Ergo Retrograde (G/t)

The Line

Links for related pic:

~DA: https://www.deviantart.com/imperial-radiance/art/The-Line-866737655

~Tumblr: https://empressxmachina.tumblr.com/post/661505948136964096/the-line-by-imperial-radiance-on-deviantart

"Well, ain't this just fantastic!? I thought this kind of trash would've stopped with Candela choking everyone out, but here you are again, suffocating me like at every damn summit."

"You're coming at me!? You're the scared puppy here! It's not my fault you won't listen to reason... or simple criticism!"

"A pot calling the kettle black, huh? Get over yourself, princess."

To be so opposing in everything, they combated like they had been married for years. For ones so small, they were so very loud.

***

One couldn't be more out of their element than being light-years away from home. That and being confined to the Conscience and with its lodgers, the ship itself only having a house's worth of surrounding walking space, had knocked DeShawn off his rocker. In size, the house in question did fight Euphoria, the station from which the tiny team's once-unsuspecting trip departed. However, it was nevertheless an unbounded labyrinth of mostly sunless walls. He may not have been the sole, small soul with the opinion, either, but he was the only one to vocalize or, for all he knew from his low angle, show it, exploding from cabin fever up to the heavens one morning after the first meal, unapologetically unafraid to nip at the enormous, ecru hands that just fed them.

Beige body parts controlled by a being so unfathomably large and figuratively otherworldly if the latter wasn't already the literal case.

Nonchalantly wiping a just-used mug clean in his hand, Kolvyr's celestial head gazed down at the less-than-cup-sized collective on the dining room table in silence, scanning over the samplings of surprise from the tinies with titles, fear from the civvies, pointed antagonism from a particular captain-companion combo, and the daring, diminutive glare up to him from DeShawn. The little lieutenant and the large lord of the house locked eyes for what felt like days - the tension building enough to make Kiyoko herself need a doctor. Like everything in the end, however, it didn't last, but it wasn't easy to say who, if anyone, faltered first.

Every infinitesimal astronaut caught their heart in their throats when Kolvyr glanced to his side for a moment and then suddenly walked away from his audience, footsteps reverberating past corners, down halls, and upstairs with the clink of a now-clean mug set atop a counter in the midst of them.

In the giant's absence, a tsunami of quietness rushed over the group - dense stress too thick for a laser. Armand, the subdued beacon of wisdom, was the one to break through after a pregnant pause, divulging everyone's variant yet aligned thoughts with a cheeky "I'm sure there was a better way to go about that." Its simple veracity did squeak chuckles out of some, but the fatherly tone came at a price: being just like that of the mountain DeShawn just lashed out at. Another glare from the unjaded gentleman was gifted to the giggling gaggle, clamping their lips closed in an instant, except for a gasp from Gale, who was first to notice Kolvyr's return to the table in a proper day outfit rather than the cotton separates in which he awakened.

Having smartly kept to himself the observation of how the dried streaks and stains in Kolvyr's cup were uncomfortably close to DeShawn in more ways than one, the horror on Gale's face was palpable when the casual Colossus raised a Laputan island of a palm up to the table top's edge. Again, more looks of panic popped across the populace before anyone acknowledged the awkwardness, and again it was Kolvyr to make the first move.