Raven Chapter 14 Fun New Traumas and Unicorn Farts 163
Raven
The silence in this room is louder than any argument I could have given Kieran to stay. It gives me too much space to think, and my brain is currently serving up a highlight reel of every cringe thing I've done since becoming corporeal.
So much for that nap.
Apparently I don't get sleep or orgasms. Just an existential crisis and a front-row seat to my own embarrassment.
I need a distraction.
Right. New plan. This bed is officially rejected.
I go to get out of bed but end up getting tangled in the sheets, resulting in what can only be described as a dead fish imitation.
I flop onto the floor and lie there for a full minute, seriously reconsidering my life choices.
I decide this is probably the gods trying to screw with me, so I persevere until I’m upright and shuffling down the hall.
When I reach the very end of it, I don’t give myself a second to think. I just throw the door open and shuffle over to the bed like an overripe blueberry with legs. I sit for a moment, looking around.
“It has to be somewhere,” I mumble, until my eyes snag on the remote. A cry of victory escapes me before I’m throwing myself at the bedside table and snatching it up.
This is something I have great confidence in.
I've spent years watching him pull up documentaries, dreaming of the day I'd have bones and skin to push the buttons myself.
I hit them expertly, quickly exiting a boring documentary about Antarctic moss droning on the wall-mounted screen.
It's replaced with the documentary I've been eyeing for months. My Octopus Teacher.
Emerson sits frozen, chair swiveled toward me, fingers steepled as he tries to pick me apart with his eyes. He looks like a programmer whose code just gained sentience—and immediately used said sentience to order pizza.
I quickly situate myself under the covers, adjusting the pillows to my liking.
A shiver runs through me as I realize his sheets are made of some liquid-like fabric that feels like heaven.
He never seems to sleep, so his bed was a mystery.
Now I know—this is obviously the best. I haven't felt anyone else's sheets yet, but I'm calling it now. No one's beating liquid-sheets.
I let out a contented sigh, finally tuning back into the world outside my own sensory euphoria as the opening music swells.
“This is my room,” he states, the words clinically detached. “That’s my bed.”
"Mhm," I agree, pulling a pillow to my chest—then pause. It doesn't smell like him. Of course it doesn't. He never sleeps. His bed is a prop, a decoration, a lie . I scowl at the innocent pillow. "Just like old times," I mumble, but now it's tinged with disappointment.
He falls silent. I know this quiet—it's the sound of his orderly universe straining at the seams. I'm a chaotic disaster with a pulse, planted right in the middle of his perfectly ordered space, and he's trying to decide if I'm a threat, a specimen, or something else entirely.
The soft, rhythmic scratch of his pencil fades as I lose myself in the film. And then the octopus appears, and this weird, beautiful friendship unfolds, and it just…
Jim.
That's him. That's us. A strange, impossible connection across a barrier neither of us could cross.
My chest tightens in a super not cool kind of way. All sharp and painful.
I have to find a way to get to him. I have to let him know I'm okay.
The thought is a trapdoor, and my stupid new stomach plummets right through it.
Suddenly the walls are wrong. Too close. My lungs—traitors, the both of them—seem to have forgotten the whole "breathing" thing.
So this is a panic attack. Cool. New experience. And honestly, part of me is weirdly into it, finally getting to check this box.
A shark on screen picks that exact moment to go full asshole, and the visual is so violently real it yanks me right out of my own head.
I watch the attack, and I don't just see it, I feel it in my bones. The desperate flailing. The sheer, wild will to live. And the guy with the camera just... watches. Doesn't play hero.
And I get it. Of course he doesn't. Jumping in would have turned their whole beautiful, weird thing into a lie.
Made him a god. And let's be real—the god-applicant pool is already full of power-hungry pricks who couldn't manage an HOA, let alone whatever cosmic kingdom they think they're qualified for.
It was the only choice. The right choice.
Even if it makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with panic.
A hot, sharp pressure builds behind my eyes. It's so foreign, so overwhelming, I have no defense. A single, scalding bit of liquid escapes and traces a path down my cheek. I'm crying, I realize. Then another follows.
Just great, apparently I'm leaking again. At least this time I understand why. I'm going to have to ask Dre if this is normal, because I'm pretty sure these things aren't supposed to malfunction this much.
The octopus on screen is dying, and I am definitely not okay with it. I think of Jim and send a desperate, wordless prayer into the universe that the creature survives.
Before I can escalate that into a full-blown threat against any listening gods, a shadow falls over me. I look up to find Em standing there, hovering at the side of his bed. His usual analytical gaze is gone, replaced by sheer, unadulterated panic.
He doesn't speak. He just turns on his heel and beelines for the small kettle on the little table next to his bed. His movements are jerky, unnerved. I watch, mesmerized through my tears, as he fumbles with the canister, the measured, graceful precision he’s known for completely abandoned.
“The lacrimal response indicates acute psychological distress,” he finally says, his voice tight, mug extended like an offering he's furious about having to make. “I failed to account for the documentary’s potential as a negative emotional catalyst. This was a critical oversight.”
Five years following them and I've never seen this. My broody genius is short-circuiting, and frankly, I'm fascinated. I decide to just let it happen.
I bring the mug to my lips, the steam carrying a scent that’s both floral and… dusty? I take a cautious sip.
My face scrunches up involuntarily. “Ugh. It tastes like… flowers decided to be sad.” It’s bitter and sharp, a completely different kind of dark than chocolate. It reminds me more of a forgotten attic, not a delicious, happy night.
He lets out a slightly impatient sigh, still eyeing the tears running down my cheeks, before plucking the mug from my hands.
In two quick motions, he splashes in some cream.
I barely even get time to watch the thicker liquid bloom into mesmerizing little clouds before he’s shaking a little sugar over the top.
“Try it now,” he says, thrusting it back towards me.
I eye him, then the tea.
Oh, this is good.
The creamy sweetness seems to have tamed the bitterness a little, and the dusty edge is now smoother, less attic-like. It also reminds me of him.
“What do you smell like?” I ask him. “This drink smells kind of like you but also not.”
“Anik has told me I smell like old books and vanilla.” He cocks his head, considering.
“A technically accurate but incomplete assessment. Given the constant presence of bergamot oil from my preferred tea,” he motions to my cup, “a more precise description would be the scent of vanilla-infused parchment, with top notes of bergamot.”
I just blink up at him. “Not helpful, Em.”
I decide to just ask Ki-ki next time I see him.
He’ll be able to take all that and distill it into words my raccoon brain can understand.
I thought vanilla was a food! Now he’s telling me it’s something you can somehow infuse with paper.
I try to imagine chocolate paper, and I just can’t wrap my head around it.
Instead of wasting any more time attempting to visualize the impossible, I turn back to the TV.
Em watches as the tears slow but don’t stop completely before retreating to his desk. I keep watching. The scratch of a pencil on paper starts up again, and I take a shaky sip of the tea, letting the film play out.
The octopus lays her eggs, then protects them, not eating, slowly and gracefully fading. Her life, given for the ones she loves.
Emerson's voice draws me back into the room.
“It’s a perfect, elegant lifecycle,” he says, his voice low, filled with a kind of aching awe. “A total transfer of energy and purpose. Morbid, but… exquisite.”
I realize the pencil scratches I was hearing weren't him working; he was sketching. I stand and make my way over to him, peering down at the drawing. My breath leaves me in a rush. He hasn't just sketched me; he's captured the very sadness that was radiating from me.
He started this when my tears didn't stop.
He looks up from his sketch, his gaze meeting mine. The panic is gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated fascination. "I concluded your tears were not a problem to be solved, but a phenomenon to be documented."
The yawn that almost breaks my jaw distracts me from the tears welling up again—tears born from the bizarre sensation of being truly seen. Even if it was only because I was crying over a cephalopod in the bed of a man who views me as an intruder that also happens to double as a science experiment.
“You require sleep.”
“Stunning observational skills.” I hand him the remote. “You can learn about Antarctic moss now. It won’t bother me.”
I adjust the pillows and start burrowing. I thought my little guest bed was comfortable, but it has nothing on this thing—which is shocking, considering he doesn't even use it. I'm not sure why it's here.
Right now, I'm just happy it is, so I can fall asleep surrounded by the familiar, comforting drone of a documentary, punctuated by the steady click of his keyboard and scritch of his pencil.