Cytonic (Skyward #3)(105)

Both were surrounded by a scattering of reality ashes. I didn’t need a description to know the stuffed animal was the base’s icon. How had it gotten here?

We hid, my pin said—though more with impressions than words—when the fighting started. Some here would have tried to steal us.

Merely seeing the reality ashes immediately made me feel better. More connected to who I’d once been.

It’s so good to hold you, I said to the pin. Thank you. Thank you so much for your help.

In response, I heard a distinctive—and happy—fluting sound coming from the pin.





Doomslug! I thought, excitedly projecting the thought toward her. How?

Hiding, she sent back. Delvers. The impressions were laced with the idea of hiding in a hollow of stone, trying not to be seen by a predator that prowled nearby.

I sent you home! I sent to her.

You equal home, she sent back, picturing us together. Then she added something to the image—projected into my mind. A version of her in my arms, but now with eyes and a smiling mouth plastered on her front. They looked like they’d been drawn on with marker. She didn’t quite understand what eyes and a smile were for, in human terms, but she seemed to sense that this expression indicated contentment. Happiness.

Home. She didn’t live in a cave. She lived with me. Wherever I was.

I felt like an utter fool. I’d vanished into the nowhere holding Doomslug, a cytonic creature that had evolved to avoid the attention of delvers, and then my father’s pin had immediately shown up in my pocket. And I’d been told by more than one person that cytonic people could change how they appeared in here. If a person could, well, why not a slug?



You look like my pin! I sent her.

Special, she said, very pleased. We are special. To hide.

Still, I said. You didn’t have to follow me in here.

She sent back comforting emotions and the image of me being chased by a predator. She’d been worried about me. So she’d come with me, but had hidden herself. I hadn’t been communing with my father’s soul. She was the one who had been supporting me all this time, the familiar mind that had lent me strength in resisting the delvers.

I felt an enormous wave of gratitude. And relief, actually, that she wasn’t my father’s soul. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, it was just that…well, there had been something unnerving about that thought. I could see that I’d substituted the familiar feeling that came from Doomslug with something I wanted. Which I now realized I didn’t want at the same time.

This made way more sense. Though…uh…I had buried her… She made a distinctly annoyed fluting sound.

“Sorry,” I whispered, chagrined. “I didn’t know it was you.”

I got an indignant fluting in response.

“No, I won’t bury you again,” I said. “But you could have told me.”

She sent me fright. Fear of the delvers, who had been nearby. Watching for her kind. She’d come in here with me, but had deployed her camouflage out of fear. After that she’d been comfortable riding in my pocket. Enjoying the…sensation of this place? Was that right? When in the nowhere, her kind just liked to snuggle down and absorb the nowhere “radiation.” Less slug, more…sea cucumber maybe?

This was what she did every time she traveled through the nowhere during hyperdrive jumps. Because of the delvers. It was why starships traveling via slug were so much safer than ones using cytonic people.



Can’t leave, she sent me. Since we weren’t in the lightburst, she was locked into the belt like I was. Other than that, she seemed content to be back with me, though I again had to promise I wouldn’t bury her. I wasn’t certain how much she understood; I’d always seen her as an animal before. But in here, I felt like I could understand her better.

You talk smarter now, she sent to me. Though it wasn’t words—but I interpreted them that way.

I’ve been practicing, I said to her, with my powers. You think it’s working? You understand me?

Smarter talk, she said with a fluting approval, and a reality ash dropped from her.

Wait, I said, pinching it between my fingers. What are these, anyway?

Poop! she said.

I blinked, but… Okay, I quested deeper into the meaning of what she’d sent. She thought it was the same thing as, well, poop. But it wasn’t—her powers linked her to the somewhere, and that pulled through a little reality. A kind of crust. I rubbed the ash between my fingers, and thought maybe I understood. Like fragments formed around holes between dimensions, these ashes formed around creatures that bridged the two dimensions.

Actually, hadn’t I been told that being near a fragment helped people keep their memories? Was that because, in essence, the small bits of new rock growing on the fragments were reality ashes?

Well, people were starting to notice me kneeling there beside the wall. So I took the pin that was Doomslug in one hand, the Surehold icon in the other, then held that one up.

“Hey,” I said to them. “You all missing something important?”

That caused a ruckus, of course. I settled down in a chair to wait as people rushed over. Maksim called for Peg, and it took her less than five minutes to come charging in. There, she reverentially reached down and cradled the stuffed animal.