“Ah, I’m just conserving energy at the moment. It’s kind of like a puppet. But I can either control it at the same time, or I can control that half of me independently. When we are inside, that is what I’ll do, so I can still talk to you.” The Dweller cleared his throat. “Well, let’s go, I guess.”
Seri nodded, even as his eyes remained locked on the shadow puppet with trepidation.
How much more could Shadow Dwellers do? It wasn’t just Preston, or the darkness, he had to look out for, it was…everyone… If this was something Preston could do…no one, nowhere…nothing in this world was safe.
“Seri?”
At hearing his name, he flinched, meeting Severo’s gaze. “Yes?”
“Let’s go?” the man repeated hesitantly.
“Y-yes…let’s go…”
Severo nodded and started forward… Seri followed with Skya in her stroller, eyes moving back to the shadow puppet. The puppet, only inches in front of the Dweller, moved in time with him. Watching it happen was…unsettling, to say the least.
“When we are inside, just point me in the right direction and we will snag whatever you need. There should be some ready-made meals for us to grab,” Severo said as they entered the store.
Seri looked around. The outside of the building had looked like a large lopsided rectangle, with a circle stuck on the right side, but the inside was pretty much an average rectangular room. He never understood making the outside of a building look so odd, just to make the inside normal. But that was common nowadays. Odd outsides, normal, old-fashioned insides.
On spotting the carts, Seri mused, “I guess we should grab a cart and…let’s see if they have some bags we can buy, as I don’t think trying to carry all this stuff without them will be easy.”
“Good plan.” Severo remained standing there while the shadow part of him in the other world broke off. The puppet walked over, grabbed a cart, and then returned.
“That’s…so weird.”
Severo shrugged and started forward, looking around as he went. “Eh, you’ll maybe get used to it. I imagine this won’t be the last time we are forced to do this.”
Seri did his best to follow and step around the shadow people. He failed a few times. It was just…so weird walking through them. And the brief flashes of darkness it caused in his vision made him want to avoid it all the more. He didn’t feel anything when it happened, but it still made his skin crawl on top of causing him to panic.
Seri glanced over when Severo stopped. The female shadow version of Severo turned towards a worker, even as the actual man didn’t move. And for the first time, the shadow spoke. “Excuse me, do you have bags here?”
Seri’s jaw dropped at the squeaky mess of a voice that came out of the shadow’s mouth. Wait…why could he hear it?
The worker’s eyes widened, looking startled for a moment, before he regained his composure and started saying something… At least, Seri assumed he was. Because while the person's mouth moved, there was no sound.
He frowned. So…he could hear Severo’s horrendous…whatever that was…but yet no one else?
“Ah, thank you,” the shadow Severo chimed, voice just as high-pitched, squeaky, and fake sounding as before.
The voice was just too much to take the second time around. Seri burst into laughter, snorting a bit before managing to say, “You are so bad at that.”
The non-shadow Severo sniffed. “I can’t help that I have a deep voice.”
“A deep voice has nothing to do with whatever the heck you just did. Why didn’t you just become a different looking man, if you are so bad at faking a woman’s voice?”
“I thought being as different from normal as possible was the best option,” Severo grumbled stiffly. “Let’s just get this over with. I know where the bags are.”
“So you could hear the worker?”
“Yes. I can hear everyone.”
“Why can’t I?” Seri asked, slightly curious. “And why can I hear you?”
“Because while you are completely cut off from the other world in here, I am not. I’m always connected. As for why you can hear my shadow…well, it's more of a projection, rather than the shadow actually speaking.”
“You can project your voice without moving your mouth?”
“It’s more…” Severo frowned. “Well, think of it as me having two bodies that I can control at the same time, making them say and do different things, but they are both still me. This is the full me, and the only one with vocal cords. The shadow can’t talk on its own, so it borrows my voice to speak…and you can hear it because it’s this version of me speaking, not the other…and…” Severo’s voice trailed off, the man’s brow pinching.
