Ioan Bălan — 2350

Through some stroke of luck or perhaps some forgetful nature, it was perpetually early summer at Arrowhead Lake, that abandoned mountain sim Ioan and May had long ago adopted. Whether or not winter had socked them in at home, they could at least take a summer walk somewhere.

“Winter has its place,” ey’d explained to May once when she’d gotten particularly whiny about the snow. “I like the snow so long as I’m inside.”

“Did you ever even see snow, my dear?”

Ey’d shrugged. “Sure. We’d get dumped on once or twice a year.”

“And was that pleasant?”

“Well, no, but–”

She’d laughed at em, then, shaking her head. “I miss our porch swing. I miss our lilacs and dandelions. Sometimes, I just want to lay in the grass and overheat. I have been betrayed by our weather.”

So it was a good escape when it got cold. They could duck off — alone or together — to the lake and head for a walk.

May had chosen the name Arrowhead Lake over Ioan’s protests that it looked nothing like an arrowhead, being more kidney shaped. The sim itself was tagged Peak Lake#587a9383. Maybe it was just Peak Lake? This seemed only to have emboldened her when ey brought it up, and ey was firmly overruled.

Whenever ey walked out there without her, as ey did today, ey’d think on this. Maybe it had little to do with the lake itself. Maybe it had to do with the silhouettes of the pines? Or something to do with way the snow lingered on pointed peaks?

“Or maybe she’s just a brat,” ey mumbled, smiling to emself as ey walked slowly along the deer trail. “No reasoning with an Odist.”

Ey’d long wrestled with whether or not they were just normal people. Perhaps Michelle had been — ey’d not spent enough time around her to know, and what time ey had managed had been mostly silence. Toward the end, her conversations were more interruptions than not, although the impression ey’d gotten was that she’d been kind and gentle, while still being the type to care passionately about things or, more often, people. The impression just hadn’t been a strong one. Not enough time for it to solidify.

Ey’d eventually come to the conclusion, confirmed through discussions with several of the clade, that each of them had begun more as a distillation of a singular aspect of Michelle than the whole of her. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t complete in their own right, simply that each was singularly focused on their interests and skills, a perpetual hyperfixation. What was it Codrin and Dear had said? Even True Name was a fully realized person.

Normal, though? Could one be both a singular facet and normal?

And maybe it went beyond them. Maybe it was a dispersionista thing. Ey could see such a habit building even without Michelle’s unique experiences.

When the trail dipped down out of the trees toward the shore, ey stooped to pick up a handful of pebbles, enough to toss into the water once ey reached the boulder at the lake’s outlet. Codrin had eir cairns, ey supposed, and ey had a heap of pebbles at the bottom of the lake, tossed in one by one over the decades.

I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, ey thought, rattling the rocks around in eir hand as ey continued walking. I don’t know if I’m supposed to help either of them, bring them together again, or what.

It was still a week out from eir next meeting with True Name, from Secession Day, and while May’s anxiety hadn’t ticked back up, eir own had lingered. There was an unsettled feeling within em that made itself known whenever ey thought about heading to the coffee shop.

“Maybe I’m not supposed to do anything,” ey muttered, climbing up the boulder. “Maybe I’m just supposed to be a friend, like she says.”

Ey tossed a stone into the water with a small plunk and splash.

That gulf remained between the two skunks, and no one seemed happy with it.

Plunk, splash.

“I don’t know why it feels like I’m supposed to be the one to do something about it. Friends are supposed to help, right?”

Plunk, splash.

“There’s nothing for me to fix, really. They’ve each made their own decisions, and seem at peace with those, even if they’re not happy with whatever’s left between them.”

Plunk, splash.

“And they’d probably both resent me if I were to do anything.” Ey tossed a few pebbles in at once, splashing in a brief, watery static. “Whatever that’d even be.”

Ey stood at the peak of that boulder, tossing pebbles into water and thinking, mumbling to emself about May and True Name. When ey ran out of pebbles, ey sat cross-legged and looked out over the lake, unseeing.

“I should just pinch myself whenever I start thinking that there’s something I need to do,” ey said to the water. “Pretty sure May doesn’t want it, she’s happy working on her emotions without me meddling, and I’m pretty sure True Name doesn’t want it, since she seems content…what was it, maintaining that level of connection after so long a time of disconnect?”

The lake didn’t answer, not in anything other than the water lapping at the shore and the chatter of the creek.

“This is stupid.”

Ey sat for another hour, just watching the lake, the clouds, the trees, trying not to think about how complicated it was for one person to be so split among so many instances.

The walk back was spent unwinding the thought processes that led em here in the first place. Unwinding and re-coiling into a careful skein, now with fewer knots than it had had in it before, though it still remained tangled.

“Good walk, my dear?” May said when ey returned and plopped down onto the couch.

“Very. It’s nice out there.”

“It always is,” the skunk said, walking over from where she’d been poking around in the kitchen to dot her nose atop eir head. “It could be here too, you know.”

Ey laughed and waved a hand toward the picture windows facing out the balcony, out to the drifting snow. “It’s pretty, May. It makes being all warm inside nicer.”

She leaned down to rest her elbows on the back of the couch beside em. “I am not immune to the beauty, I am just a wuss when it comes to the cold.”

“Well, if you ever wore shoes…”

She swatted at the back of eir head and laughed. “Jerk.”

“Ow! Domestic abuse!” Ey laughed as well, rubbing at eir head. “Want to go out for dinner?”

At that, May perked up, grinning. “I take back the slap. Yes please! Can we get sushi?”

“Sure, J2?”

She bounced on the balls of her feet and nodded. “Yes! You, my dear, know just how to treat a girl.”

“Skunk girl.”

“Well, yes, but still.” Still bouncing, she twirled around behind the couch, tail trailing along behind her. “I will get ready. I am hungry now, so too bad if you are not.”

One of the things that Ioan appreciated most about J2 over all of the other sushi places May had dragged em to is that it was the most amenable to em eating with eir hands. May was quite nimble with chopsticks — no mean feat with paws and claws — but ey’d never quite picked it up, so being able to eat those little bullets of rice and fish with eir hands suited em quite well.

It had a channel of water floating along between the booths, small dishes drifting by lazily for the diners to pluck from the water. This obviated the need for any staff, real or simulated, as each dish would be replaced from behind a bend in the river. With no need to pay beyond a token amount of reputation, it simply became a pleasant evening out, plates stacking up at the edge of their table a tacit contest with other diners.

“Did you get what you needed out of your walk earlier?” May asked before popping a bit of fish into her muzzle.

Ey shrugged, finished chewing, and said, “I guess. Was doing some thinking into that feeling that I have to fix every problem in front of me when it comes to relationships.”

“I have noticed that in you, yes,” she said. “Beyond when we specifically talk about it, I mean.”

“You have?”

“You are not a sneaky person, Ioan. When it comes up, it is there for me to see.”

“Oh, uh,” ey stammered, setting eir plate on top of the stack. “Sorry, May.”

“No, no, you are fine! I accept it in the spirit in which it is given. You want to do right by me and your friends, even when ‘doing right’ is not your responsibility. So long as you do not overstep boundaries, I can at least understand it.”

“Well, all the same, it’s not like it’s comfortable. I don’t think anyone likes feeling helpless, but I just wish I didn’t get hung up on finding solutions to everything.”

“You know, it is weird,” she said, gesturing vaguely with a shrimp. “For someone who spent so long purely observing, a busybody tendency feels out of place.”

Ey shook eir head. “Observing is situational. If there’s something happening that has a start and end, or which I can come home from, then I can just observe it. If it’s something that’s ongoing or integral to a person, especially a meaningful person, then I feel like I really want to help.”

She had taken the opportunity of em talking to eat the bit of shrimp she’d used as a pointer, and when she finished, she asked, “Is this a new thing?”

“How do you mean?”

“Were you always like this? Did you always want to help when it was something integral to people you care about?”

Ey frowned.

“Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting one way or another. We have only known each other for a small portion of our lives. It is just that Codrin and Sorina both decided to specifically focus on that only recently.”

Ey nodded thoughtfully. “Right. I don’t know, honestly. Maybe? Maybe it’s you, and–”

She rolled her eyes.

“No, I mean, maybe it’s you in that you’re the first person I’ve gotten close enough to to wind up feeling like that, at least since I uploaded.”

The skunk paused in the act of picking another plate from the river, letting it drift on. “Did you feel that way about your brother? Was you uploading your fix?”

Ey felt eir muscles go rigid, eir jaw clench, eir hands start to tremble. “Uh…well, huh.”

Ears splayed and eyes wide with alarm, the skunk reached out to take one of eir hands in her own. “I am sorry, Ioan. If I overstepped, I apologize.”

Letting the skunk lace her fingers with eirs, ey shook eir head to dislodge the slight dizziness that had come with the realization and concomitant panic. “Maybe?” Ey forced a smile. “I mean, maybe uploading was my fix for that situation? I don’t know.”

She nodded, gave eir hand a gentle squeeze.

“I think you’re the only person I’ve really loved other than Rareș,” ey said, nudging the conversation back on track to avoid settling into that particular rumination. “That’s what I meant. I want to make things good for you, whether it’s you overflowing, stuff with True Name, or any other number of things that aren’t my responsibility or even under my control.”

May smiled, the expression veering perilously close to a smirk. “You have said that you want to fix things for True Name at times, too. Are you sure that you are not in love?”

“I’ve also talked about how often I’ll wind up getting caught off guard by how much you two still look and sound alike,” ey said, smirking right back. “She’s nice and I do want to help her, but I think I’m a ways off from that.”

She laughed. “I know, I know. You just leave yourself so open, sometimes, a girl cannot help herself. You are also allowed to want to help friends and acquaintances as well as me.”

“Skunks, I swear…” Ey laughed when she pinched at eir fingers, tugging eir hand free so ey could grab another plate of sushi. “That’s kind of what I was thinking about on the walk, though. I feel weirdly obligated to fix things. It’s not my place to, I don’t think either of you would be comfortable with that, and that’s not even counting whether or not it’s something either of you want.”

“I do not know,” she said, shrugging. “I spoke about that with End Waking and Debarre recently, and am no closer to an answer. We did all agree, however, that you doing what you are is a good thing, in that it at least sets up an avenue for change, even if neither True Name nor I decide to take that step.”

Ey nodded. “I just want things to remain smooth between everyone, is all. Maybe it’s a little…I don’t know, overly conciliatory of me?”

“Perhaps, but that does not mean it does not have its own utility.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Ioan eventually giving up after finishing eir plate. It was no less easy to eat too much, even in an embedded world.

“Are you okay with it?”

“Hmm?”

“Being between us. Interacting with the both of us even though I still resent her and she is still pleased with the work that she does. Are you okay being in the middle of that?”

Ey slouched back against the booth and watched the plates drift lazily by on the current, thinking. “I don’t know.”

“That is a perfectly valid answer, my dear.”

“I don’t really like the feeling. I feel weird about it every time it comes up, much as we need to talk about it.” Ey smiled, taking one of her paws in eir hand again. “I agree that it has its uses. It’s uncomfortable at times, but I don’t think I’d be any more comfortable dropping out of the role.”

The skunk brushed her thumb over eir fingers, saying, “I understand, Ioan. It is complex. If it needs to change, it can, and until then, even if I still harbor equally complex thoughts on True Name, I appreciate your position in our dynamic.”

The conversation drifted away from the subject after that, and the two wound up back at home to poke through their own projects even as the night fell early.

It wasn’t until they’d made it back to bed and curled up together that ey was finally able to truly let go of the topic, though; even throughout eir writing, a small portion of eir mind had been dedicated to the question of what eir role was between the two skunks and why it both rankled and felt necessary.