Once that’s done, I check on Darcy again—still asleep or in a coma—and grab my things, heading out to go forage.
Ok, I’m getting curry from the food truck a couple blocks away. (Yes, it is breakfast time. Yes, I am about to have curry for breakfast; it’s delicious and an excellent hangover remedy.) I’ll get enough to share if Darcy wakes up, and maybe I’ll call Chet on the way and find out if his sudden unconsciousness is something I should worry about.
When I hit the sidewalk, I dial Chet’s number. (That folded piece of paper ended up in my back pocket—that was a lucky bit of fidgeting on my part, wasn’t it?)
The phone rings twice and goes to voicemail.
I try a text.
Me:Hey Chet, this is Elijah from the apartment with the broken chain lock this morning (thank you for fixing it). I just had some questions about some things happening rn.
The message delivers, and then somehow undelivers. I’ve never seen that happen before. “I didn’t even know it was possible.”
As I’m pondering this, the message delivers again.
Skeptical that it’s not fucking with me, I stare at it.
Undeliverable.
“Rude.”
I’m not going to fight with a text message app, so I turn my phone off to give it a rest. I’ll try again after food.
As I walk, church bells start chiming all over the place. “I wonder if there’s a city event or something.”
I’ve never heard church bells on a weekday on this route, and I walk for curry at least once a week. It’s a beautiful accompaniment to my walk, though.
My foot unexpectedly hits something, and I fall flat on my face, hitting the sidewalk hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs. I gawp, trying to gasp, to inhale, and a stressful second later, I manage the whole breathing thing again.
I get up on my hands and knees and then get myself back to my feet, looking for the thing that tripped me. Disappointment in myself falls on me as I eye a knee high statue of a hideously cute gargoyle thing in the middle of the sidewalk. Everyone else is managing to walk around it. But me? The guy with one foot? I didn’t even see it.
“God, I’m a dumpster fire.”
I turn around to keep walking and immediately hit the pavement again.
“Ouch.”
A guy in a Willy Wonka-esque purple and green suit he matched with a cute bow tie and a complimentary top hat bends next to me. “Oh, he got you twice didn’t he?” the guy says, helping me up.
I look down and the statue is there, just not in the same place it was before. “Did you move it?” I ask the guy, confused why I’m being attacked.
His laughter is delightful but has an undercurrent of stone scraping against stone. I have a feeling this guy isn’t human in the same way Darcy isn’t human. “Oh no, I call that one Harry; he moves all on his own. I think he wants your attention.”
I squat down in front of Harry, reaching out to make sure he’s stone like I thought. He is, so I use his shoulder to keep my balance. “What’s up, dude? You need something?”
The church bells I thought were coming from some city event start chiming out of the little statue. “Huh. Sorry my guy, but I don’t speak Church Bell.”
The guy who helped me snickers. “Lucky for you, Harry and I have known each other for ages. He wants an update on his friend. He heard they took you on an adventure yesterday.”
Must be the baby flink. “Oh, sure. They’re back with their parents now. Darcy, uh, Hell-something helped us get back to the space station.”
The statue chimes, and it sounds happy.
“Yeah, I was relieved they went to their parents too. Never been forced to be a perch by galactic law or whatever. It was alright, but I wouldn’t want to do that long term, ya know?”
The guy laughs again. “I’m glad Darcy found you. The flinks should be relieved to have their baby back. Flinks so rarely ever have babies that they’ve become one of the most protected species in the known universe. That’s why it’s illegal to move a baby flink from their perch. The stress of removal could cause their hearts to fail.”
“Did you know pandas would be extinct if it wasn’t for humans? We think they’re cute so we keep breeding them, but if we didn’t, they’d have bred themselves out of existence by now. Funny how nature isn’t all that good at keeping its kids alive, right?”
