The Prima Vista's belly never really slept.
It breathed.
Pistons thumped like a lazy giant's heartbeat. Pipes ticked and pinged as they cooled, then warmed, then cooled again. The whole airship felt alive in the dumb, stubborn way a kitchen knife felt alive—useful, sharp, and absolutely indifferent to whether you bled on it.
Zidane woke up in a pocket of heat behind a stack of spare rigging and a crate stamped DO NOT OPEN (OPENED) in three different inks. His hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and engine grime. His shirt smelled like old smoke and newer oil.
Something heavy and warm was pressed against his ribs.
He blinked, looked down, and found a small, round creature tucked under his arm like it had always belonged there.
Quina.
Chibi-sized. Pink-cheeked. Mouth slightly open. A thin line of drool had escaped and was now slowly attempting to become part of Zidane's shirt.
Zidane stared at it for a second, then poked its cheek.
Quina didn't wake. It just made a small sound—half sigh, half satisfied grunt—and snuggled closer, as if Zidane had been the one caught drooling.
"Unbelievable," Zidane muttered. His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat and tried again, quieter, like he didn't want the ship to hear him complaining. "You do know you're supposed to be my pet, right?"
Quina's eyelids fluttered. One eye cracked open.
"Hung… ry."
"Yeah. Me too." Zidane shifted, carefully. The floor plating was warm enough to soothe the ache in his back, but it also meant if he stayed here too long he'd wake up tasting metal. "Come on. Up."
Quina sat up with all the urgency of a prince being asked to work for a living. It blinked at him, then at the air, like it was reading the room's flavor.
Zidane watched it do that. He didn't understand how it always knew where food was. He just knew that it did.
"Okay," he said. "You lead, I'll pretend this is teamwork."
Quina waddled forward without looking back. Zidane followed, rolling out of his nest of ropes and costume scraps and the single blanket he'd stolen off a props cart last week. The blanket had little stitched stars along the edge. It had probably been meant to be romantic on stage.
Down here it was just something that kept the metal from freezing his bones when the engines cooled.
He tucked it into the crate again. Not because he was noble. Because if someone saw it on him, he'd get questions, and questions turned into hands, and hands turned into being tossed out of the belly and back into the open air where the Mist touched everything and everyone pretended it didn't.
Quina stopped at a vent and tilted its head.
Zidane stopped too. He held his breath.
A hiss of steam spat from a seam in the pipework, sudden and violent. It blasted hot air across the corridor and made the air shimmer. Zidane flinched hard enough that his shoulder slammed into a bulkhead.
The steam passed. The pipe went back to being quiet.
"See?" Zidane said, more to himself than Quina. He rubbed his shoulder. "Ship hates me."
Quina stared at the pipe as if it were a confusing animal.
"Hot," it said.
"Brilliant observation." Zidane looked at Quina's tiny feet and then at the floor where the steam had washed dust away, leaving the metal clean and bright. It looked like a wound. "Try not to lick anything down here."
Quina considered this. Then it turned and walked away, leaving Zidane with the distinct impression that it was now thinking about licking everything down here out of spite.
They climbed a ladder that rattled under Zidane's weight. He kept his hands light, fingers sure, moving like the ship was a pocket he was picking and not a machine that could crush him. He'd learned early: if you acted like you belonged somewhere, sometimes the world got confused and let you stay.
Above the lower decks, the ship's guts gave way to the backstage parts—the places where Tantalus stored their lives. Crates of costumes. Paint. Fake swords. Real knives. A rack of masks that always made Zidane feel like he was being watched by a dozen faces that didn't blink.
Quina waddled past them like it didn't care.
Zidane didn't care either. Not really. He'd gotten used to the masks.
The galley was two corridors over. He could smell it before he saw it: old stew, baked bread, garlic, and the thick sour tang of a pot someone had forgotten on the heat too long.
Quina's pace doubled.
"Hey—no running," Zidane hissed, because obviously telling Quina not to do something would work. "We're guests. Polite guests. You love manners."
Quina ignored him.
Zidane slid into the galley doorway and paused, listening.
No footsteps. No voices. The ship's crew was asleep or pretending to be. The galley lantern was low, throwing warm light across the counter and turning every hanging spoon into a little silver moon.
On the table sat a bread loaf, half-wrapped, like someone had meant to come back to it.
Zidane's stomach clenched so hard it hurt.
Quina pointed.
"Eat."
"Yeah," Zidane said softly. "That's the plan."
He moved like a rumor. Bare feet on wood. Weight balanced. Fingers ready. He reached for the bread—
A rat skittered out from beneath the table.
Zidane jerked back on instinct, hand snapping up. The rat froze, whiskers twitching. They stared at each other for a long, stupid moment.
Then Quina lunged.
It wasn't fast in the way a knife was fast. It was fast in the way hunger was fast.
Quina caught the rat with both hands, lifted it like a prize, and bit down.
There was a crunch.
Zidane made a sound somewhere between a gag and a laugh. "Quina—what the—"
Quina chewed. Swallowed. Looked pleased.
"Good," it said.
Zidane stared at the empty space where the rat had been, then at Quina, then at the faint smear of something dark at the corner of Quina's mouth.
He wiped it with his thumb automatically, the way you wiped a kid's face. The way you wiped a friend's face when they were too tired to notice they were messy.
Quina blinked at him.
"Friend?" it asked, like it was checking.
Zidane's throat tightened for a second. He covered it by flicking Quina's nose.
"Yeah, yeah." His voice came out lighter than he felt. "Friend. Just—maybe don't eat ship animals where I can see it. Some of us are trying to keep dignity alive."
Quina tilted its head again, as if hearing the word dignity for the first time and deciding it tasted bad.
Zidane grabbed the bread loaf, snapped it in half, and shoved one piece into Quina's hands before Quina could decide the table looked edible too.
Quina immediately began eating like it was racing time.
Zidane took a bite of his piece and felt his whole body go quiet.
Bread. Simple, stupid bread. Warm from being too close to the stove. A little stale at the edges. It tasted like not dying.
He leaned back against the counter, chewing slowly. Every bite felt like it took effort, like his body didn't trust the food enough to accept it without suspicion.
Quina ate faster.
Zidane watched it. "You know," he said, "you're really ruining the whole 'cute companion' thing. Cute companions don't—" he gestured vaguely at where the rat had vanished into Quina's mouth and no longer existed as a problem he had to deal with "—do that."
Quina paused mid-chew and looked at him with complete seriousness.
"Hungry," it said.
Zidane snorted. "Fair."
They ate in silence for a minute, the kind of silence that felt earned. The ship creaked. Somewhere above, a rope tapped against the mast like someone practicing a rhythm.
Zidane swallowed and wiped his hands on his pants. He looked down. His fingers were blackened with grease from the engine room. The bread had gone under his nails and picked up oil and dirt and whatever else the ship had rubbed into him over time.
He licked his thumb without thinking.
It tasted like metal and salt and shame.
He didn't stop.
He'd learned early that disgust was a luxury. You could have dignity or you could have calories, and the world didn't often let you have both at the same time.
Quina, watching him, said, "Good?"
Zidane laughed once, sharp. "No."
Quina didn't understand that tone. It nodded anyway. "Good."
Zidane looked at it. Really looked.
He wasn't sure what Quina was. He knew it wasn't like the crew. It wasn't like the ship. It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen in the alleyways or under the stage. It showed up one day in the belly of the Prima Vista like a joke the universe forgot it had started telling. Small. Hungry. Stubborn. Too calm.
It had stayed.
Zidane didn't ask why.
He'd spent his whole life being the thing people didn't ask about too hard. The stray kid. The spare hand. The "who cares where he came from, he's useful."
Quina had never looked at him like that. Not once.
Quina looked at him like he was… there. Like that mattered.
Zidane chewed the last of his bread and tried to keep his chest from doing something embarrassing.
"Hey," he said, softer. "You're not gonna leave, right?"
Quina blinked slowly.
"Leave?" it repeated, like it was tasting the word.
Zidane regretted saying it instantly. He slapped a grin over it like a bandage. "I mean—unless you find someone with better snacks. Which, rude, but I get it. Loyalty has a price."
Quina considered this with the kind of gravity you gave to life decisions.
Then it held out its remaining bread—half-chewed, slightly damp, absolutely disgusting—and offered it to Zidane.
Zidane stared at it.
"That's—" he began, and his stomach twisted, and his brain supplied about ten jokes in a row to avoid feeling anything. "That's… the sweetest thing anyone's ever done to me and also the worst thing anyone's ever done to me."
Quina's hands stayed out.
Zidane sighed like a man accepting his fate. He pinched off a tiny piece from the offered bread—careful not to touch too much drool—and popped it into his mouth.
It tasted like bread and saliva and friendship.
He chewed it anyway.
"Okay," he said, swallowing. His voice went a little rough. "Okay. Deal. You don't leave, I don't leave. We're a team. A highly questionable team."
Quina nodded, solemn as a priest.
"Friend," it said again, as if confirming the contract.
Zidane felt something in his ribs settle, like a knot loosening a fraction.
He wiped his hands on his pants again, stood, and reached toward the counter where the rest of the loaf had been. There were crumbs, but no more bread. Someone must've taken it earlier.
He stared at the empty space, then glanced at Quina.
Quina was licking its fingers, pleased with itself. It did not look guilty.
Zidane narrowed his eyes. "Did you—"
"Hungry," Quina said immediately, as if that explained everything and absolved all sins.
Zidane barked a laugh. "Unreal."
He was still smiling when the footsteps started.
Heavy. Confident. Coming down the corridor toward the galley like whoever it was didn't care who heard them.
Zidane's smile froze on his face.
His jokes tried to sprint ahead of his fear and tripped over themselves.
Quina, mid-lick, went still. Not startled—alert. Head tilted, like it was tasting the approaching presence through the air.
Zidane's fingers flexed once, then closed. He wiped his palms again without realizing it, leaving dark streaks on his pants.
"Okay," he whispered to Quina, voice low, warm, too fast. "We're gonna be cool. We're gonna be invisible. We're gonna be—"
The footsteps hit the doorway shadow.
A figure blocked the lantern light.
Zidane's heart thumped once, hard enough to sting.
And in that single breath, with grease under his nails and half-chewed friendship on his tongue, Zidane realized the ship's belly had finally decided to spit him out.
He straightened anyway.
Because if you acted like you belonged somewhere—
The figure stepped forward.
—and sometimes the world got confused and let you stay.
Sometimes.
Not always.