Kip was drunk. Intensely drunk, blisteringly drunk, maniacally drunk; happily drunk.

Everything tasted like flowers when it hit his tongue.

Kip had made a fool of himself. He knew that. He couldn't remember how, though.

But Katrina remembered. Boy, oh boy, Katrina remembers, I'm catching hell for that. Giggle.

Katrina remembered, very well, how Kip had staggered to the front of the room, stood on a table, stoutly inquired why flowers smelled so good and tasted so piss, stoutly wet himself in front of a sizable audience.

Katrina took him home and put him to bed.

But on the car ride home, Kip had felt obliged to share more deep thoughts, mostly relating to picnics, lightning, and the size of the sex organs on most mammals, specifically whales, and how that related to their culture.

She had borne the tide with great long suffering, had tucked him in, kissed him goodnight, calmly wiped the saliva of his overly enthusiastic kiss onto her dress, smashed into her chair. She believed very strongly that it was of no use to reprimand a drunk. The sober feel more pain.

"You are dying, Kip Pilgrim."

Everything inside of him resonated with those words. It was like the framework of a scaffolding was collapsing, and every time, sending little pulses down into the ground, again, again, again.

He looked at the girl sitting on the grass in front of him. When he stared straight at her, she looked like a shadow. An outline of a girl, filled with ink. When he looked away, he could see her; blurred, in red, blonde, thin; looked back, darkness. A shadow.

"What?"

He was still lying in the glass velvet grass. The sky had changed colors. The clouds were gone, four suns were shining, each a different shade of red.

"You are dying."

He giggled, laid his head back down into the grass. He could feel her words as she spoke them. They felt like the grass, but they were brushing his insides. His stomach, his throat, his brain. So many slivers of glass, of velvet glass, painting pictures on his organs, painting them green.

"Thanks."

He heard something moan. Looked up, heard it, felt it coming from the girl.

"What?"

"Don't you want to live?"

Kip dragged a hand across his face, felt his liver painted, let his pinky sit in the corner of his lip.

"I don't know."

In the corner of his eye, Kip saw the girl smile.

"Is this living?"

Smile fades. Tendrils grip tendons.

"This is nothing."

The girl rapidly rose, walked a few feet away, stared into the suns. She spread her arms wide, opened her mouth; a sound like scraping chalk retched out; blackness flew everywhere.

Kip covered his face, burrowed into the grass, cringed at the feeling of that scream. He could feel it clawing at his insides, an angry worm, livid, squirming, tearing, rasping.

It subsided in time. Kip was covered in sweat.

Lifts his head, stares at the girl. There is no more blackness.

"I have broken myself for you, Kip Pilgrim. I have broken who I was, so that you and I could be."