She suddenly looked up and out the window. The words ramming against each other had completely blocked the view inside her mind but it was cloudy and overcast for the most part anyway, unless you craned your head all the way up and out to catch sight of the shock of blue always above it.

His fingers laced into hers from the right, jolting her all the way back to the here and now.

“I,” he started softly, watching her shake off the shock and re-access her surroundings, “thought you were all the way back already.”

“…no,”she paused, “I am now though.” 

He swallowed her sheepish grin like it was the sun itself, knowing he’d be beaming the rest of the day because of it. “What time is it?” she asked.

“No idea,” he blushed.

She rolled her eyes. “Look- somebody’s gotta be paying attention to time when we-” she started to fuss.

‘Why?” he grinned impishly as he asked it, actually curious about how she’d respond.

“We can’t get lost in time-”

“You’re right… we … can’t. Remember?” he murmured , leaning towards the halo of her hair. “It moves even when you don’t, ya know?”

She scrunched up her nose. “Huh? The time we can’t get-” she started.

“No~ your….halo-”

“Ah,” She grinned. “How do you think she got named as an entity unto herself?”

“No, I’d be deep in… in figuring out my…and I’d look up and she’d be…waving at me.”

“Of course. She’s an incorrigible flirt- & she’s not the one writing, but she’s where all the secrets are~”

“…Do you miss yours? I know I feel like I missed yours tumbling down your~” she chuckled.

His eyes narrowed. “According to you know who,” he pointed up at the sky, “You didn’t ‘miss’ my hair at all- You only fucked around with dudes whose hair was even more ridiculous than mines-”

“Not ridiculous- hot,” she growled, momentarily reminiscent. “Still irks me to this day that I Ever saw you fn Apologizing for having had all that…glorious madness just spooling wildly outta yer- You should’ve embraced it!”

“I enjoyed my-” he fussed back.

“I would’ve embraced it,” she chuckled darkly. “You woulda been baptized in the- Nope, nevermind, the past is over- We did what we did when we were- Besides… I would’ve made you crazy with that hair… but This hair-” she reached over and grabbed a handful of the multifaceted, psychedelically shifting swishes of grays, blacks and white spouting in all the directions he allowed it to grow and go when he was on task “…is the hair that makes me crazy, so…”

“So it’s better I have this running amok in the here and now instead of then? So you can grab it like you-”

“This is…my…” she leaned in-

---

A throat was cleared from behind them.

“Oh, for fucks sake!” he groaned.

“Get a room!”

“You actually had to enter the room to even-” he fussed.

He waved it off from the door. “They need you. Are you- ‘recalibrated’ like you said you needed to get?” he mocked from down the hall

“Did this motherfucker just “air quote” you?” she muttered. “I Felt the air quotes!”

“Good!” he called out from the hall.

“Shhh~ bye-” he grinned, kissed her on the cheek and then pushed up out of his seat. A beatific grin spread across her face as she bent down.

He stuck his head around the corner after he sauntered past him and snarked “Thanks for letting him go~”, just in time to be smacked in the face by the flipflop she’d flung, knowing he’d not be able to resist. “Sonafa-” he cursed.

“You deserved it. Leave’er alone, let’s go-” 

---

They heard the music she wrote to turn on as they waited for the glass elevator and stepped into it in silence. Unable to resist, he finally asked.

“Do you really feel-” he started.

“…better?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

He looked at the city that panoramically wrapped around the exposed womb they crawled down the skyscraper encased in. “Do I look better?”

“You always do whenever you play with her crazy ass…that’s why we- Okay, everybody else is – Just I- but this is kinda-” he folded his arms across his burly chest in judgement. “She’s been trying to “be” here for years. & I’ve been along for years-I’m just asking… if you truly feel better with her here?”

He turned towards the dude who never kept straight if he was processing things as a little brother or big, regardless of the actuality of his age, who stepped back into the doors of the elevator, stunned. “the fuck-”

Guard down, face open, beaming out into the dreary day with the force of ten thousand suns. “Well…” he started.

“I can see…what she’s casting as she writes, dude. All of it…weaving up right in front of her- For real. As real as …all this-” he motioned to the gray cityscape and  grinned, “and me…safely. To her…”

“…and in the light of whatever the fuck That Heaven is that she’s capturing …what I am chewing on untangles and gets its shit in order too. Some fucking how.” He stopped and looked out at the world he’d come out of her weird take on Heaven back into.

“So… yeah. I really feel better. With her… here. Whatever the fuck she’s doing, whatever the “how,” even… she was fucking right all along-” he paused.

“But what I can’t shake is…we aren’t late… and both of us were silently beating ourselves up, thinking we were. That much I know. But it- it probably wasn’t even safe for her to unfurl like that, even with me…until now-” The elevator coasted to their stop and pinged open.

“So,” his psychological-spiritual work armor slid back into place around him as he stepped past him, over the threshold and out into the elements, “…Respect it. & Suit up. It’s gonna be a crazy rest of the day-“

The sun finally broke through the clouds on their left as they walked across the rooftop towards the waiting vehicles. Everything that had once seemed sadly waterlogged with rain now glistened around them, reflecting bright, wet light all over the place.

---

“Hey,” she called out into the empty room as she made her way over, retrieved her sandal and slid it onto her tabi -socked foot.

“Sup?” her guardian muttered, barely looking up from the grid he was ensconced in and the book babies crawling all over him like the cosmic jungle gym they felt he was for them.

“You know I feel it when it happens, but-” she paused, looking for the words. “Why does he let him see what I’m doing too? He’s never done that with any of the-” she stopped, watching him like a hawk for tells.

Her guardian winced and held one of the latest of her fiery offspring out away from him to make the book baby stop swinging on his hair like she was crazy, then shrugged. Coyly. “Who knows?” he grinned.

“You know!” she grunted. “Tell me!” 

“Just…live it~ chile. Enjoy it for what it is-”

“Gaaaaah!” she fussed.

All the book babies climbing the walls around her and her guardian angel mimicked her yowl happily alongside her, everyone effectively off-task and spiritually disgruntled until the sun suddenly popped out from behind the clouds and golden, palladium-streaked bright light slashed into the room, filling it. 

Everything became still. She looked around at every aspect of herself and creation assigned to her basking in the reverb of what was surely his light processing hers somewhere out in the world below and blush grinned.

“Just… enjoy it. I think it’s just the cosmic chemistry- The motherfucker’s got his own Shining Ones ‘stique going on and it’s fucking good with yours and for you.” he glanced around the room at the cherubs peaceably putting themselves down to nap.

“All of you, apparently. I’m just glad I get to see it, after all the-”