Fuzzy.

[MurderWeasel]

Off to one side, in the corner, there was another figure sitting on a crate. While fairly average in height, her slender build and the way she pulled in on herself made her look smaller. Between the darkness and her long black hair and what she was wearing, she faded almost entirely into the shadows, except for her left upper arm, which was streaked with color almost like a rainbow.

She was paging through a book with a red cover featuring a silver robot reaching skywards front and center, but when eyes finally fell upon her she paused. Her eyes glanced upwards, searching for danger, then turned back to the page. She reached the end of the paragraph, marked the spot wither her finger, and then lowered the book.

Her expression wasn't flat, but near enough that it was hard to read the emotion there—fear? Judgment? Irritation? She didn't make good eye contact, instead looking with both her eyes at one of his.

"Ten isn't hard," she said, "if you're trying."

Then her head went down as the book came back up and another page turned.

[The Honeless Beard]

He was on a boat.

Waves crashed against it, and they affected its movement. Even the most subtle of stances, shifting of feet, turning of torso, had an effect - a push and a pull that was tangible, tracible. The waves moved him, forced knees to bend and ankles to clench and balance to be reaffirmed.

He was on a boat.

The boat, too, affected the water - its reactions to the waves spawning waves of its own, little ripples in a massive pond, a thousand tiny movements, resistances against the big changes that the ocean spawned and commanded. It was a symbiotic relationship born out of inequality - the big ocean pushing and the little boat pushing back, weakly, feebly, against the coming tide.

He was on a boat.

If a boy with dark skin and glasses hadn't woken up nearby a boy with a love for bees, would there still be as many dead? If a deranged, narcissistic girl hadn't woken up nearby a ready made ally, would she have found the same success? If a war pick hadn't smashed on a railing, would a letter still have been carved? If a girl hadn't killed their best friend, would the Respects still have been formed?

He was on a boat.

The waves of the ocean had a push and a pull, and the pull was the one nobody talked about. While the push could land you in trouble, the pull could devastate you, pull you beneath it, bat you around and playfully smash the breath from your lungs and force you to its cold, salty depths. You could fight it, but the dangerous thing is that you'd still be fighting - are prepared to fight - the wave's push. The pull is the sneaky uppercut to the solar plexus, the punch that gets through any defense you put forwards.

He was on a boat.

Catalysts, retributions. They all came together to form a solid barrier of thought that didn't penetrate his goal, his mission. He stared at them, looked at them, memorized them, one by one. Catalogued their expressions, reactions, the push and pull on him. He let them finish, get it all out.

He was on a boat.

"Best thing about my drum popping," Ivan said, after they all shimmered and faded, "is that I didn't catch any of that."

((Continued here))