Chapter Text
Photane. That was their name now.
This body was a strange thing. Not solid, or at least, not as solid. Their skin was now gelatinous, soft, like those creatures they had seen in the sea. Admirabilis. It wrapped around something. Bones. Light still suffused through, but not as much. Instead of brilliant flashes or a glow that seemed to come from within, their flesh only took on a warmer hue, nearly red.
It was awkward, this shell but less fragile, in a way at least. So many components to it – organs, viscera, veins, blood. They had never known blood before this. Not even the lunarians had it. So many things to protect, yet getting one of them damaged did not mean to be entirely and wholly shattered.
There was warmth, and taste, and smell. Overwhelming to their mind but not their being. Phosphophylite, Photane now, took a deep breath instinctively, feeling themselves calm down without knowing why besides the surface level knowledge humans were allowed to have on every subject.
They stretched an arm, finding themselves as usual marvelling at how it unfolds with ripples of muscles, of how it stopped and couldn't be pulled further like their gold. How the heavy alloy couldn't be circulated through their body anymore at will and thin red replaced it.
Yes, Phos liked it here, far away from home maybe, but... home hadn't been home in a long while. Not when they were the only ones there.
The city was unusual. Wild. At The School, there had been schedules to follow. Chores to complete. The beings of this world, while having a resemblance of order, did not reach the level of organisation Phos was accommodated to.
Also, everything was loud.
With barely any greenery around, only concrete upon glass upon concrete, there was no chirp of the birds or wind breezing like bells through leaves. Not a lot of natural light, either. The sun had been tamed, stripes of LED glued on top of metal bars that would make night indistinguishable from day were it not for most of the lamps being in a state of disrepair.
And the roads.
And the buildings, really.
To be perfectly fair, Phos’s neighbourhood was far nicer, but the best cafes in this decrepit city concentrated in the Bowery. Thus, rat infested corners and suspicious stains it was. Phos shoved their hands in their coat’s pockets and kept their eyes squarely in front of them. As long as they didn’t seem lost, they would be left alone. The colder weather meant less people out, at least.
Late autumn meant people had to start saving for the winter to come. Families will have to budget or put other expenses on hold if they could. Young adults will have to pick an additional shift or job, whichever was the least shady. Street kids will have to try finding some kind of resemblance of protection, be that tucking behind a dumpster or risking it all with one of the shelters. Heat bills would increase and medicine would be needed.
Most wouldn’t get it.
How expensive would it be to buy jackets from thrift stores and wash them at a laundromat? Phos didn’t believe it’d be an exorbitant amount. Also water bottles. Some canned goods. Hot chocolate? If they bought it in bulk from a cafe maybe they can even get a discount like with the–
Their shoulder collided with something immovable and they slowly dragged their eyes to the perpetrator, ignoring the white lock that had been nudged in front of their face from the impact. They expected the corner of an alley, a lamp even.
A man glared back at them. Phos took a step away before he could direct his apparent anger somewhere, not trusting that the rosy tint of his cheeks and nose was only from the biting cold, nor too confident in the thick bandages rising up his neck, sloppily done and loose in the wrong places. Phos only returned his hostility with a blank gaze, aiming for eerie but probably landing on something more akin to pharmaceutical induced high. Even after all these years, facial control was still rather challenging.
“Watch where you goin’,” he grumbled, seemingly deciding Phos was not worth the air in his lungs. Phos tilted their head, not bothering to be subtle as their eyes followed his figure while he stomped past.
When the man disappeared past the line of a building, Phos resumed their walk. The tattoo they had been staring at on the shrinking person was worrying. A bold thing peeking from under the beige bandages, curling behind the man’s ear and disappearing into his hairline. It wasn’t matching with any of the gang tattoos they knew, could very well just be a personal choice, but…
Hm. That internet cafe with the less offensive pumpkin spice should be open now, as early it was. It had no cameras either.
***
Something weird happened when you squeezed a bigger than life being in a human body. Something hard to understand unless you were willing to let your brain leak through your ears. Everything that felt insignificant before, like life and death and planets and universes, they suddenly felt... displaced. Unreal.
Phos went from being able to comprehend the abstract plane, to remembering that life had a meaning, but not knowing what. Like it was on the tip of their tongue but not able to be materialised into words. So frustrating it was, these thoughts swirling in their mind continuously.
Once, they knew all.
What each blade of grass was composed of, on what type of soil they found home, how much oxygen it managed to produce in its lonesome. The stages the seed went through before becoming tall and what direction each sprout was facing. Now, they looked at the grass and saw… just green.
Phos used this weird restlessness to study every possible moment, even though Phos instinctually knew they could never reach the same amount of knowledge they had before. The same type of awareness. It grated on their now existing nerves, like something breathed into life by their inadequacy.
They were adequate, they had been molten and molded over spare parts until they were enough, until the appealing features added to them solidified together to make them the perfect god.
They had been a god.
And in this life they had to learn about volcanic rocks from a thick book that weighed at least a quarter of their irritatingly insignificant childhood weight.
(Their mother told them they'd grow into it, when puberty hit. Phos did not know what puberty is at the time, but internet searches had proven them it was some kind of harrowing experience all humans had to go through to mature. That they went through already. Gems don't mature though, they live until they shatter and are used for pretty jewellery by–)
Electricity was also a new thing Phos had to get used to. The internet even more. Not exactly the all knowing machine they understood it as, wanted it to be, but more than enough to make a difference.
There was something that carried over from their last life. Memorising. It was as easy as glancing at a page to know it forever. Not all humans had that, and while Phos's inclusions were gone, their soul must have carried their past life over. At least that's what they assumed. They must have had a soul now, one forged in suffering and pain, in loss and grief, in answered prayers and a single one left unsaid. It served well now, to make their life easier. To make knowing easy.
Phos once wanted to make an encyclopedia of the things on their small land. Then they wanted to find someone’s purpose, then wanted to rebuild someone back piece by piece. After, they knew all there was to know about their small land and beyond.
Now? Phos wanted to learn everything that could be learned, until their head burst from all the information inside, until they could look at a single blade of grass and instinctively know, from the color, the placement, the geography, what it was composed of, on what type of soil they found home, how much oxygen it managed to produce. The stages the seed went through before becoming tall and what direction each sprout was facing, instead of only seeing green.
Green.
So much green in their life. A mint green that had marked them for something great. They didn't want to be great now, Phos promised. Now they knew what being special meant. What it led to. They just wanted to not feel so lost anymore.
So they learned. They could–would not stop. They needed to know everything again.
The computer they had been burning holes through all this time just started booting up at a sluggish pace, the bar at the bottom filling up like it was the bus from this morning Phos had to catch. Twenty minutes late and breaking down just before their stop so they had to walk the remaining distance.
With a sigh, Phos took the go-to cup of the sugary monstrosity of a coffee they ordered and took a sip. They found the name of Sugar Plum espresso pretty apt. It was sweet, vaguely fruity, extremely autumn coded with some spice in it that warmed beyond the physical heat of the beverage. Not at all in the top of their preferences, but it was good. Safe.
The computer let out a melodic little tune and Phos put the cup down between the keyboard and the screen in favour of typing.
The keys were not the best quality. They clicked with an unpleasant level of noise and the spring sometimes got stuck on the way back up, very probably from the stickiness found on the board that Phos would never touch again. Once was enough to satisfy any curiosity they might have had.
Every search took too long to write out, and the eight pages of links they had to browse just to find something remotely useful was not ideal, but beggars could not be choosers in this economy. Phos squinted at the screen when a completely unrelated window popped up, shutting it down rather pointedly after managing to wrangle the barely functioning mouse to follow their command and hover the cursor over the x.
They had a feeling the three hours they had prepaid for would not be enough.
Going down the rabbit hole that was the internet was not hard. Too easy, in fact. Phos always got distracted while doing it. They would be contently reading on a particular subject and in less than five minutes could pivot to completely unrelated information, only remembering their original intention after losing track of how many sites they had hopped to and from.
When their coffee was gone, found out by a rather unfortunate attempt at a sip that came up empty, Phos had not scrounged up anything about the tattoo but managed to learn rather in depth about polymerase chain reactions. They're not sure how the transition happened, one second they were reading about ink then they stumbled upon drug clinical trials. The chain reactions happened a little later, when the cursor slid farther than Phos moved it to slide the page down manually, as the wheel didn't work, and hit a blue word.
Rolling their shoulders back and hearing a worrying crack, Phos exhaled deeply. Their arm was looping in front of their chest and reaching behind them before they could stop it, fingers prodding at their shoulder blade to check for any fissures. When they only met the soft material of their worn-out hoodie, heat creeped up their neck.
Right. Human. So inconvenient.
Since their hand was already there, they massaged the upper part of their trapezius muscle, alleviating the present soreness as they stood up. The chair scraped against the concrete floor as it was pushed back, nearly melding into the wall because of the cramped space. Phos had chosen the farthest computer from the entrance, secluded in the corner of the cafe that barely got any traffic. There was no risk someone might see their screen and they also wouldn't be bothered by the possibility of neighbours.
Phos’s free hand plucked the empty cup from the table and they started heading towards the counter. Their three hours were nearly up and lunch was approaching. If they didn't leave now, they wouldn't have time to cook. If they got another coffee now and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home, they could stay a couple extra hours.
“Found everything to your liking?” the girl at the register asked cheerily, a smile firmly fixed on her face. Phos hummed noncommittally and dropped the empty cup in the trash can next to their feet.
She was a brunette, with freckles across her cheeks that travelled down her neck. The apron she was wearing was the customary black one with neon squiggles licking at the hems, the logo of the cafe positioned on the left side of her chest. Some kind of rhombus with a simplistic hourglass in the middle. It was drawn in the same way as the squiggles to seem like it was glowing.
The girl’s face gradually became more and more nervous the longer Phos stayed silent, so they chose to spare the analysing for now.
“You're new,” they said instead, only worsening the state the girl was in. Phos winced internally at their own lack of tact and gave what they hoped was a reassuring smile. “Sorry. I must be more tired than I thought. I just haven't seen you before. Cathy took my order when I came in.”
“Oh!” The girl–Samantha, by the delicate embroidery under one of the apron’s straps–slumped her shoulders in relief. “Yeah, I'm new. Cathy is in the back doing… something,” she said vaguely, in that tone that implied she didn't know what was happening either but knew better than to ask.
“I hope you'll like it here, then. The owners are quite kind.” Phos fished in their pocket for a loose twenty dollar bill they knew was there since last Friday. They caught the end between their index and middle finger, then pulled.
“Yeah, they are. I was kinda hoping to get a job at the cafes edging closer to the Upper East Side, maybe even on the fringes, but no one would take me and my savings were getting kinda thin… I'm lucky they hired me when they did. This is closer to home anyway.” Samantha babbled away, folding her arms on top of the cash register to lean closer.
Phos politely waited for her to finish. “I get that. This block is mostly safe, so I think you're better off here. Can I get a Gingerbread Oat medium? And two more hours on the computer,” they asked, offering the twenty. Samantha blinked, as if just remembering she was at work. She started nodding her head before even taking the money, wild curls of brown bouncing around her face as her smile dimmed into something more relaxed.
“Of course. I'll unlock the computer again after I finish making the drink.”