Tangled In Strings

Chapter 16: Threadbare

Moonlight shouldn’t feel heavy.

But tonight, it sank against Moonjumper’s skin like wet cloth—pulling at his limbs, weighing down his bones, twisting behind his mask in ways that made him feel frayed from the inside out.

“You’re quiet,” Snatcher said, glancing up from a half-written contract.

Moonjumper sat curled beneath the broken window of Snatcher’s treehouse, pale light pooling around his boots. He didn’t respond.

Not at first.

Then—

“I don’t feel right.”

Snatcher blinked. “Well, join the club. We’ve got toast ghosts and emotional repression.”

But Moonjumper didn’t smile.

And that’s when Snatcher knew something was wrong.

---

✦ Symptoms ✦

It started small. A flicker in Moonjumper’s fingers. A flickering of his glow. His voice slurring, just barely. When he tried to rise, his strings dragged behind him—longer than normal. Looser.

Unbound.

“You’re unraveling,” Snatcher said under his breath, eyes wide. “But—why?”

Moonjumper leaned against the wall. “The Rift left a scar,” he admitted. “And my mask’s magic is thinning. I’m not strong enough to seal it.”

Snatcher hissed. “Then why didn’t you tell me?!”

“Because you panic like a ghost on fire.”

“I do not!”

The table across the room burst into flames.

“...Okay. A little.”

---

✦ Care, the Snatcher Way ✦

Snatcher tried everything.

Summoned soup that screamed every five minutes. Magical moonlight poultices (he read about them in a cursed romance novel). Even a quilt made from stitched-together old contracts that might or might not have whispered legal advice in Latin.

Moonjumper, pale and dizzy, managed a dry laugh.

“I never thought I’d be nursed back to health by someone with a flaming ego and a mushroom butler.”

“Yeah, well, you make unconsciousness look sexy.”

“Charming.”

But the truth was: it wasn’t working.

Moonjumper’s body flickered at the edges. His strings curled in on themselves, and his voice began to echo like he was falling away.

Snatcher sat at the edge of the bed, wringing his clawed hands.

“I don’t know how to fix you,” he whispered. “And I can’t lose you.”

Moonjumper cracked open an eye.

“Then stay. That’s enough.”

Snatcher blinked. “...That’s way too emotionally healthy for us.”

Moonjumper gave a weak smile. “I’m delirious.”

“There it is.”

---

✦ Nightfall ✦

That night, Snatcher didn’t sleep—not that he ever really did. He sat beside Moonjumper, watching his mask fracture with hairline cracks, his glow flickering like a dying star.

He whispered stories. Bad jokes. Recited old contracts in dramatic voices. He talked until the sun came up—just so Moonjumper wouldn’t vanish in silence.

And once—just once—he reached out and held his hand.

No words.

No grin.

Just fear. And love. And fear again.

---

✦ End Scene ✦

As dawn broke over Subcon Forest, Snatcher looked out the window at the barely-there sunrise.

The moon was still cracked. The forest still quiet.

But behind him, Moonjumper was still breathing.

And that, for now, was enough.