#I especially love the ones where the pov is half underwater

[soupy-sez]

Christian Riese Lassen

[starsreminisce]

So, there are plenty of opinions and compelling arguments about whose book is next. I've reached a point where I just want to express some thoughts. I haven't made a decision because my feelings shift every time I consider it.

Personally, just knowing a new book is on the way excites me. I'm sure that even when CC3 comes out, I'll be hunting for crumbs like a broke cokehead – which brings me to my next point.

Maasverse spoilers under the cut.

The next book will be responsible for bridging ACOTAR to CC for readers who follow ACOTAR exclusively. We still have ACOTAR readers wondering if Elriel(!!!!!) will be tasked to find the 4th dread trove, despite it being revealed in CC. The ACOTAR subreddit gets asked every day about what series/book to read after ACOTAR.

There is a crucial element that SJM needed to establish in HoFaS, something that couldn't be addressed in ACOTAR. This is particularly significant, especially when she wrote two CC books consecutively. The context within Prythian needed to be set up in HoFaS before it could seamlessly progress into ACOTAR.

Prison Island/Dusk Court? Illyrian descendants? Avellan fae? All Trove items accounted for? Truth-Teller? Koschei's origins?

Gwynriel makes sense to me because they have the most tie-in to CC. This would help in segueing from Nesta in ACOSF to Truth-Teller's importance in HoFAS, continuing the story with Azriel and Gwyn. It's worth noting that Gwyn felt Aidas in ACOSF, and she is now closer to Nesta than Elain is. Additionally, her role as Merrill's researcher and her interest in the 26 worlds, coupled with her heritage from both grandparents, likely plays a part here. Notably, CC has shown an underwater civilization, which adds to the anticipation of Gwyn's storyline.

Elucien makes sense to me because who best to catch a reader up who does not know about CC than two characters who aren't directly involved with it at all.

Elain was not present when Bryce arrived. She sure as hell is not going to walk in after Rhys introduced himself. I would think that for a moment as huge as a visitor from another world would assemble all members of the IC. We have Mor’s reasoning why she might not be there. We don’t have Elain’s, especially after "doing whatever it takes for this court."

This does help set up for a tandem read where Elain and Lucien move similarly to how Chaol marks what Aelin is doing in ToD or, at best, making it similar to how the context would change if someone were to read HoSaB then ACOSF.

I also have personal reasons why I want one over the other. Elucien because I'm starving for it, but Gwynriel because the fandom has been so out of pocket about Azriel's love life, with Bryciels still being pushed despite SJM's clear reaction to the question. Do I want to suffer through another 18-24 months of half-baked fanfic-based theories that Elucien's book is like Feylin in ACOTAR? Fuck that shit.

There are still many factors to consider because we don't know how involved Bryce would be in Velaris, who all is going to be involved, how involved Azriel is going to be (is the reason we had his POV in ACOSF is because his POV will be featured in HoFaS, like the bonus chapter?), how is Truth-Teller connected to all of this, and most importantly, how CC3 will end now that we know their worlds are connected.

Even then, I still don't know if that would be enough to draw a good conclusion and we might not have long anyway before the next book is announced.

[sprites-writing]

Chapter 14: Castles Crumbling

Freya POV, 1350 words kinda all over the place because this is a filler chapter, shit's going down next chapter ;)

heads up that there's kinda graphic descriptions of injuries throughout, especially concerning blood, tldr if you need it at the bottom :) also heavy talk of insecurities/self-worth issues

chapter 1 chapter 13

By the time the rain stopped, we were down on the beach, the stars shining in the sky as if twelve lives hadn’t just been destroyed. I stood a few feet away from the others, their distrust in me breaking my heart into a thousand little pieces.

Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the pain from my wounds was making it hard to stand up straight. I had a bullet still lodged in my left shoulder, my right hand was sprained, if not broken from how hard I had landed on it while trying to save Enoch and I had easily a dozen deep cuts from the glass. Blood was slowly seeping onto my dress, staining the green a reddish-brown.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Fiona said, “What do we do now?”

Jacob looked lost, leadership obviously not being something he was used to. “I-is there any sign of Miss Peregrine and that Wight?”

“Gone. They must have had a boat.” I shook my head, the motion sending more blood out of my shoulder and I clamped my most definitely broken hand over it.

“We need to go after them,” Jacob said, stating the obvious. “We know he’s taking her to Blackpool.”

“But Blackpool is miles away! The next ferry doesn’t go for hours. We’ll never make it in time,” said Millard.

“Not unless we go by boat too.”

I snorted, “Where the fuck are we gonna find a boat?”

Turns out there was a boat. Mind, it was easily 200 metres underwater, but there was a boat. Slowly, we swam down, Emma blowing air bubbles for us to be able to breathe. Every stroke of my arms sent agony flaring up my shoulder and down my back, the bullet had done more damage than I thought.

While Emma worked on filling the rest of the boat up with air once one room was sufficiently dry enough for us to breathe, the rest of us slowly moved room by room through the ship, finding enough bedrooms for each peculiar to have two, the engine room and a room full of skeletons.

Before long, we all ended up in the bridge. The angle that the ship had taken to get out of the water resulting in most of us falling against a wall. Once we were out of the sea, Enoch came and stood beside me as we all looked out at the island. There was no guarantee we would ever come back, let alone live past tomorrow.

I did my best to avoid everyone, including Enoch, for the next few hours. The betrayal in their eyes was too much for me to handle, especially while we rushed to Blackpool.

It was like every single good thing I had done in the last nearly seventy years had been erased in a matter of an hour. Every night spent drinking in the village with Olive and Emma meant nothing. Every time I took care of Wyn and Claire meant nothing. Every afternoon I soothed Fiona when she lost control because of Hugh, they meant nothing.

If I had to see my family look at me like I was a monster one more time…

In a way, they were confirming all the fears I’d had since I was thirteen. No one could ever fully accept that someone they loved could kill them and anyone else in seconds if their control slipped for only a moment.

I will always be on my own. I will never have anyone for long.

Maybe it was a gift of sorts to have seventy years of being loved, even if I had to hide such a big portion of myself to get it.

My spiral of self-pity was interrupted as I turned down the hallway that led to the room I’d claimed for the night. It was a good few hallways away from both where the younger and older wards were sleeping. Enoch was leaning on the wall next to the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing, everything’s fine,” I said, trying to push past him to open the door.

“Sure, that’s why there’s blood all over you.”

I half-turned to him, “I can fix it.” I didn’t like being shitty to him but it would keep him safe and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t my top priority.

He raised an eyebrow, he knew damn well I was bullshitting, “You can fix a bullet wound with one hand?”

I sighed in defeat and let him follow me in. While he found a first aid kit in the bathroom, I pulled off my dress and my cami underneath, leaving me in a soft bralette and bloomers.

I had just sat on the bed when Enoch turned around with bandages and tweezers in hand. At the sight of me, his jaw dropped slightly, “I didn’t realize it was so bad, I would’ve annoyed you into letting me help earlier if I knew.”

To be fair, I was looked a mess. I had rebraided my hair after getting to the ship but the water had wreaked havoc on my curls and had left them in a mat of tangles. My shoulder had stopped bleeding, but there was still blood crusted from my collarbone to my bicep. There wasn’t too much blood from the glass but that was only because they were still embedded in my skin.

“Where do you want to start?” he said, sitting down gently next to me.

“Bullet. Probably not good for it to stay in there long.” He nodded and I twisted so that he could see where it entered. 

He unscrewed a bottle of whiskey and poured some on a cloth. “This is going to hurt like hell but we can’t risk infection, not right now.” Enoch wiped the cloth over my bloodstained skin and I hissed through my teeth at the sting. To say it hurt would’ve been the understatement of the century. It felt like it was burning through my raw skin.

After what felt like far too long, he had me lie on my back so that he could find the bullet. The tweezers were freezing as he dug through the muscle and flesh of my arm. There was a slight tugging feeling before the bullet was out.

“Here’s the little fucker,” he said, dropping it into my waiting hand. It was only a few minutes longer before I was stitched and bandaged up.

“Glass next?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, knowing that this was going to be a long process. Thankfully, it had been mostly big shards of glass that got stuck, the majority of the small pieces bouncing off me.

After another twenty minutes he asked “Is there anything else?”

“I might have, possibly, definitely broken my hand when I was trying to grab the hollow,” I said, scrunching my face up as I waited for his reaction.

Noch blinked twice, “What?”

I held up my hand. Two of my finger were at an unnatural angle and you could just barely see where one of my bones poked into my skin slightly. It was a miracle I could move my hand at all right now.

“Oh shit. That-that is definitely broken. I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Me neither. Maybe we could bandage it? So that it doesn’t get worse?”

“Alright, we can do that.” He gently wrapped my hand then redid the bandages on my arm and thigh from when Claire spilt her hot chocolate. 

God, I thought, that couldn’t have been just three days ago.

There we sat in silence, Enoch cradling my fucked over hand in his like it was something to be protected, like I was something to be protected, and I suddenly realized what was going to happen. We were finally going to talk about the elephant in the room that we’d been ignoring for sixty years.

“Frey—” he started and I snatched my hand back.

I shook my head, clutching my broken hand to my chest as I stood up. “I-I can’t,” I said backing away until I reached the door.

And then I ran.

TLDR if the injury talk was not for you: Freya begins to distance herself from the others because she thinks she's worthless after how the others (minus Enoch) reacted to the death-touch part of her peculiarity. They go down to the Augusta. General talk of how they confirmed the fears she had for years about not being accepted for her peculiarity and maybe it was a gift that she got nearly 70 years of them not knowing. Enoch fixes up all her injuries even tho she's been trying to avoid him. Enoch tries to get her to talk about their feelings but she panics and runs off.

chapter 15

[writing-in-april]

The 5 Stages of Grief

Stage one: Denial (1/5)

Spencer Reid x Gender Neutral Reader (Spencer POV)

Summary: Spencer going through each of the stages of grief after the death of the reader. Stage one is denial.

A/N: Hi guys this is my new series!! I’ve been working on this for like the past two months and I’m excited to start sharing it with y’all! This is based off of my own recent experiences with how I acted in my grief and this fic is just based on one model of how grief can present itself. This story is gonna be sad throughout and there’ll be a lot of trigger warnings as a heads up. This is also written different from my other works and is very sporadic at times because of Spencer’s mind set. There’s a lot of repetitive thoughts by Spencer so some sentences are repeated two to three times. And, there’s lots of rhetorical questions. I’m going to post a chapter once a week and sprinkle in other fics in between- other chapters are gonna be longer this is just the establishing chapter. Also let me know if you want the playlist I used while writing this- some Billie eilish references definitely are in here...And thanks to @zhuzhubii for helping me with the original idea and inspiring me (they write amazing angst). Requests are open and thanks for reading!

Warnings ⚠️: Reader death, Gunshot wound, Unreliable narrator, Spencer spiraling, Spencer getting violent, Unhinged Spencer, Talks of schizophrenic break

Main Masterlist | 5 Stages of Grief Masterlist

Word count: 1.2k

This was not happening. There was no way this was happening. This was just some sort of alternative reality or maybe a dream. Maybe I’m having a psychotic break- those were common with people who have early signs of schizophrenia right?

I wasn’t sure of anything in the few minutes that had passed since I had seen the light go out from their eyes. I was still cradling their body covered in blood, they had been shot by the unsub they had been pursuing down a back alley. I didn’t really care where the unsub had gone all my mind was focusing on was the fact that they wouldn’t wake up.

“No no no… You’re fine- stay with me! Please!”

I hadn’t even had the privilege of hearing their last words, they had closed their eyes before I had even pulled them to my lap. They still had words left in the brain that I admired, it didn’t matter that they hadn’t said anything, that they didn’t get their ‘last words’ because they would awaken again. I had to believe that.

My breathing was heavy and shaky as I laid them down on the ground to start CPR. It was the only way they were going to survive the trip to the hospital once the rest of the team got here. I wonder if they could have understood the situation with how distraught I sounded on the phone. When I started the chest compressions my hands wouldn’t stop trembling, I could barely keep the compressions at a steady pace. My mental metronome was fracturing as I started to become more frightened for the love of my life.

“Fight, please! Don’t give up!”

I felt their ribs cracking as I tried to continue my steady pace of the CPR despite my alarm. I looked for a pulse, there was a faint fluttering heart beat. Right? Yes, there was a heartbeat, I was sure of it. My ears rang like there were church bells in my ears which were soon joined by faint sirens I could hear barely in the distance as I begged for them to stay with me. I wanted to tell them that it was gonna be alright and remind them of less painful times, but the only things I could manage to say in my distressing state were pleas.

A sharp cry of No! that sounded like it was my voice rang out in the air when I started to feel myself being pulled away by a set of hands. When the hands still refused to budge I fought hard, seeing only red. I thought it was the unsub coming back to finish me off. Another set of hands joined the original pair to try and haul me away from the one I loved. Did the unsub have a partner? How could we have missed that? I had to get back to them, what if they hurt them more? What if they killed them?

“Spencer! It’s me! It’s Morgan!” The words shouted at me by someone that sounded like Morgan seemed so far away. It felt like my head was underwater, drowning in the panic and sorrow that was filling up my lungs. Everything else fell away as unimportant with only one goal in my mind crawling to the forefront.

I had to help them.

“SPENCER!” A female voice shouted hoarsely, which made me focus somewhat. Why were they yelling at me? Why weren’t they helping them? I wasn’t the one that needed help.

My eyes unblurred as I forced my rage to dissipate slightly in an attempt to figure out what was going on, the figures of Morgan and Emily then became recognizable to me. I registered that it was actually their hands on me. Both of them were in defensive positions and Emily looked frightened of me? Why would she be frightened of me? Why weren’t they helping them?

I still wasn’t confident that this wasn’t some elaborate alternate reality concocted by my subconscious. There was no reason for Emily to be afraid of me, we were colleagues and more importantly friends. All I was trying to do was help and I seemed to be the only one who cared enough to help my injured partner.

But, I realized there was in fact a reason for Emily to be scared of me. She was trying to prevent me from helping the most important person in my life, who was bleeding out on the pavement, close to death. And, the whole team knew I would fight like hell to protect them, she’s lucky I didn’t fight her and Morgan off more. They were lucky they’d only get a possible faint bruise from my thrashing, rather than what I really wanted to do to them in retaliation for preventing me from helping them.

Though, I had now realized that the hands tugging me away from their hurt body did not in fact belong to two unsubs, I started to try and fight them off again.The paramedics would need to know their medical history- especially their blood type.

I had to help them. Why weren’t they helping them?

A soft voice filled with sorrow then joined the rest that I knew belonged to JJ, “Spencer, I know you want to help, but the paramedics are the best thing for them. I already gave them their medical history.”

My body relaxed some at JJ’s words, glad that the paramedics now had the proper tools to help them. However, my mind was still racing, analyzing everything that had happened so far at a rapid pace. My mind then fixated on JJ’s tone of voice- Why did it sound so resigned? Why did she sound like she was resigned to the fact that there was nothing the paramedics could feasibly do? I may not have been in the best mental state, but I could still read the underlying meaning in her voice.

No they couldn’t be gone.

I had to help them.

Why was nobody helping them?

One of the paramedics moved forward to check their pulse as was routine and I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, someone was helping them. My hope was dashed when I saw them shake their head to their colleague, panic rose even higher within me. I was sure I was going to drown to death soon myself, all breath had completely left my body at this point.

They couldn’t be gone, I refused to believe that.

I couldn’t believe it.

I couldn’t be left alone again. When I first met them they helped me from plunging into darkness, they had pulled me from the edges of the abyss. I would be weaker than ever before if they left me, I don’t think I could survive it. My mind begged for them to fight, maybe my reasons were selfish, but the water was going to drown me soon.

As I saw the bag zipped up that held their body my blood ran cold when reality hit me hard. Morgan and Emily both had to hold me back again from racing back over to their body that was being put into the coroner’s van. I screamed in desperation, begging and pleading for them to not give up, that there must be something that they could do. But, the cold harsh reality hung over me like a dark cloud that rained over my head, fully submerging me underwater.

There was no denying it anymore.

They were gone.

—-

Tag list (message me if you want to be added):

All works:

@shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz

Spencer Reid/CM:

@calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss

5 stages of grief series:

@joonie-centric @tatesimper @half-blood-dork

[im-moreofa-dogperson]

Continuation for To Kill A Kingdom

Summary: Set directly after Lira’s POV and before Elian’s at end of novel.

Warning: Vivid description of blood, minor changes to the rules of TKAK universe, mild fluff

Words: 1410

POV: (second person) Reader as Lira

**MAJOR SPOILERS** For To Kill A Kingdom by Alexandra Christo (Enemies to Lovers book, 10/10 highly recommend).

masterlist

______________________________________________

When the Sea Queen melts away until all that’s left are broken shards of ice in her place, Elian and you are still embracing. The warmth of his hold makes you feel as though you might just melt alongside your mother and you laugh at the thought of it.

Elian finally pulls back and smirks, “What’s so funny”?

You smile at him, and shake your head, “nothing.” He traces his thumb across your cheek, pushing the wet strands of hair from your face.

A small part of you tells yourself you should find no joy in this and rather be feeling remorse. Or guilt. Or grief. Something that a daughter should feel when her mother, no matter how cruel and heartless, departs from this world.

But you don’t. In fact, you feel just the opposite as your heart is full only of relief. Relief that your mother’s tyrannical ways have been forever ceased. Relief that your cousin Khalia and the remaining surviving sirens kept or shifted their allegiances to you. And you felt especially relieved that Elian is safe beside you, and that his crew is mostly intact.

As if reading your mind, Elian, still crouched beside you, begins surveying the frost-covered battle ground, no doubt even more hardened than he was before by the souls now lost, both human and other. While he inspects all the worn faces, you suddenly feel a sharp pain course through your shoulder.

You grimace and Elian immediately returns his focus to you, placing his gloved hands on your forearms, gently forcing you to face him. It’s then you both remember the wound graciously left for you by the Flesh-Eater.

Your entire right arm is now stained as crimson red as your hair. Even with your familiarity to both receiving and inflicting pain, you still weren’t used to seeing this much blood pooling around you the way it did given that you’d spent the majority of your life underwater.

Even after you’d been shot, at least the wound had been far more controlled. A term Flesh-Eater didn’t seem to understand. Meanwhile, the relief washes away just as quickly as the pain increases as it was all you were able to think about now.

You gasp as Elian suddenly scoops you into his arms, drooping only for a second by the unexpected weight of your fin, and rushes to his medic whose other title of mechanical engineer fits just a bit better.

While clinging to his neck, you wished you understood more of the power that the eye of Keto granted, or that the invincibility of being Sea Queen was brought about after the old one passes on rather than when your skin once again reunites with that of the Diavolos Sea. Then you were sure you could just fix yourself and be done with it. Not have to involve a medic who could be aiding anyone else injured in such a merciless battle.

You don’t mention these qualms to Elian, however, already knowing he’d refuse to hear any of that, and would instead tell you to just be quiet.

When you reach the medic, it takes him a moment to place where the blood is coming from given the mess of crimson hair and liquid spilling all over your side. Elian gently places you beside him, seamlessly webbing his fingers with yours and shifting your weight so that the left side of your back was on his chest and you weren’t lying awkwardly on your side.

Madrid and Kye soon rush over both sporting various minor injuries, but all in all mostly unscathed. At least unbothered by their inflicted wounds.

As the medic gets to work on stitching you up, keeping his gloves on so as not to come in contact with the acidity of your blood, you begin eliciting subtle winces and hisses. Your face fluctuates between human and beast, vulnerability versus ferocity.

However prominent the two depicted emotions you expressed were, you still felt as though the human in you as well as the siren had merged into one. That you were now an equal part of both land and sea. This new revelation, however, didn’t subside the pain you still felt.

Hissing out a string of curses in Psariin, you tighten your grip on Elian’s hand who doesn’t even flinch at the added pressure of your newfound strength.

Kye crouches down on the other side of Elian with Madrid standing behind him placing her hand on his shoulder. They both see you as a member of the Saad’s crew now, therefore were once again desperate that you hadn’t lost too much blood and would be alright.

Being that you were a long way away from the Diavolos Sea and you didn’t possess the powers quite yet accompanying your being the Sea Queen, you were right there beside Kye and Madrid’s worries, hoping you’d have enough strength to make it back.

“So, what happens now?” Elian asks, no doubt attempting to relieve some of the tension that yet again clouded around a monstrous wound of yours.

You peer up at him and say with as much composure as you could muster, “Well I suppose your ship’s head engineer either strings me back together, or I’ll wither away like half of your brain cells.”

He chuckles and replies, “You know that loss is a result of conversing with you.”

You laugh in response and so he continues, “I meant after that.”

Rather than responding, you gaze out at the carnage left behind and begin pondering what you should do. Though the atmosphere had somewhat improved in lieu of recent events, the sirens still wore expressions of restlessness. Now that you were the Sea Queen, it was your responsibility to safely them back home.

You remembered the way your mother had spilled a pathway through the water, allowing the underwater folk a portal-like mode of transport from the Sea all the way to the Cloud Mountains. You lift up your good arm, Eye of Keto in hand, and close your eyes.

Willing the water to do your bidding no matter how far away you were from any real sea, you feel the push of the tides and muster what little strength you had left to pull back.

Opening your eyes, you notice the water begin to swirl hypnotically. You attempt to block out the pain emitting from your right shoulder and instead focus your attention on widening the doorway through the crystal-like waters.

The merfolk begin to take notice of the portal you’ve created and without barking an order at them to go through, they dive back in one by one. The number of sirens quickly dwindles as they return back home.

After the last siren dives through in a blur of blonde hair and sunset scales, you drop your arm and huff out a breath of relief. The water splashes back into place, rippling back out through the lake.

You collapse back on Elian’s shoulder in exhaustion just as the medic had finished stitching you back together as best as he could. The pain of your skin being threaded had subsided. Now you simply felt drained.

“Not going back just yet, huh?” Elian asks smirking, already knowing the answer.

“Did you want me to?” You respond.

“No”, he states. You smile at each other, grateful to be on the same page until Kye interrupts the moment, “If you two are done making love, can we start making plans to get the hell off this mountain?”

Madrid laughs and although at first you feel like joining her, you feel a slight twinge of guilt. You were so focused on freeing your own kind from this frozen wasteland, you’d forgotten all about the treacherous terrains that awaits the humans.

After some mild bantering and eventually coming to the conclusion that Elian’s crew were still too weary to travel back down the mountain today, you all begin making your way back into the palace to rest and revive, you in Elian’s arms.

You figure once your shoulder has had time to heal, you’d be strong enough to use the Eye to transform yourself into human to accompany the crew on their journey back before returning to the Diavolos.

Though the repercussions of the battle were not minimal, the war had still been won and you wanted to relish in that with the people who helped you to find that it was a war worth ending.

____________________________________________

[the-melting-world]

Defining Moment | “Esmerelda”

~ In which Kipling, Ozy, and Khleo unlock a very powerful Door…

@arcana-echoes

This 🕯 is scented with “Esmerelda” by Ben Howard

~ 2.3k words

On the days when the umbras are permitted to venture off the temple grounds, Kipling, Ozy and Khleo visit their favorite reef.

***

(Ozy’s POV)

Ozy and Kipling sat on the edge of the cliff that stretched over the shallow reef. The sun was warm enough to make every limestone, salt-slick surface sparkle. The shallow waters sloshed and undulated across a rare spectrum of turquoise transparency. 

“Let me see it,” Ozy said with his usual over-eagerness.

Kip bristled at his impatience, but only a little before handing over her pocket journal of micro-poems. Ozy took it and devoured Kip’s progress with hungry hazel eyes.

He softly read it aloud, his voice radiating calmness and reverence.

Earth took you far But never forget Water brought you here We all start somewhere

Kip self-consciously reached for her ghost lock. “It’s not done yet.”

“But it will be someday,” Ozy said, his voice easing back into something more breezy and content. Then he soured Kip’s mood by adding, “Just as soon as you have something worth saying!”

She snatched her journal from him and set it off to the side. “That’s the last time I show you anything.”

Ozy grinned, knowing that most certainly wouldn’t be the case. The silence was interrupted by the sound of a Door opening. Ozy and Kipling turned to see Khleo stepping out from an immaculately formed portal. He didn’t, however, close the Door properly. Instead, he let it slam shut as soon as he passed over the threshold. 

Ozy had warned Khleo before that this was very dangerous. Perhaps Khleo couldn’t be bothered with exhausting his arms by sealing off the portal when he barely had the strength to open it in the first place. Ozy studied Khleo’s slight upper body with concern.

I told him not to go opening portals without me and Kipling there. Why doesn’t he ever want to listen?

Ozy decided against bringing it up. The day was too perfect and he didn’t want to ruin the mood of either of his friends. So the three umbras sat together, engrossed in their light banter and easy talk. They brushed elbows and flicked each other’s ghost locks to prove their various points. They complained about the heat while simultaneously expressing their gratitude for the sun. And when they decided that it was too hot for them to bear, they stood up on the rock and peeled the clothes back from their swimsuits underneath.

Ozy caught the way Khleo stared at Kip while she was preoccupied. It was a look that Ozy had seen on Khleo’s face a few times before and sometimes Kip even returned it. Ozy found this puzzling, but not enough to compel him to investigate further. Right now it was merely a curiosity that he pulled out and observed from time to time. Let Kip and Khleo have their lingering, heavy-lidded stalemates to themselves. Grey magic and the gaps that Ozy still needed to fill was what generally occupied his thoughts.

For now, however…

“Let’s jump into the water on the count of three!”

Ozy just wanted to live in this moment with all of his mind and heart and body. He took Khleo and Kipling by the hand. Despite Kipling’s protests and Khleo’s fragile frame, Ozy happily swung them forward as he leaped off the rock. Together in the air, there was an instance before gravity claimed them where there was nothing but salt and sun and bliss.

Ozy’s descent was clean and acrobatic while Kip and Khleo spiraled chaotically into the lagoon like orphaned kites. The three of them were swallowed up by the shallows where they splashed and played until Khleo and Kip wandered off on their own, as they were often prone to do.

Ozy let them go, content to float on his back and be alone with the warmth of the shallows and his own thoughts. He gave the easy current permission to drag him under the shade of the one of the many cavernous pockets where the water cooled under his toes.

Ozy opened his eyes to see if he recognized this cave. It would have looked like all the others... 

If not for the ancient glyphs pulsating on the walls.

***

(Khleo’s POV)

Khleo finished tying the cowrie shell necklace for Kip. When he leaned back to take in his handiwork, he cursed under his breath. “Damn. I didn’t make it long enough.”

Kipling shook her head as her fingers drifted up to inspect the choker. “No, it’s perfect.”

Khleo tried not to let his relief show as he helped her off the rocks and back into the water. 

He shrugged. “It’s not like you can’t find a dozen of them at the straw market, but… shells look good on you and I just thought –”

Khleo lost his train of thought when Kip tucked a finger behind the twine of his own necklace and pulled him off balance. But she caught him and brushed her lips against his chin.

“I’ll never take it off,” Kip whispered into his skin just below his lips. Then she let go and backed off before Khleo could take it any further.

“Kip, wait.”

She was already underwater, swimming towards the reef bed. Khleo took a deep breath and followed her. The umbras navigated the shallow reef like they were born right there between the corals. They had been to this spot so many times, swam these warm, tropical waters so much that their eyes no longer burned from the salt. 

Kipling led Khleo into the deeper parts of the reef where the stingrays and greater fish carried on with their lives. Khleo recognized where they were headed – a hidden grotto that they had discovered years ago. 

They resurfaced in a place where the surrounding rock curved into a dome ceiling high overhead, making it the perfect echo chamber. Khleo and Kipling used to prop up on the walls and spend hours shouting nonsense and badly memorized songs just to hear their own voices comically bounce and resonate off the glossy, concave rock. 

Today, however, they didn’t rush to create silly echoes. The grotto was deep enough that they had to steadily tread water in order to stay afloat. Holding a steady gaze took some effort. The umbras fell into a slow, natural orbit around each other.

“So,” Khleo said, “what were you and Ozy talking about?”

Kip shrugged. “A little poetry. You would’ve hated it.”

Khleo lightly splashed some water in her direction. “Hey. I don’t hate poetry. I just think it’s really…”

Kip smirked. “What? Stupid?”

“I was going to say boring.”

They both broke into laughter, their voices delightfully reverberating throughout the warm grotto. 

“I’m glad you warmed up to him,” Khleo said after the giggling spell wore off. 

Kip floated a little closer. “You know at first, I couldn’t understand why you wanted us to be friends with him. And the only reason I even tried was for you.”

“I know,” Khleo said softly. There was a pause that he tried to fill by going in for a kiss, but he snapped out of it when Kip made a flustered noise before continuing on with her point. 

“I get it now. Why you brought Ozy over to us. You care about people... animals too. Especially when everyone else around them doesn’t.” 

Khleo paid close attention to the way Kip’s syrupy brown eyes took in his features – his wet curls, the army of freckles across his nose, and his lips, slightly parted in uncertainty. 

“And I think that’s what I like the most about you, Khleo.”

Finally, she let him kiss her. Khleo couldn’t always find the right words to express what he felt in his heart the way Kipling could. He didn’t have a mind like Ozy. But what he couldn’t say on his own, he could show. Whatever he could not solve in the moment, given time, he could prove himself. He always found a way to take the things that were supposed to be far from his reach. 

When it came to Kipling, Khleo never needed to prove anything. She kept every secret he ever had. She made him think before he broke a rule, but still loved him through his recklessness. At least, Khleo hoped it was love. He wanted it to be love. 

The chamber echoed with that kiss, so easy and wet and safe. The two umbras would have kept going if they didn’t need to keep themselves afloat.

“Kip?” Khleo whispered. “I have to tell you something.”

Kipling withdrew some, the longing in her eyes shifting to concern.

Khleo clarified, “There’s nothing wrong, but what I have to say…” he glanced at her necklace. “It’s important.”

Kip’s smile came back. “Okay.”

Khleo steadied himself with a deep breath, but before he could speak, the cavern roared with the familiar sounds of a portal unlocking overhead. Khleo’s stomach dropped just in time for Ozy to cannonball directly between him and Kipling.

For once, Khleo was not happy about Ozy’s arrival. Kip was a lot more expressive about how she felt in regards to Ozy portaling in unannounced. Ozy, however, was resolute in his belief that his intrusion was completely justified. He made it very clear that he wasn’t going to go away.

It wasn’t enough that Ozy had to drag them all the way to a different cave. There he made them help him unearth a pair of gauntlets from a hunk of rock covered in dead inscriptions from the umbra precursors. 

Khleo thought he could go back to the other cave with Kip, but Ozy wasn’t done with them yet. After he secured the gauntlets, he dragged them outside back up onto the rocky shelf where they had started. Before Khleo knew it, he was suffering through an impromptu lesson in grey magic. Meanwhile, the sky overhead darkened with storm clouds. 

Kip, to Khleo’s surprise, was being pretty patient with Ozy as he fitted one of the new gauntlets to her hand and walked her through the controls. Ozy gave Khleo the other gauntlet along with some basic instructions. Khleo was only half listening as he flared his fingers through the openings and counted the tiny light bulbs and switches that hugged and wrapped around his knuckles and wrist. 

Khleo began to speculate the possibilities of this artifact compared to his older, more basic model. How wide could he open the Door with this sort of upgrade? How fast could he encourage the water in the tunnel to rotate? How far could he bridge the gap between one location and the next?

“Khleo, are you listening to me?” Ozy snapped his fingers. “After Kip locks the Door, just stand back and wait for me to find the jump point, got it? Wait for me, Khleo.”

Khleo gave Ozy a placating smile so he would leave him alone. The storm clouds had claimed the whole sky by now. Though there was not much wind to drive it, warm rainwater began to fall. Not that the umbras cared. Outside of hurricane season, island storms tended to have short lives. 

Ozy was all fired up. Like usual, he had an uncanny sense of where to focus the gauntlets across the invisible control panels. He seemed to know exactly where each portal would appear and how to quickly build a desirable exit. But the more Ozy directed Kipling, the more condescending he became. Despite the tension between them, Kipling had managed to open a very large Door. 

In fact, this one was more massive than anything Khleo had seen before. The body of water on the inside was turbulent – a reflection of Kip’s lack of skill in that area. Still, the immense portal was too great to go ignored. It yawned in Khleo’s direction.

“Ozy, if you want it done right so badly, then just do it yourself.” Kip tried to remove the gauntlet.

Ozy’s eyes grew wide. “No! Don’t take that off. You have to lock it, Kip. You’re the only one who can, so just listen to me. Look at the glyphs.”

Kip groaned. “What glyphs!”

Khleo did his best to tune them out while he edged closer to the door so he could get a better look. He wanted to shape the water tunnel so it could start rotating correctly.

“They’re right there on the Door, Kip. You’d be able to see them if you opened up your chakra like I showed you!” He pressed his finger to the spot between her eyes. “Watch. It’s not that hard.”

Kip smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me again.”

Khleo knew this wasn’t going to end well, but he wanted to try out this Door before it disappeared. The Door tugged him gently toward it at first. Just as all Doors do.

Then suddenly… it yanked.

Khleo lost his balance. He caught himself in time, but not without sacrificing his mobility. He couldn’t go backwards or put any distance between himself and the Door. He couldn’t create an exit to match the girth and weight of this portal. It was too big for him. His arms were already about to give up. 

“Kip? Ozy? Something’s wrong.”

Khleo struggled to keep from sliding directly into the giant hole, but he didn’t know how long he could hold on. When he received no response from his friends, he looked over his shoulder to see that they were still heatedly bickering. 

They would notice what was happening before it was too late... they would notice, right? Right?

And then it hit Khleo.

This would be his last moment with his friends.

No, Khleo finally panicked, I don’t want it to be. I don’t want to go through that Door!

“Help me. Please look. Kip. Ozy… shit!”

The Door took him.

[a-song-of-quill-and-feather]

timeline 14 + Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia Malfoy + #14 the timeline in which they took a chance they didn’t in canon.

This got long because it’s an AU I’ve thought all the way through before so putting it under the cut for everyones sake. 

So uh, yeah this works very well for an AU idea I already have (and love and lowkey want to write in full) for Cassiopeia where she enters the Triwzard Tournament and is the Hogwarts Champion in place of Cedric. She doesn’t enter in canon despite being able to, so thus a chance she takes that she doesn’t in canon!

She’s old enough to enter because her 17th birthday is in September, this is a fact she definitely rubs in the twins faces, especially as she would 100% after their age potion goes wrong just walk between them and drop her name in with a smug look upon her face directed at them

She enters for two reasons, one to prove her skill, and also to have money that is her own and not tied to the Malfoy name or her family (she sees it as a potential opportunity to choose her own future after school, if she has her own money then the choice to pursue healing and living on her own terms is much more feasible) 

When she gets chosen the twins definitely are the loudest in the Great Hall. She’s a bit surprised (though she doesn’t show it) because she hadn’t honestly expected to be chosen. When Harry is chosen she’s a bit miffed, but she’d also see how out of sorts he looks and realizes quickly that he hadn’t intended this by any means

Draco is definitely even more insufferable towards Harry because of the fact that it’s his sister that is the champion opposite him. Narcissa and Lucius are of course proud (unaware at the start of Voldemorts plans with Harry and the tournament) this grows as Cass proves her abilities in the tasks as a witch

Fred and George wear support for both Cass and Harry, first task Fred supporting Cass and George supporting Harry, second task Fred supporting Harry (and George supposed to support Cass but well he ends up part of the second task), and for the third they wear half supporting Harry half supporting Cass

Harry still tells her of the Dragons, like he did with Cedric, and she in return tells him of the egg like Cedric had, less because it’s more fair and more because of not wanting to feel like she owed him for telling her of the Dragon. She does tell him more plainly than Cedrics cryptic “take a bath with the egg”, plainly telling him to listen to it underwater

She goes with George to the Yule Ball, this time though it’s because she asks him and not because Fred got sick of their dancing about each others feelings and made a bet with George. They enter a relationship quicker because of this change. She also buys his robes for the ball this time around, because she wants him to look nice for it (”can’t have a champions date in anything less than the best”)

Like I mentioned, George is her something that she’ll ‘sorely miss’ in the second task, causing Fred quite the panic when his twin goes missing. It makes Cass a bit angry that they just put random students in the way of danger for the Task, and she certainly fusses a bit more over George (though he sort of loves it). She (like Cedric) ties for first with Harry after this task.

Her parents and Draco join her in the Champions tent before the third task, and well Weasleys and Malfoys under the same roof is loads of fun. Especially because George and Fred are hopping between the two, and also George is dating Cass at this point so Cass meets the Weasleys officially and Lucius and Narcissa look disapproving at them. It’s all good fun

Now for the angst, because Cass and Harry still both make it to the cup and still the pair agree to grab it together (”there was only supposed to be one of us any way, we go together as one and Hogwarts wins”). So they both grab it, and both are transported to the graveyard.

And now, Cassiopeia is the spare in place of Cedric, and like Cedric she is killed by Peter Pettigrew at the order of Voldemort. Not much else changes for Harry in the graveyard, but Lucius is affected quite a bit when Voldemort is reborn and the death-eaters are summoned

Lucius almost immediately spots Cass’s body, and goes into a bit of shock. Voldemort notices, and ‘bemoans’ the spilling of pure blood but also states it as a fitting punishment for Lucius’s seeming disloyalty in the years between Voldemorts disappearance and now where he never sought him out as well as the failure to protect the diary.

Cassiopeia like Cedric asks Harry to take her body back, as well as to tell Fred and George that they’re both brilliant and to never hold back.

Harry’s return with the body (funnily a scene i like for the way it was done) is much the same. Cheering, music, and then the realization that one of the bodies is dead. Narcissa screams, and holds tight onto Cass’s body after Harry’s dragged off. Draco meanwhile is in shock and can’t quite in that moment come to terms with the fact that his big sister is dead before him. (if/when I write it I’d probably do multiple povs of this part, and Draco would be thinking of memories with Cass when he was little)

The twins realize it as they’re coming down the stands, most other Weasleys are concerned with Harry but George and Fred bolt for Cass, George starts to break down and that’s when Bill notices and him and Arthur go to them. 

After when they’re all with Harry in the hospital wing and learn from Harry that Voldemort is back, George and Fred are pretty equally despondent (to the worry of Molly). When Lucius arrives and goes to where Narcissa and Draco are with Cass’s body George sort of snaps and goes off on Lucius about supporting the man who killed his own daughter and doing nothing about it.

The summer after is a tough one for the Weasleys, because Fred and George are grieving and it’s not something any of them have really seen from the twins. The Malfoys also hold a private funeral, that the twins (and others of Cass’s friends who weren’t invited) crash 

Probably the biggest difference to come all of this, is that the Malfoys bolt. They leave, Harry’s 5th year comes around and all the buzz (besides his cries of Voldemorts return) is that Draco Malfoy was not on the train and that the Malfoys have disappeared entirely

The Malfoy’s go to America out of grief and self-preservation, and hide there in hopes that Voldemort doesn’t succeed, or if he does that they can stay hidden from him there. Thus it’s not Draco who is tasked with getting death-eaters into Hogwarts and killing Dumbledore (some other death-eater child is probably given that task instead) 

I think that after the war Narcissa and Lucius stay in America, having settled in amongst the pureblood society there, while Draco eventually does return to Britain and takes up the Malfoy Manor there (I also like to think he returns with an American witch as his fiancée) 

Draco does, after finding some stuff in Cass’s room while cleaning up the Manor, seek out George and give him some of Cass’s mementos. They’re hardly friends, but both recognize that they’re the only ones in Britain that were close with her and thus have an amicable relationship that surprises most others

Send me a timeline # and an OC of mine and I’ll tell you how things would’ve turned out for them in it

[alextriestowritestuff]

Blood Of Olympus Read W/ Me

This was the worst book of the series by far. I almost didn’t finish it. I think my thoughts are going to be rather short but they’ll still be below the cut for spoiler reasons. There will also be Trials of Apollo spoilers so I highly suggest not reading this if you haven’t caught up with those books! Let’s get into it.

I’d like the start by saying what I like: Nico/Reyna POV. I loved their relationship (which I didn’t see coming at all) it was very big sis-little bro vibes. I love that Nico finally found a place and his budding relationship with Will. What’s funny is though I knew Will would be his love interest (You can’t avoid them in fanfic at all) I thought he’d be more like super sunshine/super happy and that would contrast with Nico’s emo nature. But he was just chill and was like Nico, stop being a dumbass, we’re friends. I think fanfic gave me a different impression of what he’d be like (Granted I never read the fics, just summaries) and I was surprised that he was not like that. It’s not bad or good, just pointing it out. 

Oh and Nico telling Percy he liked him and Percy just being like ‘say what?’ I didn’t expect Nico to actually fess up to that one but Percy’s reaction was gold. 

The best moment in this book is Reyna taking down Orion by herself. She was that BITCH. Correct me if I’m wrong but the only other person who defeated a giant by themselves was Percy right? In the Battle of Labyrinth when he fights Antaeus? I think Antaeus was a half-giant though because Percy, a demigod, managed to kill him without the help of a god. Anyway, Reyna was everything in that scene. Oh I lied, he took down Polybotes too. They’d be unstoppable together (though I love Percabeth). She was about to sacrifice herself too!! What a queen. I respect the crap out of her. UM Jason you really picked the wrong girl lmao. 

I appreciated the Thalia cameo (because again, I didn’t re-read the Lost Hero so I haven’t seen her since the last time I read the PJO series) and the mention of Zoe. I hope Kenzie didn’t really die though, I liked her. 

And that’s all the good I have to say about it. Now for the bad...so much bad.

So after thinking about it, I realize that what makes HoO so different from its predecessor series is that there’s no consequences. The closest we got to consequences was Annabeth and Percy falling into Tartarus because they weren’t saved in time. No one important (protagonist/good guys side) died. Leo was resurrected (And I looked it up and found out that he came to Camp in the Trials of Apollo series so everyone knows he’s alive). Even for the Tartarus one, we didn’t even get a PTSD arc. It would’ve been helpful to have Percy or Annabeth’s POV in this book to wrap up that subplot. Instead we get two lines about their time in Tartarus and when Percy brings it up, Annabeth tells him not to mention it. So no PTSD arc. Got it. But we can just casually mention that Octavian committed suicide (which I don’t care for that ending at all).  Right.

The HoO books are boring because there’s no consequences. I never felt true fear apart from Percy/Annabeth being in Tartarus. In the Last Olympian, mortals were put to sleep, Annabeth was gravely injured, Silena and Beckendorf died. Luke and Ethan died. There was no magical save for them. Blood of Olympus had NO stakes, coupled with a weak, slightly developed new characters made it a bad series imo. It also doesn’t deliver on the questions posed in the book.

Hazel’s curse is still active, no descendant of Neptune has taken it away. I read the wiki summary for every book of the Trials of Apollo (The last one isn’t out yet) and there’s no mention of her curse being lifted. I think Frank’s stick is resolved imo being that it’s safe in the fireproof pouch but for some readers, they don’t think that’s resolved. Kym told Percy he’d have to face his fatal flaw. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t feel as though he did. Percy also never helped Leo find Calypso but Ig that’s null because he never got the chance to. Also is Black Jack, Frank’s grandmother, Hylla okay? Orion said Hylla got away but I was hoping for another cameo. 

Let’s talk about the villains/the entire quest of the Seven. The quest was boring, Nico/Reyna/Hedge’s quest was 100x more interesting and they were transporting a freaking statue. The quest of the Seven was fight this minor god/villain who is working for Gaea who promised them something (Even Jason has a line where he makes fun of this), outsmart/fight them, get to Athens where all the monsters are. Percy and Annabeth’s blood awakens Gaea. The gods come down which makes me angry because most of them weren’t helpful throughout the series. Poseidon wasn’t in this series at all. He didn’t even send a symbol or talk to his son who went missing. I’m pissed that the battle against Gaea wasn’t even in Athens! I’m pissed that they got slapped to New York, like what? The gods really couldn’t poof them back there, they gave some excuse but it was still bs. But I guess Rick needed Argo II to get back to NY so Leo can turn festus back into a dragon. But anyway, the gods come down, the demigods work with to defeat the giants in less than two pages. The giants that were poised as a massive threat for four books straight. Defeated in mere minutes. We don’t even get a cool battle description, they just hack and slash at them and they’re dead. Huh? 

Percy, Annabeth, Hazel, and Frank were reduced to background characters and I understand they don’t have a POV but I never felt that characters who didn’t have a POV in a certain book were ever forgotten/not utilized. They didn’t really get to do anything. 

We also don’t really see the Roman and Greek gods all that much. I know they’re the same people, different Greek and Roman personalities. But like I thought their Roman side could be seen a bit more but they were having difficulty maintain one persona throughout the whole series. I can tell you what the Greek gods are like and how they interact w/ each other based on the throne room scenes/anytime they help demigods in PJO/HoO. But Roman gods as whole? I can’t tell you how they even interact with each other. 

But wait, it gets worse. There’s not even a formal recognition thing like there was at the end of the Last Olympian (where Percy is offered godhood and Annabeth is given position of architect) there’s a little meeting with the gods and the Seven in which Jason is like give minor gods shrine and the gods aren’t really all that interested in what he has to say. There’s no thank you demigods. No, thanks Annabeth and Percy for literally going through Tartarus and Hazel for sacrificing yourself at 13 back in the 1940s. And the rest of them sacrificed something too. Like damn, no wonder why Luke was always like the gods don’t care about their kids. 

Gaea was built up to be a big bad (honestly not really, she talked trash the entire time/sent people to do her work) and the woman is easily overpowered by the three demigods. She’s not even awake for 20 minutes and she goes down. WHAT?? 

Overall, it was anti-climatic and totally did a 180 on everything else established in this series-the fact that Gaea was such a major foe and turned out not to be (that SEVEN demigods had to take her down, not just 1 like Percy’s prophecy) and the giants were to be feared too but they get taken down. At 200 pages in, I dead ass wanted to DNF, it was so boring. I gave it a one star because although the good I mentioned was really great, it doesn’t save the book. So for me, this series had every book be 3 stars or under except House of Hades. 5 books and I only really was able to like one and get through it easily and it still had issues. Like what?

Lastly, I want to touch on Jason. I still think he’s bland though I appreciated him giving Nico a hug at the end there. Again from ToA/being spoiled over the years, I learned that Jason died and I won’t be reading ToA but I read the summary of the book where he died and um, wow. I don’t feel anything for his death but the fact that he and Piper broke up sent me into a laughing/anger rage. Laughing because they really said ‘I love you’ at the end of BoO and they didn’t even make it a year lmao. And the fact that PIPER, miss always insecure in her relationship with him, McLean broke up with HIM. WOOOOOW. But it made mad because I listened to her complain/fawn over Jason for 4 freaking books (not counting tSoN) for NO REASON cuz they ended up breaking up. Overall, I appreciated what Jason, Hazel, Frank, and Piper did in the HoO series because they were helpful but I couldn’t connect with their characters. I’ll admit that in BoO we got a little bit more bonding between characters which is what I asked for in my last read with me and I like the Percy/Jason scene underwater and Piper/Annabeth scene from the beginning. I do think some relationships were summarized when they could’ve been shown--i.e. Annabeth/Reyna/Piper friendship but they have potential. 

The bonding was good, it was just too late. It should’ve happened in MoA/HoH as well. Random but I also hate how Leo was treated (esp. by Jason and Piper) throughout the series and I’m glad he got out of that mess. He was reduced to a deus ex mechanic and that wasn’t cool. The Seven wouldn’t have been able to do this quest without him. 

Sooo I guess this is it. I don’t think I’m going to read another Rick Riordan book again unless I hear something drastic happens to Percy or Annabeth/Any of the PJO characters and Reyna. I’m strongly reconsidering removing him as my fav author. I still love the PJO series but this one was not it. I don’t know if Rick was on a tight deadline for these HoO books but it was just poorly executed. I don’t regret reading the series, I think reading HoH was worth all the time I spent reading this series. I wish I had just read a summary of tSoN and MoA, especially because I already read them years ago and knew I wasn’t into them from my first read. I wasted my own time by doing that. So if I had done that I would’ve gotten to just read HoH and then only be disappointed by BoO as opposed to three books. It is what it is. It��s nice to be in the loop because I always see these things about HoO characters and spoilers so now I know how it went down. 

But that’s it guys, thank you for reading this entire thread and the ones before it. I have a lot of opinions and I don’t think I’m in the minority by saying I didn’t like this series overall. I will get back to my writeblr content and I will leave you guys with my final ratings for the series (My rating system may seem generous compared to my read with me thoughts but I personally don’t give less than 3 stars to books that plot wise made sense. It may not be the most compelling plot or have the best characters but if it made coherent sense, I have to give it at least a 3.) :

The Lost Hero: This score is based off of my original reading in 2012/2013 and my thoughts on the main characters in that book, I give this a 3/5 stars

The Son of Neptune: 3/5

The Mark of Athena: 2/5

The House of Hades: 4.5/5

The Blood of Olympus: 2/5 

Worst book of the series: Mark of Athena (Blood Olympus is a close tie but the Nico/Reyna really saves it from this spot) and best book- House of Hades. 

[aislinceivun]

Hi! I know that you’ve said that you won’t continue with the sequel planned for Wandering Bird, but I was wondering if I could inquire on what you might’ve written? It’s just, I really adore your fic; can’t get it out of my head actually (so I’m so sorry if I’m being insensitive!) You mentioned once that you were going to do a POV from Arthur Gwen and Morgana- does that mean they (Morgana and Gwen specifically) had an idea of Merlin’s fate? Could Arthur “see” Merlin during his adventures? Part 1

Part 2: (Again, I apologize for my questions-your story just has so many interesting plot points!!) How would Bonnie and Co interact/react to Arthur’s return? Why couldn’t Freya interact much with Merlin; Was it a lack of magic, interference or something else? Somewhat weird question: but did you have anything in mind for Merlin’s Vigil Night? (If he can get one poor dear). (Gushing continued in third ask I’m so sorry)

Part 3: I loved how you showed Arthur considering legal reforms before his death-and the Phoenix as the emblem? *Chef’s Kiss* Was the creation of the phoenix’s later on a reference to that? Random aside: I really adored how badass you made Merlin, without making him too edgy or dark, you know? Also I really loved the many prophecies/legends surrounding just Merlin as “Emrys”! I adore literally everything about Aithusa, and her final scene made me bawl (also your art is gorgeous!) You’re amazing!

------------------------------------

Don’t ever apologize for asking questions about fics! Even if they’re old fics the author doesn’t plan on returning to, these kind of asks can really make their day and I’m sure 98% of the time they’ll just be over the moon that someone still thinks so much about their work :D I am!!

I still get emotional thinking about Aithusa, so I’m super glad her storyline made you feel so deeply. And that yuo liked Merlin’s portrayal and the lore about him! And thea art! Ahh, just, thank you! 🥰

Unfortunately, I no longer have my original outlines and the roughly 15k I’ve written due to my old laptop crashing, and it’s been 7 years (oh my gosh how) so I no longer remember the details. Which is too bad - I have several abandoned fics in my mother tongue, and I always uploaded summaries of what was supposed to happen to provide some kind of closure to readers. I can’t do that properly with Wandering, but I’ll try my best!

Putting the rest under a cut. :)

Feathers was inteded to be a series of 7 fics: 3 long main stories and 4 shorter (8-15k) standalone side-stories. The graphics are pretty much the only thing I still have  left x’D

You know this one, 75k of how Merlin spends those roughly 1500 years between the end of the show and Arthur’s rebirth. Then, the stuff that never got finished:

The Gwen POV side story, set during ch1 of Wandering. Focused on Gwen dealing with Arthur’s death, managing the kingdom and working on abolishing discrimination against magic users. Also getting together with Leon after a few years.

The Morgana POV one, at parts corresponding to ch1 and ch2 of Wandering. Honestly, I’m no longer sure about the details, but the early parts were supposed to explain and detail show canon, and then... I think I meant to bring her back in as a literal bird. With the life span of it, just keeping her consciousness, so she can watch what happens in the world. She probably watched over Aithusa, too, and Merlin, and IDK but the goal was to show her thoughts and eventually give her character justice and closure.

The Arthur POV one. He was kept in some kind of otherworldly, underwater palace-like place and could only interact with Freya, really, but he did get constant flashes of Merlin - especially where he was near Albion. This short was supposed to be very dream-like, as time works differenetly in that place. It’s kind of like when you’re half-asleep, y’know? So Arthur didn’t really live those 1500 years like Merlin did, but he followed his journey, in a way. When Freya “woke him up” at the end, they did have a conversation about it. He lost these memories when he was reborn. (But he still often dreams of water and a kind lady)

The next big one! Set in 2012, this would’ve started with Arthur & Merlin going to uni and “meeting each other” and ended with Arthur finally regaining his memories. Merlin kept away from him while Arthur was growing up, you see - aside from that one time when he learnt that by pure chance, Ray (who became a PE teacher) ended up being one of lil’ Chris/Arthur’s teachers. As old man Emrys, he got himself some history teaching shtick because he wanted to see how Arthur was doing, but he quickly realized that this is not going to work, what with him being in love with the man Arthur is going to become. xD So he left after a few months, and kept away from Arthur. (But kept pestering Ray with questions :D)

Anyway, when Arthur goes to uni (by this point, he exclusively goes by ‘Arthur’ btw, dropping Christopher) Merlin magics himself back into his eighteen year old form and gets enrolled in the same school. Agatha and Mike would have had prominent roles as basically Merlin’s sidekicks. Aggie is especially close with him, after him mentoring her about magic all her life.

Arthur has no memories either of his old life or about the years spent with Freya, so the dynamic at first is pretty much show S1. Most of the angst would have come from Arthur finally wanting to get together with Merlin but Merlin pulling away because there’s just too much Arthur doesn’t know; how is he supposed to be together with him when he’s hiding so much, lying so much? This Arthur is pure and free of the tragedies of the past, and maybe it’d be best if Merlin left him alone... But something must be happening - something the world needs Arthur for, if he slept through WWI and WWII but NOW fate decided to send him back...

Anyways, he would have gotten back his memories aroud the end of this instalment. Cue a lot of crying from Merlin’s part.

The last big one, a direct sequel to With Memories. A lot of recap and talking in the early parts, Merlin and Arthur reconciliating who they were in the past with who they are in the present and who they wanna be in the future. 

There was a Big Bad of some kind of malicious magical origin (not necessarily a person, but an “end of the world” kind of thing/entity. It was 2012 after all. Little did we knew the real shit was coming 8 years later It was revealed that Arthur had magic himself, plenty of it - he couldn’t use it, at all, but he wielded a lot of pure magic, maybe related to how he was basically marinated in magic-juice for over fifteen centuries and how his soul was pushed back into the world xD There was a lot of magical and dragon-related lore to be revealed. The Phoenixes came back to play a part in resolving the Big Bad, too. But it’s all very hazy. What I do remember is that to fix the Big Bad, Merlin AND Arthur had to hold their Vigil Night, in a way - not dying, god now, but both of them hand to give all their combined magic back to earth.  This resulted in the Big Bad no longer happening and Merlin losing his immortality =)

After figuring out their shit in the first half, they were pretty much together, btw. Learning each other in a new way. Arthur digged Merlin’s Phoenix emblem tattoo, that’s for sure. A lot of communication was needed, especially because it wasn’t easy for Arthur to understand Merlin’s grief (sometimes, Merlin looked so old despite the young form he wore; sometimes he felt ancient, and Arthur was a bit scared in his presence - not scared of Merlin, but scared of how to measure up to him, reach him, help him.) And Merlin had to understand that even with his old memories, Arthur wasn’t exactly that Arthur, the king - he had a life of his own in the present, a new identity, and it was unfair of Merlin to expect him to be the same. They no doubt talked a lot about Merlin’s lived experiences, his lost ones, Aithusa. (Merlin never stopped wearing the pendant made of Aithusa’s scale)

Happy end, of course :)

Well, that was a lot of vaaaague stuff, but hopefully gave you an idea? Bonnie wasn’t around too much, though I’m sure I’d have included some scenes with her. She probably didn’t met Arthur until Together Again. Aggie liked him fine but kept teasing him and she could be a bit harsh, what with her being so overprotective of Merlin. Mike and Arthur got along really well. Arthur was shocked when he was first fully introduced to the whole family and was met with his old PE teacher AND that brought up the fact Merlin attempted to teach him for a few months xDD 

Buuuuut.... this was still just 6, eh?

Last instalment, another side oneshot, and a prequel to the whole series. Kilgharrah’s POV. Set a few generation’s before Uther’s rein, elaborating on some of the lore and backstories revealed in Together Again. (all of which I no longer remember, rip) I know we’d have met an ancestor of both Merlin and Arthur through Kilgharrah: Aurelius Ambrosius, who does some good deed to Kilgharrah, and the dragon blesses him - after this, the man takes the name Pendragon. And Coel, who was a dragon lord, husband to Ystradwal high priestess. Coel had a cheerful and kind personality, and he was the first human Kilgharrah came to like. They became friends. Coel was supposed to be Merlin’s grandfather, I think. Kilgharrah and his mate were expecting their first egg to hatch when Uther’s purge started, and that was pretty much the end of this short =(

------------

All I have left aside from these is some tidbits of dialogue from the single file on the sequels I have:

~

“Whoa, Merlin, slow down. I can’t follow you.”

“I’m different from you. Okay? I’m not... I wasn’t... I didn’t reincarnate. I’m not a reincarnation of the original Merlin. I am the original Merlin. Do you understand? I never... Look, I never died.”

“You are. The same Merlin." Merlin nods. "The same Merlin who mucked out my horses and saved me countless times and magicked his way into my life.”

“I’m afraid, sire.”

The title comes without a conscious thought, and when he realizes, his heart twists and cracks.

Arthur just stares at him.

~

“So? Who are you guys, then?”

“I wasn’t lying about them. They are family. No! Gods, no, not like that,” he adds quickly upon seeing Arthur’s widening eyes.

“He’s our magical fairy godfather,” Mike and Aggie say in perfect union, completely straight-faced.

 ~

“The only times I was really miserable were the very first few hundred years, and later the roughly three centuries that followed Aithusa’s death. For the rest of the time, I wasn’t completely alone, and that... helped. A lot. But... it was hard. I hated how everyone I cared for withered away and died before my eyes, so I tried to keep people away for a long time. I was lonely, but that kept me safe from heartbreak. At least, that’s what I’d thought.

“But then I met Bonnie, and as I watched her grow up and start a family - a family that welcomed me - I realised how foolish I was for attempting to condone myself to a solitary life and deny myself the warmth of others’ love.”

~

Arthur wipes a hand over his face. “Owning a magical heritage but no apparent talent to use it... Just. Great. I’m a fucking Quibble!”

------------

Phew!! What a trip down memory lane xD And I actually remembered more than I thought I would, so that’s nice. Thank you for enabling me to ramble and recall some stuff a really liked about this verse. I hope I was able to give you some closure! Cheers!♥

[imaginingthebands]

More Than You Know Chapter 2

PERSPHONE’S POV

We parked and got into the elevator. It was a twenty minute drive to the hotel, but we had stopped for food before hand so it was pretty late now. “Hey! Lets go swimming!” Rose said. As we walked down the hall to our room I was trying to figure out which swimsuit I wanted to wear. I dug through my bag and found the black and purple bikini I was looking for. It was very sexy, it looked like lingerie almost with the bits of lace on it. I was in the mood to feel good about myself. I hadn’t thought about a single bad thing all day and I wasn’t about to start now. We quickly changed and walked down to the elevator. “I love the detail in yours!” I said to rose who had an almost matching set, but red with slightly different lace. Just as the doors were about to close we heard a voice say, “Hey can you hold that?” We stopped the door from closing and as it opened I tried not to gawk. It was Chris, Ryan and Vinny. All wearing swim trunks. They grinned as they recognized us and Ryan whispered something to Chris, which made Chris shoot him a glare. They stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the main floor. Rose grinned at me then quickly turned to them, “Y’all are going swimming too?” she said smoothly. They nodded and Vinny and Ryan quickly struck a conversation with her. Chris and I stood near each other and I tried to think of something to say. Vinny elbowed Chris, who almost fell into me. “Aw, Chris, was it your turn to fall?” he said with a smile. Chris rolled his eyes and turned to me, “Sorry, they do this all the time.” I just smiled and said it was okay.

The doors opened and Ryan looked over his shoulder at us, “Last one in pays for dinner!” We all raced to the pool and laughed when Vinny slid and fell on his ass. Ryan jumped in first, Rose right behind. Chris and I stood there laughing. I stopped and pointed behind Chris, “Oh my God!” I cried. He turned around quickly and I jumped in the pool, leaving him the last one to jump in. He turned around and crossed his arms, playfully glaring at me, “That was cheating!” I giggled and said, “Hey Ryan didn’t say we couldn’t.” Ryan shrugged and took Rose’s hand, gently pulling her towards the deep end of the pool towards Vinny. It was becoming almost too weird that they kept leaving me and Chris to talk. I wasn’t going to complain though. I just hoped I didn’t make a fool of myself.

Chris pushed his wet hair out of his face that was now makeup free. God, I could get lost in those eyes forever… He smiled somewhat nervously and said, “So what are you guys doing after this?” “Heading back home tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a bit of a drive,” I said. He nodded, “Good call with the hotel then. Especially since our show ran late with the extra songs.” Chris ran a hand through his hair and looked over to where everyone else was. “Where’s Justin?” I asked, “He passed out almost right after we got back,” he chuckled. I nodded and bit my lip nervously.

It's not every day you can say you got to meet your idol, have him catch you and then go swimming with him.

The hotel was like a ghost town and we were the only ones in the pool area. Ryan splashed water at Rose who shrieked and splashed him back, laughing. Chris and I swam over and we decided to play a game. “Marco!” Vinny yelled, eyes shut and arms stretched out in front of him, trying to find us. “Polo!” we said quietly. I tried to quickly sneak away to the shallow end but bumped into Ryan who grinned and playfully shoved me right into Vinny. I groaned, “That’s cheating!” “No rules,” Chris smiled. I rolled my eyes at him before shutting them. I could hear Chris to my left and swam towards him. I reached out and felt somebodies smooth chest. I opened my eyes and it was Chris. He smiled down at me and whispered, “I suppose I’m it now?” My heart started to beat loudly. He reached out and touched my hand that was still on his chest. I pulled it back quickly, embarrassed for touching him for so long. He grinned and tackled me, “This counts right?” he yelled. I giggled and held on to him so that I wouldn’t go underwater. I could feel the muscles in Chris’ arms and I never wanted to let go. My legs were wrapped around him as he held me up. He carefully let me go so that I wouldn’t drop into the water. Looking down at me he smiled. This had to be the best dream I ever had. Any minute now I’d wake up in my hotel bed and have to leave. But the feeling of Chris grabbing my hand to led me to the others proved I was very much awake. I had to be the luckiest person alive.

After about an hour, we all got out of the pool and dried off. Chris walked to the bathroom with Ryan and Vinny stayed with Rose and I. “You guys are some of the coolest people we’ve met. Would it be weird if we got your numbers?” he asked. I was screaming inside and hoping that he couldn’t tell. I did not want to come off as some crazed fan. “Yeah that’d be awesome,” I said, trying to hide the shakiness of my voice. Vinny put his number in both of our phones and we put ours in his. Ryan and Chris came out and Vinny waved his phone, “I got their numbers. I figured next time we’re around we could try and hangout.”  They grinned and we shared the elevator up to our floor. As soon as I shut the door to our room Rose grabbed my shoulders. “This was single handedly the best decision of our lives to come here! Oh my God this is crazy! They have our phone numbers!” she gushed. We flopped onto our beds in exhaustion and happiness.

 The next morning, I woke up to Rose screaming happily. I quickly sat up and said, “What’s going on?” She showed me the text on her phone from Ryan. “HE SAID I’M CUTE BITCH!” She held her phone to her chest and closed her eyes grinning ear to ear. My phone went off and I could hear Chris’ voice. My heart stopped as I read the text.

Hey Persephone, it’s Chris. I hope it’s okay that I got your number from Vin. Have a safe drive back home!

“ROSE, I AM GOING TO LOSE IT,” I shouted. I threw my phone at her and she giggled, “We are the luckiest girls ever.”

I quickly text him back and thanked him, wishing him a safe drive to the next city. Putting my phone in the pocket of my pajama shorts, I stood up and began to pack with a smile on my face. We played music all morning while we packed and loaded Rose’s car. It was my turn to drive on the way back so I hopped into the drivers seat and put on Melanie Martinez.  We sang along as Rose text Ryan happily.

Half way back with only an hour to go, Rose said, “Girl guess the fuck what!” “What?” I questioned, turning to look at her for a moment. “Ryan just said, ‘Chris thinks Persephone would think it’s weird to hang out when we’re off tour. Would she?’” She smiled at me as she quickly text him back reading it aloud, “No she wouldn’t, in fact she wants to have se-” “ROSE!” She rolled her eyes, “She’s driving right now, but said it wouldn’t be weird.” She hit send and turned towards me with a sassy look on her face, “Better?” I nodded. “Just trying to get you your goth daddy,” she shrugged. I about choked on my water and laughed. “Whatever, he wants to be friends and that is literally the best thing in the world. I could’ve never imagined this happening, like this only happens in those dumb stories I used to write in high school,” I said.

When we arrived at Josh’s house, we brought my suitcase in and all decided to hang out and have a game night.

We pulled two tvs out to the living room and all hopped on our playstations to play different games. I had choose Skyrim to play and sat down in the middle of Rose and Josh who were playing Grand theft Auto and Kingdom Hearts. Just as I left Belathor’s shop, my phone rang. Josh grabbed my phone and said, “Who is Chris?” I grabbed my phone back from him and said, “No one!” I quickly answered before it sent him to voicemail. “Hey,” I said with a smile, though he couldn’t see it. “Hey, we just got back from tonight’s show it was awesome! What are you up to?” he asked. “She’s hoarding cheese like that meme!” Rose yelled. I blushed and shoved her, “Shut up!” I hissed. She grinned and Chris said, “Hoarding cheese? What?” he chuckled. “You know that meme about that room of cheese in Skyrim? Yeah, well uh, I got really bored one night and started collecting a lot and just threw it in this room..” I trailed. He laughed, “That is awesome. You have to send me a picture when you’re done.” “THEY GAME?!” Ryan said in the background. “Ryan wants the gamertags,” Chris laughed. Rose’s phone rang and Josh threw his hands up. “Why do no boys call me?” “Because you’re lame?” I said. He feigned a hurt face.

After about twenty minutes, Chris had to go so we hung up. I went back to my game and threw all the cheese into my followers room as Rose laughed, “I still can’t believe you started this.”

Over the next two weeks, I had gotten to know Chris more, and he was so down to earth and sweet. We had a lot in common when it came to music, games and books. I was currently nose deep in a book he had suggested when he called. “Hey! How’s tour?” I said happily. “It’s going great! I’m so excited to get back to my own bed though. Only two more shows and we’ve finished a whole month of touring!” he said. We weren’t able to talk long since they had just arrived at the venue. “So when I come home, what do you think if I took a little road trip and you showed me around where you live?” I laughed, “Aren’t you tired of driving?” “True, well come to me then.” “I can do that,” I said with a grin. “Good, I’m excited to see you. We can even have a movie night and watch Sweeney Todd because I know that’s your favorite.” I couldn’t help but giggle, it was cute that he made a point to remember that. “I’ll text you later, I have to go, Vinny is yelling at me to hurry up,” he laughed.

When I set my phone down I looked up with a smile and saw Josh standing in my doorway with his arms crossed. “Seph,” he said. “Yes?” He came in and sat on my bed, “I know you have had a thing for him forever, but don’t forget to take time to actually feel and reflect what’s going on here.” I nodded and said, “Chris and I are just friends I swear. And I have been, it’s all finalized now and I’m pretty over it.” “Okay, well I hope you have fun when you go see him. Tell him I need a man if he knows anyone,” he said with a smile. I laughed as he walked out of my room and lay back down under my blankets. I couldn’t wait to spend more time with Chris. He really is such an amazing person and I couldn’t wait to get to know him more.

[fleetbound]

BIRDS AND LIONS [SIPARA POV] - 20k

This got deleted off of tumblr ages and ages ago, so reposting. |D

You can’t picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. “So he doesn’t need our hivestem. He’s got his own, and it’s lovely,” he says for you, when you don’t answer. He’s been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. “And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to.”

It’s rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won’t come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, ‘except instead of draining out thoughts, it’s not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, ‘til the only thing that’s left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he’s watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

“.. but you aren’t,” is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. “Right?”

0. COIN | 7 years old / 3.27 sweeps

"Catch!"

The caegar is dusty and green with age and rust, but it still cuts a nice figure as it twirls in the air high above. The green light catches on each rivet and groove, pink shadows deepening each curve, every place it bows out until it looks like something special: some kind of a gem, maybe, sparkling in the night air.

It isn't! It's just something you found in one of the journals and spit and polished until all the dirt had come off. Too old for the Imperial symbol to have been carved onto it! Too old for it to be of any more use than the wooden coins in the boxed games. But as far as you're concerned, that just makes it all the better.

After all, wood rots! And you'd never get away with playing river games with a real coin.

The moons are in your eyes at this angle. Everything's green and pink moonspots and the purple sky above, and between those three, the caegar blends right in. You catch a glint of it. You snatch for it! And you miss.

Instead of landing neatly in your palm, the coin smacks into the water with an audible pop near your face, and you jolt back, spluttering with outrage.

From the shore, Sipara whoops.

It’s the start of the wet season, and even though the moons are high on the sky, the air is still heavy with a heat crisp enough to taste. It won’t stay hot and humid like this for very long. Soon enough, the rains will come proper, and you won’t be coming outdoors for a dozen caegars, never mind this silly little half-penny. But that’s nearly a perigee away, practically forever, and until then, you and Sipa are determined to take advantage of the heat.

“Way to go!” she jeers. No matter how much you beg, she refuses to ever get so much as her walkstubs wet. You even tried bribing her once, but she'd just stolen the apple you’d offered and eaten it anyway. And the only time you actually hauled her in, she’d bit you so hard that you’d had to get bandages from Whydah.

(They'd sucked their fangs at you when they'd seen the bloody weals, and then wrapped the bandages so tight you couldn't feel your fronds for nights.)

But every time you head off to the river, Sipara’s always a step behind, trailing you like the world’s most dreadful shadow. She claims it’s ‘cause she’s waiting for you to drown, so she can take all your stuff and pawn it at the market, but she hangs around even when the river’s way too low for you to do much more than wade. You think she’s jealous!

Which is silly, because you keep offering to teach her to swim. She's the one that always refuses. But then again, Sipara is silly. “You’re supposed to catch it, doofus!” she yodels at you now, hands on her hip. She’s leaning in close to the river, near enough that you can see her reflection on the water below.  “Not let it fall!”

You puff out your cheeks at her, pressing your palms to your face and wiping away the water. As much as you can manage, at least: staying in place like this is hard! Your head keeps bobbing down, trying to dunk you in the water 'til even your top half's completely submerged. If you stop thinking for half a moment, you'll be pulled under.

Sipara’d scream if you were. She looks stressed enough just standing by the shore, like she thinks the water’s going to reach up and drag her under. You're not sure what she's so afraid of.

“Hard to catch it when you’re awful at throwing,” you call back. "Where did it go, Sisi? Did it even land in here?"

Tilting your head down, you make a show of squinting down into the briny water, but you're really watching her through your lashes. She leans down, big hands tight on her bendsockets. Her mouth is thin. "'course it landed," she snaps. You can't see her eyes like this, but you know they must be all thin and unhappy. You can't see her face, either, with all her hair falling down around her like a curtain, not anywhere but in the water, where it's too blurry to see what look she's making.

Too blurry to tell her feelings, maybe, but just clear enough to aim. You let the silence sit just long enough for her to stew in it. She can't stand quiet, not really.  And then, right when she's opening her mouth to say something else, you slap both hands into the water.

All that happens is she catches a mouthful of water, but the way she jolts, you'd think you hit her.

Sipara jerks back so quickly that her feet slip in the mud, and no amount of arm-flailing can keep her upright. She hits the clay soil with an audible plop, hair poofing up around her, her eyes saucer-wide in her face. Almost as big as her mouth, which's already twisting open as she sucks in a breath.

You dive just as she lets off the first ear-piercing shriek of rage.

Underwater, you can't hear it. (Underwater, she can't hear you, which's good, 'cause you're laughing.) The water is high and the river's murky with silt and dirt, but ducking under's comfotable, even when the current's jerking you every which way. That's alright. You just have to go with it, and you let it tug you along a few feet, staring down at the bottom.

The water would've tugged the coin a long a little farther than it ought. But luckily, just along, and not out. This close to the shore, the ground's near enough that you can feel it, brushing along the bottom of your psionics. And it's close enough that the light of your aura cuts through the gloom as easy as clay. There's still black on either side of you, tugging at the corners of your  vision where the light doesn't shine, but that's alright. You can see straight ahead, and that's all you need.

Because right below you is the gleam of the coin, hiding in the silt on the bottom.

When you grab it, it's heads.

1. RMEROS | 4.15 SWEEPS / 8 YEARS OLD

Pheres's moirail's got the biggest head you've ever seen. He's the biggest troll you've ever seen, really, if you count in his horns. And you sorta have to: they're huge and curly and ridiculous, curling all the way over his head and past his back, like he's some sort of wooly hairbeast.

"Rack like that," you'd heard Khirba murmur to Whydah that first night, after the sun'd gone down and everyone had come streaming out into the courtyard, jostling past and floating up over each other to try and see: "- rack like that it, doesn't really matter his personality, does it?"

It's no wonder he's got a big head, when everyone won't stop talking about him.

Especially Pheres.

"Sto~oppit," you wail, clapping your mitts over your soundflaps. He just laughs at you, showing off his teeth in that dumb grin that always makes you want to smack him silly. "I don't care!"

"Don't be such a brat, Sipa!" He's bustling around your hiveblock, rattling the dishes, hopping up on his toes to reach the shelves where you keep the sugar so bugs won't get in. The tea's on the hotplate, just barely starting up the whine that means it's about ready. "If you'd stop being such a runny-faced wiggler, you'd like him, I promise! He's so smart."

"Almost as smart as you," he adds, peeking back at you with a quick smile, and you let go of your ears.

"Almost as smart?"

"Almost!" The kettle whistles. He drops the mugs on the counter, sloshing the tea haphazardly in. Usually, your lusus would complain about how much's slopping everywhere, but your pops is up in the rafters, sleeping again. He's been doing that a lot ever since you got big enough to feed yourself. "I mean, he doesn't make stuff like you, but he knows all sorts of things!"

"What good's about knowing things?" You nudge him away from the kettle, taking over before it all ends up on the floor. Pheres's got tiny bird hands, barely big enough to fit your pop in 'em. Yours are bigger, and if you're careful, you can just about keep the kettle steady.

"Rmeros says all the goods in knowing things. You can't get nothing done if you don't," he says, shovelling sugar into your cup. When he sees you looking, he dimples at you. "Sugar to make you sweeter!"

You make a gesture that is not very sweet at all, and he laughs, passing you the mug. It's warm in your hands. You blow on it, but he's already sipping at his like the heat doesn't bug him any. (It's not fair! He can drink it straight outta the pot without complaining, but your mouth starts peeling just at the smell of it.) "You're going to meet him tomorrow," Pheres says, and it's not a question. "You'll like him!"

Gingerly, you take a sip of your tea, and you get a mouthful of salt.

He stops laughing when you dump the cup on his lap.

***

"This is Sipa," Pheres says a few hours later, his voice only a little muzzy.

Points to him! If he wasn't all ruddy, you'd barely knew you broke his nose at all.

"You met her before." He's watching the two of you, bright-eyed but wary, like you're stray meowbeasts about to scrap. Maybe he isn't wrong! Rmeros is big, sure, but it's one thing to know that and a whole 'nother to see it up close and personal. He's as big as a lusus, towering over you. Big enough to be someone's dad, and the fact he's got his van behind him doesn't make him seem any smaller.

It makes you feel small. It makes you want to rip him apart until he feels the same.

"I remember her," he says, eyeing you, and maybe he doesn't see you're two seconds from scratching off his face, 'cause he bends knee to you 'til his face's even with yours. Your fronds curl into fists. He doesn't notice that, either. "Hello there. You're Sipara, aren't you?"

You nod, stilted. His lips curl up, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

Rmeros doesn't have much to say after that. He leans back on the steps of his van, his back to the door, and he plays around on his fancy husktop. It's got to be nicer than anything any of you lot have: as the older kids pass by, you can see them eyeing it, but he doesn't pay them any mind.

You wouldn't think he was paying you and Pheres any mind, either, but you can feel him watching. It's weird. You don't know why, but then again, you've never met anyone from outside of the hivestem. Maybe they all sit there and watch like the slitherbeasts in the foliage, waiting to try and snatch your pops right outta the air.

He's not looking at you, but it's still like you can feel his attention. You manage to forget Rmeros is there anyway. It's easy when he's so quiet, and what starts off as a discussion with Pheres turns into a lecture turns into a discussion of everyone else. And just like it always does, it turns into an argument.

The two of you fight, even when you're agreeing. It's been this way since you were itsy bitsy and you first got stuck in the hole between your walls. (The both of you were perfectly agreed on how much you wanted to get out of the wall. The trouble came in that neither of you could stop hissing long enough to manage it.) "Simoom's terrible," Pheres says, in that hushed, rapid-fire way of his, "but you can't cull him, Sipa, that's silly. You're being silly. Again!"

"He's not that big!"

"It doesn't matter when he can lift you up with his brain!" He frowns at you. "You're going to start something and get hit, and you'll deserve it." He's always on about that. It's just a matter of consequences, he says, like that's anything but an excuse for the bigger kids to rough you up. "Even if you smacked him on the pan with a rock, he's still bigger --"

You whirl on your heel, flinging your hands out. "Pheres! You nerd!" He doesn't jolt back quick enough to avoid you grabbing his face. Your palms squish into his cheeks. "That's brilliant," you crow. "If I hit his horns enough times, he won't be able to do nothing at all! Walk, spark, nothin'!"

A white-hot spark lands on your skin. You let go with a yowl, and as soon as you do, he's dancing back. "Yeah," he says, confused but pleased despite the side-eye he's giving you. White's still dancing across his horns and shoulders like a brazen warning. You stick your hand in your mouth, sucking on the warm spot. "Ah. I.. am brilliant?"

Rmeros laughs.

Pheres jumps in a crackle of psi. When you stumble back, blinking againsnt the light, Pheres's right behind you, and the both of you end up sprawled out on the ground. "Get off," Pheres yelps, shoving at you. "You're smothering me!" Both of you forgot Rmeros was there: he's quiet as a fucking meowbeast, that's what he is, leaning forward with his chin on his hand and his elbow braced on his husktop. His eyes are twinkling over the top of his glasses.

Not like Pheres when he gets pleased, all sparks and a light that makes your eyes water. But like he's amused.

Like he thinks the two of you are a joke.

"You two really are pupas, aren't you?"

When you give Alsike this look, she threatens to backhand you. Rmeros just laughs again, eyes squinching shut in a way that doesn't happen when he smiles.

Pheres bats away your hand as soon as you offer it, scrambling to his feet and sidling away. You huff, squaring your shoulders. It's not that your feelings are hurt! It's just that he's dumb."Well, if you're so smart," you burst out, "what would you do?"

"Befriend him," Rmeros says promptly, and it's your turn to laugh. His smile shifts a little at that, turns to a shape you can't quite identify.

"What's your name, again?" he asks.

"Nzinga," you say, and his smile fades.

2. ADVICE | 4.58 SWEEPS / 9 YEARS OLD

Everyone calls you Nzi, except for Pheres.

It's always been Sipara with him. He says that's how you introduced yourself, back when you first met, but you have your doubts: the only thing you remember from back then is knowing he was there, right on the other side of the thin plaster wall, and knowing that you hated it.

It was your hive! It was your hive and your home and it was bad enough there were trolls on every end of you, breathing through the walls, breathing above and below you. But then you realised there wasn't even a proper wall between the two of your hives, just something you could punch right through, and it'd been terrible. If it wasn't a wall, then it was your space. If it was your space, then he shouldn't have been there.

You bit him, the first time you'd met, just for the fact he was there and you didn't want him to be. You don't think you introduced yourself at all! Least, not before he'd wrestled you into the coon and half drowned you in it. Your lusus had shrieked and shrieked 'til you'd given in, and that'd been the first and last time those two had ever agreed on nothing.

But it doesn't matter, 'cause when someone calls your name, you always know it's Pheres. No matter how funny it sounds.

"Sipara!"

He's doing his silly skip-hop again. Some of the floaters do a little skip-kick to launch themselves into the air, and he's copied - except instead of floating up at the tip of his jump, he flickers and crackles, and when his feet hit the ground, he's two, three feet ahead. He might've been the way back at the hivestem starting off, but it only takes him a minute to reach you like this.

His face's still red and his breath all funny like he's been running. "Sipa," he says again, unsteadily. "Oh my god, why are you in a tree?"

You kick your legs down off of your branch. "'cause I'm getting apples, duh!"

He's on the other side of the fence, but Pheres is a brat: he doesn't even have to scramble, he just makes that little noise that means you ought to close your ganderbulbs, and then jumps right over it.

When you open your eyes, he's right below the tree, staring up. "Khirba said Simoom'll dock our horns if we get caught stealing." But he's already unwrapping the scarf around his torso, and holding it up like a basket.

There's a game to finding apples worth stealing. This early in the season, half of 'em are still green and barely worth the picking. The other half are all ripe, but the orchardkeepers like to tuck those branches away, keep em hidden. They're little flashes of yellow in all the green, and you have to dig to find them.

"Simoom's a stupid fart and I'll bite him if he tries." The apples you're throwing down are mealy and small, but it's food. Pheres doesn't care, past that.

But he didn't just turn up for food. "'Sides, why're you worrying? He's not gonna do anything to you," you call, sour, "since he's,  like, over the moon for your dumb moirail."

"Why're you even here? Thought you'd be reading your dumb books."

"I'm allowed to go out," he says, taking a bite of one of the apples. "I'm not stuck learning all the time."

"Just whenever I'm supposed to see you," you complain.

He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it.

".. I wanted to say you should be nicer to him," he finally says, all stiff and prim. "He thinks you're a brat. And you are!"

"Says the boy stealing all my apples!"

"I've only eaten one! And I'm holding them, so it's not stealing." He spits out an appleseed on the ground, then crunches through the core. "It's just a tax."

"That's dumb, and so's you." You shift. "I'm not gonna be nicer to him. He's awful."

"Well, you're awful, so the two of you should get along just fine."

You throw an apple right at his face for that.

There aren't that many apples. The grafters are too clever for that: they know people like to steal, and they don't like to make it profitable. So you have to climb all over the tree, stretching out your legs and arms far as they'll go as you pull and tug the branches. It's tiring!

But it's fun, too, and it's worth it for the way that Pheres is all but bouncing with excitement as his scarf starts to sag with the weight of it. Pheres has been hiding away in Rmeros's van for most of the hours of each night, coming in to visit you in breaks and right before he goes to sleep, like you're just something to keep him busy when his moirail isn't around. Like you're an afterthought.

But out here, you're his only thought. His big white eyes are watching your every move, and even if he's all salty over it, he's hanging off your every word. It's just like the way things used to be,  when it was just you and him and your lusus and no one else in the world who gave the slightest damn about either of you.

"The guards, " he says, and goes still.

'cause no matter how it feels, of course there's still other folks here. Simoom assigns people to walk the orchards just to crack filchers like you. Last time Majlis had caught you, she'd given you four lashes, while your pops practically burned Pheres for holding him back.

It's been perigees, but your back still aches at the thought. You hush.

It seems as if they might pass you right by. The orchards are big, and there aren't that many kids that wanna do field duty, not when they could be having fun out playing at guards or making things. There's only four kids at it any one night, and they like to split into two, the better to patrol. These two could be on their way home. They could be wrapping up for the night.

They're lingering at a tree three rows down, though, writing down where a fruit got bit straight in half by some echoing squeakbeast, and they're gonna be heading your way soon.

You're motioning for Pheres to scatter before you even look up. "You gotta go," you murmur, but he's taking, too: "- no, no, you have to go!"

"If you get switched again, then your lusus is gonna burn them, and Majlis'll have her mum eat him!" Now that they're studying the next tree, you can see the three pronged points of Majlis's horns. Ugh.

"If they catch you, Simoom's gonna kick your butt!"

"What's that matter? He does it anyway." Pheres huffs, looks away. His shoulders are up, but when he peeks back at the duo and catches a glimpse of your face, he blanches.

"No, no, I'll be fine," he says, quick as anything.  "He won't do anything! Like you said, ah, he likes Rmeros, and Rmeros already got onto Khirba for smacking me, so he isn't going to do anything but bark. I'll be fine, so just - oh, just hurry up!"

You slide more than climb down the tree, the jagged bark dragging at your palms and feet. But your skin's rougher than some dumb tree, and you don't feel nothing, not even when you finally slip to the ground.

Pheres's tying the scarf around your neck before your feet hit the dirt, the edges tucked so the apples are nestled close. He looks ridiculous without his wraps, all skin and bones and stubby little slashes of gray that barely count as grub scars. He must've been the tubbiest pupa.

He gives your ear a sharp tug. "You're thinking something awful," he informs you. "Stop! And go!"

"If she tries to smack you -"

"Sipa! "

"If she tries to smack you," you say, insistent, "tell her I'll snatch her horns off!"

"You're not even half her size," Pheres says. "You will not. Shoo! Go!"

He's smiling, so you go.

3. SMILE | 4.66 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

The worst thing about Rmeros, you decide, is that he's always smiling. When he's coming back from hunting, or teaching Pheres, or even talking to Simoom, he always looks amused, with his eyes all squinted and his seedflap curled up, like he's getting some joke no one else is hearing.

He even smiles at you. You hate it.

Pheres's not big on touching you unless the two of you're fighting: he's always leaning and sidling and shoving you, complaining that you're gonna knock him down until you get fed up and actually do. But he's sitting all prim and neat by Rmeros's feet, head leaned back so his horns are braced against his knee, and you hate that too.

Pheres wants you to be friends, though, and so it doesn't matter how much the sight of Rmeros makes your belly churn, or makes your mouth go dry and flinty. You've gotta play nice. That's the only reason why you're standing in his van, breathing in this stuffy-ass air that smells like mold and dust, and the only reason why you don't growl when he smiles at you, all flap and no bulbs.

He's got a wreath of herbs hanging from his hand, and a lizard in the other. It's dead, but it's not burned: your dad hasn't hunted for you for the last three perigees, so it's still all red, fresh, not bad in the slightest. There's even still blood dripping from it, the cherry red of the sorta critters that're okay to kill.

"It's very nice," Rmeros says, the skin of his nose all scrunched.

He's holding the lizard out like he's afraid of it. With each little plip-plop of the blood hitting the ground, his eyes go thinner.

"Congratulations on your.. hunt." If he got any more careful, his voice'd be wearing gloves.

"You couldn't have bled it first?" Pheres asks. A splash of blood had landed on his foot first thing, and he's been curled up tight ever since, face wrinkled like he bit into mold.

"Why would I do that? Dummy. I'm gonna make pudding out of it."

"For you guys," you add, fluttering your eyelashes, and Pheres perks right up.

You knew that'd win him over. He's always hungry, for all that he pretends he's not: your pops doesn't bring back enough food for the both of you, and he throws a fit if he thinks you're sharing too much. And you've always been able to get more from the communal pot, on account of the fact your lusus'll burn anyone that tries to stop you, but Pheres --

-- well, he just eats when people give him things, for the most part.

"Well." Rmeros gives the lizard a perfunctory shake, and then jerks his chin at you. It's a sharp little jerk! It's something that'd be more at home on Simoom's knife-edge of a face than his plump one. "Thank you for showing us before you began. Pheres. Take it back to her, will you?"

Pheres unfurls in a tangle of limbs, his head tilting up even as he pushes himself off the ground. He's in such a hurry he even forgets the desk behind him. The thwack of his horns hitting the wood's loud enough that you flinch, your noisechutes pinning back, but though his face goes red, he doesn't pause.

And he only just barely makes a face when he takes the lizard. "Here, Sipa," he says. He isn't nearly as good as hiding his voice. It's gone all sour and terse, and you can practically hear him vibrating with the urge to drop it every time the blood drips.

When he holds the lizard out to you, you shake your head. "Put it on the table," you demand, and he's eager enough to let go that he doesn't even question you. Eager enough for that, and, well -- he always likes free food.

You push past Rmeros, your soundflaps up high. He's just staring. Good! If Pheres wants you to be nice, you'll do it -- but you'll do it your way, so that everyone can see. If Rmeros wants to gawk at how nice you're being, well, good.

"Go wash your hands, dude, you're being gross." The trick to bullying Pheres, you've found out, is just ordering him to do what he wants to do 'til he thinks everything you say's gotta be like that. Alsike says it's on account of the fact he's a creature of habit.

Whydah says he's just biddable, and they don't say it even half as fond. "And get me a pot," you add. "A pot, and a - a -"

"A knife! I don't think we have cardamom, Sipa." He steps daintily around the blood you're tracking, reaches under the counter to pull out a drawer you didn't even know was there. "Good! Cardamom's gross," you say, wrinkling your nose.

He places the pot on the stove, then starts rummaging through a different drawer that's filled with little vials. (What does anyone even need that many vials for?) "Well, it doesn't matter if you like it. We have to have cardamom." He's so confident, like he's ever cooked a single thing in his whole life. "And the ginger! Rmeros, do you have any ginger? Well, I guess we'll find it later. Ah, you've never made pudding, right? First, we start with the flour --"

"We," Rmeros says flatly, "aren't doing anything. Pheres, what in heaven's sake are you doing? Put that down."

You'd found a knife all hidden away in a block of wood. Pheres's stilled in the corner of your eye, too far to see his expression, but near enough you can see his face go even brickier.

Whydah's right. He is biddable.

Well, you aren't! The first swoop of the knife takes off the head, easy as anything for all that the blade skids on the counter. (It leaves a scratch in the wood. Who makes counters out of wood?) Pheres jumps at the clang as it strikes the counter. Worse yet, he trills at you, with a quick, furtive step forward. You don't pay him any mind.

You aren't a wriggler to be minded. And you're not doing anything wrong.

You're lifting your arm for the second swing when something closes around your wrist.

Rmeros's hand is hot, hot, hot, hotter than Pheres's skin, hotter than even the stuffy air in the van. And his grip is tight. When you try to wrench free, you can't get so much as a wriggle off. "Hey," you protest, twisting. "Let go!"

He takes the knife with his other hand and places it gingerly on the counter. He isn't even half as gentle with you. His grip on your wrist is starting to hurt! You can practically feel your bones creaking, and shifting, like they might just up and break, and all he's doing is holding still.

"That's enough of this," he says. It'd be better if he was flat, or annoyed, or anything, but he's just.. talking, bland and brisk, like Pheres isn't wide-eyed and terrorstruck behind him. "If you want to make a mess of a kitchen, do it in your own damn hive. I'm told you have one? Somewhere?"

"And no, Pheres, I do not have ginger. Or cardamom. Honestly."

"Leggo! I'm not making a mess!" You're going shrill. Your wrist hurts, and he's not letting go, no matter how much you thrash. "I'm making pudding, so let GO of me, that's, like, like, what people do --"

"It's true," Pheres interjects, so quiet you can barely hear him. "It's.. she's trying to be nice."

"Bringing dead vermin into my hive and tracking blood across my floor is nice? You people have such unusual standards." Now he's gone flat. "If the two of you want to create a mess, then you can do it in her space, on your own time."

"Not in mine." He pauses, glances at Pheres. "Ours," he amends, and oh! His voice is so, soflat, flatter than the racks they stretch the skins out on, but Pheres brightens like that little aside's a kindness.

Like Rmeros doesn't have you by the fucking wrist.

That's fine. If Rmeros won't let go, and Pheres's turned traitor, you'll just help yourself. So you pin your noiseflaps, tensing your entire body, and then you lunge up, sinking your teeth into his arm.

The scream is gratifying. You've wanted to do this since the first time his rotten ping woke you up in the middle of the day. It's been a long time coming! The scream is gratifying, but the way the world goes white when his free hand slams into your central struts is not. He lets go of your wrist and you let go of his arm at the same time, and momentum sends you skidding over into the desk. The edge digs into your side, hard as any knife, an unfortunate match to the way your poor struts are throbbing.

Your mouth is full of iron. When you spit on the ground, it's brick red.

Pheres's looking between the two of you, wide-eyed, like he can't figure out which one he wants to help. Rmeros's arm is bleeding and his face is pale like a mask, his hands curled in tight. And you're hissing like your broken teakettle, horns down in case he decides to try and hit you again.

(Try. Let him try! You'll rip him apart.)

"I told you to let go," you snap, soundchutes still down, your chest a white-hot pain. "I told you --"

"Pheres," Rmeros says. There's a shake to his voice, just the barest hint of a quaver. It takes you a moment to realise it's a warning rasp. "Get her the fuck out of here."

He doesn't need to be told twice. Pheres's grabbing hold of your arm before you can even process it, tugging you along, careful to keep him between you and Rmeros. It's only when you're nearly at the door that he stops, looks back. You can't see his face, with him blocking you like this. (Like he could stop you, if you wanted to take another bite out of his dumb moirail.)

You don't need to see his face, though, when you can hear his voice.

"Ah. Rmeros! Are you sure -- do you want me to get you a bandage? Some wraps? Alsike has lots," he says, worried. "They're free!"

"What I want," his moirail says, flat, "is the both of you out of here  before I cull you."

4. MOVING ON OUT | 4.68 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

"Ghosts aren't real, Sipa," Pheres says, like you're simple. "When a troll dies, they're dead."

The smile he's got plastered on is as fake as the yellow of Myljis's symbol - everyone knows she's practically orange, no matter how much lemon she slathers on her skin.

Tonight, you managed to catch him just as he was leaving the river. That's all he ever is anymore: he crawls in the 'coon after you go to sleep and he wakes up before you do, and if he's not at Rmeros's hive, he's off in the damn water. His braids are still wet. He stinks of salt.

"They are! Whydah says --" you protest, but he cuts you off with a laugh.

"Since when have you believed what Whydah says?"

Since he stopped being around, you're tempted to say. But then he'll just get mad, and it's not nearly as fun as it used to be to wind him up now. Used to be that you could say the right thing, he'd take a swing at you, and that'd be it. You'd be on the ground, practically scrapping for your life!

Or at least, so he wouldn't ground your face in the ground and lecture you on being civilized.

Now-a-days, he just skips straight to the lecture, and if you pop him, he just gets mad. He shouted at you last time 'til you cried, and he's never done that, not even when you cracked his horn once when you were both little.

So you don't say anything. You just curl your lip at him, and he huffs right back at you, almost like he used to. "Whydah's superstitious and silly," he says, with a quick, nervous glance around to make sure they can't hear. They like to pop out of all the dark corners when you're least expecting it. "There aren't any ghosts in the river! I've been all over it, and I've never seen anything down there, except bones and kelp and clutter."

"There aren't even any fish! How's a ghost going to survive down there, if there're no fish?"

"It's a ghost, stupid. Why's it need fish?"

"Well -"

"Rmeros says," you drone with him, but while he goes red, he doesn't stop talking. "Ghosts are a silly thing for a person to believe in. Once you're dead, you're dead, and that's that."

There's something hesitant in that, though. It takes you a moment, then you whistle, impressed. "He'd better not let Alsike hear that."

Ancestor worship is big in your hivestem. All the older kids do it, even Simoom, though he grumbles something fierce about wasting good woolbeasts by burning it all up. "'cause he can't be a part of the stem if he doesn't believe." You don't, but that's just because ancestors are silly. Who cares what a couple of dead fogeys think? It's not 'cause you think they're not real, like some of the trolls.

Whydah doesn't think they're real, and that's why they spend most of their time out hunting. Everyone gets nasty mean when you don't fit into the flock.

Maybe Pheres's remembering that, because he's quiet even longer this time, like he's turning over the words in his head. "Alsike already knows," he finally says, careful like each sound's glass.

"And she didn't kick 'em out?" You let your flaps pin down in disbelief, and his face goes bricky. "I don't believe it," you announce. "You're fibbing!"

"I'm not," he protests.

"If she knew, she wouldn't let him be a part of the hivestem."

"Maybe he doesn't want to be a part of the hivestem, Sipara."

It's your turn to go quiet.

Pheres lifts his chin. "It's not like this is a big hivestem," he says, and if each word's glass, now he's talkin' like he's afraid he'll break them. "His is better! He's from Dimašqa, did you know? He said his hivestem is bigger than our entire plot, and it's one of the smaller ones. And no one even has to work there, not unless they want to."

"Can you imagine that?"

You try to picture a hivestem bigger than yours. How tall would that be? A dozen stories, reaching up into the sky - it'd be like the orchard, maybe, but with hives on every end, trolls blocks on each spreading branch.

You can't picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. "So he doesn't need our hivestem. He's got his own, and it's lovely," he says for you, when you don't answer. He's been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. "And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to."

It's rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won't come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, 'except instead of draining out thoughts, it's not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, 'til the only thing that's left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he's watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

".. but you aren't," is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. "Right?"

"Ah." He lets go of his hair. It's still dripping on the sand behind him as he folds his arms, wrapping them around himself. "Not right now!" He starts to laugh, then stops, wrinkles his nose. "Ah. That'd be silly. The rains are about to come, and then we won't be able to drive very much at all. But.. in a few perigees, maybe."

"When it's dry."

Everything about you right now is treacherous. If you could fight your body, you would! But your soundchutes are pinned flat and your bulbs are wide and the air's going wavy like the sun's about to come up. It isn't. It's just tears, staining everything a rheumy red, and that's even worse.

Pheres's gone pale and wide-eyed. He isn't smiling anymore.

"Oh," he says, distressed: "- oh, oh no, don't get upset! Why are you upset?"

If you say anything, you'll cry. So you clamp your fangs shut tight, but Pheres keeps talking. "Do you want to come?" His eyes are getting wet. He always gets upset when you get upset, and sometimes it's fun to use that, but right now, you don't want to cry. You just want to shut up and wait to calm down, but --

"You can come, too! I promise, I promise, Sisi, don't cry --"

-- he's going to make you talk.

"No, I can't!" You are blubbering. There's thick orange drops rolling down your face and clouding your vision and even swiping at your bulbs with your hands doesn't stop the tears. And Pheres's just staring. "You're going to go and leave me and I can't come, because -- because he hates me!"

"I won't leave you!" Pheres steps forward, but he stops when you hiss. You don't want him near you, not when his hands are twitching like he wants to touch you. Pheres doesn't like being touched, not 'less you're fighting, and you don't want to fight him right now. "I won't leave you, and - and you're being silly. He doesn't hate you at all," he says, soft, like you both know it's a lie.

5. KNIVES | 4.70 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Everyone in the hivestem colony hates Rmeros, and that's just the truth.

Alsike thinks he’s weird. “You don’t get pale for a pupa,” she said to you one night when you’d been helping her cook one of the big kills. “Everything’s supposed to be even, Nzi-fizzy. Can’t be even if one of you’s about to get on a ship and the other’s barely out of the caverns.”Hamsin agrees with whatever Alsike says. Whydah doesn’t like him, though they’ve never said why, on account of the fact they barely say anything.

The only people that like him are Simoom, who’s a rotten old ponce with a rotten old crush, and Pheres. And Pheres doesn’t count. Pheres would like a daywalker, if it paid attention to him!

But even though everyone hates Rmeros, you’re the only one willing to do anything about it. Which is fine, ‘cause if Pheres ditching you’s taught you anything, it’s that you’re pretty great at working alone.

("I won't leave you," he'd said all prettily, and then he'd packed up his things and moved into Rmeros's van. You hope he gets to that stupid city and the hivestem's are all dead.)

Maybe you always had Pheres at your back before, trailing you like a dumb, gangly shadow whenever you needed to teach someone a lesson. (For stealing his shit, for making fun of your dad, for trying to sass you - there's always a reason to rough someone up.) But it wasn't like he was ever much help in a fight, 'cept for getting in your way if he felt you were getting too rough. He never really helped.

So it's not like you're working alone at all, really, 'cause what's changed?

Except that usually, you use this knife on animals, not tires.

Who knew that rubber was so thick? You're having to saw through it, and even that's barely scratching the surface. All it's doing is making your arms ache. And your soundchute's ache, too. The noise's so loud, you don't even notice when the van door pops open.

".. what're you doing?" Pheres's scrubbing at his face like he's trying not to fall asleep, eyes half-lidded, but you can hear the sound of snoring drifting out of the lookout, clear as anything. No way that big of a sound could have ever come from your reedy little hivemate: it's gotta be Rmeros. And if he's asleep, why isn't Pheres?

Because his hands are wrapped tight around a steaming mug, and it smells like the stuff the older kids drink. The stuff Khirba smacks you, when you try to steal a sip.

"Is that coffee?" you demand, but he's canting his head to the side, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Is that a knife?"

"I asked you first!" You shove it behind your back, putting on your most quarrelsome face. "You're not supposed to be drinking that!"

"I've got a lot of work to do. And no, you're not supposed to drink it. Your custodian doesn't care what I do." He's oozing along the side of the cart, forcing you to take a step back, pivot to keep him facing your front. And then he sparks,  just the once, and he's behind you, grasping your wrist.

"You do have a knife!" he hisses, outraged.

He doesn't keep your wrist. He's all bones, and while he's fast, he's never had the weight or strength or will to keep you: you twist free in a second, snarling loud enough to make him startle back.

There's fury churning in your gut, eating away at your tongue. You're doing this for him! You're doing this for him, and all he's doing is looking like you've messed up. His hands are clenched at his sides, and he's gone all sour and pinched. "Sipara, what is wrong with you-"

"Pheres." The snoring hasn't broken, but that's Rmeros's voice, not sleepy in the slightest. Pheres startles again, and your ears pin back. When you look at each other, it's hard to remember that you were just angry. You don't want Rmeros to come outside, you with a knife in your hand and rips in his tires.

Your wrist aches.

".. nothing," Pheres calls back. He's wide-eyed, but his voice barely squeaks at all. Maybe he doesn't want him to come out, either. "It was just a squeakbeast! I'll get rid of it."

He takes hold of your arm, tugs. You let your feet drag, but you let him pull you along when he hisses,  "Come on!"

He leads you away from the van in quick, hurried steps. The coffee keeps sloshing into your hands, but neither of you says a word until the van is behind you, and you're safely in the shadow of the walls. There's holes in it where the stones have fallen out, and he curls up in one, knees drawn up right against the curve of the bedrock.

"Where's your custodian?" he asks. When you just stare, he fixes it, peevish: "- your pops! Your bird! Where's he at?"

"Sleeping, duh. Same as always." He's been trying to stay awake more again, ever since Rmeros came, but he's no good for it. "Why?"

"'cause he's supposed to be stopping you! That's his job."

"What d'you know about his job? You don't have a lusus," you say, baffled, and you're gonna say more, but Pheres wilts.

It's baffling. That's the sort of thing that's never bothered him before. You're not being cruel: it's just a fact, like how you haven't any horns to speak of. He's not supposed to get thin-lipped and unhappy over it.

"I do have a lusus," he says, curling up tighter. He's so put off he doesn't even complain when you settle down near him, back againsnt the wall. "It's not my fault he's dead!"

He takes a sip of the coffee. "It's not my fault he's dead," he repeats, quieter this time and peevish.

He's never ever been salty about this.

You've seen his weird, dead dad. You live with him! It's impossible not to have seen him: Pheres used to keep it sitting on the edge of the coon til your thrashing tipped it in one night, and now he just keeps it around the nutritionblock. He moves it, sometimes, but it's the same way he likes to shuffle around everything. It's not like he actually ever cared about it.

"Um." You don't know how to deal with him when he's like this. A few perigees ago, you'd have started a fight, 'cause after that first slap, he doesn't have room for anything other than getting mad. But he won't fight back if you hit him anymore, and you don't think you could say anything mean enough to get him spitting right now.

The way he's acting right now, he'd just cry.

Or he'd leave.

You scoot down and lean in against him. Normally, he'd bolt away at this point, or kick up a fuss, or smack you 'til you moved. But he just exhales, loud and heavy like he's pushing all the air outta his lungs. Emboldened, you butt your head against his arms til he lets you rest your cheek againsnt his knee. "You're gonna get hair in my coffee," he grumps, but it's halfhearted. ".. and I'm still mad at you."

There's a hundred things you could say! But you swallow 'em all, because fighting right now seems like an awful idea. Saying anything at all seems dumb, so you just curl in tighter against him, shouldering your way closer 'til he's dropped his knees enough you can slide an arm around them.

Alsike will cuddle with you sometimes. Khirba, if he's in a good mood. But Pheres never, everlets you touch him like this.

"If you want a lusus," you say, meek, "you can have mine."

That gets a laugh from him. Everything feels soft and strange right now, but the sound warms you. Pheres might be being strange, but his laugh's still the same, all sharp and mean. "I don't want yours!" he huffs. "Yours is horrid."

"Yeah, well.. why not just carry yours, then?"

".. what, under my arm?"

"In a bag!" He's dropped his knees. It's a tight fit, but you climb all the way into his lap, writhing around until your face is looking at his, and your hair is getting caught on the stones. "Like, Alsike's got lots and lots with broken bits, and all she ever does is make stuff, and she likes you, so - so you could ask her! I bet she'd make one just for you!"

It's a brilliant idea. All of your ideas are, of course, but this one is especially perfect, because Pheres's brightening, one watt at a time.

"It'd look silly," he protests, but it's half-hearted.

"You look silly! With those big dumb horns -"

"Rmeros says they're dignified!"

"That's only 'cause his are worse." You grab one curly horn and give it a yank. He's not moving. He's not smacking you. He's letting you sit on him and you don't even have to hit him and it feels like your entire body's full of butterflies and bubbles all frothing to get out. "I bet if you went and hid with Simoom's fluffbeasts, he wouldn't even notice you were there, that's how silly these are! And - and - and if you made your hair all big, instead of lank,  he wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even if you went up and bit him -"

"I'm not going to do that!" He jerks his head hard, twisting his horn free with a huff, and the bubbles pop all at once.

"I'd rather go gargle in the river," he complains. But he doesn't push you out of his lap. He doesn't push you off at all.

6. THICKER THAN WATER | 4.74 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Pheres is at the river. He’s never at your hivestem anymore, or at the hiveblock - he doesn’t even come home to get his share of the rations you collect every week, because Rmeros thinks the food here is disgusting. He likes his coffee that he gets all the way from Dimasqa, and food that he bought in a different district entirely.

“A more civilized district,” Pheres had whispered to you in Rmeros’s snooty voice, back when making fun of him was a thing your hivemate would still do. Now he gets mad and pinched if you talk bad about him at all, and the last time you made a joke about lamwas, he didn’t speak to you for a week.

But even though he never comes home, you always know where he is, because Pheres is always at the river.

Every time you see him on the shore, it makes you want to snatch him up. Make him move! He’s so little, and the river’s so big, full of ghosts and the bones of dead kids ready to pull him in. When you were a pupa, you’d stand right here and holler and fuss until he got away from it, and you’d cry every time his head bobbed under the water. You knew he’d pop back out.

Pheres is one of the only kids that goes down to the river, him and Whydah, and it’s practically a part of 'em. If you bled Pheres, sometimes you think all that’d pour out is water and the red-pink mud. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.

He isn’t in the river tonight.

“Sipara,” he says, prim and strict, like he’s the voice from the schoolfeed. His feet are dangling in the water, kicking up silt and dust. If it was any other river, there’d be crocs nibbling at his walkstubs right now, but nothing in this water’s alive anymore. Sweeps and sweeps ago, some wader dumped salt in the water until everything shrivelled up and died, and it’s been that way ever since. Pheres told you that, and Whydah told him, so you know it’s gotta be true: Whydah never lies, not ever, not even when they should.

(It’s why they don’t go down to the river anymore. No point in it, they’d told you, the one time you’d asked: they’d dredged out all the stuff worth taking back when they were your age, all the trinkets left on the bones that could be sold and the horns hanging loose on their beds that could be carved into arrowheads or jewelry or caps.)

But dead or not, though, you don’t like to get near the water. You dawdle a good few feet behind him instead, feet scuffing at the dirt, like you’re just bored and not spooked at all. “What’re you doing?” you demand, petulant. “You haven’t been hive in, like, days.”

“Bennui misses you,” you add, and he laughs.

“You’re not supposed to fib. That’s rude.” He pats the ground next to him, soft at first, then insistent.

You don’t move. He’s been ignoring you! He doesn’t get to play at this now, like everything’s fine. His hands still, and then he folds them in his lap, prim as if he’d never done that in the first place.

For a second, you almost think he slouches in on himself, but nah. Pheres sits like he’s got a tree growing up his spine, just like his dumb moirail.

“I’ve been busy. Rmeros’s teaching me how to copy.” The mud squelches between your toes as you slink closer. “It takes forever,” he adds, glancing back at you. “He wants it all by hand. He says that’s the proper way of doing it.”

“Copy what?” You've only been in Rmeros's hive a handful of times, and never after you brought in the lizard. This is the first time you kinda regret it. You hate not knowing things. It's a personal affront, which's one of Pheres's stodgy words.

“Books! You saw them the first time, remember? He gets them and he writes them down and then he sells them. It's prestigious," he says, preening, probably as much over the word as Rmeros's silly books.

(Selling books. Who'd even buy them?)

"You don’t need to sleep over there for that."

“I can’t work around you,” he objects, squinching his face up at you. “You’d dump something on the books!”

You wrinkle your nose. “Would not!”

“You would too! Even if it wasn’t on purpose. I’ve seen your manuals.” There isn’t nothing you can say to that. You dug out all the tech books from the hive ibrary, soon as you cracked open your first grub and realised you didn’t know anything of what you were looking at. They’d been nice enough when you started, but. Well.

If you’re not spilling tea, or dropping food, then Bennui’s fighting the pages in protest to the pictures. That’s not your fault, though, but you know Pheres figures it is, so you pooch out your lip, for all he can’t see it.

But maybe he knows you’re doing it anyhow, because he laughs. “And, ah, he’s been teaching me other stuff, too! Like..”

He bites his lip, turns his head just enough to peer back at you. It’s tilted to the side, so his braids are trying their best to slip out of the twine he’s wrapped 'em in. It’s the look he uses on Alsike when he’s trying to get her to braid some of her bright yarn into his hair. “Come here, and I’ll show you!”

Reluctantly, you tromp over, stopping a breath behind him.

He makes a show of it, to lure you in closer: he lifts up his hand, shoulders angled so you just barely can’t see, and when you shuffle a little closer, he wraps his fronds in closed. He doesn’t move 'em until you’re at his side.

And then he turns to face you, each frond  curling open one at a time, slow as the water in the riverbed. He's chewing on his lip, and he keeps peeking up at you, furtive little glances like he's tryin' to figure out what you're thinking.  Then he opens it all the way, all at once.

There’s a light in the center of his palm, dim but flickering. For a moment, it brightens as he breathes in, steadies himself - and then you make a noise, delighted, and it dissolves.

“He’s teaching you to make lights,” you say, awed. Your eyes are stinging a little. It made your scalp crawl, the sight of it: white as bone, as bright and garish as if he’d held the sun in his hand. The sort of thing you’re only supposed to see if you’re dead.

It wasn’t pretty, not precisely, but there’s something tight in your chest that makes you want to see it again.

When you look up from his hand, he’s bleeding.

Only for a moment, then he takes in your wide eyes and starts scrubbing at his snout. His eyes are bright, almost as bright as the globe in his hand, and it’s a stark difference to the ruddy stain on his face. “So I don’t need a torch when I'm working,” he says, proud, like he ain’t bothered at all. “I’m not very good at it yet - or, ah, holding it, haha - but Rmeros is amazing at it.”

“Rmeros can do lights! Dozen of them! Practically millions.” He’s got to be fibbing, but he sounds as proud as a fang-billed abirdination right now. (Used to be that he sounded that way talking about you. The tightness in your cavity's got a different source, now.) “And he says I’ll be able to do it like that, too, if I just keep practicing –”

“I don’t think anyone else starts bleeding over practice,” you say, flat, and his eyes dim.

“Well! Maybe nobody else is practicing the right way.” He lifts his chin, daring you to challenge him, but you don’t take it. Maybe once, it would’ve been an invitation to a real argument! A real scuffle! But nowadays, you argue too much, Pheres just leaves. “Rmeros says it happens to everyone, when they work hard. You just have to -” He waves his hand. “- push through it, 'til it sorts itself out.”

That’s dumb, you want to say. But you swallow the words, and you just flop down right next to him instead, shoving him with your shoulder. He goes tense, but all you do next is drop your head onto his shoulder, nestling it againsnt the curve of his horn.

(Once, you could’ve just slid your head right up againsnt his neck if he'd ever held still long enough to let you, but all his horns have been doing is growing, growing, growing, the past few sweeps. Like all the inches that ought’ve gone to his legs are going straight to his rack instead.)

“I’m tired of talking about your dumb moirail,” you announce. “What’re you even doing out here?”

You can feel the rise and fall of his chest. You can feel the way he’s staying stiff as a board, like he expects you to haul off and smack him. You think he might shrug you off, he’s staying so tightly wound, but all he does is sigh. “I’m thinking. Or trying.”

“About what?” you persist.

He doesn’t answer for the longest time. It’s just your breath, his and the sound of the river lapping at the shore, with the occasional splash of his feet kicking in it.

“.. Rmeros believes in ancestors,” is what he finally says, grumpily. “If you laugh, I’ll push you in the river.”

“I’ll drag you with me!” You bury your face in his shoulder, and then in your hands on top of it.

“You’re laughing!”

“I’m not,” you squeak, finally breaking for air. Your shoulders are still hitching. “I’m not, I promise! Don’t you shove me in there! Holy smokes. Like - like -”

Your voice is still hitching. He takes pity on you. “In all of them,” he says, pained. “In old ones. In new ones. In his own personal one. I didn’t know those were a thing. Did you?”

“No! How come you know they’re real?”

There’s another long pause, but this time, you think he’s doing it on purpose, 'cause he’s watching you side-long, and there’s something a little sly in his voice when he speaks up next. “'cause he told me,” he says, lowering his voice like it’s a secret. “I asked, and he told me all about them.”

“D'you know, he thinks everyone’s got their own personal ancestor?  Not like the shared ones. Ones just for us. All of us! Even me.” There’s pride there, begrudging but still clear. You’ve seen the way Pheres looks at Rmeros, like his signmate’s a promise of something he’ll grow into. It makes sense he’d like the idea of his own personal ghost.

“So, what, why doesn’t he burn stuff for 'em?” Alsike had been sour on Rmeros right from the start, but him refusing to join in the burning had set her feathers all up. All the older kids participate! It’s a part of what makes you all a hive, and not just a cluster of kids all jostling for space.

“He said that’s just superstitious nonsense.” Pheres rattles off the word with ease, like it ain’t longer than any good word should be, and he pays no mind to the way you grimace. “He thinks it’s just a thing that shows how you’re gonna be.”

“It’s all in the blood. He's got it, and I've got it, and our ancestors had it, too, and that's why we're all the same.” And he doesn’t sound shamed about the pride in that, not at all. “Or, ah. That’s what he says!”

“So what about me? Do I have one?"

He’s slouched forward, gradually, unbending like he ain’t even noticed. Relaxed against you like the two of you are friends, and like you’re not just another person he’s been ignoring. (Another person he thinks he needs to fight.)

But now he stiffens. “What about you?”

“What about my ancestor, you danderfluff?” you demand, nudging him. You don’t know why he’s gone all uncomfotrable on you again, but it’s frustrating, after you just spent all this time getting him to loosen up. “You got one! Do I got one?”

“Um.”

He’s so bad at lying. “Well? Did you ask him? You asked him, right?”

“.. yes?” He exhales slowly. He isn’t looking at you: he’s staring at the water, and his feet have gone still. “I asked him about yours. Because if I have one, and he has one, then you ought to have one, too. It.. ah, it wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”

“So what he’d say?” You shouldn’t be pushing, maybe. Every bit of him’s screaming you ought to not ask, but if he won’t come out and say it, you won’t pay it any mind.  If it’s your ancestor, then it’s yours to know.

“.. he said blood’s like water,” Pheres says, miserable, “and that means sometimes, it’s just bad.”

7. GUIDANCE | 4.78 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

“He thinks I’m dirty,” you wail, burrowing your face in Alsike’s lusus. “And so does Pheres!”

Simoom’s lusus might be the prettiest, but Alsike’s hoofed hopbeastmom is basically just perfect: she lets you scoop her up with no more protest than a sleepy blink.

“I hate him,” you tell her, burrowing your face in her headfluff. All around you, the tanning pits stinks of acid and burnt flesh, but Alsike takes good care of her mum, brushes her out and washes her every day. She smells like the same oil Alsike uses when she braids hair, familiar enough to make you ache. “But if I cull him, Pheres’ll cull me. I don’t know what to do!”

She bleats at you. You shake her. “I can’t do that!”

"Can’t do what, sugargrub?”

Alsike is stripping off her leather gloves and shrugging off her apron. She’s not the head tanner, but she’s in line for it: everyone knows that when Cendol gets conscripted, she’ll take over the tanning pits and be in charge of everyone that works in 'em.

Right now, though, she’s just another tanner, and that means she can take the time to talk to you and Pheres, when you dare to come near. The pits stink. You’re going to smell like this for whole nights.

“I need to talk to you,” you blurt out, spinning to face her. Alsike’s lusus snuggles closer to you, rumbling away in that weird way that means she’s happy.

It’s a good thing your pops is asleep at the hive, or else he’d get jealous.

“You do, Nzi? You sure? 'cause I thought for certain you were here to talk to Simoom.” Alsike’s smiling, fond as a lusus, and this is why you don’t like her. Pheres is over the moon for the way she dotes on him, but that’s just him being Pheres: he’s perfectly content being someone’s pet, if they give him a pretty enough bow.

“No!” You don’t hiss at her, because Alsike isn’t like Whydah. To be fair, she isn’t like Majlis, either. She won’t switch you, but a smack isn’t much better. “I don’t wanna joke! This is important!”

“Oh, well, if it’s important…” But she’s eyeing you like she’s taking you seriously, at least, even if it does take her forever to put away her things.

Alsike’s a flatscan like you, and the hivestem isn’t built for the likes of either of you. Soon as he got big enough to realise what yellow meant, Simoom offered her a hiveblock down in the basement, where it’s cooler, and easier to get down to. But she'd said no. Her hiveblock’s all the way up on the third floor, halfway up the stem, and she liked it just fine, for all that getting up there’s a matter of climbing up ropes, down the ladders, jogging across the roofs and across the hand-holds. Alsike takes her mum after the first climb, but you’re still sticky with sweat by the time you make it up to her hiveblock.

Alsike’s hiveblock’s like you and Pheres’s, save there’s no hole in the wall to your little closet of a block. She’s got the same hammocks near the window, the same sliver of counter and cupboards, a 'coon in one corner and a door to an ablution in the other. If it weren’t for the fact her roof’s so much lower, and there’s so much junk on the ground, you might’ve thought she’d taken you back to your hive.

But there’s so much junk. You step on a bag of chips, and it crinkles. “You’re gonna get bugs,” you announce unhappily, dragging yourself into the hammock.

“You wanna clean, Nzi?” She’s bringing over two glasses of water, and she sets it carefully in your hands. “'cause in that case, I’ll get you a bag. But I thought you wanted to talk.”

Pheres is Alsike's troll. When he was little, she offered to take charge of 'em, make sure his hair didn’t end up full of nits and he wasn’t hauling disease back to the hive. She even used to bring him food, 'fore you got old enough to hunt for you and him and he got clever enough to filch without getting caught.

He adores her. But you don’t like her, not at all, and the stickiness of your distaste is making your speechfrond feel like stone.

But you gotta talk. Alsike’s piling with Simoom, and Simoom’s in charge of everything. When he hollers, folks listen - and if anyone can knock Rmeros out of your hivestem, it’s him.

So you talk.

“- and he wants to put me in a bag, and drown me in the river!”

At some point, you put down your glass all carefully in the hammock, and then you’d started pacing. It makes it easier to talk, somehow, get out all of this frustration and anger, 'cause you certainly can’t take it out on Alsike. Still, you wish you could! Your chin’s tucked down and your horns are up, and if you thought she wouldn’t smack you silly for it, you’d be scratching them on the wall just to get the itch out of them.

“He’s not going to drown you, pupa,” Alsike says, soothing, and you whirl on your heel to hiss at her.

“Duh! I’d, like, rip him in half if he tried!”

Alsike’s mouth goes pinched like she’s trying not to laugh. Slap or no, you give her the nastiest look you can muster. “And I don’t care if he wants to,” you snap. “He’s awful and I hate him and I wish he’d try! But he keeps telling Dys things, and - and -”

You don’t cry. You fell head-first out of one of the orchard-trees once when Alsike had passed under and startled you, and you’d gashed your forehead right open in the process. You’d bled and bled, and Pheres had screamed like you were going to die, and it’d felt like it. But you didn’t cry!

You aren’t going to cry now, no matter how much your eyes are stinging. “He’s gonna make him hate me,” you say, or you try. It comes out as a wail, and you grab hold of your hair, pulling it hard in front of your face.

You’re not going to cry. If you say it enough times, you won’t.

“Oh, pupa.” Alsike’s being gentle, and if you hate Rmeros, right now, you hate her too. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“No! It’s -” She thinks you’re being a wriggler. She thinks you’re being a dumb, jealous pupa, and maybe you are, but that isn’t what’s important right now, is it? So you take a breath, scrubbing at your face with your headfluff, and if the world’s a little orange when you open your eyes, you’re just gonna ignore it.

“He’s telling Dys things! And they’re all wrong. And he keeps getting different, in - in a really bad way. He’s unhappy.” She isn’t looking anything but sympathetic. Alsike helped him when he was little and small and alone, and you thought she’d help him now, but he’s not any of that anymore, is he?

He’s not even her pet anymore. He's Rmeros’s, and his dumb moirail hasn’t even brought out a bow.

“His face bleeds whenever he uses his sparks,” you say, desperate, and finally, she looks concerned.

“Every time?”

“Every time! And he thinks it’s normal!”

She goes quiet at that. It’s suddenly hard to breathe, because her brow’s gone all furrowed, and she’s biting her lip like she’s thinking. Simoom’s the only one who can tell Rmeros to get out, but he loves Rmeros, and he hates Pheres. If he thought Rmeros would strip him down and sell him for parts, he'd probably give him  an entire hivestem suite.

But if Alsike asks - if Alsike says something to him -

“Nzi, dear,” she says, “have you tried speaking to him? They’re signmates. Maybe it is normal for their psionics. I’ve seen stranger things…”

Your face must fall. “They’re moirails. They know best. But don’t worry, sugargrub,” she says, gentle as anything. “I’ll speak to Dys for you.”

8. KNOWLEDGE | 4.98 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

If the sun doesn’t kill you, Rmeros’s stupid lusus will.

Every time she exhales, moisture beads on your throatstem, and her head bobs, making her feelstrands skitter across her skin.

Every time you inhale, you get the stench of rotting meat, heavy enough that you can taste it.

You’ve seen the smaller lusii before play with the mice and birds in the court. They’ll pin them and bite them and break their wings, and when they start to get bored, they’ll let them go free.

And then they’ll eat them.

Well, she’s got you on the ground, her mitts digging into the meat of your rotationropes, and you think she’s past the point of playing.

When the door of the motorcart creaks open, you don’t even bother looking. It’s probably just Rmeros again, back to gloat or whatever the fuck he does. He’d seen you outside the van, with his mum’s teeth on your shoulder like a warning and the rock on the ground, and he’d fucking laughed - and then just went inside, like that’s okay.

You’re part of a hivestem! No one lets their lusii attack each other, because that’s the rules.

No eating the lusii: no eating their fucking kids.

(But Rmeros isn’t a part of the hivestem, is he? He’s always made sure of that.)

But the footsteps are all wrong for Rmeros: he’s big and he walks like it, with galloping steps that send dirt flying, but this is all pitter-patter in comparison. And maybe the roarbeast notices, because she pauses from where she’s nuzzling at your throat, her lip curled enough that you can feel the press of her fangs.

(You’d just wanted to put a rock through his window. His mum wasn’t supposed to be here! His mum is never here.)

Her ears flick once, twice - then they snap back as a dark hand cracks her straight across the head.

“What,” Pheres hisses, “do you think you're doing? Get off of her!”

You can see dusty feet out of the corner of your eye, but you can’t see him proper. You don’t need to: you can hear the impact of him hitting her again, the sharp crack of a hand hitting fur.

When she growls - a deep, rumbling sound that makes her entire body shake, and her claws sink into your skin - he snarls right back. If you tilt your head, you can just barely see him, throwing one twiggy shoulder into hers like it’ll do anything but give her an ache.

“Move, you stupid cat!”

It takes you a moment to realise she actually is. There’s pain shooting up your legs as her tail lashes against them, but more important is the way she sinks into your shoulders - and then the weight evaporates all at once as she bounds over and off of you.

You’re scrambling up and backwards as soon as you can. Your body is screaming like someone’s driving iron into their poor hoofbeasts heels, but you can breathe, and Pheres is right there, fussing.

Rmeros’s mum is sitting only a few feet off, watching both of you with slit eyes and a curled lip, but he isn’t paying her any mind. “Sipa! Sipa sipa sisi - are you okay? Did she hurt you?” he’s saying instead, hands flitting across your face, tilting it up and to the side, checking your neck -

- brushing against the browning skin of your shoulders  -

There’s snarling. It only when Pheres jerks back, his eyes bright with alarm, that you realise it’s coming from you.

You’ve bit him before. There’s ragged white lines on his arms where you’ve sunk your teeth in and held, scrabbled and scratched until there was red in your mouth or until a fist hit your horns, or a foot landed in your gut. You see him remembering that in the wideness of his bulbs, in the way that they flick down towards your teeth, but you can’t stop growling, because everything hurts.

Then he hisses at you. “Stop it,” he snaps, sliding in close, knocking one bony shoulder under your arm. He’s emanating that familiar warmth, and it’s painful and soothing all at once. “I know it hurts, Sisi, but you’re not going to bite me, so just calm down.”

There’s needles in your shoulders, sparks of pain climbing down your arms like bugs under your skin. Pheres is moving, and you can’t seem to remember to walk with him, so he’s mostly just dragging you, his mouth a thin slash.

You’re still growling.

But you don’t bite him.

The sky is purple by the time the two of you finally make it back to the hivestem.

“I didn’t think you were gonna come,” you say later. There’s bandages around your shoulders, wrapped triple tight and slathered in all the sterilisation fluid that Pheres could find. You’re lying in the recuperacoon, your chin resting on the edge, and sopor and exhaustion’s making you sleepy: it’s hard to talk, but you make yourself form the words anyway.

Pheres is curled up by your coon, his knees all tucked in and wrapped up in that way that means he’s thinking. When you speak, though, he jerks like you hit him, all hurt and indignation. “Of course I’d come!”

He’s barely spoken to you in nights. You let the silence sit, watching him drowsily, and you can see when that thought hits him: his face reddens and his shoulders go up.

Your tastefrond’s heavy with the words that could turn that embarrassment into his familiar, spitting rage. It’d be so easy! And you’ve always liked Pheres best when he’s forgotten to be all stiff and proper, and he’s just being him.

(You always thought he liked himself best when he was like that, too, until Rmeros came.)

But right now, the thought of him being upset just seems dumb and boring, like some wriggler’s game you’ve outgrown. It hasn't been fun for perigees.

“You’re usually, like, sleepin’ by now,” you say, when the silence gets too much. “Like, you’re always sleeping.”

“Rmeros says -” He pauses, unhappy. If he had normal soundflaps, instead of the round little nubs you can barely even see, they’d be flat. “I decided sleep is a waste of time,” he settles on instead, and that’s so stupid.

Pheres is so stupid. The rush of warmth that thought brings is weird, too.

You laugh, and for a moment, he looks indignant, then it smoothes out. “Don’t be a brat,” he sniffs. “Think about all the stuff you could do if you weren’t sleeping all the time.” He’s scrubbing at his arm, and then he abruptly adds: “.. Rmeros needs to control his mother.”

He unfurls, kicking his legs out in front of them, and then he stands up, gingerly as if the name alone’s brought his stupid moirail into the room. He dusts off the front of his shirt like there’s dirt there, but there isn’t: there isn’t anything, except the oil streaks left from his braids. He’d already tied them in a day-knot.

So much for not sleeping. Pfff.

“Yeah, well, your moirail sucks.” It’s hard to feel het up when you’re in the sopor: it feels like the attack was perigees ago, not just, like, two hours. “If she’d eaten me –”

“She wouldn’t have eaten you!”

You blink at him, and the angry red of his blush deepens to something bricky. He folds his arms, like he’s trying to reign back in the outburst. “I wouldn’t have let her,” he says thinly.

“But if she had -”

“- if she had eaten you, then I - I would have told Alsike,” he says, lifting his chin. “And she would’ve taken care of it.” You both know what that means, for all that no one’s ever broke the rules while you’ve lived here. Simoom's the overseer, and Alsike's his moirail, and that means certain duties fall to her.

And Rmeros isn't a part of the hivestem. He can't be exiled. Which only leaves..

"Liar," you say drowsily. All you want to do is duck down low in the sopor and go to sleep. The warmth's getting to you.

Pheres’s voice has gone from thin to out-and-out reedy. “I don’t care about him as much I care about you, because - because I know you.”

You’re not feeling so drowsy now.

He looks at you sidelong through his eyelashes, like he does whenever he’s nervous. For a moment, there’s eye contact - then he breaks it, his gaze skittering up to your hair.

“I know you,” he repeats, and your breath catches.

“I know you better than anyone else, and you know me, and.. that means something, doesn’t it?”

It feels like there’s flutterbugs in your digestionsack. You tilt your head to the side, letting your cheek squish flat against the recuperacoon’s edge, but it doesn’t take the feeling away: it just intensifies, like all the bugs are dancing a jig. And maybe he’s feeling that way, too, because he’s still talking, the words getting faster and faster, until he’s bubbling away like that river he likes so much.

(You do know him.)

"And even if we haven’t talked all perigee - even if I never, ever saw you again, or if I leave, or even if you go off and get ruddy with some highblood and leave –”

You stick out your tongue, gagging, and he grimaces right back at you, laughing a little despite himself. “Even then,” he says doggedly, “I’ll still know you, and you know me, better than anyone else ever, and that’s more important than moirails, or quadrants, or - or -” He flounders, and his little bubbling ends weak. “He’s got to control his mother. It’s not right.”

“C'mere,” you say.

He shuffles in closer to the recuperacoon, and you kick in the sopor until you’re straight again on the edge. Leaning forward, you press your forehead against his, and he doesn’t move, even though this’s usually the point you’d bite him. It's hitting you he's kind of sad-looking, all gaunt cheeks and sad eyes.

How come you’ve never noticed that before?

“You’re mine,” you say, testing it out, and he doesn’t object: he just breathes out. “And I’m yours. And we’re both okay. So, like, chillax. Okay?”

Pheres doesn’t say anything: he just he huffs, pulling back. And then: “Stop hogging the ‘coon,” he says, wrinkling his nose, and scrambles in.

9. KISS | 5.08 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

Pheres spends the next week back in the hivestem, and it's just like old times. Except nicer, in a way, 'cause the two of you aren't always scrapping. Used to be you'd never even thought that was a problem. If anyone'd ever say the sight of Pheres wouldn't make you want to bite him, you'd have laughed 'til you were sick.

But you haven't wanted to smack him in ages, and before you went to sleep last night, you'd reached over and pressed your lips to his cheek.

He'd blinked at you, already half-asleep, almost all the glow gone from his eyes. He always looks moon-eyed when you catch 'em like this: all big gray blotches around little black dots, 'cause his eyes are so used to the light, they never go properly big. "'sat for?" he'd said, sleepy.

But pleased.

"Iunno. just 'cause," you'd said back, nuzzling your head into the curve of his neck. The two of you've always shared a 'coon. When he curls his arm around you sleepily, it feels like the past few months never happened at all.

You fall asleep like that.

When you wake up, Pheres is gone.

He's not in the respiteblock, he's not in the kitchen, and by the time you notice the floor's all sleek and shiny, yours are the only green tracks on it. He must've got up early to mop it, but it's weird. Usually, he waits until you're up.

The only time he didn't was when he'd left to stay with Rmeros, and he didn't come back.

You're in a frothing fury by the time you make it down the ropes and to the ground-floor of the hivestem. It's still early enough in the evening that the sky's bright and no one's really out yet: there's the sound of voices coming over from the fields, where they like to start early, 'fore the ground gets too hard from the chill, but that's all.

You know he isn't down there, so you don't even bother to stop. You do stop by the tanning pits, just in case he's waiting for Alsike. You could forgive that! But he isn't. He's not even in the courtyard, though you even go as far as to check under the stairs. He used to slip under there, back before his horns grew in and he started getting stuck.

He isn't there either, stuck or otherwise.

Majlis waves down at you as you slip out the gates, just to be a prat, but you don't have time to fight with her right now. Or anyone else! If Pheres is off with Rmeros again, then that's - you'll have to -

("- that's more important than moirails, or quadrants -")

- he's not, you decide, so it doesn't matter.

You check anyway.

The van's empty when you get near it, but you don't get too close: your ears are up and pricked for any sound, and you're tense as a wire. The bruises from his rotten lusus haven't faded yet. They're still aching as you try your best to see if the vans lights are on. It's hard to tell through the tinted solar windows, but there's no light shining out of the look-out.

And Rmeros's lusus is nowhere to be seen.

"Pheres," you call out, but there's no answer.

You move on.

***

That first night after he'd met Rmeros, Pheres had been so pleased. He'd barely been able to sleep, even after you'd dragged him into the 'coon.

"He's so dignified," he'd said, delighted and fit to burst from pride. Rmeros spoke Standard like a troll from the vids, smooth and rolling and deep, like he was talking straight from his digestion sack. "D'you think I'll sound like that? When I'm his age?"

It'd taken dunking him head-first to make him finally calm down.

With all the fuss Pheres paid him, you'd recognise Rmeros's voice in a crowd. But you don't have to: the only sound is the rushing of the water nearby, and the awful, gargled-rocks sound of Standard.

And the buzz of psionics.

It's just a bother at first, but by the time you get close enough to see the figures by the shoreline, it hurts. It's like being right next to a rumblecart when it starts, or like when the bees got loose from Khirba's apiaries: you can feel the vibration of power going all the way from your horns to the rest of you, buzzing through your nails, setting your teeth to edge.

When you crest the hill and can finally see down the shoreline, Pheres is there. And so is Rmeros.

Every time you see Rmeros, you're reminded how big he is. It's never been quite as clear as right now. The hand holding up Pheres's chin is the size of his head. The thumb keeping him in place's as big as his nose. Rmeros himself's like a bird in the sky, and Pheres's his shadow: so much smaller than anything ever ought to be.

For the first time, maybe, you don't think you can fight him. You're big, sure, but there's big and then there's massive, and Rmeros is huge. He wouldn't have to grab you to hurt you. He could just swing. You can't fight him, but there's no way you can leave the two of them, because you've never seen Pheres's eyes this bright. It hurts to look at him: it makes your horns buzz and your eyes water, like you're staring at a lightbulb. Like you're staring at the sun.

That's not right. Most of the kids in the 'stem are sparkplugs, but there's only one time they ever get like this, where the air's so thick with psi, you could reach out and bite it. And that's when they're scrapping. Not the little kid shows, either, but the shit like the time Simoom'd caught his kismesis making time with Cendol.

But all they're doing is sitting there.

"Pheres," you call, and he doesn't look up. If he and Rmeros were normal trolls, maybe one of 'em'd have flicked an flap, or tilted it. You don't even get so much as a wiggle from their flat, round noisechutes. It's like they can't hear you at all.

Rmeros's eyes are bright, too, and as you creep closer, the buzzing only gets worse.

You can feel it in your claws. You can feel it in your fangs, practically taste the vibrations on your tongue. It's like holding tar in your seedflap, heavy and thick and sticky. Like something that'll suffocate you if you stay near for too long.

Maybe this is how they practice.

(Maybe this is why Pheres keeps bleeding, because you know plenty of psionics, and none of 'em have ever shed so much as a drop of blood.)

So much of your pan's saying you ought to go, go, go. Just leave! If you interrupt, Pheres'll be furious. (If you interrupt, Rmeros will cull you this time, and save his mum the trouble.) Alsike said that moirail's know best.

... but Pheres said you know him, better than a moirail, better than any quadrant, and the thought sticks more than any tar.

You know him, and you know this can't be good.

Only a meter away, the roar of the water's near deafening. You approach it slowly, carefully, weighing out each step as you creep around them and towards the shore. You had the first big rain of the season a few nights ago, water enough that the river poured up the bank. The water's gone down. The debris it left behind hasn't.

There's rocks the size of your fist, rounded and tumbled smooth by their journey through the water. You pick one that fits neatly into the palm of your hand. When you curl your fingers, they fit neatly over the top.

Then you whirl around and you throw it.

You're scamping away  even before the rock leaves your hand, chin tucked, horns down defensively. Your hair is falling in your face. You can't see between the black waves and the white glare of their psionics, but you don't need to: you hear the thunk of impact, a crack that makes your stomach heave with sympathy. And then you hear Rmeros snarl.

You grab up another rock. When you look up, the light's have dimmed. It isn't pleasant, not precisely, but it's not painful to look towards them. And Rmeros's standing up. There's a crack in his top horn, sluggishly leaking red down his forehead. He's sluggish, like he isn't quite there.

It doesn't stop him from noticing you. The fact your rumblereeds are rattling so hard you're shaking makes you hard to ignore.

"Nzinga's," he says, slow and displeased, like it's the worst kinda marvel. "Why is it always a fucking Nzinga?"

Perigees and perigees ago, Pheres said you ought to hit Simoom so he couldn't use his psionics. And so you threw so that Rmeros can't, either.

You're not expecting that he doesn't even try.

He's bigger than you, and he's got a longer reach. Two steps closes the distance between you, before you even have a chance to respond. Then he hits you. Rmeros's hand's nearly as big as your head. It catches you right across the face, nails tearing. If you'd stayed stiff, it would've taken your head clean off.

You go limp instead, and it sends you flying.

The ground's hard when you hit it. It's hard and it hurts, but you're still alive, so you scramble to your feet, pumpbiscuit racing. (The world feels kind of lopsided. He hits like a goddamn tree.) Rmeros's gaining again, quick as anything, looking properly peeved for the first time you've known him.

You throw the second rock.

When you were a baby, Bennui had brought you a knife from the hivestem's stores. It'd been dull and old and rusty, and hunting had been horrible. He'd go out, find you something, and burn it. Then he'd leave it for you to finish off.

Killing something with a blunt blade is torture.

By the time you were old enough to be allowed into the stores yourself, you'd learned about the power of a stone. Every bodies nothing but skin and giblets and the pieces holding them together. Throw a rock just right, hit those spots, and things just fall apart.

It works well on rabbits and deer, and it turns out it's true for trolls, too.

Rmeros doesn't crumple so much as he staggers. One knee hits the ground with a thunk. Then the next. Then his palms, but you're not paying attention to that. There's more rocks near you.

Once, you'd figured you'd rip him apart. But right now, you just want him down. And once he is, you'll -- you'll --

-- you'll figure it out, because behind him, Pheres is wailing.

You sprint over, veering wide around Rmeros. (He's making sounds, too, gross keening pity noises. The second rock was much pointier than the first.)

When you see Pheres, your pumpbiscuit nearly stops. He's all curled up just like his signmate, knees tucked in, hands cradling his face. He's wailing high and throaty like he's the one hurt.

"Pheres," you say. Your knees hit the ground. You turn him over, prying his fingers away from his face, but there's no blood from his forehead: just some steadily dripping from his snout, but that's no reason for him to be wailing. His eyes are still bright. Too bright, and it hurts to look at them. So you don't. You reach down instead, mopping away the blood on his face and scrubbing it off on your breeches. "Pher, Pher, why - shh. Shoosh!"

He doesn't shoosh. And you don't know what else to do, so you pap him.

"You're fine. Shoooosh. You're fine. I promise!" You keep sneaking glances over your shoulder, but Rmeros isn't moving. He's gone still, though he's still making those noises. (This is the point you'd cull a rabbit, but you left your knife at home, and your pan's still scrambling for a different solution.) Pheres, on the other hand, is finally quieting.

His eyes are dimming, so you keep petting his face. The skin of your fronds is catching on his skin, and you're leaving trails of mud, but you don't care. Maybe he doesn't either, because his breath hitches, and then he stops wailing, the sound dying off with a sickly little sob.

"Pher --?"

"He was in my brain," he says, hitching over the words, and you make a decision.

***

You make Pheres help. You don't regret that.

Rmeros's not dead, when you push him into the water.

You don't regret that, either.

What you do regret is that Pheres keeps crying.

And what you do regret is that neither of you thinks to check the van, and see where Rmeros's mother is, before it's too late.

10. SCRATCH | 5.3 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

She doesn't kill you, but you don't realise it for weeks.

The first few nights, it's just pain, pain, pain, and Pheres's worried eyes above you. He cries on you once, sad and squelchy and making all sorts of horrible noises, like his airsacs are straight up gonna fall out and burst, but you can't keep your eyes open to tell him to calm down. You can't even get words out of your soundchute: your wordmuscle is thick and heavy in your seedflap, and it feels like there's wool on your face, keeping all your sounds in.

But you try anyway. The hours blur together. The van's hot, too hot, and you can't seem to sleep, but all you do is sleep: you take a breath and blink, and the sun's shining down from the look-out in murky rays, where it was all gloom a moment afore.

One day, you blink, and when you open your eyes, you're feeling better.

Pheres is asleep right up against you, his face buried in the crook of your neck, arms wrapped tight around you like you're his lusus. Compared to the heat you've been feeling, had crawling under your skin like the worst kinda worm, he's been cold - but now, he's sweat-hot, fever-hot, and the sticky damp of his skin's too much to deal with. "Move," you whine, and you try to shove him. You're not in the 'coon, for some reason.

Your arm is all numb, like you slept wrong, so you use the other.

The instant your palm touches 'em, he's on his feet and skittering away, even before his eyes are all the way open. He's too tired to even spark at you: he just curls his lip, shoulders up and eyes slit, afore he realises it's you.

And then his eyes pop open all at once.

He does cry on you, this time, and it's gross, but you let him.

Pheres wants to curl up right against you, bony points digging into all of your fleshy ones, but you whine and whine 'til he settles on the ground below the platform instead. He rests his chin on the edge of the soft bit, and peering up at you with that big ol' scentnozzle, he looks like a barkbeast from the vids, all sad-eyed and hopeful.

"How are you feeling?"

"Good," you say, 'cause what else can you say, when he's looking at you like that? You hurt all over, like you've been in a fight. (And you were: with the lusus, then with the fever. You've seen the ways kid thrashed back at the hivestem, like sommat was beating 'em black and blue.)

He brightens. "Oh, good," he says, fervent, like someone's taken a weight off of his back. His eyes are red, red, red, rimmed with his blood along the bottoms and with the little blotches of burst veins in 'em. If he's been sleeping much, then you're mad as a tower of bees. "I'm so glad! I'm so, so, so glad - I tried all the medicine in his cabinets, but I couldn't find none - any, I couldn't find any that'd work right, all the labels were saying things that weren't right at all, so I had to go get a mediculler, and d'you know, d'you know these hivestems are too small for a mediculler?"

"Too small! They just -" He's straightened up, and his hands are flitting in the nervous little gestures he does. But now he clasps them together, wringing them in a way that's gotta hurt. "They don't take care of people if they get hurt," he says unhappily. "If they think they're unsalvagable. So I had to drive all day to get to one that did."

"But she fixed me," you say, reaching out. Your arm's still asleep! No matter how much you jerk it, it doesn't want to move, or do nothin' but tingle, so you harrumph, shift your whole body over so you can swat his hands apart. "So, like, it's cool."

He's not wringing his hands. He ought to look calmer. But he's going pale, pale as the tile under him at your words. "She.. mostly fixed you," he says, hesitant, and something in your gut drops. "She got the fever down! And she pulled the infection out. She had psionics, you know, the healing sort, so she could just -" He spins his hand in a quick, jerking motion, that you have no idea what it could even mean. "She said there ain't nothing else - there wasn't anything else she could do, past that. I'm sorry."

"What're you sorry for?" The room's spinning all around you, but you're still struggling to sit up, because something's wrong. Pheres's gone from looking nearly calm to on the verge of tears again, his lips pinched tight like that might stop him from bawling. "What's - oh, goddamnit. Why's it still asleep?"

You can shrug your shoulder. That's not asleep, and awkwardly, trying your best to keep your arm out of the way, you sit up. "You let me lie on it all day, or what?" you grump at him. "I can't feel a damn thing in this stupid hunk of meat --"

"She tried to fix it. She did her best," he says, unhappily, and tells you the truth.

You don't break anything.

Later, you'll be very proud of that.

***

"It's a good thing we left, huh? 'cause I wouldn't have been able to climb shit. I might've fallen and breaken my damn neck."

"Language," Pheres murmurs.

It's been a whole perigee since your fever died down, and you learned about your arm. Pheres hasn't let you leave the cart since then.

He hasn't let you drive, either, so all you do is sit righ tyour nose pressed up againsnt the viewing panes, watching the desert pass you by. You've been driving for days and days now Not on the main road, where people are always looking askance at your big ol' rattle-truck, but on the smaller ones that wind through the plains and the trees and skirt right along the shadow of Kuikiro's treeline. Pheres figures it's safer, farther away from anyone else.

The two of you don't talk about your hivestem, or Rmeros, or anything much at all. Pheres is too flip: he snaps at you, then jokes, and all of his jokes fall flat. He gets uncomfortable when you get too energetic, and he cries when you're tired, like you're only half a second from dying on him again.

It's a miserable ride, and worse is the fact he's keeping you penned in like a brooding cluckbeast.

He drops the basket on the table. There's eggs, the crisp, transluscent white that probably means they came from someone's lusus. The end of a bread loaf. Fruit, and...

There's blood on Pheres's lip. "It's nothing," he says when he sees you looking. "Don't worry. I got some food, didn't I?"

"I told you to get meat," you huff, looking away. If you ask how he got banged up, he'll just play it off. If he'd let you out of the cart, you wouldn't let anyone rough him up, 'cause if you're not allowed to, why the hell's anyone else?

And you're his moirail. You told him you were his moirail, all the way back, when his face was ruddy and before Rmeros's mum came out, and you hadn't lied. Keeping him from getting roughed up is supposed to be your job.

But he won't let you do it. He won't let you out, and you've run your voice raspy with the asking.

"Meat's expensive, Sipa." The two of you've shoved as many as the books as could fit down in the storage hutch, but there's still trays of 'em on the counters, on the table. He has to push them to the side to start unpacking the food. "We don't need it. I got nuts, see?"

"You don't need it, because you're not broken." You can't see his face, but his ears go red, and he droops a little againsnt the table.

You're not being kind, but you know by now he won't say nothing. And you're not being fair, but by now, you just don't care. (Fair isn't a thing, not when you're the one who got ruint.) "But whatevs," you say, bouncing to your feet. Bennui stirs on top of the recuperacoon, where he's been sleeping. Because there's no time for sulking, not when an opportunity just struck you.

"Me and Pops can hunt us up something, and it won't cost nothing at all!"

"You can't do that." Pheres looks back at you, frowning.

"Why? We're out in the woods! I'm not gonna trot off into the jungle, you big baby," you say, grabbing hold of one of the long-sleeved shirts. You'd long cut off the legs on your pants, on account of the fact it's so hot, but sleeves'll give you some protection, if something goes after your arms. "Don't worry! I'll get something good, too."

"You like hopbeast, yeah? Can't, like, make it fancy like Alsike did, but I bet I can find one out there --"

When you turn, Pheres is standing in the doorway, his face pale. "You can't go outside, Sipa," he says again, sharp and slow like you're simple. "It's not safe."

You stare at him. His face's going more ruddy, and he looks down and away. "Why wouldn't it be safe?" you ask, squinting at him. He's skirted around the question, when you threw it at him in the past. Danced and played with it, like not sayin' it changes anything at all.

He opens his mouth.

("Because it's dangerous," he said last time, like you didn't get mauled in this damn cart.)

"Because you're injured," he says now, waspish, spitting it out all at once. "You're injured and people'll take advantage of that. Look, if you want meat so badly, why don't you have Bennui get it? He's already getting up!"

Your pops is. You hear the rustle of feathers behind you, the slinking-shuffling move that means he's getting up, and then the flap of wings. Pheres's got one of the windows cracked, just wide enough for your pops to slip out, but not big enough for anything to get in. It creaks now. If you looked, you'd probably see your lusus slinking his feathery butt out.

You don't look.

"I'm perfectly fine," you snap, scowling at Pheres. Your arm aches, but no, it doesn't: it's just your pan, saying it ought to ache, 'cause you can't really feel nothing in it.

"You are not." He lifts his chin. "Don't be silly. Here, I got you something, too." He digs around in the basket. You hadn't taken a good look inside. There's just food, and what d'you care about food?

But he shifts the eggs and the loaf, the fruit, and he pulls out a larva, small and fat and glistening with something wet. It blinks its many eyes at you and yawns, showing off a tooth-lined seedflap. "It's old tech," he says doubtfully, "but she said you might be able to program it to do something interesting --"

He's holding it out to you, and you slap it out of his hands.

Pheres jerks back, eyes wide, his horns hitting the cabinet with a thump hard enough to shake the books. He drops the grub. There's a snap as it hits the ground, a high-pitched squeal, and then it races off -- somewhere.

You're not looking at it. You're watching Pheres, who's got his horns down like he wants to fight, but who's damn near cowering. It's stupid. He's stupid, and awful, and --

"Well!" He looks down at the piles of things where it might've hidden, and his voice's brittle. "There just went twenty caegars."

"I don't want your stupid grub," you snap. "What's that supposed to mean? People'll take advantage?"

He doesn't say anything. There's something hot and unpleasant churning in your gut. He's right, something in the back of your pan keens, he's right and you're cullbait and if you leave, someone'll knock your head clean off just for the audacity of existing --

-- but the rest of your pan's just frothing, furious at the indignity of this, because he might be right, but he's wrong, too. "I can defend myself! And I'd defend you too, bulgemunch, if you'd let me! I never got knocked around afore, and I won't get knocked around now, and - and - if someone tries to take a go, then I'll cull 'em! Like I culled him!"

Pheres's not saying anything at all.

"Say something," you demand, but he's just watching you, horns down, mouth set. The skin under his eyes is bunching, the tension in his shoulders is growing. If it was anyone else, you'd say he was going to take a swing at you. But this is Pheres.

He doesn't hit with his hands anymore.

"Because you did such a fine job defending yourself," he says thinly.

"What would you do if someone went after you? Throw a rock at them, Sipara? Bite them?" The words are spilling out like rocks, like he can't keep them in, and each stings. The way he's saying them stings. "We're not in the desert anymore! And - and what we did wasn't culling. You can't cull your -"

"- your quadrants," he spits out, his eyes bright. "It's called murder. And that's what people'll do to you, if you go outside! You're not big! You're not tough, you're not - not anything, except worthless cullbait."

You can't breathe.

You take a step forward, and he flinches, starts to step back before he realises the cabinet's right behind him. But then he recovers: squares his shoulders, sticks out his chin. "Take it back," you demand, your voice quavering, and just as quick, he says: "No."

"I'm not worthless!"

"Saying that doesn't make it true. We're rust, and we're pupas, and we're worthless," he says, stretching out the word. "The only thing we're good for is feeding to people's lusus. And I can run, if someone tries to nab me. What about you?"

"What're you going to do, if you can't even lift your arm?"

"You're wrong." He thinks he knows you, but every words proving that he's wrong, wrong, wrong. He doesn't know you at all, not a thing, because you're not -- you killed someone for him. For both of you. You didn't do that for nothing.

But just because he doesn't know you doesn't mean you don't know him. Your pumpbiscuit's racing. Your mouth's dry. Each exhale feels like it hurts, like you're pushing all the air out of your lungs and it ain't never going to come back, but your words come out clear. "You're being stupid," you snap, because he might know how to hurt you with his words, but you know how to make him bleed. "That's all you are: do you even think anything in there? Or is it all fluff? 'cause I can't tell if it's you or Rmeros talkin' right now."

The name drops like a stone in the water. Pheres flinches like you just hit him, his eyes wide, and for a second you think he's going to cry about it. What he does instead is hiss at you, his face twisted, sparks cracking off of his horns. "Everything I do doesn't go back to him! I'm not - I'm -"

"Dunno why I culled him," you say, "if you ain't even gonna try to be your own person."

He tackles you.

You hit the ground with an oomph, but he's skinny, and only getting skinnier since the two of you bolted. "I have thoughts," he reeds, "thoughts and opinions and they're mine!"

"You don't know that!"

He goes for your face. You grab his wrists, one in each hand, and he hisses at you, trying to wrench them free. His eyes brighten. There's a spray of sparks, but they're dim, and he's cringing, shaking his head like he's trying to dislodge them before they're even half-formed. "I do!"

"You don't! You don't even know how to think! Alsike says, Rmeros says - you didn't even know how to think before he came, and now you're just some shitty copy --"

There's a blinding pain in your eye. You yowl, jerking away, but you don't get free. He's got those skinny knob knees dugging into your side, locked in as tight as a door, and no matter how much you kick, he hangs on.

He doesn't pop you again. "You were going to die. If I hadn't gotten someone, you would've died. You were so close," he rasps. "I had to stay up all day to make sure you stayed cold! And - did you know, the mediculler wanted to cull you. She said it wasn't worth the money to save you."

"Shut up --"

He leans in. "She said it'd be a mercy," he says, soft, his knees digging in, and for all that he's smaller, you can't knock him off. "- and if I gave the slightest fig, I'd let her."

"I told her I'd fry her if she tried! She had a knife and she was yellow and I told her that anyway, but - but if you think I'm so awful - if everything I say is just terrible - then I should've let her!"

You slap him, hard. When your claws drag at his skin, you hook them in. You rip.

Pheres screams.

It's the worst sound you've ever heard, and there's warmth on your fingers, and an elbow to your face - your gut - everywhere he can hit, tiny hands flailing. (But you don't stop. You grit your teeth and you curl your fingers in tighter, because he hurt you and that's not fair, it's not fair at all--)

You can't see anything at all, he's sparking so hard, and you feel that more than see it, each pinprick of pain as they hit your skin. He's kicking back and you're kicking back, and - and -

- suddenly he's off of you, and your back is hitting the wall, hard.

The room is spinning. There's lights in your eyes, and you hear more than see Pheres bolt for the door.

When you look down, there's blood on your hands.

***

A few hours later, your eye is a mottled, ugly brown, and it's swollen tight as a door. You can’t see shit. You don’t want to, either, not when it’s still throbbing like.. well, like someone popped you in the face.

When Bennui got back in, hauling a pair of burnt-black mice, he'd taken one look at you and puffed up, furious. You’d almost felt better, ‘til he’d dived down at you and taken a whack.

There's blood in your mouth from where he caught you with his wings, but there's no more painpills in the counter. When you’d went for the fridge, Bennui'd had a go at you again, pecking and smacking until you’d retreated back to the front. 'Tough it out,' he'd said, with his birdy little eyes and angry mantling: '- you deserve a little discomfort!'

When the door creaks open, you're feeling rotten. Your face hurts. Bennui’s hiding on top of the fridge, guarding his mice like they’re the world’s greatest prize and giving you the cold shoulder. (Least he’s stopped lecturing you. But being ignored, as it turns out, isn’t much better.) And you don’t want to see Pheres. You don’t want to see anyone else in the whole, entire world.

But you can’t exactly lock him out of his own hive, no matter how rotten you feel.

‘specially because when he comes into the back, he doesn't look like he's feeling much better.

He's fixed up his face as best as he could, but there's no fixing the bloody furrows you left. You can see the path of your claws, where some hit his snout and stopped, where the rest curved under and up towards the rest of him. The skin's peeled back where it's the deepest, but the entire thing is angry and red and weeping.

He looks like he's been, too.

For a moment, both of you just stare.

“.. I wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” he says, brittle.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," you blurt out, stepping forward.

Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say, because his face goes tight. But he doesn’t leave, and you take that as encouragement. His eye on that side's half squinched shut, like it hurts to keep it open, but you didn't think you knicked it. Did you? You're leaning forward to see, pusher in your mouth -

- and he's skittering back, hissing loud enough that it makes you flinch.

"I'm sorry!"

"You don't get to hit me," he says all at once, stumbling over the words. "I hit you, but I didn't hurt you. And - and it's not right for you to hit me, when all I've been trying to do is help you. I didn't have to! I didn't, I didn't, I'm already a horrible moirail and no one would've said anythingif I hadn't, but I did, because you deserve to be helped, and - and -"

"I don't deserve to be hit!"

"I'm sorry," you squeak. His back is to the door. You take a step back, putting more distance between the two of you. Your arm feels like a dead-weight, dragging you down. There's red rolling down Pheres's face, either blood or tears or both, and your vision's going cloudy with orange.

"I'm an ass. I'm awful, I'm sorry, I'm really, really, really sorry, and -- Bennui bit me over it." Laughing from nerves is Pheres's thing, but maybe it's catchin', because you're laughing and hiccuping all at once. "He bit me 'cause I hit you and I know that means I fucked up! I'm really, really sorry, dude. You didn't deserve it. I'm just awful."

He's supposed to say you aren't. The two of you've seen moirails in the hivestem before. You both know how the script goes.

He squares his shoulders instead, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. ".. you are," he says, petulant. His face is all runny still, the sealed scratches re-opened by all his hissing, but he’s not cringing quite as much anymore. That’s something, right?

“You are awful. But –“ He takes a breath. “I guess we both are. We’ll just have to – have to –“

“Work on it,” you say, hopeful. (Working means he won’t go. Working on it means he won’t leave.)

“No more hitting,” he says, and you’re nodding, before the words are even all the way out of his mouth.

11. COIN | 5.8 SWEEPS / 12 YEARS OLD

"Betcha five dollars I can beat you up!"

You're up on top of the bannister of the staircase. The moons are high in the sky, and this is the only place in Temasek you can probably see 'em: everywhere else, it's all skyscrapers and hivestems and the terraces between 'em, but you're in the central court. Far enough from the docks that there's no finny faces, but near enough that everything's nice and wide and spaced out. Lowbloods don't mind the clusters, but you're learning highbloods act like they've got a stitch in their britches if they so much as have to see another fellow walking nearby.

But it works out! There's no building for twenty, thirty feet in any which way, just stone tiles and the raised patio of the courtyard proper, and there's plenty of folks milling around in every direction. Folks who keep lookin' at you.

A mossblood makes eye contact. You beam, showing off all of your teeth. "Hey, lady," you sing, "wanna take a bet?"

She looks at your bandaged arm, at your scruffed up clothes. At your pops, sitting on the bannister next to you like he ain't got a care in the world. She's not much older than you! A sweep, maybe, which's just about perfect. That means five caegars is enough for her to consider it, and not enough to be salty if she loses.

(You lost a tooth, last bloke who tried to get pissy with you after he lost. A clout to his horns dealt with that.)

Her friend laughs, nudges her. "Do it," she urges. "Or are you scared about some one-armed pupa, lah?"

That's all greenie needs.

Fighting's easy, even one-armed. You're a big kid! A tumble sends her flailing to the ground, and then you grab her by the wrists, twist 'em up above her head. She tries to bite you. You headbutt her right in the nose, then you do it again 'til she yowls empress.

Her friend's laughing still as she gets up. Greenie's face is all green and nasty, like she wants to hit you proper. But she flips you a coin all the same.

A dark hand snatches it out of the air before you can.

Pheres's balancing on the slanted arm of the staircase, stepping down as carelessly as a meowbeast. (He won't fall. He never, ever falls. His psionics are good for that, at least!) "Five dollars?" he asks, clicking his tongue.

The mossblood's out of hearing, but that doesn't stop him from checking, glancing after her with a quick, furtive smile. "What a cheapskate," he says, once she’s certain she’s gone. “She’s bigger. She ought’ve bet ten.”

"Well, why don't you tell her that?'

Pheres doesn't bother with rude words. He just makes a gesture with his fronds that shows you what he thinks of that idea. And when you laugh, he rocks back on his heels, flashing his teeth like he did something clever.

"Maybe five dollars isn’t much to you, mister fancy pants," you announce: "- but some o' us are poor as fuck. Five dollars is like, a fortune.” You bounce forward. He shimmies back. One step for every step. “Five dollars is like, like --"

Pheres beams at you, clasping his hands behind him. "Two plates of tau huay?" he offers, fronds wrapped tight. He can't think you've forgotten he's got your caegar.

(Both of your caegar, technically: everything the two of you bring in is split. His book money, your fight money. Ain't no point in keeping it separate when everything you've got is shared.)

"Two plates of tau huay and an entire mug of tea. That I earned, so give it!” You sidle around him, but he turns with you, laughing. Pheres's still tinier than you, all bird bones and pointy limbs, but age is doing weird things to the angles of his face. Before, he was pointy and moon-eyed, with cheeks you could put your palms in, and a nose that a lusus wouldn't love. But now he's growing into both of 'em, and there's flesh to the curves of his face, and he's almost pretty. Especially when he's pleased.

Not that you'll ever tell 'em that. He'll get a big head, and between that and his horns, his neck'd snap right in half.

“You're thinking something dreadful again, aren't you? No, don't argue, I can tell. It's all, you know --" He presses his palms to the sides of his face, angling his fingers down in a crude imitation of your soundflaps. "Well, think about this. I could stand to eat an entire two plates,” he says, thoughtful. "Everyone says I'm too skinny. In fact, I really think I need to! D'you think they'll trade the tea for coffee, if I ask nicely?"

“You can’t even eat half a plate, dude, don’t play. If you tried to eat two, you’d – you’d explode!" You fling out your hand to demonstrate, sidling another step in closer. His eyes are so busy tracking your fronds, he doesn't even notice. "It’d be gross. There’d be guts, and organs, and, like, folks crying every which way, on account of the fact they’re all smothered in nasty giblets --”

“That’s not scientifically plausible,” he mocks. “That doesn’t even happen in films!”

“Sure it does! I’ve seen zeds blow up all the time in your silly daywalker kissing flicks --"

"I'll give you the caegar if you'll shut up," he says, and he flips the coin right over your head.

You whirl around, lunging after it with your good hand.

When you grab it, it's heads.

[whyarethedolanssoattractive]

Paint You Wings ~ Ethan Dolan {Part Two}

Ethan’s POV

"Ethan, answer your damn phone!" Grayson demanded from the driver's seat. I rolled my eyes and pulled the device out of the cup holder.

I didn't recognize the number, but still answered it. "Hello?"

"Um, hey, is this Ethan?" It was a girl. What girl? I wasn't sure.

"Who is this?"

"It's Averly. This number was on a sticky-note on my door."

And just like that, I couldn't breathe. It was like my throat closed up and I was stuck underwater. Averly was freaking hot. But not just that. She was a creator. An artist. A good one, too, if her work was gonna have a shot at being in a fancy gallery.

I swallowed a breath. "Averly! Hey, yeah this is Ethan. What's up?" I laughed awkwardly and looked over at Grayson. He rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Averly sighed. "Well, not a lot really. You?"

I shook my head, even though she couldn't see me. "Just running some errands with Grayson. Say hi, Gray!" I put the phone on speaker.

"Dude, I don't know her." Grayson shook his head and laughed.

I rolled my eyes. "Averly, you're on speaker with me and my brother, Grayson. Grayson, this is Averly. She's our neighbor." I quickly introduced the two.

"Hi, Grayson! Nice to meet you!" Averly laughed.

"Yeah, you too Averly." Grayson smiled and shook his head.

"So, Averly, Grayson and I were talking, and we think it would be really cool to look at some of your art."

Grayson looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. I held one finger to my lips and winked at him. He rolled his eyes and looked back at the road.

Averly took a deep breath. "I don't know, none of my pieces are, like, earth-shatteringly remarkable."

"Oh, come on! You had a meeting with someone from Art Pour L'áme! Of course they're good!" I laughed. "By the way, how'd that go?"

"Not as well as planned, but nothing to cry over. And fine, I guess I can show you guys a few pieces."

I smiled. "Great! We'll be back to the apartments in, I don't know, an hour? Hour and a half maybe? Whatever, I'll text you when we're kinda close so you can have the art stuff ready."

"Okay. See you later, Ethan." Averly hung up.

Grayson looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. "Dude. You're not interested in her art." He shook his head slowly.

I stared at him for a minute. "Of course I am. Why else would I-"

"Because you want to bang her, Ethan!" Grayson said it like I was stupid.

My jaw dropped. He was freaking crazy if he thought that I wanted Averly. I mean, yeah, she was hot. And really cool. And a freaking artist. Good Lord, I wanted her. But not in a lustful sense!

"What? No, I met her, like, nine hours ago." I shook my head and laughed.

Grayson rolled his eyes. "You've screwed on less."

I groaned. "Shut up. That was one time. Let's just finish running errands so we can get back to the apartments and look at her art." I punched his shoulder and looked out the window. I was excited to see her art work, whether Grayson had lost all faith in me or not.

We stopped by the grocery store and got some stuff for an upcoming video, then went and filled Gray's car up with gas. Once we were getting close to the apartments, I texted Averly.

New iMessage to: Averly

Hey! We're like five minutes away... Gray and I are both reeeeeaaaally excited!

Her response didn't take long. I was glad that she wasn't one of those girls that feels the need to wait three minutes before she even opened the message.

iMessage from: Averly:

Okay! I'll have a few pieces ready to show you :)

Once we got back to the apartment, Gray and I put up the groceries, then walked to Averly's door and knocked. She was still wearing the purple dress from this morning, but no shoes and her hair was in a curly ponytail. She looked really pretty, despite already having a long day.

"Hey Ethan, and Guy Who Looks Suspiciously Like Ethan." She narrowed her eyes and kept looking back and forth between us.

Grayson and I laughed. "I forgot to tell you that we're twins."

She smiled, then led us inside. There were twelve easels set up in the room with different sizes of canvases. "Um, so this one is entitled 'The Governing'," she pointed at a small canvas with an American flag background and two chess kings - one black and one white.

"Whoa," Grayson got a closer look. "That's freaking cool."

Averly laughed, then showed us the next one. "This one is called 'The Jump', and it is actually a mixed-media piece. Partial charcoal, partial oil pastel."

This one was amazing. On the left, there was a lion preparing to jump on a hunter, who was standing on the right, guns ready. The lion was in pastel and the hunter in charcoal, and where they blurred together was a masterpiece.

"Averly, this is. . . I don't even know. I'm. . . Wow." I wandered around the room, looking at all of the pieces. They inflicted so many emotions and feelings. I was entranced.

"I'm glad you like them." She leaned against the wall and watched as Grayson and I gawked over her work.

"What was decided in the meeting?" I asked as I examined an abstract piece that made me think of two people on opposite sides of a canyon, or a crack in the earth.

Averly sighed. "I have a month to create another piece, and if Mr. Clifton feels like it's good enough, it's going in the gallery."

Grayson and I both stared at her. "That's so cool!" Grayson praised. Averly laughed and shook her head.

"Nothing to celebrate yet." She shrugged. Grayson and I scoffed.

We didn't know much at that exact moment, but we knew that you can literally celebrate for anything if you really want to. "Dude, yes it is. Y'know what? I'm gonna cook a fancy dinner for us all tonight to prove you wrong! If you have family or close friends in town, invite them, too!" Grayson decided in a split second.

Averly shook her head again. "It's just me. I don't really know anyone out here yet, and all of my family is in Dallas." She shrugged.

"Well, then it's official. Ethan and I are your new friends, and if you deem it acceptable, your family as well." Grayson bowed at her.

She looked at us like we were freaks, but smiled all the same. I walked over to her and slung my arm around her shoulders. "Yeah. And since we're all friends now, it doesn't matter how messy our apartment is for dinner, right?" I joked.

She shook her head and laughed. "Not at all."

We hung out at her place for a few hours, then Grayson went back to ours to start on dinner. Averly went into more detail on her art and the inspiration, then told me more about the meeting. Within an hour, I felt like I'd known her my whole life. She suddenly went from the hot neighbor with the cool paintings to the amazing girl that I wish I knew sooner. There was something compelling about her. Her attitude, maybe. Or the way she didn't seem to give a damn about anyone's expectations. She was absolutely amazing.

We were sitting on the couch, completely facing each other, but not saying anything. The air in the room was thick and I felt like one wrong move could set the entire place on fire.

I cleared my throat and sat forward slowly. "Um, will you excuse me? I'll be right back. Like, seriously, right back." I stood up and sprinted to the door, then slammed it open and went back to Gray's and my apartment.

"Bro, what are you-"

"I swear, I'm about to sound like Ted Freaking Mosby, but I think I might be falling for Averly."

Grayson dropped a glass on the floor, then rushed to get the broom. "Sweep this up, I have to watch the rolls." He shoved it at me, then knelt down by the oven. "Falling for her? Ethan, are you crazy? You met her at three AM!"

I rolled my eyes and started sweeping up the glass. "You think I don't know that, Grayson? I feel all weird and gooey. I don't. . . I don't know, I've never felt this way. Especially this quickly." I shook my head.

Grayson stood up and smacked the side of my head. "Give yourself some time before you talk to her about this, if you do, because - if you don't recall - Ted Mosby didn't end up with Robin Scherbatsky. You know why?"

I stared at him for a second. "Because they wanted different-"

"No, Ethan! Not because they wanted different things! Because Ted told Robin that he loved her on the first date! You're not even that far along!" He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world.

"Gray, they didn't even break up until a long time after that!"

Grayson threw a spoon at me. A freaking spoon.

"Shut up, you'll disturb the rolls."

I scoffed, then finished sweeping up the glass. "I'm gonna go back to her apartment so she doesn't think I completely ditched her."

"Tell her to come over here, everything's almost done." Grayson put his hands around his eyes and looked into the oven.

I walked back to Averly's apartment, then we went back to mine and Gray's. He had already set out the plates, so we all just sat down and started eating.

"This is seriously amazing." Averly pointed at her plate.

Grayson smiled so wide I thought his cheeks were gonna rip. He got out of his chair and down onto one knee, then grabbed Averly's hand. "Marry me."

We all laughed awkwardly, but kept eating and making random conversation. I could have listened to Averly talk about art for hours - hell, I wanted to - but around eight, we bade her farewell.

"I'll see you guys later." She smiled at us as she walked out of the apartment.

Grayson and I plopped down onto the couch. "I'm freaking stupid, dude." I groaned and threw my head back.

He laughed. "Yeah, I know."