Sagittarius Midheaven's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Sagittarius stays outside until dawn, watching the wooden jester hold its orb steady in the air. The thing has not moved since the portal closed behind it. Its grin stays fixed. The orb in its claw pulses in slow waves, each pulse a beat of color folding inward on itself. He tries to set down a print stake in the dirt at his feet. The stake will not hold. Every time he drives it in, the ground hums back at the same rhythm as the orb, and the wood refuses to anchor. He cannot pick a site. He cannot start the press. Something is calling to the orb from somewhere he cannot see, and until he finds it, nothing here will stay still. He walks a wide circle around the jester, listening. The pulse grows louder when he faces uphill and softer when he turns away. He follows the louder direction past the edge of the Punk Haven, through dry brush, until the ground turns to bare rock. The pulse becomes a steady drumbeat in his chest. He climbs a low ridge and stops. Set into the hillside is the mouth of a crystal cave. Pink and teal crystals frame the entrance like teeth. Smaller spikes of amethyst and citrine push up through the dirt around it. The cave is humming. Every crystal in it is pulsing in exact time with the orb behind him. Sagittarius steps inside. The walls are warm. He presses his inked palm flat against one and feels the rhythm slow under his hand, then match his pulse instead of the orb's. The cave is answering him. He understands now what the jester was waiting to show him. The orb was never the signal. The cave was. The orb had been calling its match, and the match is here, rooted in rock that cannot be carried off or burned. He walks the chamber and counts the floor. There is room for a press. Room for type cases. Room for paper stacked to the ceiling. The walls will not catch fire. The stone will not give up an address. He stands in the center and says, out loud, that this is the site. Outside, the jester's orb goes dark. The wooden body folds forward at the waist, bows once, and crumbles into a pile of pale ash. The portal does not reopen. Sagittarius walks back down the ridge in full sun. The print stake slides into the dirt and holds. He drags it free and carries it uphill instead. The manifesto pages are still on the workbench, waiting. Tomorrow he will move the type, the ink, the paper. The running stops here. The next thing he builds will be made of stone.