The Queen of Roach’s cleans up surprisingly well. Once she's polished and sparkling, like his desk, his station and his room, he has her change the ruined sheets, instructs her on how to tuck them just right at the corners.

  He leaves only to prepare them something to eat and returns to find her outsourcing work to Ricket, who’s fluffing up the pillow and adding an extra blanket — hand made and brightly coloured — to Rivin’s cot, while Roach skims his books again.

  “Creation, without permission, is sin—” she reads out loud. “and thus Halidom’s greatest stepped forward to purge the world of weakness, lead by light incarnate and hope all bound together. Unity prospered this day—” The girl snorts. “The victors really do write history, huh?”

  Rivin leans against the frame, crossing his arms languidly over his chest. “You remember it differently?”

  Roach glances up to smirk, “I’ve got it on good authority that the skyfat are belligerent liars, yes."

  “Ah, something you have in common then.” Rivin steps into the room just as Ricket turns to regard him, beaming bright with wide hazel eyes.

  “So nice of her to visit,” the young boy muses.

  “Isn’t it?” She’s sneering now, glaring at the eldest through a playful facade.

  Rivin risks a smile. “It is.”

  She softens immediately, throws a bashful hand to bat away the compliment but basks in it anyway. “I’m not staying long, I’ve got pressing matters of extreme importance.”

  “What matters?” Ricket tilts his head.

  Rivin raises a brow. “I thought you were tired.”

  “Must’ve been all the mud on my eyelids.”

  “You can stay,” Rivin mutters, glancing away.

  Ricket piles on immediately. “Yeah, c’mon Roach. Hang around a while.”

  The girl tilts back her head, cheeks flushing a flattered and rosy red. “I guess it can’t hurt.” She’s already on her feet again, twirling towards the door. This might’ve been her plan all along, for she quickly disappears from view, skipping towards the platform like she knows the place from memory. Ricket follows after her, more eager pup than boy.

  Rivin’s just grateful to see him smiling again, can vaguely hear him chattering about his most recent dream as the pair grew further away. He misses that. Even so, he hangs back. The room is suffocatingly quiet now. Dank and dark, save the new addition of colour atop his bed. He moves closer, rubbing his fingers across frayed fibers.

  He’s seen this blanket on Mouse’s bed before, often shoved beneath the pillow or clutched within her fist. It’s too small to cover the mattress completely and something hard develops in his chest when his fingers drop away. The absence of the room begins to infect his heart and so Rivin is quick to escape it, tries to disguise the urgency behind efficiency as he follows the echoes of laughter out the door. The leftovers of warmth.

  By the time he’s reached them, the pair are already settled at the table where Roach stands at the center, clean, but bare, feet steaming up the metal. Ricket watches with wide and adoring eyes, hands clutched before him as the girl finishes a theatrical display.

  “—And in those wispy willows,

  On the eve of something great,

  The mother wallowed in grief and bones

  For the children that she..” she roars the final word, flexing her fingers like claws “— ate!”

  “Ew.” Ricket claps his hands while the girl bows and when he spots Rivin, he waves him over.

  “What are you doing now?” The eldest sounds unimpressed, steely eyes glued to her feet. He doesn’t let her answer before, “get off the table.”

  She complies by stepping off the edge mid-sentence. “Writing a better story than Halidom. I have the time to provide entertainment. I call it—” She boxes her hands around an imaginary title, “Children: Surprisingly Yummy.”

  “—Can’t believe you let her near the kid,” Slink mutters, revealing himself from the shadows he’d never truly left. He’s still slunk over gear and metal, the machine in his lap half-hidden by poor posture. He looks exhausted and the deep bags beneath his eyes surely hold all of the grief he won’t allow himself to voice.

  Roach squeaks with fright, bringing up her hands to defend before relaxing. “When did you get there?”

  “I’ve always been here.”

  “She’s telling stories,” Ricket informs him.

  Roach twinkles her fingers past her eyes. “Legends.”

  “About cannibalism?” Rivin queries.

  “Great hook, right?”

  He ignores her. “Wipe up the table, we eat there.”

  “Ket, do that for me, would ya—?”

  “Roach.” Rivin’s tone certainly doesn’t invite argument.

  The girl deflates before sighing deeply and doing as she’s told, grabbing a rag from the kitchen and sweeping it over the top. “Is he always this bossy?”

  Ricket smiles bright. “Yes.”

  “I’m not bossy.” Rivin frowns.

  “Rivin, why is she here?” Slink sounds authentically irritated. “You returning something, thief?” His eyes narrow into thin slits.

  Roach clutches her chest as though wounded but springs back with a sly smirk. “Want a refund? I can open him up again real quick.”

  Slink throws a spanner but it misses the girl and hits Chip who appears from the hallway. He yowls and cups his eyes, the other sending daggers towards mohawk and regret. “What the— Slink?!”

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  “Don’t blame me!” He’s standing now, throwing up his hands. Rivin’s still reeling from Roach’s threat to undo his survival but finds that he can’t be upset, not when this is the most noise they’ve made in weeks. Everything looks brighter, feels warmer. The colour is coming back with the sound.

  “Don’t worry, I aint sticking ‘round,” Roach is sitting on the bench, chewing bread that’s greening on one side. Rivin quickly slaps it from her hands, replaces it with a slice from a fresher loaf. Roach continues without pause, crumbs spitting out as she speaks. “I’ve got business.”

  “You keep saying that. What business?” Rivin asks, handing her the pan and brush. He’s guiding her into cleaning up the mess while she elaborates.

  “Missing persons.” There’s a beat of quiet after that, save the bristles against the tin. Roach empties the crumbs into the trash can while Rivin holds the lid.

  “What.. is happening?” Chip is still rubbing his eyes, sore where the skin is already welting above his brow. He looks tired and confused, but more awake than he’d been in a while. Alert for the first time in weeks.

  “Whose missing?” Ricket’s eyes are earnest and sad.

  “My most fearless warrior,” the girl laments, returning the dustpan to the hook. “An esteemed member of my council. As a neighboring kingdom you must understand my urgency.”

  “Kingdom?” Ricket perks up.

  Slink rolls his eyes. “This shit again.”

  “What is happening?” Chip echoes himself.

  “Wait, who are you looking for?”

  “My esteemed and noble comrade and most beloved muse, she who haunts the tunnels—” The girl is standing on the table again, reaching for the sky like she’s reciting poetry, her voice rising and passionate. “My vessel of vengeance—!”

  “Get off the table.”

  “What is happening?!”

  “The royal calvary herself! My stubby silhouette!”

  “Is she broken?” Slink asks.

  Rivin sighs, shaking his head, “Her, uh— cat.”

  “General Stubby to you, sir!” She points a vicious hand in his direction.

  “A cat!” Ricket gasps before the realization dawns, “oh no.. not a cat.” It was a wonder anything survived down there in the dark, let alone felines, drinkers of the sun, bathers of the ray.

  “Not just any cat,” Roach defends as Rivin shoos her down from the table. She stands tall now and holds her finger up matter-of-factly. “The cat that always comes back.”

  “Dead,” slink declares.

  “Definitely dead,” Chip echoes.

  Roach gasps, turning to face Ricket. “Ket, do you agree with this wretched swine?”

  The boy glances away, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “I’m sure she’s okay…” something about the way he won’t face her suggests otherwise.

  “Regardless, I look!” She salutes the shadow but her hand drops just a little as Rivin glimpses the brief glimmer of weight in her gaze, “and I return.” He knows she’s good for promises, however, he notices the slightest slip in her expression, a brief dart of copper-bolt eyes. Something hidden, perhaps? Something he’s only just learning to spy.

  A half-truth.

  After it all, Roach doesn’t stay long, merely disappears as quickly as she came. Like smoke in the smog. Seamless. But, she doesn't stay gone either. In fact, she would come to materialize again and again like a feral thing slowly domesticating itself.

  On all such nights that she returns, he most often finds her already curled atop his cot, reading through his books again and pretending not to see the dirt she leaves on the sheets. It’s becomes almost ritual.

  She leaves. Returns. They change the sheets.

  Sometimes she wears a new bruise like a broach, grins through a split lip as though she enjoys the bitter taste of blood. She talks of deep, dark places she visits in her search, but never returns with the cat, only a glimmer in her eyes that looks more alike to rain than to fire.

  Some nights she is already sleeping by the time he staggers to his bed, aching, dusty, and exhausted from working the mines or the Fossa — he’d hoped to escape Halidom-branded control once and for all with Lav’s deal, but he’d been a fool to dream of anything else. A child. A boy with lungs full of ash and heart full of lead. How could he have thought he could be anything but? His future lay in order, in living long enough to crack open ore or burst open skulls.

  In truth, they didn’t need the coin, not anymore, instead they desperately needed the ration cards. Re-entry into a system with food and clean drinking water. Their only hope now that famine breathed down their necks.

  Some nights it felt as though Roach was the only colour he saw in a day. Right now, her freckled nose is barely visible beneath the comforter. She sleeps like she needs to be hidden, like that's the priority over breathing.

  He shakes his head and sighs deeply, but the sound of her in rest has begun to mingle in with the sounds of home and he’s finding that sleep comes easier now. Even when he wakes up cramped most days.

  The next morning, he offers to help her with her Missing Persons. She’s already half-way out the window with a stale crumpet caught between her teeth.

  “You can use the door, y’know.” He tells her.

  “Window keeps me limber.”

  A pause settles between them where Rivin grits his teeth and glances at the floor. His lungs feel taut but his pride appears to be the most at risk. “I have a bit of free time..” he starts.

  The girl only raises a brow. Chews slowly. When she swallows, her grin begins to bloom. “You're bored,” she accuses.

  He opens his mouth to argue. “I'm trying to—” he fizzles up but then sees her standing there— all bright eyed and reckless smirk, crumpet dust stuck to her cheeks, and he swallows the ire before it overflows, and tries again. “Do you want help with you missing cat or not?”

  Somehow, he even gets her to take the door.

  They search for hours. Roach knows everyone. Asks everyone. “She likes to hide under things — she's like the Spine Snake that way. Slippery.”

  He lifts pillars that she scampers under, and stands guard with thick grey eyes of mortification when she scurries into sewer grates. “I once saw her take on a Gutterling hoard and eat the matriarch in one bite! That's how she lost her tail.”

  They go deeper into the hovels of the Lowrealm where moss grows thick and crustaceans teeter over wet surfaces. Waters rumbles overhead, dripping from old pipes. It's Drowner territory.

  “Runt, stay close to me.” Rivin can feel the tension in his bones. Roach runs off too quickly. Too far ahead. Too often.

  “She loves the smells — I bet one of those Drowners caught her in a trap again.”

  Rivin hears low chatter in the distance. Quickly, he snaps his fingers at her, sternly gesturing her closer until she relents with a huff. They search the outskirts of the Marina, where the wood is thick with barnacles and bones. Roach pockets a shell or two (and what he thinks, but doesn't confirm, is a severed big toe) but they move on.

  “Stubby is my best apprentice,” Roach hums later, balancing on a plank of wood over a makeshift creek. “We've survived a lot together.” It's the first time he's heard the concern edge her voice. “She's the only thing I've ever lost that comes back.”

  Rivin swallows thickly. He reaches to touch her shoulder but pauses too long. She skips ahead. “We'll find your mongrel cat,” he promises and she stiffens with determination.

  The search continues long into the day (or night — time is often lost in the darkness). Long past the point of blisters and fatigue. Roach finally allows them rest at what appears to be an abandoned Halidom outpost. Tall, sleek feminine statues lay chipped and fallen on marble flooring. Containers lie upturned and empty; evidence of a battle are still scorched into the tile — cold now and softened by time. A small marble fountain with a figurine of a man and his beloved entangled in rising sheets lay broken at the center, stained with algae and old water.

  Rivin passes her a flask of purified water. She gulps it down eagerly while admiring the ruins with tired, fond eyes. “I've never seen this place.”

  “Oh?” Rivin sounds surprised. His gaze follows her path over the outpost.

  “Funny how there's still so much left to discover. Even down here.”

  “I figured you'd been everywhere.”

  She puffs out her chest. Sits a little straighter. “I am a fearless explorer.” He looks at his hands. Smiles through the thick of his hair. He needn't hide it. She's not looking at him. “Can you imagine all the space up there?” She's looking up.

  “Up top?”

  “Where the sun shines.” Roach wraps her arms around her knees.

  Rivin follows her gaze. “I've never really thought about it.”

  “Liar. Everyone's thought about it.”

  “Tch. There's no point.”

  She smiles slowly, at something else, somewhere else, and murmurs to the dead air: “Stupid. It's the whole point.”

  He doesn’t believe her. He swears he doesn’t, and yet, for several minutes, two children silently stare into darkness and imagine the sky.

  It's a good while before they head back to The Hole. Rivin can hear his stomach rumbling. Roach's sack is overflowing with trinkets she'd discovered on their journey.

  “Think again about leaving that crap here,” He warns, his tone lacking bite.

  She only cackles as she hikes the pack further up her back. “It's temporary!”

  Somehow he doesn't believe her — even worse, he hopes that she’s lying.