Reykjavík ‧ 12 months after the Ring
Spring sunlight drizzled through sea-fog, painting Hallgrímskirkja's basalt spire with a pastel halo. City banners flapped crooked prime-beats—five peach stripes, eleven indigo dots. Tourists called it "the off-beat festival." The locals just said Cadence Day.
Inside the waterfront dream-hub, a wing once packed with ICU beds now thrummed like a youth hostel. Patients lounged on beanbags that pulsed faint lantern-glow; med-techs handed out cocoa shots instead of sedatives. The prescription was simple: thirty minutes communal nonsense, twice a week.
Cassie Hale—lab coat over hiking shorts—demonstrated the regimen to a gaggle of new volunteers. She strummed her battered one-string, singing the world-famous mnemonic:
"Lantern / llama / light-ning / lol-li-pop…"
Half the room joined; half laughed. All woke sharper.
Glitch and Chip—granted honorary junior staff badges—tapped prime sync on the ceiling tiles. They'd grown half a foot, facets now swirling with stylish charcoal graffiti. When they hit 101, the tiles answered with a squeak—as if the building itself hadn't gotten around to learning that beat.
Cassie winked but let it slide.
The Pier Café—Reunion Minus One
A low whistle—missed by no local—rolled along the harbour boardwalk. Aiden appeared, kettle in one hand, mug in the other, coat pockets bulging with souvenir socks.
Maya looked up from a holo-tablet full of bug-report confetti. "You're late, Barbarian."
"Coffee line was chaos." He passed her a cup. "Tasted seven roasts, chose the worst."
Nephis leaned against a rail, cloak now double-layered with ring-dust threads. "He buys 'worst' on purpose. Consistency."
Lin exited the café with a tray of delicate hojicha shooters. The left sleeve of his sweater displayed an embroidered tarantula and trombone—memory anchors externalised.
He set them down, frowned gently. "Still can't recall my first locker combination, but I know forty-seven prime beats by smell." He raised a shooter. "To holes we never patch."
"To holes," the group echoed, clinking porcelain.
Cassie dashed up, guitar slung, children in tow. Hugs collided; chairs rearranged themselves. Glitch patted Dawn-Core's travel case with proprietary pride.
Aiden surveyed the circle. "One chair light." Solayna had remained with the Quiet-Weave to stabilise far threads; Liora roamed starpaths as envoy of messy hope. The emptiness felt more wistful than sad: a seat reserved for the uncounted.
Keynote in Four Imperfect Movements
That evening they took the outdoor stage—just a jetty lit by dusk lanterns.
Movement I—Maya triggered a banjo-bug report that played random kernel panics as chord progressions.
Movement II—Nephis shredded cloak ribbons against a contact mic, generating thrash percussion.
Movement III—Cassie let children conduct a call-and-response of prime taps, sky darkening to accept them.
Movement IV—Aiden finished with the ugliest kettle whistle ever broadcast, while Lin whipped steam rings that smelled of socks and seaweed. The crowd roared until auroras spilled over Esja mountain—teal fringed with peach.
Somewhere above, a telescope array recorded a brief spike of off-beat radio noise bouncing off the ionosphere, filing it as benign festival traffic.
Afterparty—Pier Shadows
Later, lantern strings dimmed. Cassie and Aiden sat on bollards, shoes skimming harbor glass. She nudged his shoulder. "That 101 squeak in the ceiling? Same glitch followed us home."
Aiden nodded. "I logged two mirror flecks in my travel mug yesterday. Dust sweeps miss them."
"You worried?"
"Yeah," he admitted. "But mystery keeps the cadence alive."
She tucked Nephis's cloak needle—still her hairpin—behind his ear. "Reminder to keep it crooked."
Down the pier, Maya and Nephis argued stitch density versus bit entropy, arguments punctuated by shy smiles. Lin poured hojicha for a passing tourist, explaining tea should be brewed to exactly-ish seventy-something degrees.
Stars blinked irregularly overhead. One of them winked twice—long dash, short dash. Liora's distant code? Or something newer?
Aiden grinned into the night. "Tea first," he murmured, echoing an old promise, "then adventure."
Behind him, Dawn-Core pulsed 107-109—then hesitated—skipped to an unheard prime 113, as if tapping a question.No one answered yet. The pulse faded into harbor fog, leaving just enough tension in the chord to promise another verse someday.