"So…. like…. Wildwing has a twin brother?"

 "What? No,” Nosedive paused a moment to consider. “Well. I guess, maybe?"

 “NO!” Winterwing shouted across the small store, and then pretended that he hadn’t when too many heads turned to stare at him, and a few scattered shushings were deployed.

The store gave off a strange smell, that upon closer inspection was revealed to be the scent of fresh printing of physical, brightly colored and flimsy books. They were on every shelf and alcove, most displaying large print and people on the front doing heroic-looking things. Winterwing couldn’t read any of it, but the drawings themselves were varying levels of realism and competence. As he looked down the row, it occurred to him that they did not strike him as all that different from the scattered pages he had left on the floor of the rec room.

Nosedive had disappeared into the far back of the store, where flimsy tables and thirty-odd locals had gathered, all speaking in hushed tones and paying more attention to the dealing of cards and rules recitation than anything else. Winterwing stood by the counter at the front, agitated, and Emily poked through the stacks of books in a shelf that came up to her waist. She could not have possibly read them either, but tried her best to appear engrossed just the same. While Winterwing was simply wearing what he had been the whole day, Emily and Nosedive had apparently been issued plainclothes with striking resemblance to their individual combat gear, and were dutifully wearing their modified team colors.

Nosedive emerged from the gathering holding two paper plates and two aluminum cans, and set them down on the counter next to Winterwing, whispering harshly, “Can you please try to chill for like, ten minutes?”

The teen vanished back into the group of humans without waiting for a response, and as he rejoined the fray someone asked him “Is your life just a giant soap opera, or what?”

“Yeah, basically,” Nosedive agreed, pointedly speaking loud enough that they could hear him across the store, illiciting a few more shushes from people focusing on their card game.

Emily stood up straight, watching the group for a time, before asking, “How long do you think it’ll be before he realizes you’ve never been chill in your life?”

Winterwing tried to gauge the manner in which she said it, but for whatever reason he could not read malice into her voice, or the little half smile. It was, in fact, a suspiciously friendly tone for someone that had pointedly not spoken to him in weeks.

“Why did you want to come to this, anyway?” he asked, with just a little more accusation laced in the words than intended.

“I’m guessing it won’t take ten minutes,” she said, ignoring his question, walking around the shelves and displays separating them. She inspected the peace offering of food that had been left for them on the counter.

Winterwing looked down at the dubious meal. It was a triangular slice of something warm on a flat bread, that had a thick layer of glistening cheese. "They would… they would tell us if something on this planet were poisonous, right?” he said. “They wouldn't just let us die."

Emily shrugged, apparently less concerned, and gave hers a taste. Winterwing was horrified at the lack of caution, but she held up a finger to halt his protest. She chewed less and less enthusiastically, before finally swallowing and coughing a bit. 

"Well?"

"It's fine," she lied and put the plate down on the counter, inspecting the colorful aluminum cylinder she had been gifted with urgency. There might have been tears in the corners of her eyes.

"Uh-huh," Winterwing prompted. “But?”

"It just, it tastes like about fifty-nine different animals went into it," though she looked perplexed that she had said such a thing. "That can't be right, can it?"

He frowned. "That is a very specific number."

Emily figured out how to open the can with a satisfying hiss, and for a moment this appeared a more promising offering. She frowned even deeper as she took a swig, shaking her head and swallowing reluctantly. "This is just sugar water."

"So far I'm not impressed with local cuisine," Winterwing observed.

She sipped, thought did not seem any more pleased with the second taste. "I have no idea what this flavor is supposed to be."

Winterwing sighed and took a bite of his warm triangle, then looked at it suspiciously again. "I'm getting mostly salt and oil."

"That's all the important food groups covered, I think," she said with false cheer, tipping her can in a mock toast.

They stood in that awkward silence and watched the huddled group of people focused on the far side of the store as they nibbled. He had never seen the game they were playing before, or anything like it, but it seemed to involve a large number of colorful cards. The game, whatever it was, was stopped with regularity for consultation of a thick rule book, and at least one argument about order of play that, he noted with some annoyance, did not get shushed.

 Emily startled him out of his mindlessness. "No way," she exclaimed, stood up straight, and set her half-eaten food down on the counter-top. She disappeared around one of the displays, and returned with a plush toy in her hands. "Look! It's you!"

It was a little lumpy white duck, proportioned like a child with a giant head, little orange webbed feet, an appropriately sized hockey jersey, and strangely no other clothing beyond a hockey mask.  

 It was clearly supposed to be Wildwing.

 She held it close to his face, and it let out a shrill noise. "It squeaks!" she proclaimed, admiring it and squeezing it again with a sharp laugh.

 "Well, that settles it. I'm in hell," Winterwing said.

What transpired next would be disputed depending on who was doing the telling. From the back side of the store, the concentration of the players at the tables was shattered by a strange, high pitched yelp. Witnesses that turned to the noise would have seen Emily poking at Winterwing’s side, for the split second before he tore the toy from her hands and began hitting her with it, its protesting squeak punctuating each blow. 

There was no reasoning with her, Emily was reduced to laughing so hard she began honking between breaths, and Winterwing’s blows became sloppy as he tried, and failed, to maintain his righteous assault. A flurry of Winterwing’s molting feathers flew up around them.

The sun beat down on the plaza in front of the store, hanging almost directly overhead. The concrete nearly glowed, the air above the ground was wavy and roiling. Winterwing and Emily leaned against the front of the store, in the slight sliver of shadow it cast on the ground, and they ate the rest of the food they were given before being ejected unceremoniously.

He didn’t drop dead from eating it, so on the balance things were going fine.

“I think a bunch of kids just put us in time out,” Emily mused.

Winterwing pondered the stores across the plaza from them. “I see a lecture in our future.”

She quirked a smile, “Haven’t heard that I’m a giant fuckup yet today, I suppose.”

He cleared his throat and donned the most serious, yet condescending tone he could muster. “I can’t believe how irresponsible you both are. That cards tournament was key to our strategic advantage against Dragaunus.”

Emily proudly held up her stolen Wildwing plush, and squeezed it aggressively into a loud, indignant squeak.

Winterwing lost a few more feathers as they leaned against the wall and laughed themselves out of breath again.

The laughter was eventually eclipsed by the ambient noise of the open-air mall. Most people walked in a straight line past the shops, a destination already in mind. Some chatted among themselves loudly, and a few showed passing interest in storefronts. On the far end, there appeared to be a performing musician, sitting alone with his instrument, playing something light to match the day, for no one and everyone.

Underlying all that was a sound, a constant quite noise that seemed to come from no where and everywhere, distant but clearly artificial, subsuming, and from all directions. He could not quite place it, though he was sure he had heard it before, somewhere. It sounded vaguely like wind, though there was none in evidence. The sound of an alien city, he supposed.

The mood past, melted away by the heat, and old annoyances set back in.

“Haven’t had a good laugh in a while. Didn’t know we still could.” Emily said, and the venom that he had expected earlier reappeared. It was an invitation to restart the argument that he had insisted they weren’t having.

“Teal broke up with me,” he said instead.

 Emily looked up at him sharply. "What?"

 "The morning before we were brought here."

 She visibly searched his face, before saying, “That’s why you’ve been so upset this whole time? Not saurians or being stranded here or being chased by monsters? Your girlfriend?”

 “I’m not exactly proud of it.”

 She stared at him wide-eyed, before realizing her gaping and looked away. "I'm sorry." 

 "No," he said, "she was right. She wanted me to make you move out."

 "I thought she didn’t want the extra room.”

 "Doesn't matter. It upset her that you were still there and I ignored it."

 They stood in baking silence, heat radiating from the walkway and buildings around them, increasingly intolerable even in their shade. He sipped at his drink and she dejectedly played with her pilfered toy.

 "You should have said something," she murmured.

 "Why did I have to say it? Why didn’t you leave on your own? It was supposed to be a couple of weeks, remember?"

 Emily focused on her sullen examination of the toy, rather than look at him. "You were nice to me. It's been a very long time since someone was nice without expecting anything for it." She let this simmer in the hot air, before adding again, "You should have said something."

 He leaned back against the hot wall and looked down the row of shops, without really seeing any of them. Winterwing had spent the solitude of the last few weeks mourning the relationship, and had exhausted himself of any spite. All that was left was a lingering sadness, and the knowledge that it was all his own fault. "I was in love with her."

 Emily winced in his peripheral vision. "I know.”

 "I remember when I realized that. The exact moment," he sighed, shaking his head. "I don't know when I stopped. I must have, because it's not there anymore, but I don't know when it left." He had probed that spot many times since realizing its absence, as if he had simply misplaced an emotion and it would return on its own, and he had come up empty handed each time. Its departure was so complete, he had occasionally questioned if it had ever been there in the first place.

 "It's not a great feeling, ruining that," Winterwing said. "She deserved better than that.”

 "I'm sorry," Emily said again, more quietly.

"My fault," he corrected. “I fucked up. That wasn’t you, that was me. Like you said, I could have done something about it, and I chose not to.”

There was supposed to be a meaningful conversation that followed, where all the stupid things he said and all the important things she had avoided saying could have been forgiven. They would still be admonished for failing the basic task of actually watching the teenager, but at least he would have a friend to be admonished with. That would be better than hostility from all sides.

What happened instead was everything turned a brilliant purple.

For a moment, Winterwing was sure that he had gone blind. He could see nothing around him, and it was not immediately obvious to him if the color that lingered in his eyes was really there, or if it was an afterimage, the last thing he would ever see. As he blinked furiously, shapes around him began to resolve. He could see the shadows he and Emily cast on the wall behind them. The trees in the center of the plaza slowly regained form, and then the dark outline of the line of shops a hundred feet across from them came into definition, and then shapes of dazed people trying to shield themselves from the glare. Everything was still an unnatural shade of brilliant purple. It consumed every other color, it caused an ache in his head so fierce he had to close his eyes again and put his back where he thought the lightsource was. He grasped blindly for Emily. She flinched at his touch, then huddled in against him, her forehead brushing his shoulder as she leaned into his cast shadow. 

There was a sound that followed, a high pitched whining, like wind through cables.

When he opened his eyes again all was still purple, but her face was there beside him, starkly dark with her back to the light, the small pinpricks of blue in her eyes marking her alien tenant. 

The whining was getting louder.

“Do you think it’s been ten minutes yet?” he shouted to her. He snatched a glance over his shoulder, to the source, which appeared to be a brilliant, impossibly bright column that rose over the skyline, directly into the clouds, and then into the atmosphere beyond. He turned back, squeezing his eyes shut again, hoping that column wasn’t seared permanently into his vision.

A bell sounded as Nosedive burst out the door they had been pushed through moments before, and he squinted against the glare until he made out their silhouettes. “Hey! We gotta-”

“Yeah! We know!” Emily called back at him.