Chapter Text
Pomni woke to the deep red drapes of her bed, the fabric falling in heavy folds that brushed the floor like they were caging her in. Her throat felt dry, tight, even though she hadn’t been thirsty, and her stomach churned as her gaze wandered aimlessly across the room.
The dust motes kept her entertained for a short while before the dreadful recollection of yesterday’s events came crashing back full force.
The red and blue button.
The revelation that it was all just an adventure.
Jax’s unhinged, helpless laughter ringing in everyone’s ears.
Jax.
A cold twist sank into Pomni’s gut at the thought.
They weren’t exactly on speaking terms yet and after yesterday, everything just seems like a mess not only for the two of them but for the rest of the people in the circus as well.
A curl of dread twisted through her mind as she thought about today—how everyone would react when Caine announced the next adventure.
Would anyone even remember yesterday’s events? And would he mess with their minds like Jax had said?
Feeling her thoughts beginning to spiral, Pomni forced herself to focus on the stupid dust motes—Caine had, strangely, remembered to include them in this place in full detail.
There was a gentle knock on her door that made her startle a bit.
“Pomni?” Ragatha called out quietly.
Pomni scrambles to sit upright. “C-coming” she responds back and hops off the bed and opens the door to a worried looking Ragatha.
Her eyebrows are scrunched together in concern, and Pomni realizes she must have let all her negative thoughts show on her face.
“I look rough, don’t I?” Pomni said, a short, humorless huff escaping her and Ragatha shakes her head, disagreeing.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt if you were still napping,” Ragatha said, looking off to the side guiltily. “I just wanted to check in on how you were doing. Kinger and I are just hanging out near the couches. You don’t have to come—I just thought I’d let you know.”
Pomni blinked up at Ragatha, taking in the familiar worry etched into her face—but the small twitch in her lower lid made Pomni think she needed the company more than she was letting on.
“What about the others?” She asked.
“Oh. Uh, I also asked, but they didn’t want to come out,” Ragatha said, her voice dipping a little.
Pomni’s eyes flicked to Jax’s closed door. Ragatha followed her gaze and gave a small shake of her head—not entirely dismissive, but the worry in her face tightened into something closed-off and careful.
Pomni realized then that Ragatha hadn’t asked Jax, and judging by the pause, probably wasn’t ready to. She hadn’t heard anything from his room before Ragatha came knocking, and the thought made her chest ache a little in concern.
“Um… yeah, I’ll be right there,” Pomni said, stepping out of her room. Ragatha’s furrowed eyebrows eased slightly, and she began walking back toward the couches in the main area.
Pomni paused halfway down the hallway, her eyes lingering on Jax’s portrait on his door.
She bit the bottom of her lip out of habit, anxiety knotting her stomach. Ragatha’s footsteps already sounded a bit distant, and Pomni slowly tore her gaze from Jax’s door, hurrying to catch up.
__
Kinger is surprisingly just staring off into space and not in his fort when Pomni and Ragatha approach.
“What’s wrong with him?” Pomni whispers to Ragatha in concern. Kinger staring off into space is not anything new, just the dead look in his eyes was a bit startling to see.
Ragatha shrugs, her expression one of worry again. “I’m not sure--he’s been like that ever since…well, since yesterday. He isn’t actively trying to build a fort or anything” She whispers back.
Kinger’s eyes glaze over further before going wide at the sight of Pomni and Ragatha.
He lets out an abrupt shout that makes them both jump. “Pomni! Ragatha!” He calls out.
Pomni waits, expecting him to continue — it sounds like he’s about to make a point but Kinger just stares off again, eyes glazing over like he’s forgotten what he was about to say. Though his expression was not as dead as they had looked just a moment ago.
Pomni exhales and exchanges a glance with Ragatha. “Kinger… do you uh, want to go somewhere dark?” She asked awkwardly and in the most weird way possible.
Kinger blinks at her, tilting his head like he’s considering it. “Uh… no, I don’t think I want to go somewhere dark right now,” he said seriously with eyes still glazed over, unfocused. He fidgets with his hands, twisting his fingers together.
Pomni raises an eyebrow. “Uh… you sure? It’s fine if you don’t want to, we just—”
Kinger cuts her off with a tiny, uneven laugh that’s almost a squeak. “Yeah, I’m sure. Dark places right now… well… Not today. Nope. Not today,” he repeats, a little faster each time.
Pomni tilts her head, unsure if she should press or let it go. “Okay… if you’re sure,” she murmurs, glancing at Ragatha for backup.
Ragatha shrugs awkwardly. “Yeah, okay, no problem.” She gives him a small smile, though her stomach knots a little.
Ragatha shifts slightly and leans back on her hands. “He isn’t all the way here right now,” she worriedly murmurs to Pomni, glancing at Kinger. “And I feel like forcing him into the dark might be a bit…” She lets the thought trail off, leaving the sentence hanging in the air.
Pomni nods, letting out a small, almost imperceptible sigh. She shrugs and slides down onto the couch to Kinger, letting her back rest against the cushions. Ragatha follows suit on her other side.
Kinger’s fingers twitch and he hums quietly to himself, staring at the ceiling with that same odd, unfocused expression. Pomni watches him for a moment, then looks at Ragatha and shrugs again, letting the silence stretch. The three of them sit there together, awkward in the quiet.
The mood doesn’t lift even as the three of them huddle together on the couch. A dark cloud still hangs over them, a quiet reminder that yesterday was real.
The silence rings through Pomni’s ear as they all collectively stare off into space.
They hear a couple of footsteps in the distance and see Zooble and Gangle walking together, both of their heads lowered and murmuring quietly to each other.
Upon seeing the three of them on the couch, Pomni can see Zooble and Gangle’s eyes look as troubled as they do, clearly still shaken from yesterday.
“You uh, you guys good?” Pomni asks awkwardly.
“Hardly..” Zooble responds, sighing and shaking their head. Gangle nods in agreement, her happy mask nowhere to be found as she slowly treads towards one of the couches perpendicular, Zooble following suit.
“I hate this place… even more so now,” Gangle confesses, twisting the ends of her ribbons together like hands being wrung.
“Don’t we all..” Zooble murmurs to no one in particular. At the mention of “all” Pomni fixes her gaze questioningly towards Zooble. “Did you see Jax? When you left the hall I mean?” She asks anxiously.
At the mention of his name, there’s collective tensing in everyone except for Kinger who’s counting the threads on a cushion quietly.
“Nah,” Zooble said after a beat.
“Oh,” Pomni replies softly.
An empty silence stretches between them again. Ragatha starts fidgeting with the patches on her skirt, her movements small and restless.
“W-what do we do now?” Ragatha asked. Zooble turned their eyes on her with a raised brow.
“Do? We can’t do anything in this place. We’re stuck here. If anything, yesterday—” They cut off, a hitch in their voice as if something had caught in their throat. “Yesterday just reminded us that there’s no way out.”
At that Gangle’s teardrops started falling and she wiped at them quickly before hugging her knees to her chest.
Zooble was right.
They’ll be stuck here, eventually forgotten.
And there’s nothing she—or anyone—can do to stop it.
Feeling her own thoughts beginning to spiral, Pomni quickly stands, startling Ragatha, who seemed lost in her own quiet crisis.
What made it worse was knowing they were all just left to wait—waiting for Caine to call them in for the next adventure.
“Uh… I gotta— I gotta go.” Pomni stutters out. She quickly walked away from the couches of the main area, away from the rooms to just wander around to clear her thoughts even when she hears Ragatha calling her name out from behind.
__
Pomni had probably been walking mindlessly for ten minutes, already far from everyone else in the circus.
The thought pressed on her chest, dragging her back to the first day she arrived here—the fear, the confusion, the helplessness. It made her stomach twist, and before she realized it, she was sprinting aimlessly.
She burst through a random door in one of the unfamiliar halls and pressed her back against it, shutting it behind her. Only then did she let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“[BEEP].” She cursed out, her eyes still scrunched closed feeling overwhelmed.
Pomni then opened her eyes to the sound of gentle waves in the room she burst into, curious despite her initial crisis.
The room before her was broad and quiet, its walls washed in soft white light that seeped through the tall, arched windows. The pale tiles under her feet gleamed faintly, reflecting the diffuse glow like a muted mirror.
Nothing immediately felt wrong, thank [BEEP] , she thought —nothing threatening, only calm—and for a moment Pomni just stood there, letting the serenity press gently against the tight coil of anxiety in her chest.
The faint sound of water lapping reached her again, rhythmic and soothing, though she couldn’t see its source yet. She took a cautious step forward, letting her eyes drift across the space.
Shadows stretched lazily across the floor from the structural arches, elongating and shifting as the light pooled in different angles. Dust motes floated lazily in the beams, catching her gaze and holding it, as though the room itself wanted her to pause and breathe.
Turning another corner, Pomni’s eyes widened. A shallow pool shimmered under the soft light, just enough to ripple gently with each small movement. A single lounge chair rested quietly at the edge, angled toward the glow from above--an indoor pool.
The sound of the water was faint but steady, pressing against her nerves in a way that eased some of the tension she’d carried from the circus.
Pomni stepped closer, shoes brushing the edge of the pool and for the first time in hours, she let herself exhale fully. The calm of the room wrapped around her like a soft blanket, almost coaxing her to sit and simply exist without worry.
She moved toward a bench placed nearby, settling onto it and letting her hands rest lightly on her knees, her eyes fixed on the gentle ripples.
And then, from somewhere behind her, a voice broke the quiet.
“What are you doing here?”
Pomni squeaked in alarm and she spun around to find Jax standing in the hallway she had just passed, his face unreadable, and his voice calm—though strangely lifeless.
His expression was one of boredom aside from the slightly crooked twitch of his left ear--he looked like he’d just woken up from a bad nap.
“Jax! Sorry I--I didn't know anyone was here..” Pomni quickly explained
Jax stared at her for a moment longer, then snorted quietly. “Wow. Breaking into random rooms now? Guess things really are going downhill,” he said, tone dry, almost lazy.
Pomni winced. “I didn’t break in, I just— I needed somewhere quiet,” she muttered, hands curling into her sleeves. “I can leave if you want.”
Jax’s ears twitched again. He glanced past her, toward the pool, then back to the doorway behind him.
“Relax. It’s a big place,” he said. “Not like there’s a reservation system.”
She hesitated, still standing near the bench. “I really didn’t know you were here.”
Jax sighed again. He walked towards the pool area and smoothly sat on the lounge chair, ignoring Pomni standing a few meters away, still poised to sit on the bench at the edges.
Even with his back turned, arms crossed behind his head, Jax’s posture held a tightness that didn’t match his easy stance—like the aloof bravado seemed forced, Pomni thought.
She eased on to the bench carefully, choosing to stay silent for a bit but still keeping her eyes trained on Jax.
“Hey Jax..” Pomni starts to call out quietly but upon seeing the back of his shoulders tense further she pauses.
Are you okay? She wants to ask.
But her gut tells her that that might not be the best approach with Jax yet. The memory of him hunched over the buttons console in despair, raw and full of hurt comes unbidden.
“...What is this place?” She asks instead, relieved to see that his shoulders slightly sagged down as if in relief.
Jax cracked one eye open and glanced lazily toward the far wall.
“No idea,” he said. “Just another one of those rooms.”
Pomni blinked. “Rooms?”
The word made her look around properly for the first time.
Beyond the pool’s glow, the white tiles didn’t end where she thought they did. Tall archways lined the walls—no doors, no frames—just long, open passages stretching into darkness.
The light from the pool barely reached inside them, thinning out until the halls dissolved into shadow. There was no telling how far they went. Or how many more spaces branched off beyond what she could see.
The room suddenly felt more uneasy to her, the serenity fraying a bit as she realized how unknowingly vast it could be.
Pomni’s fingers curled slightly against the edge of the bench.
When she looked back, Jax had turned his head just enough to watch her reaction. A small crooked smile tugged at the edge of his mouth.
“Relax. It only goes on forever.” He said, one eye crinkling faintly, the smile never quite reaching it.
“Uhh…” Was all Pomni could say back as she uneasily looked back between him and the dark hallways. She shifted on the bench, pushing herself gently away, drawn to inspect one of the passages a little closer.
When she stepped near the hallway and turned back to ask him something, her eyes caught his face.
Jax was looking towards the pool, gaze fixed somewhere between the tiles and the reflection in the water—his eyes were empty in a way that felt heavier than any words.
The slight crooked twitch of his ear caught Pomni’s attention—a small, unconscious gesture she unfortunately now recognized whenever he seemed deeply upset.
“Have you… explored this place?” she asked quietly, trying not to let her unease show.
Jax startled slightly, as if Pomni’s question had snapped him out of a daze. He let out a soft, humorless chuckle, one shoulder lifting just a fraction--still faced away from Pomni. “I have,” he said, voice low and tired. “Like I said… it just goes on forever.” His words weren’t playful this time; there was a flat exhaustion to them, the kind that made Pomni’s chest tighten.
“You wanna go explore more of ‘forever?’ ” Pomni presses, forcing a bit of cheer into her voice.
Jax let out a soft, almost imperceptible ugh and started to turn toward her. “Look, Pomni, I—” His words faltered as he caught her face mid-turn. For a moment, his jaw tightened, like he was ready to refuse outright.
But then he paused. His shoulders slumped slightly, and a quiet sigh escaped him. “…Sure, why not,” he muttered instead, a hint of reluctant resignation in his tone. He slowly started to sit up from his lounge chair to approach, leaving Pomni blinking, caught somewhere between relief and curiosity.
She wondered what expression she had made that had made him change his mind.
__
Pomni’s eyes swept over the endless archways again, the weight of the place still pressing on her chest.
“So… this really does go on forever, huh?” She says rhetorically, her shoes making light footsteps on the tiled floor as they began walking through one of the hallways.
“One thing you have to remember when you’re here,” Jax said, his voice low, casual, as if stating a fact, “is that these halls have a very strict no wrong-tile policy.”
Pomni blinked and abruptly stopped walking. “No… wrong-tile policy?”
Jax nodded back seriously. “Yeah. Apparently, they prefer you walk carefully in certain patterns. Step wrong, and the tiles… rearrange themselves. Could make you slip and fall on your head. It’s very sensitive.”
Pomni raised an eyebrow, half-exasperated. “…Sensitive?”
Her eyes flicked down to the tiles at her feet, suddenly distrustful. Her eyes flicked back at Jax, noticing the faint smirk tugging at his mouth.
“You’re just [BEEP]ing with me” she said, eyes narrowing at the subtle curl of his lips.
Jax let out a soft, humorless chuckle, leaning back slightly as if to emphasize the seriousness of his warning. “Maybe a little,” he admitted, eyes glinting faintly. “Or maybe not.”.
They wandered down the hallway, the echo of their footsteps mingling with the distant, soft lap of water. Pomni’s gaze caught the glimmer of something ahead—a soft turquoise glow spilling out from a large open doorway. As they stepped closer, the room unfolded before them.
The pool here was deeper, though not uncomfortably so, the water so still it mirrored the high, white-tiled walls like polished glass. Light filtered in from somewhere above, falling in pale beams that kissed the surface and glinted off the edges of the tiles. The room smelled faintly of damp stone and something sterile.
At one end of the pool, a massive spiral staircase wound upward, its white tiles gleaming in the diffuse light. It looked impossibly long, twisting toward a floor they couldn’t see—the top lost in shadow except where the beams of light hit the edge of the ceiling. The staircase seemed almost alive, inviting exploration, daring anyone to climb and see what awaited above.
Pomni slowed, eyes tracing the elegant curve of the steps. A thrill ran through her, the first in hours, as a spark of curiosity nudged the anxiety aside. She turned slightly toward Jax, and their eyes met.
For a moment, neither spoke. But in the tilt of his head, the faint curl of his lips, the way his eyes flickered to the staircase, Pomni could tell he felt it too.
Suddenly, the weight of yesterday, the endless hallways, all of it seemed to fade for a second. The pool’s pale tiles and the streaks of light didn’t erase the unease, but they made it easier to make space to feel even a wavering sense of wonder.
Pomni stepped closer to the water, toes brushing the edge of the tiles. Jax leaned against the pool’s rim, casual, the familiar trace of mischief still there, though still a bit quiet. The echo of the water and the height of the ceiling pressed in around them, making the room feel slightly unreal.
“You… wanna see how far this thing actually goes?” Jax said, low, teasing.
Pomni let herself smirk, the corners of her mouth twitching without much thought. “…Maybe,” she said, voice soft but sharper than before, carrying the same small spark of interest she saw in him.
___
Pomni’s shoes scraped lightly against the tile as she climbed, each step feeling smaller than the one before. The spiral stairs seemed endless.
Jax moved ahead a few steps, his posture casual, one hand brushing against the curve of the stairs for balance, though he made it look effortless. “You holding up?” he called back when he saw Pomni breathing a bit hard.
“I… yeah, I’m fine,” Pomni said, forcing a small smile. She dared a glance down—and froze. The floor below looked impossibly far. Her stomach flipped, and she gripped around her own stomach instead.
“You’d think I’d warn you, huh?” Jax said, voice light, teasing. “But where’s the fun in that?”
Pomni let out a small, nervous laugh in good nature. “My stomach might disagree,” she murmured, taking the next step carefully.
They climbed mostly in silence. The echo of their shoes seemed unnaturally loud in the empty space. Pomni’s legs were starting to ache, and she shifted slightly closer to the inner curve of the stairs, moving cautiously.
Jax slowed his pace, matching hers without saying anything.
Pomni caught one of his glances—brief, distant—and her chest eased just a fraction.
She hesitated near a particularly steep curve. “Oh… wow…” she whispered.
“What?” Jax asked.
“It’s just… really high,” she admitted.
He paused for a moment. “Relax. If we fall, it’s a long way down—plenty of time to scream.”
“Jax!” She shouts in panic at the thought.
They continued their way upwards before another thought occured to Pomni.
Pomni paused mid-step, her gaze drifting toward the pale sunlight spilling through the high windows. She swallowed and spoke aloud, voice small and uncertain.
“How long have we been climbing? Uh, We’ve been here for a while already right?”
Jax glanced at her from a few steps ahead, his tall shadow stretching along the curve of the stairs. Without looking directly at her, he said casually, almost offhand.
“Oh, the light in these rooms never goes dark.”
Pomni blinked, letting the words sink in.
“So… uh,” she said, twisting her fingers nervously, “we can never tell if time even moves in here?”
Jax shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Works better that way, if you ask me,” he said as they continued to climb.
They kept going again, slowly, almost wordlessly. The spiral stretched above them, winding and twisting, each step echoing softly against the smooth tiles. Time seemed to blur—minutes folding into probably hours? Pomni thought, mild panic starting to bubble out her own thoughts.
Pomni’s legs wobbled slightly as she took another careful step, her breathing shallow. “I… I don’t know if I can make it all the way to the top,” she admitted quietly.
Jax glanced at her, eyes narrowing just a fraction, then rolled his eyes. “It’s ‘cuz your legs are too short,” he said. He leaned against the tiles, one hand brushing lightly over the smooth curve, and Pomni eased herself down beside him, exhaling— too tired to respond to Jax making fun of her.
They stayed there for a moment, listening to the soft echo of water slapping somewhere far below. After a few quiet beats, they noticed the landing opened onto a short hallway, the walls pale and empty, leading toward a door set into the far wall—they exchanged quiet glances before wordlessly deciding to head to that room instead.
When they stepped through the door, the space beyond made them pause. The room opened wide, the pool stretching out so far and dark that it seemed to swallow the light above. Pomni’s eyes widened, and she took a cautious step closer.
Around them, statues filled the room. Dozens, maybe hundreds, all identical—generic-looking, pale-colored figures that reminded her vaguely of Roman sculptures, blank faces and smooth, plain forms.
They were unnervingly uniform, and they stretched in every direction as far as she could see, giving the room an unnatural abundance.
The windows were massive, towering over what was probably four floors, letting in a stark, bright light. Outside, there was nothing but an endless sky—a soft, generic blue with a faint haze and cartoonish clouds, like Caine had just plopped in a stock image for the outdoors. The brightness made the room feel almost weightless, yet the sheer scale of the statues and the pool pressed in on her mind.
Pomni’s breath caught when a slight ripple disturbed the water. Jax leaned over the edge to look, and they both froze. Just beneath the surface, barely visible, the top of a statue’s head barely above the water—a glimpse of something enormous, far bigger than anything they could have guessed. They exchanged a glance, eyes wide. The pool was deep. Really deep.
“What the [BEEP].” said Jax.
Pomni swallowed, her fingers curling lightly against the edge of the tile. “It… it goes down forever,” she whispered.
Forever seems to be a theme for them right now.
Jax’s hand hovered over the water, his reflection shifting across the dark surface. “Yeah… looks like it,” he said, voice filled with a bit unease. He squinted at the statues, tilting his head. “This [BEEP] is just uncanny.”
Pomni looked at him, then back at the water, her chest pressing with the scale of the room. The light, the endless water, the repetition of the statues—it was unsettling, but almost hypnotic.
“Dare you to go in there.” Jax starts and Pomni rolls her eyes at him.
“This reminds me of the time I got into a room just full of hats. It’s like Caine just created all these options just to dump them there”
He let out a dry chuckle, glancing at the statues again. “Honestly, I half expect him to just throw in a bunch of rubber ducks next. Or maybe a room full of screaming garden gnomes. Wouldn’t be out of character.”
Pomni blinked, a small laugh slipping past her. “Screaming garden gnomes? Really?”
Jax shrugged, one shoulder lifting lazily. “Hey, if you’re gonna make a place that goes on forever, you might as well make it ridiculous. Keeps things interesting.”
Pomni lingered near the edge of the pool, moving slowly along the tiles, her gaze fixed on the dark water below. The surface barely rippled, but every so often she caught the faint, distorted curve of the statue’s shape warping and slipping away whenever she tried to focus on it too hard.
Jax stayed a few steps back, hands loose at his sides, watching her with a kind of idle attentiveness that didn’t quite match his earlier edge.
She stopped suddenly and glanced back at him suspiciously. “Don’t push me.”
He blinked, then let out a real laugh—short, surprised, and unguarded. It echoed faintly across the room before fading into the high ceiling. “Wow. That’s the reputation I get now, huh?”
Pomni huffed, but there was a hint of a smile there. “You earned it.”
“Fair,” Jax said easily. He then rolled his eyes. “Relax. Not feeling very… shovey today.”
That, oddly enough, helped. Pomni eased herself down at the edge of the pool, tucking her legs beneath her and resting her hands on the tile. Jax followed after a moment, sitting close enough that she could sense him there without feeling crowded—one leg stretched out, the other bent, posture loose.
They sat in silence for a bit, watching the water. The statues loomed around them, still and countless, their blank faces turned toward nothing.
Jax broke the quiet first. “So,” he said, glancing sideways at her, “you mentioned before you used to poke around abandoned places. What kinda stuff did you actually see out there?”
Pomni hesitated. “Uh… depends. Most of it was just… empty. Old factories, run-down malls, schools that smelled like mold and dust.” She paused, then added, “Sometimes it was kinda boring.”
Jax snorted. “Yeah, I don’t buy that.”
She smiled faintly. “Okay, sometimes it was boring. But sometimes it was…” She trailed off, eyes drifting back to the water. “Sometimes it was really weird.”
“Define ‘weird,’” Jax said. “Because my scale’s a little warped.”
Pomni let out a soft breath. “There was this one place. Super old building, half-collapsed, right near a swamp. I wasn’t even sure it was safe to go inside, but—” She shrugged. “Curiosity.”
Jax nodded along. “Naturally.”
“I found this room,” she continued. “Just… full of doll heads. Like, dozens of them. Maybe more. All piled up in the corner, right next to this broken window where swamp water had leaked in.” Her fingers curled slightly against the tile. “The hair was everywhere. Tangled. Synthetic, obviously, but still…”
She shook her head. “It felt wrong. Like I’d stumbled onto something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
Jax was quiet now, watching her instead of the pool.
“I stood there for, like, five minutes,” Pomni said. “Just staring at it. My brain kept going, ‘These are fake, these are fake,’ but my stomach didn’t care.” She let out a small, uneasy laugh. “I almost called the cops. Over doll heads.”
Jax scoffed under his breath. “Great. So not a crime scene—just someone’s extremely cursed hobby.”
She glanced at him. “You don’t think that’s—”
“No, no,” he cut in lightly. “It is creepy. Just not in the fun way. More in the ‘this person should not be left alone’ way.”
Pomni huffed despite herself. “I almost called the cops.” She repeated
Jax snorted. “Over doll heads?” He quoted her back.
“They were everywhere,” she insisted. “And the hair—”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” He lifted one hand, palm out. “Swamp doll shrine. Very upsetting. Zero out of ten. Would not revisit.”
After a beat, Jax spoke again.”So. You miss that stuff? the whole ‘trespassing for fun’ lifestyle?”
Pomni thought about it. “I think I miss being able to leave,” she said slowly. “If something felt wrong, I could just… go.”
Jax’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Yeah. Welcome to the circus.”
Pomni glanced sideways at him. “You know… you’re a little less unbearable when you’re not trying so hard.”
He scoffed. “Careful. Say it again and I might start valuing your opinion.”
She rolled her eyes in response. “I meant it,” she said quickly.
Jax finally looked at her, one brow lifting playfully--his expression deliberately judgemental. “You’re weird, Pomni. You know that, right?”
She snorted quietly and shifted on the tile, stretching out onto her stomach instead. Her elbows came down easily, forearms crossed as she rested her chin against them, facing the pool. A second later, Jax leaned back as well, settling onto his spine with his legs stretched out, one ankle lazily hooked over the other.
“Did you know,” she said, after a moment, “there’s an actual phobia for… that?” She tipped her chin toward the water.
Jax hummed, eyes still on the ceiling. “Let me guess. Something long and impossible to pronounce.”
“Thalassophobia,” Pomni said. “It’s the fear of deep bodies of water. Or what might be in them.”
Jax turned his head slightly, one ear flattening against the tile. “Wow. They really saw ‘ocean terror’ and went, ‘Yeah, let’s make that sound worse.’”
She smiled faintly. “It’s not just oceans. Lakes count too. Even pools, sometimes. It’s the idea that something huge could be under the surface, and you wouldn’t know until it moved.”
“That’s just common sense,” he said. “That’s not a phobia. That’s survival instincts.”
Pomni glanced at him. “You don’t find that stuff like--unsettling?”
He considered that, tail flicking once against the floor. “Depends. What are we talking about? Shark? Octopus? One of those weird flat things with too many eyes?”
“A shark would be worse,” Pomni said immediately.
Jax scoffed, making a buzzer sound. “Wrong!”
She pushed herself up on one elbow, looking at him in alarm. “How is a shark not worse?”
“Because sharks are honest,” he said. “You see a shark, it’s like, ‘Hey. I’m a knife. I’m fast. This is a bad situation.’ Respectable. Very upfront.”
“And an octopus isn’t?”
“No,” Jax said. “An octopus is planning something. It’s got hands. It can open jars. It’s thinking about you. A shark just eats you. An octopus would make it weird first.”
Pomni stared at him, expression somewhere between disbelief and mild horror. “That is the worst argument I’ve ever heard.”
He grinned, sharp and pleased. “And yet, here you are. Still listening.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, flopping back down onto the tile. “I still think sharks are scarier.”
“Yeah, but if you saw one under there—” He flicked two fingers toward the pool. “—you’d at least know what you’re dealing with.”
“And you wouldn’t panic?”
“Me? Panic?” He glanced at her. “What do you take me for?”
Pomni let out a quiet laugh before she could stop herself. It echoed faintly off the tiles, small but real.
They fell into an easy back-and-forth after that — ridiculous hypotheticals, half-serious debates about which sea creatures were overrated, whether eels counted as snakes, whether seeing anything move under that water would be grounds to ditch the other and who’d be faster to leave.
Jax talked with his hands more now, one arm folded behind his head, the other gesturing lazily in the air. His voice stayed light. Unforced. The edge from earlier — that tightness in his shoulders, the way his gaze had seemed to snag on nothing — had eased.
Pomni noticed it without quite meaning to.
The way his eyes tracked her when she spoke instead of drifting. The way his smirk came and went naturally, not like something put on for effect.
He looked… settled. Present. Like lying here,on the cold floor was enough to pull him out of wherever he’d been stuck before.
She didn’t comment on it.
Instead, she rolled her head slightly toward him and said, “If you ever say you want to see a shark down there, I’m leaving you.”
They kept talking more again after that and time stretched in a way that was hard to measure. The lights overhead never changed, the pool stayed dark and still, but the space around them felt quieter somehow. Their words slowed. The gaps between sentences grew longer.
At some point, they shifted so their bodies lay roughly side by side, shoulders almost level. Jax stopped gesturing altogether. His arm slipped down from where it had been moving through the air and rested at his side. His voice dropped, too—lower, lazier, like he was talking more to fill the silence than to say anything specific, looking drowsy.
Pomni couldn’t help but smile at how his ears had gone all droopy.
Pomni’s replies grew softer, shorter. She found herself staring at the way the light caught along the edge of the pool, though she couldn’t shake the feeling that his eyes stayed on her. Her eyelids grew heavy without warning. The floor beneath her was cold, steady, and oddly soothing.
Her hand shifted slightly, unconsciously inching closer to his.
By the time they both drifted off, their fingers hovered close, his twitching just enough to brush hers. Neither noticed.