PRE PARTY

Garter socks, uncomfortable corset rescued from the bottom of a prop box, a cat mask. Her cat mask.

“How?” Kae asked Dora, feeling the mask beneath her fingers. The plastic, white and painted over many times, was old and stiff, but still rested on her face like a second skin. Which it was. A performance face, something raw and almost-honest to cover her real self with, for courage and modesty.

“Ludo had it,” Dora said. “Oh!” Like she just remembered. “Don’t worry! I never wore it! I made mine myself. As a sort of tribute, see?”

It was different. A different make, different mold. Overlayed on Dora’s features, it changed her also in another way. It pushed her up, somehow, while Kae’s hid and underplayed what was there. Kae’s was armor, but Dora’s was a weapon.

“You look so good in it,” Kae said, honest, serious.

“You think?” Dora asked.

“You know you do. Not that you need it, but you seem more confident.”

Dora looked at herself in the mirror. Kae knew what that look meant. One last time. She was thinking the same thing, only this, the mask, the stage, hadn’t been a part of her life for nearly five years now. Kae didn’t exactly miss it. She was terrified, in fact, but. But the world was ending. Everything was coming to a close, the curtains drawing, the room emptying, the cleaners coming to tidy up the place and turn the lights off as they left.

Did it make sense to be afraid?

No. At the same time, Kae didn’t care. She was afraid, in a much different way than when she had jumped over traps and exchanged banter with spellwielding pirates. That was exhilarating, this was… Well, it was playing scary.

And there was Dora, putting on her face over a collection of bottles of facepaint. Lightning-bolt whiskers and a blue-yellow pattern on her skin, lips bright red.

“Will you do me?” Kae asked. She nodded to the colors. “I… forgot, I think. It’s been a while.”

Dora smiled like it was the best thing Kae could possibly have asked her.

And the girl knew her patterns better than Kae could hope to remember. It was so strange, stranger than anything else, to learn that they’d had fans. When Ludo and her had started their act, it had been as an act of rebellion, to get away from stuffy career paths and deep, ponderous studies and do something that bared their confused, tormented, just-cresting-twenty souls to an uncaring and many times hostile crowd.

Walking away from it all had cost her little. She’d never considered if Ludo had felt the same way about it.

Dora was looking her in the eye. Ostensibly to draw a blue teardrop on the right side of her face, but there was a question floating there, something struggling to come out. She was about to say something, and suddenly she didn’t have to.

“I’m sorry,” Dora said. “It must be so strange.”

“What do you mean?” Kae frowned without frowning. Dora hadn’t stopped painting.

“I mean, coming back and finding me here, wearing your mark, your name. Dating your ex…”

Kae couldn’t stop herself from shaking her head. Dora had reflexes enough to lift the brush in time.

“Actually, I’m sorry. For being a complete bitch earlier. It was super weird to come back, and in my mind I sort of… I hope, no, hah, not hoped, but… I thought everything would be the same. That it would just be like old times, me and Ludo. Is there a word for that, coming back and realizing everything is different than it used to be?”

“Yeah,” Dora smiled. “Time.”

“Good one.”

Kae let Dora work in peace. She tried to stay still and ignore the brush’s tickling, master her muscles and nerves into submission. It was easier than attempting the same with her mind.

“You two look great together, by the way. Just great.”

“Oh, come on,” Dora scrunched her eyes. “You didn’t even get to see us together.”

“Because Ludo was so nervous.”

“Exactly!”

“Well,” Kae sighed. “I didn’t need to. For one, you’re a great person and he’s a great person. Two, I saw how happy he was. And not, like, manic, bouncing-off-the-walls happy, just… serene. That was never him. He used to always feel the need to fill up the room, to be the center of attention…”

“Come to the End of the World Party, staring Faeman…” Dora ironized.

“Yes, sure, he’s a show-off in his heart. But for the first time since I met the guy he doesn’t seem to be doing it to get his fix of attention.”

Dora nodded at that, and drew the contour of her chin in bold, black lines.

“Oh!” Kae said, nearly dislodging the brush with catastrophic consequences. “And Des liked you. That’s how I know you’re a good person, Des was impressed.”

“She’s great, by the way,” Dora said. “You look great together too.”

Kae blushed under the paint. For a wild second, she was tempted to let the illusion settle, to leave Dora with the impression that there was something between them. A passing need.

“Actually, we’re not a thing.”

Dora cocked an eyebrow.

“We, uh, just met today.”

Both eyebrows.

“Well, you will be a thing,” Dora decided. And that was that.

“Ooo, OK, then, Oracle,” Kae chuckled, then drew her lips together. “How… Why do you say that?”

“Because you only just met and you already look like you’re ready to jump each other. Dead giveaway.”

Kae made to nervously push a strand of hair behind her ear, then remembered her hair was trapped in a ponytail so as to not ruin the paint job and brought her hand down again.

“There. What do you think?”

Dora stepped away and swiveled Kae’s chair so she faced the mirror.

Oh.

Now it came back to her, suddenly and completely.

“Did I get it? Does it look like your face?”

“Uh, no,” Kae said.

Dora looked disappointed.

“Bah—”

“No! I didn’t mean that, the lines are perfect and I damn well hope you’re studying Art—”

“I am—”

“But it’s not my face. Not anymore. It used to be! I used to feel so safe behind this thing, but now… Wow. Sorry. Sudden epiphany.”

“No, I get it,” Dora said. She reached down into her pocket for another prop, one new to them both.

Faeman’s goggles. There was no way he was going to make it to the show on time and get Slipstream up and running, so this was the deal. Dora would be a Lucilee/Faeman combo. And Kae would play Luci. An opening act, a warmup. For old times’ sake.

“Ready?” Kae asked.

Dora placed the goggles on her forehead. They gave her an odd, alien bug look. Not bad. Not by a longshot.

“Ready.”

They left the room arm in arm. Kae’s voice drifted in the air, saying, “I can’t believe you guys built a whole dressing room, by the way. Jealous.”

Des looked up at the stars. Just a few of them were visible tonight, while the rest of the sky was taken up by the brightly-shining half-moon. It was comfortable here on the roof, away from the noise and the throngs of people. It didn’t matter what they’d called her, Raindrop, Jump, Mountain, or her second to last spell, Lightning Bolt. Des had always been uncomfortable in crowds, only really at ease when she was supposed to punch through them.

It was a question for the more philosophical spellwielders: if the spells can change your body, make you stronger, faster, and more capable, even long after you’ve discarded them, if they can change even your name, not in a bureaucratic way but in the very fabric of your being… Then who’s to say you were still you, and not simply someone the spell was wearing to stay safe from material reality, in the same way she wore her coat as a shield against the night’s chill?

It was a good question. One that made Des feel happy about this handicap, that no matter what they called her she always was, and always would be, uncomfortable in the crowd?

Well, thought something in her mind, an old, more primal, and much more cruel side of her. Not always, eh? Not really.

She shut the thoughts down before they got out of hand. Active forgetting, a skill essential for dealing with spells. Essential for dealing with reality, in Des’ opinion.

Slipstream opened up, and Ludo walked out, rubbing his hands in the cold night.

“Hook her up,” he said. “And she’s responding. We’ll see results soon, I think. Assuming she knows what to do with the extra energy.”

“She knows,” Des said.

Ludo put his hands up, surrendering. Then he lowered them and fished a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.

“I quit a long time ago,” he said. “But since the world is quitting me, I no longer think I should bother. Want one?”

Des shook her head.

“Never started. Apparently it takes practice.”

He smiled and lit the cigarette between his cupped hands, then took a long drag and blew it away in the wind. Des turned to follow the cloud.

“You sure I really can’t convince you to come watch the show?” Ludo asked.

“I’m sure you can try, but it won’t matter much. I’m not great with crowds.”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, I get that. You have that look about you. Not shyness, but something a bit deeper. Still. It’ll be a few hours before she’s up and running.”

“I got a bed inside,” Des said, unconcerned. “The Wave is still some time away. I think I’ll just go to sleep.”

Ludo nodded slowly, then turned to look into the city, the infinite individual points of light that composed it even when it was being abandoned, even when all hope was already lost. The Wave was visible in the horizon. Or not visible, but sensible through some other means, something in the back of your neck that warned you when you were faced with death. It was like that now, painting a whole swathe of the horizon as death. It wasn’t and easy thing to forget, no. But it was easier than when she could sense it and see it.

Now that she was far away from it, she could appreciate the curve of the circle that enveloped them, moving steadily to the center. That center was Atlantis. The last torch of humankind. It would go down at last, with the rest of the ship.

“I wanted to mention,” Ludo said, his voice filling the air along with smoke. “That I think it’s really brave, what you did.”

Des turned to him. She could only see his outline drawn against Slipstream’s neon blue shine and the forge-red tip of his cigarette blazing in the wind.

“What do you mean?”

Ludo shuffled from side to side. Nervous?

“I… I know how they’re made, right? Bioships? I’ve read about the spell.”

“You shouldn’t have access to that,” Des said. There was more strain in her voice than she thought to put there.

But again, Ludo’s hands were raised.

“Look, I’m not judging. Not at all. I’m just saying… I don’t know what I’m saying.”

But Des knew. It was pity. It was always pity, in the end, in the very core of it. She’d had enough of it in the Guard.

She was about to say something. Something violent and rude, or something meek and inadequate, she hadn’t quite made up her mind. But then something flashed in the sky between buildings, far away.

“What was that?”

Ludo turned. A moment later, it passed again, a different color this time.

“Oh,” he puffed on his dwindling cigarette. “First Guard. They arrived a few days ago. You know how they’re trying to stop the Wave, and— hey!”

Des had activated the ship’s invisibility cloak. She stood there, trembling, then turned to look at Ludo. Her eyes were flashing. It wasn’t a metaphor.

“I think I’m going to the show after all,” she said forcefully. “Lead the way.”

He thought of asking. In the end, Ludo shrugged. What the hell. It was the end of the world.