Saltburnt Inbox

[snaggleteeth]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
QIMIR

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[snaggleteeth]

Oh. I'm the logogram. That logogram.

[he does not fire on enough cylinders to solve puzzles local to saltburnt. always waiting to fuck off back home. but he looks up the screen again. back down.]

Are we having a fight?

I don't mind you and your friends keeping secrets. We all have them.

[kobes]

🚫👊

🌠😡🦭? 🌠🤗🦭?

[snaggleteeth]

There's a teacher logogram somewhere in the set. I think I've seen it.

I'm not upset with you. For the library. Or anything else. It's a safe assumption we shouldn't all trust each other with everything we have or know. The more you have, the more you know, the more you have to lose.

Are you somewhere safe?

[kobes]

🌠🪐🌊🫵🫵🫵

🚪🛋️

[snaggleteeth]

I know, I know. I still think about it all the time.

Have you gone to the room with the sea in it? Might taste better. The water is salt. There's sand. There's something wrong with it, because it's Saltburnt. But it's beautiful.

[kobes]

😢🌠❓

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
👀👀👀

[snaggleteeth]

Sometimes. Just grief. That's power, too.

Yes. Wouldn't say the tides are all that impressive, but you'll like it. You can bring your friends. It doesn't seem to mind.

[kobes]

🌠🤝🦭❓

alkjaslk;gjpilcxbna;gklalsgjkdalgsk;ajsg;k

[keysmashes to emphasize.]

[snaggleteeth]

Are we friends? Is this what 'friends' means?

[kobes]

🫂 🤗 🦭🌠

[snaggleteeth]

I don't think we should be friends. Seems like the wrong word. But I'll come with you if you're not too mad about that.

[kobes]

[the pause is exceptionally long this time, because typing with a whiskery nose is an exercise in futility:]

alelie ance?
coem aeome coeme wit hhh mes. wit. hme. ?????

[snaggleteeth]

alelie ance is not invited. I don't know them.

When do you want to go?

[kobes]

A
L
L
I
A
N
C
E

[impatient seal, headbutting the phone somewhere.]

N
O
W
N O W
NOWOWOWOWOW.

[snaggleteeth]

['alliance' sounds very institutional, and he does not do institutions! but that would be a little pedantic to say, so.]

Okay, let's go now.

[kobes]

🦭🦭🦭🦭🦭🦭🦭💞💞💞💞💞💞

→ action I assume because when Cee says she ain't starting anything new, she's lying

[snaggleteeth]

[the man who meets the seal has a bucket. inside the bucket, silhouetted in the squiggly shadows of water by the mansion's soft hallway lights, is a fish. alive and gaping, spinning its wispy fins for balance.]

It's for you, [says the man.] But not yet. For hunting in the water. You really are pink, aren't you?

[the man—he doesn't have a name, but he goes by 'qimir'—is smiling. this color, in the wild, would be too visible to predators and too naked in its honesty about the role of hemoglobin to carbon-based lifeforms like theirs. he stretches his fingers toward the animal's round nose, slow-motion, as if afraid of being button, or that some disaster follows the depression of this conspicuous button. he's watched several earth movies, at this point. he knows the danger of the wrong button.] Do you want me to talk in your head?

it's True

[kobes]

[the seal is not a dignified creature on land -- oblong, rotund, shaped less like an animal and more like a spotted, blubbery cylinder, having to bounce along in order to ambulate. koby's a pale pink seal, speckled with brighter pink dapples like sunlight through water, nearly five foot tall when he sits as tall as he can, oddly liquid in how he moves. his whiskers are equally pink, twitching as he lowers his head towards the bucket in curiosity, eyes enormous. around them, the splotches make the shape of spectacles, lenses outlined perfectly round.

a little huff at the bucket, then sealby settles back, sleek and silent and watching with orblike eyes as qimir reaches out. the question gets a twitch of his whiskers, a chuffing sort of sound, pitching closer to a whistle at the end -- but then he nods, deliberately, on muscles and bone that aren't designed for such movements. what they are designed for -- which koby does, leaning back and disappearing in on himself, then stretching out to bump his whiskery, wet nose to the flattened palm -- is very different.

another little whistle, and koby's thoughts like this are permeable, flowing, like water onto the shore, water in the deeps, water wide and moving and unbothered. he waits for qimir to step inside.]

[snaggleteeth]

[something pendulous and elastic about the way koby's blushy bulk compresses in on himself. there should be a rubbery or spring-loaded sound effect. the stranger catches himself smiling. it's not technically unusual; 'qimir' has an expressive and playful character. ordinarily, the smile doesn't fucking sneak up on him, is all. few things do.

such a lapse, the long-term threat it represents, is a later problem. as are the thousands of other subconscious—and conscious—encroachments of saltburnt upon him. today, he is going to the beach. he lets his hand fall. his gaze focuses on the glass melt coins of koby's eyes, and then unfocuses ever so slightly, the next blink staggered ever so slightly out of rhythm. (the fish in the bucket would like to hurry this shit up, splashing with its forked tail. it's slowly running out of dissolved oxygen, and has not considered alternative ways to die.)]

Hello, Koby. Glad you kept the leftovers on. [settling into seal-thoughts is a few-second process, but the first coarse static forms into simple words of communication—a joke. obviously. the seal's magnificent poundage credits nothing to dinner last week. the stranger hefts up the fish bucket, jerking his other thumb down the hall.] Walk and talk?