbeat. The moment of hesitation, the burst of ink, the clink of its tackle gear against the ground. Over and over again. Clanging of a stinger. Whistle of a flyfish. That makeshift rattle, gunning of an engine she always expects a scream to punctuate—

Every blue thing in her room has turned purple under the ludicrously rich orange sunset. She flicks the c-stick back and forth, fidgets. The start screen doesn't respond.

Her head is stupidly thick, like lined with cotton. Lethally so—the shift set to automatic Play in her mind's eye starts and stops and fades in and out, unresponsive. Shiloh is very warm, and she is comfortable. Ultimately. Aching with exhaustion, but the adrenaline is just theoretical: she doesn't have to stay awake. She's not trying to, dammit.

She's alone, tired and resting. With him.

She blinks drowsily at the paisley pattern of her wallpaper without processing it. It's very quiet. On some distant level traffic drones faintly through the door. The game's menu music is almost muted, a jaunty, idle loop she tuned out forever ago. Infinite and halcyon.

And this—is what she's going to wake up to again tomorrow.

And her FUCKING LEG ITCHES.

It aches so badly it hurts.

She's never going to hear the surge of a maws beneath her or behind her in person ever again. As in, she could if she wanted. She's healing fine; doctor said it'll be like normal once she goes through physical therapy. But that's not what she wants. It's so quiet that she can hear him breathing—soft and shallow, in the same slow time as the resonant pulse of a slammin' lid's field. Same as the rush of ocean waves in the dark beneath her. She focuses on a trio of dark blue dots in the pattern, frowning in concentration, cognizant even now of the hysterical tremor in his voice pleading not to die.

The bite of the wind on their long roundabout walk, her yanking sharply at his wrist, the insulting total of his payout. Shiloh shifts beneath her, unconscious, and she doesn't react. More important is the heavy, gratifying weight of her slumping back onto him. They'd paid for each other's dinner so many times it became tradition; she'd learned a long time ago that Grizzco was Grizzco, and there was no use crying about it.

But the bad part was the point where she didn't notice anymore. The faint haze of the question, as in: when had it engraved itself in her head like this. When had the water started boiling. Made her the frog. Her fingertips' tracing over the slick scab of her leg makes her motion-sick, anticipation for an attack already come and gone. She can't think past the itch, gaze fixed on the paisley, in her mind's eye watching herself tug on the hem of her athletic shorts instead.

She's so tired. For what.

Ten years. Years of grime and muck and air that tasted like metal in her mouth. Of on-your-six, side-step, hollow-boned reflexes. A year of this, at home, no sound but the click of joysticks dampened by embroidered pillows, drowsing with the sunset spilling in, until she's healed. She leaves the lights off to mitigate her headache. Shiloh is very warm.

Her couch is very short. When Shiloh goes to bed at night, his legs fold over the edge of it. He makes her coffee in the morning, and he's starting to get the hang of it.

It hurts.

But the bad part was—at some point she didn't care anymore. If she woke up in the morning. It wasn't like it wouldn't just be the same old tune, over and over again. She can't make her eyes stay open now. Her head is heavy. Thick and aching. She's alone—no sticky film of the slopsuit against her damp skin, no ghost of her coworkers through the fog, no headset clamped down on her ear and staticky taped voice filtering through the cacophony. Once the sun sinks past the horizon she won't listen for the whisper and rustle of glowflies. Instead it's this, warm stale air of her living room, dry blankets and the faint rhythm of Shiloh's breath, his shoulder gradually rising and falling.

It'll be the same thing tomorrow. For a lot of days after that.

In her lap the controller is warm, gone silent. Dusk blurs the white and blue pattern into a wavering plum color. Makes her vision murky, the polished knickknacks on her shelves blending in with the gloom. She doesn't know when she got used to it.

This. Indefinite purple dusk braided with phantom pain and never another thundering beat of the helicopter's blades reverberating in her veins. Never another of her signatures on the splintered sign-in board for a shift. She doesn't have to stay awake. She's not trying to stay awake.

She's sore to the point of nausea, but at some point the exhaustion has to win out.

No sunrise over Sockeye's worth it.

There's nothing left but the quiet and his heartsbeat. Which she does notice. Over and over. And over again.

Spencer strikes a match. Bronze and pink, fog suffuses the nascent morning light over Junction, darkening the broken asphalt, the distant metal pillars gleaming with lustre. Four and a half long hours have gone, left with the last Goldie to slip under the waves. Nobody has spoken in half as long. She sits, slouched matte white and gray-blue, on the lip of the withdrawn basket; hisses as the flame leaps to attention at the end of her glove.

Sharp light glitters off her fractured glasses and reflects in her eyes, narrowed, focused, reverent, as she presses the match to tinder. Ungrateful, idle idiots, the lot of them. At her ankle, their impending breakfast slouches, eyes lolled and unseeing, out of a stinger's pot. There are eyes on her. Fire catches, and she glances up, orange dancing and spitting under her chin.

Shiloh's watching, silently. She thins her lips, then lifts an eyebrow, invisible under the cut of her bangs. He grins anyway.

Other less-good works, unfinished scraps, and other odds and ends I've posted elsewhere. Coming soon!

Zine History

Note: Works prior to 2025 are credited as Localsprite.
Many finished works can be found in my Illustration Portfolio.

Space Invaded: A Momokarun Zine
2025 • Dandadan • In Progress • Page artist

Eggstra Credit
2025 • Splatoon • In Progress • Spot artist

What's Your Style?
2025 • Splatoon • In Progress • Art mod

Tako Party
2025 • Splatoon • Complete • Multiple rolesexpand I was brought on as the Writing mod, but I also created the cover, designed and drew multiple promo materials, wrote multiple announcements and emails, tracked contributors, reached out for late submissions, and formatted the written pieces.

Spectrum Obligato
2025 • Splatoon • Complete • Writer (withdrawn)

Population: Inkopolis
2024 • Splatoon • Complete • Merch artist

INKPOP!
2023 • Splatoon • Complete • Page artist

Rising Hues
2023 • Splatoon • Complete • Page artist (withdrawn)

Inkopolis Arcana
2022 • Splatoon • Hiatus • Page artist

Farewell Inkopolis
2022 • Splatoon • Complete • Page artist

Splatbattle!
2021 • Splatoon • Complete • Page artist

Hermitzine, 5th Edition
2021 • Hermitcraft • Complete • Page artist