#Lichmai Remy

[and-it-freezes-me]

Not Resembling A Morrow

Not Resembling A Morrow is the second part in the What Happened In Lichmai series.

Title is from ‘Monotony’ by Constantine P. Cavafy

Summary: Most people never really left the town of Lichmai.

Not for good, anyway. They might go away to university for a few years before coming back to settle into a job that they can’t quite remember ever wanting, exactly, but one that they’re content enough to do until they finally retire.

They might even end up with a job they prefer in some other city - but in the end, something always brought them home. It could be a relative falling suddenly ill and needing them to be there; it could be that the pressures of work became too much and they needed to shift to something a little calmer, a little closer to somewhere they knew.

They might go away on holiday for days, weeks, maybe even months at a time. A few people have spent a year or two just travelling before finally admitting that nowhere else really feels like home.

That might have been because, in most other places, it gets dark when the sun sets.

Not in Lichmai.

Content: non-graphic child death, disappearance, discussion of death, this sounds dark I don’t think it’s as dark as it seems?, corrupting light, vampire!Remus

Words: 6,972

There he was, in the dark, alone, waiting, watching.

In the early days, sometimes there had been challengers. People that had heard of a reward for slaying his lord, and had met their deaths at the end of his now rusted sword, his claws, his teeth.

In the early days, he had talked, near constantly, about everything, about nothing. About revenge, about the future, about waking up, about fighting and rebuilding and tearing down and moving on and living. The words that hadn’t been eaten by the darkness around them had fallen on unhearing ears.

If a knight speaks and there’s no-one to hear, did he really speak at all?

Sometimes he told stories, just so that he could hear a voice, anything other than the quiet, steady breathing that seemed so loud in the silent chamber.

Sometimes he sang, just to remind himself that he could.

Usually, he stayed quiet. There wasn’t much to say, not after this long alone.

In the early days, he measured time by his lord’s unhurried exhalations.

He had stopped counting when the numbers became too large to mean anything to him anymore.

- 

Most people never really left the town of Lichmai.

Not for good, anyway. They might go away to university for a few years before coming back to settle into a job that they can’t quite remember ever wanting, exactly, but one that they’re content enough to do until they finally retire.

They might even end up with a job they prefer in some other city - but in the end, something always brought them home. It could be a relative falling suddenly ill and needing them to be there; it could be that the pressures of work became too much and they needed to shift to something a little calmer, a little closer to somewhere they knew.

They might go away on holiday for days, weeks, maybe even months at a time. A few people have spent a year or two just travelling before finally admitting that nowhere else really feels like home.

That might have been because, in most other places, it gets dark when the sun sets.

Not in Lichmai.

Oh, it gets dimmer, of course. The town is cooler at night and no plants grow when the sun is no longer overhead (a series of experiments have been done to prove this, first started by a somewhat mad scientist in the early nineteenth century and repeated every year by the town’s highschool). The only shadows cast are those cast by the street lights and the lamps in houses - and those were only installed recently, when almost every single delivery-person or traveller just passing through commented that it was weird to see a town in the late twentieth century with practically no electricity at all.

But it only gets properly dark during the blackest of storms.

Nobody knows why, of course - and they’re not about to start calling in people from Outside to try to figure out what’s going on, either. Everybody in Lichmai just seems to know that drawing unnecessary attention to themselves wouldn’t be a good idea, although nobody is sure why that is.

On the rare occasion that a tourist ends up travelling through during the night, they seem to forget about the weird, never-dark nights the second they cross the town boundary on their way out. The people that lived there and managed to leave never forget, of course, but any relatives that come to stay but don’t actually live in Lichmai? They manage to forget every time they leave, and remember every time they return.

There’s actually a line around the edge of town, marked with small rocks every few metres, that denotes the boundary where those that forget, forget. Rumour has it that someone in the seventeenth century spent a month leading an outsider forward and backward over the Edge of Knowing and placing the stones… Shortly before setting fire to one of the town’s churches and disappearing into the night. Nothing happens if residents cross the line - nothing noticeable, anyway - but most people make a point of staying well within the town’s boundaries.

There are rumours that the stones move when nobody’s looking.

If the world Outside appeared to be anything more than vaguely aware of Lichmai’s existence, maybe more people would visit in an attempt to figure out why Lichmai had such a high rate of accidents and disappearances - or maybe they would come to see if the whispers about sightings of Tasmanian tigers, red wolves, or passenger pigeons held any truth. Maybe these people would disappear as well. There is something in the trees, pine and deciduous alike, that preys on the unwary.

This was the town that Patton Sanders was born into, one stormy morning in the middle of March, and this was the town that he was taught how to survive by his parents.

Larry had lived in Lichmai for his entire life, and his parents before that, and their parents before that - if someone had any reason to, they could trace the Sanders name right back to the twelve-hundreds, when it was believed that the town had been founded. The oldest plaque in the graveyard, dating back to what was believed to be 1287 (the letters were greatly worn with time), bore the name ‘Thomas Sanders’ - although graveyard may be the wrong word. No bodies lay there: the people of Lichmai had always burned their dead.

There was an urban legend - because there were always urban legends about these sorts of things - that somebody had tried burying somebody once. According to the story, every dairy product in town spoiled as soon as it was touched, every crop harvested was found blighted and inedible, and animals grew sick. People said they saw the body, too: standing silently near its home, watching, pulling away from any that drew close. After four weeks of this, the townsfolk had banded together and gone to burn the thing, and it had run. It had been chased long into the night (if night were the correct word; even then, the dark never fell) before collapsing suddenly into a pile of foetid, decaying mush and bones. Someone had covered the mess in lavender (although some said it had been mint, some said white poppies, some said all three) before putting a torch to it, and it had burned merrily for three days and three nights. When the flames finally died away, there was nothing left but a scar on the earth.

That scar is still there to this day, sitting just outside the Edge of Knowing.

The people of Lichmai burn their dead.

Dot Sanders - previously Dot Grange - was a newer addition to their community. She had moved to Lichmai with her mother when she was seven. If anybody asked Ellen Grange why she had chosen the land equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle as the best place for her and her young daughter, she said that she had heard it was a good place to go if you didn’t want to be found. People learned not to ask about Dot’s father.

She had met Larry - he was Laurence then, and she Dorothea - on her first day of school. They had swapped sandwiches: she didn’t like mustard, he didn’t like ham. The rest, as they say, is history.

Larry had taught her how to tie her laces in the way that seemed to deter the Things That Lurked In The Woods. Dot taught him to play blind-man’s-buff, and he showed her how to walk through the snow and return home without inviting any of the Things inside. She showed him how to make pear turnovers, and Larry showed her how to press mallow and oenothera and sprinkle them into her sock drawer for protection. When they were thirteen and somebody two grades above them never came home, they spent the hours before the bones were found stitching mistletoe berries into the linings of all the jackets in the house.

Dot was a quick study - but then, you had to be, if you wanted to survive more than a few years in Lichmai.

When she asked Larry out, it was with a beige ribbon around one wrist (for good fortune) and a bell around one ankle (because the Things That Devoured In The Woods loved new couples, and bells seemed to be the only thing that kept them away).

When they got married four years after they graduated, Larry wore a jacket with rice sewn into every pocket, and Dot carried yarrow flowers in her bouquet along with the more traditional blooms.

Dot taught at the highschool. Larry made the drive out of Lichmai to Olkin, the nearest city, every day, where he lectured at the university there.

And then Patton came along, and they sprinkled mallow and oenothera over all of his babygrows, glued a neat line of red sea glass (they had spent four days at the beach about a month before Patton had been born) to each windowsill in their home, and boiled three-leafed clovers into the paint they decorated the nursery with. The last one was tricky: it was sometimes difficult to tell whether a given clover really was a rare three-leafed one (good for keeping long-tongued bark sprites away from children) or just a four-leafed one that had been slightly tattered (completely useless).

Patton grew up learning every trick in the book, just like every other child in Lichmai that wanted to get to ten without being snatched away or devoured.

Well, most other children. In every generation, there are always a few that slip up and never quite find their way back home.

Patton was six when he watched light slip beneath the skin of Bonnie Notts, the girl that lived next door to him and was by extension his best friend, and burn her to nothing. They had been building small castles in the sandpit in his back garden when she had stood up, slipped, and landed face-first in the small tower Patton had been adding to his cake-shaped palace. Sand had gone everywhere, in their hair and their clothes, ears and noses and mouths and eyes, and Bonnie had started bawling loudly. After a second of surprise, Patton had joined in - but then stopped abruptly when something sparked in the corner of his vision.

Bonnie didn’t see it, but she certainly responded to the round, glowing figure when it spoke in a voice that sounded Dot’s - although Patton was sure that it sounded like Mrs’ Notts to his friend. “Little one,” it crooned, “little one, do not weep…”

Bonnie’s wails had calmed a little. She rubbed her sandy fists in her eyes and turned toward the source of the voice.

“There, there, little one…” The figure didn’t seem to have a face - or a body, for that matter. It was just a glowing, roughly human shaped… Thing. And it was reaching out toward them with one long, spindly… Arm. “Do not cry… Come here, little one…”

“Buh-” Patton cut himself off before he could give away his friend’s name - names are powerful, it’s one of the first things children get taught in Lichmai - and grabbed her arm. “Don’t, don’t, ‘s not-”

“That’s it, little one… Come here…” Bonnie was already reaching out toward the thing that was not her mother, and Patton suddenly realised that one of its ‘arms’ - and it had three or four of the things now - was moving toward him.

He dropped Bonnie’s arm and shoved both his pudgy hands into his pockets, fingers closing tight around the walnut in one and the small pebble in the other, and started chanting. He nudged his friend with his foot, trying to get her to do the same, but she didn’t seem to be listening to anything other than the crooning coming from the Thing in front of them.

“Come here, little one… Do not weep…”

“Mama, my eyes, m-my,” Bonnie whimpered, both hands reaching forward now.

“Good, little one, come here…”

“Srednas nottap, srednas nottap, srednas nottap, srednas-”

The arm that had been extending toward Patton jerked away as though it had brushed against a hot stovetop.

The two arms that had been reaching toward Bonnie met her outstretched fingertips, then curled up her forearms like vines, and Patton was screaming now, desperately wondering why their parents hadn’t come to help them. “Srednas nottap! Srednas nottap!”

“Good, little one, my little one…”

And then the tentacle-like arms reached her shoulders, coiled up her throat, and Bonnie still didn’t seem to think that there was anything wrong - not until they touched her sand-blinded eyes.

Then Bonnie screamed, too. Jagged lines of liquid light began to spread beneath her skin like cracks, covering first her face and then spreading down her neck, reaching her fingertips, her ankles, her bare toes.

There was a flash of light, a burst of white-hot energy, and then Bonnie Notts was gone and Patton was safe in his father’s arms, still crying, still repeating his name, backwards, over and over and over and over.

Watching their best friend be torn into a thousand threads of light is the kind of experience that stays with a person, and Patton Sanders was no exception - but in a town where these events are expected, nobody even batted an eye when he grew his hair long enough to braid the knots usually reserved for shoelaces into it, or when he started leaving little pouches of sugar and mistletoe berries in his desk, his locker, his schoolbags and his clothes. It was reassuring, his teachers said, that he was taking the tragic loss to heart and making sure that he was safe.

Bonnie was one of two deaths in their school that year, and there were three each in the Lichmai middle- and highschools, giving the year that Patton was six the highest incident rate in nearly twenty years. That was what they called it - ‘incident rate’. It had a nicer ring to it than ‘child loss due to general Lichmai weirdness’.

Not that these things happened often, of course. The previous year, there had been no deaths at all, and all of the children who disappeared in the years prior to that had been returned after days or weeks or months.

It was still worth being wary, though.

Lichmai didn’t have its own university, so the kids that did choose to seek higher education had to study elsewhere. A fair portion of them became day students at the Olkin university, taking the bus or driving over the Edge of Knowing every day - it was easier to stay somewhere they knew, when the rest of the world was so different.

(Of course the residents of Lichmai knew how different they were. People left town and came back again all the time; they had television, radio, the internet… And for some reason, even knowing how much safer the Outside was, people still never seemed to leave).

Patton was one of the others, one of the ones that spent ages pouring over prospectuses and visiting different campuses until he found one that he would be happy attending for three or four years. He planned on coming back: Patton would willingly admit that he couldn’t imagine himself living anywhere other than Lichmai, despite the horrors that occasionally befell those that didn’t double check which flowers they pressed and hid in the linings of their clothing.

Patton spent four years studying psychology in a city where it got dark at night, and where people trod carelessly on cracks in the pavement or over gutters, where it was considered strange to wear a necklace comprised of the tabs from soda cans and round pebbles with natural holes in the middles and for his baby teeth to be braided into his keychain (he had learned very quickly to hide that keychain from people).

The Patton that came home at the end of his first year seemed more tired than the Patton that had left the previous August. He had cut his hair, the blond curls that had once hung to nearly his shoulder blades now formed a neat nest that occasionally flopped over into his eyes. He spent almost the entire summer sleeping in his room, or on one of his friends’ couches when he was invited over to hang out and found that he didn’t have the energy to hike through the hills. (The hills near Lichmai were slightly safer than the woods - safe enough to walk through and occasionally camp, if you were canny with your precautions).

The Patton that came home at the end of his second year didn’t speak much, and cried a lot when he thought that nobody was watching him. Dot and Larry tried to get him to open up to them, but he brushed their concern away, saying that he was fine.

The Patton that came home at the end of his third year seemed to have no energy to do any of the things he used to enjoy, whether that be walking through the safer parts of the woods or the hills, or dancing in Lichmai’s strangely frequent dances, or watching films with his neighbours - he didn’t have many proper friends any more, having gone silent on them for several years now.

Then he came home for good, and he got a job as a therapist in the small practice near the centre of Lichmai.

The Patton that came home at the end of his degree and got a job was much closer to the Patton that had left at the start of his first year: he was bouncy and bubbly again, hurling himself into dances and baking with wild abandon, throwing himself after every animal he came across even when they gave him hives or left him sneezing for hours afterward.

But that isn’t to say that the Patton who came home wasn’t different.

He was.

 -

There were already two therapists working at the only clinic in town when Patton arrived: one of them, a tall chinese woman named Juliette who had been several years ahead of him in school and had accepted one of the I-promise-I'll-be-a-good-colleague cupcakes he had made with a warm smile, was there when he showed up early on his first day. She had reassured him that their coworker would be there soon, and that he was very enthusiastic about most things, and Patton had cheerfully looked forward to meeting the man with a poster of Appa on his door.

He had not been disappointed. Emile had startled him with an exaggerated drum roll while he had been setting up his desk, and it had taken about two minutes for the two of them to get onto the subject of cartoons - initially Avatar, but quickly evolving into Steven Universe (Emile’s favourite) and Kipo (Patton’s first choice). He had never met Emile before that day - the man had moved into town in early December, while Patton had been in his final year - but there was something in his friendly, comforting nature that quickly gave him the feeling that they had known one another for years.

Patton had been working there for about six months when the coffee shop across the road shut down. Nobody was really sure what had happened - not officially, anyway. The woman that had owned it never arrived to open up one morning, and when one of the part-timers (Jacob Hollis, a guy in his second year of highschool) went over to her home to check on her and collect the key for the shop, he found a heat haze shimmering over the empty home, door hanging open, windows staring vacantly across the street. A small smudge of blood was found on the back door, and was quickly confirmed to be Sofyah’s; all the evidence pointed toward her scraping herself on the gate and accidentally opening her home to one of the Things That Came From The Woods with the droplets of blood.

Of course, ‘general Lichmai weirdness’ wasn’t something that could be put on a police report or death certificate - especially if there was no body, and no proof of Sofyah’s death - so she was merely marked as a missing person.

Nobody really mourned the death of Lichmai’s One-Stop Coffee Shop. Patton, whose tastes had changed somewhat since he had been a child and now found most hot drinks distasteful, had taken one mouthful of the latte he had bought there and almost spat it out at the weirdly gritty texture. Emile frequently mourned the fact that all of their sugary drinks (the man had a sweet tooth the size of the moon) tasted as though they had been mixed with a spade and were all concerningly cruncy. Juliette, who sometimes had coffee and sometimes had tea and sometimes even went for one of the sugary monstrosities that Emile seemed to enjoy so much, had reported that their tea was either much too weak, or had been left brewing for much too long.

When, a month later, they arrived at work to find that the sign above the coffee shop had been painted and replaced almost overnight, all Juliette had said was that she hoped the new owner of what was now the Eyes-Wide Café knew how to make a decent cup of tea.

Patton was in charge of their first coffee run - they took it in turns to get the drinks - and had joined the small queue of people with some apprehension. Sure, Sofyah’s coffee might have left a lot to be desired, but at least he had known what to expect… When the leather jacketed barista had peered at him through their sunglasses, eyes catching on the alice-band keeping his blond curls from his eyes, the expression that crossed their face suggested that they wanted to say something other than, “Welcome to the Eyes-Wide Café, doll! Let me guess, you look like a coffee person? Black, no sugar?”

Patton had nodded, running a hand self-consciously through his hair. “Good guess, ...Remy.” There was a name-badge pinned to his jacket. “One of those, and one…” He scanned the board behind the counter. “One raspberry-cream frappé, and one hibiscus tea, please.”

“Buying for the rest of the office, I see. Am I to expect you to become a permanent fixture?”

“Depends on how good the coffee is,” Patton grinned at him - he had a feeling that they both knew that he would be back no matter how the coffee was. The three of them had been patrons of Lichmai’s One-Stop Coffee Shop for half a year despite the awful drinks served there, after all.

“Babe, you’re gonna find that I make the best drinks this side of Italy. Tell you what, I’m gonna add a little twist to your coffee - no extra charge, and nothing dodgy, don’t panic, daddy-o,” Remy added, catching Patton’s raised eyebrow and correctly interpreting it as concern. “I’ll save the cocktails for later.”

Patton hesitated a moment longer before nodding, and Remy whooped, sliding Emile’s frappé and Juliette’s tea onto the counter. Patton’s black coffee followed it a moment later, and when Patton picked it up, he caught a whiff of coffee granules and something else - chilli, maybe?

Most food and drink just smelled a little off to him these days. This coffee, however? It smelled… Good. Really good. Remy must be some sort of wizard.

When he made it back to the clinic and delivered the drinks to his colleagues, Patton found that the drink tasted as good as its aroma suggested it would.

When Juliette came back from getting drinks the following day, she was clutching a cup of something green that somehow bore the scent of springtime. She said it was the best cup of tea she had ever tasted.

When Emile arrived back at their office the day after, he was frowning faintly, but clutching something that looked like the illegitimate child of a sugar factory and a confectioner’s shop. It was bright pink, covered in rainbow sprinkles and more cream than any one person could realistically eat in their lifetime, let alone one morning, and just looking at it made Patton’s teeth hurt.

Those drinks became their regular order: one coffee, house special; one ginger, jasmine, and spice tea (the spices seemed to change from day to day, and Juliette never had a bad word to say about them); one rainbow frappé (Patton was one hundred percent certain that the rainbow frappé was another house special - he had never seen another person with one, and didn’t want to, either). Some days, when he had part-timers in, Remy would come to drop the drinks off themself, and hang around in the waiting room for a while.

It took approximately three months for Patton to work out that Remy wasn’t hanging around for his own fascinating quips and puns, but because he was trying to strike up a conversation with Emile. The discovery had been made when Patton went into the shop to get coffee one morning, and Remy had leaned over the desk with an unusually serious expression on their face.

“Say, Pat, you wouldn’t happen to know if Picani’s dating anybody?”

It wasn’t the bluntness that took Patton by surprise - Remy rarely went for tact when they spoke - but more the upfrontness. “Ah, so that’s why you’ve been hanging around our office so much!”

Remy didn’t blush, but his eyes slid away from Patton and toward the drink he was making, even though they both knew he could mix it with his eyes closed. “I just want to know if I have a chance, babe. No need to make a big deal out of it.”

“It’s a huge deal!” Patton countered, grabbing one of the sugar sachets from the pot on the counter and spilling it across the surface, then etching a good-luck knot into it. “The ice-cold Remy - how do I not know your surname? Anyway - with a crush on my colleague!”

Remy shook their head, pushing Patton’s order toward him. “Chill, babe. Nothing’s gonna come of it - he barely looks at me. I was just curious.”

Chuckling, Patton patted - ha, Patton patted, he should remember that - Remy’s hand and picked up the cardboard carrier containing their drinks. “Sure. I’ll keep quiet. And he’s single - any time you need me and Juliette to clear out of the office for you to make your move, just send a message by putting sugar in my coffee. I’ll know you have something sweet planned!”

He had ignored Remy’s indignant protests that he wasn’t actually going to do anything, given that Emile barely seemed to pay any attention to him, and kept a careful eye on his colleague over the next few days, and then the next few weeks. Six months passed before Patton came to the conclusion that Remy really wasn’t about to do anything to further their dreams of dating the other therapist.

It was a shame, really. Patton had a feeling that Remy’s down-to-earth presence would be grounding - grounding, like coffee grounds? Anyway - for Emile, who could be flighty and sometimes seemed as though he had so many ideas that he was liable to take off like a cartoon-powered spaceship; he thought that Emile’s enthusiasm and general desire to see the good in things and people would probably balance out some of Remy’s overwhelming appetite for cynicism and sarcastic quips. They’d be really cute together.

Plus, he knew that Emile wasn’t dating anybody: he might have talked Juliette through not one but two breakups since Patton had known them, he might have enthusiastically egged on Patton’s crush on the downstairs receptionist - at least until the guy had turned out to be straight - but when asked about his own private life, he had always maintained that whilst he wasn’t opposed to the idea of a relationship, he hadn’t found anyone he liked enough (romantically, at least) to attempt to pursue one. 

This was the quandary that Patton had been deliberating as he had made his way through the woods that afternoon: how to discreetly push Emile and Remy into such a position that they realised that they were perfect for one another without giving away Remy’s crush or his own involvement. Or, more accurately, how to get Emile to realise that Remy was quite obviously his soulmate, and Remy to realise that he shouldn’t just give up on the object of his affections without trying to find out if they were interested.

Of course, Patton wasn’t particularly good at romance. Of right and wrong, he considered himself a master. He had had more than enough practice at most emotions - even if some of his methods weren’t exactly ones he’d recommend in a professional capacity (this came back to his expert grasp of right and wrong). He was pretty much unbeatable when it came to hugs, and whilst his cooking left something to be desired, his baking was usually spectacular (when he paid attention to the recipe, that was). He knew every single thing about avoiding misfortune in Lichmai, and he knew how to survive the world Outside, too.

So how hard could it be? He’d need something beige, and beige seemed to be Emile’s preferred base colour. It shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade him to wear a ribbon of the same shade. Getting one or both of them fixed up with a bell would be a little harder, but if he picked one of the town dances as the stage to his matchmaking then most people would be wearing bells. White carnations, whilst known to be attractive to some of the Things That Hid In The Trees, were also perfect first-date flowers - he’d just have to make sure he sprinkled in plenty of false indigo to counteract their more negative effects. 

The false indigo was one of his reasons for wandering through the forest on one of his days off, actually. He usually stayed away from this side of the river and the cave system that fed it, knowing what kind of Things liked to sleep in the mines, but he knew there were usually more flowers where the Things That Lay In Wait lay in wait.

It hadn’t taken him too long to find a small clearing full of blooms, and once he had matched one of the purple flowers to the picture he had saved on his phone he had turned around to find a good place to eat lunch.

That was when the first of the afternoon’s strange encounters took place. Patton was just walking slowly, studying the trees around him and looking out for mushroom rings or twigs and stones forming specific shapes (one always had to be on their guard in the woods, after all!) when he became aware of the snapping of twigs behind him.

It couldn’t have been one of the Things That Silently Stalked, largely because most of those things lived up to their name and were silent until it was too late to get away - unless they were deliberately trying to scare him to make a hunt more interesting. That seemed unlikely, though. Patton’s clothing had mistletoe berries sewn into every hem, and he was wearing his ring-pull and stone necklace. He knew every trick in the book.

It couldn’t have been an animal, either - unless one of the elk had managed to get themselves seriously injured and was staggering through the trees. Even then, most animals would be quieter than this.

Patton had turned on the spot to stare in the direction of the noise, which he had suddenly realised was getting closer to him, but stayed silent. He was almost holding his breath by the time somebody burst out of the foliage, panting hard. They were wearing… What were they wearing? 

It looked like a band shirt - one that was ripped almost in two down the front, ruining whatever logo had been below the words that now read ‘Black V’ and ‘rides’ - underneath what had once been a denim jacket that was now a few scraps of denim held together by threads. The rips on their jeans looked deliberate, at least, but Patton found his eyes drawn to the fluffy mess on one foot (the other was bare). What the heck?

Then their head snapped up, and Patton was met with a pair of glowing eyes and hollow cheeks, tanned skin a nearly ashen colour. Drool was dripping down their chin, and he could see bloody scratches on their exposed chest; more blood had dried on their upper lip, as though from a nosebleed. Whoever this was, they obviously weren’t human - but they weren’t like most of the Things that Patton could think of.

Everyone Patton had met, every animal he had seen, all sported a faint glow around their heads, similar to a halo in an old drawing. Emile had one. Juliette had one. His parents, Remy, the dog on the street, the people he had had classes with at uni, the squirrels he had passed on his walk. It was faint, only really visible when he was looking for it, but it was still there.

This person didn’t have a light spreading around their head.

When Patton concentrated, he could see very faint wisps of light lingering around their chest.

He raised an eyebrow as they took a jerky step forward, and their eyes met for the first time.

The green-eyed not-person drew their lips back from their mouth, revealing a set of long, needle-like fangs, and hissed.

Then they darted past Patton in a blur of movement and vanished into the trees.

Patton gazed thoughtfully after them for several long seconds. He hadn’t seen someone with so little light before, or in such a strange place. Were they okay? Maybe the lack of light explained their feral nature - but what about the scratches, and the ripped clothing? Should he go after them?

There was no way he was going to catch up with them now.

Frowning faintly, Patton started walking again.

 -

The second weird encounter wasn’t until after he had eaten, but somehow managed to be even stranger.

It hadn’t started off as an encounter. Patton had stumbled across a duffle bag lying next to a fallen tree, and stared at it for several long seconds. He didn’t recognise it, but that didn’t mean much. It wasn’t as though he made a point of deliberately going through people’s houses and taking inventory of their bags and rucksacks.

There was a chance that the thing had been left here by somebody hiking, but not a very large one. Residents of Lichmai typically avoided the forest unless it was absolutely essential for them to venture into it, and if that happened they would be very careful not to announce their presence by doing something as stupid as leaving their possessions lying around. Outsiders, be they personal guests or just people passing through, were usually encouraged to stay away from the woods with rumours of bears and hidden caves - and Patton didn’t see why they would just leave their possessions abandoned like this.

The bag had probably been stolen, either by someone who had dumped it here, or by one of the Things in a more mischievous mood. Either way, he should probably try to get it returned to whoever it belonged to - he could take it to the police station, check in with his uncle on the way out (his uncle Terri was the town’s finance officer and worked in the mayor’s office, which was in the same building as the station).

If there was anything in the bag bearing a name, though, he could just bring it back in person - that would probably make someone’s day! Bending down, he unzipped the top of the bag and reached inside, pulling out the first thing to meet his hand. It was a camera - and quite a nice one, by the looks of it. Not new: it was slightly worn around the edges, and the little icons beside some of the buttons had half rubbed away, but it was clean and looked to be in excellent condition. (Patton assumed so, anyway. He didn’t know much about cameras).

He was just turning it over when there was a very human sounding gasp from somewhere to his right. Straightening up, he glanced over his shoulder to see a skinny guy standing on the other side of the clearing. “That’s - that’s mine.”

It was such a surprise to see another person in the forest (two people in one day! Sort of…) that Patton just stared for a moment. This guy was tiny, and clearly an Outsider - nobody should have allowed him to just wander through the woods on his own. “What’re you doing here, kiddo?” He pushed the irritation out of his voice. The kid was probably staying at the motel, right? He’d have to have a word with the owners.

“Walking. What are you doing? Why are you poking through my stuff?” The words had a staccato, rapidfire effect to them, as though whoever this was was desperate to get the conversation over with as soon as possible. Sensible. It wasn’t safe to talk to strangers in the woods. 

Patton made himself smile. He had probably just freaked this poor kid out completely. “Just checking it hadn’t been abandoned here!” He hesitated for a second, then kept going. “I was going to take it back into town if nobody showed up - can’t have littering around here!” Really - he wasn’t going to steal anything. The purple haired guy looked pretty nervous - did he think Patton was about to drop his camera? He lifted it a little to show that it was safe in his hands, then glanced at the display - he must have pressed the power button by mistake, because it had lit up. “This is a lovely camera, kiddo. Are you a professional? Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“No.” The answer was short, almost rough, and when he took a step forward Patton flinched automatically. (The fight or flight instinct was hard to repress sometimes).

There was a blinding flash, and Patton cried out automatically: “Srednas nottap!” The protective phrase was almost always on his lips, ready to spill over at a split-second’s notice. In a town like Lichmai, a second’s hesitation when faced with danger could be the difference between life and painful, horrible… Something. Death wasn’t always the worst thing out there.

Then he realised that he must have hit the trigger on the camera by mistake, and glanced sheepishly over it at the kid again. “Kiddo?” It looked as though they were going to throw up - were they ill? “Are you alright? You’ve gone grey - do you need to sit down?” He was careful to keep his voice calm, trying not to let too much concern bleed into his words, trying not to sound too indifferent.

The guy didn’t seem to hear him. “Give - Give his camera back.” Was he shaking? His voice was shaking. “My camera. Give it back.”

He really thought that Patton was going to break the camera. It looked like a prized possession. Maybe he shouldn’t have just picked it up. Glancing back down at the device in his hands, Patton found himself greeted with the gallery (had he accidentally navigated there? He should put this thing down before he deleted a photo by mistake). “Sure, sorry. It’s not damaged, though - you can relax, kiddo.” The picture he was looking at was clearly the one he had just taken: the stranger was standing against a backdrop of trees, staring nervously at the camera. The image wasn’t blurry in the slightest, which counted as a good picture in Patton’s book! “This is actually a really good picture of you, you know? You’ll probably want to delete it, but...”

He trailed off, frowning again. The other guy’s shoulders had hunched and he seemed to be curling in on himself, not listening to anything Patton was saying. Was… Was he hyperventilating?

Oh. Oh, damn. Damn, heck, rats, snap - putting the camera carefully back into the bag, Patton took several steps forward. “Hey. I’m sorry, I didn’t think… I’ve put the camera down. Can you take a deep breath for me?”

It didn’t look as though the kid could hear him, and Patton’s heart ached for the poor guy. It looked as though he were slipping into a full-blown panic attack. Was this his fault? Could he have avoided it if he had just put the camera down in the first place? Guilt twisted Patton’s stomach for a brief second before vanishing. Okay. He could deal with this - he was a therapist, for heaven’s sake!

“Just focus on me, alright? I’m going to count, and it would be amazing if you could breathe with me. You’re safe. Ready? We’re going to breathe in now, for four. Ready? In, two, three-”

Then the kid started glowing.

Not just the light that hung around his head: his whole body started glowing. There was a growling sound, as though from a large beast - maybe the lions from The Lion King - and then a burst of white-hot light light exploded from the thin body in front of him.

“What the heck?!” His own pained exclamation was drowned out by the scream from the other guy.

Patton was about to start chanting, about to start throwing ground walnuts into the air around them in an attempt to dispel whatever malevolent Thing had come to attack, when the ground disappeared from under them, and they were falling.

 -

There was darkness.

Nothing but darkness, for breath after breath, for assassin after assassin, for song after song, for speech after speech, for silence upon silence upon silence upon silence.

There was darkness.

And then there was light.

[and-it-freezes-me]

Schemes Of Mice - Part 2

Schemes Of Mice is the first part of the What Happened In Lichmai series.

{Part 1} {Part 3}

Summary: Virgil gets his car collected, and ends up running an errand for the guy at the coffee shop.

Word count: 5,809

He could leave, of course. 

He could stand, cross the room - he couldn’t see it, but he knew exactly how many steps it would take to reach the archway. They had left the staircase unblocked: he could have left this darkness at any time.

He wouldn’t leave, though.

-

It took Virgil approximately four hours to conclude that he probably wasn’t dreaming.

They drove for another half hour after night suddenly turned to day, through the outskirts of the town - Lichmai, he reminded himself - and then stopped outside of a small motel.

Ethan, who hadn’t said anything since welcoming Virgil to town, was out of the van even before Roman had parked, although parked may be the wrong word. Slammed the brakes on in the middle of the mostly empty car park and blocking four or five different spaces was probably a more accurate description. He came around the side of the van and opened the door on Virgil, who was now clutching his bag to his chest: Roman had made several very sharp turns and he had been sure they were going to hit every other (seemingly redundant) lamppost and tree in the place.

“Mechanic opens at nine on weekdays. They can give you directions inside.” It was quite clearly a dismissal.

The deafening music clicked off.

As they had drawn closer to Lichmai, Roman’s manic laughter had subsided, and he seemed to have become more twitchy. The random comments he had thrown over his shoulder had become less frequent; for the last ten minutes, the three of them had been sitting in silence.

If it weren’t for the fact that he was being abandoned in a strange town, Virgil would almost be relieved to be leaving his suddenly taciturn companions.

“Thanks,” he murmured, unbuckling himself and getting up. Ethan offered him a hand for balance, which he took before jumping out of the vehicle. “I owe you one.”

Ethan flinched as though Virgil had raised a fist to him, hand jerking out of his.

“Watch who you say that to.” Now it was Virgil’s turn to flinch, because Roman’s voice came from right behind him. He didn’t remember hearing the driver’s side door open. He turned to find Roman staring at him, the white strip in his hair hanging between his intense neon eyes, and swallowed hard. “People take that kind of thing seriously around here.”

“Uh. Right.” Virgil glanced back to find that Ethan had disappeared into the van. “I’ll… Be careful.”

“Good luck.”

Roman moved past him, and a second later the door slammed closed behind him. Ethan must have been pinning blankets up over the windows, because Virgil couldn’t see into the van anymore. Were the two of them going to sleep here? In a poorly parked vehicle just outside of a motel with actual beds?

Actually, Virgil wasn’t sure he was surprised. The two of them were certainly weird enough that sleeping in their van wasn’t that bizarre.

Shouldering his bag, Virgil headed into the reception. If the woman sat behind the counter thought it strange that he was buying a room for one night at half past three in the morning, she didn’t say anything. She simply took his money and handed him a key - Virgil wasn’t sure she had said more than ten words to him, and he the same to her. Not that he was feeling particularly chatty just then.

The first thing that Virgil did when he got into the room he had paid for (12, good, he didn’t think he could handle being in room 13) was put his phone on to charge.

As he slid the curtains closed (they were thick, heavy things that completely blocked out the light from outside. Good. The orangey sky was making Virgil feel ever so slightly queasy), he glanced out at the car park. Ethan and Roman’s van was still there.

He didn’t bother changing out of his jeans and hoodie. Instead, Virgil tugged his weighted blanket from his bag and wrapped it around his shoulders, kicked off his shoes, and slid under the covers of the single bed beside him. He was so tired that even the unfamiliar surroundings couldn’t keep him awake for long.

-

When Virgil woke up, he expected to be in his car. That was how dreams worked, after all: one sleeps, one dreams, one wakes up in the place they originally went to sleep. The fact that he was not in his car, and was in fact in the motel room he had booked in what he had hoped had been a dream, suggested that maybe he hadn’t been dreaming at all. He had run out of petrol, made the stupid decision to hitchhike with a guy wearing slippers designed to look like very dangerous rabbits, and ended up in a town where it apparently didn’t get dark at all.

He could still be asleep, of course. This could be one of those weird dreams that feel so much like real life that it’s almost impossible to tell the difference. Maybe he was lying in a coma somewhere after making the idiotic decision to get in a van with some strangers.

With no better options, Virgil decided to pretend that he believed that he wasn’t asleep anymore. That way, if this did turn out to be real life he wouldn’t have wasted any time making a fool of himself - he was done with being everybody’s fool. And if he did wake up in a few hours time? Then none of this would matter anyway.

The minivan was gone from the carpark when he opened the curtains, and Virgil could see the edge of the sun peeking over the buildings in front of him. The sky seemed to be gradually shifting from the unsettling pastel yellow to a cool blue.

Virgil changed into a pair of slightly less rumpled jeans and a fresh t-shirt, then repacked his bag and went to hand his key in at reception. It was only as he returned it to the tired woman at reception that he actually looked at it properly: the key itself was just a typical metal key, a few flecks of something that was probably rust nestled into the grooves, but the attachment was a little more bizarre. Rather than a rectangular piece of card or wood bearing his room number, it looked like a long, off-white stick with the number ‘12’ burned into one side. A ring of translucent white beads wrapped around one end, and a beige ribbon was tied around the other. It almost looked like a bone.

Weird.

He must have been standing there for a while because the woman - she had a nametag, he realised suddenly, although rather than being pinned to her shirt it was perched on her short afro like a bow - cleared her throat. “Anything else I can help with?”

Oh - right. “Actually, um - my, my car’s kinda stranded.” Virgil shifted, pulling his bag closer to his side. “Do you know if there’s a mechanic, or…”

“Off mainstreet, opposite the clinic.” He waited, and after a second she smiled faintly. “Sorry. Out of here, second left, first right, ten minute walk. It’s signposted. Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks…” He craned his next to read her nametag. “Stacei. Have a good… Day.”

She snorted. “Not planning on returning any time soon, then?”

“Not really. Leeshmay wasn’t on the itinerary, and the whole sky thing is… Unsettling.” He tugged the strap of his bag higher up his shoulder and turned to go.

“Lichmai. Emphasis is on the first syllable. Sky gets a lot of people when they first arrive.” There was the squeaking of a chair whose wheels didn’t get enough oil, and then a soft jangling as Stacei returned his key to the pegs on the wall. “Mechanic won’t open ‘til nine - even if you drag your feet, you’re gonna be waiting around a while. I’d recommend the Eyes-Wide Café. They’ll be open. Tell Remy Stacei sent you.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Remy turned out to be an attractive guy with tight cornrows, maybe a few years older than Virgil was, wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket with a badge reading ‘My pronouns are he/they’. The Eyes-Wide Café was only a few buildings up from the clinic and the repair shop opposite (identifiable only by a tow-truck sat outside; apparently ‘signposted’ meant something different in Lichmai than it did everywhere else), and a queue of about three people were already waiting for various drinks.

Virgil spent his time in the queue rehearsing his order: One plain black coffee. He could add sugar later. No - that wasn’t polite enough. Good morning. Could I have one plain black coffee, please? No, that sounded too… Or maybe it wasn’t enough? He had just about settled on Morning. One plain black coffee, please, when the person ahead of him placed their order and moved away and all of his planning was put to waste.

“And what can I get for you, babe? Oh - hello, you’re not from around here, are you?” Virgil winced. Was it that obvious? Remy had pushed their sunglasses back from their eyes to get a better look at him. “You’re not! When’d you roll in, sugar?”

“Uh… Five hours ago, give or take…” Virgil would far rather have this conversation after he had gotten some coffee. Or, preferably, not at all. “I’m not staying.”

“Just passing through - you must’ve slept at the Sunny Motel, huh? That’s where most people end up.”

Didn’t Remy have better things to do? Wasn’t there anybody behind him in the queue? Virgil glanced over his shoulder to see that no, there wasn’t. He licked his lower lip. “Yeah. Girl on reception, Stacei, told me I could get coffee here?”

“She didn’t try to get you to use the machine there first?” Remy sounded almost incredulous. He was leaning across the counter on his elbows now, and as Virgil watched he pulled a packet of sugar from the jam jar by the till, ripped it open, and tipped it onto the countertop.

“No. Is the coffee good there?”

“Bless you, babe. It’s like making love in a canoe,” Remy replied, dragging their index finger through the small pile of granules in front of them.

Virgil waited, but when no explanation seemed forthcoming he resigned himself to the fact that he really couldn’t let that go without asking. “That’s… Good?” If they did coffee at the motel, why hadn’t Stacei just said that? He could have saved himself this weird interaction.

“Good?” Remy licked the pad of his thumb and pressed it against the sugar crystals. Virgil really hoped that the countertop was cleaned regularly. “It’s fucking close to water is what it is, babe.”

Virgil couldn’t help the unattractive snort of laughter that left him then, although he was aware enough to cover his mouth with his hand. Remy politely ignored the sound, chuckling faintly, and then turned to one of the large coffee machines to their left.

“I’ll tell you what. It’s your first day in town -”

“And last,” Virgil interrupted, and then felt like an ass.

Remy just raised a finely sculpted brow. “We’ll see. Either way, I’m gonna whip up something special for you - on the house, if you’ll do me a favour.”

Virgil hesitated, immediately on edge. “What… Sort of favour?” If this guy asked for his number, he was walking straight out. Not that Remy had seemed particularly dangerous so far, of course - but all Virgil had wanted when he had walked in was a coffee, and now he was having this ridiculous conversation.

His suspicion was obvious enough for Remy to look up from the second large drink he was filling. “Nothing dodgy, babe. Relax. Just hoping you’d drop some drinks off for my… Friends. I’ll have yours waiting when you get back, how about it?”

He gestured dramatically at the two drinks now on the counter between them. One of them was in a very large cardboard cup, the dark liquid and the rich, earthy scent betraying it to be coffee - almost exactly what Virgil wanted to order. It had another scent, too, one he couldn’t identify off the top of his head. The other was in a clear container, droplets of condensation running down its sides and mixing with the sugar Remy had left on the table. The drink was bright pink and topped with enough whipped cream to make Virgil’s teeth hurt just looking at it.

Virgil glanced at the clock behind the barista. Half past eight. He had the time. “Uh… Sure. Why not. Where?”

“You’re a real doll.” Remy pulled a rectangle of card from under the counter and unfolded it into a drinks carrier, then put the two drinks into opposite corners and pushed them toward Virgil. “The clinic, third floor. The coffee’s for a Mr. Sanders - he’s the short one with the glasses. The rainbow frappé’s for Picani, pink hair, office full of cartoon merch. Got it?”

Virgil nodded, adjusting the strap on his shoulder with one hand and taking the drinks with the other. “Sure. Be right back.”

He really needed to stop doing things for people. As he stepped away, Remy called out, “Next!” and somebody stepped forward - there was a whole queue of people waiting now. Virgil didn’t remember seeing a single one arrive.

Well, at least Remy’s eyes had been a regular deep brown, rather than some other neon shade. And he was getting free coffee out of it.

It took him barely three minutes to reach the clinic and climb the stairs to the third floor - the person sat at the reception desk had looked up when he had entered, seen the drinks in his hand, and gestured toward the elevators. Clearly this was a regular occurrence; couldn’t Remy have waited for a break and then carried the drinks over themself?

There was a sign on the wall just opposite the elevators on the third floor. It read,

Dr. Emile Picani, Therapist, Room 3.1

Dr. Juliette Sho, Therapist, Room 3.2

Mr. Patton Sanders, Therapist, Room 3.3

Dr. Amelie Frost, Child Therapist, Room 3.4

Well, that made finding Picani and Mr. Sanders a lot easier: Virgil had been worrying that he was going to actually have to ask somebody where to find the two of them. He was definitely not in the mood to talk to more people this early in the morning.

The elevators and stairwell opened into a small open area with a few couches, a table, and another reception desk (this one empty), with a corridor visible on the other side. Its walls were painted a soft pastel blue, broken here and there by pale doors that looked wooden but were probably covered in a plastic veneer to give that impression. A few posters had been tacked to the walls, all bearing slogans like Talking is the first step to mending or Everyone needs someone to listen. It was… Well, it was just like the other hallways Virgil had sat in on his way to therapy sessions.

He swallowed briefly and patted the lump of his camera with his free hand before walking over to the desk. Remy hadn’t said he had to deliver the drinks directly into their recipients’ hands - he could just leave them here, he supposed. That way he wouldn’t have to actually interact with anybody - but it might mean that Remy’s friends didn’t get their drinks until they were cold. Or warm, in the case of the pink monstrosity that Virgil suddenly noticed was decorated with rainbow sprinkles.

Virgil had put the drinks carrier down on the desk and was glancing nervously from corridor to elevator, reasoning that a receptionist was likely to show up in the next few minutes and know who the drinks were for so he could leave now, when the nearest door opened.

“-you, Ruby? Did you get my email about the- Oh, you’re not Ruby.” Virgil’s heart sank. This must be Picani: he had hair almost exactly the same shade as the cold drink Virgil had brought him, and was wearing a dark blue cardigan that would have looked perfectly normal if it hadn’t been for the pale blue stomach and the line of antennae that ran up his back (Virgil could see them and the large ears on the hood when he turned to close the door behind him). “And you’ve got my drink! Remy must have persuaded you to drop them off as a favour, right? Ah, you’re a gem - I’m thinking Amethyst, given all the purple and the way you look like someone setting out to prove themself, but that’s only the most obvious choice - and we’re not taking your personality into account at all!”

Virgil blinked at him, pulling the bag at his hip a little closer to himself. Was everyone in this town missing a few buttons?

“Am I coming on too strong? Sorry! Let me start again - Emile Picani, therapist, in desperate need of that drink. I don’t think we’ve met. You are?” As he had spoken, Picani had approached the desk and scooped up the frappé, then taken a long sip from the paper straw sticking out of the top before looking at Virgil expectantly.

“... Virgil Insmyre,” Virgil muttered reluctantly. “And I’m just passing through.”

“That’ll explain the bag! You’re clinging to it like it’s your last connection to your past lives! So, Virgil, what do you think of Lichmai?” The universe seemed determined to make him talk to people this morning.

It would be rude not to answer - but it would probably be rude to say what he really thought, which was that this place held more crazy than a children’s birthday party in a candy factory. Licking his lower lip, Virgil cast around for the right words. “Well, it’s very… Different. A little unusual. Very unusual. The sky is definitely… Not what I’m used to.”

Picani chuckled. “Trying very hard not to offend, I see.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“I’ve only lived here for a few years now - I know the cultureshock firsthand.” He took another slurp from his drink. “Remy probably bribed you with a free drink to bring these over, right?” Virgil nodded. “You’ll want to get back. He’s a wizard with those drinks - never guesses wrong, and always brewed to perfection. The Uncle Iroh of coffee - or any drinks, I guess. I’ll take Patton’s coffee through.”

“Thanks.” Virgil bobbed his head once in an awkward approximation of a nod, then shifted from foot to foot. Picani didn’t seem to have anything else to add: he was picking up the coffee cup with his spare hand, apparently unconcerned by the hot liquid in the thin card cup.

Turning to go, Virgil made it halfway back to the staircase before Picani’s voice reached him again. “Hey.” He glanced back over his shoulder. The pink-haired therapist was still standing by the reception desk, watching him with his large, dark eyes. “You’re gonna be just fine out there, Virgil Insmyre. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you. Everything’s going to work out.”

Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any weirder. Virgil was about to reply, politely but firmly state that he wasn’t here for therapy and didn’t want any free samples; a violent sneeze left him instead, and stinging his nose and making his eyes squeeze shut.

When he opened them, Picani was beaming once more. “Have a good day, Virgil!” He called cheerfully, before turning and heading down the corridor, presumably toward Patton Sanders’ office.

Virgil watched him go, the hood of his cardigan hanging down his back and the large ears attached to it bouncing slightly as he walked, then hitched his bag up on his shoulder yet again and let his shoulders hunch.

It wasn’t until he left the building that he managed to put his finger on what was really bothering him about that interaction: Picani’s parting words, the ones about everything being okay. They hadn’t sounded like reassurances or encouragement.

They had sounded like an order.

“Getting paranoid there, Verge,” he scolded himself, then shook his head once and made the short trip back up the road to the Eyes-Wide Café. “He’s just a slightly intense therapist with no filter. You never have to see him again.”

The queue in the coffee shop was still there, although its components had changed. Virgil found his fingers itching to pull his camera from his bag, to sit in the corner of the café for the rest of the day and document the way it grew and shrank, the way that it always held to the same structure no matter the people making it up. They would be the kind of photographs he would take now, and then come back to in several years time, maybe when he’s made something of a name for himself, and touch up to release as a proper series. Something about permanent patterns arising from impermanent moments…

Remy caught his eye and gestured to a table by the door, where a clear takeaway cup was sitting, a black-and-purple striped straw sticking jauntily out of the top. (Virgil had no idea where the straw had come from: the only straws on the counter were red and white. Picani’s had been pink.) The drink itself was almost black in colour, but it was quite obviously iced - and it was going to be really bitter, wasn’t it? Virgil knew he should have made off with Patton’s coffee when he had had the chance.

Still, a free drink was a free drink, and he had no desire to stand in the queue and offend the barista. Virgil glanced at the clock behind the bar - nine o’clock. Perfect. Grabbing the cup from the table, he left the café to the soft jangle of the bell above the door and started back down the street (again).

He would speak to the mechanic, get his car filled up, and be out of here before midday. Then he could forget all about the weird sky and the people here. Halfway between the café and the repair shop, Virgil lifted his drink to take a brief sip, braced for whatever concoction the barista had assumed he would like.

It… Wasn’t what he had been expecting at all. It was obviously coffee based, but there was no trace of bitterness in the cold liquid. It was somehow creamy despite its dark tone, and the taste of caramel lingered in his mouth after he had swallowed. The coolness sent a shiver down his spine and left a buzzing in his fingers, but he was spared the uncomfortable tingling in his teeth that usually made him avoid iced drinks like this. It was sweet enough to satisfy his tastes, but not so sweet that it became sickly or like eating pure syrup.

In short, it was really good.

Maybe Picani had been right and Remy really was some kind of coffee wizard, he thought. Didn’t stop either of them from being the second and third weirdest people he had met in his life (with Roman taking first place, and Ethan coming in at a tidy fourth).

Taking another long mouthful and enjoying the smooth caramel flavours, Virgil turned the corner to find that the garage door on the repair shop was slowly being raised, a blonde woman in stained blue overalls (cliché, much?) standing beside it with her fingers on a control box in the wall. The disemboweled form of a large car was gradually becoming visible inside the building.

“-ait!” Virgil was just lifting a hand to wave awkwardly at her when he became aware of shouting behind him over the grinding din of the door opening. “Wait! Wait up!”

The highstreet was not busy. There was no doubt in Virgil’s mind that the shouting person was trying to catch his attention. He briefly considered ignoring them, already having passed his limit on social interaction for the day, but turned when the sound of running footsteps met his ears.

It was the barista, still wearing their purple apron and with an empty coffee cup in one hand. Remy looked almost panicked, and Virgil glanced over his shoulder in the hope that somebody else was behind him and had skipped out on their bill - his hopes were proven false when the other skidded to a stop beside him.

“Did -” He paused, clearly trying to catch his breath.

Virgil raised an eyebrow. “You’re out of breath after running past four shops?”

Remy straightened up, clearly about to snap back at him, but paled when Virgil took a wary step backward. His eyes flickered to the half-drunk coffee in his hand.

“Is there a problem?” Virgil looked at the coffee as well. Remy had definitely made eye contact with him and pointed at it; there had been nobody else around, so it wasn’t as though he had just stolen somebody else’s coffee and walked off. So why did Remy look as though they were about to pass out?

“The - the cream.”

“What?”

“The, the cream, babe.” Remy pressed a hand to their face, pushing their sunglasses further up their nose. “I didn’t check if you were, uh…” He waved a hand, and Virgil’s eyebrow rose higher.

“Lactose intolerant?”

Remy nodded frantically. “That’s it. You’re… You’re not, right?”

“Bit late now, isn’t it?” Virgil gestured with his cup, then lifted it to his mouth again. He regretted the move when the barista’s dark skin moved a few steps further down the path toward grey. “No, I’m not. I’m fine. Did you really just abandon your shop to check that?”

Another nod, this time less desperate - but Remy didn’t seem relieved. Instead, they seemed… Resigned? Virgil was definitely imagining things now.

“Right. Good. Okay.”

They glanced left and right, then at Virgil again, and Virgil found that he couldn’t read their expression anymore. He held up his drink awkwardly again. “It’s… A good drink. Thanks.”

“Good.” Remy seemed to shake himself then, drawing his shoulders up a little and straightening his back. “Good! Okay, I’ll - good luck with your car, babe!” The sudden return of the brash barista was almost as surprising as the exaggerated swagger with which they returned to their café, and felt just as forced.

Virgil’s first assessment had been right. Great coffee or no, Remy was just plain weird.

Didn’t matter. Who cared about some strange guy in a strange town that he was never going to visit again? Taking a deep breath, Virgil counted slowly to five in his head before pushing them from his mind and heading into the repair shop.

-

He was grateful that the mechanic seemed more or less normal. She didn’t hand him any keychains made of bone or have glowing eyes or try to learn his life story. There was nothing weird about her shop at all: it was just like every other small shop Virgil had ever visited, slightly greasy and covered in spare parts, bolts and coils and tyres and pipes. He had passed a pair of petrol pumps on his way in to find her - she had been under the car in the shop, and had introduced herself with a brusque, “People call me Yana. What ya need?”.

Virgil had apologetically explained his situation, and she had slapped him on the back with an oily hand (he was going to have to wash his hoodie) and announced that it happened all the time: sometimes GPS just didn't work around Lichmai.

"That's not weird at all," he commented dryly, and Yana just laughed.

"Not around here, shortie." Grabbing a rag from by the door, she wiped some of the dirt from her fingers and then swiped a set of keys from a workbench by the door. "I'll head out and grab ya car, fill it up when I get back. Probably be an hour 'n a half?"

Finishing the last of his iced coffee, Virgil followed her out of the shop and watched as she lowered the sliding door once more, then flipped around a wooden sign he hadn't noticed before. The now-visible side read 'Back later.' "Do you want me to come with you to help you find it?"

Yana shook her head, already climbing into the battered orange tow-truck. "Only two roads in 'n out of town, 'n ya already told me which one you took. Just be here a little before eleven, yeah?"

“Just before eleven. Right.” What was he supposed to do until then? Go and sit in the Eyes-Wide Café and hope that nobody else tried to make conversation with him? It wasn’t as though he could go back to his room at the Sunny Motel, given the fact that he had handed his key in that morning.

Virgil lifted his free hand to shade his eyes from the morning sun as Yana’s truck turned the corner onto mainstreet and disappeared, then sighed. He supposed he could just sit on the wall outside the repair shop until she got back - boring as that might be, it would mean that he’d be able to leave as soon as was humanly possible. On the other hand, if he had a little over an hour, maybe it would be a good opportunity to stretch his legs. If he took the time to walk around now, whilst he didn’t have the option to be driving, he could realistically push back his mandatory driving breaks and try to make up some of the time he had lost by getting… Well, lost.

Maybe he could find a small park and see if there was anything worth photographing.

Setting an alarm for an hour’s time, Virgil returned to mainstreet and started walking in the opposite direction to the coffee shop and its weird owner, keeping a careful map of his route in his head. It was made more difficult by the fact that half of the turns he made seemed to be onto streets with no name, or rows of cookie-cutter cottages with identical gardens. Not that that was all that weird - plenty of places ended up with a given construction service building repeatedly from the same blueprint. It just made it rather difficult to find his way around.

At one point, the houses he was walking past seemed to thin out a little, and he found himself beside a small orchard.

Cresting a hill, he came across what must be the town’s highschool: he could see a game of lacrosse being played by a group of teenagers, and the words ‘LICHMAI MIDDLE SCHOOL / LICHMAI HIGH SCHOOL’ were stencilled across one building. (Actually, he only assumed it was lacrosse, but he thought it was probably a fairly good guess given that he could hear a teacher yelling at somebody to stop hitting their friend with a lacrosse stick).

Following the road down the other side of the hill, he found himself on the highstreet once more, this time further up than before. Weird. He didn’t remember doubling back on himself.

Somewhere - Virgil had given up trying to remember a route - he found a small square with a fountain in the middle, and the town hall stretching across one side of the plaza. The image of himself striding inside and demanding to see the mayor to complain about the lack of darkness briefly crossed his mind, and he chuckled at the thought. What was an elected official going to do about a localised breakage in the solar system? And he could definitely see himself as the sort of person that barges into the mayor’s office of a town he doesn’t even live in to make complaints. Not.

The soft chiming of his phone startled him out of his reverie, and he slipped it from his bag to glance at the screen. He didn’t need to: nobody would be messaging him, and he wasn’t expecting any phone calls, so it was obviously the alarm he had set.

Well, that made everything easier. A short walk back to the garage, pay Yana, get in his car, and forget this weird little town ever existed.

Virgil deliberately ignored the fact that it only took him five minutes to arrive back on mainstreet, despite the fact that he had gotten slightly turned around and ended up walking down a road he had never seen before (he would have remembered seeing a shop called ‘Midge’s Supplies: For All Your Protection Needs’ and what looked like several large bulbs of garlic, painted blue, hung in the window. What did they sell there? Herbal voodoo nonsense? Guns? Condoms? A mixture of the three?).

He pointedly didn’t mention the fact that Yana had tied a small pouch full of what looked like crushed flowers to his rearview mirror. He could take them off as soon as he had pulled away from the repair shop.

Virgil turned onto the highstreet. As he passed the Eyes-Wide Café, he glanced sideways, and found that Remy was watching him through the shop window. No - they were staring out of the window, watching the cars drive past. Virgil couldn’t even see his eyes behind those sunglasses. They weren’t watching him.

The first time he found himself stopped at a traffic light, he unhooked the small pouch Yana had left him, unbuckled his seatbelt, and leaned out of the passenger side window to drop it into a trash can.

Virgil only hit one more red light on his way out of town. In fact, he only saw one more light - did the place just have an unusually small amount of traffic control? He pushed the question aside as the buildings grew more sparse, and by the time he was driving passed what looked like a small farm Virgil was already trying to guess how long it would be before he reached a place where his GPS would work again. His phone had signal now, but was flatly refusing to load a map.

The woods, when he reached them, were almost completely silent. The trees had been cleared for about twenty metres on either side of the road, leaving a grassy strip pockmarked with what looked like the occasional overgrown stump. To prevent a treefall blocking one of the two roads into and out of town? That made sense: easier to stop a problem from happening all together than have to deal with it when it did happen. Finally, something about Lichmai that wasn’t completely bizarre. Not that that gave him any desire to stick around any longer than was completely necessary, though. Virgil pressed his foot down gently, encouraging his old blue car to pick up speed and get him back to some recognisable roads.

That, of course, was when smoke, thick and black, began to pour from under the bonnet.

Virgil swore.

[and-it-freezes-me]

Schemes Of Mice - Part 3

Schemes Of Mice is the first part of the What Happened In Lichmai series. This is the final part of Schemes Of Mice.

Summary: Virgil spends a few days wandering around town before turning his attention toward the forest.

Words: 5,406

{Part 1} {Part 2}

That was the beautiful cruelty of the thing. At any point, he could rise and leave the darkness. Maybe he would only make it out of this room before collapsing; maybe he would make it halfway up the staircase. Maybe he would even make it out to the surface - because they would have left a path for him, would have given him a way out, delighting in the choice he’d have to have made.

Maybe he would see daylight before he died.

Before they both died.

Before, in his selfishness, he killed the one he had sworn to protect.

He couldn’t leave.

That was the cruel beauty of it.

-

When Virgil had opened the bonnet of his car, he had found a blackened heap of burnt metal, still hot enough that he had almost burned his hand on the hood. He had sworn at it for a long time before accepting that doing that wasn’t going to fix anything, and had vented a little more of his frustration by kicking at a large stone on the grassy bank by the roadside. It had fallen over in a frustratingly minor reaction to something that sent pain sparking up his leg.

Then he remembered that he didn’t have any way of contacting Yana, and a brief search on his phone told him what he had already guessed: she didn’t have a website, so he was going to have to walk back into town until he reached the shop, or at least found somebody that could get in touch with her.

Unless she had an entire spare engine lying around, Virgil had the horrible feeling that his stay in Lichmai had just been significantly extended.

When he reached the farmhouse he had passed on his way out and psyched himself up enough to knock on the door, Virgil was met with a suspicious glower from the person inside. He had to talk fast to persuade them not to slam the door in his face immediately; when he had explained, there was a second of silence and then a pale hand shoved a scrap of paper through the crack between door and wall.

Weird and rude.

Virgil half expected the scrap of paper to be covered with strange symbols or some sort of curse to make strangers go away (he could use one of those, actually) but it did have a number scrawled across it in messy handwriting. When he put the number into his phone, it even turned out to be the right one, and he returned to his car to wait for the mechanic to rescue him.

“Keep your eyes on the woods,” she had said shortly before hanging up, and he did so, feeling somewhat foolish. She was just messing with him, of course: trying to unnerve the clearly jumpy stranger that had apparently managed to melt his engine. It wasn’t as though anything was going to sprint out of the trees and maul him. Even if there were wolves in the area, they wouldn’t be hunting in the middle of the day. And even if they were (because Virgil couldn’t blame the local fauna for getting confused, given the strangely bright nights), they weren’t about to attack a guy leaning against a car.

Virgil got into his car, just as a precaution.

The first thing Yana did when she arrived - after jumping out of her truck - was open his bonnet, let out a low whistle, and then lean in to poke at the still-hot metal with her bare hands. A few seconds passed, during which Virgil got back out of his car and came to stand beside her.

“Really did a number on this one, huh?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Virgil protested, although how his engine could have spontaneously decided to melt of its own accord, he didn’t know. It had been fine last night! “I don’t know what happened.”

“Ya engine overheated, caught fire, and started melting the rest of the stuff under here. Gonna need ta replace the whole thing.” Yana poked at one of the more twisted lumps, then sighed and turned back toward her truck. “Know for a fact I don’t have all the components in at the moment. It’ll be a few days ‘til I can get some more shipped in from Olkin.”

“Olkin?”

“Nearest city. ‘Bout two hours this direction.”

Virgil nodded slowly. Fan-fucking-tastic.

-

Yana let him ride back to town in the truck with her. Well, it wasn’t as though she was about to abandon him out there: as she had hooked his car up and maneuvered it onto the back of her truck, she had sent repeated glances over her overall-covered shoulders into the trees around them. When he had asked her what she was looking for, she had muttered something about the woods not being safe and then clammed up completely, her next words being a brisk, “Hop in. I’ll get ya back ta town,” that booked no room for argument.

When they had reached her repair shop, she had jumped out of the driver’s seat with barely a second glance at him and immediately started clearing space for his car. Virgil had watched her for a second, then jumped out to help - until she had snatched a large rock he had been moving from his hands, returned it to the place he had picked it up, and then shooed him away. “Get anything you’re gonna need from ya car. Doubt I’ll be touching the trunk, but I’ll call ya ta grab the rest of ya stuff if I have ta.”

“Do you have-” Virgil started, fishing around in his pocket for his phone, and the mechanic waved him away.

“Saved ya number when ya called. I’ll let ya know when the car’s done.” She leaned down and picked up what looked like the drum of a washing machine and carried it inside. Virgil could hear clinking when she walked, and assumed it was full of small bits of scrap metal.

He grabbed the duffle bag that currently held his camera and laptop, added a few more changes of clothes to it, and started walking.

Okay. Okay, assuming it took a week in the worst case for Yana to get the parts shipped in, that still gave him more than enough time to get to his new home before his first day at Mary-Lee, Lee, and Co., more than enough time to scout out the area. He’d have over a week. It wasn’t as though he had booked himself any tickets or appointments that he was going to have to cancel, and nobody was expecting him - he didn’t have any friends in Charlotte, and didn’t have a flatmate yet. That had been something he was going to consider looking into once he had given himself time to settle in, and once he got a better idea of what his work-life balance was going to look like, and how much cash he was going to have on hand.

What was he supposed to do in this freakshow of a town for the next week, though? It wasn’t as though he had friends here that he could visit or rely on for a quick tour and then a week of… Movies, or something. Whatever adults did when they visited friends. Even if he weren’t predisposed to being uncomfortable trying to make friends with random people, Virgil would have been put off trying to befriend any of the townsfolk he had met so far sheerly by their monumental kookiness. (Was he being a little judgemental? Yes, absolutely. Should he be a little fairer toward the people who had only tried to make him feel welcome? Probably, sure.)

Remy had been far more cheerful than somebody who worked in customer service had any right to be - not that that was what was putting Virgil off going back to the Eyes-Wide Café to hang out until he figured out what to do. It was the expression that had been on his face when he had hurried out after him. That hadn’t been the kind of expression a barista makes when they accidentally serve a lactose intolerant person milk, not even the most devoted to their trade. It had been the slightly sick expression of a person who has just realised that they’ve mixed up the labellings on their spice jars, but is too late to stop their guest from sprinkling large amounts of wolfsbane into their dinner under the assumption that it is only basil and then beginning to eat.

Surely, in that case, the accidental poisoner would say something?

Not that Remy had poisoned him, of course. “That would be stupid. It’s a simile, idiot,” Virgil muttered, kicking at a stone with one ratty trainer.

Quite apart from the fact that he had no desire to hang out in a therapist’s waiting room, Virgil didn’t think he had the energy that was clearly required to hold any prolonged conversation with the pink-haired Picani. And then there were his ominous parting words, the reassurances that had sounded weirdly like an order… Nope. Nope, Virgil was not dealing with any more of that.

He could try to find Ethan and Roman, he supposed - although where he was supposed to bump into them he had no idea. A bar, maybe, if there was one in a town (village?) this size? That would be brilliant, wouldn’t it: a place designed to be loud and busy and complete hell on his anxiety, where he had no real business hanging out because he wasn’t quite old enough to buy alcohol, full of people who all knew one another and could quite clearly identify him as an outsider.

Besides, why would he want to see those two again? Roman had seemed to have even more energy than Picani did, and absolutely no filter over his clear inclination toward the macabre. Ethan had been more relaxing to be around, but they were still strangers with creepy eyes who had seemed completely unenthusiastic about returning to their supposed hometown. Who stops in the middle of the night to pick up hitchhikers?

It suddenly occurred to him that Roman had been the only person to touch his car other than Yana. What if he had done something to it, maliciously or by accident, that had caused the engine to combust?

No, Virgil was perfectly happy staying away from those two.

The only other person he had met had been Stacei. She hadn’t seemed too weird - used to the weird sky, maybe, and much too comfortable playing with keys that looked like they were tied to pieces of bone, but not as though she were about to curse him or was already planning his funeral.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as though Virgil had the time or inclination to make friends with anybody here. He would be leaving by the end of the week, he just had to keep himself entertained and alive for a couple of days.

He could grab some microwave meals from a store to keep him fed - there had been what looked like a small kitchen near Stacei’s desk, and Virgil assumed it would have a microwave. According to Remy, it had a coffee machine: a microwave was a little more commonplace, right? There was probably a laundrette in town; he could clean the dirty clothes in his car (he’d have to go back to the repair shop to grab them, but if he did that tomorrow he could ask Yana if she had any news on how long he’d be staying…). The mandatory break in his travel plans would give him the opportunity to take some more photos - there could be deer in the forest. There could even (a small smile tugged at his lips) be some old buildings, maybe an abandoned mine entrance or something. Virgil wasn’t stupid enough to explore a sinkhole full of toxic minerals and rusty bits of wire and rockfalls and sudden drops and pools of freezing water that plunge so far down that anything living at the bottom would have to have evolved to deal with the crushing pressure of hundreds of tonnes of fluid above it - he shivered, pulling his hoodie a little tighter around his shoulders with his free hand. No, he wouldn’t be venturing into any caves - but photographs of the entrances, overgrown with roots and ivy? Virgil would love to take some of those.

He was so deep in thought that it took him a couple of seconds to realise that he was walking past the Sunny Motel, and then a few more seconds to realise that he vaguely remembered passing it at least two more times since he had left the repair shop. Had he just been walking in circles without realising it?

Virgil shook off the weird feeling that gave him and headed for the reception again.

Stacei glanced up when the door opened, smiled widely at him, and then looked back down at her sudoku as he hesitated in the doorway. It wasn’t as though he had any better options than to stay here, right? Even if there was a hotel in this small town, the motel was going to be much cheaper. Stop it, he told himself firmly. There was no reason to avoid staying here.

Approaching the desk, he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Hi.”

“Did your car break down?” She scribbled a number down, then met his eyes once more. Her name badge wasn’t in her hair anymore, and she had changed since he had seen her that morning. Maybe she had taken a break while he had been out - he had left before eight, and it was easily early afternoon by now.

“Good guess.”

“Wasn’t really a guess - it happens a lot more than most Outsiders would expect.” Stretching her arms above her head, Stacei kicked the desk (at least, Virgil assumed she did, given the thud of shoe against wood) and sent her chair creaking backward toward the wall of keys. “You’re probably going to be staying here for a week, right?”

Virgil nodded. “Until Yana can get the parts to fix my engine.”

“That’s usually how it works, yeah.” She pushed a form toward him, and Virgil picked up a pen from a jar by the desk to fill it in. It didn’t work. “Do you know how you’re going to kill time?”

“Hm.” The second pen he tried was bright orange. The third was purple and the fourth didn’t work either. “Might walk around a bit. See if I can take any good photographs, you know.” The fifth pen didn’t work either, so Virgil resigned himself to filling in the form in purple. “Do you know if there are deer in the woods? I’d love to get some pictures of them.”

“Deer, and… Other things.” There was a rustling, and Virgil glanced up to find that Stacei had put his room key on top of a small leaflet and slid them both across the desk toward him. “I’d be careful going out there, you know. We had a hiker get mauled by a bear last year, and there are all sorts of hidden drops and the occasional carnivorous plant.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Virgil responded, then winced at the accidental pun. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Stacei just chuckled, accepting the form. “There are a few farms on the outskirts of town, and the orchard always looks nice in the mornings, with the mist rising through it. I’d recommend hanging around there for a while. Sometimes we get sunbugs in the evenings.”

“Sunbugs?”

“You know, the little ones that glow! Right, if you could just…”

Virgil paid, then took the key and the leaflet she had handed him and left reception. He was in room three this time, in between rooms one and four. Somebody had messed up on the numbering system, it seemed - did that mean that room thirteen (which was present, between rooms twelve and fourteen) was actually room twelve?

Food - he should probably get some food. Despite carrying around a packet of jerky and some dried fruit since he had left his car the previous night (earlier that morning?), Virgil hadn’t actually eaten anything in a while. There had to be a supermarket somewhere in town, right? Probably on mainstreet - that had seemed to be where most things were. He could grab a sandwich, and a few microwave meals like he had already planned. Some fresh fruit wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Or he could order pizza - there was an advert for what claimed to be ‘the best pizza in Lichmai!*’ on the back of the leaflet Stacei had handed him. When Virgil looked at the ad more closely, he found a footnote to the effect that Pizza Day was also the only pizza place in Lichmai.

Fantastic. They didn’t even have a pizza brand he recognised.

-

After walking out to pick up his pizza (which was actually much better than he had been expecting) and grab some food from the store, Virgil spent the rest of that afternoon curled up on the bed in his room, watching a show on Netflix. He was only half paying attention to it, but it was nice to just zone out for a while.

The following day, he made his way back to the repair shop (carefully avoiding walking past the Eyes-Wide Café so as to avoid another weird run-in with Remy) and collected the bag of dirty clothing from the back of his car. Yana wasn’t able to give him a better estimate on how long he’d be trapped there, but reassured him that she had put in the order for the parts, and then clapped him on the shoulder once more, smearing grime further over his hoodie.

The laundrette had more bulbs of garlic hung in the windows, painted like brightly coloured easter eggs. Worse - he saw the pink-haired therapist in there, calmly loading a machine with a mess of pastel and beige fabrics. Picani had looked at him, beamed, waved, and then paled as though Virgil had just grown an extra head. Whatever it was that had disturbed him had not stopped him from dragging Virgil into an hour-long discussion about… Well, Virgil wasn’t quite sure. It had started off as a compliment on his favourite Jack Skellington shirt, which Virgil had dropped whilst trying to load into a machine, and quickly evolved into an evaluation of different kinds of animation, and then Picani had been telling him about the differences in styles visual, musical, subtextual, and plot between three of his favourite shows, and Virgil had just been nodding along helplessly.

By the time Picani left, Virgil was exhausted. Some people he found very tiring, and the therapist was definitely one of them! He headed straight back to the Sunny Motel as soon as he had taken his clothing out of the drier, entirely unwilling to do anything other than crash in front of his laptop for the rest of the afternoon.

On his third day in Lichmai, Virgil took up Stacei’s recommendation and asked her for directions to the orchard. She was much less chatty than she had been the last time they had spoken, hunched over a crossword, and that was fine with him.

The orchard turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, really. The morning mist was thick and clung to his ankles as he pushed open the small wooden gate, but without the contrast of the morning sun bringing light into the sky, all of the pictures he took looked ever so slightly… Wrong. No - they looked very wrong.

As the day aged and the mist burned away, Virgil settled down on his stomach near a particularly gnarled tree, camera in his hands, and watched the shadows shift across the ground. He managed to get one or two decent photographs - not necessarily ones he could sell, just ones that he thought looked nice enough to almost make the discomfort of lying in damp grass worth it. He got a picture of a hare, standing almost bolt upright, ears pricked, the sun visible through the branches of a tree behind it. (Actually, he took several, just in case one didn’t come out right). He spent nearly an hour trying to get the right angle and then waiting for the sun to be in the right position to get a near perfect shot of an apple, the sun reflecting off of one side and making it look as though the fruit was glowing. Then he took his eyes off of the apple to consider the image he had taken, and when he looked up, the fruit was gone.

(Virgil had no idea why there was a single apple growing on a tree at completely the wrong time of year. It was one of those questions he was just not going to ask).

He must have been sleeping worse than he thought he had been, though, because toward mid-afternoon he had started seeing small flashes in the corners of his vision. Discovering that they persisted when he closed his eyes, he shifted to get more comfortable in his new spot and pulled a water bottle from his bag, assuming that his lightheadedness was related to the fact that he had somewhat neglected to eat lunch. He had gotten halfway through his store bought sandwich when a yawn split his jaw from side to side.

Then he blinked, and suddenly he was cold. Giving his head a brief shake, like a dog trying to rid itself of water, Virgil pushed himself back into a seated position, and found that he was coated in grass, dirt, and yellowed leaves. His bag was about a metre away from him, closed - he didn’t remember it being closed. When he lunged for it, sending dead foliage scattering onto the grass around him and startling a small flock of starlings into flight, he found that his camera had been nestled into it and surrounded by more earth and leaves.

“What the fuck…?” Had some kid decided to screw with him while he had been asleep? It took several seconds of frantically scooping dirt from his bag to get his camera out, and when he had ensured that it hadn’t been damaged - it was the most precious thing he owned, after all - Virgil’s panic half turned to anger. Somebody had come and covered him in dirt while he had slept, had played with his things, had - had stolen the remainder of his sandwich and his water bottle, apparently. Somebody had been near him while he slept. The fury turned back to panic with a sickening lurch.

He stayed in the orchard just long enough to dump the rest of the dirt from his bag onto the ground by the tree before returning to the motel at a sprint.

There was no way he was going back there, despite the mist or the rabbits. Falling asleep somewhere public like that had been stupid, risky, stupid, and the fact that some arsehole had decided to half bury him was enough to put anybody off.

Besides, he was much more interested in exploring the forest.

And so it was that on his fourth morning in Lichmai, Virgil Insymere packed his bag with two new water bottles, some sandwiches, his phone, a compass he borrowed from Stacei (who always seemed to be on the desk in reception - didn’t she do anything else?) knowing that he was liable to get lost, and some chalk as well as his camera. He also packed some spare batteries: given his luck of late, he would have the perfect shot all lined up just in time for his camera to die on him.

Even in the early morning, the forest seemed to glow green around him. The ground was carpeted with a thick layer of pine needles and dry, crumpled leaves, and Virgil was glad for his thick shoes when he almost tripped over a thick, thorny vine only metres into the trees. He could hear birdsong from almost every direction, trilling and chirping coming from above and around, and a soft rustling that might be squirrels or rabbits or foxes in the undergrowth.

The trees around him were dressed in soft, lush shades of green, the brown of their trunks a backdrop carefully chosen to draw out every shade of their spring jewelry, from bright chartreuse to deep emerald.

Virgil could have sat down right there and spent the day making studies of how the light fell through the thin canopy above him and glittered across the pebbles at his feet.

He didn’t. He could come back and do that tomorrow, maybe - he should still have a few days before his car was fixed, after all. Thinking about his car put him in mind of Yana and her wariness of the forest, so Virgil returned his thoughts to the idea of a river, a cave mouth, some deer. 

Wandering aimlessly did eventually bring him to a small stream, gurgling cheerfully as it tumbled over a rocky riverbed. He stayed there for a while, trying to catch a good shot of the gem-like fish sparkling in the clear water, before following the stream back in the direction of its source. Hopefully, it would lead him toward a spring - there were usually caves around springs, right? Virgil hoped so.

Even if he didn’t find a cave, making his way through a bright, gorgeous forest next to the most cheerful stream Virgil could remember encountering would make for an awesome morning.

Yes, he was usually more comfortable indoors, on familiar terrain and with control over his surroundings and the comforts of his possessions, but Virgil did enjoy completely disconnecting at times, too. There was something amazingly therapeutic about wandering through seemingly untouched wilderness. He was having to pick his own path through the sparse undergrowth, following what looked like animal tracks when he could - it seemed that all the townsfolk avoided the forest.

Shame. They were missing out.

-

Around lunch time, the ground of the other bank had begun to slope upward, and Virgil had hopped the stream to climb the small hill. He could sit up there to eat, see if it went high enough that he could see the town from the forest, and then return to the stream to continue in his quest for a cave mouth. There had been a small clearing at the top of the mound, and Virgil had set his bag down next to him while he ate, folding his sandwich wrapper neatly and tucking it back into an inside pocket. An empty water bottle joined it shortly later.

He wasn’t quite sure why he felt the need to move back into the cover of the trees to relieve himself, but he did, moving in the opposite direction to the stream until he was just out of sight of his picnic place. That had turned out to be a truly excellent decision, though: he was just re-doing the button on his jeans when he heard a soft crunch from somewhere to his left, and turned his head to see the largest deer he had ever seen.

It was easily a metre taller than him. Virgil knew he wasn’t the tallest guy out there - at a little over a metre and a half, he tended to struggle to reach things on the top shelf in supermarkets - but this animal dwarfed him even before he considered the magnificent, curling, twisting antlers. They added maybe another half metre to its height, making it probably more than three metres tall.

Deer didn’t get this tall, did they? Virgil wasn’t about to claim that he knew a lot about them, but he had seen a few over the last year or so, and they were rarely taller than him even when antlers were included in the measurement.

It was grazing on the branches of a tree, and didn’t seem to have noticed him.

Virgil’s hands drifted toward his camera bag. Fuck. He’d left it back on the mound. Would this… He grasped for an accurate word and came up empty. Would it still be here if he hurried to get it? There was only one way to find out, because Virgil needed a picture of the creature. He needed pictures of its huge legs - preferably without getting kicked; he needed studies of the intricate patterns formed by its stunning antlers, preferably taken without getting gored; he needed to capture the sleek bob tail and the smooth, brown coat and the sinews moving underneath as it tilted its head back and bellowed. A similar sound answered from somewhere to his right, and Virgil thought he might just die from excitement as he turned and began to move as silently as possible to retrieve his camera.

That was when things went wrong.

There was a man in the clearing where Virgil had eaten lunch. He was blond, probably taller than Virgil although not by much, and was bent over Virgil’s possessions; he must have heard Virgil’s startled gasp, because he straightened and turned to face him. He was holding Virgil’s camera in his hands.

Virgil felt his stomach twist. He swallowed hard. “That’s - that’s mine.”

“What’re you doing here, kiddo?” The man was wearing a thick pair of glasses, a blue polo shirt, and had a grey cardigan tied around his shoulders. He was frowning, and the cheerful note in his voice sounded forced.

“Walking. What are you doing?” They needed to get this over with. Virgil had some massive deer to take photos of, he didn’t have time for some weirdo in a forest to- to- “Why are you poking through my stuff?”

“Just checking it hadn’t been abandoned here! I was going to take it back into town if nobody showed up - can’t have littering around here!” Virgil felt a brief surge of irritation that this man had just assumed that his most precious possession was litter, but it died almost immediately as he raised the camera a little higher and peered through the lens toward him. Virgil’s breath caught in his chest. “This is a lovely camera, kiddo. Are you a professional? Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“No,” Virgil answered brusquely. He wiped his palms on his jeans - they had started sweating - and took a step forward. “Giv-”

The other man flinched and his finger slipped; there was a flash as his finger found the capture button, and Virgil froze, ice coursing through his veins. He had shouted something as he had taken the picture - something about cereal - and it occurred to some distant part of Virgil that he had probably just scared away the giant deer.

“Kiddo?” The blond had glanced around briefly, but now his eyes were back on Virgil. “Are you alright? You’ve gone grey - do you need to sit down?”

Virgil wasn’t sure he could sit down: his legs felt rooted to the floor, and he was dimly aware that his hands had started shaking. He cleared his throat again. “Give - Give his camera back. My camera. Give it back.” He wished the quaver in his voice would even out.

Rather than putting the thing down or walking toward him to hand it over (why had he given the man an option to get closer? What was he thinking?), the stranger looked back down at the camera in his hand before nodding. “Sure, sorry. It’s not damaged, though - you can relax, kiddo. This is actually a really good picture of you, you know? You’ll-”

Tight steel bands had wrapped around Virgil’s chest. His vision had tunnelled to the camera still in the man’s chubby fingers, and he suddenly couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in his ears; when he scrambled desperately for a breathing exercise, he couldn’t come up with anything. It felt as though his breaths were being torn from his chest, painful gasps that he was certain would be noticed in seconds, and then, and then-

And then four things happened.

There was a loud rumble, as though of thunder.

A searing heat exploded across Virgil’s body, and he cried out in pain.

The man before him - when had he gotten so close? - broke off from whatever he had been saying to yell, “What the heck?”

And the ground opened up beneath their feet, swallowing them whole.