The dream was strange.
Logan did not see anything.
He floated somewhere dark and soft, but not empty. Something was there with him.
A scent.
Flowers.
Flowers mixed with paint aerosol.
Logan tried to think about that, but thinking felt like pushing his head through mud.
...
He liked it.
He liked it so much that for a while, he stopped trying to wake up.
The scent wrapped around him from both sides. Warm. Familiar. Annoying. If he had been given a choice, Logan thought he might have stayed there forever, buried under that impossible mix, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.
Then something cold hit his face.
His entire body jerked.
It was the kind of cold that dragged someone out of sleep by the throat, that made the brain stop dreaming and start swearing.
Logan came awake choking.
Water ran down his face, into his mouth, down his neck, across his chest.
"Son of a, what the hell!"
His voice came out hoarse and broken, but loud enough.
Someone cursed beside him.
A bed creaked under him as he tried to sit up too fast. His vision blurred, spun, and caught on a wooden ceiling made of rough planks. Light leaked through the gaps. A bucket hovered near his face, held in Vi's hands.
Ekko stood beside her, looking both relieved and ready to start another fight.
"I told you to use a straw," Ekko said.
Vi looked at the bucket, then at him. "Nothing was going in that way."
"That's because you kept poking his cheek with it."
"I was aiming for his mouth."
"You were aiming like you'd never seen a mouth before."
Vi pointed the bucket at him. "You want to do this right now?"
Ekko threw one hand out. "You just waterboarded him awake!"
"I did not waterboard him. I splashed him."
"With a bucket."
Logan blinked at them.
His thoughts moved slowly. Too slowly. He knew Vi. He knew Ekko. He knew their voices. He knew this argument was probably normal, which somehow made it worse.
Vi turned first.
Her eyes widened.
"Wait... oh, shit," she said. "He's awake."
Ekko froze.
Then his expression shifted, like the words had taken a second to become real.
"Shit," he said. "He really is awake."
Logan looked from one to the other, then he looked around.
He was in a small wooden hut. The bed beneath him was simple, the blanket thin but clean. A table stood near the wall with a few bowls, a knife, some folded cloth, and a strange fruit with red skin and pale blue flesh. A window without glass looked out onto green leaves and bright daylight.
It smelled like wood, water, moss, and something sweet cooking far away.
Vi stepped closer, then stopped as if remembering she was not supposed to move too fast. "Okay. You're awake. That's good. That's really good. But maybe don't talk too much. Or move too much. Or think too hard."
Ekko stared at her. "That was your gentle explanation?"
"What? It was clear."
"You told him not to think."
"Then you explain it."
"I would, if you stopped making it worse."
They started talking over each other again.
Logan watched them for another few seconds, trying to find the point where any of this made sense.
Then one question pushed out of him before he understood why.
"Where is she?"
Vi stopped.
Ekko stopped too.
The hut went quiet.
Logan frowned. He had not meant to ask that. Or maybe he had. He did not know who he meant. The question had come from somewhere lower than thought, somewhere deep enough that his mouth moved before his mind caught up.
Vi and Ekko looked at each other.
It was not a long look, but it said enough. The argument was over.
Vi set the bucket down and picked up a wooden cup. Ekko took it from her, filled it, then passed it to Logan.
Vi's voice softened. "Drink."
Logan took the cup.
His fingers closed around it.
He froze.
Water sloshed over the rim and onto the blanket.
He looked down at his hand.
His right hand held the cup.
That was normal.
Then he looked at the other side.
His left arm was there.
It rested across his lap, damp and pale, fingers slightly curled. It looked like his. Almost. The shape was right. The scars were not. A thick line marked the shoulder, clean and raised, like the body had been cut off from one life and stitched into another.
Logan stared at it.
His breath slowed in the wrong way.
"This…" He lifted the arm slightly. It obeyed, but not smoothly. His shoulder burned with a deep, unfamiliar ache. "Is this my arm?"
Vi's face changed.
Ekko opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. "Don't think too much yet."
"My arm was... gone."
Vi's jaw tightened.
Ekko glanced toward the door. "I'll get him something to eat."
Before he left, he leaned close to Vi and said something too low for Logan to catch.
Vi shook her head. "Not yet. Let him sort his head out first."
Ekko hesitated, then nodded and left the hut.
Logan drank because Vi had told him to. The water was cool. His throat hurt when he swallowed, but the second mouthful went down easier.
"What happened?" he asked.
Vi rubbed the back of her neck. "No questions."
"Where are we?"
"No questions means no questions."
"How long was I out?"
"Logan."
"What happened before this?"
Vi closed her eyes like she was counting to ten and getting stuck at three. Then she seemed to remember something. She went to the small table, picked up the bitten fruit, and carried it back.
"Here," she said.
Logan stared at it.
Vi held it out. "It's pretty good. Try it."
"It's already bitten."
"Yeah. By me. I'm healthy."
"..."
Vi looked at the fruit, then at him. "Did you forget how eating works?"
Before he could answer, she took another bite, chewed, swallowed, and offered it again. "See? Not cursed."
Logan took it because arguing required energy he did not have.
The fruit was ridiculous.
Sweet first, then sharp, then cold in the middle. He took another bite.
Vi smiled a little. "Told you."
Logan lowered the fruit and looked at his body.
He was wearing only underwear. A scar ran around the base of his left arm near the shoulder. Another curved around his left leg near the knee. Smaller scars covered his ribs, stomach, hip, and right thigh. Some were old. Some looked too new to be old and too healed to be new.
His left leg was there too.
He moved his toes.
They moved.
Not well, but they moved.
"I'll get you clothes," Vi said.
"... Ok"
She leaned closer and sniffed.
Logan looked up at her. "What are you doing?"
Vi made a face. "Maybe a bath first. You stink."
He should have had an answer for that. A dry insult. Something simple.
Instead, the word bath caught in his head.
Water. Steam. Someone laughing. Someone arguing.
Logan frowned.
Vi noticed. "You okay?"
"I want a bath," he said.
She blinked, then smiled. "Yeah? Then let's go."
She offered him a hand.
Logan stared at it for a second before taking it. Standing up was harder than he expected. His left leg accepted his weight, then nearly betrayed him. Pain shot up through the knee, not sharp enough to drop him, but enough to make his vision flash white.
Vi caught him before he fell.
"Easy," she said.
She guided his right arm over her shoulders and held him around the waist. Logan hated needing help. He also knew he would fall without it, so he said nothing.
They stepped outside.
Sunlight hit him in the eyes.
It was too bright. Too open. Too alive.
He had the sudden feeling that he had not seen the sun in a very long time.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw the village.
Wooden homes sat among thick trees and giant roots, with round roofs painted in soft colors and curved little chimneys puffing pale smoke. Some houses were tucked under mushroom-shaped awnings. Others leaned into trunks as if the forest had grown around them on purpose. Paths of smooth stones wound between gardens, hanging lanterns, carved signs, and little fences wrapped with vines.
Blue-skinned people moved through it all.
They wore caps, aprons, tunics, tool belts, and bright scarves. One carried a basket of vegetables. Another dragged a cart full of folded blankets. A group near a well stopped talking when Logan and Vi passed.
They stared.
Logan stared back.
One of them lifted a hand in a cautious wave.
Logan did not know what to do, so he lifted the bitten fruit.
The blue person seemed to accept that.
Vi kept walking. "Don't ask."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were absolutely going to."
For some reason, Logan had the strange feeling the blue people were supposed to be much smaller.
They followed a curving path through the village. Vi muttered under her breath, glancing left and right.
"Where the hell were the hot springs again? Blue bakery, weird carrot statue, singing well… no, we passed that twice yesterday."
"You know where you're going?"
"Mostly."
They took one wrong turn, then another. A pair of blue children ran past carrying wooden swords, stopped to stare at Logan's scars, then fled when Vi glared at them. Someone shouted directions from a rooftop. Vi shouted back that she knew. Then she turned the opposite way.
At last, the path opened into a stone clearing surrounded by flowering shrubs and smooth gray rocks.
Steam rose from several pools built into the earth. The water was pale turquoise, clear enough to see the stone steps beneath. Thin wooden screens separated parts of the springs, but most of the place was open to the sky. Vines hung from the branches overhead. Small lanterns swung in the warm breeze. The air smelled of minerals, flowers, and clean heat.
Logan stopped at the edge.
For the first time since waking, his body loosened a little.
Vi looked proud, as if she had personally invented hot water. "Pretty great, right?"
...
A scream answered her.
Then something slammed into them from the side.
Logan had just enough time to see blue hair, pink hair, and some pale tails before the world flipped.
Vi shouted.
Logan lost his grip.
Two bodies crashed into them, and all four of them went over the edge.
Hot water swallowed him.
For one stunned second, Logan sank in silence.
Then he kicked upward and broke the surface, coughing, hair plastered over his eyes. Steam wrapped around him. Water splashed everywhere.
Vi came up beside him already yelling.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
A blue-haired naked woman stood waist-deep in the pool, completely soaked, her long hair floating around her like spilled dye. She was trying to hold onto a pink-haired woman, also naked, who seemed far less interested in standing still than in causing problems.
"She won't stay put!" the blue-haired woman shouted back. "The fox never stays put! This is nothing like bathing Isha!"
The pink-haired woman laughed.
Not words. Just bright, breathless sounds, almost musical, like she had forgotten how to do anything else.
Six tails rose from the water behind her.
Then all six slapped forward at once.
A wave hit the blue-haired woman in the face.
Vi stared.
Logan stared too.
The blue-haired woman slowly wiped water from her eyes.
"Oh," she said, very calmly. "You wanna play splashy?"
The pink-haired woman made another delighted sound.
Logan looked between them.
His brain was still broken enough that none of this made sense, but not broken enough to miss the obvious.
They were both incredibly beautiful and sensual.
Logan stared for half a second too long.
Then, his body reacted in a very inopportune way.
He sank a little lower into the water.
"What the hell is happening?" he muttered.