Chapter Text
Days passed. The adventures were fine, good enough to keep everyone busy but still not enough to be enjoyable. Not even Caine seemed to like bringing everyone through them. Harli wasn't sure what went wrong, but something she said that night was taken personally. Too personally, especially for someone who wasn't a person. That was what she told herself, at least. Ragatha was probably right. Caine was nice when anyone played along, but one short half-argument had him refusing to speak to her for more than a few seconds. She still thanked him after every adventure, only resulting in a guilty sideways glance. They needed to talk again, she was sure of it. Caine just refused to take the first step.
“Caine!” She shouted in a bored monotone, masking her anxious anticipation.
“Caine, where are you?”
The tent echoed without reply as she continued her aimless search, opening doors at random to no success. He was almost certainly away from the tent, in his office or some other area outside. There was nothing she could do if he was still holed up in his room, she hadn't a clue where it was. The other locations were a different story.
The digital carnival was loud, bright, and constantly overwhelming. Every sort of ride, food stand, and fluorescent light were all firing at once, busying the senses regardless of the dulled awareness that came with a digital form. None of the humans bothered to visit, it was essentially just another adventure, one with even more to take in than normal. Harli wandered through the lines of animated mannequins, shouting and laughing surrounding her, blurring together into an irritating ambience. The NPCs played games at countless multicolored stalls, tossing rings onto the necks of bottles or throwing darts at suspiciously Bubble-shaped targets. The main event was the ferris wheel, an impossibly tall red-and-yellow wheel with immaculately-painted golden carriages. It reached so high into the void-sky that the top was almost obscured by its sheer height. The wheel itself, however, was not her focus. There was a carousel which acted as its base, spinning slowly. It appeared more aged than the ferris wheel, paint on some of the horses chipped or faded. Caine had offhandedly mentioned it several times, and it was worth a shot to check. Watching the revolutions yielded no results, he wasn't riding it. Harli approached the carousel base, looking up past the panels and metal rods into the empty upper canopy. Two mismatched eyes stared back, receding from her line of sight. With an exasperated exhale, Harli placed her hands on either side of the carousel's center pole, hoisting herself up to sit on one of the sweeps. She was tall enough that it wasn't much of an issue to ascend, but the space was a bit cramped. Caine looked surprised to see her, but more so that she'd come to join him inside the carousel. He did nothing to leave, arms crossed atop his knees and still perched on an adjacent sweep. “Ready to talk yet?” She posed the question gently, slowly, as if it could somehow frighten him.
He already looked worried enough, but nodded all the same.
“I don't want you to think that I don't understand how you feel. Or at least, that I don't try. But I want to hear it from you first.”
Caine shifted uncomfortably, mulling it over before finally deciding on an answer. “I just can’t... I'm not doing anything wrong, am I? With my purpose.” He asked, mostly rhetorically, a pleading look in his eyes.
“I don't think I have the answer that you want to hear, Caine.”
He inhaled sharply, an almost strangled sound. She'd never seen him breathe before. “But if you'll just listen for a second, it'll help. I promise.” She assured. Caine still looked on, unbelieving but hopeful.
“You're right. There's something wrong with your purpose, definitely. I know the feeling. But it's nothing you can't fix, if you just let yourself.”
“I have let myself! I've tried other things, but they just don't work the same. It doesn't feel right. Making adventures is what I was created for. It's all I was made to be good at. And what you're saying, it means…” He trailed off, eyes darkening slightly. “I won't be good at anything else. It isn't what I was created for.” He finished curtly, cutting short whatever he couldn’t say.
“Maybe just trying something new could give you something else to live for,”
“I don't live.” Caine interrupted bitterly.
Harli stopped. He looked to be breaking, body visibly stalling, glitching apart and back together again. Caine didn't seem to notice. “We all do, just…differently than in the world we used to know. That’s what people hate so much about this place. But as far as you, I think I know what we should try, if you’re willing.”
He didn't say no.