Between

Episode 11

Episode 11

"There, that's the last one," Philo said, popping off the last gear.

It had been a long process, and it had left Philo grease-smeared and bruise-knuckled, but he'd managed to harvest all the remaining items on his fetch list from the train they had found. He smiled as he looked over the pile of chain and minor components he'd liberated. There was something familiar about this. This felt right. Not the fact that he was standing on the bottom of an antique train floating in a galaxy of salvaged junk in the middle of an endless white void, of course. That part still felt wrong, but the job felt right.

Ever since his arrival in The Between, Philo had been a bit lost in pretty much every meaning of the word. He'd arrived without any real memories. He only even knew his own last name thanks to the documentation he'd found in the chamber that brought him here. Fortunately for him, he'd turned out to be the sort of person who excelled at floundering. It's hard to feel disoriented when you aren't aware of what the original orientation was. All the same, blindly wandering along without any concept of where you came from or where you're going isn't the most secure way to make one's way through an unfamiliar place. This, at least, seemed to be a part of that missing history.

"Definitely one for the good column. I'm good at taking things apart," Philo said. "Hopefully I'm also good at putting things together. Those seem like skills that would complement each other nicely."

"Are you talking to us, Philo?" came a curious voice.

Rill swept around from the top of the train and stared at him. She was dusted with soot, as she'd finished her own part of the fetching job and decided to curl up in the coal car of the train until she was needed. There was something oddly adorable about seeing the purple hydra—who had become his closest friend in The Between—covered in black powder like some sort of impish chimney sweep mixed with a sea serpent. It suited her personality. Well, two-thirds of her personality, anyway.

"No, just talking to myself," Philo said.

"But... you only have one head," Rill said.

"Why would you talk to yourself?" Right-Rill asked.

"It isn't like you're going to answer," Left-Rill added.

Philo shrugged. "Sometimes it's useful to say something out loud. Helps me think."

Left-Rill looked at the small pile of gears and chains at Philo's feet. "Is this it? Seems like a lot of time and effort for that little pile of metal. We got a whole big pile of brick and wood in half that time."

"Well, yeah, it had to be a pile of very specific metal," Philo said. "But I think we're all done." He wrapped the haul up in a piece of canvas and tucked it into his bag. "Let's—whoa!"

Rill had barely waited for him to stow the goods before snatching him roughly by the neck of his jumpsuit and darting off toward their impromptu base of operations nearer to the edge of the Junkyard. Philo was tempted to complain, but it had become clear that while Rill was reasonably clever and a fairly swift learner—contrary to what many of the other fetchers seemed to think—one thing she couldn't quite get into her heads was that he wasn't a stuffed animal to be toted around. They'd work it out eventually. Baby steps.

"Do you think Trixie's done? Maybe we can find her and head back together," Philo suggested.

"We wanna get back first," said Rill, displaying remarkable diction for someone with a wad of jumpsuit in her mouth.

"Yeah! When you do a good job, the Quartermaster gives you an extra token sometimes," Right-Rill said. "I've seen him do it."

"And it's time someone showed Trixie she's not the only one who can do good Junkyard fetches," Left-Rill growled.