Good Vibes

“Food quest time!” Sage announced.

“Um. Dream food won’t actually fill our stomachs,” I pointed out. “What’s even the point of eating in this place? Also, why do I even feel hungry or tired from walking in a dream?”

“Maximum realism, bruh. The food here fills souls with joy of shared experiences!” she stated and pulled off her cardboard cube helmet to reveal her human face underneath.

Red hair cascaded down her shoulders like liquid fire, catching brilliant light that didn’t exist beneath the blue-ish tinted halogen lights of the convention center. For a moment I was lost in her perfect smile and blue eyes so deep they looked like gateways into a salacious-ocean dimension. The Skinwalker’s freckle-spotted cheeks carried the warmth of a thousand sunrises and a primal urgency with a weight of a billion-love chains screamed that I should fall to my knees and devote the rest of my existence to the fox-goddess.

I blinked hard, swaying momentarily and then as before, let Sage’s allure sink into the frontend of my mind while my backend remained unaffected.

Laika and Galateya stared. Nexxali’s pupils dilated to full moons. Even Shady seemed momentarily transfixed before shaking herself like a wet dog.

“Put a lid on it, skinny,” Shady growled, having regained her wits faster than the other girls. “You’re distracting the mortals.”

“S’ good practice before you meet the real me,” Sage’s beauty-tsunami wave went down a notch to merely stunning, face foxing up, snout lengthening. “N’ways, there’s a bubble tea place ‘round the corner. My treat!”

“You… you’re very pretty,” Laika let out, tail wagging. “The prettiest… girl I’ve seen. Ever.”

“Das’ how we Skinwalkers roll, ye,” Sage replied.

“This place isn’t a dream,” Shady commented, clawed hand firmly entwining with mine as we began walking across the convention hall to the aforementioned bubble tea shop, “it smells too solid, the details are too sharp, there’s no smudged faces, no wobbly edges anywhere.”

“S’ not a dream, ye,” Sage agreed, “it’s a Yesterweave construct, a magical matrix powered by the memories of fourteen k foxes. More souls equals greater realism.”

“Hrm. It must be tough to do magic of this magnitude in this dimension,” Nexxali commented.

“Eh, it would be, but I’m a local-born girl,” Sage shrugged. “If you focus a Yesterweave hex through the Astral with enough souls, you get Star Trek style holo-deck vibes! Full immersion!”

“And these nerds behave too realistically,” Shady added, looking at the crowd around us. “Like they’re all actually… alive. My hooks can sense their thoughts, discern separate… fears and feelings from each one.”

“‘Das cus they rrr’ Fox souls masquerading as humans,” Sage explained. “The skulk likes to play pretend. They think it’s a cute game, sort of like play-hunting with particular roles and rules.”

“So the lady who sold me the plushie…” I voiced.

“That was Gage,” Sage said. “One of my cleverest cuties! Ke ke ke.”

“Could you put your fox-souls into gun units, give them bodies?” I considered. “Would that make them more effective helpers in the physical world?”

“Perhaps,” Sage replied. “I’d have t’do some serious artificery on the aforementioned gun units tho’. I’m excellent at Astral stuff but not great at physical permanence. That is, I can fuck up a particular location or dimensionally skewer an object or software, but not produce mobile physicality. I’m an Infinity-Entropy type mage. Teya here is Syntropy-aligned,” the fox girl squeezed Galateya’s waist, making her blush slightly. “She could do great permanent magic if she pushes herself to develop more!”

“What level are you anyway?” Shady asked.

“Don’t know,” Sage shrugged. “Numeric particularity gets iffy the more Infinite-Entropic you get. I very much doubt that a Lazarus bracelet would even be able to connect to me properly or tabulate me on the account that I’m a network of souls that’s constantly in motion. A Frontenachii incarnator well is pretty much useless to me, but thankfully I’m naturally immortal.”

Shady made a bothered face which probably meant that she was jealous of Sage.

“Aight,” Shady’s figure wobbled, rapidly darkening and unfolding in every direction, jet-black feathers with iridescent edges populating her head, antlers rising upwards and a tail sprouting from her spine. “I’ll be myself too then.”

Laika made a spooked dog yelp, hiding behind Sage.

“Relax, doggo,” Sage laughed, reaching out to smoosh Laika in a hug. “Shady-o looks like a Tom Burton character ‘dat had a baby with a lawnmower, but she’s nice.”

Shady loomed over us, like a basketball player of star-dusted abyss. A few nearby fox-soul-cosplayers scattered away from us as the lights overhead flickered and dimmed ever so slightly in her vicinity, casting unnerving double and triple-edged shadows.

“I’m Starshade,” Shady said to the cowering dog, showing all of her slightly glowing, shark-like teeth. “A Wendigo Omnid Firstborn, the Frontenachii Empire’s Crown Princess and this pack’s founder. I am also this nerd’s best friend and his Prima-fiancée.” She pointed a blade-claw at me. “If you cause problems or betray our pack, I WILL eat your soul. Is that understood?”

“She means welcome,” I translated.

“I said what I said,” Shady stated.

Laika cautiously peered around Sage’s side. “You are very… big and scary and smell… very dangerous.”

“I am incredibly dangerous to my enemies, yes.” Shady snapped her blade-claws. “I liberated your soul from its binding, so I expect you to behave respectfully and no… pawing at my Ashy without my permission. Is that understood?”

Laika nodded rapidly.

Galateya stepped closer to Laika and offered the trembling pupper her hand. “Ignore her. She feeds on fear and enjoys making people uncomfortable.”

“S’ a medical condition.” Sage giggled.

“It is NOT a medical condition!” Shady huffed.

“It should be,” Galateya huffed back in the same tone.

“Come on, y’all, no need to be ‘rawd while standin’ roun’, bubble tea awaits,” Sage chirped, seemingly unaffected by the terror-inducing radiance pouring from Shady that made my heart beat far too rapidly.

The fox-souls playing convention-goers parted for us like the Red Sea, some of them snapping photos, others giving enthusiastic thumbs-ups as if our group was the best cosplay ensemble they had ever seen.

“Do… they think we’re in costumes?” Laika whispered to Sage.

“They think many cute fox thoughts,” Sage whispered back. “The Yesterweave smooshes them into character particularities, gives them experience, helps ‘em grow!”

We pushed through the glass doors of the convention center into the late afternoon Seattle.

I noticed that it was easier to focus on distant objects. The Space Needle stood in the distance, a little too sharp against the clouds, the colors a pitch too saturated and warm, almost like we were in a Technicolor Wizard of Oz film.

I realized that the city didn’t sound like the usual muted din. Each sound was separate, clear… as if part of a massive orchestra where I could discern separate instruments at will.

The road smelled of wet asphalt and gas, carrying faint, albeit separate scents from passing cars. Even the smells in the Yesterweave were stronger. I supposed such made sense if thousands of foxes were weaving a gargantuan 5-sense holodeck-style composition.

“There,” Sage pointed down the block. A small café sat wedged between a vintage record shop and a store selling self-help books, crystals and incense. The sign above the door read “BOBBAW TEA” in hand-painted letters.

The interior of Bubble Tea cafe was small and aggressively cozy. We crammed into a corner booth clearly designed for five people. Six of us fit only because Shady solved the spatial problem by pulling me onto her lap and refusing to negotiate.

“Shady, I can grab a separate chair.” I voiced.

“Can, but won’t.” She wrapped both arms around my torso and rested her skull-chin on top of my head, antlers creating a bone canopy above us that made the light falling on me more eerie-blue-green tinted. “I have not had enough Ashy-time today. Everyone else got Ashy-time. I’m falling behind quota.”

“You have me-quotas?” I asked.

“I believe I’ve already clarified my position,” Shady commented. “I came here to have a chillaxing time with my bestie and all I’ve been doing is friggin’ work, work, work. This is not an acceptable development. Tomorrow you’re coming… home and you and I are spending the entire day together. Maybe more than a day. As long as I need to feel less shit basically.”

“I…” I opened my mouth, about to clarify all of the alien armada and dungeon problems looming above my Earth like a sword of Damocles.

“No,” she squished me. “I need this, Ashy. I’m full of entropy and coming apart at the seams.”

“And I can help with this, how?” I asked. “I’m just a human, not a magical whatever doctor you need to be less entropic.”

“Your value is exactly that,” Shady said. “You’re my human, a magically linear null. An anchor that grounds me to my past, healthy self. When we spent the three summers together I felt… happy. Happier, more stable than I’ve ever been. Blanket forts, stick swords… pirate adventures, and you teaching me so many wonderful, silly, human things.”

“Is there no Syntropy-increasing potion or something?” I asked Nexxali.

“Not really,” the Serval replied from our left side. “Syntropy is a personal thing for every Fractal Engine heart, you can’t just force it in as a drink Phoenix-tears style. Shades will gradually heal on her own by nomming stuff, she’s a Wendigo. We should make her a hoard to accelerate this process.”

“Yass, hoard me up some noms,” Shady affirmed. “You all are slacking on bringing me tribute.”

“I’ll make you nice artifacts to lick,” Sage offered.

“Fine,” I accepted my fate as Shady’s lap warmer.

“Tomorrow,” the Wendigo stated, tightening her grip, “you and me. Breakfast. Couch. Snacks. Movies. Zero aliens, zero invasions, zero foxes making lewd advances on your person.”

“I heard that,” Sage called out from across the table.

“You were meant to,” Shady replied.

“Joke’s on her, I’m gonna make advances towards both of them,” Nexxali cackle-whispered at Teya who rolled her eyes.

A fox-soul barista materialized at our table. She was short, round-cheeked, wearing an apron embroidered with tiny pawprints and a nametag reading “CLEMENTINE.” She held a notepad and a pen shaped like a carrot.

“Welcome to Bobbaw Tea! Now, what can I get for the spookiest table I’ve ever served?”

“What’s bubble tea?” Laika asked, intensely studying the colorful menu board, nose twitching at each listed flavor.

“Flavored tea with chewy tapioca balls at the bottom,” I explained from Shady’s lap perch. “You suck them up through a fat straw. They’re like these, uhh, little gummy spheres.”

“Gummy spheres,” Laika mused, tail doing a metronome wag. “The local humans put gummy spheres inside drinks on purpose?”

“We put gummy spheres in everything,” Sage said proudly.

“We?” Laika repeated.

“I’ve got a human soul rattling in me,” Sage tapped her chest. “Therefore am human… ish! N’ways, humanity is a species of unhinged snack innovators. We deep fry butter, wrap cheese in more cheese. We created the turducken!”

“The what?” Nexxali’s ginger-black ears rotated to the fox.

“A turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken,” I said.

The Serval’s golden eyes widened. “You stuff birds inside birds inside birds?”

“Yes. And then we eat it for a holiday,” I confirmed.

“This Earth,” Nexxali chortled, “is truly the most glorious place I have ever invaded. I want seventeen of these turducken things. Immediately.”

“We’re getting bubble tea right now, catio,” Sage laughed.

“I want bubble tea AND turducken,” the Serval insisted. “Make it happen with your weave-mojo, fox.”

“Nu. This is a memory of a very specific bubble tea shop,” the Skinwalker pointed out. “To summon things into it which don’t correlate to the menu breaks the fourth wall.”

“Buuut I want bubble tea with turducken flavor now!” Nexxali insisted, making big kitten eyes at Sage. “Can’t you wobble the wall a bit for me?”

“How about I take you on a date in the real to a place that sells turducken?” Sage wiggled her eyebrows.

The Serval pursed her lips, considering the proposal.