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Yellow beams of lights flew overhead. Each ray permeated a warm flash in Hat Kid’s vision, an almost comforting sight to her as the ceiling above glowed like a view of the stars, abruptly ending at the walls she wished she wasn’t reminded of.
Lifting her head up, the booming crowd became nearly audible against the ringing.
Swinging down from the upper loft, the Conductor’s toothy beak spread across his face and glowed to his cheering audience, and he continued by – in a way only a movie director would know how to exaggerate – swinging down from a loose rope, blade clenched between his teeth and gracefully descending to the glittering stage. Completely ignorant of the barely-conscious child laying on her stomach, he sprinted into a victory lap, hopping ecstatically under the few disco balls he hadn’t shattered yet.
Meanwhile, Hat Kid had barely managed balancing on her elbows, still tender from the sting of the bird’s blade. Her pupils grew with an attempted push, expending the little energy she possibly still could’ve had. Her throbbing head held her back.
Come on.
The heart pon is right there.
The young girl squinted, hoping that it would roll closer to her reach, a gesture of some fondness that universal physics had for her.
Hearing a scottish drawl shouting reassurance to the crowd, she rested her head again. She was hurt, but she hadn’t been worrying – not a bit, actually.
In times like this, the Hat Kid had simply breathed slowly and remembered an everlasting reassurance, one that grew to the front of her head in moments like these – although, other times, she was significantly less aching.
It came to her in the pages of a colorful pop-up book. It recalled to her in the voice of a close friend of hers; another traveler, just like her. Donning a blue bow headband on her head, Hat Kid recognized her as a fellow timepiece carrier, pillow fight professional, certified sleepover attendant, and licensed best friend. Indeed, Bow Kid was the best at keeping Hat Kid level-headed.
Words, drawn in their wide, vibrant font, soothed Hat Kid’s ringing ears, reaching her in her old friend’s calming voice.
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“See the picture here?”
It was a now-unfolded diorama of another kid, cartoonishly drawn, surrounded by heart pons.
“That means they’re healthy!” Bow exclaimed, flipping the page.
The next page was the same child, instead lying on their back, flower in hand. A sheet ghost was drawn escaping the kid’s mouth. Hat Kid giggled at the exaggerated drawing.
“But now they’re… they’re covered in boo-boos!”
She pointed to the next pop-up, the most prominent slip of paper being a long, tall cartoon bruise extruding from the drawing’s scalp.
“But you’re really strong! That’s ‘cause you can get way more boo-boos than the other people on the planet,” Bow said, pulling the surrounding mess of pillows closer to her shoulders.
“And when that happens to you , you’ll be okay! Those timepieces are like… magic doctors! Yeah, like a magic doctor!” The final drawing showed the character beaming with life once again, clocks and hourglasses swirling around them. “So long as you have this… um… thingy!” Bow assured, holding a pocket watch, adorned with hourglass designs and a cyan blue frame. Looking at it closer, a drawing of a cat’s face centered the watch’s display. Hat Kid grinned, realizing that the hands of the clock were supposed to be whiskers.
“Like it? I made it way prettier, just for you! So don’t get worried about getting covered in boo-boos, okay? Just make sure you don’t worry, and everything will be alri-”
Hat Kid grabbed Bow Kid into a tight hug.
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“An’ that’s whatcha git fer touchin’ that !” the Conductor shouted. Not out of spite, of course, but to the amusement of the crowd. And they loved it. The cheering express owls boomed with excitement, still unheard by the young lass under the stage lights.
Remembering the stammers in Bow Kid’s words, she wondered if that was why when she was hit headfirst with a spinning blade, she felt a tingle of sharp head trauma, rather than being gibbed to two flying pieces. Her thinking had drowned out her acknowledgement of the Conductor.
As he ran the last of his laps, the Conductor felt a glance towards Hat Kid escape him. He was poised to cackle again when a twitch washed over him. It rose in his chest, then shockwaved through his head.
…
“Oh peck.” he thought.
She looked hurt. Seriously hurt.
Didn’t-react-to-the-stagelight-falling-near-her-head hurt.
Chest-barely-heaving hurt.
Had her chest not moved softly and her hand raising occasionally, he would’ve assumed she was…
A glance at the glittering timepiece in his back pocket quickly rearranged his thoughts. It shined brilliantly, its contents flowing independently of gravity, carrying every one of his subconscious what-ifs with each slosh. Fulfillment in a bottle. Award number 42, drifting right in his reach.
What was he thinking about before, again? No matter. She was in the way. She was the greedy pest standing between what he wanted. It would change him forever. But he was always one to grab his opportunities.
Leaping back up to the upper loft – which was now covered in scratches by the Conductor’s previous launches – he looked out to a crowd, choruses rising again after the Conductor’s inexplicable moment of idleness. He waved his wing to the response of the express owls, twirling once more.
Then, he focused his muzzle of a beak towards Hat Kid, now holding up upon her knees, toes, and sweat-slicked palms. Her back was still turned away from the blinding stage.
The Conductor, looking down, felt that familiar twinge of self . A thought rose up in his conscious.
“ What if- ”
It suddenly sank, flooding under the audience's cheers of command and drowning it, as if he had never felt it in the first place.
“Finish it! Finish It!”
In unison, the action was clear. But the Conductor doubted the intentions of his poised posture. He hung off the baluster. The uneasy feeling crept up to him again. That perhaps there was another side to this. That he was– no, he wasn’t wrong, but, it could be reconsidered. That if he took the action he was posed for, that he was cheered to commit to, that he’d done multiple times in the last minute without a tinge of remorse, that…
…that Hat Kid wouldn’t…
The timepiece glittered into a singular, captivating shine once more.
Fulfillment in a bottle. 42. I grab my opportunities.
The Conductor took his shot.
The horrendous crack that echoed against the walls was absolutely indescribable. Not that anyone present would ever want to describe it.
The sound met the walls with no resistance. Every bird who’d been cheering for a spectacle of a final K.O. had now turned dead silent. There was nearly no presence. Not a breathing hint that there was anything else but the scene at the center of the room.
Only the cold sweat running like a fever over every bird who dared open their eyes.
And a petrified DJ Grooves stumbling over his first steps out of the elevator.
Wondering if he could’ve been sooner.
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Hat Kid’s eyes fell shut.
Then they opened wide.
Despite working on its first prototype, dismantling it piece by piece and reassembling it by idle fidgeting, and witnessing its effect nearly a hundred times over, she still flinched at the spectacle.
A flurry of white swirled her surroundings, flying away piece by piece. The Conductor was the first to go, the snowy white abyss surrounding him. Time ticked at a snail’s pace, all previous actions being locked into slow-motion. Hat Kid didn’t see much of him before the flakes drew him out of sight, aside from what seemed like a grimace across his beak. Maybe a shock of regret.
The walls were the next to go. They peeled apart, nothing behind their concealment. Then the audience, each bird fading into wisps of differing shapes and sizes.
DJ Grooves was the last to be emptied. That’s weird , Hat Kid thought. Though time was impossibly slowed, it seemed to not stop the thin tear running down Grooves’ wincing beak.
The snowflakes around her began to dissipate into a void of color and space; quite literally, nothing.
The pocketwatch flew idly in front of her, the kitten inscribed on its face staring blankly forward.
Then it collapsed all at once.
There was absence. No, not even absence. There was nothing.
Then, all at once, it came back.
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The lights overhead flickered on to a warm array of light. It reflected against the glowing lights under the floor, the shine pulsating rhythmically. Hat Kid stepped out from the cover of the dark hallway and into her own little spotlight, stretching her back to ease and refreshment, and her arms leaving no trace of wound and tear.
She looked up with a blank stare on her face, seeing no one else but the Conductor, an array of lightbulbs framing his appearance stage-center. A disappointed look drew across his face – a far cry from the cackling grin she expected. Still, he cracked open his mouth.
“Oh ho hoooo, look who we’ve got ‘ere! I guess yer found my lil’ basement, eh?”
Oh, she was going to give him
so
many boo-boos.