🌌🐈🐉

Cal ran her hands over the contours of her face. Once, again. She looked at herself in the mirror. Another splash of water, another brush over her cheeks.

Unreal. The fur still felt strange under her fingers. Not unpleasant, but strange. You learn a lot about the contours of your skin without really thinking about it through just washing your face every day, turns out. She'd kept repeating the habit as much to feel the contrast as to learn things anew, the shape of her muzzle and the places where her fur were thicker and thinner.

It was strange what lingered with you from mortality. Numb, distant, foggy, but there were still things that made their way through.

The moment she'd dried her face, her right eye started trickling again. A stranger thing yet, that. Apparently you kept part of your loss with you, physically. A deathsign, they called it.

Cal... hadn't been doing her best at the end. Tears kept sneaking up on her, even if she didn't really feel sad about it at this point.

She jumped at the sound of pounding on the bathroom door. "Yo, spacecase!" came the familiar voice, "Lose yourself in your head again?"

Jackie'd found her walking alongside the road some days ago. They'd read her like a book: hesitation meant unfamiliarity, the flavor of a new arrival.

"Can't die twice. Can't get trapped. Two of the basic rules, stranger. I couldn't do shit to you if I wanted. We don't get serial killers down here. Can't."

Apparently they'd been down here long enough to have particularly high spirits in spite of keeling over from a particularly nasty knife to the gut.

"So what does that leave you with?"

They lifted their shirt. "No cool scar, if you're thinking that. Well, not for me at least. Met someone else who'd beefed it the same way who did, but..."

"But?"

"Emptiness. Kinda a dull ache. Kinda like feeling a bit hungry and listless?"

"Weird."

"Says you, walking demon-dog to walking demon-dog."

Another thump on the door snapped her back, again. "Cal, I got the snacks. C'mon, we're done at this station. We have nowhere to get to."

"Wait, you don't know where we've been going?"

"There you are!" She could all but hear the smile behind the door. "...also: no."

"Uh."

"Got anywhere to be?"

"Not really."

"Cool, me too. I'm hoping to find something on the way."

Cal looked in the mirror for another moment, wiped the trail from her eye.

"Sure."