“So, Psiksi, what did you do before you were in the Alsyr and you ended up out here? Were you really just bumming around our old universe?”
Psiksi paused, then glanced into the bedroom where Elksia and Tenuk were sitting on the bed, chilling out and wrapped up in a duvet. Elksia had been feeling a little under the weather the last few hours and Tenuk was busy cheering her up, while Psiksi was on guard at the door.
“Well… uh…” Psiksi hesitated. “I’ll be honest, it was all a fucking mess.”
“Care to tell us anyway? It’ll be a good distraction for Elksia.”
“I mean, sure, but you’re all gonna feel bad. Because you, Elksia and Retvik all disappeared and I had to get my butt off Portalia as soon as possible because the Ksithans and the Temthans were threatening war against each other.”
“They were?” Elksia squeaked. “Why?”
“Someone had the bright idea to dump a whole lot of refugees on the planet. Mostly Temthans and Ksithans. And Phovos wasn’t around to keep the peace, so there was an immediate power vacuum there as well… Kinda also couldn’t just go home because the Voidlands were all pretty much destroyed…”
“Wait, really?” Tenuk blinked. “I thought you Skyavok were protected the same way a lot of races were.”
“Hah, no, not at all. I was super fucking lucky I didn’t lose my parents or my brothers, they weren’t in the Voidlands when it all happened. Things got… really bad though. I had nothing on me, I woke up in a ditch with no clothes on, no communicator or anything, couldn’t get back home because I was in the middle of nowhere and nearly fucking died of thirst and hunger because I spent the last thirty quid I had on a ticket to get off Portalia as fast as possible.”
“You got to safety though, right?” Elksia exclaimed. “You were okay!”
Psiksi nodded. “I spent a few days sleeping rough outside a space port on the Rethan home world until some weird Rethan called Trismit found me and took me to his parents’ place. Turned out, he had been taken to fight the Voidborn army as well, he’d woken up in a ditch with nothing on him same way I did, but he’d been found by Retvik’s brother Rethais, who kinda adopted him, and I spent a few weeks kinda just living with Rethais’s kids until I was back to full health.”
“And what happened after that?” Tenuk asked.
Psiksi thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I got a call out of nowhere, asking to meet with Veeksiar and the Rethan library general guy. Apparently the stupid piss on Portalia calmed down and somewhere along the line, they kinda had all your old Dessaron stuff. They asked me if I wanted to run a “Museum of Heroes” mostly focused you two and Retvik, but also having a bunch of Phovos’s stuff and… and I think some of Elkay’s stuff too… Mostly just ran the museum with my old boyfriend Kass…”
Psiksi suddenly fell silent. Tenuk and Elksia quickly realised why.
“Things went bad with him?” Elksia whispered.
“Yeah. I caught him cheating. He said it was an accident, that he was drunk. I didn’t believe him.”
“How comes?”
“There’s a fuckton of steps between getting drunk and fucking someone else. You don’t just buy eggs, flour, sugar and milk from the shop and immediately have a cake ready to eat, there’s steps in between. Same way with cheating. It’s a choice. Even if you’re drunk. You decide to have a drink, you decide to chat someone up, you decide to sneak home, thinking your partner isn’t around, you decide to put your dick in someone else. I lost all faith in Kass, dumped him and spent my time sleeping at the museum, half of which was the old Dessaron headquarters anyway, because that place and the two buildings next door got merged into the museum.
“Tried dating Kayen for a bit when he and Timik moved back to Portalia, didn’t really work out. Didn’t do much else, up until Thitaksi wanted a family reunion because he was ill, and I rushed off to find Eksi and… got catapulted out of the universe.”
Tenuk frowned, then got out of bed, grabbed Psiksi and pulled him into the bed as well, giving him a big hug.
“I’m sorry. We forgot about you.”
“Oh, you totally did. But there was fuck all you could do about it…” Psiksi sighed. “The whole multiverse or whatever went to complete shit. You got kidnapped by Kinisis, Elksia got her whole body remade by Kairos and Retvik got dragged off by the local Decay Lords. And I got completely… thrown away. Just…” Psiksi trailed off again. “Wasn’t your fault. But I got out of it in the end. You all found me, fixed me up and gave me a new home, I got a new boyfriend and everything’s well. And you’re all happy too.”
Elksia grinned. “We’re totally happy! And I think? When the egg hatches? You’ll be even happier too.”
“Yeah… wait, what?”
Elksia continued to grin. “You’ll see.”
“Oh… uh… I don’t get it…” Psiksi was confused. Tenuk was clearly a little confused too, but he glanced at Elksia and quickly remembered what Elksia was hinting at. Psiksi decided to just let the whole thing drop and changed the topic. “Are you feeling a bit better now, Elksia?”
“Definitely! You always make me feel better, Psiksi! You’re a happy charm. Always making people happy. And also Retvik is here!”
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. And standing there, just as Elksia had stated, was Retvik.
“Hello, how are you all?” Retvik asked.
“We’re great!” Elksia beamed. “It’s getting close now. It’ll hatch soon.”
“Ah, good…” Retvik smiled weakly. “Do any of you need anything?”
“Snacks?” Tenuk suggested.
“Snacks is a good idea! Retty, can you get snacks please?”
Retvik grunted. “Of course. What sort of snacks?”
“Crisps!” Elksia chirped. “Lots of them.”
“Very well. I shall return in a moment.”
“I’ll join you!” Psiksi exclaimed as he climbed out of bed. “Tenuk will protect Elksia for the five seconds we’re gone.”
“Sure,” Retvik smiled properly, patting Psiksi on the shoulder as they headed off. “I will need some extra hands to carry all these snacks…”