“Decadent is putting Chicken Little’s birds on my head and shoulders while I work. Some of the chicks are so cute! I laughed because she ran out of places to put them, but then she stuck one of my head-cameras onto my helmet. Wait, let me fiddle.”

I floated, looking down, my eyes scanning the red crystal.

The cold air from above was seeping into this void, which was more temperature-neutral. Where the cold air from our world met the neutral air of this world, it formed vapor, that hung over the plain like a fog, and settled onto the crystal as a frost or beads of moisture.

Barely any light from the crack above us. Most of the illumination came from the crystal itself, like it was all lit by light from a light turned to the lowest possible setting on a dimmer switch, tinted red. It colored the fog, moisture, and frost.

“Ta da!”

Kenzie had altered her projection, now showing the birds that were perched on her. The spherical helmet she wore with the large eyed, smiling face etched onto it now had attachments for the hair-buns, which periodically parted like clamshells, to show mechanical eyes that stared out or look around. More birds perched on those, flapping their wings every time they opened up. A few took to the air as she swept her arms out and spun in a circle, glitching as they got more than three feet from her.

As she settled down, the birds roosted on her again.

“Very cool,” I said. “Are you guys getting along okay?”

“Okay,” she said, shrugging. Birds took off with the motion, and one flew through me, fritzing out as it passed through my forcefield, which I was keeping up for the small impact on warmth and body heat, and in hopes it would find an equilibrium again.

I could feel the forcefield moving, despite my wishes. Reaching out, heads moving, mouths opening. The periodic arm was swung, hard enough to audibly cut through the air.

Not as restless as it had been, but this was almost worse.

I tried to ignore it, and scanned the ground, looking at the faint images that popped up. It felt like we were out in far left field. I could draw some mental maps between the areas, because the sentiments and ideas that defined one place connected loosely to the neighboring tracts and regions.

From grief to revulsion to losing track of one’s senses in the throes of strong emotion. Then rage neighbored that. From rage, we got to anger. From anger, we made our way to… I wasn’t sure. The mildest form of anger? Peevishness?