#look at my skykid. my skid for short.

[the-vault-apprentice]

Previous

Next

Shout out to @llluckymaggie @brainweird-moth and @hlr413 who I namedrop in this chapter as they are essential to my overall experience of the Trials and the strength of friendships in Sky. More will likely be coming, but I can't put all her friends in one chapter. The unnamed one is one who only has the randomly generated name, and I couldn't check what it was because the servers were undergoing maintenance at the EXACT time of me writing this, but she dragged my butt through the Trial of Fire TWICE. Fly high, little friend.

In Which a Friend(?) Is Made

Cold, cold, cold, it is COLD in this one!

Kani misses her cape, but at least she now has shoes. For a very long time, she was doing this barefoot! And she has more layers now that she has gotten nicer clothes. But still, it is cold. What else can be expected from an ocean of ice?

Crunch, crunch, crunch goes the snow- Has anyone left any funny notes on the candles? A small giggle escapes as she recalls the time she found a message- "I swear I didn't pee in the pool" it said. It had made her laugh then, and it makes her laugh now.

Hmmmmm. I can't read these....

Wait

Is someone there

Someone IS there?! By the statue... Hmmmm.

Well, that's okay. She will do the Trial and they will do the Trial and they may not overlap at all. It CAN be done alone, after all, and only an idiot would want to stay here longer than absolutely necessary.... As peaceful as it is, there is something fundamentally WRONG to not have the gift of flight.... Even if she sometimes prefers to keep her feet on the ground, at least the OPTION is there. Not so here. A bird with no wings.

But something is.... Wrong.... Are they sick? They look sick.

She does not look at them much. Only to see once quickly. But they are dressed very plain, which is not too strange. .... At the very least, they seem to have the Candlemaker's hair. Very new ones cannot reach this place, though. So maybe they are not so new?

No shoes, no shoes, their poor feet...

They are the wrong color, too. Faces are not easy to judge, because of the masks, but the hands and the feet and the legs of the Skykids she has met are very brown under what they wear. Brown like mud and dirt and clay! Warm and alive.

Are they dying? They look like they are almost a statue. They are not moving. I think they are scared.

There are sounds that might be words, she is only halfway listening.... Inside her head has gotten very loud. She steps back and away from the candles, away from the statue. Watches the water come up and go down, stands right at the edge of where is safe. Turns a candle over in her hands. Pulls at her pigtails. Gives them every chance to go on.

They have not moved. They will not come closer to the water.

Help, don't help, want space to BREATHE, but.... But they are alone.

There is a big difference between alone that you choose, and alone you do not.

And she remembers. She remembers doing the Trials alone, trying to. Water was okay. Earth was good. But.... Air. Air was so so so so so hard. She kept getting very close and just falling short.

She remembers the time three others were in there with her. She had offered up candles, looking for a friend, a hand, some help. None were taken, and despite her best efforts to keep up, they left her behind after the first time she fell.

She remembers dear Hazel making time to come and guide her. She remembers having a hand to hold through the whole thing, she remembers landing the final jump because of her friend- A friend who taught her how to do it for herself, yes, but still held her hand the first time.

She remembers the Trial of Fire. Dark and lonely and scared. Not so bad at first, but then... Those Things In The Dark. She has cleared that Trial twice. Both times because of a short Skid in a pink cape with puffy hair, who took her hand and led her through a path she never would have reached alone- Climbing the walls and not being afraid of the dark anymore because her friend would keep her light shining, reaching the end.

She remembers her friend from the Prairie, she remembers Maggie. She remembers running full speed across the sand of the Isle to hug her, remembers showing her the butterfly cliff, remembers holding her hand through this exact Trial- And later on, through Eden, through Orbit, through rebirth- And all the times she was with her in the realms between.

She remembers Ariadne, and guiding her through Sanctuary- A place she couldn't have reached alone, so very new to the world. The waterfalls and the mantas and the views and showing her friend the beauty there was to be found- But only because someone was there TO show her.

All of this remembering comes at once and Kani puffs her cheeks and shakes her head. Sometimes she wishes she could just reach inside and pull out whatever it is that makes her care so much!

But what she pulls out is a candle. She's going to need it. Still looking at the ground, she holds out her other hand in the direction of this someone who is Like Her and Also Not.

"...... It is..... Okay. .... I know how to get across. We can go together..."

She still does not look at them.

Their hand is cold. Cold like a rock. Cold like a statue. Cold like the ice.

Talk talk tell them how. If you fall, they will need to keep going until you catch up.

"Dark water.... Is bad. The light water outside is good for swimming. But not here. Secret is.... Breathing. Breathe deep in when the water comes up. Breathe slow out when the water goes down. Then you will get a feeling of when is safe to move. I will do my best to not let you fall."

"Look, I'm not trying to be rude...."

The thought stops and there is quiet for another moment. They sound like a he. Maybe they are. She does not blame them if they do not trust her right away. Not everybody is always nice.

"Thanks. It's good to meet you. My name is Jack."

She nods, watching the water come up and go back down. Not this time- They will run the next. What an odd name. A hard sound in your mouth. Sharp. Quick. Not much to think of, saying it.

"Do.... Do YOU have a name?"

Ah. Part of her had hoped he would not ask. Names are important things, and she is still unsure how much Like Her he is.... And how much Not.

"My name is Koulokani. If we are still friends at the end of this, you can call me Kani. ...."

Breathe in, pause-

GO!

Down the hill and light the fire and her new friend is laughing when the snow under them rises and suddenly they are above where the water can reach-

"..... You are the third very strange person I have seen today."

She had looked behind her, just a moment, just to be sure she had not lost her friend on the very first step.

He does not have a mask. Did the man in the Village? .... He was too tall. I couldn't tell. How odd, these people are....

Secretly, she envies the stranger a bit- How lovely it must be, to have eyes with COLORS in them!

[justsomeectoplasm]

When your timezone is literally on the opposite end of your friends' timezones, because of that! I like to think my sky kids appears at night, with a pillow ready for their friends because they just woke up- 😭

Same-

Everyone is asleep when I log on, both discord and sky. I talk with them a short while before they log off.

But your description just make me think of night skids...

Imagine, skykids who were born with a little darkness in them, causing them to fall asleep when exposed to too much light. Or skykids who lived so long that their light is fading away. Maybe like they're transitioning from light to dark, but the darkness of night, a peaceful and beautiful darkness. They visit the realms at night (if we headcannon that time changes in the realms), with vault being the exception. Maybe a mojority live there, working around the shelves of memory cubes. They glow a soft blue colour, not the bright cyan like the krill but a rich blue that looks like a sapphire's glow. Their skin is littered with white marks, pictures and patterns stretched across their backs and arms.

They often make friends with other night skids, but when they meet a normal skykid, they offer them pillows or blankets for their sleeping companions.

HMMMMM ideas-