"Jax... if you ever need... to talk to someone... I just... I'm here."
Jax felt her pupils dilate. She couldn't believe it, but she actually felt herself fall in love with Ragatha. Suddenly, she became incredibly paranoid, as though she were being watched from behind her own eyes. "What do you mean? Why would I possibly want to talk?" she put on her practised insincere smile, "And, if I did, why would I want to talk to you?"
"Jax... if you need... to talk... I'm here. Jax. I'm here. Pomni, I'm here... if you need... to talk to someone... I'm here."
Pomni felt her pupils dilate. She couldn't believe it, but she actually felt herself fall in love with Ragatha. "What do you mean?" she asked, "Why would I possibly want to talk?"
"Jax... I love you... Jax... Pomni... I love you. I love you. Pomni, I love you."
Pomni snapped her eyes open, seeing the darkened inside of her bedroom. This used to happen when she was new to the Circus, but even after being here for 3 months, she still sometimes had difficulty separating dreams from her everyday fantasy-reality. She had to look in the mirror to verify that she was Pomni, not Jax. She looked over at a photograph she had found in Jax's room when they were cleaning it up for the memorial site. It was a selfie Jax took with Kaufmo and Ribbit, and was the only piece of paraphernalia in her room where she was genuinely happy. There were a lot of Polaroids on the wall, but in most of them, Pomni could tell Jax's smile was insincere. This one, however, was genuine. She couldn't tell how, she just knew it was. She remembered the feeling of love that Jax had for Ribbit as she looked at her picture, and the feeling of, at the time, brotherhood with Kaufmo. She also felt the almost paranoid desire to keep these hidden from everybody.
Then, Pomni looked over at the picture that Gangle had taken of her with Ragatha at the beach a few weeks ago. It was the same picture that she had looked at every day since, but it was different this time. She still felt the love that Jax had felt for Ragatha, but unlike in Jax's memories, it was not fading or trying to be replaced by something insincere. Surprisingly, it also didn't feel secondhand. So far, remembering Jax's memories, it always felt like she was feeling somebody else's emotions, as though they were being beamed into her soul for it to watch. However, this feeling was... real?
"Ah," she told herself, "I'm just getting used to it, that's all."
Joining her friends at B&R for breakfast, Pomni avoided eye contact with Ragatha, but still sat next to her.
"Morning, Pomni," Ragatha greeted her.
"Hi," Pomni replied sheepishly.
"So, big news, guys," Zooble announced. Pomni noticed Gangle was blushing.
"Oh, I love big news," Caine answered, "What is it?"
"Well, you're getting better at small talk, I'll admit," Zooble said, "but that isn't it."
Gangle set a plate of digital food before Kinger, still blushing, but overflowing now. "Zooble and I are getting married!"
Pomni looked surprised, "Married?"
Zooble nodded, "I proposed last night."
"Oh, that's wonderful!" gushed Ragatha, "When did you have in mind?"
"Today!" squealed Gangle.
"No time like the present," Zooble responded. Gangle hugged Zooble from the side. "Kinger, you're the nearest thing to a preacher we have around here, could you officiate?"
"Well, sure! I'd be honoured."
"What about me?" Caine asked.
"Well," Gangle replied, "since we lost our only piano player, could you play the music?"
"Sure! But, um... I don't know any human-composed music except 'Daisy Bell', of course. Every AI knows that one."
"That'll be fine," Zooble answered, "Also, since we're kind of short on performers these days, could you escort me down the aisle, Pomni?"
"And, Ragatha, if you could escort me," Gangle beamed.
"Yes, of course!" Ragatha responded, "Pomni?"
Pomni's mind had been elsewhere, "What, huh? Oh, right!" She smiled and replied, "I'd be honoured."
Gangle squealed in delight, "I'd better get ready, then!"
Portraits of all the Abstracted performers, including Jax's modified portrait, stood in front of the stage, assembled in an arc. Kinger stood in the middle under a trellis archway decorated with flowers, while Caine played "Daisy Bell" on the piano.
Pomni escorted Zooble to the trellis from the sitting room. Pomni was wearing a pink and white version of her usual jester outfit while Zooble was wearing a striped necktie and a black skirt. They stood to Kinger's left with Pomni standing behind them. Caine changed the piano to sound like a pipe organ as a signal.
From around the wall, Ragatha escorted Gangle. Ragatha was wearing a yellow dress and matching hat while Gangle was wearing a flower crown and veil and carrying a bouquet of flowers. She stood to Kinger's right with Ragatha standing behind her. Caine stopped playing and Kinger spoke.
"Dearly beloved and departed, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Gangle and Zooble in amazing digital matrimony."
Zooble groaned, "Kinger..."
Gangle, however, just beamed at Zooble.
"Well, anyway," Kinger continued, "Ragatha?"
Gangle passed the bouquet to Ragatha in order to free her hands.
"Gangle," Kinger said, "please join ribbons with Zooble-- oh, you already did. Did I tell you to do that?"
"You didn't have to," Gangle replied.
"Ah, of course."
Pomni probably should have been focussing on the ceremony, but she couldn't take her eyes off Ragatha for some reason. That awkwardness from breakfast had seemingly become a full-on crush. Pomni still couldn't sort out whether it was her own feelings or a time-delayed reflection of Jax's. After all, she was seeing through Jax's eyes in her dream, just as she was seeing through Jax's eyes when looking at his memories 3 months ago. She felt the veil lift in Jax's mind for that split-second when he fell in love with Ragatha, but she also felt the walls go up immediately to shut those feelings out. Most importantly, the feeling that Jax had for Ragatha felt like someone had described the sensation of love to her and she was assembling it from third-hand sources. Whereas, independently of Jax's memories, Pomni was feeling like she actually was falling in love with Ragatha. It felt real, not remembered or artificial. As Kinger said, "I now pronounce you wife and spouse!" the image in her head changed; she saw Ragatha wearing a wedding dress and knew on some level that this was their wedding ceremony. Not Zooble's and Gangle's, but hers and Ragatha's.
"You may now kiss each other," Kinger added. Pomni started to walk over to Ragatha with a funny look on her face, but was interrupted by Ragatha applauding for Zooble and Gangle. Realising what was going on, Pomni started clapping as well.
"Congratulations, Gangle!" Ragatha exclaimed, "You two were made for each other."
"Honestly," Zooble chuckled, "sometimes it does feel like it."
"Yeah," Gangle said, gleefully, and called over at the piano-player, "Hey, Caine; thanks for making me and Zooble so much alike!"
"Procedural generation!" Caine announced and began playing a flourish.
"So," Pomni refocussed her attention, "Where are you guys gonna go on your honeymoon? There's a lot out there now."
"We were thinking about the Tropical Twister," Zooble replied, "That is, as long as Caine remembered to turn the hurricane off."
"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?" Caine grumbled, half-jokingly.
"Then, we'll go to the Snowy Summit," Gangle added, "As long as Caine turned off the Snow-bomb-inations."
"Now, those were causing a memory leak," Caine said, "I had to delete them."
"I added a really neat ski-lodge there," Kinger offered, "I'm pretty sure Queenie and I went to a place like that on our honeymoon in Realspace, but I couldn't remember details, so I just made some things up."
Zooble turned to Gangle at last and muttered, just loudly enough for Pomni to hear, "Hey, you wanna go procedurally generate some hearts around our door?" Gangle giggled in response and Pomni hoped nobody was seeing her blush. Caine and Kinger went off to continue their planning on Carrington's infrastructure, leaving Pomni and Ragatha alone by the stage.
Ragatha sighed and clasped her hands together, watching Gangle and Zooble walk off toward their room. "Don't they make a lovely couple, Pomni?"
"Yeah. All the same, I think I'd probably stay out of the hall for about the next hour."
"Yeah," Ragatha started blushing a bit, "I... learned my lesson there."
They stood in silence for a moment, looking aimlessly around the room. With only the two of them there, the atrium seemed cavernous. "It's... kinda quiet around here now," Pomni offered.
"It really is," Ragatha sighed. "I almost miss the days when new people were coming in every couple of months.
"I guess that still makes me the new kid, huh?" Pomni chuckled. She turned to the stage, remembering her first day in the Circus.
"It appears a new human has entered this realm!" Caine had exclaimed.
"How do I get this... headset... off?!" Abby had exclaimed in a panic as she pulled at her eyelids in an attempt to remove the headset that she had found in what she thought was an abandoned office complex.
"Yeah, just keep grabbin' at it," Jax had replied, "It worked for all of us."
"Hey," Ragatha snapped her out of it, "You still awake?"
"Yeah," Pomni responded, "I just wonder if there are any more headsets out there, sitting on demo kiosks, waiting for someone to come and get their brain scanned. Or, whether there's a database somewhere that's full of brain-scans. Kinger said those files are pretty small."
Ragatha also looked at the stage, "I wonder if someone new is going to show up someday?"
"They'll be scared and confused... I know I was. Jax was, too."
"Well, I know one thing," Ragatha put her hand on Pomni's shoulder, "If anyone else does come through, we'll be right there to help them adjust."
"Yeah. It'll probably be a lot better to know you're a brain-scan right off the bat, rather than having to follow a trail of clues and chase an existential crisis for 2 weeks."
She looked down and sighed, "If Caine had just told us that we were brain-scans as soon as we arrived, Jax might not have Abstracted. Kaufmo definitely wouldn't have."
"Maybe," said Ragatha, "But it's just as possible that they would have Abstracted immediately. Wasn't Jax running from something when she got here?"
"Yeah. She'd just..." Pomni hesitated, realising that Jax wouldn't want Ragatha to know her secret, "...been in a fight and she was running from the cops." That was near enough to Lee's story to stand in for the real one. "It was probably best to let her think she was completely safe, hiding here."
"So, in a way, Caine was protecting Jax." Ragatha put her hand on her chest, "That explains so much..."
"Ragatha?"
"Nothing. It may be nothing. I, uh... I have to think about it some more."
"Okay." Pomni suddenly had an idea that she spent no time mulling over and simply blurted out, "Do you want to come over to my place for dinner tonight?" She felt her pupils dilate when she said it, but Ragatha didn't seem to notice.
"Sure!" she replied in her normal cheerful tone, "It's a date!
A date... Pomni realised that, yes, that's precisely what it was. Trying not to suddenly appear unresponsive, she said, "What, maybe, six-ish?"
"You got it." With that, Ragatha walked off in the direction of the Performer's Directory, presumably to edit it to show that Zooble and Gangle were now married.
Pomni went back to her room and realised, "Shit... I can't cook." Indeed, even with the virtual nature of her new home, she still managed to completely make a mess of her own meals. In Realspace, Abby couldn't even make a bowl of oatmeal; in the Circus, Pomni could barely microwave a fish. Her best friend ever was about to come over for dinner and she didn't know the first thing about what to make. She suddenly had visions of a school principal attempting to pass off a very obvious fast food meal as his own home cooking to the school superintendent. "Okay, Pomni, don't seize up," she told herself, "We've still got 3 hours, we don't need to go insane, just something simple. We can do this." She crossed over to the bookshelf and pulled out a book: Cooking for People Who Can't Cook.
At Six o'clock, Ragatha knocked on Pomni's door. "Hi, Pomni, I'm here."
"Uh, come on in," Pomni called from the other side.
Ragatha entered Pomni's room. There was a distinct smell of something having overboiled and sizzled on the stove burner. "Wow, something smells... interesting."
"Yeah, that was just a mistake," Pomni called from the kitchen, "it's not dinner."
"Oh, good," Ragatha called back, "Uh, I mean, mistakes are... how we learn."
Pomni came into the room, with an apron tied around her waist, flour on her jester outfit, and what looked like tomato sauce on her hat. "Well, I guess I learned a lot, then," she panted, bracing against the doorframe.
Ragatha chuckled slightly at Pomni's appearance, "Wow, you look like hell. Sorry! I didn't-- uh, I didn't--"
"No, you're right, I feel like I've been through war, and I've been in a real shootout before."
"So, what are we having?"
"Sandwiches. Chicken sandwiches."
"Oh, sandwiches."
"It turns out I'm really good at slicing tomatoes and really bad at just about everything else in the kitchen." She reached over to the counter and produced two plates, each with a roughly deli-style chicken sandwich on it and a handful of potato chips. Ragatha looked relieved at how the sandwiches looked-- honestly, she had been envisioning a chicken leg between two slices of bread, but these sandwiches looked quite nice.
"I'm sorry it's more a lunch than a dinner," Pomni apologised as she set the plates on the table and lit the candles.
"Pomni, it's about the company, not the food," Ragatha assured her.
"The sandwiches are from the Café," Pomni admitted, "I just added tomato slices to them... well, and cheese. And mayo. And lettuce, so it's mostly my sandwich at this point. I could have just made the sandwich myself, honestly, I don't know why I didn't do that."
They sat down across from each other. Ragatha asked, "These come with ketchup at the Café, don't they?"
"Yeah, and I hate ketchup, absolutely can't stand the stuff," Pomni admitted, "I got it off Katara-style." She opened the sandwich and demonstrated with the mayonnaise, bringing it completely off the bread and returning it to a viscous blob with her hand, then setting it back on the bread where it resumed its original spread form.
Ragatha laughed, "Ketchup-bending, huh?"
"It's the benefit of working with digital food."
"So, what's with the flour stains and everything?" Ragatha asked, biting into her sandwich.
"I was slicing tomatoes and I thought, hey, you know what would be good is pizza."
"That would be good."
"I know, right? So, I start getting the stuff out for pizza dough and there's nowhere in the cookbook that says I have to turn the stand mixer off before adding the ingredients. So, I get a face-full of flour and now, I've got water making the flour sticky, so as I'm brushing myself off, I'm actually making more of a mess. Then the sauce starts boiling over and I wonder when I started making that, and then it turned out I didn't have any cheese, and then it was Four Fifty-Seven, and..." she stopped and groaned, "yeah."
"I'm sorry," Ragatha looked rather guilty, "I didn't mean for you to go to all this trouble."
"No, no, it's like you said: mistakes are how we learn. I learned that I do not belong in a kitchen, whether it's in Realspace or the Circus."
"I'm guessing you were one of those people who ordered Doordash a lot."
Pomni sighed, "I even had to have them cater my brother's birthday party. I mean, I had a stand mixer, but I used it mainly for storing apples and oranges."
She looked squarely at Ragatha and said in the most sober voice anyone could possibly muster, "I had to look up what a 'spatula' was."
Ragatha laughed out loud, "Oh, Pomni, you're a menace."
"Yep, pretty much. I just wanted to do something special, since we were the maids of honour."
Ragatha picked up a crisp and smiled, "This is special enough. Thank you, Pomni."
Pomni smiled, lovestruck. The candlelight was playing on Ragatha's face, casting dancing shadows with her hair. It wasn't a memory, it wasn't artificial-- it was real. She was in love. "You're welcome, Ragatha."
Ragatha hesitated putting the chip in her mouth, noticing the sweet yet goofy smile Pomni had on her face. "You know, in Realspace, I was actually a pretty good cook."
"Oh, yeah?" Pomni replied, dreamily.
"Like, there was this one time, my dad was hosting this big cookout at our ranch, and the grillmaster was one of his friends who owned a grill restaurant. Well, obviously it would be a grill restaurant if he was a grillmaster. Well, anyway, he had a fun sense of humour and was just great to be around. And, at this cookout, I was supposed to walk around and refill everyone's drinks, right? And I start watching him prepare this big ol' steak for the grill, and he's stoking the fire and everything."
Pomni suddenly realised that she still had the grin on her face when she accidentally began to drool. "Yeah?" she asked, attentively, while surreptitiously wiping the corner of her mouth.
"He asks if I want to know how to work the grill, and he teaches me the basics. And, before long, I'm actually mincing up garlic, chopping vegetables, scoring beef, and all that stuff. I kinda thought it would be fun to open a restaurant myself someday." She stopped and sighed, "But, dad came by and shooed me away from there. He said that grilling was 'man's work'." She ate a bite of sandwich. "Which is strange, because he also said that a woman's place was in the kitchen. So, like, cooking. What is grilling except cooking outside over fire?"
"I always hated that," Pomni agreed, "somehow, everything fun was 'men's work'. I just stopped caring about that when I turned 13."
"Yeah, I didn't care, or I tried not to. But, my mom was... well... traditional. That's the polite term, obviously."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"The thing that finally split me from my parents was when my mom told me I had to quit going to college. She said I had to get married and start a family."
"She really bought into the whole 'tradcore' thing, huh?"
"So much," Ragatha groaned. "And then dad said I should marry... uh... well, I don't remember his name, but I do remember that he was the son of one of dad's friends, and that he was a giant misogynist." She began to get more agitated, recounting her memories, "He was the kind of guy who wasn't interested in a partner so much as a free-use sex toy or a baby factory. Total tradhusband. I couldn't stand being around the guy, he..." she cringed, remembering him, "he gave me the creeps the way he would talk about me to his friends like I was a horse or a cow or something. He even called me 'breeding stock' once."
"What?" Pomni nearly dropped her sandwich, "People seriously talk like that? It's not just an internet thing?"
"Oh, I heard that and worse. I told dad he could forget it. He told me that I need to get married by next year at the latest or he would kick me out and close my savings account down."
"Oh, my god."
"Well, he shouldn't have said that, because I stormed off to the bathroom, got my phone out, and transferred all the money from my savings into my PayPal account where he couldn't touch it. Then, I went back out there and told them to fuck themselves, and I ran out to the truck and drove back to school. I sat in the student commons for the rest of the night, studying realty for some reason. I just chose it basically out of a hat, I'm not sure why I didn't do, like, banking or something. Just, I'd passed billboards for realtors on the way to school and I just decided, I'm gonna be a realtor."
Pomni was shocked and saddened by her story, but also felt closer to her now than she had when she woke up this morning. "Wow, Ragatha, I... had no idea."
"That's actually part of how I ended up here," she responded, "I had to think about it earlier, but, yeah, just like Jax, I'm pretty sure I was hiding, too. I was, I was in a mall... yes, the... Westfield... mall? I think? But, I saw my mom there, too. I didn't want to talk to her. There was... a computer store? No, a Sharper Image. A demo kiosk with a VR headset that covered your entire face, and I thought, 'that's perfect'. I put it on, but I wanted to keep track of where mom was so I could know when to leave. Kinger told me I was glitching for a few seconds after appearing... that must have been the brain-scanner getting interrupted by me looking around the headset." Ragatha looked distant for a moment, presumably reliving the event in her mind before shaking her head and saying, "Anyway, it's all in the past. I'm here now, and Suzie Ackerman is off being a successful realtor and, hopefully, has a better husband than what's-his-name. That is, if she's married at all."
"Do you think she's married?"
"Honestly?" Ragatha shook her head, "No. I was never really interested in boys. I mean, I went out with a few boys while I was in high school, I had my first kiss with a boy, but I always felt like that was... I don't know... artificial. More artificial than the Circus. Does that make any sense?"
"Believe it or not, yeah, it makes perfect sense," Pomni agreed, "because that's basically me too."
"You said... you were... falling in love with Jax, though?"
"I dunno, maybe I clocked her? But Jax was the first person who registered with me. I thought she was a guy at the time, but... yeah."
"Maybe we're lesbians," Ragatha chuckled.
"Maybe." Pomni rearranged the chips on her plate. She was still smiling from the conversation, but there was something else going on in her mind.
"I wasn't running from anything when I found the Circus," she admitted,"My life was pretty good. Boring, but good. I spent my days as a wealth manager, helping old rich guys figure out what to invest in so they could keep making money after they retired. God, the numbers... the money these people had! I was making about a hundred thousand a year, which everyone says is supposed to be the cutoff point, right? If you make that much in a year, then you're supposed to be rich, right? Well, not me. I wasn't exactly scraping by, but not exactly comfortable either. I was just out of college and I stupidly decided to take out this huge loan so I could buy a house I'd always wanted. Well, the fact I was starting a so-called 'high-wealth' job meant that the bank decided it was a great idea to trap me in a 30-year loan with a ten-percent A.P.R."
Ragatha looked confused, "I thought that was illegal."
Pomni laughed sardonically as she picked up her sandwich, "I know, right?! But try getting the government in this country to... er, you know, That Country Out There... try getting them to regulate banks even a little.
"So, there's the monthly loan payments of nearly two-thousand dollars, which wipes out a good 20% of my pay every month, on top of the taxes, fees, and other bills, that leaves me with just a little over fifteen hundred in useable money. And, of course, prices of everything have been going up since COVID, right..." she set her sandwich down and gazed at the plate for a moment. "What right do I have to say I was 'running from' anything? My dad wasn't pressuring me to marry anyone, I wasn't running from the police, I wasn't homeless. I just felt... weighed down. Here I was, helping rich managers and CEOs get richer, dealing with clients whose net worth was more than I could ever imagine, while I had to go home at night and hope that Doordash hadn't increased its rates again.
"I guess that's why I liked urban exploration so much. Stepping foot in an abandoned shopping mall or office complex-- someplace that, just a decade ago, was probably making hundreds of millions of dollars every month-- it feels like an affirmation. You know, like capitalism will eventually eat its own tail. But... the thing that really got to me, what really tore me up about my job..." angry tears began welling up in her eyes as her voice broke, "these people cared more about a number on a screen than they did about the real people that they supposedly served. I had a guy come in once who explicitly said he wanted to make sure his company's change of leadership couldn't be used as a bargaining chip for the employees to gain a higher salary... and I had to help him do that!" She stifled a sob.
Ragatha got up from her seat and rounded the table to Pomni, where she knelt down on the floor next to her and put her hand on her shoulder. "You were running, Pomni," she reassured her, "you were running from the entire economy. That's probably the hardest thing in the world to get away from."
"I was never in any personal danger," Pomni protested, "I was living in my dream house, I was making eight thousand dollars a month, I didn't deserve to run like that." Despite firmly believing she was still in the wrong, she nonetheless reached down and grabbed Ragatha's free hand, holding it tightly as she continued to cry. "I got a bonus of five-thousand dollars for sealing that deal... I couldn't look at the money without feeling sick, so I gave it all to the community garden."
"Wow, you gave $5000 to a community garden, Pomni."
"Yeah, my old neighbourhood community garden. They wanted to name a greenhouse after me. The 'Abigail Brooks Greenhouse', can you believe it? But I said, no, I didn't want recognition. I didn't want anyone knowing that I was behind the deal that let the biggest employer in town downsize a whole department and put at least a hundred people out of work. The money was tainted, I just wanted to get rid of it."
"The way you did it, though," Ragatha offered, "was probably the most help that the garden had gotten in a single donation. You took tainted money and did good with it."
"You know what's funny?" Pomni chuckled through tears, "The very next week, I found the VR headset that brought me here. It wasn't in a mall, it was just sitting there on a desk in an abandoned office building. It didn't even look like it was connected to anything. I passed the camera to... um... well, my friend, I don't remember her name, and I put the headset on, just for lulz. And... the rest you know."
"Pomni, I know you don't feel like you deserved to escape, but you were escaping. Everyone has a different personal peril, and yours was capitalism. You care about people, and you found yourself working in one of the least-caring professions in the world."
Pomni sniffled, "I was... always good at math. Accounting sounded like adding up numbers all day. It sounded easy. I didn't know it would be... what it was."
She turned and managed an appreciative smile, "Thanks, Ragatha."
"Anytime." Rather than pulling away and standing up again, Ragatha remained knelt next to Pomni.
"Ragatha?"
"Yes?"
"I, uh... I have... I... oh... how do I...?"
"Yes?" Ragatha sounded expectant, as though she already knew and was just waiting for the words.
"I... I've been... Lately, I've... I, um... I..." despite no longer crying, she was shaking as she attempted to muster the courage to say what she wanted to say. Not being able to come up with the words, she simply leaned forward and gave Ragatha a sudden, short kiss on the lips before pulling away in shock. "Uh, I... I'm sorr-- I'm... I didn't--"
"It's okay," Ragatha whispered as she closed the gap and kissed Pomni again. They kissed for at least several seconds, but it felt like minutes to Pomni. As she and Ragatha kissed, she saw soft clouds and swirling galaxies.
Finally, they pulled away from each other, each looking at the other with their own expression of relief and bliss. Pomni wanted to say something, but she wasn't sure what would be appropriate. Ragatha chuckled slightly and whispered, "Wow..."
"Yeah..." Pomni whispered in response. She thought of something to say: "Ragatha?"
"Yes?"
"Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"I dreamt about you last night... you told me you loved me."
"How did you reply?"
"I don't remember. I woke up, I think."
"Pomni?"
"Yes?"
Ragatha paused for a bit as the full weight of what she was about to say settled on her like a soft, warm blanket and she smiled broadly, "I love you."
Pomni smiled as well, bringing her hand up to her chest. If she had a physical heart, it would be so warm right now. Despite not having one, she still felt the sensation. "I love you, too, Ragatha." They kissed again. This time, putting their arms around each other. They had hugged once like this before, as they were comforting each other after Jax had Abstracted. The sensation back then had been more of desperation, kinship, and inseparability. At the time, Ragatha had just admitted to thinking she would Abstract before Jax did, and Pomni had a sudden vision of the red "X" crossing out Ragatha's portrait, feeling a preview of the incredible loss which she would never be able to get over or cover up, that would have ultimately caused her to Abstract as well.
Now, however, there was no desperation, only love; the desire to communicate great volumes without saying a word.
Zooble and Gangle passed by Pomni's room en route to the World Select menu. Gangle pointed to Pomni's door. "Look!"
Above the door, there were two swirling hearts becoming one before getting pierced by Cupid's arrow.
"Hey!" Zooble chuckled, "It's nice that they finally figured it out!"
"I knew they were attracted to each other as far back as the Lightning Round," Gangle giggled as they walked away down the hall.
"Yeah, I figured something was up after that Haunted House adventure, what was that called?"
"Mildenhall Manor?"
"Yeah, that's the one."