A Friend That Matters Most
Chapter. 3
“…Yeah. Alright. We’ll see you in a little while.”
The phone clicks on the wall with a hard noise that rings of finality. Meta stares, for a moment, unseeing past the plastic of the receiver. It hangs like a weight on his shoulders.
Kes looks at him as he moves to flop wordlessly against her on the couch. Head turning, lolling against her shoulder, and the cold natural to her kind is a balm on his nerves, grounding.
For a time, neither of them speak. They bask, quietly, in the anchor of each other’s presence, soothing themselves in the wake of the last few days. Meta needs it, after everything. He wishes he could just nap and wake up and everything would be over, a distant memory. Into a better world.
“…You don’t know if this will do anything to help, in the long run.”
Kes murmurs, and Meta feels cool breath brush his temple.
“It’s not like I have any better ideas. At least in Kalmari Kirby has friends that like him.”
“And how will he feel when it’s time to go home, Meta? To come back to a place where he has no friends at all? He would never want to leave West Nova. We’d bear witness to a Demon Beast of a tantrum.”
Amusement coats her voice like fine frost, subtle and sardonic, layered over the weight beneath. And he knows, Nova he knows. As if he hadn’t thought of that through his entire conversation with Bate.
“What else is there, Kes?” He doesn’t raise his voice. It trembles and teeters, weak. He’s not of a mind to care. “We can’t just make friends for him. And after everything the past few days, doesn’t he deserve…something? At least? He hasn’t been himself since.”
Kirby is always so bubbly, always so happy, bringing gifts and candy and never without a heap of optimism. But now…
The listless look in his boy’s eyes remains burned in his mind. The weight of him won’t leave, huddled in his arms, a fit of tears shed in the way only children had. All of his friends, gone.
He doesn’t want Kirby to ever feel that way. Not Kirby, of all people.
“We can’t make friends for him, true. But we needn’t sooth his wounds with friends he will only have to leave again eventually.”
He feels a hand, calloused from many years of combat and work, stroke the top of his head gently. “He was ecstatic when we brought him to the beach before he found those children. What if we did that, instead?”
“I don’t think he’s going to want a beach day, Kes.”
“Mmh. I was thinking something a little grander. Tell me, when was the last time we went to Orange Ocean?”
Meta turns it over in his mind.
The memories he has of that place are. Fuzzy. But it didn’t get its name for nothing – stunning at any time of the day, but especially so at sunset, when the orange waters glow vibrant to the point of blinding. Also host to one of the largest aquariums on Pop Star, if he recalls right, and a significant tourist destination.
A perfect vacation spot for a family get-away, he thinks.
“It’s…not a bad idea.”
“He’s a little boy,” Kes murmurs, to herself or for them both, it’s hard to say. “Not just a warrior. Some time as a family – away from all this – would do us all well. Without needing to travel quite so far.”
Just a little boy, he thinks to himself, and thinks in his mind’s eye of a Meta some decades younger. Grown up too fast, as is the lot of the Star Warriors. Just a child.
“Yeah,” Meta says quietly. “I think it would.”
…
“I think dinner would be a nice time to surprise him.”
And suddenly Meta’s headrest is gone as if it were never there, and he has to flail to keep from falling on his side. Kes, standing, turns to look at him, and her expression is warm with mirth.
“I think I’ll make his favorite. So why don’t you go spend some time with him, then. I believe he went fishing a bit ago?” Which is odd, for someone like Kirby who can’t seem to keep still, but then Kirby has been out of it for the past few hours.
“Out back?” His brow raises. “There aren’t any fish back there.”
“There aren’t.” Kes agrees. “I was thinking you might bring him to the lake. He might sniff out the dinner from behind the house, otherwise.”
She’s not wrong. Kirby is frightful at smelling food. An excellent hunter’s nose, Kes has said more than once.
He shrugs and gets up to do as he’s bid, and if he finds his earlier frown upturned at the corners as he heads out the back door, then that’s all just as well, isn’t it.
Meta’s only ever wanted Kirby happy, in the end.
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He still doesn’t have a bite.
The water is still. Where the bob to the line floats, the water moves, but just a little bit, and the rest of the pond doesn’t move at all. It looks like a mirror.
Kirby sees himself in its reflection.
Fish aren’t supposed to be quiet, or still. Fish always move. He’s seen it. Fish are supposed to move constantly, and they’re supposed to be dumb. They’re supposed to bite so he can catch them. So he can bring back dinner.
But they aren’t. And now there’s not going to be dinner.
Why can’t he do it? Why can’t he catch a fish? Fish don’t think. Fish don’t do anything. Fish are just…
You’re pretty dumb.
Hands tighten around the rod.
If Kirby catches one, he won’t be. If he catches one, he can bring it back, and someone will smile. His parents haven’t been happy since they came back, and he needs to fix it.
They’ll be happy. He’ll be happy. Everything will be good.
(Fear. Lots of eyes staring at him and there’s fear in all of them.)
(Nobody is around when he leaves. Nobody wants to be. Not around him.)
His mouth tightens, and wobbles, and tightens again. It was his fault, wasn’t it? That’s what Marx always said. For ignoring him, for leaving him alone. That’s why he got mad. That’s why he did what he did.
That’s his fault. And now he’s alone. Completely.
And he still hasn’t caught a fish.
He doesn’t hear it at first. He’s too busy staring at the water, willing with everything he’s got for it to do something so he’s not completely useless. Bushes rustle all the time.
But it gets closer. Gets closer. And then eventually he hears the sound of a stick snap, not a foot behind, and the proximity and the sheer suddenness of the whole thing to his foggy head makes him jerk a good foot into the air, wings hiked high and spread wide. Bristling.
Demon beasts exist on Pop Star. He knows that. He’s trained for that since he could walk. Was it one of them? He. Doesn’t know.
Kirby turns around to look behind him. There’s nothing but bushes and twigs and grass. It’s quiet.
Carefully, without much thought to it, he sets his fishing rod down and steps on soft feet to the edge of the parameter, not fearful so much as cautious and curious in equal measure. It’s hard to see through the thicket this direction, but he doesn’t see anything odd.
Demon beasts, he figures, would have jumped out by now. The longer he waits and looks, the quieter it seems, until eventually he figures it isn’t one of them. They’d be too loud.
“Dumb birds…”
The words sound odd on his mouth, like Marx put them in there, but he’s too huffy to feel bad for it. He just turns and walks away instead, because he still needs to find at least one fish for his parents.
And then he stops. Stares.
…
There is a fish.
Kirby thinks he’s seen a lot of fish in his time. All kinds, cooked all different ways. He should know his fish.
This one is not a fish he knows. It’s huge. Bigger than his whole body, like someone made a fish five sizes too big. It’s limp beside his fishing rod, and when he nudges it with his foot (it’s really that big) it gives no twitch.
“I don’t think I caught you.”
He didn’t. But it’s still here.
Kirby glances around, this way, that, because if he didn’t catch it, then either it jumped out or someone forgot it here. Did—Did they pass through when he wasn’t looking? That’s pretty fast.
But nobody shows up. Nobody comes back to pick it up. It’s just kind of there.
…
Kirby grins.
If someone won’t take it, it’s his now. Finders keepers, and maybe now mom can make that fish stew he’s been begging for. With a fish this big, she can’t not, right? She has to!
But as he’s thinking of a way to actually drag it back, the bushes rustle again. And this time he hears it immediately and turns in a jerk with a childish narrowing of the eyes.
“Hello?” He tries, because this might be the fish owner, now that he thinks about it. Bummer. “…Is anyone there?”
He gets no reply. Just still foliage.
Kirby calls, again and again, each time his voice a little louder, and his feet carry him forward into the underbrush because now he knows something is here. Why are they hiding, he asks? What are they doing? Did they lose a fish? Are they a monster? He says all of this out loud and waits for a reply that doesn’t come.
He’s not dumb. He’s not. There’s something here, someone, but he can’t do anything if they won’t--
Something flicks him in the back of the head.
It’s not hard. Feels like a bug sting. But Kirby doesn’t expect it, so his reaction is louder than it needs, a yip as his hand flies to cradle the spot where he’d been stung.
He turns, wings hiked up in defense. Eyes wide and mouth open to yell and do—something.
It’s a pebble laying on the ground. Not a bug.
And there’s someone here!
He feels them more than he notices them at first, and he couldn’t tell anyone how. They’re just…there. Lingering a good distance away, roughly in the direction the rock had come from.
And Kirby doesn’t know what they are. They don’t look like anyone he’s seen on Pop Star, or even West Nova. The best way he could describe them would be like a giant, floating ball of putty, or clay, or goo. They float and they move the entire time, framed by something like yellow flower petals and weird, tiny blue blobs that surround them and squish and stretch at random on all sides.
There’s also a tongue. Not just a tongue, but long one, longer than Kirby is tall, longer than his fishing rod, longer than his parents, even!
And it’s holding a melon as big as they are.
Two big eyes take up most of their shape, blinking and staring at the same time. Kirby is reminded of a Gao Gao. They don’t move, and they look hopeful. Feel that way too.
“…Hi! Are you giving that to me?”
Because that’s what it feels like. And he’s right! They nod, funny body jiggling right along with the movement and yet somehow their tongue remains perfectly steady, bringing the melon closer. They set it down gently at his side, just beside the pebble, and Kirby has to look up to see the stem at its top. Big.
Kirby likes him a melon. Kirby likes most foods, in fact, and a big part of him is excited to even get anything, regardless of where it came from. People are nice, they do nice things!
Another part of him, mature and cultivated and not dumb not dumb smarts of suspicion. Stranger danger, his parents said. Demon beasts, his parents warned. Pop Star is peaceful, but not always. People are kind, but not always.
(Children look at him and stay far, far away.)
“Why?”
It’s a good question to ask, since he doesn’t know them, but the look on their face twists. Their head – whole body, really – tilts. They’re confused, he thinks. Confused and sad.
“Why’d you give me a melon? Where’d you come from, even?” Kirby presses, and they blink. Why won’t they answer? It’s not hard?
As if reading his thoughts, their mouth opens. They take a deep breath, brow furrowing.
Nothing comes out.
Their expression pinches and they try again, and again, and nothing. A barest hint of a whistle, a sigh, but nothing that forms words, and their expression casts downward with a sense of failure.
Kirby feels like he should apologize, but for what, he isn’t sure. It still doesn’t explain what they’re doing here, or why.
He doesn’t know what’s going on. He should. He’s not dumb.
(Children, afraid. Kirby, alone. And Marx—)
“I—”
They’re staring at him. Eyes wide, unreadable but staring hard in a way that makes him feel like a bug, they stare and stare, and he gets ready to open his mouth to tell them to stop. You can’t just do that.
Their eyes shift away. The relief makes his wings sag.
Quietly, they shift closer, and the tongue lingering like a disembodied snake in the air nudges first the melon, then the rock at his foot. Pointed but tentative, it nudges, until it digs just so into his skin.
“What?”
Because he doesn’t know, doesn’t know— And they do it, again and again, pointed and firm, he thinks, even if their expression doesn’t say it.
They’d thrown it at him, he thinks. They’d hid because they were scared and shy and thrown it at his head.
They’re nice. They’re not bad. But that didn’t answer his questions, and he isn’t dumb.
They nudge the pebble again, harder, and--
(A rock had been thrown at Marx too. He’d seen it, from a far ways off. He’d thrown it, when nobody was looking. It wasn’t fair of Marx. It wasn’t right.)
And that--
Kirby shakes his head hard enough to leave him dizzy.
That wasn’t him. That wasn’t Kirby. Kirby hadn’t thrown it. Kirby hadn’t done anything. He’d seen the rock fly, had seen it hit Marx square in the head, but he hadn’t thrown it.
Kirby looks, half in a daze, at the being that hovers in front of him. They stare at him calmly, evenly, and this being knows. They know. It wasn’t Kirby. It wasn’t him because it had been them. Because it hadn’t been fair. It hadn’t been right. And Marx deserved it.
“No!”
Kirby thinks, of friends crying and refusing to come within ten feet of him. Of Marx, angry and upset and taking his rage out on every single one of them. How such a nice day had been completely ruined because someone had to go and make someone else mad.
They all could have gotten along. Nobody would have gotten hurt because nobody there had started it.
It wasn’t Kirby’s fault.
It was theirs.
Kirby isn’t very familiar with anger. Not really. He’s been mad before, but never angry. Right now, angry is what he feels. He feels too hot, feels like his body is a big bolt of electricity, how much he’s shaking, and he doesn’t think he can breathe right. It’s too much.
He wants to do something very, very bad.
“It’s your fault I lost my friends,” He says, and the tone he uses is one he’s never heard before. “It’s your fault you made him angry and I lost them! If it hadn’t been for you, then—”
He breaks off, turning away, violent in his trembling and feeling the sting of tears coming in tracks down his face. He doesn’t see them shaking their head, frantic.
“I don’t want your stupid melon!” Kirby yells. “I don’t want to see you ever again, you hear? Get lost!”
Kirby doesn’t stick around to find out if they do. He runs, and it’s the hardest he’s ever run in his life.
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“Oh, Kirby, you’re home— …Kirby?”
“Hi, mama.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, mama.”
“…Hm.”
Kirby stands there at the back door and stares at the floor and feels like he could take a nap for a very long time. His mother, quietly, gestures for the couch, and Kirby crawls over to do exactly that.
It’s not fair.
“Have you seen your father, dear?” She asks in a hush, and he leans into the cool hand that brushes his forehead. Kirby doesn’t want to answer. Kirby doesn’t want to do anything.
And he doesn’t have to.
The back door cracks open, and from the entrance comes a familiar voice. “Hey, I’m home. Kes, have you seen Kirby? He wasn’t at the pond and he left all of his stuff— Ah.”
He doesn’t look up. Kes says nothing. For a minute, the house feels really, really awkward.
“Well,” Meta starts, closer than he was, and Kirby hears the sound of shuffling distantly. “You should know better than to leave your presents alone, Kirby. It’s pretty rude!”
“…Presents?”
And that bids him to look up.
The first thing he sees is Meta. Large and with wings spanning the length of his body, Kirby always thought he took up the whole house. He stands and lingers over a familiar melon that makes Kirby immediately feel sick at his stomach and abuzz with nerves all over again, looking over something at its stem.
Get rid of it, he wants to say. Throw it away. He doesn’t want it.
“Yeah,” Meta replies, and he turns over something in his hand so Kirby can see it better. A note, now that he looks closer, tied to the stem. “I assume it’s from Marx? Although even his handwriting isn’t this bad…”
Kirby takes it, despite how much he doesn’t want to. Kirby looks.
‘F R I E N D’
…His dad isn’t wrong. It’s written really, really badly.
His stomach lurches, and this time it’s for a lot more than just anger.
“Oh! Kirby!” His mother’s voice comes from a distance away, back in the kitchen, and when he looks up she’s lingering over the table at a familiar fish stretching the length of the surface. “Kirby, did you catch this?”
“I—” He isn’t sure what he should say to that. Does it count as having caught it if he’d just found it there?
“I thought all of the fish in the pond had died out some time ago,” She murmurs. “Especially one this large; you couldn’t find something like this anywhere but the lake… Good job, Kirby!”
He hadn’t, though. He hadn’t done anything. He’d just heard some rustling in the bushes, looked away, and when he turned next it was just there. He hadn’t caught anything. It was just there like— like a gift.
Like a melon.
…
Kirby doesn’t know what’s going on.
He’s not dumb. He’s not selfish. He knows that. So why is this all happening? Why him? What did they want with him? Why give him all of this? Why want to be his friend, after they did what they did?
(It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, he remembers thinking. They had looked sad the entire time, now that he tries to turn it in his head.)
(They were sad, and they had wanted to be his friend.)
“…Kirby? Where are you going?”
“I forgot something, I’ll come back soon. Sorry.”
Kirby doesn’t know what’s going on.
But Kirby isn’t dumb. And Kirby’s going to find out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The little spot by the pond is the exact same as he’d left it. None of his stuff is there anymore, but otherwise it looks like nothing at all had happened.
Kirby takes a deep breath, puts his hands around his mouth, and yells.
“Hey!”
It echoes through the trees, gets swallowed up in the leaves and foliage. Birds rustle and take off, and the cacophony, for a second, is deafening.
Nothing.
He tries again. Again and again, trying to catch their attention, but no matter how he tries, there’s no rustling of bushes, no pebbles, no movements. They. Couldn’t have left already, could they?
And at the end, when his throat is sore and he’s left panting, with nothing to show for it, he feels something curdle. Ugly and dull and heavy. Something bad.
“Why!” He finally bites, not anger but— “I…Why’d you do it? Why’d you make them run, and then give me a present? Why’d you throw a rock and why do you wanna be my friend after that? Couldn’t we all get along?”
People can be kind. People can be mean. Can they be both?
“I…” He wobbles, feels his eyes sting again, but if he wanted to cry the tears wouldn’t come. It’s a yucky feeling. “I don’t understand. You’re a lot nicer than he is.”
Marx had never gotten him any gifts. Marx was his friend, but Marx was also mean. And yet he was his friend.
People can be kind. People can be mean. Can they be both?
“So. Why?”
He knows why.
They hadn’t meant to cause him to lose his friends, he thinks. They had just wanted Marx to stop. Marx was mean, and Kirby didn’t deserve that. Kirby is good. Marx was not.
They are sorry, he thinks.
They--
Kirby jerks his head.
They hover, concealed by the trees and the underbrush. Shadowed over, expression pinched and uncertain. They won’t come near him, he knows, and he doesn’t blame them for it.
They’re sorry, he thinks. It was an accident, he thinks.
“…I’m still a bit mad, you know.” Kirby mumbles. There’s no heat behind it. But he thinks he gets it now.
It’s just…a big old mess. A very big, very icky mess.
He really wants a nap.
“…Thanks for the food.” Kirby says, and it really is a mumble this time, as quiet as it is. “And. Sorry. For yelling, earlier. Do you…still wanna be friends?”
People can be kind. People can be mean.
And accidents happen.
As they draw out, slowly, into the open, Kirby feels something like a tentative warmth. They’re curious, he thinks. They would like to be, he thinks. The still want to, he thinks, if he does.
“Okay— Okay!” Another friend, who would’ve believed it— “M-My mom, she makes a good fish stew, if you want to come over?”
It still feels odd. But, they haven’t done anything but cower and apologize and throw a rock at someone who, maybe, deserved. Even now, it’s better than Marx ever was. “If you want, um—?”
And Kirby blinks.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
He gets.
Nothing.
“…Do you have a name?”
He doesn’t think they do. Their expression is blank, a little confused he thinks. They hover, idly, in place, and Kirby thinks that this won’t do at all. Everyone should have a name. Even the demon beasts.
“Do you want one? Mine’s Kirby!”
Curiosity. They blink. Stare at him, turning his name over, and then they brighten in a way he hasn’t seen since they met. Yes! Okay!
But. What to name them?
Kirby goes through a list, briefly. Orange? Citrus? For the petals attached to their sides, or whatever they are. Neither of them seem to stick. Bluey? No. Doughy? He looks like dough. The expression that one gets makes him snort.
He barely notices the sick in his stomach has gone away, filled instead with something light, airy. Good.
“Well…” And Kirby takes a good look at him, at his shape, the way he moves, the way he looks. He looks—kind of like--
“Gooey?”
Something pings, hard in his head. That’s the only way he can describe, the brightening of their expression, the way they perk up and their tongue curls in the air. Gooey? Gooey!
“Gooey!” Kirby lets out a laugh, as pleased as he is amused. A funny name, a good name. It’s good! “Nice to meet you Gooey! My name is Kirby!”
And he thinks--
He hasn’t felt this happy with someone in a very long time.
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“Hey, dad!”
“Kirby!”
Meta feels himself ease when he catches sight of the boy crawling from the woods, and it’s with pleasant surprise that he sees Kirby is far more enthusiastic than he’d been earlier.
He’d been worried. It wasn’t hard to see, there in the house, the way Kirby had looked, worse off than he’d been at the beach. What had happened, he wanted to ask. Was it Marx? What was wrong?
Meta wouldn’t have been able to fix it. But by Nova, he couldn’t do nothing.
So there’s a sense of relief now, seeing his boy come back happy, come back normal. Whatever had happened, it had passed, and he couldn’t be more thankful.
He only ever wanted Kirby’s happiness.
“Dad, I made a friend! We uh, we had a small fight, but it’s okay now! Look!”
“A friend?”
Kirby gestures at the empty spot beside him. Stares, and blinks.
“Gooey? Gooey, come out! I know, he’s scary, but he won’t hurt you, honest!”
He reaches over, into the brush. Something rustles underneath, and Kirby makes a noise that Meta can’t decipher.
From the brush, it emerges. Slowly.
“Dad—”
Meta only ever wants Kirby’s happiness.
“Meet—”
And Kirby looks so happy.
“Gooey!”
So why then--
(It stares. Something that should not be here. It stares and he knows, distantly, what must be done.)
—did Kirby have to find a friend in a Dark Matter.
The phone clicks on the wall with a hard noise that rings of finality. Meta stares, for a moment, unseeing past the plastic of the receiver. It hangs like a weight on his shoulders.
Kes looks at him as he moves to flop wordlessly against her on the couch. Head turning, lolling against her shoulder, and the cold natural to her kind is a balm on his nerves, grounding.
For a time, neither of them speak. They bask, quietly, in the anchor of each other’s presence, soothing themselves in the wake of the last few days. Meta needs it, after everything. He wishes he could just nap and wake up and everything would be over, a distant memory. Into a better world.
“…You don’t know if this will do anything to help, in the long run.”
Kes murmurs, and Meta feels cool breath brush his temple.
“It’s not like I have any better ideas. At least in Kalmari Kirby has friends that like him.”
“And how will he feel when it’s time to go home, Meta? To come back to a place where he has no friends at all? He would never want to leave West Nova. We’d bear witness to a Demon Beast of a tantrum.”
Amusement coats her voice like fine frost, subtle and sardonic, layered over the weight beneath. And he knows, Nova he knows. As if he hadn’t thought of that through his entire conversation with Bate.
“What else is there, Kes?” He doesn’t raise his voice. It trembles and teeters, weak. He’s not of a mind to care. “We can’t just make friends for him. And after everything the past few days, doesn’t he deserve…something? At least? He hasn’t been himself since.”
Kirby is always so bubbly, always so happy, bringing gifts and candy and never without a heap of optimism. But now…
The listless look in his boy’s eyes remains burned in his mind. The weight of him won’t leave, huddled in his arms, a fit of tears shed in the way only children had. All of his friends, gone.
He doesn’t want Kirby to ever feel that way. Not Kirby, of all people.
“We can’t make friends for him, true. But we needn’t sooth his wounds with friends he will only have to leave again eventually.”
He feels a hand, calloused from many years of combat and work, stroke the top of his head gently. “He was ecstatic when we brought him to the beach before he found those children. What if we did that, instead?”
“I don’t think he’s going to want a beach day, Kes.”
“Mmh. I was thinking something a little grander. Tell me, when was the last time we went to Orange Ocean?”
Meta turns it over in his mind.
The memories he has of that place are. Fuzzy. But it didn’t get its name for nothing – stunning at any time of the day, but especially so at sunset, when the orange waters glow vibrant to the point of blinding. Also host to one of the largest aquariums on Pop Star, if he recalls right, and a significant tourist destination.
A perfect vacation spot for a family get-away, he thinks.
“It’s…not a bad idea.”
“He’s a little boy,” Kes murmurs, to herself or for them both, it’s hard to say. “Not just a warrior. Some time as a family – away from all this – would do us all well. Without needing to travel quite so far.”
Just a little boy, he thinks to himself, and thinks in his mind’s eye of a Meta some decades younger. Grown up too fast, as is the lot of the Star Warriors. Just a child.
“Yeah,” Meta says quietly. “I think it would.”
…
“I think dinner would be a nice time to surprise him.”
And suddenly Meta’s headrest is gone as if it were never there, and he has to flail to keep from falling on his side. Kes, standing, turns to look at him, and her expression is warm with mirth.
“I think I’ll make his favorite. So why don’t you go spend some time with him, then. I believe he went fishing a bit ago?” Which is odd, for someone like Kirby who can’t seem to keep still, but then Kirby has been out of it for the past few hours.
“Out back?” His brow raises. “There aren’t any fish back there.”
“There aren’t.” Kes agrees. “I was thinking you might bring him to the lake. He might sniff out the dinner from behind the house, otherwise.”
She’s not wrong. Kirby is frightful at smelling food. An excellent hunter’s nose, Kes has said more than once.
He shrugs and gets up to do as he’s bid, and if he finds his earlier frown upturned at the corners as he heads out the back door, then that’s all just as well, isn’t it.
Meta’s only ever wanted Kirby happy, in the end.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
He still doesn’t have a bite.
The water is still. Where the bob to the line floats, the water moves, but just a little bit, and the rest of the pond doesn’t move at all. It looks like a mirror.
Kirby sees himself in its reflection.
Fish aren’t supposed to be quiet, or still. Fish always move. He’s seen it. Fish are supposed to move constantly, and they’re supposed to be dumb. They’re supposed to bite so he can catch them. So he can bring back dinner.
But they aren’t. And now there’s not going to be dinner.
Why can’t he do it? Why can’t he catch a fish? Fish don’t think. Fish don’t do anything. Fish are just…
You’re pretty dumb.
Hands tighten around the rod.
If Kirby catches one, he won’t be. If he catches one, he can bring it back, and someone will smile. His parents haven’t been happy since they came back, and he needs to fix it.
They’ll be happy. He’ll be happy. Everything will be good.
(Fear. Lots of eyes staring at him and there’s fear in all of them.)
(Nobody is around when he leaves. Nobody wants to be. Not around him.)
His mouth tightens, and wobbles, and tightens again. It was his fault, wasn’t it? That’s what Marx always said. For ignoring him, for leaving him alone. That’s why he got mad. That’s why he did what he did.
That’s his fault. And now he’s alone. Completely.
And he still hasn’t caught a fish.
He doesn’t hear it at first. He’s too busy staring at the water, willing with everything he’s got for it to do something so he’s not completely useless. Bushes rustle all the time.
But it gets closer. Gets closer. And then eventually he hears the sound of a stick snap, not a foot behind, and the proximity and the sheer suddenness of the whole thing to his foggy head makes him jerk a good foot into the air, wings hiked high and spread wide. Bristling.
Demon beasts exist on Pop Star. He knows that. He’s trained for that since he could walk. Was it one of them? He. Doesn’t know.
Kirby turns around to look behind him. There’s nothing but bushes and twigs and grass. It’s quiet.
Carefully, without much thought to it, he sets his fishing rod down and steps on soft feet to the edge of the parameter, not fearful so much as cautious and curious in equal measure. It’s hard to see through the thicket this direction, but he doesn’t see anything odd.
Demon beasts, he figures, would have jumped out by now. The longer he waits and looks, the quieter it seems, until eventually he figures it isn’t one of them. They’d be too loud.
“Dumb birds…”
The words sound odd on his mouth, like Marx put them in there, but he’s too huffy to feel bad for it. He just turns and walks away instead, because he still needs to find at least one fish for his parents.
And then he stops. Stares.
…
There is a fish.
Kirby thinks he’s seen a lot of fish in his time. All kinds, cooked all different ways. He should know his fish.
This one is not a fish he knows. It’s huge. Bigger than his whole body, like someone made a fish five sizes too big. It’s limp beside his fishing rod, and when he nudges it with his foot (it’s really that big) it gives no twitch.
“I don’t think I caught you.”
He didn’t. But it’s still here.
Kirby glances around, this way, that, because if he didn’t catch it, then either it jumped out or someone forgot it here. Did—Did they pass through when he wasn’t looking? That’s pretty fast.
But nobody shows up. Nobody comes back to pick it up. It’s just kind of there.
…
Kirby grins.
If someone won’t take it, it’s his now. Finders keepers, and maybe now mom can make that fish stew he’s been begging for. With a fish this big, she can’t not, right? She has to!
But as he’s thinking of a way to actually drag it back, the bushes rustle again. And this time he hears it immediately and turns in a jerk with a childish narrowing of the eyes.
“Hello?” He tries, because this might be the fish owner, now that he thinks about it. Bummer. “…Is anyone there?”
He gets no reply. Just still foliage.
Kirby calls, again and again, each time his voice a little louder, and his feet carry him forward into the underbrush because now he knows something is here. Why are they hiding, he asks? What are they doing? Did they lose a fish? Are they a monster? He says all of this out loud and waits for a reply that doesn’t come.
He’s not dumb. He’s not. There’s something here, someone, but he can’t do anything if they won’t--
Something flicks him in the back of the head.
It’s not hard. Feels like a bug sting. But Kirby doesn’t expect it, so his reaction is louder than it needs, a yip as his hand flies to cradle the spot where he’d been stung.
He turns, wings hiked up in defense. Eyes wide and mouth open to yell and do—something.
It’s a pebble laying on the ground. Not a bug.
And there’s someone here!
He feels them more than he notices them at first, and he couldn’t tell anyone how. They’re just…there. Lingering a good distance away, roughly in the direction the rock had come from.
And Kirby doesn’t know what they are. They don’t look like anyone he’s seen on Pop Star, or even West Nova. The best way he could describe them would be like a giant, floating ball of putty, or clay, or goo. They float and they move the entire time, framed by something like yellow flower petals and weird, tiny blue blobs that surround them and squish and stretch at random on all sides.
There’s also a tongue. Not just a tongue, but long one, longer than Kirby is tall, longer than his fishing rod, longer than his parents, even!
And it’s holding a melon as big as they are.
Two big eyes take up most of their shape, blinking and staring at the same time. Kirby is reminded of a Gao Gao. They don’t move, and they look hopeful. Feel that way too.
“…Hi! Are you giving that to me?”
Because that’s what it feels like. And he’s right! They nod, funny body jiggling right along with the movement and yet somehow their tongue remains perfectly steady, bringing the melon closer. They set it down gently at his side, just beside the pebble, and Kirby has to look up to see the stem at its top. Big.
Kirby likes him a melon. Kirby likes most foods, in fact, and a big part of him is excited to even get anything, regardless of where it came from. People are nice, they do nice things!
Another part of him, mature and cultivated and not dumb not dumb smarts of suspicion. Stranger danger, his parents said. Demon beasts, his parents warned. Pop Star is peaceful, but not always. People are kind, but not always.
(Children look at him and stay far, far away.)
“Why?”
It’s a good question to ask, since he doesn’t know them, but the look on their face twists. Their head – whole body, really – tilts. They’re confused, he thinks. Confused and sad.
“Why’d you give me a melon? Where’d you come from, even?” Kirby presses, and they blink. Why won’t they answer? It’s not hard?
As if reading his thoughts, their mouth opens. They take a deep breath, brow furrowing.
Nothing comes out.
Their expression pinches and they try again, and again, and nothing. A barest hint of a whistle, a sigh, but nothing that forms words, and their expression casts downward with a sense of failure.
Kirby feels like he should apologize, but for what, he isn’t sure. It still doesn’t explain what they’re doing here, or why.
He doesn’t know what’s going on. He should. He’s not dumb.
(Children, afraid. Kirby, alone. And Marx—)
“I—”
They’re staring at him. Eyes wide, unreadable but staring hard in a way that makes him feel like a bug, they stare and stare, and he gets ready to open his mouth to tell them to stop. You can’t just do that.
Their eyes shift away. The relief makes his wings sag.
Quietly, they shift closer, and the tongue lingering like a disembodied snake in the air nudges first the melon, then the rock at his foot. Pointed but tentative, it nudges, until it digs just so into his skin.
“What?”
Because he doesn’t know, doesn’t know— And they do it, again and again, pointed and firm, he thinks, even if their expression doesn’t say it.
They’d thrown it at him, he thinks. They’d hid because they were scared and shy and thrown it at his head.
They’re nice. They’re not bad. But that didn’t answer his questions, and he isn’t dumb.
They nudge the pebble again, harder, and--
(A rock had been thrown at Marx too. He’d seen it, from a far ways off. He’d thrown it, when nobody was looking. It wasn’t fair of Marx. It wasn’t right.)
And that--
Kirby shakes his head hard enough to leave him dizzy.
That wasn’t him. That wasn’t Kirby. Kirby hadn’t thrown it. Kirby hadn’t done anything. He’d seen the rock fly, had seen it hit Marx square in the head, but he hadn’t thrown it.
Kirby looks, half in a daze, at the being that hovers in front of him. They stare at him calmly, evenly, and this being knows. They know. It wasn’t Kirby. It wasn’t him because it had been them. Because it hadn’t been fair. It hadn’t been right. And Marx deserved it.
“No!”
Kirby thinks, of friends crying and refusing to come within ten feet of him. Of Marx, angry and upset and taking his rage out on every single one of them. How such a nice day had been completely ruined because someone had to go and make someone else mad.
They all could have gotten along. Nobody would have gotten hurt because nobody there had started it.
It wasn’t Kirby’s fault.
It was theirs.
Kirby isn’t very familiar with anger. Not really. He’s been mad before, but never angry. Right now, angry is what he feels. He feels too hot, feels like his body is a big bolt of electricity, how much he’s shaking, and he doesn’t think he can breathe right. It’s too much.
He wants to do something very, very bad.
“It’s your fault I lost my friends,” He says, and the tone he uses is one he’s never heard before. “It’s your fault you made him angry and I lost them! If it hadn’t been for you, then—”
He breaks off, turning away, violent in his trembling and feeling the sting of tears coming in tracks down his face. He doesn’t see them shaking their head, frantic.
“I don’t want your stupid melon!” Kirby yells. “I don’t want to see you ever again, you hear? Get lost!”
Kirby doesn’t stick around to find out if they do. He runs, and it’s the hardest he’s ever run in his life.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
“Oh, Kirby, you’re home— …Kirby?”
“Hi, mama.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, mama.”
“…Hm.”
Kirby stands there at the back door and stares at the floor and feels like he could take a nap for a very long time. His mother, quietly, gestures for the couch, and Kirby crawls over to do exactly that.
It’s not fair.
“Have you seen your father, dear?” She asks in a hush, and he leans into the cool hand that brushes his forehead. Kirby doesn’t want to answer. Kirby doesn’t want to do anything.
And he doesn’t have to.
The back door cracks open, and from the entrance comes a familiar voice. “Hey, I’m home. Kes, have you seen Kirby? He wasn’t at the pond and he left all of his stuff— Ah.”
He doesn’t look up. Kes says nothing. For a minute, the house feels really, really awkward.
“Well,” Meta starts, closer than he was, and Kirby hears the sound of shuffling distantly. “You should know better than to leave your presents alone, Kirby. It’s pretty rude!”
“…Presents?”
And that bids him to look up.
The first thing he sees is Meta. Large and with wings spanning the length of his body, Kirby always thought he took up the whole house. He stands and lingers over a familiar melon that makes Kirby immediately feel sick at his stomach and abuzz with nerves all over again, looking over something at its stem.
Get rid of it, he wants to say. Throw it away. He doesn’t want it.
“Yeah,” Meta replies, and he turns over something in his hand so Kirby can see it better. A note, now that he looks closer, tied to the stem. “I assume it’s from Marx? Although even his handwriting isn’t this bad…”
Kirby takes it, despite how much he doesn’t want to. Kirby looks.
‘F R I E N D’
…His dad isn’t wrong. It’s written really, really badly.
His stomach lurches, and this time it’s for a lot more than just anger.
“Oh! Kirby!” His mother’s voice comes from a distance away, back in the kitchen, and when he looks up she’s lingering over the table at a familiar fish stretching the length of the surface. “Kirby, did you catch this?”
“I—” He isn’t sure what he should say to that. Does it count as having caught it if he’d just found it there?
“I thought all of the fish in the pond had died out some time ago,” She murmurs. “Especially one this large; you couldn’t find something like this anywhere but the lake… Good job, Kirby!”
He hadn’t, though. He hadn’t done anything. He’d just heard some rustling in the bushes, looked away, and when he turned next it was just there. He hadn’t caught anything. It was just there like— like a gift.
Like a melon.
…
Kirby doesn’t know what’s going on.
He’s not dumb. He’s not selfish. He knows that. So why is this all happening? Why him? What did they want with him? Why give him all of this? Why want to be his friend, after they did what they did?
(It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, he remembers thinking. They had looked sad the entire time, now that he tries to turn it in his head.)
(They were sad, and they had wanted to be his friend.)
“…Kirby? Where are you going?”
“I forgot something, I’ll come back soon. Sorry.”
Kirby doesn’t know what’s going on.
But Kirby isn’t dumb. And Kirby’s going to find out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The little spot by the pond is the exact same as he’d left it. None of his stuff is there anymore, but otherwise it looks like nothing at all had happened.
Kirby takes a deep breath, puts his hands around his mouth, and yells.
“Hey!”
It echoes through the trees, gets swallowed up in the leaves and foliage. Birds rustle and take off, and the cacophony, for a second, is deafening.
Nothing.
He tries again. Again and again, trying to catch their attention, but no matter how he tries, there’s no rustling of bushes, no pebbles, no movements. They. Couldn’t have left already, could they?
And at the end, when his throat is sore and he’s left panting, with nothing to show for it, he feels something curdle. Ugly and dull and heavy. Something bad.
“Why!” He finally bites, not anger but— “I…Why’d you do it? Why’d you make them run, and then give me a present? Why’d you throw a rock and why do you wanna be my friend after that? Couldn’t we all get along?”
People can be kind. People can be mean. Can they be both?
“I…” He wobbles, feels his eyes sting again, but if he wanted to cry the tears wouldn’t come. It’s a yucky feeling. “I don’t understand. You’re a lot nicer than he is.”
Marx had never gotten him any gifts. Marx was his friend, but Marx was also mean. And yet he was his friend.
People can be kind. People can be mean. Can they be both?
“So. Why?”
He knows why.
They hadn’t meant to cause him to lose his friends, he thinks. They had just wanted Marx to stop. Marx was mean, and Kirby didn’t deserve that. Kirby is good. Marx was not.
They are sorry, he thinks.
They--
Kirby jerks his head.
They hover, concealed by the trees and the underbrush. Shadowed over, expression pinched and uncertain. They won’t come near him, he knows, and he doesn’t blame them for it.
They’re sorry, he thinks. It was an accident, he thinks.
“…I’m still a bit mad, you know.” Kirby mumbles. There’s no heat behind it. But he thinks he gets it now.
It’s just…a big old mess. A very big, very icky mess.
He really wants a nap.
“…Thanks for the food.” Kirby says, and it really is a mumble this time, as quiet as it is. “And. Sorry. For yelling, earlier. Do you…still wanna be friends?”
People can be kind. People can be mean.
And accidents happen.
As they draw out, slowly, into the open, Kirby feels something like a tentative warmth. They’re curious, he thinks. They would like to be, he thinks. The still want to, he thinks, if he does.
“Okay— Okay!” Another friend, who would’ve believed it— “M-My mom, she makes a good fish stew, if you want to come over?”
It still feels odd. But, they haven’t done anything but cower and apologize and throw a rock at someone who, maybe, deserved. Even now, it’s better than Marx ever was. “If you want, um—?”
And Kirby blinks.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
He gets.
Nothing.
“…Do you have a name?”
He doesn’t think they do. Their expression is blank, a little confused he thinks. They hover, idly, in place, and Kirby thinks that this won’t do at all. Everyone should have a name. Even the demon beasts.
“Do you want one? Mine’s Kirby!”
Curiosity. They blink. Stare at him, turning his name over, and then they brighten in a way he hasn’t seen since they met. Yes! Okay!
But. What to name them?
Kirby goes through a list, briefly. Orange? Citrus? For the petals attached to their sides, or whatever they are. Neither of them seem to stick. Bluey? No. Doughy? He looks like dough. The expression that one gets makes him snort.
He barely notices the sick in his stomach has gone away, filled instead with something light, airy. Good.
“Well…” And Kirby takes a good look at him, at his shape, the way he moves, the way he looks. He looks—kind of like--
“Gooey?”
Something pings, hard in his head. That’s the only way he can describe, the brightening of their expression, the way they perk up and their tongue curls in the air. Gooey? Gooey!
“Gooey!” Kirby lets out a laugh, as pleased as he is amused. A funny name, a good name. It’s good! “Nice to meet you Gooey! My name is Kirby!”
And he thinks--
He hasn’t felt this happy with someone in a very long time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
“Hey, dad!”
“Kirby!”
Meta feels himself ease when he catches sight of the boy crawling from the woods, and it’s with pleasant surprise that he sees Kirby is far more enthusiastic than he’d been earlier.
He’d been worried. It wasn’t hard to see, there in the house, the way Kirby had looked, worse off than he’d been at the beach. What had happened, he wanted to ask. Was it Marx? What was wrong?
Meta wouldn’t have been able to fix it. But by Nova, he couldn’t do nothing.
So there’s a sense of relief now, seeing his boy come back happy, come back normal. Whatever had happened, it had passed, and he couldn’t be more thankful.
He only ever wanted Kirby’s happiness.
“Dad, I made a friend! We uh, we had a small fight, but it’s okay now! Look!”
“A friend?”
Kirby gestures at the empty spot beside him. Stares, and blinks.
“Gooey? Gooey, come out! I know, he’s scary, but he won’t hurt you, honest!”
He reaches over, into the brush. Something rustles underneath, and Kirby makes a noise that Meta can’t decipher.
From the brush, it emerges. Slowly.
“Dad—”
Meta only ever wants Kirby’s happiness.
“Meet—”
And Kirby looks so happy.
“Gooey!”
So why then--
(It stares. Something that should not be here. It stares and he knows, distantly, what must be done.)
—did Kirby have to find a friend in a Dark Matter.
-End Chapter 3-
<< Chapter 2 | Chapter 4 >>
Artist Comment:
Date: 01-26-2023
-----------------
Gooey and Kirby meet for the first time~!! It's also revealed it was Gooey who threw the rock at Marx. oAo Unfortunately, it caused quite a bit of drama, but Kirby eventually understands Gooey meant no harm by it. Accidents happens, and Gooey was just trying to protect Kirby. (And maybe Marx kinda deserved to have something thrown at him. XDD )
We hit a bit of a snag now, because Meta finds out his son has befriended a Dark Matter. If you're reading my comic series, you'd know he's not particularly fond of Dark Matter. oAo
----
*** It has been so long since this chapter has updated. But I'm hoping to change that. All the illustrations have been sketched out, and I'm hard at work writing summaries for each chapter before passing them to my friend to write them out.
From this chapter going forward, I'm commissioning my good friend Dogblog to write them out. She does an amazing job translating my summaries, and I just LOVE how she writes the way Kirby and Gooey communicate. Kirby and Gooey have a special way of communicating (Because Gooey can't speak, and their conversations are telepathic in a way) and she does a marvelous job writing them~ >v<
Date: 01-26-2023
-----------------
Gooey and Kirby meet for the first time~!! It's also revealed it was Gooey who threw the rock at Marx. oAo Unfortunately, it caused quite a bit of drama, but Kirby eventually understands Gooey meant no harm by it. Accidents happens, and Gooey was just trying to protect Kirby. (And maybe Marx kinda deserved to have something thrown at him. XDD )
We hit a bit of a snag now, because Meta finds out his son has befriended a Dark Matter. If you're reading my comic series, you'd know he's not particularly fond of Dark Matter. oAo
----
*** It has been so long since this chapter has updated. But I'm hoping to change that. All the illustrations have been sketched out, and I'm hard at work writing summaries for each chapter before passing them to my friend to write them out.
From this chapter going forward, I'm commissioning my good friend Dogblog to write them out. She does an amazing job translating my summaries, and I just LOVE how she writes the way Kirby and Gooey communicate. Kirby and Gooey have a special way of communicating (Because Gooey can't speak, and their conversations are telepathic in a way) and she does a marvelous job writing them~ >v<
Species © Nintendo/ HAL Laboratory
Interpreted characters created from said species © Rhylem
Interpreted characters created from said species © Rhylem
