Just before the midpoint, too — poor me, Pinky Panther, finally drifting off to sleep after having stumbled out from the dancefloor, thought. I should’ve at least held out to be sixteenth. Oh well.
Though they had fallen asleep in their room, when they awoke they were somewhere dark and formless and unfamiliar. Explosions of liquid colour formed and collapsed and disintegrated endlessly beyond transparent membranes like miniature nebulas, a sight so distracting that they forgot to move or question the nature of their new reality. When they did attempt to move they found themself as clumsy and uncoordinated as a newborn fawn.
This can’t be Kinikolu, Panther thought, watching a spark of pink light burst out and contract inwards. Unable to move, observation was their only choice. But as they gazed outwards, an orb of dark mass broke from the thin membrane of the world and formed into another marble. Transparent save for their brown and black stripes, they blended easily into the surroundings.
“You’re avoiding me, aren’t you?” they accused with a voice Panther recognized. “Why?”
Panther blinked slowly. “Starry…? Well, hello to you too,” they bit back, though it sounded rather more pathetic than it had in their head. Starry — if the marble was Starry, Panther wasn’t sure — simply glared at them. “Um, well, I haven’t been avoiding you, actually. I’ve spent the last fifty-six days around you. And before that —”
The room itself shook fiercely, and Panther went quiet.
“But you wish you didn’t have to,” Starry began, voice booming. “Never looking me in the eye, never having a word to say to me, always conveniently with somewhere to be as soon as I’m around. Why is that, Pinky Panther?”
Panther averted their gaze. “I’ve got nothing against you.”
“You don’t deny it, do you? That you’re letting your guilt bleed into your work.”
Panther grimaced. This world was theirs first. They didn’t have to sit around and be lectured. Why couldn’t they move?
One more stubborn attempt, almost forcing themself forward, and they were in motion.
Towards the formless distance — away from Starry — was the goal. But when the other marble disappeared from sight, the floor of the world simply…collapsed. Panther fell helplessly into a well of darkness infinitely deep, upon the walls of which were projected the shape of memories long past. Particularly vivid was 2022’s final event; sitting on the podium with Mallard and Ruzzy followed by awkward congratulations with Glimmer and Starry, both visibly crushed. If they were avoiding Starry, it probably began there.
They crashed to the bottom of the well and into the boughs of an awaiting sakura tree that sloughed its blossoms from its branches. Winded but uninjured, Panther watched as the petals reformed into Starry.
“You know it won’t be that easy,” said Starry, disappointed.
“For a figment of my imagination, you’re really stubborn,” sighed Panther. More petals scattered earthwards.
“You feel guilty, don’t you? Beating me made you happy and improved your life, and being near me reminds you of that, so you avoid me. Very petty.”
“I’m sorry,” pleaded Panther sheepishly.
“I only ask you to act like an adult. You could have been on last year’s Marble League podium, but that was taken from you by Bumble. It would be childish if they avoided you forever, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s different,” replied Panther indignantly.
“How, exactly?” Starry asked.
Panther went dead silent, thinking, until their answer eventually came. “I didn’t want to hurt you by reminding you that you lost to me — you’re Starry! You’re incredible! Half the time I don’t even know what I’m doing!”
Starry harrumphed, a deep displeasured noise. “You’re trying to be kind. It’s admirable. But I’ll have you know I’m tough enough to survive seeing your face. And whether you know what you’re doing or don’t, you certainly do very many things well. It would be better for you if you stopped running from that.”
“…Can I go now?” Panther whined.
“Fine. But try to remember what I said, won’t you?”
The tree Panther sat atop shrank into itself; collapsing until it opened a perfectly circular black hole in the fabric of reality, surrounded by a funnel. Dropped from a height onto the event horizon, on instinct, they began to spin, and spin, and spin, until they fell through into a vast emptiness from which they awoke in their bed with a start.
Even with an early-afternoon flight, Panther arrived at Kinikolu Airport exhausted. After the dream they hadn’t slept a wink, walking through the rest of the day pre-departure in a strange daze.
Starry was really the last marble they wanted to see in the lobby, but of course, there they were, waiting for the check-in gate to open, seeing everything around them as they always did. Panther swallowed the heaviness in their throat and approached, smiling.
“It was good to compete against you again,” Panther said. “See you soon?”
Starry blinked at them in surface-level surprise. Behind their eyes was a knowing darkness, one that Panther could only logically excuse as a mirage summoned by their sleepless mind. A dream, no matter how lucid, is just a dream, nothing more and nothing less.
“Of course,” was Starry’s ever-polite reply, “and I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Credits
- Writer: Millim
- Editor: Phoenix
- Artist: Harumi
- Reference: Marble Survival 100: Races 50-56 Compilation | Jelle’s Marble Runs
- Release: 19/06/2024
Project Marblearth 
🙂
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