#but i finished these like last week so take these two in the meantime

[lizzardwitch]

it's halloween season bitches you know the vibes (pr/tim burton film redraws)

kendall/heckyl as kim & edward (edward scissorhands)

rj/fran as jack & sally (nightmare before christmas)

[laikascomet]

LAIKA'S COMET IS NOW ON HIATUS!

i've been talking about hiatus for awhile now (since about halfway through chapter 2!) but its official - laika's comet is now on hiatus! this hiatus will be a bit longer than the last, but for good reason.

my intention is to keep working until i can rebuild a buffer of finished pages that is larger than the buffer i've been working with up until this point. a photoshop update corrupting multiple pagefiles, a few challenging pages and then getting the flu for two weeks meant my entire buffer was depleted within the span of two months.

thankfully - that's what a buffer is for! i was able to finish out the main climax of the chapter so there weren't any strange pauses in the story, or stopping during a cliffhanger. that said, realizing that only two life events outside of my control was enough to leave me with no buffer has made me realize i need to be working with more than i thought. so yeah, ill be gone for a bit... but when i come back, i hopefully won't have to take a pause like this one again for awhile.

in the meantime, ill be trying to answer some asks to this blog in the #letters tag like i have been (and moreso to keep the time in between less quiet) as well as uploading art i work on for stuff outside the comic. i hope that you wont be too sad or miss laika and co too much while we're gone... and thank you again for reading/giving my comic a chance! i want to continue making a story you can all enjoy and be proud of.

[anni-writes]

teamwork

Kuroo Tetsurou x reader | very suggestive fluff

word count: 1.8k

Warnings: post timeskip Kuroo x coworker! reader, fluff nsfw-ish language

@ anni says: I'm Kuroo Tetsurou's whore. but I also adore him. this was just another innocent self indulgent drabble that was lost in my drafts, so there you go, enjoy!

the lingering stares, the coffee excuses, the light subtle touches while exchanging papers, the gossipy chatting every lunch break,

the way you look so goddamn hot when you're focused in your work and how that sometimes distracts him from his own work…

and also the inhumanly strenght he need to gather to divert his stare from your plump thighs when you cross your legs under the desk… the privileged view from his desk across from yours can be also a burden sometimes

and then there's that damn high heels you use… not often, though. only when there's important meetings. makes you feel more confident, you said once. but god, when you use it he just want to lay on the floor for you to step on him

there's more and more and so much more about the office bond he has with you that irks him both in the right and wrong ways.

working in the JVA marketing implied that your most strong stakeholder was the promotion division, once the areas needed each other to thrive

therefore, makes total sense that you and Kuroo were so close to each other, right?

it's normal when you're training a new intern and he tags along with the excuse to help you, but spends the whole time glaring menacingly at the guy when he stares at your cleavage a little to much, isn't it?

or when he passes by your desk, leaving a chocolate once every other week, with his handwriting in a note thay says “that presentation was sick, congratulations” or “you deserve a raise, but take this chocolate in the meantime” or some other silly thing that makes you smile

your eyes always dart to him, smiling softly,

but you also can't help but think to yourself that he wanna fuck you so bad— and the thought itself is so entertaining that you shake your head, snorting, as he eyes you puzzled

the tension is clear for you as much as it is for him… he, too, checked all your boxes. a handsome smoking hot smart and competent man that has his eyes set on you? you'd be crazy not to enjoy

so, eventually, you would throw paper balls at him while he's focused, making him roll his eyes and smirk

but also never ceased to bring him coffee when you go get for you. you know how he likes, he works so close to you, why wouldn't you bring him one too?

and the glint in his eyes make it worth it every damn time

neither of you were making the first move so soon, but everyone in the office knows about the unspoken bond you share, gaining some attention in gossip groups around the floor

but then, one day, you were working until very late, apparently alone at the office.

and suddenly, he popped up back, with a can of beer, a loosened tie, two buttons opened, walking torwards your desk, placing the beer beside your papers

you looked at him tilting your head puzzled

“Where did you get that?”

“At the bar across the street”

i tilted my head even more

“You were at the bar across the street and came back to the office to hand me a beer?”

“Exactly”

he said matter-of-factly, making you snort. his words were subtly slured, indicating he drank enough to get at least tipsy

“Why?”

“Why not?”

he answered shrugging, and you read through his attempt to divert the topic. but you also know he's very stubborn, so you just brush it off

“How did you even know I was still in the office? It's late…”

you say, while opening the can while looking at the hour on your computer

“It's the first Monday of the month, you always stay late finishing the monthly report… Besides, I saw the light on from across the street, just put two and two together”

“Damn, you're good—”

you say, amazed at how he memorized your routine by now, while sipping your beer, sighing as the cold liquid soothes your tense muscles, feeling the last motivation to end the report today getting obliterated

he watches your every move like a hawk, walking sneakly behind your back to rub your shoulders

you sigh, feeling a chill down your spine with his touches, humming softly with the massage

“You're done with the report?"

he asked, his fingers rubbing circles in your back muscles, sliding to your shoulders. you lean in his touch

“No… But I think I can finish it tomorrow morning," you reply, trying to suppress the pleasure in your voice from his magical touch.

he chuckles lightly, lowering his torso to lean closer, his breath hitting your neck, making you shiver embarrassingly

"That's what I thought," he says softly, his hands never ceasing their movements, the tension that's been building between the two of you for months feels like it's finally reaching a boiling point

before things get awkward, you start to stand up from your chair, closing your laptop on the desk, sipping your beer casually,

when he took advantage of the moment to pull your chair away and leaning closer, his chest pressing against your back, his mouth on your ear

"Don't I deserve a… reward… for the beer and the massage?”

he whispered, the warmth of his breath making your heart race, his arms encircling youe waist in a new way… despite your supposed closeness, it's the first time you feel him this close.

his voice is like velvet, seductive and irresistible, making you question if this was a good idea.

you pathetically place your free hand on the desk to anchor yourself, feeling the weight of the intensity that has been building between us

"Is that what you've been thinking about all along? Pinning me on the desk when there's no one around?"

you whisper back, your voice dropping to a sensual tone as you lean in his chest, looking at him through your shoulders

the tension is palpable, your mutual attraction finally coming to a head. you put your beer down on the desk, meeting his gaze with a daring look, ready to cross the line you've been flirting with for so long.

"And what if I have?" — he whispers back, his voice a low growl that sends shivers down your spine. —"What are you going to do about it?"

his challenge hangs in the air between us, a gauntlet thrown down, waiting for you to pick it up. and that's exactly what you do.

you turn around to face him, raising your chin to line your mouth with his, as his arms hook around my waist

“I might just finally kiss you… would that be bad?”

his eyes darken with desire, his hands pulling you closer.

"That might be the best idea you've ever had,"

and just like that, we give up, succumbingto the tension building for months,

he leans in, or you lean in… its indistinguishable who kissed who first, but you capture each other lips in a heated intense kiss, your tongues already seeking each other’s and you taste the faint malt of the beers he had earlier, sighing with the deliciousness of it all

he gives one step further, boxing you on the desk behind, making you lean back, his hand traveling down my hips

you retaliate, taking his bottom lip between your teeth and biting softly, making him groan

he pushes his tongue inside your mouth again, and you gladly take it, sucking on it, kissing him back with the same passion

it feels almost relieving having him like this after so much tension building. it feels right.

he parts the kiss, but kept his mouth on your jaw, leaving a trace of wet kisses down, reaching your neck

you lean your head back, giving him free reign on your neck, which he gladly take it, switching from kisses to bites, making you moan softly

your moan unlock something primal in his brain, and one of his hand on your hips travel down your thigh, reaching the back of your knee, pushing up his waist, and the other slides to cup your ass

all that while assaulting your neck with languig nibbles, and you can't help but let out a chuckled moan

“Fuckk… eagerrr, are we?”

you say, low and purring, and the way you draw the words from your mouth goes straight to his pants, making his cock twitch, unconsciously grinding his hips on you, his hand giving a light squeeze in your ass

he grins, groaning a little in your neck, the tone vibrating against your chest

it takes you the damn last bit of strenght to knock some sense into him

“Mmhmm… Kuroo… you know… there's cameras in the office… ”

you say slightly breathless, threading your fingers in his hair, gripping, trying to pull him away from your neck

“Call me Tetsurou”

he say lowly and i can't help but chuckle

“Tetsurou…” — i say, rolling his name from my tongue, liking the sound— “there's cameras—”

“They're not gonna check the cameras unless something gets stolen…”

“We're not gonna fuck in the office, Tetsuro”

he parts from your neck, looking straight at me with a glint in his eyes, his famous lazy smirk

“Oh? So we are gonna fuck?”

you narrow your eyes, he got you now.

you snort, grabbing his tie and pulling him for another kiss, mumbling a quick

“Shut up”

he kiss you chuckling in your mouth, his hand on your thigh progressing further, sliding your skirt up, feeling the soft skin he drooled so many times before—

“Not here, Tetsuro—”

he grumbles, releasing your thigh and raising his hands in mocking surrender

“Okay, okay. I get it.” — then he takes your hand, pulling you closer to him — “but you're coming to my place now, and I'm not taking no for an answer”

as you two leave the workplace giggling and holding hands, your coworkers on the bar across the street watch the scene, all ready to let the gossip spread, but also knowing it was bound to happen eventually

[olsenmyolsen]

imgonnagetyouback

master list . dark master list

If I said best song on TTPD, then what???

MCU (Female Reader X Wanda Maximoff)

Summary: You and Wanda Maximoff used to be something, but now that you're with Natasha Romanoff, Wanda can't stand by and let it happen.

Word Count: 1.4K

Content: Pissed Off Wanda, Manipulation, Cheating(?)

Wanda hated seeing you with Natasha.

She hated how the redhead whispered sweet nothings into your ear as you cooked dinner. She hated seeing how Natasha's arms held you tight after a mission. Wanda mostly hated how she looked at you. When Wanda truly looked at you. Wanda could see the pain hidden behind the glare.

Wanda hates how you treated her and how she treated you in return.

On top of that, she regrets calling it off too early. But now she hates the idea of you with someone else.

The images of you and Natasha are driving her crazy.

So, as she stands in front of her mirror in a white shirt and a lilac short skirt that fits her like skin, she smiles.

She's gonna get you back.

You're no better than a man when you see the way Wanda glides into the kitchen for breakfast. The body-hugging skirt leaves little to the imagination while making your mouth dry.

Wanda feels your gaze on her as she keeps her back to you. Using her magic to grab a bowl and spoon for cereal, keeping a laugh inside as she hears your thoughts.

You look away when she turns around but look right back up with a spoon clatters against the hardwood. You go red when you see Wanda bent over, picking up the spoon.

The color of her panties matches the skirt.

"Hey!" Natasha's voice makes you jump as she enters the kitchen with a smile. Wanda finishes gathering her cereal in the meantime. She knows this part of her plan worked just by how hard you're trying to keep your focus on Natasha and not Wanda and her body. "You woke up before me. That never happens!" Natasha makes a casual joke that you give a half-hearted chuckle at. "Yeah, just wanted an early start today, I guess."

Wanda takes one last look at you before she leaves the room. Your eyes catch her green ones, and you just about stop breathing when she winks at you.

"You're mine."

The following week, Stark is throwing a party for god knows what the occasion was, but it doesn't matter. You need something like this for one reason or another.

(Wanda and Wanda.)

So, as you walk with your arms linked with Natasha's, you find all eyes on the two of you. Natasha is dressed in a strapless thigh-high slit silver dress. You opted for an all-black tux that Natasha couldn't wait to tear off you later.

And you with her dress.

You smiled and kissed her cheek while she made small talk with colleagues, and you felt the burn of green eyes on you.

Wanda was stewing across the party, in a tight black dress that complimented your tux better than Natasha did. You and Natasha looked stunning.

She hated it.

So, with her mind on autopilot, Wanda downed the remainder of her glass and kept her burning desire trained on you.

After days of teasing, Wanda didn't feel close to accomplishing her goal. So, with misguided judgment, she rolled her tongue over her lips and found herself standing in the garage.

A golf club in her hand.

Luxury cars that Tony spent too much money on never to drive were the first pieces of machinery Wanda saw before she walked further and further down that aisle.

A loud click bounced off the walls with every step of her heels. Until. Wanda finally stopped in front of your bike.

Wanda remembers times when you'd spend all day with this stupid junk—fixing it up and taking it for a spin, being too loud and careless. God, Wanda hated it. But she also loved it because it made you happy.

But Wanda did at some point, too.

A memory of her arms wrapped around you while you sped around the compound plays out.

Wanda unconsciously screams and takes a swing, hitting the headlight right in the middle of the bike. Glass spraying around her. With a gasp, Wanda takes a step back, surprised by her actions, before she grips the club harder and swings for the fences.

39 times.

Wanda had a date a few weeks after Starks party. Your bike was totaled, and Wanda had another date.

You couldn't fucking believe it.

You felt like you had been going crazy with Wanda lately. She was gone one minute and was always around the next, in short skirts or revealing tops. Wanda was there. She acted friendly, and then, in a second, she couldn't stand you.

You couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening.

Was she getting me back?

One way or another?

You sighed as you sat down on your bed at the compound. Natasha was gone on a mission, and even if you wanted to talk to her, you couldn't really do it about Wanda.

You would be lying if you said you didn't miss Wanda at times when Natasha wouldn't get your jokes or how her and Wanda's idea of nights in were different.

On top of that, you missed Wanda's touch. You hate to say it, but you miss feeling her skin under your hand or hearing her whispered sighs escape through her lips.

You groan and lift up from the bed. You head down to the gym to distract yourself. It's empty when you get there and by the time you're finishing up. Yet, with your headphones in and your back to the door. You don't hear Wanda enter the room.

Wanda had listened to your thoughts repeatedly for the last two hours. She had smiled wide and touched herself briefly as your frustrated moans left you. She knew how close she was to getting you back.

So, as you hummed to your music, Wanda gently walked towards you.

You stopped and turned around when red magic surrounded the equipment you were using. "Wanda?" You questioned as you paused your music. She was wearing a black sports bra and bike shorts.

But god, did they stick to her like glue.

"Hi Y/n." Wanda moved closer. "What are you doing here?" You asked after swallowing your nerves and trying to keep your eyes from roaming her body. "Just thought I'd get a workout in before my date," Wanda said with a wide smile that upset you. Wanda's words were making you think twice about what happened between the two of you.

But one thing was for certain.

Her date could never do the things I could.

Wanda raised an eyebrow at that and stepped closer to you. "You've told your friends you hate me, but you love me just the same." You remained stoic even if your lips moved slightly. "Come on. Y/n.." Wanda practically moaned as she stepped closer again with a smirk. Bringing her hand up to your body and dragging her index finger from your chin to your breast.

Only stopping when you grabbed her.

"We tried the whole bygones will be bygones thing," Wanda said as she lifted her eyes from your sweaty and toned body to your beautiful eyes. Eyes she missed, looking at her with softness and lust. "I've tried harder than you." You said, making Wanda roll her eyes.

She was playing a game.

"I don't see what if done wrong," Wanda questioned. "I see the whispers in your eyes, baby. You want me." You dropped Wanda's hand and shook your head. Your thoughts descending into actions of you taking Wanda right here and now mixed with Natasha and her broken heart. "You're poison." You speak with your face inches from Wanda's. "I'm poison either way." Wanda's words cut through you easily.

She'll always be around whether she taints your thoughts and actions or keeps to herself. Wanda will always be there.

"You have someone." You say, but Wanda laughs. "You have someone, too."

You should leave, but you can't bring yourself to do it.

Wanda smiles before she pulls you forward and collides your lips with hers. A simple thing turns into a heated make-out session that leaves both breathless.

And yet Wanda pushes you away when you reach for her shorts. "I need to get started on my workout." She says with a breath between each third word. You shake your head and try again, but Wanda stops you. "Oh, honey..." Wanda coos. "You didn't think it would be that easy. Did you?" You stare at Wanda as she clicks her tongue. "I always have the upper hand, Y/n."

Wanda then looks outside as a Quinjet flies by. You're too busy scanning Wanda's face.

"Looks like she's home," Wanda says as she turns back to you. "And don't worry, I won't say anything." Wanda shrugs before turning away, leaving you standing still as your fingers touch your lips. Still a taste of Wanda. "Oh, and Y/n."

You pull your eyes to her.

"I'm gonna get you back."

dividers by @/benkeibear

[pedroscurls]

training partners (pt. 9)

summary: thoughts of jack still linger, but a familiar face (and the person who's helped you get over your breakup) come to visit you and hugh - your personal trainer. meanwhile, hugh continues filming and puts on the wolverine costume for the first time. pairing: hugh jackman x fem!reader warnings: angst - mentions of toxic relationship, verbal abuse. smut (18+, mdni) - cowgirl, unprotected p in v, oral - m receiving, dirty talk, all while hugh is in his wolverine costume, implied age gap (hugh is 55, reader is in late 20s-early 30s), no use of y/n. word count: 4k a/n: i've missed these two's personal trainer, so she's coming back and i think she's gonna be the driving force behind the reader realizing how far she's come! hope y'all enjoy, things are gonna get better... i promise. in the meantime, i've been wanting to write some smut of hugh in his wolverine costume bc i mean... how can you not??? lol. as always, this is purely fictional! i mean no disrespect to hugh jackman. prev part. - next part.

A week has passed since your run in with Jack. Hugh tries to act like nothing happened, act like what happened didn’t bother him, but he couldn’t help it. He was still fuming, still wanting so badly to just find Jack and finish what he started. He does notice a small shift in your behavior, but he has to wonder if you’re hiding the fact that you’re still on edge. There are still brief moments where you space out, like your mind has drifted to some other place and he has to gently take you out of it with a hand on your shoulder or a quiet call of your name. 

You snap out of it more quickly than before, but he can still see the panicked expression flickering in your eyes. 

Every night, you thank him and Hugh isn’t sure why. You thank him for being there for you, for being the safe space that you didn’t know you needed, for loving you the way you should be loved. 

And every night, Hugh watches you fall asleep and only when he sees the peaceful look on your sleeping face does he feel relaxed enough to go to sleep too. 

As the weekend approaches, Hugh has an idea to give both your personal trainer a call and invite her over for the week. He knows how important she is to you, how she has helped you overcome not only your breakup with Jack, but has helped you see just how amazing of a person you are. 

You’re in the bathroom when Hugh steps out on the patio of the hotel room to give her a call. She answers almost quickly and Hugh has to look over his shoulder to make sure that you haven’t come out yet. 

“Hugh, hey! How’s filming going?” she says enthusiastically. 

“It’s been going great,” Hugh answers, biting his lower lip. “How are things back home?” 

“Busy like always,” she laughs quietly. “I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation.”

“How about you come here?” 

“That’s not necessarily a vacation if I’m going there to work,” she chuckles. 

“I’ll pay for everything.”

“I mean, that’s only fair.”

Hugh laughs quietly then he lets out a quiet sigh. “Listen, Jack–”

“I know,” she interjects. “We’ve been talking this last week. Doesn’t sound like she’s doing that well.”

“I think she’s hiding the fact that she isn’t doing okay,” Hugh admits. “And I think if you’re here, she’d feel a lot better. You don’t even have to train either of us. Just– I think she needs someone more than me right now.”

“I’m there,” she responds immediately. “Tell me when, Hugh, and I’ll be there.” 

Hugh lets out a breath of relief. “Perfect. I’ll arrange everything for you and send you the details.”

After Hugh hangs up the phone, he walks back inside the hotel room and sees you come out of the bathroom in a white robe and a towel in your hands to run through your wet hair. He sees you look up at him, a small smile on your lips as he walks over to you. His hands drop to your waist as he leans down to peck your lips.

“So…” he begins.

You arch a brow, tossing the dampened towel onto the bed. You stare up at him, hands now moving to rest on his chest. “What?”

“I know what happened last week is still lingering,” Hugh continues and sees your mouth open to protest, but he shakes his head. “It’s lingering for me at least, baby.” 

“Hugh…”

“Just,” he sighs. “Hear me out. I’m flying in our trainer this week. I know that she’s been with you through everything, has helped you with this and I can’t…” Hugh bites his lower lip. “As much as I wish that I can help you, I just know that I can’t.”

“But you have…”

“But it’s not enough, love,” Hugh admits. “I know that. You know that.”

“I’m sorry…” you drift your eyes downwards, staring at your feet.

“Hey,” Hugh bites his lower lip and hooks a finger under your chin to get you to look back up at him. He can see the hurt in your eyes, the worry etched in your features. You’re thinking again and Hugh brushes his thumb gently across your jawline as he stares deeply into your eyes. “You don’t ever have to apologize for this, for him.”

“I just wish he still didn’t have so much control over me…” 

“I know, baby,” Hugh says softly. “He hurt you for a long time,” he tightens his jaw. “So the way you’re feeling… It’s completely valid.” 

“I love you,” you tell him. “I don’t think I deserve you–”

“Okay, we’re gonna stop saying that, yeah?” Hugh says with a small smile. “I feel like the luckiest man alive that you chose me, that I get to feel your love,” he admits. “So from now on, we’re going to stop saying that… because if anyone doesn’t deserve the other person, it’s me.”

You roll your eyes and open your mouth to protest, but he just leans in and presses his lips firmly against yours. You melt into him, hands moving from his chest to wrap around his neck. “Don’t think that kissing me is going to prevent me from saying otherwise,” you mumble against his lips.

Hugh smiles and wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you flush against him. “Fine,” he says, pulling away slowly. “How about we say that we do deserve each other?” 

You nod, playing with the hair at his nape. “Yeah, I like that a lot more.” You lean up on your toes and gently peck his lips, feeling him lift you even further until your legs wrap around his waist and he sits on the edge of the bed with you on his lap. 

“I love you, baby,” he says, moving a hand to the knot on your robe. “And I just want you happy.”

You bite your lower lip and look down at where his hand plays with the knot at your robe, feeling his length stir beneath his shorts. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” you admit. “And it’s because of you.”

Hugh grins and then undoes the knot on your robe, slowly pushing it off your shoulders as he watches the fabric fall from your body. He clears his throat, your entirely exposed frame now in full view for him as his gaze darkens with lust. 

“Think we can be quick about this?” he asks hopefully, feeling you slowly roll your hips against his. Hugh’s eyes gaze down between your legs, seeing your sex slicked with your arousal. 

“I think that’s a question you should be asking yourself, baby.” Hugh grunts quietly when he feels your hands tug at his shorts and he lifts himself slightly to lower it past his legs, letting it pool around his ankles. He’s already so hard at the sight of you, his tip already leaking with his precome and when he feels your hand wrap itself around his base, he lets out a loud groan.

“Shawn and Ryan can wait a little longer,” Hugh smirks, eyes fluttering when he feels you slowly lower yourself down onto him. 

—

True to Hugh’s word, your trainer arrives on set the following week. You practically run towards her in excitement (and immense relief) when you see her. Hugh’s at his trailer, leaning against the door when he sees the big smile on your face. It’s been a while since he’s seen your smile meet your eyes, pure happiness and relief written on your expression. 

You pull away from the hug and lead her to Hugh’s trailer, seeing the both of them hug as well before he lets the both of you inside. He’s not yet dressed for today’s shoot, but you can see the blue and yellow suit hanging in the corner. Today had been a day you were looking forward to because not only was your trainer going to be here, but Hugh was finally going to put on the comically-accurate Wolverine suit for the first time in over twenty years. 

“I was thinking we can all grab dinner tonight after shooting,” Hugh suggests, hand reaching out for you. You smile in his direction and take his hand, leaning against him. 

“Yeah, that sounds like a great plan,” your trainer says with a smile. 

“I usually leave earlier than Hugh, so after a few scenes, we can head back to the hotel and catch up,” you tell her.

“Perfect. I’ve already seen Hugh in his element, but to see you in yours? I’m excited.” 

“Oh, I’m nothing special–”

Both Hugh and your trainer look at you with an expression that tells you to stop the negative self-talk. You bite your lower lip and then shake your head, lifting your free hand in the air. 

“Okay, okay. I’m working on it.”

“Oh, after this week, it’s gonna be drilled into you,” your trainer chuckles. “Now come on, show me around set while Hugh gets ready.” 

You nod and then watch her leave the trailer before you turn to look up at Hugh, hand resting on his chest. “I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.” Hugh smiles and pecks your lips. “I missed your smile,” he admits. 

You let out a quiet sigh and then look down at his chest, not wanting to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry…”

“There’s no reason to be sorry,” Hugh corrects. “I just love seeing you happy, baby.” 

“You’re perfect,” you tell him with a contented sigh. “I’m thinking I don’t ever want to let you go.”

Hugh grins broadly. “Good because you’re stuck with me.” 

“Oh, you promise?” you tease.

Hugh nods, staring deeply into your eyes. “More than you know, love. I’ll see you in a bit.” 

—

You give a thorough tour of the set, but you can tell from the look on your trainer’s face that she’s waiting for you to bring up Jack, to bring up what exactly happened, and how he even came back into your life. 

You know you’ve come a long way from the first time you met her, but you can’t help but feel a bit disappointed in yourself… that all of the hard work that your trainer helped you with seems to have gone to waste at the first conversation with Jack. 

“He called me after he found out that Hugh and I were together,” you finally admit. “I’m assuming it had to do with Hugh posting a picture of us and then word got out and–” you sigh shakily. “Well, you can figure out the rest.” 

“What an asshole,” she mutters. “I’m sorry you still have to deal with him,” she says softly. 

“I just feel–” you sigh. “I feel like I’m the same woman I was when I was with him. A coward. Weak.” 

“That’s not a reflection of who you are as a person,” she replies. “You were never a coward and you were never weak.” 

“But–”

“Jack was abusive,” she says bluntly. “Verbally abusive… and he took advantage of you. And he’s still trying to do that, but there’s a big difference from the woman you were to the woman you are now.” 

“And what’s that? Because from where I’m standing, I feel like I’m back to square one.” 

She sighs. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.” 

You shrug. “I just wish I never got Hugh involved.” 

“You didn’t do anything,” she corrects. “You deserve to be happy and Jack doesn’t like that. He doesn’t have a right to tell you who you are – he never did, do you understand me?” 

You can feel tears stinging your eyes as you look at her. She had become the person to help you out of your negative thoughts and you knew that if not for her, you’d have been stuck in the same mindset that Jack made you to believe about yourself. 

“I really missed you,” you tell her, wrapping your arms around her in a tight hug.

“Even my workouts?” 

“Ah, maybe not that,” you tease, pulling away from her with a small smile as you wipe your tears away. 

“Well, I’m sure we can squeeze one in this week,” she winks. 

“Thank you,” you say seriously. “For being here.”

“Thank Hugh,” she chuckles. “He just wants you to be happy.”

You smile to yourself. “When you texted me telling me about having someone join in our sessions all those months ago… Did you know that we would hit it off?”

She grins mischievously. “I knew you two would hit it off, but I certainly didn’t expect you both to get together so fast.”

“Oh my god, you set us up.”

She bursts into a fit of laughter. “Guilty as charged.”

You shake your head and begin laughing with her, feeling like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders, like you can finally breathe again after everything that’s happened with Jack. 

—

After a couple of hours, your trainer decides to leave for the day and get some rest at the hotel before dinner tonight. You opt to remain on set, not having had the chance to see Hugh yet. It’s lunch time for the entire cast and crew, so you walk towards his trailer and step inside, removing the camera from around your neck to set on the table. 

When you turn around to see him dressed in his full Wolverine suit, sitting on the couch with a bowl of salad, you widen your eyes and clear your throat at the sight of him. He has a big grin on his face and waves in your direction, but you can’t help but let your eyes take in his frame. 

The suit is so fitting – sculpting to his entire body, but your eyes deviate to his arms, seeing his muscles flex from beneath the suit as he takes another forkful of spinach. 

“You’re–” you bite your lower lip. “You’re wearing the suit.”

“I am,” he chuckles and sets the bowl down onto the table nearby before he stands up. 

Your eyes widen even further at the sight of him standing in his suit in front of you. You know you’re obviously ogling him, eyes lingering in certain areas and Hugh’s enjoying it. He likes the way you look at him, especially right now. You look like a woman who knows what she wants and he can see the gaze in your eyes darkening. 

“You look–” you stutter. “You look good. Like really fucking good.” 

“Is this everything you’ve ever dreamed of?” he teases, his large hand coming to rest on your waist. “You know, with Wolverine being your favorite and all.” 

The contrast of him wearing this suit and his accent is doing things to you that you never thought it would. You can feel the wetness build between your legs, the throbbing and yearning to clamp around him. You can’t even respond, your eyes moving continuously up and down his frame. He looks so big, so strong, and–

“Hello?” Hugh interrupts your thoughts, chuckling quietly. “Do you like it?” 

“Like it?” you answer, hands moving to rest on his chest as you gently shove him back down on the couch. “I fucking love it.” 

Without hesitation, you drop to your knees in front of him as your hands move up his thighs and towards the waistband of his pants. You bite your lower lip, tilting your head as you try to figure out how to remove his pants and letting out a quiet huff of impatience when you can’t seem to find the zipper or button or anything to pull it down and reveal his hardening length. 

Even beneath the fabric of his suit, you can see the length of him, stirring and hardening as you run your palm over him. 

Hugh groans, head tilting to the side as he reaches down to cup your cheek. “Baby, I don’t–”

“Help me figure out how to take these pants off.”

“Baby,” he grunts, feeling your lips press against his manhood from over the fabric of his suit. It’s starting to get uncomfortable, his length straining beneath the fabric and he groans when he feels your lips find his covered tip. 

“Hugh,” you whimper impatiently. “I need you.”

Hugh nods and then stands up in front of you, looking down at you as you remain on your knees. He expertly undoes his pants, knowing that it’s going to be just as difficult to put back on, but at the sight of you so needy and ready for him, he knows it’ll be worth it. 

Hugh then drops his pants to pool around his ankles and he’s about to sit back down when he feels your hands wrap around his base and your mouth immediately wrap itself around his tip. He groans, eyes fluttering shut as he tangles one hand in your hair and remains standing before you. 

You feel a sudden sense of gratitude wash over you, wanting to show Hugh just how grateful you are of him. How patient and thoughtful he’s been these last few weeks. You lean in further, relaxing your throat as you feel the tip of his manhood kiss the back of your throat. The hair at his base tickles your nose and you feel tears sting your eyes as you look up at him, his face contorted into pleasure. You pull back enough, his length glistening with your saliva.

“Fuck,” he growls lowly, his grip in your hair tightening even further as you continue to bob your head rapidly. It’s almost obscene the way you’re sucking him off, like you’re a starved animal and this is your first meal. Hugh can feel himself getting closer and closer to the edge with each of your strokes, with each inch sliding further and further into your mouth that he has to pull back from your lips with a quiet pop!. 

Your lips are red and slightly swollen, saliva dripping just a bit at the corner of your lips. You’re staring up at him with a lustful look on your face and he’s about to say something, about to tell you that he’s getting close, but you interrupt him with a shove against his chest to make him sit back down on the couch. 

He clears his throat, watching you drop your pants and underwear to the floor. He reaches down to stroke himself, eyes taking in your exposed lower half. Hugh groans in anticipation when he watches you straddle his hips and align yourself to his tip. 

You waste no time (like you usually do) in sitting firmly on his erected length. You don’t take your time, you don’t slowly lower yourself. Instead, you lower yourself until he fills you to the hilt and Hugh tosses his head back at the sensation of your warm and wet walls clamping down on his already throbbing length. 

“Oh fuck, baby,” Hugh groans, hands darting out to your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh. 

“Call me bub,” you demand, hands moving to rest on his shoulders as you bounce along his length. “Please, Hugh…”

Hugh grunts, feeling every inch of your walls slide along him. He knows what you want, so he switches the flip inside of him and stares at you with a dark look on his face. He lets out a low growl – the way Logan would – and leans in to rest his forehead against yours, having long forgotten his normal Australian accent to replace with Logan’s.

“You feel so good wrapped around me, bub,” he groans. “Taking me so well.” 

Your eyes widen and your walls clench at the role that Hugh is now playing. When he sees the look on your face, he smirks and digs his fingertips even further into you, knowing that it’s going to leave bruises later. “Oh god…” you moan, biting your lower lip from trying to let everyone else on the lot hear what’s going on.

“Yeah?” he growls, moving a hand to your clit and beginning to rub it in circles. “Such a good girl. Look at you,” Hugh groans, feeling himself get closer and closer. “Oh bub,” he continues. “You’re close, ain’t ya? Can feel you tremble…”

“Hugh!” you exclaim, rolling your hips forward and backwards as your walls tighten even further around him. You reach your high far too quickly and feel him continue to rub circles against your clit, your body shaking as you try to reach down for his wrist to stop his movements. 

“That’s a good girl,” Hugh grins. He knows that he’s stronger than you, but he loves seeing you try. Loves to see your body become so overly sensitive that you begin to squirm away from him, unsure if you can reach another orgasm. 

“Hugh… Baby, I can’t–”

“Shh,” he whispers, leaning in to gently bite at your jawline as he thrusts his hips up roughly and rapidly. His balls slap against your backside, the sound of skin slapping against skin echoing off the walls of his trailer as he feels the tightness in the pit of his stomach begin to build and build–

“Fuck!” he groans, moving both hands now to your hips as he paints your walls with his come. Hugh’s eyes fall shut tightly, slowly guiding you along his length as he shudders at your tight walls milking every last drop. 

Slowly, Hugh lifts you off his lap and you quickly scramble to sit next to him, not wanting any of his come to get on the suit. You lean back against the couch, legs still spread open as Hugh looks down at you and sees his release slowly trickle out of you. 

“God, you’re fucking amazing,” he says, his voice back to normal as he watches groans at the sight of his come now trickling between your legs. 

“That was hot,” you smile, breathing heavily. 

“You’re hot,” he grins, reaching for a tissue to first clean you up and then to clean himself. Once he’s softened enough, Hugh pulls up his pants and then grabs your panties and jeans to gently hand it to you. “I’m going to have to film for the rest of the day after that?”

You bite your lower lip and slide on your panties. You sit on your knees and lean in to gently peck his lips. “And then we also have dinner tonight.”

He groans and runs his hand along your bare thigh. “How am I going to pay attention after you attacked me like that?” 

You gasp and gently slap his chest, feeling him take your hand and kiss your knuckles. “I did not attack you!” 

“Oh, the minute you saw me in this suit, you were already undressing me with your eyes.”

“Not my fault you look so hot in it.”

“Should I take it back with me to the hotel?” he grins, eyes wiggling suggestively. 

“If you bring it back to the hotel with you, we’re never leaving.”

“Would that be so bad?”

“Yes,” you giggle. “You still have a movie to shoot.”

Hugh sighs dramatically. “I suppose you have a point.” 

You let out a laugh and Hugh smiles in your direction. “I’ve missed your laugh too,” he says quietly. 

You look up at him and cup his cheek, eyes staring into his own. “I’m not gonna let that man control me anymore,” you admit. “It’s going to be tough, but I–”

“You’re stronger than you know, baby,” Hugh finishes for you. “And I’ll be right there to help you through it. As long as you’ll have me.” 

“Wear the suit and then maybe I’ll consider,” you tease. 

Hugh chuckles and gently pushes you onto your back as he settles himself between your legs. “God, I love you.”

“I love you too, Hugh.”

“Do you think you have one more in you?” he asks, eyes dark with lust once more as he moves a hand between your legs. 

“I don’t–” you gasp when you feel him move your panties to the side and slide a finger past your depths. He can feel his spend inside of you and it makes him growl. 

“Lunch is almost over, Hugh…” you whimper.

“I know. Let me have my dessert, baby.” Hugh grins and then lowers his head between your legs.

---

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@wolverigrl - @its-in-the-woods - @d3ad2you - @definitely-not-chill - @khxna

[lina-linny]

summary: Your boyfriend Minho comes home after a busy week and just wants to relax.

words: 0,8k

genre: fluff

"Ok im not letting you cook ever again."It was the first sentence your boyfriend uttered after entering your shared apartment.

You had offered to cook for him despite your lack of cooking skills. Minho had had a stressful week. From photo shoot to video shoot to dance practice to interviews. He hadn't had much time to relax so you had thought about taking at least a little stress off him. You had cleaned the whole apartment, fed and bathed the cats and last but not least you wanted to cook dinner for him.

Even though it was a bit late, you knew that minho hadn't eaten yet. So you sent your boyfriend a message about two hours ago and asked what he would like for dinner. His crative reply "I don't care" didn't really help you. So you decided to go off on your own, go to the supermarket and pick out everything for his favorite meal.

It already started badly, as it was quite late and half of the ingredients you needed were already sold out. But instead of seeing this as a sign to simply go with ramen or take out, you decide to improvise. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turned out. Because that's how you ended up here. In the large kitchen of your apartment. There were ingredients and bowls everywhere. Everything was dirty, including you, and the ingredients that had ended up in the cooking pot were burned.

You were on the verge of tears when you heard the door open. Which could only mean that your boyfriend was home. Minho came into the kitchen after some time and snorted when he saw you standing there in such despair.

"Ok im not letting you cook ever again Jagiya." You just glared at him. He came over to you and ran his hand over your hair to remove what you thought was a little flour. A long, blessed sigh escaped you and you wrapped your arms around Minho's torso. He buried his face in your hair, laughing.

"I'm sorry," you mumbled against his neck.

"I just wanted to cook something for you because your week has been so stressful..." he laughed softly at your apologies.

"You're sweet... What do you say I order us dinner, clean up your mess and you take a shower in the meantime?" You just nod, but don't move, not yet ready to give up your boyfriend's body heat.

He breaks away from you and starts to order food for the two of you on his cell phone.

"Thank you for trying... with the cooking Jagiya." He doesn't look up from his cell phone. Not even when he adds:

"But please do me a favor and never touch our kitchen again. Especially not with the intention of cooking something, otherwise you'll probably burn down the building." He laughs lightly as your lips curl into a pout.

"I hate you, Minho." You grumble and head to the bathroom, where you take a much-needed shower while your boyfriend cleans up your kitchen grinningto himself.

Just as you finish, you hear Minho taking the food delivery. Exhausted, you plop down on one of the chairs at the dining table and wait until minho places two plates of food in front of you. One for you and one for him. He sits down opposite you and pulls his plate towards him, which contains a little less food than yours.

Sometimes it's hard for minho to show or express what a person means to him and little things like that have always been proof that he cares about you. You smile as Minho immediately starts shoveling the food into himself.

"Does it taste good?"

"Yes," he replies curtly and goes back to eating. You start eating too and you both enjoy the silence that has settled over your apartment. After dinner, you get ready for bed, still in silence, until you and your boyfriend finally slip under the covers.

You lie quietly and relaxed next to each other and are almost caught up in a dream when you feel your boyfriend wrap his arms around you.

"Thank you for always taking such good care of me and the cats." He whispers in your ear as he snuggles closer to you.

"And that you tried to cook... I really appreciate it all. I don't know what I would do without you." You turn into his embrace so that you can wrap your arms around him and that's enough for an answer. No words needed between you and Minho. Because you both know how deeply you care for each other.

You hear his breathing become more even and feel yourself relax more and more. The two of you snuggle together, nourished by each other's body heat, and soon drift off to sleep.

[wandixx]

one-shot snippet

Duke was running out of fumes to run on. The last few days would be exhausting if it was just vigilante or just civilian stuff but no, he had to have it both. Because of Arkham break out, he had been called in three nights in a row, not for a whole patrol but he couldn't exactly sleep it off during the day like others did, especially not in a week when every teacher decided they needed to have test or quiz or what not. Naps meant he wasn't as sleep-deprived as he could be but he needed far more. But he couldn't because crime in Gotham never sleeps so he had normal patrol to finish and there were about two hours left.

Would something bad happen if he just stopped for a moment and laid on a roof? Ten up to fifteen minutes. It was a slow day too…

Yeah, no, he deserved a moment to rest and if something disastrous was to happen in the meantime he would shame other Bats for not giving him enough time to sleep.

It certainly said something that he found gravel covering this roof to be quite comfortable. He set a timer for ten minutes and let himself close his eyes.

When the loud screech of the timer jolted him awake, he was suddenly fully aware that he wasn't alone anymore. He sat up a little too quickly.

"Oh, you're awake" white white-haired girl around Damian's age chimed, sitting cross-legged just a few feet away from him. She wore something that could only be described as a lab safety hazmat suit, white and black with popping green accents. When had Gotham gotten a new vigilante/villain/whoever the girl was? "Good, I just returned from a snack hunt," she added, gesturing at a big textile bag lying next to her. Duke didn't have enough brainpower to do anything more than ask.

"What?"

The girl shrugged, take-out from BatBurger in her hand.

"You look like you have a bad day if not a few days, so I've got you my cousin's bad day combo or at least the closest thing I could. BatBurger burger isn't as good as NastyBurger but you certainly have better fries" As she spoke, a second take-out bag, 1 liter bottle of energy drink, juice bottle of the same size, and pack of convenience store brownies joined greasy paper bag sealed with a sticker.

"Is your cousin a speedster?" Excuse Duke, it was a totally valid question, he saw with his bare eyes both Wally West and Bart Allen when they visited Manor. No one else would be able to stomach the amount of food they inhaled during their stays.

"Nah, we're not that fast or that hungry. Though I think I may get closer to the speed of sound." So, clearly, a meta if white hair and weir aura that let his eyes rest weren't enough indication "My cousin when he has a bad few days often forgets to eat so this combo has to help with there too. But I'll steal your fries of course."

Duke was not going to look a gift horse in the teeth, so he grabbed one bag and tore it open. There was a classic combo with bigger fries and NightWings inside.

"Thank you…" he trailed off, hoping that the girl would take a clue and introduce herself but she didn't. She just drowned her fries in ketchup and started munching. She had her own juice.

"My cousin always said that each part of this combo has a different purpose." she explained instead, slightly muffled because of the fries in her mouth "This" she gestured towards the fast food meal "is to soothe your stomach. This "she tapped energy drink "is to soothe your brain and kick it back online. This "she raised a bottle of juice "is to soothe your taste buds because energy drinks are war crime against them and this "she nudged brownies "is to soothe your heart because Ancients damn it, this day is awful and you deserve it. At least that's what he told me when I had day bad enough to deserve that" she shrugged, licking ketchup of her finger. Suddenly she froze "You aren't allergic, are you?

"No, I'm not" he confessed bewildered.

"Good"

For a long moment, they sat in silence, devouring food the little girl brought. Duke distantly wondered if this was how the night shift spent their snack breaks. It felt nice.

He was finishing his part of the brownies when the girl spoke up again.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Yeah," he was a little surprised to realize that t it was true. He'll have to note down what she put in this 'bad day combo'. "Thank you"

"Don't mention it." she shrugged with a general gesture of dismissal "You're one of my cousin's favorite heroes because you're vaguely his age and handle Gotham alone during the day and I quote "She did honest or God air quotes at that" 'As only hero in Amity-' which is a lie by the way, Val is doing great and even if he suddenly got problem with how she feels about his alter ego, he still has Sam and Tuck even if they're usually more of moral support. And I helped when I visited, so no, he isn't the only one. Anyway as he said 'As the only hero in Amity, my heart goes out for anyone who deals with this type of bullshit so Dani if you absolutely have to prank heroes, leave them out of it, especially Signal, he can't be older than Jazz, he doesn't need any more mess to handle.' All aliens and lanterns are also off-limits because he is a space nerd. But you aren't space-related so I'm like 80% percent sure he has a celebrity crush on you" She slurped more juice, unbothered.

Duke was thankful he wasn't swallowing anything because for sure she would choke. He took a split second to consider addressing… this whole situation and choose against it. He was not ready to be anyone's celebrity crush.

"Your name is Danny?" he asked instead.

"Dani" she corrected" with an I"

"Ok. It's nice to meet you Dani-with-an-I" She giggled, nodding her head slightly.

"It's nice to meet you too Signal"

Duke stood up, stretching a little. Dani joined him after hastily putting all the trash in her bag. She was a little higher than expected.

"I have to get back to my patrol"

"Cool," she drifted back a bit, making him realize that she was floating a few inches above the ground. She fixed her bag on her arm.

"Hey, can I hang out a little bit more? My cousin will go green out of jealousy when I tell him" she added with a mischievous smirk but Duke could tell there was more to it. He took a moment to consider it, which apparently made the girl nervous "I can be invisible the whole time, like before." she offered, disappearing in the meantime. He could still tell where she was, because of her heat signature, and aura but for regular people, she would be no different than the surrounding air.

"Yeah, you can hang around and you don't have to be invisible. Just don't get in my way when I have to actually do some fighting."

She popped back to the visible spectrum and pouted like Damian whenever he got benched.

" I can fight, y'know? I stopped mugging on a snack run."

It was ten goddamn minutes, how could she get so much food and stop a mugging in such a short time?!

Oh, right, superspeed. Still, impressive.

"I haven't seen it" he started, channeling all Dick-trying-to-wrangle-Damian-into-socially-acceptable-activity' energy he could muster "So I don't know how you fight or even what powers you have. If we tried to fight together we would trip over each other" It was a bare-faced lie, Bat Training made sure of that but he knew for a fact that if he said anything else, the girl would be mad and probably did her own thing.

Was that what Bruce thought about all of them?

Oh no.

Dani still looked displeased but after a moment of consideration, she nodded with a defeated sigh.

Suddenly she straightened like she got struck by lightning and whipped around.

"Wha-"

She just shushed raising her finger to her mouth. Duke did indeed quieten.

"I have enhanced hearing" she whispered "There is a mugging somewhere this way."

"Let's go then" he shot his grapple, waving his other hand at Dani to come with him before he jumped off the roof. He heard the girl giggle as she flew right after him.

" After this, you'll show me the coolest gargoyles, okay? Sam asked for photos"

"Okay"

It seemed that the end of this patrol wouldn't be as bad as the start was. Hopefully.

And afterward, he was going to lock himself in his room until the sky fell or he was well rested.

Yeah, that was a good plan.

*******

how do you like it?

[mistywaves98]

Hi! I love your writing. I was wondering if I could request Wanderer with a sub afab reader with a degradation kink please 🙏. If not, feel free to ignore.

✧･ﾟ:* ->Wanderer x Fem! Reader

✧･ﾟ:* ->¡Warnings!: NSFW, Degradation, Modern AU, Phone sex, You call him Scara, Ending is bad, I wrote this while half asleep, Some praise, Fingering (yourself)!

✧･ﾟ:* ->Minor writing smut! DNI if uncomfy!

Your boyfriend was away on a business trip that was supposed to last a few weeks and while you didn't object at first, after the first week or so you had to admit that his absence was making you lonely.

That also meant you had to rely on yourself for pleasure but no amount of toys or your fingers could make yourself climax like he did. Hell, you couldn't even orgasm in the first place. By the end of the second week you were extremely pent up and frustrated. You missed everything about him, his face, his fingers, his voice, his cock...

It didn't take long for you to finally open his contact and press call. He answered almost instantaneously and you felt your heart flutter when you heard his soft voice through the device next to your ear.

"Hello?" "Scara, I miss you so much...you've been gone for so long!" He smiled at your longing tone full of indignation before replying, his voice holding a teasing lilt to it,"I miss you too, baby, even though it's only been two weeks—" "Two weeks is a very, very long time for you to be away!" You couldn't help but cut him off, scoffing as he merely laughed in amusement at your annoyance, finding it cute how badly you wanted him to be by your side again. "Alright alright, just hold on a little longer, I'll be home before you know it. In the meantime, tell me about your day."

And so he patiently listened to you ramble on about the things that happened while he was gone, occasionally throwing in a snide comment here and there. You took a deep breath as you finished, asking him about how things were on his end. As you listened to your boyfriend talk, you couldn't help but let your mind wander. Soon you completely lost track of the things he was saying, focusing on how smooth and sexy his voice sounded. The low rasp in his tone only made more blood rush to your cheeks as all the pent up feelings you surpressed made their way to the surface.

You bit your lip, rubbing your thighs together as arousal pooled between them. Your mind became clouded as you imagined him whispering the filthiest things right next to your ear in that same tone. One of your hands kept holding the phone as the other made it's way down your body, teasing the waistband of your pants before slipping in. You shuddered as your fingers made contact with your soaked pussy. When did you get so turned on...?

Carefully, you circled your thumb around your clit as your middle and ring finger prodded your leaking hole. Your teeth dug into your lower lip even harder as you slowly pushed them past your folds, resisting the urge clamp your thighs around your hand. Your hand that was holding your phone trembled as you struggled to hold back your moans. The sound of his voice only made you wetter as you pumped your digits in and out of yourself at a steady pace.

You were so caught up in your pleasure, that you didn't even realize Scaramouche had stopped talking. It wasn't until you heard him inquiring about your state that you snapped out of your blissed out state,"[Name]? Are you still there?" "O-oh! I'm fine, just...keep talking, please..." Needless to say, your boyfriend was a bit baffled by your request, but he complied anyway. The more he spoke, the closer you felt to finally reaching orgasm for the first time in weeks. Your fingers' pace quickened as you found it increasingly difficult to stay quiet.

Even moving the phone away from your ear a bit did not stop him from hearing the heavy pants and muffled whimpers in the background, which caused some suspicions to raise. "Are you sure everything's alright, [Name]?" "I-I told you, I'm fine! Keep talking...I'm almost there..." He wasn't stupid and that sentence told him everything he needed to know. A smug smile graced his features as he put and two together.

"I see how it is..." "Wh—" "I can here your slutty moans clearly. I didn't realize that my pretty little girlfriend was such a desperate whore, that she'd resort to fucking herself on her fingers to the sound of my voice. You really missed me that much, huh?" "..I did..." You could barely answer between your moans. God, hearing talk like that to you was so hot. You could feel yourself clenching tightly around your fingers. You were getting close... "It's okay. I bet you've missed my cock too, you wish I was there to fill your needy pussy with my cum, hm?" He continues to praise and degrade you over the phone in that sultry tone you love so much.

"I'm sure you haven't been able to make yourself cum once since I left. It's so adorable to see how you need merely the sound of my voice to get yourself off. You'd literally be hopeless without me. Now keep thrusting those fingers into that pretty pussy, I want you to cum hard around them," And so you did, sweet cries sounding from the speaker of his phone as you quicken your pace, eyes rolling back into your head from the pleasure. The way your moans' pitch heightened told him that you were teetering on the edge of orgasm, so he continued to coax you,"Just like that, gush all over those dainty fingers for me."

You didn't need to be told twice. Your moan of ecstasy echoed through the dark room as your juices coated your fingers, soaking through your clothes and dripping onto the sheets below. You rode out your high until your breathing evened out slightly and you pulled your soaked digits out of your tight cunt, making you miss the feeling of being stuffed. Your pussy clenched around nothing as you heard his low laugh on the other end of the line,"Oh, how I wish I was there to see your face contort into that whorish expression I love so much. I bet you still want more, right? My slut wants me to be there, fucking her dumb on my cock?" You nod your head enthusiastically as you answer even though he isn't even there to see, but you're just that eager.

"Of course a slutty bitch like you wants my cock, if I was there with you, I'd make you get on your knees and make you worship it all night while making you finger yourself so that I can watch for my own amusement." The image makes your head spin and you swear that your inner thighs became even more messy with slick. "You're so wet now, aren't you? Want me to grab your hair and use your throat like my personal fucktoy?"

Your only responses are either longing whines or quiet 'yes's as he dirty talks to you over the phone, making promises of fucking you nice and hard when he gets back to make up for his absence which only makes you even more impatient for his return. Eventually, he has to go so you reluctantly hang up the phone before getting up to clean up. After that, you curl up on the bed, hugging the pillow he always sleeps on as you drift off to sleep.

[blindvogel]

We know very little about the time Rook is stuck in Fade prison. Only that it is weeks and that the team crafts the fake dagger in the meantime. We never really learn what everyone feels or how they find Rook in the end. I think it is called the Lighthouse for a reason. So. Part two. Emmrich.

~~~

Its shape the absence of you (Part 2 of 3)

The memory has burned itself into his mind, plays on repeat every time he closes his eyes. Kamari, right in front of him, just a couple of steps away. Falling forward, reaching for the dagger in Ghilan’nain’s chest, he’d called to her to pull it out. And then she is gone. Just like that. Swept into the greater Fade with not even a trace for him to find. 

Other details are hazy. Davrin bodily dragging him away, down to the beach. The heat of the fire as Elgar'nan’s rage consumed the island. The silence of the Lighthouse.

When Emmrich opens his eyes the morning after there is a heavy weight sitting on his chest. Its shape the absence of her. 

She pins him down, like a butterfly in a box or a flower pressed between pages. 

This weight, it is seeing her face as it twists in anger and pain. Pain he caused her because he is a coward. It is the shake in her voice as she tries to stop him from breaking something beyond repair. Because he is a coward. It is the knowledge that the last memory he has of her will be this because he let his fear win. 

He’d been so afraid of the possibility that she would leave him in some nebulous made-up future, so afraid of causing her pain with his own death should she stay, against all odds. So scared of the what-ifs and the maybes. Of his own feelings. 

And nothing of this matters if he’s lost her. Just like this. Before he could repair what he had broken, before he had the chance to say how truly sorry he is. How much he needs her. How much it scares him if she should not feel the same way. 

Except- she does. Did. He simply had been too scared and too stubborn to believe it until it was almost too late. Is too late now. 

Emmrich is no stranger to loss and grief, to regrets. He has learned to carry them and not break, but he can feel the cracks. The rituals, the habits that he has picked up and created for himself after he joined the Mourn Watch have supported him through the darkest days. They do so now too even if it is a struggle. A clean shave, the proper dress, every piece of jewelry is a piece of stability, of armor against the pain. 

He has days where this works, where he can be a functioning member of the team. Go over news from Minrathous, work on theories and ideas how to stop Elgar’nan without the dagger - how to make one. 

It’s an idea that first sparks hope - trying to find Kamari in the vastness of the Fade by his usual means had yielded nothing, not even the smallest trace of her. But with the dagger they might be able to do something. 

He latches onto that idea, to that work like a lifeline. He spends days working out the details, the composition and crafting methods, and manages to procure the materials. He works on it feverishly, painstakingly. Yet when it is finished it is nothing but a bauble, a mere trinket, and not his salvation. 

Emmrich also has bad days. They all do. Kamari was not the only one that did not make it off the island. They lost Harding, Bellara. Both Taash and Neve take it hard, and he tries to be there for them with an open ear - he is a Watcher, it is part of his duty after all. 

But it is hard on the bad days, when he wakes up with the memory of her on his mind and that weight on his chest, when nothing he does can ease it. 

Then all he can do is sit in her room, one of her journals in his lap. She’d shown them to him once, her thoughts and feelings committed to paper, interspersed with pressed flowers she’d found on her travels with Varric. Emmrich knows there are also her thoughts on him in there - but he is still too much of a coward to read them. The page is marked with a Shroud’s Kiss. 

He also has not informed Myrna or Vorgoth. He knows he must, eventually, as is his duty. But it would be so final to put it to paper, like dousing the last flame of hope he keeps alive in his heart. 

It had been bad enough trying to explain it to Manfred when he had turned to him and simply asked, “Kamari?” 

“She is gone, Manfred. We’ve lost her to the greater Fade and I’m afraid it will not be as easy to bring her back.”

“Alive!”

“Oh I hope so, my boy.”

Then he had sent him out on an errand so Manfred would not see him cry.

It is a bad day when he finally opens the journal to the page with the pressed white flower - her favorite non-color as she had teased him after his little pedantic outburst during their date. White like fresh snow. The moon. Kamari, in an Old Nevarran dialect. The only thing she had ever received from her parents. He’d felt foolish then but she had just waved it away with a laugh, with such grace. 

Now his fingers tremble as he lifts the flower so he can read the words below.

I’m glad Manfred is back. It will make many things so much easier for Emmrich. He doesn’t really want to admit it, perhaps not even to himself, but he’s felt lonely without him. Without his family, his son. He waved it off when I suggested as much but it’s so clear to see. 

With Manfred back it’s going to be easier to convince Emmrich that he is braver than he gives himself credit for. That his fears are not everything, will not consume him. With time, he’ll see what I see. A wonderful, kind, loving man that has faced so many things thrown at him and not wavered in who he is. 

The strength of that conviction, that we must believe in kindness - it’s what gives me hope that we will get through this. It’s what I love about him.

The first tear falls onto the back of his hand and he quickly closes the journal, not wanting to smudge her words and lose this last thing he has of her. The reason he cannot give up hope. 

He cries himself to sleep on her couch that night, the journal pressed tightly to his chest. 

When Emmrich wakes in the early hours of the morning with a pounding headache and his heart heavy, it is to the sight of the Caretaker hovering in front of him. 

“A new path has opened, dweller. The Lighthouse will show the way as it has always done. A beacon to the lost.”

Then they disappear before he can ask any further questions. 

Emmrich stumbles to his feet and out of the room, out into the Library where there is a door that has not been there before. It leads to a spiraling corridor ushering him up and up and up, until he arrives at what must be the very top of the Lighthouse. Gemstone windows encircle the entire room, shimmering in every visible color and some that can only be felt. And in the middle of the room a light, warm and bright and a doorway beyond. 

His senses reach out to it, through it. It is as if he has become a lighthouse, his searching gaze traversing the Fade farther and faster. Somewhere, she is out there somewhere, he can feel it. 

He doesn’t know how long he stands there. Eventually there are Neve, Lucanis, Taash at his back. Asking questions, bickering. Still he searches, unwavering, until- 

“There, a light!”

“We’ve got something?!”

Emmrich reaches into, through the doorway. His fingers wrap around a wrist, his other hand finds the upper arm. Then Taash and Lucanis are beside him, reaching and pulling until there is no more resistance. Until she stumbles out of the Fade and into their arms. Whole. Alive.

Then Kamari pulls away, stumbles back with her hands raised, her breathing shallow, her eyes pressed shut. “Please. A moment.” 

Neve is faster. “What’s wrong?”

It takes Kamari a moment to answer. He can see her deliberately drawing breath, using a technique every initiate learns to deal with panic and pain to calm herself. His heart twists. 

“Too many sensations at once. Too bright, too loud, too much. I can feel… everything.” 

Then she opens her eyes and her gaze finds his, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe. What he sees there, a moonrise.

[kjhbsies]

PT II: Flowers of Despair

Ellie Williams x fem!reader (wc: 3, 248)

Synopsis: Will a love bloom even if your marriage is not real? Will Ellie Williams find a way to open her heart again?

Warnings: part II of the Waiting Room fan fiction. ellie is an asshole. major angst??? mixed signals??? not proofread and may have grammar errors. there will be a last part of this fic. happy reading!

pt. i pt. iii

In the first week you two moved into your dream house, you were beyond nervous. You did not expect for this to happen so quickly. Your father insisted that Ellie and you should get together for the meantime, while preparing for the wedding. Ellie agreed, saying that there was no problem, so who you are to decline such a wonderful offer.

This was your dream home; it was perfect. It was a fairly huge house with big doors and a great garden. You specifically bought this months before, and was staying here every now and then. It was near the farm, so it was serene and beautiful. You loved the landscapes here since you liked to paint everywhere. 

But now, you aren’t sure how to feel.

“This is my room.” You said, pointing out the bedroom on your right as the both of you ascended through the second floor. “I’m sorry if it’s somehow messy, I just did not have the time to fix it up.” You smiled. “Your bags are already in there, but the maids will arrange it in the closet for you when they’re finished cleaning up the living room.”

“We’re not sleeping in different bedrooms?” Ellie scanned the whole area. “Or you insisted that we’ll get to share the same bed?” She looked at you with her stoic face.

Ellie watched as the color of your face drained out. You became pale when you heard her say that. Ellie has no problem sharing a room with you. Hell, she can’t even remember how many girls she has on her bed every night. But, the problem is, Ellie just wanted to taunt you because, well, she can be an asshole sometimes.

“Oh! I-I did not- I thought that’s what married couples do, you know, share the same bed.” You rambled, heart beating fast. 

This is so humiliating, you thought.

Ellie chuckled. Heart warming up as she looked at you. You were so fucking…

Cute?

“But, we’re not supposed to be like those normal married couples, aren’t we? I thought we had an agreement, babe. Don’t fall in love with me.” 

“Then don’t call me babe.” Your face scrunched up at her. “You don’t have to remind me every single day about our arrangement, you know? I’m not an idiot. I can hear you loud and clear.” You gulped. Ellie’s jaw tightened.

Am I an asshole? You looked sad, and something inside me hated it. She thought.

You looked up at her with soft eyes. “Well, it’s been a stressful evening. Let’s just rest. I’ll call one of the maids so they can bring your clothes to your room. You can just pick any bedroom you’d like.” You said before quickly going inside.

You hated it. 

You hated how she’s just in front of you, but you can’t even touch her.

You hated how she’s just within your reach but you can’t get her. You will not get her.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

One month.

One month is all it would take until you and Ellie will be married. And then, you can get your inheritance. Ellie would still endure a few weeks with you. After she gets the money, you and her can get a divorce, and if it’s possible, Ellie will get Dina again, and the three of them can live as a happy family.

But what about you?

Nah, it’s fine. Ellie doesn’t really care.

“You can cook?” Ellie asked surprisingly when she saw you in the kitchen. She is walking straight beside you. She ignored how you looked great in your sundress and floral apron. There it goes again, the bows in your hair look adorable. She shut down her eyes, mentally scolding herself when she caught herself looking like a fucking creep.

You glanced back at her. Your heart skipped a beat when she settled beside you, leaning her back at the counter while her tattooed arms were folded in her chest. She’s just wearing a plain slim fit shirt and a pair of black trousers. Her auburn hair was tied in a bun and her freckles looked really good in the sunlight. “Yeah. I make really good pastas. Guess you can say that it was my specialty.”

“I thought rich girls can’t cook.” 

“And I thought we shouldn’t bother each other. So, why are you here?” You quipped back.

Ellie looked at you in amusement. Good catch. Damn. “I was… bored.” Even she was not convinced with her statement. To be honest, Ellie doesn’t even know why she went up to talk to you. She’s just intrigued when she smelt the aroma of the food and was surprised when you were the one making it.

When she first tasted the pasta, you were looking straight at her, waiting for Ellie’s comments. And it made her uneasy. To say, your gaze made her nervous. So, she’s slowly devouring the food in front of her, chewing it gently. And damn, you really are a great chef.

“Was it good?” You asked, curiously.

“Yeah. Fuck, I was surprised that you can cook because, you know, you’re a ric-”

You shook your head, looking at her unamused. “Please don’t say rich girl.” 

Ellie laughed. 

Ellie fucking laughed for the first time. 

Oh, this arrangement will fuck you up so bad.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

On a Sunday afternoon, Ellie found herself in the garden, sitting in the grass, while holding her guitar. You, however, would usually be at the same spot while painting. When you found Ellie there, you decided to quickly walk away from her.

“You can sit with me, you know.” Ellie said when she sensed you around. 

“Uh…” You hesitated, the grip on your easel and canvas became strong. “Sure.” You gave in immediately.

You settled beside her as you began setting your art materials up. You looked at Ellie while trying to strum her guitar. Well, you’ve known that she has the skills because you’ve always seen her playing that. And it shocked you to the core, but Ellie has a beautiful voice.

“This is the first time that I picked this thing up.” Ellie blurted. “I swore that I wouldn’t play guitar again since…” She stopped talking. And you have an idea of what she might've been talking about.

“Do you still like her?” You asked, gripping on the paint brush as tight as you can, fingernails digging through your palms. 

Ellie’s mood turned sour. “That’s none of your fucking business, princess.” 

“I was just asking.”

“Well, you shouldn't. Don’t ever bring her up again. As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t even talk with each other.” Ellie said before standing up while grabbing her guitar. 

Your eyes drop as you can feel lumps in your throat when you’re holding your tears back. 

Ellie did not know why she became so defensive. When anyone brings up Dina, her mind automatically flashes back to everything they’ve done. And as much as she tries to conceal or hide it at the back of her mind, Ellie can’t seem to get away from it. 

She looked back and found you staring down at your lap when guilt started flooding her brain. Ellie wanted to apologize then and there but her pride made her walk away. 

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

The argument happened three days ago. You never talked to Ellie since the incident, and she didn’t even try to spare a glance at you either. The house has been eerily quiet and cold since that happened. Martha, your maid seemed to sense the tension between you two. 

Every day, you’re always the one who wakes up earlier to make and eat breakfast for the two of you. You did not want to eat three times a day with her, and Ellie also felt the same way. 

Did she?

I mean, to Ellie’s surprise, she’d wake up with food on the table everyday. And even though she tried to deny it, she’s always fascinated with how you cook and how delicious those meals are. It is obvious that you try to avoid her every day. And Ellie did not know whether she would be grateful or annoyed. Well, why would she even get annoyed, right? She asked for it. And now that you’re giving it to her, why is she always catching herself trying to find you every day?

To make it short, she’s an idiot. 

Now, both of you were at Jackson to try wedding dresses. Your mother insisted that she knows the best tailor in town and that’s where the both of you were. 

“Ok, twirl.” Your mom said when you stepped out of the changing room.

“I don’t like how it fits me. I can’t breathe.” You said while looking at your figure in the mirror.

“Try another one, mija. We have so many dresses here.” The old lady smiled at you and you nodded. Going back to the same changing room to try the dress that captured your eye.

Ellie passed by and your mom called her. “Ellie! How’d the fitting go?”

“It went well and faster than I expected.” Ellie chuckled.

“Well. Sit here and watch your future wife. I think she’ll like the last dress.” Your mom patted the seat beside her and Ellie hesitated for a second before she nodded and sat down.

You walked out of the changing room while wearing the first wedding dress that caught your eye. It fits you like a glove, and it is really flattering. Your steps halted when you saw Ellie staring right at you.

“Do you like it?” The owner asked happily. “It really brings out your beauty.”

Ellie silently agreed. She can’t keep her eyes away from you and how stunning you looked. Her mouth gapes, trying to find a word that best describes you at the moment but how her heart fluttered made her weak. Both of you are staring at each other’s eyes and you can’t seem to look away.

“Doesn’t she look great, Ellie?” Your mom asked Ellie.

She wasn’t even supposed to talk to you. Both of you shouldn’t even interact, let alone stare at each other like this. But there’s no choice. 

“Yes.” Ellie gulped. “You look… great.” She cursed at herself. Great? Idiot, she’s more than that.

You try to fight off a huge smile so you look down, afraid that you just look like a stupid highschool girl at the moment. You turned your back at her immediately before nodding to the tailor.

“Yes I’ll get it since my wife likes it too.” 

God, both of you were supposed to be mad at each other, right?

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

Throughout the preparation for the wedding, both you and Ellie were always at Jackson. Your morning routine consisted of you waking up at 7:00 in the morning to cook and eat breakfast, and read a book for an hour before Ellie woke up. And when the clock strikes at 9:00 AM, it is your time to stand up to go into your room, take a long bath and get ready.

Ellie will meet you outside, in the car, to go to Jackson. And it is awkwardly silent and painful. Jackson is a 30 minute drive and the two of you weren’t even letting out even a small quip, nor glance at each other as the two of you agreed. 

Well, you wanted to apologize to Ellie for bringing Dina up in that conversation, three weeks ago. But you can’t seem to find the courage to talk to her. You did not know how much Dina really meant to Ellie up until now that even though it’s you that she shares the same house with, she can’t seem to forget her. This thought haunted you every night, but you can’t really blame Ellie. Dina is her soulmate, and you’re just a huge hindrance. 

Besides, both of you almost never agree on anything. You loved the shades of pink and blue for your wedding, and Ellie will say that it is such the corniest color. While trying to make the perfect wedding invitation, Ellie would go up beside you to propose something really annoying. Ellie loved carrot cake but you hated the hell out of it that almost caused a huge fight in the shop. When things get heated between you two, you will just shut up because you can’t create a huge scene, especially that both of your parents are around.

Today is your break from her since after the wedding tomorrow, you would be tied to her. Not forever, but maybe months, or years, even. Ellie and you decided to have a girl’s and guy’s day before the wedding. You two would stay here at Jackson for the night – in her old house. 

“We’re here.” Ellie said. You nodded and opened the door and she waited for you to get out before stepping outside. Ellie smiled widely as she saw her friends. Everyone of them started hugging and clapping each other’s back.

“Yo, man! I never thought you would be married.” Jesse said happily.

“Was that an insult?” She asked before playfully smacking him.

“Oh, hey, Y/N, if Ellie did something really shitty, you can just go at me. I’m really good at comforting pretty girls.” The masculine girl went up at you, grinning, while holding out her hand. “I’m Julie, by the way.”

“Uh…” You hesitated before looking at Ellie who didn't really look pleased. And seconds later, she is hitting Julie’s head hard. 

“That’s my wife, you shit.” 

Jesse and Julie shared the most obnoxious laugh. 

“Okay, guys, I’ll just leave you all.” You smiled. “Ellie, I’ll just meet up with the girls. I’ll see you at your house later.” You said, waving at them.

“Wait, wait, where’s Ellie’s kiss?” Jesse asked.

“Dude shut up.” Ellie immediately answered.

“Come on, guys. You don’t kiss?” He asked again. “Ellie, what happened to your game, dude?” He taunted.

“It’s fine.” You looked at Ellie reassuringly before tip-toeing to kiss her in the lips. It was sudden, and it was just a quick peck but your heart hammered and you felt like it would come right out of your throat. “Bye.” You whispered softly before turning away.

Ellie felt frozen at the moment. Shit, she can still feel your lips at her. The scent of your lip gloss lingered at her and it’s all that she could smell right now. What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing to her?

Ellie watched your figure as you were walking through your friends. She was so glad that you quickly went away without looking at her, or else Ellie would be caught dead right there and then.

You’re so fucking confusing. 

Ellie hated it.

Ellie hated you.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

You were staring at Ellie’s bedroom, scanning every little thing in here. Joel said that this has been her bed since she was nine years old. An old guitar was sitting near her windows, as well as a pile of books about spaces, science, dinosaurs, as well as a couple of ‘No Pun Intended’ books in different volumes. 

You were shocked that she knows how to sketch when you found some sketchbooks on her desk. Some were filled up until the last page, but there are some who weren’t even touched. When you opened one, you saw that her sketches mainly consisted of horses, Joel, and Dina. She draws her beautifully, making her a goddess, just like what she sees in her eyes. Dina is her muse, and both of them can create a masterpiece. Somewhere in your heart was pierced as you were thinking about it. Ellie probably stopped sketching when she left, and has never touched a pencil ever since. 

The door opened. And it showed a drunk Ellie. You sat up, quickly walking away at her desk and releasing the grip on one of her sketches.

“The fuck are you doing?” Ellie immediately walked up to hide her arts.

“I’m sorry. I just got carried away looking at-”

“Why are you here, anyway?” She looked at you angrily.

You sighed heavily. You did not want another fight with her. “Where am I supposed to be?”

“At your friends or something?”

You laughed sarcastically. “You really do hate me that much, huh?” Slowly, you were walking towards her.

She grinned. “Yeah. I guess you can say that you’re not my favorite person.” 

“But you’re marrying me. Tomorrow.”

She stepped forward, looking down at you with a taunting gaze. “Guess I would just deal with it.” Ellie started grabbing something on her dresser. “I’m sleeping on the floor. You can have my bed.”

You stood there, feeling ridiculous. “This is what you called ‘dealing with it?’ We’re about to get married tomorrow, and you are still a coward.”

Ellie laughed loudly. She can feel her drunkenness start to wash away from her veins as you keep on talking. Yes, both of you shouldn’t even be arguing and she could just be the bigger person and ignore you but she just physically, and mentally can’t.

“What did you just call me?” She said, looking at you with squinted eyes.

“You’re a coward. I thought you brought a lot of girls here before, so why can’t you stand sharing a bed with me?” You asked, challenging her. 

Ellie’s jaw tightened while she’s looking at you. Fuck, she can’t even say something back at you because you are making a lot of sense. 

You rolled your eyes at her when she just stood there, frozen. Slowly, you went to her bed and covered yourself under the blanket. 

There’s a nightstand beside you. In this, there’s a small lamp, a lot of toy figurines, coins, and a portrait of Ellie. She’s smiling at the camera, her auburn hair is tied in a bun and she’s wearing a tank top – revealing her muscles. You figured out that it was when she’s 19 – where she’s still a handsome girl you first admired. If you told your 16 years old self that you are marrying Ellie Williams, she would be beyond happy. She might faint, really. But right now, Ellie isn’t the girl you thought she’d be. 

Everyone was right. She’s an asshole. 

You sighed heavily as you felt the mattress beside you moved. Ellie lifted the blanket and settled herself under it. You and Ellie were sleeping both at your backs to avoid facing each other.

Why are you still wasting your time with her? Ellie wouldn’t love you no matter how hard you try. Maybe it is the time to accept the fact that she wouldn’t be yours here, or maybe in another lifetime. 

She wants Dina.

And you’re not her.

“Is this a good idea?” You asked her suddenly. “We always fight and I hate it because I’m not made for it.” You shut your eyes tightly as tears started streaming down, wetting the bed underneath. “I just want to love you.” You whispered, confessing your feelings for her. 

Ellie gulped, trying to remove the lump on her throat. “I told you not to fall in love with me.” She said, softly. She can feel a familiar ache in her heart. Like the same thing when her mom left her, when Shimmer died, and when Dina left. She tried so hard to avoid those, protecting her feelings so hard that she even forgot that she still had a heart.

Until you came. 

You smiled sadly. “Too late, Ellie. I have loved you since we were sixteen.”

[mayon3sa]

: ̗̀➛ THRIFTY

Synopsis:Having to clutch up the last round of a game is frustrating. What’s even more frustrating is getting clipped by one of the team members from the other team because they died. What happens when said clip ends up going viral and people start laughing at how the dynamic between the two strangers is. Not only does it end up going viral but it also encourages new friendships to be made through it and maybe even more than just friendships.

THRIFTY : PATCH ONE ☁︎ USER BARBONIE273???

SERIES MASTERLIST ┊ ⋆ ┊V2: NAWT COOL(TBA)

Playing Valorant alone was always one of your biggest fears, even though you were a professional player and had enough experience to speak up for yourself you always fell victim to the what if thoughts during certain games. Spiraling down those thoughts always seemed impossible to let go of ; Lucky something always distracted you from venturing any further into those thoughts

Speak of the devil and he shall appear, just as you were starting to worry your phone rang making you stop what you were doing and picking up the incoming call

“Y/N hop on val i’m on stream right now girly” Jirous voice rang through your phone

“I’m setting up my stream wait, in the meantime join the discord vc”

“Girl hurry up”

“Damn bro stop rushing me i’m almost done i'm fixing my mic, I’ll join the discord when i finish up bye bye”

“Hurry up if not i’m not playing with you bye bye”

Just as you were done setting up your mic you joined the discord vc to see shindo and shinsou also on the call

“I thought you guys were streaming why are you on call” you questioned

“Ehh we got bored and decided to just chill in call and hear you guys play val” Shindo said

“50 bucks y/n throws this game” shinsou said

“Haha hilarious you asshole, you wanna talk about throwing games let's talk about your two week lose streak back to back”

“Alright bro you didn’t have to do all that, just say you’re pressed and move on i guess”

“When i see you shinso it’s on fucking sight bro, bring your boxing gloves hoe”

“Or what”

“Oh my god both of you shut up, Y/N join my party i already sent the invite”Jirous voice interrupted you and shinou’s bickering

After nearly 20 minutes of you and Jirou playing you guys were approaching the end of the game with one last match having to take place in order for you guys to win the game. Saying you were exhausted was an understatement so needing some fun in the game you held a poll on your chat asking what you should do for the last round and surprisingly majority voted to play pistol only as it would’ve been fun. And that’s exactly what you decided on doing

“We should all do eco this round, with light shields and classical pistols” You had said to your team's general voice chat

“I’m down i’m getting bored of this game either way” a girl said

“Yeah i’m also down why not” Another girl said

“I mean why not we could win this round so sure” yet another girl also agreeing with your idea

“Jirou play eco this round let’s win this last round with thrifty that would be funny as hell” You commed

“Sure”

Just as the round started you lurked around b site playing around with your raze kit and knife making markings along the walls 

“Y/N there’s someone around the corner i set up cypher traps but they have guardian one tap and you're done for” jirou commed

“Relax i have roomba with me we’ll be ight”

“Y/N says that and she’s always first to die with than damn robot” Shinso said 

“Shut the hell up bro if i miss my shots i’ll get a medium to put a hex on you”

“Girl shut up and shoot 2 of them are coming to sight” jirou commed

“Damn bro y’all on my ass i know, i got it”

As Y/N as holding down b site two enemies had entered site you used paint shells as decoy and shot two of the enemies

“2 down, i think some might be lurking mid jirou tell iso to hold mid”

“Iso IS holding down mid dumbass look at mini map”

“Well not anymore she’s dead go hold down mid i’ll rotate to a”

“Shindo do you ever think about like what if dress to impress ever added a serving cunt category like imagine someone dressed up as maddie from euphoria” shinso talked into mic

“No because honestly think about it that would make the game so much better, i NEED that category added”

“I got sage, our phoenix commed 2 in a Y/N let’s rotate”

“Bro our whole team just full on died it’s just us” jirou said as she was checking player starts

“We’re winning this with hopes and dreams bro”

“Trust, trust i’ve been practicing my aim i can clutch this watch” y/n said

Just as Y/N and jirou were holding down a sight the enemy teams yoru had teleported behind jirou, though it was a good strategy on their part jirou managed to kill them, leaving the round between the enemy chamber, you and jirou. You do have to say as smart as the chamber was for using decoys they weren’t smart enough to kill jirou, they weren’t smart enough to realized you had your ultimate so just in time when they peaked you managed to kill them

‘THRIFTY’ was all that was heard as the round ended

Not wanting to leave a sour taste on the other players you left a message you thought was nice and Whitty on general chat ‘no scope :P wp’ 

“Alright jirou i think i’m gonna hop off i need to take care of my hedgehog bye jirou bye stream I'll see you guys hopefully tomorrow at the same time as today stay safe and hydrated guys”

Meanwhile…

“I FUCKING LOST TO A RAZE WITH NO DAMN GUN HOW BRO HOW” was all that was heard through bakugos stream

“AND WHAT KIND OF NAMES IS BARBONIE273?”

“THIS HAS TO BE SOME JOKE THERE’S NO WAY BRO HOW”

Just as he managed to somewhat calm down from the anger of that match he cut the clip and uploaded the rest to twitter

A/N. AHHHHH i finally finished the first chapter im so exhausted ngl but yayyy

taglist.@twinnintwink , @sara4uuu , @captainshindo , [open just ask to be in it :))]

[mikwaa]

After a fight

Diluc x Fem Reader

Wordcount: 2,486

Warnings: : Smut, mention of injuries

It had been a few weeks since you and Diluc had last spoken to each other, which had not been very pleasant. There had been a fight between you two, this time a silly argument turned into something bigger.

In the meantime you were avoiding any and all places where Diluc might be, be it the tavern or the outskirts of town, you just wouldn't go there. And Diluc did the same, and neither of you dared to say a word, it was all too recent, it was all too strange still.

Every word or gesture imprinted in your memory, it was impossible to try to soften the things that were said at that moment, at least now. But even though you were away from him, you couldn't help but hear one thing or another about him, mainly because you were very close to his brother Kaeya, who talked about Diluc from time to time.

You couldn't help but miss him, but for some reason your pride was a big hindrance. Besides you didn't know what you could say to him, "I'm sorry?" Would that be enough?

You feared that none of the words you could think of would be enough to appease the situation, and unfortunately, that was also the same question Diluc had in his mind.

The only way you could not think too much about this subject was your job. As a Knight of Favonius you had a lot to do, especially you were responsible for protecting a large part of the Mondstadt territory. And today, much to your misfortune, Jean had asked you to control a stream of monsters near the Dawn Winery, and it was a kind of mission you couldn't refuse.

Even if you had an excuse here or there, you had to do your duty. Without much ado you went to the place, and luckily Diluc was apparently not at home, which you thought would be a relief. The mission wasn't very difficult, just killing a few slimes that were in the vicinity seemed easy enough. But what you didn't expect was to run into a large group of Hilichurls, and to your dismay, it had started to rain heavily.

After a good fight, you finished off all the monsters, but you ended up with a deep cut on your arm, which you needed to take care of urgently. But you decided to ignore it for a while and go home, since standing in the rain wouldn't solve much. But in the pouring rain, all you heard was someone calling your name, turning around to see that it was Adelinde waving to you.

"Come here, get out of this rain." She shouted from the mansion, and in response you waved her away saying you wouldn't go, and that it was okay. Some time later Adelinde appears with an umbrella coming up behind you.

"I don't know what you're doing in this rain, come with me." She simply came out pulling you to the residence, you were so perplexed that you didn't know how to act.

As soon as you entered the parlor a shiver ran down your spine, you felt like you might bump into him at any moment.

"Heaven, you're soaking wet!" One of the maids says.

"I just need some new clothes, that's all." You assure her, but the blood stain on your clothes said otherwise.

"Adelinde." A voice calls out to her, it took a few seconds for you to see that it was Diluc, who had just come out of his room.

His eyes widened as soon as he saw you in that state, your clothes dripping wet and one arm severely bruised.

"I will prepare a hot bath for you." The same maid as before says, quickly going about her business.

Adelinde then appears with some medicine and bandages for you, "I'll take care of it, don't worry." She says while looking at Diluc, who just looks at you worriedly.

"No need, I can go back to my house and take care of it." Diluc wouldn't accept this, not even if you asked him to.

So, he took you in his arms and carried you to his room, gently putting you on the bed. He didn't care if you wet his sheets or not, all he wanted was to take care of you as quickly as possible.

And damn it, he was very concerned, he was very protective of you. Any scratch was cause for concern, now imagine a deep cut on your arm, it was enough to make him very upset.

"You should be more careful, this kind of injury is serious." He was the first to speak after the silence that had formed, at this point he wasn't giving a crap about any kind of pride he might feel.

"It was nonsense, in a few days this will be fine." The way you spoke so nonchalantly would make him nervous. He couldn't understand why you were so careless when it came to yourself.

"That's a deep cut, no nonsense." This time he made direct eye contact with you. Whenever he used that tone, you could be sure it was something serious.

You sighed, maybe it really had been an oversight on your part. But now there was no point in blaming yourself.

Then he started to pull up the sleeve of your shirt, leaving your wound completely exposed. Which made you grunt in pain the moment Diluc passed a piece of cloth to wipe off the excess blood.

"Does it hurt much?" His eyes wouldn't leave your face for a second, he was terribly afraid of hurting you even more.

"No, it just stings a little." And you, seeing that he was worried, even tried to tell him it was no big deal. But your face had a pained expression, which made it quite obvious that it was a big bother.

And this was an affirmation for him to continue dressing, he sat down beside you and gently began to clean the wound. Even with the skill he had in his hands, you could see that he was trembling a little, he knew that any little mistake he made would hurt you.

And he hated the idea of hurting you, even if he didn't mean to. His eyes widened a little bit every time you grunted or groaned in pain, so he paused for a moment and then continued right after that.

"I need to tie the bandage, it's going to hurt a little." He whispered to you, somehow trying to comfort you.

You nodded, squeezing yourself into your clothes. And so he did, carefully tying the bandage tightly around your arm, making sure it wouldn't come off. And sure enough, it hurt, you closed your eyes so tightly that you felt dizzy when you opened them. Diluc made you rest your head on his chest, gently pampering you, while he stroked your hand with his thumb.

You wanted to say no, but as soon as you felt his smell, his touch, you couldn't resist, you missed him too much to deny it.

"I think Adelinde has already prepared your bath, it's not good for you to get your clothes wet." Another concern of his, that you might catch a cold.

"Yes, after that I'll go home." You still insisted on this idea, but he firmly disapproved.

"No, you won't, it's late and raining. Tomorrow morning I'll walk you home myself." He wasn't proposing, he was stating that this was how it would be.

You snorted in defeat, he wouldn't let you set foot out of the house, especially in this state.

So you took a hot shower, got clean and a little more comfortable. After all, wet clothes were far from comfortable, and since you hadn't left any clothes at his place, Diluc lent you one of his shirts. He knew you liked to wear them, so he was kind enough to give you one to wear. And after a nice shower you felt more relaxed, the pain had even eased a little.

And as soon as you returned to his room, you found him still sitting on the bed waiting for you. His eyes shimmered as soon as he saw you in one of your shirts, his heart fluttered at the sight of you.

"I will sleep in the guest room, but please, if you need anything, call me." He brushes off all the dubious thoughts he was having at that moment, and returns to a more serious posture. Even though you could see how much he just wanted to hug you and hold you in his arms.

"You don't need that, you can sleep here. I have no problem with that." You mumble, there was no point in him going to sleep in the guest room just for your sake.

"Are you sure?" He asks reluctantly, him sleeping next to you, just having your presence was enough.

You just whispered a 'yes' and went towards the bed, but as soon as you sat on the bed Diluc said, "I have something to tell you." And he looked so uncertain, for the first time in ages he sounded so insecure.

And you already knew that it was something about the fight you had, and at that moment you felt that you also had to say something to him.

"I'm sorry." You both said in a choir, at the same time, as if it had somehow been planned.

You looked at each other, and he quickly came to you and pulled you into an embrace, nestling you tightly in his arms.

"I shouldn't have been so hard on you, I'm sorry." And you can hear a tearful, even guilty tone.

You pull away, and put one hand on his cheek, stroking it lightly, "It's okay, it's all right."

And he seals your lips with a kiss, which starts sweet and loving, then turns into a thirsty kiss full of desire.

And when you least saw it, you were both on the bed, undressed, your clothes had already gone somewhere in the room. It was all so fast that before you knew it he was already on top of you.

"I missed you so much." He kissed you hungrily, hardly letting you breathe.

You could already feel his cock lightly slapping against your entrance. At this point neither of you gave a damn about any fighting, nothing else mattered, all you wanted was for him to fuck you like crazy, and he would.

And after leaving your lips, he sucked on your neck and made his way to your breasts. Where he licked and sucked like it was the last time, the way he played with your nipples made you roll your eyes with every touch.

Meanwhile, his deft fingers opened your sides, his thumb circled your clit, he just wanted to make sure you were ready for him. And fuck, you were, with the slightest interaction like this you were already dripping.

You thrust your hips towards his fingers, and seeing how desperate you were to get him to finger you, he began to slide his fingers in and out, hitting all the spots you loved.

"Ah, fuck Diluc." You gasped as you grabbed a lock of his hair, pressing it even harder against your breast.

He grunted, and you could feel the vibration in his voice. The way you whimpered and moaned his name, heavens, it was such a perfect sin. And you were so close, so close, just a little bit more and you would reach the limit. But with a hoarse groan Diluc stopped, not only to get the perfect view of you, lying completely naked and exposed to him. This was proof that you were so much his, and it was breathtaking in his eyes.

"I've been dreaming about this, fuck, you have no idea." He says breathlessly, his blush evident. He missed your cunt, he missed everything about you.

He rubbed his cock against your entrance, making you groan to get it in all at once. But he liked so much to see you like this, begging him to fill you with his cock.

And slowly, in a tortuous way, he put himself all the way into you. He was completely buried in you, his tip was so deep inside you. You wrapped your legs around him, pulling him closer, and without wasting much time he pulled his lips against yours in a deep kiss, this while his tongue explored you endlessly.

He didn't care if anyone heard what you two were doing, so he didn't even think about slowing down, skin on skin slapping that could be heard by anyone passing in the hallway. His pace was fast and deep, just showing how much he wanted you, to the point where he couldn't control himself.

He didn't even need to ask if you were close to cumming, the way your walls clenched him, and how well you accommodated him was already the precise answer for him. Your pussy was devouring him, the wet noises already more than evident.

"I'm close." You whimpered between his lips, letting out the most impure of moans.

"I want to cum with you, together." He was just as needy as you were, he wanted to paint your walls white so badly, until you were leaking from all he did.

Your hips moved with each thrust, as did his cock twitching inside you. With a few more thrusts you reached your limit, making a mess on his cock, white cream running down the length of it. Just as he made sure to fill you with his cum, it was dripping all the way down to the sheets.

He relaxed, put some weight on you, and gently pressed his forehead against yours.

"Don't leave me again." He purred, and it was genuine, from the bottom of his soul.

He would give anything not to have to leave you again, he would go crazy if that happened.

"I will never leave you." With a brief smile you say, his face burning with so much embarrassment.

Then gently rubbing his lips against yours, he says, "I love you."

You can't help yourself, and pull him in for another kiss, this time slower and more gentle as you murmur, "I love you too."

But don't be fooled, this moment was only going to be a short respite. There was still the whole night ahead of you two.

[chlorinecake]

“I cherish you” | N.RK ff ༄

༄ Last year’s Valentine’s Day marked the day you and your boyfriend Riki first starting dating. Ever since then, he spoils you on the 14th day of every month in honor of your love story…

🍒 pairing bf!nishimura riki x fem!reader genre romance, fluff 🍒

༄ wc 1.1k ~ written with black reader in mind ~ requested !

You found your boyfriend in your shared apartment bathroom doing his typical morning routine. You walked up behind him, snaking your hands beneath his shirt to pull him closer. Pressing your cheek against his back, you could smell a new body wash he must’ve used. Or maybe it was cologne?

“Morning,” Riki mumbled through a mouthful of minty foam, wiping his mouth before turning to kiss the top of your head.

“Good morning,” you returned warmly.

He ran a clawed hand through your hair before his fingers got caught in your curls. You winced at the sudden tug before giggling at the worried expression that waved over Riki’s face.

“Sorry, baby! Did I hurt you?”

“No, Riki, but you did remind me that I need to comb my hair,” you smiled, freeing him from your clingy grasp.

You searched through the bathroom drawer for a few products to style your hair. In the meantime, your boyfriend was busy lathering his face with shaving cream.

“Uh,” you started confused, “what’re you doing?”

“Prepping to shave my beard.”

You snorted, “Your what?”

“I’m not as young as I was when we first met, y’know? This is what men do.”

“Mhm, and who told you that?”

“Heeseung-hyung. He’s one of the best people I can go to for advice. Especially with girls.”

“Oh, so you’re a man and I’m just a girl?”

“For now, yes. Though, maybe in a few years I’ll make you my woman if you stick around long enough,” he winked, making you cringe but in a loving way.

“Hey, I wanna try,” you chirped, snatching the razor from his hand.

“Woah, ____! Did you forget there’s a sharp blade on that thing?”

“Oh, c’mon! You’re a man now, remember? Don’t tell me you’re scared of your girlfriend.”

He shook his head at your teasing, “only when she’s on her period… that’s when she get's really crazy.”

You nudged him in the shoulder, making him giggle.

“Okay, now hold still,” you said, guiding him by his chin as you slid the razor against his face, checking after each stroke for any access hair. “Riki, there’s nothing on here!”

“Gimme that,” he said, taking the razor from your hand to examine it for himself. And to no one’s surprise, there wasn’t any hair on it.

“Ugh, this is useless,” he whined, wiping his face before leaving the bathroom.

You followed after him, “Riki, is everything okay? Why’re you putting so much stress into getting ready today?”

He looked at you with offended eyes, “Don’t tell me you forgot today marks our 14th month anniversary.”

Suddenly, everything started to make sense.

“Riki, you don’t have to try and impress me. I love you just the way you are like I always have,” you smiled, holding his hands in yours.

“I love you too, ____, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna spoil you on our anniversary.”

Riki was never one to consider gift-giving to be one of his love languages. Not until he asked you to be his girlfriend on Valentine's Day over a year ago.

The day started with him showering you with gifts and praise as an attempt to earn your love which he already had. These days, your romantic boyfriend can't help but to celebrate the day he won you, even though his friends call him a simp for it.

And in perfect cliche fashion, your anniversary happens to fall on the 14th day of every month, which is what brings you here today.

“Spoil me, huh?” You grinned, “so what do you have planned? I mean, sometimes I feel like we’ve done everything already.”

“You know I'll always think of something new. But for now, it's a surprise. You’ll find out after we finished getting ready.”

You and your boyfriend shared the bathroom for the next 25 minutes as you two got dressed together, wearing the cutest matching red outfits that he picked out a whole week prior to today.

“You look absolutely stunning, ____,” he marveled, taking in your frame like a work of art.

Your stomach fluttered at his remark, “Oh please, you’re just proud of your work.”

“Maybe,” he smirked, pulling a large bouquet of red roses from behind his back.

“Riki,” you began before he took your hand, interlacing your fingers around the flower stems.

“I wanna get a picture of you like this,” he smiled, counting down from three before snapping a quick picture, “Don’t worry, I won’t post it anywhere,” he said, noticing that you seemed a bit awkward.

You walked outside with his arm linked in yours, still holding the rose bouquet. You two made your way past the familiar shops that lined the city streets beyond your apartment, taking in the beautiful early morning scenery.

That’s when you two spotted a band of instrumentalists, harmonizing to a romantic tune. You looked up at Riki with playful eyes, communicating to him that you wanted to dance.

Knowing your boyfriend, he would happily oblige to any opportunity to dance, especially with the love of his life.

“May I,” he asked cornily, bowing before you.

“Yes, Riki, you may.”

He took the bouquet from your grasp, placing it on a nearby coffee table before tucking a rose behind your ear.

“And for you,” you smiled, placing one of the roses between his teeth.

He took your hand in his, pulling you close before guiding you across the floor along with the music, bracing your lower back.

Your hands sat at his shoulders before getting lost in his hair, staring into his piercing eyes as the heart-warming melody came to a sudden stop.

It was starting to rain.

The band busied themselves with packing up their instruments before fleeing the moist environment.

"Welp, that was fun while it lasted," Riki chimed, grabbing the bouquet before walking back in the direction of your apartment.

"Hey, I thought we were gonna spend the day out," you pouted confused.

"I know, but I had a picnic date planned in the park, which I doubt would be much fun in this weather."

He held the flowers over your two heads as a way to shield yourselves from the down pour.

"Sooo, what do we do, now?"

"Hmm," he hummed in thought, "we could always just run around the city and hope we don't get struck by lightening. Orrrrr, we could have a dance off in the rain! First one to slip loses."

"Riki!"

"What? That's better than me sulking over how a few grey clouds ruined our anniversary."

You looked at his face which fell from its original enthusiasm, trying to think of something to cheer him up.

You smacked the bouquet out of his hand, running ahead of him.

"Yah, ____! I paid good money for these!"

"Last one to the apartment's a rotten egg," you giggled, hardly getting far with your high heels against the rain.

Riki counted from five, giving you a few more seconds to get ahead before sprinting ahead of you, laughing as you pouted in defeat.

Fin.

🌹 Special thanks to @microwvdstrawb3rri3s for requesting this piece! This was my first time writing an established relationship fic so I hope you guys enjoyed it!

🌹 Taglist (open) — @fanficfactoryfoxxx @ashgonedash @yourmomscuntis2tighy @kaykay11sworld @rickysblkgf @4imhry @yngwife @bambangan @microwvdstrawb3rri3s @nikipedia07 @naddii @beomgyusonlywife @rickysblkgf @nikiiitties @03sunoos

[coltermorning]

Of Love and Loss Ch. 20 (RDR2 Fanfic, Arthur Morgan x F!Reader, 18+)

Summary: You and Arthur finally find solace in a town and in each other, breaking down every last wall that remains.

Author’s Notes: Sexual content in this chapter. Chapter twenty of this one.

Tags: Arthur Morgan x reader, high honor Arthur Morgan, minor character death, loss of parents, blood and injury, grief/mourning, survivor guilt, strangers to lovers, slow burn, smut, loss of virginity, graphic depictions of violence

AO3 Link

~

Of Love and Loss

Twenty: The Power of a Name

Word count: 6609

She really thought I would leave her here. What nonsense, especially after what happened in the last town and how much it haunts her. I suppose I’ll be seeing this journey through to the end. Either that, or long enough for her to tell me to get lost. Surprisingly, that ain’t happened quite yet, though I ain’t holding out hope that it won’t after how much of a fool I been towards her. We shall see, I guess.

~

It had taken ten more days to get back to civilization. The town of Ogallala was small but growing fast due to the rail built through it. Arthur knew it made you nervous to be around this many people again, but the law in this town was sparse, and the two of you kept your heads down well enough and found a hotel tucked away to stay hidden in in the meantime. If anyone came through looking for you, they’d have to go door to door to find you, and many of the townsfolk weren’t local besides. That meant no real reason to turn in two people folk hadn’t really noticed in the first place. That left Arthur calm enough not to worry over your safety like he had been the past week and a half. And that left him more relaxed than he had been in a long time.

It turned out you were nervous about more than just the law and the local population—he’d had to wriggle it out of you, but Arthur finally figured out you thought the local train station meant his departure. Your final destination wasn’t far, and you had thought he was impatient enough to get back to his gang that he would take the first train to Denver and leave you here to fend for yourself. He couldn’t begin to explain how wrong you were and had instead led you to the hotel without a word, a little miffed you thought he cared that little about you. Then again, he hadn’t outright expressed much reason for you to think otherwise, and he was starting to think it was time to. You’d immediately collapsed onto the bed upon arrival, worn from all the hard travel, so he didn’t have a chance to speak his mind anyway. Later, he told himself. Though he was in denial about the fact that very soon, there wouldn’t be a later.

Arthur sat on the floor beside the bed and chewed on a bit of cooked deer meat Beth had insisted the two of you take, looking over his journal to pass the time. Really, he wondered what to say to you. He wasn’t the best with words, especially when it came to matters of the heart. He thought of writing it down but had come up with his pitiful new journal entry instead, cowardly as ever. Then, annoyed, he turned back a page, knowing exactly what he would find. He didn’t know why it surprised him. But there you were, laid out on that bed in that barn, half-naked save for his coat. And underneath, your name. Your real name, written out after he’d finished every last gentle curve and arc of your body. He never thought knowing a name would be such an honor, but he realized that it had been your way of expressing to him what he had yet to express to you—how much you cared for him. It was obvious he felt the same, obvious in the few stolen kisses he’d gotten since what had happened in that worn down barn. But maybe the pair of you hadn’t come together like that since because he was the one holding back, not you. And that left him shameful.

Arthur looked over at you on the bed, your back steadily rising and falling in sleep. You were faced away, so he couldn’t see much of you apart from your hand draped over the bedside. Even that small glimpse of you had him thinking of how little time there was left between you and how precious this closeness was. It was time for him to admit things he never normally would or risk letting them fester within him, nothing more than regret that would chafe like hell the farther away he got from you.

Arthur stowed the deer meat and went back to studying the drawing of you. One thing he liked most about it was the look on your face—the smile. Upon first meeting you, he never would have thought someone so heartbroken could eventually be so willful again. That smile was catlike, just for him. It turned him on a little. And the rest of the drawing didn’t make matters better, nor did the thought of what the two of you had done together to cause that smile.

Arthur thought of other ways you had surprised him, as you continued to do every day. How good of a shot you were, for one. Hell, just the thought of you being so good with a gun you’d snapped that noose clean in half had him hard. Then his mind drifted to your hands wrapped around a gun, and just like that, he was lost.

Arthur’s eyes followed the curve of your breast in his coat as he thought of how argumentative you were, the way you snapped at him without fear time and again. He was used to being intimidating enough to make everyone else hold their tongue, but not you. You let him have it.

And your mouth. The way you kissed him despite not quite knowing how—it was unfair to be so good at it. Unfair to be so innocent yet so arousing. Timid yet wild, broken yet strong. All of it.

Arthur let out an annoyed breath at how aroused he had become, setting his journal aside and turning to look at you. He wouldn’t leave you again, but he was suddenly desperate to take himself in hand, something he would rather not do in front of you, asleep or not. But, he considered, you had just fallen asleep. It could be hours. You weren’t a very heavy sleeper, but he could be quiet. He could…shit. He shouldn’t be considering this. But he thought of you waking up and catching him in the act, and that made things immeasurably worse. How would you respond? That put a smile on his face. You’d never seen him naked, nor any man if he had to guess. He loved seeing that shy, surprised look on your face his overly confident words brought, and he had no doubt the sight of him pleasuring himself would make you go so red it would leave you speechless for once. Or maybe it wouldn’t, and maybe you would be curious enough to crawl off that bed and come over here, crawl in his lap and-

“Christ,” Arthur whispered, in the same sorry state he had been in that bath, thinking then of what he would do with you on the first bed you’d shared. Only now, he had no reason to feel guilty over wanting you like that. He had half a mind you wanted the same from him. Or he hoped you did, at least. If how you had responded to his touch the last time was any indication, you certainly did.

And then Arthur was thinking of what he knew he shouldn’t be, because it would lead to his hand drifting downward when he really shouldn’t allow for such things. He thought of his fingers between your legs, all those perfect sounds you made. He thought of your whispered fervor, the words don’t stop cutting through him worse than any bullet. He wanted that again. By God, he was desperate enough to wake you for it. But he wouldn’t. He would let you rest and have what little peace he could offer. Because what he was considering wasn’t quite peace so much as it was demanding, outright gratification. A desperation he could no longer tame and one he hoped to drag from you right alongside him. But again, as much as it killed him, he would wait for your desire to match his. And as he pulled another cigarette out of his ever-dwindling stash to distract him in the meantime, he knew what he felt for you must be real—nothing had ever nagged him so bad as to make him more honorable. And there was something to be said for that.

~

Two months and fifteen days. You woke up to the ceiling of yet another rented room, plagued by the thought of your parents’ deathdate. Your mother had been keeping up with the days, if only for some way to pass the time, and here you were doing the same two and a half months later, nearly to the day. It had been a Wednesday. The ninth of September. And now it was nearing the end of November, and all you could hold onto was how much you regretted not marking their graves with their birthdates and deathdates. With crosses bearing names you were proud to display but couldn’t bear to part with at the time, just like your own.

You looked to the windows lining the wall, noting the gray sky beyond. It was snowing again. It had been for nearly the entirety of the past week, though part of you wished it would give. There were many things you wished would give, namely the ache in your chest at the constant absence of your parents’ guidance. As far as you had come without it, you knew you could survive on your own, but that guidance was a crutch you would have loved to feel one last time. Comforting in its surrender.

Your eyes flicked to the man propped up against the wall, one leg bent at the knee and hat slung low over his eyes. He was either asleep or resting, and you didn’t want to disturb him either way. He didn’t allow himself to do so very often after the two of you had gotten so tangled with the law, but he deserved this. He was toughened, hardened by a life you would never have come out of alive. It made him strong in a way you wanted to grant respite to. Strong in a way you knew he never would himself. Stubborn, more like, but you couldn’t deny you recognized that only because you were the same.

Turning on the bed, a loud creak resulted that had Arthur raising his hat brim to look at you. Part of you wanted to pretend to be dozing anyway like you used to do as a child, but you met his eye instead. Held that stare until it turned contemplative. Until you were both looking beyond the eyes into the soul beneath.

“Didn’t want to sleep up here?” you said softly.

Arthur looked to the window, like of all things, that was what finally made him meek.

“You needed some sleep. And didn’t leave me much room besides.”

You couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. When he turned back to you, all you could say was, “It’s snowing again.”

“Yeah,” he said in a manner that made you recall the secret he had bestowed to you—something no one else knew about him. Your very own piece of him.

“And you don’t like the cold, do you?” you teased.

He scoffed. “No.”

Stubborn and gruff. You were grinning as you said, “That’s too bad. Guess I don’t have to face my shortcomings quite like you do.”

“Meanin’?” he said, annoyance in his voice though you knew he was curious enough not to drop it.

“The postman,” you admitted. Then he was letting out a laugh.

“I guess not.” He shook his head and looked back to the gray light of the nearest window. And something about doing what you had just done to ground yourself made you ache for him.

“Come up here.”

The words were out of your mouth in a second. There wasn’t an ounce of regret in you, not even when he looked to you with questioning eyes.

You scooted back and patted the bed in front of you. He didn’t make a fuss about it—just rose and walked over, his spurs jingling with each step. He swiped his hat from his head and sat, holding your eye as he folded his lumbering frame down on the bed beside you. You lay facing each other when he set his hat on your head, an action so fond you nearly choked up with it.

He smiled at you, likely because of the way his hat was much too big and sat crookedly, covering one of your eyes completely. You had the sudden urge to give him yours, but it was on the floor behind you, and you wouldn’t move enough to ruin this perfect moment with him. He was never so…tender. Especially not with the way he looked at you. Like it was a privilege to do so.

You tilted his hat so you could see him out of both eyes and smiled at him. “What?”

He opened his mouth to speak but hesitated. “Just…”

He took a moment. You would have given him all the time in the world to know what that look was for.

“You,” he admitted on an outward breath. “Ain’t what I expected.”

“How so?”

His eyes flicked away then, like he wasn’t used to this kind of talk. He obviously wasn’t, as you’d never gotten this much from him before, but it still softened you to see him so nervous over it. Like he was trying hard to get the words right.

“I didn’t expect you to be so…alive.”

Blue eyes met yours on the last word, and they nearly took your breath. Because he understood you in a way you hadn’t realized. You’d never been so proud to be called such a mundane thing. But it meant the world to you.

“I didn’t either,” you admitted. “I suppose I have you to thank for that.”

He made a huff of surprise. Or maybe disbelief.

“I mean it,” you told him. “As much as you like to grate on my nerves, I think you’re good for me.”

“Am I?” he said, a tease in his tone.

“You are.”

“Well, I…” He trailed off, his gaze averting again. His breathing quickened and grew heavy. You were willing to bet he would kill for a cigarette right about now. But you let his words hang, hoping he would finish. Hoping he would voice what you already felt.

“I’m glad I met you,” he said lowly. “You’re pretty damn good for me too, and I ain’t just saying that because you saved my neck.”

You chuckled. “No?”

He shook his head, those blue eyes flashing. But your gaze was suddenly drawn to his throat, to the subtle line you hadn’t noticed before. He had remnants of that noose on his skin, a slightly reddish-purple scar on his throat. It looked to be healing still, like he may rid himself of it yet. You hoped he did. That was a grim reminder of something he hadn’t deserved.

Without really thinking, you reached out and touched his skin, running your thumb over the edge of the mark. He flinched but didn’t push back.

“I thought I lost you,” you whispered.

He shrugged this off, catching your wrist and tugging it away. “Ah, I’ll survive yet. Besides, look at you now. You would have been fine without me.”

“No.” You met his eyes, needing him to know how serious you were. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

He stumbled a little over your hard gaze but went on. “I have no doubt you could have made it to your folks without me by that point.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Again, he hesitated. Just watched you.

“I would have been heartbroken all over again, Arthur.”

This shocked him. Surprisingly, after everything the two of you had been through and blatantly felt for each other, he was still taken aback to hear that you cared so much.

“I couldn’t—can’t—do this without you.”

He studied you for a beat. Then, a little gruffly, “Me neither.”

It was your turn to be shocked.

“I mean…” he went on, trying hard to get his words right. “I don’t want to.”

And there it was. Just what you had been hoping so deep down that you wouldn’t even admit it to yourself—how much you wanted him to stay. How badly you hoped he would pick you over his old life.

“Me either,” you whispered.

His eyes flicked back and forth between yours, his hand finding the side of your face. You thought he would speak again, but instead he leaned forward and brought his lips to yours. It was all you ever needed to know, better than any word he could speak.

Within seconds, you moved into him, closing the space between your bodies. The kiss was slow but loving, just like the two of you. Slow to admit anything to each other but sure of it once that fondness was shared.

You broke away from him, finally finding your courage. “When we get to North Platte, I’d like you to consider staying. With me.”

The look he leveled you with was devastating. Pure shock. Awe at being so adored.

Instead of answering, his strong arms came around you and pulled you down, turning you beneath him as he kissed you. He kissed you hard, and you returned it. The act was plenty answer enough about how he felt.

Before you had even a measure of your fill of him, he broke away. But then he moved down, his mouth finding your throat just like it had in that old barn.

This, you thought. This, with him, was all there was. And you wanted all of him.

“Arthur,” you breathed, his lips like fire lighting your skin. He stopped and met your eye. “Teach me.”

His gaze went dark, but he asked anyway. “Teach you what?”

“All of it. I want all of you.”

He studied you. Then, quietly, “You sure?”

“More than I’ve ever been.”

His mouth crashed to yours. His hands skimmed against your sides until he grabbed your hips and pinned them flat to the bed. Then he was moving down again, fervent. Deliberate as he started with your boots, just like the last time. You were a bundle of anticipation as you watched him, felt him. But this time, you wouldn’t stand for him to do all the work himself.

Once he had your shoes off, you came forward and pushed him down to the bed instead. You knelt over him and started taking off his boots, unbuckling his gun belt. You didn’t care that you hadn’t done this and didn’t know what in the hell to do other than copy what he had done to you the last time. You shed your own coat and leaned forward, kissing him as you ran your arms through the sleeves, shedding the burly garment. And you kept kissing him as you brought his coat over his shoulders, letting him lean up as you pulled it away from his back and arms. Once he had one arm free, he wrapped it around you and pulled you tight against him as he kissed you hard, landing you right in his lap. His tongue was desperate against yours, and you could feel every inch of your arousal explode at the feeling of him so close. Of what was to come.

Eventually, the two of you parted enough for him to get more of your layers off. But your focus was never so sharp as it became when you went to undo the buttons of his shirt and union suit. Each inch of skin revealed was a gift. He was muscled and broad, with hair lining his chest and scars on his slightly freckled skin. One jagged pink line just under his collarbone drew your eye, and you kissed it. Your mouth was never so addicted to someone as it was when you started kissing his chest, moving upward, toward his neck. Then, finally, his mouth. Nothing was ever so perfect. He let out a satisfied breath and laid back down, content to let you kiss him. You were just the same. You suddenly wished you could draw like he could so that you could record this moment in your memory forever—what it looked like. You on top of him in nothing but your chemise and pants, sure as you kissed him. Him splayed below you, perfectly content to be there, his broad body encompassing yours and his shirt and union suit halfway off. That was doing things to you that you couldn’t explain. Your barely covered breasts were pushed up against his bare chest, and the heat and friction it brought was pure pleasure. Not to mention his mouth and how fully he took you, exploring every inch of you. One of his hands had fallen to your backside and was squeezing you with the slightest pressure but over and over again so that your bodies moved together. It was so good you needed more.

Finally finding the will to back off him again, you took his shirt and threw it aside before beginning to unbutton his pants. His head fell back to the bed, and he let out a low groan when your hands worked over what you were willing to guess was the most sensitive part of him. The anticipation to see his bare body ate at you so that you sped up, slipping his pants from his long, muscled legs. All that remained on him was the bottom half of his union suit, and the material was thin enough for you to see the outline of a hard bit of muscle running alongside his thigh and toward his belly. You knew next to nothing about a man’s anatomy but knew this was how one differed from a woman. So, without really thinking, you laid your hand on him there. He let out a groan so arousing you wanted this to happen already, wanted to feel that pleasure he had wrought from you so easily before.

You moved back up his body and started kissing him when he flipped you again, laying you underneath him. The sight was, again, something you’d never forget. Those broad, strong shoulders your gaze kept snagging on shifted and flexed as he worked the buttons of your pants. His chest did too, every scar moving under his strength. His arms were equally distracting, and you knew then it was no wonder people were easily intimidated by him. But you weren’t. And you admired every inch of him you could see as he slid your pants off and made to push your chemise up your chest.

“I’m making the same deal with you as before,” he said lowly as he admired your body. “You don’t like anything about this, and you tell me. I’ll stop.” His eyes met yours in their sincerity.

“You know I won’t stop you,” you breathed, the words coming out feminine and needy.

“We got a deal?” he said anyway.

You nodded. And because you remembered he preferred you to say it aloud, “Yes.” Then he pushed your chemise up and over your breasts, over your head and arms until he was dragging it all away. All your hesitation and inexperience, gone. All of it lost in the wake of his want of you.

He immediately brought his mouth down to your nipple, the feeling of warmth it brought just like last time. You’d forgotten how perfect it felt. You brought your hand to the back of his head, playing with the short strands as your mouth fell open in pleasure. He was moving against you this time, his heavy body lining against yours in a way that drove you mad.

You let out a moan at a particularly harsh swirl of his tongue, then did it again when his free hand found your other breast. God above, you could feel this for an eternity and never tire of it. But this wasn’t just about you.

Your hand slid down his muscled back, down until it reached the edge of his union suit. You wanted it off. Wanted him bare, completely.

You started to tug at the fabric when Arthur’s hands shifted, and his mouth moved away just enough for him to get his balance as he stripped his remaining clothes away. You watched him in awe. You watched as he turned slightly to get the union suit over his feet, the sight of his bare side so muscled and strong like the rest of him wholly distracting. But it wasn’t until he turned back toward you that your gaze caught and held. You could feel his eyes on you, could sense his amusement in his resulting chuckle, but you didn’t care. What you had touched before between his legs was now free of any clothing, a hard line of muscle just like the rest of him that stood erect against his body. The sight alone swallowed you in arousal.

He clambered closer, beginning to speak. “You-”

Your hand was around that proud length before he could say another word. He hissed a breath at your touch, and you quickly let go, thinking you’d done something wrong.

“Christ, woman,” he mumbled, nearly falling on top of you in his fervor to kiss you again.

“I’m sorry,” you said into his mouth, not knowing what it was you’d been trying, only that you couldn’t resist.

He pulled away and looked into your eyes, his gaze full and heavy as the smirk beneath it. “Shit, don’t apologize. I’d prefer you did it again if it wouldn’t cut this meetin’ so short.”

You were more confused by that than anything but didn’t respond, especially when he leaned down to kiss you and you felt that length against your thigh, hard and impossible to ignore.

You moaned into his mouth, feeling his hand begin to skim down your side. His fingers brushed over the bumpy, scarred skin near your ribs and hesitated. He broke away, looking down at the scar he had mended back together himself. His fingers ran across it, caressing it. A wordless apology for what had happened to you. The touch made conflicting emotions fight to be free from deep within you. Because the scar was a painful reminder of what would never go away, a loss so potent you could cry over it even now. But you wouldn’t, because you were equally as enthralled with Arthur’s loving touch, with how he had stitched you back together both physically and emotionally. He was still doing it to this day. And the touch was a tangible reminder—how much he would surrender himself over to you just to make you somewhat whole again. Something you’d never thought you would be gifted by him but, you were beginning to learn, something he did naturally. Kind, selfless man.

Arthur brought his mouth down to your side and pressed a kiss to that scar, tender and patient. It nearly brought tears to your eyes.

“Kiss me,” you whispered, needing to put your thoughts elsewhere. Needing him to put the pieces of you back together again one more time.

He obliged you. All sadness was lost as his hand drifted downward and between your legs, a blazing heat taking its place. Just like before, he worked his fingers against you as a slickness gathered there, urging you to rock against him. And you did, a bundle of anticipation over waiting for what you had felt last time—his finger sliding inside of you. But he took his time and circled his thumb around those nerves again, making you arch into his touch.

After enough of this, it turned into a pleasurable sort of torture. You broke the kiss. “Arthur,” you warned, though it sounded more like begging. And perhaps you were.

He let out a low laugh that caught on every inch of your arousal. “Just making sure you’re ready for me. Don’t want to hurt you, darlin’.”

Darling. How endearing. Now that was a nickname you could grow used to.

You considered what else he’d said and remembered that slight feeling of discomfort at his finger moving inside of you, like your body wasn’t used to such things. But you also remembered how good it felt to get beyond that feeling, that and his chosen nickname enough to have you wrapping your arms around his neck and tugging him back down in a kiss. He let out a low noise this time, more of a satisfied breath. And it was enough to have your tongue finding his as his finger dipped inside of you. You froze, completely focused on the feeling. Arthur took control of the kiss, of everything, as he moved his hand against you. You were breathing heavy in seconds, the feeling beyond satisfaction.

After enough of this for that curling feeling to take hold deep within you, he slipped another finger into you. You were wrong before. That was beyond satisfaction. Your eyes rolled back in your head, and you couldn’t kiss him anymore as you rocked against his hand, completely caught up in those thick fingers moving so persistently. He didn’t miss a beat, his mouth going to your neck instead, pressing hot kisses to the spot just below your ear as you panted for him.

The feeling from before, that explosive feeling you so wanted to experience again, was nearing. “Please,” you whispered, desperate for it. But before Arthur could drag it out of you, his fingers were slipping away. You nearly whimpered at the loss, looking down to see why he’d stopped. Your heartbeat pounded through you, right between your legs, when you saw where he moved. He was settling between your legs, the hard length of him running against the inside of your thigh. And you understood then exactly what this was, what you had asked of him and what he was about to do. To be fit together so perfectly, so completely, that there was no beginning or end between you.

He met your eyes, boxing you in completely beneath his heavy body. “You sure you want this?” His voice was rough with his own arousal.

“Desperately,” you breathed.

That made him smirk, the look of it so perfect on his face you wanted to kiss it away. But he beat you to it, his mouth coming down on yours. And in seconds, his full weight was against your body, and he pushed his hips into yours until you felt the head of his length slip inside of you. You moaned, your head falling back to the bed with how perfect and full it felt, and Arthur grunted as his hands found your head and he devoured you in a kiss, his hips moving slowly and carefully, in and out as shallowly as he could.

You couldn’t get air down but didn’t care as the feeling of him moving inside of you stretched you wide. He went deeper with every rock of his hips, the small bout of pain returning like it had before, but you didn’t stop him. Wouldn’t dare. It was more pleasurable than it was harsh, and besides, it was doing things to him, not just you. Things you wanted to hear and feel from him every moment. He was as lost as you were, beginning to pick up his pace as his mouth on yours became distracted.

You were soon both panting, both riding on pleasure so full and growing fuller the deeper he rocked into you. He finally broke the kiss, bearing all focus on where your bodies met. By now he was so deep inside of you it was impossible to think of him never not being there, like he belonged there. And the thought alone of him taking you like this, making you his, was forcing that tension deep within you to ratchet up at every thrust.

You whined his name. He groaned low and rough in response, shifting his hands to your hips to hold you steady beneath him as he thrust hard. It felt so good you knew you would be unraveling again in seconds. And, to add to that perfect build, you brought one leg up and hooked it around him, making for a better angle for him to sink into you. It was immediately euphoric.

“Y/N,” he groaned, a desperate plea.

And that—the power in that utterance, your name on his lips—was your undoing.

You let out a small cry as your pleasure snapped in two.

He cursed a filthy word, and your world constricted to the feel of him inside of you, rocking those beautiful hips, pulling every ounce of pleasure your body could give. It shot through every part of you. It tore you apart and put you back together all at once. Just like his fondness for you did.

You were letting out one long whine for him when your senses came back. And, you realized, he was saying something. Your name. He was saying your name like a prayer. Never in your life were you so proud for someone to have it, for someone to use it in this way. So reverent and honored by it, like it was a gift to know it and a privilege to speak it.

You loved him then. You were sure of it.

Arthur’s pace stuttered a moment before a breath rattled through his chest and he pulled back, sliding out of you. He half-collapsed on top of you, something warm and wet meeting the skin of your stomach as he groaned like a man utterly unraveled. You knew then he was experiencing the same pleasure you just had. Knowing you’d both felt it, together, because of each other…you were so proud that the feeling fought to be free from your chest.

Arthur drew in each labored breath above you, only propped up by one strong forearm now. The other fell lazily over you as he held the side of your face like he would never release you again. His hair fell over his gaze, and only when he looked up at you did you smile. Just for him.

“Pretty girl,” he murmured, running his thumb along your cheekbone as he went back to attempting to control his breathing.

You blushed under those words but pushed through the flattered feeling it brought you and said what you couldn’t resist. “Was that- was I…okay?”

He scoffed a laugh. “You kidding?”

“I don’t exactly know what I’m doing-”

He cut you off with a less than innocent kiss and pulled back with that smirk on his face. “You were perfect.” He rolled to his back beside you, the bed creaking with his weight. Still, he sucked down air like he couldn’t catch it. That proudness of yours reared its head again at the sound. “So perfect,” he continued, “That I’m gonna need to do it all over again just to be sure it’s as perfect as I remember.”

Now that, you could get behind. Those muscles low in your belly were already tightening at the mere mention of again. But before you could turn to him and coax him into repeating the act, he was leaning over the side of the bed, his strong back flexing with the movement. The sound of his satchel opening and shutting filled the room, and then he had a black cloth in his hand and was touching it to your belly. Right—you’d forgotten about that wetness from before, and now you watched as he wiped whatever it was away.

“What’s that?” you had the courage to ask.

Arthur’s eyes flicked up to yours, and that incessant smirk returned. “‘Course,” he said, swiping the last of it away and tossing the cloth aside. “Forgot you knew as much about this as I do about living up in them mountains.”

“Very funny.”

He snickered. “It’s…well. When a man finds his pleasure, that’s what happens.” His expression filled with amusement as he shifted to his side, propping up on an elbow. “You don’t know nothing about this, do you? About being with child?”

You shook your head. “I figured sex leads to pregnancy, but I’ve never really thought past that.” And suddenly, the very idea had worry blooming sharp and fierce within you. “I won’t…I’m not going to get pregnant, am I?”

He snickered again and shook his head more with amusement than any sort of affirmation. “No, you won’t.”

“How are you so sure-”

“Relax,” he teased, drawing the word out. “The only way that could happen is if I’d done that inside of you.”

You felt Arthur’s smirking stare like a brand then, because just those words had your arousal flaring. Did part of you…want that?

You must have made a face, because Arthur pushed you on it. “What?”

“Nothing,” you insisted.

He chuckled, the sound making you turn away or risk admitting that particular genius.

“Can’t lie to me, darlin’.”

There was that word again. You turned back to him, finding you were watching his mouth of all things. “You finally landed on a decent nickname, then.”

“You like that one?”

God, his smile. The way he said those words. You were a mess of fondness over his annoyingly handsome face when you quipped, “Much better than the others.”

“What, nameless or sweetheart?”

You swatted at his bare chest and immediately regretted it when your hand met with hard muscle. “Damn you,” you muttered, but you were smiling as you said it. Stupid, perfect man. He smiled right back.

“At least you never have to call me nameless again,” you offered.

His smile turned thoughtful. Content. “No. I don’t.”

You remembered then how he had said your name before. It ate you up inside to think he had only used it in the moments that mattered most. The first time being when you’d offered it to him, something that led to your walls coming down right alongside his. Then moments ago, giving up the last pieces of yourselves to each other. And maybe that’s what that utterance had been to him—a surrender. The damning truth that you both felt too strongly to shy away from it any longer. There was no more space for reluctance to stay. There was no more time for it either.

You recalled your request before all this, asking him to stay with you. He’d never answered, but when he said your name with so much care, any worry about the matter vanished. Because there was love in that word. He felt for you just as you felt for him. And that was more answer than anything else he could have said because he had used the perfect word to make you understand—the word most important to you of any of them. Not a yes, but a confession. Not an acceptance, but a name. The one word you had left to hold dear. And looking at him now smiling down at you, you felt that fondness and understanding from him better than you’d ever felt it from anyone.

Instead of any response, you kissed him. Acceptance in your own form. And just as soft and supple as a yes on his lips, he kissed you back.

_________

Chapter twenty-one is here.

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[avoxrising]

The Feral One • Ch 28

Finnick x Y/N

Series Masterlist Link

This may be the last chapter for a few days as we’re approaching the end of the story rapidly and I haven’t finished editing it yet lol. I apologize for leaving it off with a cliffhanger but I want to make sure the end is perfect before posting it. Life’s been busy this week so I haven’t had the time to finish it the way I want to.

Content Warnings - Injury, death, medical issues, I promise Finnick isn’t being stupid this time lol

The next week was full of recovery. You slowly regained your strength and were able to try solid foods again. The doctors polished all your scars off, including the one on your face from your games, at your request. You wanted nothing left to remind you of them.

You started physical therapy, as well as regular sessions with Dr. Aurelius. He allowed Finnick to join you, realizing you felt more comfortable with him nearby. You still had to use a walker to get around, but you were making progress.

A few weeks after the war ended, Coin called all the victors into a meeting. There were barely any left, mostly due to the war.

“I’ve called you all here for a very symbolic vote,” she states. You don’t like where this is going.

She proceeds to pitch her idea for a hunger games featuring capital children. There are mixed reactions from the remaining victors, with some believing the idea to be fair and others believing it to be cruel. Votes are cast around the room and it finally comes down to Katniss.

“I get to kill Snow,” she tells Coin, who agrees to this proposition.

“Then I vote yes,” she states. “For Prim.”

You can’t even process what this means. Another games? Was Coin out of her mind? You finally realized what you had been denying all along, as long as Coin was in charge, you would never be free.

Finnick brings you back to your shared room after the meeting. You allow his touch but still flinch away at everyone else. Dr. Aurelius had been working with you on that but it’s hard to undo the trauma of many years.

“I just want to go home,” you tell him.

“You have to stay here for a bit,” he explains. “District 4 doesn’t have the resources for your treatment. Once you are better I promise you can go back to 4.”

“What about you?” you ask him. “Are you staying?”

He hesitantly shakes his head.

“I have to go to 4 for a few weeks but I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he states. “Johanna will be here with you in the meantime and I’ll call every day.”

“You’re leaving?” you ask, dumbfounded by his response.

“I promise it’s for a good reason,” he says, squeezing your hand. “I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t important.”

“When do you leave?” you ask.

“In two weeks,” he responds. “I’ll be here for the first bit of your treatment and return before it’s over. Then we will both go back to 4 together. Do you trust me?”

“Always”

That afternoon Finnick helps you walk out onto the avenue to stand next to the other victors. Snow was finally falling, and you were both alive to witness it.

Standing in front of all the capital people made you uneasy. What did they think of you? Were they going to hurt you?

You’re lost in your thoughts when suddenly the crowd erupts into chaos. You look up to see Coin lying dead on the podium, an arrow in her heart. A mob of people begins rushing towards Snow, eager to kill him.

Finnick quickly scoops you up and carries you away from the commotion. When he finally sets you down, you ask what happened.

“Katniss killed Coin,” he states. “Snow is dead.”

He has to take you back to your room before you have a breakdown. What evil creature was going to seize power of Panem next? All of this was too much.

You end up collapsing on the floor of your room, shaking uncontrollably.

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[irafuwas]

Love that Lets Go Summary: Lilia Vanrouge has witnessed the rise and fall of great nations, has criscrossed the world, traversing distant realms strange and unknown, but never before in his life has he faced a challenge as grievous as this: parenting a teenager. Or: Silver stops calling Lilia "Papa", and Lilia loses his mind. Content Warnings: blood, explicit language, contains depictions of animals being hunted and butchered, canon divergent Pairings: There's like one reference to past Lilibaul, but otherwise, none. Length: 38k (Header artwork from here)

You can either read it after the cut or on AO3!

A/N: I began working on this fic last summer, right after I finished Electric Dreams, and was able to complete the general outline and write about a third of it before I promptly abandoned the project for over half a year. By the time I started working on it again this past January, Book 7 had progressed greatly on the JP server, and pretty much everything that I'd written regarding Lilia's background and his involvement in Mal's upbringing/their relationship had become uncanonical in the meantime ://// I decided to go ahead and keep those parts in the story unchanged from how I had them last summer, partly so I wouldn't have to rework the plot, and mostly because I am lazy. So the setting is more or less the same as the game, but with some major changes in Lilia and Mal's pasts, with no major Book 7 JP server spoilers for those wishing to avoid them.

I.

It was a speculative day, the kind that could not fix upon a proper humor or color, hesitating in turns between the brilliant bustle of spring and the sultry lull of summer. The morning air was thin and cool, not unusual even that late in May, but several months would pass by that afternoon, so that a sticky July heat would descend upon the valley once the sun reached its zenith. In the evening, there would be a light rain. All this the boy Silver calculated as he stepped outside.

The sky above him was a perfect meadow of morning glory and larkspur, bordered by a flourish of honeysuckle and cockscomb as golden-red as amber sap. He thrust his hand high above him, wishing for a moment he could pluck one of the dandelion clouds from its indigo plot and press it for his collection. It would be his secret treasure, and he would not reveal it until his friend Sebek next designed to inflame him. He carried within his mind a catalog of every expression and shade his friend could take, and this he now opened and paged through while he wandered towards the pig pen and lean-to that stood opposite his home, contemplating what combination of flush and scowl the other boy would respond with. He smiled at his private entertainment while he walked.

He was one of the few beings awake on that land. An industrious blackbird chirped quietly off in the distance, but the surrounding forest was otherwise silent, the pine trees and giant firs still dozing in the early morning shade. He was not, however, lonely; nor was he in want of more. His heart was light, and it gently thrummed with the same anticipation that had slipped into the hearts of all the valley’s creatures as of late, just as the sunlight slipped into their skin. May was an in-between month, an intermission, a time for Nature to enter her great chrysalis and prepare for the summer months to come. She would re-emerge sometime in late June, the earth’s prodigal daughter carrying in her arms the red-ripe wildberries she’d hang in the thicket all around him, the bright yellow coreopsis and vetch of the softest pink she’d set down in the meadow near his home, and the pearl white blossoms she’d drape across the canopies of the sweet bay beyond the fields. And she would beguile, too, the whip-poor-wills into beginning their annual summer serenades, allowing the robins and the orioles to retire from their heraldic duties at last, having spent several weeks announcing the season prior.

“There are two summers,” his father had once explained to him years ago, when he was very small. He held up two fingers while he spoke. “There’s the summer that starts on June 1st every year. That one’s based on dividing the calendar into four periods of three months each.”

“Three months each,” the little boy repeated with a nod.

“And then the other summer, the real one, starts on the solstice.”

“When’s the solstice, papa?”

“Easy,” the man grinned, “it’s when summer starts!”

The boy memorized this and all his father’s other teachings as his catechisms, and he knew, based on his observations, and based on all he'd ever learned from his masters - his father and the stars and the entire natural world around him - that the solstice was but a few short weeks away. This knowledge captivated him, and when he awoke at twilight each morning, he would spend a few minutes lying completely still in bed, nearly holding his breath, listening for those first few notes of the whip-poor-will’s call.

After releasing the animals from their detainment, he watched as the small procession of cows and pigs and chickens trod dutifully into the adjoining pasture. He would wait to fill their troughs later; each creature would automatically find for itself its morning fare amongst the acres of dew-wet grass – on this day the milk cow and her calf selected a patch of dark green clover for their breakfast, and the pigs beside them dined noisily on tall stalks of chicory, their pink brows misting over with sweat as they feverously chewed. The chickens, however, quickly stumbled upon a single, tender petunia they had overlooked all month. Gathered around the shining lilac jewel, they could not decide who amongst them would be permitted to destroy it. A forum was immediately convened, with each hen arguing her case in turn, and Silver gathered their eggs while they debated. Their hues were as soft and as delicate as a watercolor wash; some were tawny brown and speckled, others a faded green or blue. They reminded him of river stones, and they felt as smooth as clay in his work-worn hands. Each one he gingerly wiped against his pant leg before depositing into his wicker basket.

He had, for a time, believed – largely due to his father’s persuasions – that a bird’s diet determined the color of its eggs, and he’d spent one summer collecting armfuls of nasturtium, cone flowers, and bright red peonies every single day from the meadow by their home, attempting to invent an egg as ruby red as his father’s eyes. But while the chickens had delighted in their daily carmine feast, his efforts proved fruitless, the egg shells failing to develop even the slightest indication of a blush. When the truth of his father’s scheme was revealed later that fall, Silver had not rebuked him. He'd only blamed himself for being deceived, and for neglecting to include some beautyberries and rosehips into his mix, secretly believing that this was the true genesis of his failure.

The chickens resolved their quarrel by the time his basket was full. In celebration, he scattered a few handfuls of scratch over the ground for them. The bits and pieces of grain could not have delighted the small party more even if it had been the rice thrown for nuptials, and Silver turned and left them to their devices.

On slow days, when he had little else to do but drink in the air and watch the sun move across the sky, he liked to sit in the pasture and listen to them talk. The tall grass would form four walls all around him, and the hens would often come sit next to his verdant cabinet, offering to him their confessions through the screen of sorghum and fescue. They were perfect in their gesticulations, and he particularly enjoyed the mechanical way they moved their heads; it was as though invisible strings were jerking them this way and that, moving not unlike the marionettes his father had once brought home on one of his travels. There was, overall, a hilarity to their character that he missed in his other animal companions – the cows were too listless, he thought; the pigs, too cavalier.

The pigs he favored the least. He had helped his father erect a new fence along the south side of their property last summer, working sun up to sun down for over a week, and it had taken only a single afternoon for one of the boars - newly purchased with money his father didn’t have to spare - to rip a hole through the wire mesh and lead his brethren into the open forest, never to be seen again. He had been with his father the morning the vandalism was discovered. It was one of the few times in his life he’d seen the man angry, and he had been unsympathetic towards the species ever since.

He glanced at them occasionally while he backtracked to the vegetable garden beside the cottage, quickly looking away when they returned his stare. He walked around the fence that protected the garden, giving it a cursory inspection before stepping inside. There hadn’t been any break-ins yet, but he had noticed the shallow, hoof-like indentations that would sometimes manifest in the soil around the gate, and he could tell, too, that something heavy had been pressing itself against the fence posts lately, evinced by the unnatural angles a number of them were now inclined. However, the pigs defended their innocence with a brazen confidence that stupefied even his father, and the animals had so far been spared of any further interrogation.

He entered the gate and filled the watering can sitting by the pump. The alternating rows of green and orange and red and yellow buds dotting the area convened into a checker pattern, as though one of Ma Zigvolt’s gingham dresses had been spread out over the ground. He carefully stepped over and around and in between every sprout and seedling, dancing, almost, as he worked through each row, providing only just as much water to the young plants as they demanded, pausing only when he reached the tomatoes. His father was severely particular about them, fussing over the vines like a sculptor would his block of clay, and would, at the end of every season, declare that he had grown the "best tomatoes this side of the valley", but as he was one of few fae who grew them, and perhaps the only one who enjoyed their tart taste, his countrymen gladly indulged him in his boasting. Silver tilted his watering can and aimed the stream into the soil around the base of the plants, avoiding the foliage as he’d been instructed. He hummed to himself as he continued his ministrations, his thoughts drifting brightly towards the harvest to come.

Soon, there would be fresh corn pone and hoe cakes and yellow squash fritters fried in pools of marble white pork fat, heaping bowls of piping hot green beans sauteed in pats of golden yellow butter, and tender, fresh baked apple dumplings topped with a creamy homemade vanilla glaze, all washed down with the coldest, sweetest lemonade the valley had to offer. And he and his father would make preserves – of everything; jams and jellies from the wild raspberries and blueberries they’d gather from the forests, and from the bushels of strawberries now growing in their garden, and they’d pickle cucumbers and beets and radishes and fennel and bell peppers and cabbage; the tiny root cellar under their home would transform into a museum over the summer - its shelves filled to the brim with rows upon rows of glass jars containing their colorful fermented treasures, with giant slabs of dark red elk meat and pale pink sausage links hanging from the hooks lining the ceiling, and pounds of wild-caught bass and catfish curing in salt baths on the floor, nearly every specimen in that small space a self-contained microcosm of bacterial delight.

Silver was not one to favor any season over another; he found pleasure in the flora and fauna of his surroundings all year round. But so long as his father was strictly supervised in the kitchen, it was summer fare that delighted him more than anything else, and he wished every day for the watermelon and the strawberries to ripen faster, and for the honeybees to finish constructing their summer combs.

A pine warbler’s sharp trill snapped the boy out of his daydreams. The sun had at last emerged above the umber line of the horizon, and the golden edges of the sky were rapidly fading into a soft baby blue. The land was rapidly beginning to awaken. He could hear the low drone of the honeybees as they pushed past him on their way to the meadow, and the goldfinches warming up for their morning performances in the forest yonder. He hurried to complete the rest of his chores, invigorated by a mixture of excitement and hunger and still that same dull throb of anticipation in his heart.

When he was finished at last, Silver lay down on the grass, tucking himself under the blanket of fog that hung low over the ground. He could hear only the cows lowing and the chickens murmuring and the wind brushing up against the pine trees. And if he lay still enough, he could hear even the earth itself breathing. If he pressed his ear against the damp soil, he could hear the planet exhale, could hear the molecules of water vapor rising through the air, lifting themselves off the slick blades of grass, unifying and condensing into the wave of fog that rolled across his body. His world was now perfect. And it remained perfect for half an hour longer, until his father threw open the cottage door and called him inside for breakfast.

The air grew warmer and warmer as the morning languidly transitioned into afternoon. Pleased that his prediction had been correct, he suggested to his father, Lilia, that they begin making their way to the Zigvolt's before it grew too hot, and the man agreed. The mass of burnt scrambled eggs his father had prepared for breakfast still festered heavily in Silver's stomach, and he quickly wolfed down a plain butter sandwich and an apple for lunch. His gangly body could get by on very little, and the Zigvolts always had refreshments at the ready, anyways. He grabbed his knapsack from his room and accompanied his father out the door. Together, they followed the dirt path that led from the clearing into the forest.

Lilia had settled down there decades prior, appearing in the neighboring town one day with little more to his name than a few gold coins in his pocket and a raggedy shawl strewn across his back. He'd been a drifter for decades, having retired from the local military under circumstances he never cared to divulge, and while some of the townsfolk were glad to welcome him home, most others thought him a stranger. A pack of these skeptics descended upon him one evening, cornering him in the run-down hostel where he'd been temporarily residing. They poked and prodded him with their questions, asking him why he had left and where he'd been to and why he'd now suddenly returned, at times turning away to whisper amongst themselves, as though evaluating a head of cattle. To each of their scathing rebukes he simply replied, "Doesn't matter anymore." He repeated those three words like a mantra, like a prayer to exorcize the specters gathered around his bed. His defense was as solid as a leaden curtain, soundly deflecting each and every one of the inquisitors' attacks, and when they finally scattered that night, rendered stupefied by their defeat, Lilia gathered up his sparse few belongings and vanished amongst them.

He ultimately bought his property from a man who'd recognized the name "Lilia Vanrouge", but not the mysterious little creature attached to it. The landowner was however only glad to finally rid himself of the place; it had been sitting vacant for years, long overgrown with its own miniature forest of brambles and weeds, and he was easily dismissed with what little money Lilia had to offer. There was a dilapidated cottage the last tenants had left behind, as well as the rotting remnants of a barn that hadn't been touched in ages, and the water pump, rusted over from decades of unuse, snapped in half the first time Lilia tried to use it.

He began making renovations immediately. He patched up the roof on the cottage and spent a week removing all the cobwebs and rat nests he could find inside. He cleared out the overgrowth suffocating the area and tore down the old barn, erecting a lean-to for his cows and a coop for his hens in its place. He sectioned off a small plot of land next to his house for a vegetable garden, and sowed his new fields with the fervor of a devotee. Decades of working the land yielded a soil heartier and more robust than anything the locals ever seen, as though the very earth itself was repaying him in kind for liberating it from its long imprisonment. His tomato plants bore him perfect rubies bigger than his fists. His corn and his wheat stood like giants, towering high above his head. He found his heart lifting up and growing lighter and lighter together with the green stalks soaring up into the sky. All these things slowly grew in tandem with his household - he'd added another wing to the cottage when he took in Silver, and the garden, having more than tripled in size since it was first built, now produced a far greater variety of colorful fare than Lilia could have ever imagined. It was, in all, a meager living - a little home with little in it, the glass jar of rainy day funds sitting above the fireplace never to be full, always repairs around the property to be made, always hand-me-down clothes and toys to be mended - but it was enough for the man and his child, regardless.

When Silver grew older, Lilia began letting him operate the homestead on his own when he went traveling, a leisure he'd picked up in his older age. He would leave Silver a list of rules to follow and projects to work on while he was gone - in addition to his regular everyday chores - which he adjusted for each season, such as chopping firewood in the winter, and making preserves in the summer. But above all, no matter the time of year, and barring an emergency, he absolutely forbade Silver from leaving their land. Lilia had marked off a boundary for him years ago: the river to the west, a felled oak tree to the north, the meadow to the south, and the base of the nearby mountain range to the east. Lilia trusted his son, minimally, to the extent he had no doubt the boy could procure the food and water needed to keep himself alive when left alone. But the mountains and the deep forest and even the castle town he did not trust, didn’t believe in the sincerity of the light that flooded the silent earth bordering their home.

Five miles separated the Vanrouge’s homestead from the Zigvolt’s home. Five miles that cut through the forest that extended far beyond Lilia’s land. As such, Lilia would supervise his son's travels to and from his friend’s home. They only ever walked - teleportation magic gave Silver extreme vertigo, and Lilia found his powers could no longer cover the long distance as easily as in his youth. But it was a pleasant journey, and the pair quietly admired the same mass of towering pine and spruce trees they'd admired hundreds of times before as they continued down the winding road. The forest was handsome in its late spring attire, adorned in a thick flush of bright green foliage, and the charming white faces of the star flowers and wood anemones peeked at them from amongst the undergrowth as they passed by. Overhead, a symphony of chaffinch and dunnock calls accompanied the gentle stir of the treetops brushing against each other in the wind.

Silver often called on the Zigvolt’s. The youngest of the three children, a boy named Sebek, was the only non-animal companion he had his age. They had first met a number of years prior, when Sebek apprenticed under Silver's father, and while their rivalry had been immediate, their friendship had formed only slowly, over years of tense acquaintanceship. Sebek had held a grudge against Silver since the day they’d met, or possibly longer - that much Silver had been able to determine, but he could never puzzle out what he’d done to injure him so. He was frequently agitated - over Silver’s abilities, his actions, the clothing he wore, the way he walked and the way he talked. He was “wound up tighter than an eight-day clock”, as his father would often laugh. Had Silver grown up interacting with more children his age, had he an index against which to measure his friend’s volatile attitude, then he would have understood that Sebek was simply a very immature boy – he’d not yet outgrown his foot-stamping tantrums and his jealous remarks, but there was never any true venom behind his words, only that primal, juvenile desire to convince himself and the adults around them that he and Silver were equals. But Silver liked him, at any rate; there was only so much one could do to persuade a rabbit or a songbird to gambol with one, or to explore make-believe worlds that stretched far beyond their animal imaginations, and Sebek was as eager a daydreamer as he. Even a child’s heart can be a guarded thing, as Silver’s was, having matured in a world comprised of only a small handful of faces and an even smaller stretch of land, but he’d long placed Sebek in that corner of his heart only his father and Malleus and the blue birds and honeysuckle otherwise occupied, and he cherished his friend for his outbursts and rare affections, both.

It was an “off day” for the boys - neither had any training exercises scheduled, and Silver looked forward to their rendezvous. He figured they'd be spending most of the afternoon outside, in light of the pleasant weather. Later in the summer, when the heat would spoil their entertainment, they'd move indoors, reading comics and old almanacs together in the Zigvolt's parlor, sprawled out like a pair of lazy tomcats on the cool hardwood floor. And if he was lucky, Ma Zigvolt would invite him to stay for dinner (he was always too shy to ask). She was one of his strongest allies, and had rescued him from his father’s well-meaning meals on more than one occasion. He kept his fingers crossed as he walked, hoping she and Pa Zigvolt wouldn't be staying late at the dental clinic they operated.

Once they entered the deepest part of the forest, Lilia cleared his throat, signaling that he was about to speak. Silver braced himself. His father was a habitually cheerful and easygoing man, able to make merry with nearly anyone that crossed his path, but the man's good humor came at the cost of his interlocutor's, at times.

First, Lilia asked what plans he had with Sebek for that afternoon.

"Not much."

Lilia shrugged off the curt response. They'd crossed several miles already, and the afternoon heat was prickling at his fair skin. He chastised himself for neglecting to bring a hat. He next asked, smiling broadly this time, hoping both to coax his son and to take his mind off the heat, if Silver was excited for all the fresh vegetables they'd soon be harvesting from their garden.

"I guess."

Still not discouraged, Lilia dispatched his probes once more, asking if Silver had any requests for dinner, and whether he'd read or heard anything interesting lately, but the boy deflected each one with a “Yes”, or a “No”, or an “I don’t know”. Silver had recently discovered that the briefer he kept his answers, the quicker he could get his father to stop talking, and this observation proved itself true once more, the man quitting his examination a few moments later. A feeling of discomfort prickled at his skin as the heat did his father's; the perfection of that morning a few short hours ago now seemed to him like a distant memory. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

By and by, the dirt road transitioned into a gravel walkway, and the Zigvolt’s farmhouse at last came into view. It was a noble building - tall and spacious, constructed from dense heart pine lumber, the eggshell white finish still shining brightly after so many years, with a towering red brick chimney that rivaled the surrounding cottonwood trees in their noble height. An amber light glowed softly from one of the windows. Silver and Lilia stopped before the stairs leading up to the front of the wraparound porch, where a clothesline heavy with freshly washed bed sheets rocked gently in the breeze. Ma Zigvolt was known to perfume her wash, and sunny notes of bergamot drifted down to them in waves.

The pair said their goodbyes, but when Lilia leaned forward to kiss the boy’s cheek, Silver moved away, ducking and turning around so quickly that Lilia stumbled as he fell through the empty air. He steadied himself hastily, his arms whirling for a moment before plummeting to his sides, his puckered lips collapsing into a frown. The rejection stunned him. His mind hastily reassembled and played back the insult it had just witnessed, finally ascertaining after the third repetition that he had not just been struck.

Wide-eyed, he croaked, “Silver?”

The boy took a step towards the house, his back turned to Lilia. “I’ll see you later,” he grunted, as though struggling under the weight of his father’s heavy gaze. And then he stormed up the porch, threw open the front door, and disappeared inside without a second glance.

Lilia stared imploringly at the silent house, but it offered him no answers. He shook his head and sighed. “The hell’s been going on with him lately?”

Sebek’s older sister Iris emerged onto the back porch carrying a tray of milk and pound cake. She set the tray on a small table by the door and began arranging the glasses and plates. She’d been away from home the past year, busy with her university studies, but had returned for the summer. Her absence had been difficult for the family – for Sebek most of all. 

Though he was now the apple of her eye, Iris had been opposed to the idea of a younger brother at first. She’d spent the first few months of her mother’s pregnancy curled up against the low swell of her belly, regaling the child - her new little sister - with all the fantastic plans she had in store for the two of them. But when her parents returned from a doctor’s appointment one day, a set of grainy monochrome photographs in hand, and they announced the baby was, in fact, a boy, she felt the faceless black thing staring up at her from the pictures had betrayed her. She staunchly refused to address her mother’s stomach for the rest of the pregnancy.

Ultimately, Sebek entered the world as an absolute bear of a baby, all rolls and dimples and folds and milk white skin that smelled as sweet as honey. The first time Iris saw him, he was dozing open-mouthed, lying curled up on the pillow of his mother’s breast. He looked like a dollop of pure butter, and with that single glance the girl was thoroughly convinced of his perfection.

As the baby matured, growing conscious of himself and of the world around him, his burgeoning mind, incredibly receptive to every new stimulus that entered his environment, quickly took note of his sister’s eager affections, and it wasn’t long until he ascertained that his incapability was the trick to his own allure. A halfhearted grumble would earn him a kiss, for example; a miserable wail, liberation from his crib. It was almost cunning, the way he’d play the fool for her, wrapping her tighter and tighter around his plump little finger with every feigned ineptitude he devised. “Oh, Sebby!” Iris would laugh, scooping his doughy mass into the cradle of her arms when he'd whine to be held. “You’re just a helpless little thing, aren’t you?” And the baby would bat his cub paws at her and smile his gummy smile, as if to say, “Just you wait and see!"

When their brother Horace, the eldest of the three siblings, moved into his own apartment in the castle town a few years ago, Sebek had been secretly pleased, for their mother now looked to him for help with splitting firewood and mending the fences and tilling the garden. He knew his father could not be entrusted with such things - Linus Zigvolt was a kind and good man, but he was also foolish. And boring. And unforgivably human. Sebek’s mother and his sister - and his grandfather, when the man was in an affable mood - were the center of his juvenile universe. His father and brother merely orbited them. And whereas Horace’s departure had been no more noteworthy to him than the changing of the seasons, his sister had taken with her a sense of stability he still hadn’t grown accustomed to living without.

She was a tall, muscular girl, with a broad, handsome face that was rimmed by the family’s trademark scales. A star member of her school's track and field team, she had recently broken the district's shot put record, a fact which her parents and grandfather had been proudly mentioning at least once every day since. Although soft-spoken, like her father, she was also in possession of a tongue as caustic as her mother’s, and more than one naïve suitor had abandoned his endeavors a much meeker man than when he’d met her. Her long, green hair was bundled in two intricate fishtail braids that trailed down her back – a style popular amongst valley girls her age – and she brushed away a loose strand from her face as she straightened out the napkins. Her mind dimly registered that she'd need to schedule a trim before returning to school.

Content with her work, Iris turned to the garden and cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting, “Sebby! Silver! I brought you guys some snacks!”

The boys rose from behind the jumble of cardboard boxes they’d been working on taping together. They raced each other to the porch, politely offering Iris their thanks as they sat down at the table. Silver gingerly cut into his cake, careful not to scatter any crumbs. Iris had always thought of him as bird-like, with his wiry frame, and his too big head that hung so awkwardly from the end of his long crane neck, and she was struck once again at his meagerness as he pecked at his meal.

After observing them for a few moments, she asked, “Why’d you drag all those boxes into the yard for, anyways?”

“That’s – I mean – ‘Tis our fortress!” Sebek explained between mouthfuls of cake. “We’re defending our home from those wretched ne’er-do-wells yonder!” He pointed towards the garden with one hand and shoveled another piece of cake into his mouth with the other.

Iris followed the line of Sebek’s outstretched finger. Beyond its glaze-covered point lay a pair of rabbits, lazily nibbling on a patch of grass by the boxes.

“Ooh, so you guys are playing pretend again?” She smiled as she put her hands on her hips. “Are you knights this time? Do you want me to be, like, your damsel in distress again or whatever?”

Sebek’s face reddened. “Sissy, stop it!”

Iris laughed and pinched his cheek. He resigned limply.

“Don’t worry, I won’t interrupt your little fun.” She turned away, and then added, “I’ll be in my room, so just shout if you need anything.”

Sebek huffed as his sister closed the door behind her. He scrunched up his round little face and balled his fists. His cheeks were permanently ruddy, flushing darker or lighter depending on his level of agitation, and it was clear by their scarlet hue that Iris's words had hurt him. Silver pushed his empty plate away and stood up.

“Come on, Sebek,” he sighed, rubbing the other boy’s back placatively. “You can be the General of the Right this time. I’ll ask some birds and rabbits to be the townspeople, and you can come save us.”

Often, Silver’s ability to brush off any injury with the placidity of a rock would only inflame Sebek’s rage further, but he permitted his friend to coax him back into the garden. As he watched Silver recruit a regiment of forest creatures for their schemes, he decided there was fairness in the world yet.

Baul Zigvolt was dozing in his rocking chair when Lilia returned that evening. He was perhaps the progenitor of his family members' incredible statures. His wife had been a modest woman, of average height and unremarkable in her build, but he in turn was a veritable mountain of muscle and hardened flesh, so massive that the top of Lilia’s head just barely reached the enormous blocks of his shoulders. He was squeezed into his chair rather than sat upon it, and the wood groaned threateningly as he rocked. The family’s only pet, an equally massive black tomcat with a lone white spot on the tip of its tail, was sprawled comfortably by his feet. The creature was as lazy as it was amiable, having not once dispatched any of the vermin that made merry of its owners’ grain stores, but the children were so enamored with its corpulence that their parents could not bear to rehome it. It shared with Baul a passion for evening naps, and neither of them stirred as Lilia approached.

The two men had served in the Imperial Guard together for centuries, and though they’d stepped down from their posts and re-entered civilian life ages ago, having both established households and produced children, and were now enjoying all the slow pleasures of retirement, Baul still offered advisory services to the Guard on a voluntary basis. The truth of Lilia’s retirement, however, had never been fully absorbed into the folds of Baul’s brain, and he continued to address his erstwhile superior as “General” at their every meeting. “It’s just a bad habit!” he’d defend himself sheepishly when rebuked. But he would soon disremember his error, and would, in the next breath, refer to Lilia by his long-vacated position once again.

“Hello, Baul.” Lilia dipped his head in greeting.

“Evening, General,” Baul murmured, slowly blinking his eyes open with a yawn. “You come to get your boy?”

“Yes, do you know where he is?”

Baul leaned forward and jabbed his thumb behind him. “Yeah, he and Seb are playing out back.” He settled back into his chair and closed his eyes again, opening them once more a second later. “Oh, and while you’re at it, could you tell Seb he needs to get home before nightfall?”

“Oh?” Lilia raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite unlike you to worry about him,” he replied with a smirk.

“Hell if I care!” Baul huffed, crossing his arms. “We’ve been seeing bear tracks around here lately, and I don’t want him to come crying to me if he runs into one of the dumb bastards. That’s all.”

“I see, I see,” Lilia laughed. He reached out and stroked the cat’s head, cocking his own head as he did so. "Well, I don't hear them close by. Can I wait here until they come back? They're probably off playing in the woods somewhere."

Baul huffed again. "I certainly wouldn't mind any if you'd like to take a seat."

Lilia stepped onto the porch and lowered himself into the chair across from Baul with a groan. He was occasionally stricken with bouts of rheumatism, and the frequent trips to and from the Zigvolt’s that year had been taking their toll. Baul raised an eyebrow as Lilia pawed at his back, but made no comment on the subject, electing instead to remark on how nice the weather had been lately, and how excited his grandkids were to go swimming in the river that weekend. Lilia offered in turn the latest updates on his own son. The men exchanged these little stories about their children and grandchildren as passing travelers exchanged their wares. They would file away each anecdote into their hearts for safekeeping, and take them out later to smile at when left alone.

Their habitual pleasantries concluded, Lilia asked Baul if he'd noticed anything unusual about Silver that afternoon.

"Unusual?" Baul frowned. "In what way?"

"Ahh, was he..." Lilia searched for the right word. "Quiet at all?"

Baul scoffed. "He's always quiet. Never met a child made so little noise in my life. I always wondered how he turned out like that, being raised by a loudmouth like you."

"Hey!" Lilia frowned.

"Hah! Sorry, sorry," Baul replied with a laugh, throwing up his hands in defense. "But I mean, other than that, only thing I noticed is the kid's been growing like a weed lately. Guess that's one more thing where you don't have to worry he'll take after you. Heh."

Lilia paid no heed to his baseless fibbing, and instead concentrated his thoughts towards one of his oldest pleasures: finding ways to agitate Baul. He never wished to start any real fights, but was simply possessed by the natural urge to tease him, as a child might like to prod a sleeping bear. Baul found the topic of his son-in-law particularly sensitive, and Lilia grinned as he formulated his attack.

"And how's dear Linus? I heard from Silver the clinic's been pretty busy lately."

Lilia's ploy worked immediately. A vein throbbed on Baul's forehead. "That human is fine, far as I know."

"As far as you know?" Lilia looked at him quizzically. "Aren't you here almost everyday? When's the last time you spoke with him?"

"Hell if I know. I don't give a damn what he has to say."

Lilia rolled his eyes. "Will you ever get over yourself?"

"No!" Baul grunted automatically, flushing hot red once he understood Lilia's insult. "The hell's that even supposed to mean! General!"

Lilia laughed. "Oh, come on! Why can't you just cut him some slack already? I still can't believe he agreed to take your last name like you wanted, with the way you treat him."

"Hmph! One of the few things he's done right by me."

Like so many of his fae brethren, Baul did not favor humans. He and Lilia had witnessed their evils firsthand during their time in the service, and they had watched, powerless, as so many of their friends and comrades, so many of their hopes and dreams and aspirations were crushed and destroyed under the iron heels of their enemy. Over time, after peace treaties had been signed and all the war flags had been taken down and neatly folded and put away, Lilia's heart had softened enough to accept humans with a frivolous neutrality, going so far as to adopt one to raise as his son, but Baul's had not. He was immediately suspicious of the handful of humans that came to live in the valley after the war, turning up his nose at their strange wares and customs and ways. When even more of them began to pour into the castle town, he and his wife sold their house and fled to a small homestead in the forest.

But fate continued to torment him, and he ended up a widower shortly after their first and only child, Thalia, was born. Even through all of his pain, he found his daughter was perfect - more perfect than anything he had ever seen. He was at first cautious in his parenting, aware at all times that he might one day lose her, too, as he had lost so many others before, but the child embraced all the challenges of her life with a ferocity that stunned him, and his concerns quickly proved themselves unwarranted as the years went by. She grew to be a tall and proud woman - she was heavyset, soft and plump in all the places her father was lean and hard, and more beautiful than a dahlia in full bloom.

They remained close after she moved out, meeting together for dinner most nights, and he thought nothing of it when she mentioned she'd started working at a local dental clinic. She would now and then talk about her boss, a human who'd immigrated to the valley some years ago, and to Baul's dismay, her innocent admiration quickly burgeoned into something more serious. Her infatuation with the human felt to Baul like a betrayal. He and Thalia fought when she announced she was courting him, they fought when she announced her engagement, and they fought when she announced she was pregnant. It was Horace's birth that finally allowed for their armistice, and his arms trembled the first time he held his newborn grandson. A child's eyes are the truest mirror one can face, and when Baul gazed into the wet emerald panes peering up at him, he realized for the first time in his life how ugly he had become. He locked himself in his room when he returned home that night. All alone, he reached as far and as deep as he could into his heart and ripped out the black seed of his hatred, casting it far away - farther than Zeus could launch his bolts of lightning or Thor his hammer.

But even though he'd finally been able to make peace with his daughter, nothing could be done to mend his relationship with his son-in-law. Linus had been intensely curious of the world around him from a young age, and the interest he'd developed in fae dentition during his studies had drawn him across the ocean and into Briar Valley upon his graduation, where he established a successful dental practice that treated both human and fae patients, alike. He was a pinched and narrow man, from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, and his heavy-lidded eyes had never lost the childlike spark that so often betrays us as we grow older. It was this spark that had first piqued Thalia's interest, and he was just as obsessed with his wife as she was with him. There was very little of him to see in their children - they had inherited neither his shaggy black hair nor his brown eyes, neither his wiry frame nor olive complexion; their mother's genetics had overpowered his so completely it was as though Thalia had simply sculpted each child from the white clay of the earth by herself. But he fiercely adored them, regardless, showering them with praise and affection, and with an abundance of sugary treats that would make other members of his profession light headed. Over the years, Baul had grown to appreciate Linus for his kindness and for his intellect, and for his devotion to his family, but still could not stand how weak he was, and how small. He was a foot shorter than his wife and several hundred pounds lighter - a miserable twig next to a glorious oak tree, and Baul often complained that he would "snap in half if he sneezed too hard." Worst of all, he was magicless - a transgression Baul knew he would never be able to forgive. He could only tolerate the man, and offered him no more mercy than that.

Lilia shook his head, exasperated. "My god, I'll never understand how Tally puts up with you. Woman has the patience of a saint."

"Yeah," Baul murmured. "Yeah, she does." He folded his hands in his lap and contemplated.

They rocked in comfortable silence. The sun drifted leisurely towards the horizon, and the golden-orange sky looked as soft as an oriole feather. A nightingale, determined to outwit its rival suitors, began his serenade an hour early. Lilia had come to that place with the sole intention of retrieving his son, but the evening breeze dislodged that singular thought from his mind, and it floated away to join the cloud of fireflies gathering in the front lawn. The cat observed all of this with great interest. It was suddenly wide awake where the two men beside it were growing slowly unconscious, its body twitching with the primordial knowledge that night would soon fall.

Silver and Sebek found the pair fast asleep when they returned an hour later.

II.

Sometimes, when the sun seems to hang frozen above him, stubbornly refusing to give up its domination to the pleasant respite of night, when there are no chores to distract him with and his boy isn’t around to tease, Lilia will wander - usually carelessly, at times with a pointed determination - into the dim labyrinth of his mind. It would always astound him how, despite nearly seven hundred years of escapades and follies, despite almost a millennium of joy and heartbreak and unrest and sorrow, there were so few memories for him to parse through. Some of them had simply faded away as he grew older, others had burst into his consciousness and then vanished like spring lightning, dragged down by his heart into an unknown place where they could no longer hurt him. When he’d at last reach the center of that great maze, he would cling onto the earliest memory he could salvage from its shadowy depths, and always he would find himself next blinking his eyes open into the dull light of the castle barracks. He was no longer certain if the memory was from the day he’d enlisted, or if it was from a time much later in the service. He only knew that he must’ve already been an adult then, that he must’ve already accepted all the solitude and responsibility that had been thrust onto his small shoulders by the forces that determined his life.

He'd been told by the queen, along with all the lords and ladies and every other manner of noble and aristocrat he had ever served, on numerous occasions and under no pretense of kindness, that the royal family had taken him in as a young orphan, but he could not remember if that was true. He was certain, at least, that they had given him his name. "Lilia" was derived from the fae word for lily flowers, a plant whose legends and symbolism encompassed grand ideals of hope and purity, and something about it - the sound of it, its grandiose meanings, the way it would catch itself on his teeth, as though his body could not recognize what it was he was trying to say - had always felt wrong to him - foreign, even, so that he always felt like the people addressing him were talking to someone else. Out of discomfort, he often went by his last name, instead. "Vanrouge" had a sharpness to it that he found suited himself much more - both the sharpness of his temperament, and of his body. He was bony and stunted in height, his back no broader than the sticks used for kindling, and he stood shoulder height or lower to most adults his age. The nobility was not beyond recoginizing his strength and his talent in magic, however, and for all that his self-proclaimed benefactors gave him - a place to call home, people he could call family, military prestige beyond his wildest dreams - they took away just as much. Their orders came down like axe heads, and for centuries he dutifully served under their beck and call, acting as a guard dog for them one day, a scapegoat another, an undertaker the next, folding for them like a blade of grass forced flat by the wind.

He stumbled through the years as haphazardly as a tightrope walker, going only where he was told to go and doing only what he was told to do. He worked to the point that he could work no more, and when his incapability was discovered, he was immediately ordered to resign. It was one of the few times in his life he had ever felt afraid. Each and every one of the sovereignty's commands had been a link in a long fetter that bound him to their sides, but it had also been his lifeline, and without it, he feared he would be lost. The day of his resignation, he received one final order to remove his things from the barracks before leaving. The truth of it all pierced his mind like an arrow just then. He realized all at once that the tiny room with its cot and its chest and its wardrobe would be his prison cell no more, that the four walls that had been closing in on him for centuries had finally halted in their paths. He realized the thing that had been beating in his chest all his life had not been stamped out, had not been taken away from him - he had lost his dignity, his strength, even some of the people he had permitted himself to love, but not this. He smiled as he left the castle, made giddy by the greatest secret he knew he would never be able to tell. The discharge papers in his hands suddenly seemed to him like a pardon.

However, he had spent so many years bowing down to others he found he did not recognize the world when he finally stood up and looked at it again. With nothing more left in his life to guide him, he left his homeland shortly after his expulsion. He traveled from country to country with no real destination in mind - if a locale displeased him, he simply packed his things and departed for the next. As the years went by, he gradually began to operate with less and less reason, doing everything and anything he could "just because". Time had molded the clay of his person into a confusing and crude shape, and after decades of slow disentanglement and reformation, of reclaiming all the good things he had been forced to cast out of his heart, he discovered that his truest pleasure was to simply live by his whims. When he at last exhausted his traveling funds, he returned to the valley, settling down only because he'd never done so before, and was curious how well it would go. The people around him pitied him, as one often does those whom Life seems to have forgotten in its haste, but he was far too absorbed in his newfound self-indulgences to pay them any mind.

Even the acquisition of his son had been unplanned. He'd periodically scavenge from the ghost towns that dotted the countryside, in search of tools and good lumber he could use for his repairs back home, and on one such excursion, while searching through the rooms of a crumbling little cottage located deep within the valley's eastern forests, he found a human baby, fast asleep in its cradle. It was gaunt, with an evident pallor to its face, and Lilia quickly concluded it had been abandoned; the stagnant air in that place told him no other living being had been there for days. When he turned to leave, not wishing to disrupt Nature's process, an idea struck his mind so suddenly and so violently he had to steady himself against the doorway before he fell. What if he were to keep the child? What if he, a fae, were to raise the very flesh and blood of his nation's most ancient enemy? The notion intoxicated him. His head spun as he slowly returned to the crib.

"Now wouldn't that be a lark," he murmured as he raised the child. It blinked up at him weakly with eyes the color of the aurora, and Lilia was immediately convinced of his own genius.

"Let's get you something to eat, you poor thing! I'm quite famished myself, you know. You have excellent timing," he said with a wink. The baby watched him silently as he carried it back home.

He thought it would be simple. He knew from his time watching over the infant Malleus that babies needed little more than food, play, clean diapers, and naps. His first charge had flourished splendidly in his care, and he had no doubt his second would do the same.

But Silver was difficult. After its initial, desperate feeding, the baby, seeming to finally remember it was in possession of lungs and a vocal instrument, began to cry incessantly. If it wasn't in Lilia's arms, it cried. If it went a moment too long between feedings, it cried. Even when it slept Lilia was not safe. If he set it down for a nap and attempted to leave the room, it would awaken immediately, understand it had been abandoned once more, and would cry. There were times - random, and frustratingly rare - where it would suddenly stop in the midst of one of its fits, and smile at Lilia so sweetly he'd wonder if someone had snuck in and swapped the child for another when he wasn't looking. Once he realized his legendary frivolity had met its match, he began consulting with the Zigvolts on a regular basis, as Pa Zigvolt was the only human in the valley he trusted. It was the height of summer then, a time he'd usually spend taking refuge in the cool shadows indoors, but he did not mind walking the five long miles back and forth between their homes, preferring even the heat over the child's endless screaming. Pa Zigvolt assisted him to the best of his abilities, imparting to Lilia all the knowledge he had acquired over the years as a then-father of two, and Silver's fits ended a few months later as abruptly as they'd started.

The second hurdle arose when the little boy began to talk. His first, crude word was "Ba pa", and it took several days for Lilia's mind to finally register that he was the intended recipient of this title. He'd planned to have Silver call him by his first name, just as he'd been forced to do when Malleus was little, and hearing the child acknowledge him as its parent made him uncomfortable, as though both of them were breaking a rule he didn't know the name of. The baby, however, refused his every plea for reconsideration, and gradually figured out all the tricks of human speech as he grew older, learning to perfectly pucker his lips, and mastering the rhythm of the two syllables he so desperately wished to string together. He would repeat "Papa" throughout the day, singing out "Papa, Papa, Papa!" with the joy of a hymn. But for Lilia, each utterance was like a stone launched against the walls he had built up around his heart, and when they collapsed and faded away into nothing, he realized his discomfort had vanished with them.

He would later realize, too, that where he'd long forgotten much of his early life, he found he could now remember, to an almost startling degree, much of what he'd seen and experienced ever since he took in the boy. He could still remember a freezing day in January over a decade ago, when Silver had chanced upon a lone snowdrop shivering off the cold in the meadow near their home. The flower had fascinated the boy severely; he sat before it, stone still, tilting his heavy head this way and that, trying to understand the small creature’s drooping frame. Eventually, Lilia came over and accompanied him in his study. He had seen snowdrops countless times before, while marching through the countryside, while working on the clearing, but only then, as he knelt in the snow with the young boy at his side, both of them shivering quietly in the late winter light, only then did he finally realize its perfection. He could still remember, too, the snow slowly melting later that year, and Silver pointing out to him the magnolias blooming in the copse behind their shed, and the daffodils and tulips breaking through the frost that blanketed their small garden, and the linden trees releasing their sweet perfume. He could remember Silver revealing to him with a boyish surety the strangeness of rain showers on sunny days, and the comfort of the mist that lingers on cool autumn mornings. So many sights and sounds and sensations had passed by him all his life in a blur - colorless and dull, abstract and undefined, and when his son entered his life, it was as though a bolt of lightning the color of the aurora had struck the earth and finally given all these things their color and meaning.

But Silver had begun to change recently. Not physically - no, he still had the same rosy, cherubic little cheeks; the same bright blue-grey eyes; and the same sweet, half-crooked smile that Lilia would proudly boast about to all who would listen, and even to those who would not. It was his attitude, his tone of voice, his humor that had changed, and Lilia had not noticed it willingly, at first. Where he'd always been so agreeable and forthcoming, so that Lilia was unsure if the boy had ever kept a secret from him in his entire life, he was now secretive and temperamental. At times, Silver would whirl on him like a wildcat, his eyes narrowed, his thin lips pulled back into a snarl, upset at something Lilia could not understand. There was always a strange look to his eyes during these flares, not quite panicked, yet not angered, either. He looked, if anything, confused - as though he could not believe the truth of the thing he'd just done. When he was amicable, he was as loquacious as a monk. He'd also been showing a newfound apathy towards Lilia's jokes and teasing, and to his presence overall, expressing more and more his desire to be left alone. Most alarming of all, Silver had recently stopped addressing him as "Papa", and now called him "Father", instead. It felt as unnatural as if a songbird had stopped singing. He found it vulgar. "Father" was harsh, adult, stern - formal and distant where his previous moniker had been so intimate and sweet. He'd pleaded with Silver more than once the past month, asking if anything was wrong, demanding to know why he was acting like this, but the boy was unwavering in his defiance, curtly assuring him each time that everything was fine, before excusing himself to go be alone his room once more.

Lilia ultimately decided not to push the matter further, presuming Silver would recover his good attitude in due time, and had instead been focusing his attention on preparing the homestead for summer. The garden work and other miscellaneous chores had all been welcome distractions, but an incident the past week had revived his concerns.

He and Silver had gone to the Zigvolt's for dinner. Ma Zigvolt prepared a feast of grilled corn cobs, roast venison slow-cooked with creamy golden potatoes and carrots, and a whole pile of her buttery homemade biscuits. The pair ate heartily, having both worked up a respectable appetite from hoeing weeds together all that morning, and as usual, they stayed with their hosts late into the evening, if only so Lilia and Baul could talk, and so Silver and Sebek could listen. It was the boys' greatest pleasure in the world to gather in the parlor and listen to them talk. Sometimes, they would simply muse on the recent weather, or discuss local politics. Other times, they'd tell stories - the boys always begged for a story. The former war heroes would weave tales about all the faraway lands they had journeyed to and the greatest enemies they had ever faced, and about fearsome beasts the children had never heard of and stars they'd never seen - “Men’s talk”, as Ma Zigvolt would scoffingly call it. But there was always softness in her voice whenever she rebuked their late-night gatherings. Horace and Iris used to join the small audience, too, but gradually stopped as they grew older, claiming the men's yarns had lost their appeal. It was one of the few things Sebek disagreed with his sister on - he worshiped her, but understood at his young age that even an idol's opinions could be wrong, at times.

The boys' habit was such:

Sebek would sprawl on the bearskin rug before the fireplace, and Silver would curl up against his father’s chair, his head resting on the man’s lap. Lilia would play with his son's hair absentmindedly while he spoke. It could’ve been the shining hands of the angel Gabriel himself carding those gentle fingers through his hair and the boy scarcely would’ve noticed a difference. This was his great reprieve, the most delicious reward after a long and tiring day of chores and training and schoolwork and hard labor; a time for him to sigh out all the aches and pains that gripped his thin body and a time for him to rest.

Lilia knew all this. He had always known this. His son’s heart was a rose; he needed only to whisper the boy's name and its petals would unfurl for him.

The meeting last week had proceeded as usual, at first. Dinner was enjoyed by all, the fireplace was lit, Baul and Lilia took their seats in the parlor, and Sebek planted himself on the bearskin rug. But when Lilia smiled at Silver and set his hands on his lap, his palms upturned, the boy turned away, sitting down in front of the fireplace next to Sebek, instead.

In that moment, Lilia realized Silver's strange behavior the past month was a symptom of an issue far graver than he could have anticipated. When they returned home that night, he consulted his trove of parenting books after Silver went to bed. He'd bought a number of them when the infant Silver had begun his fits, turning to them for advice whenever the boy fell ill or reached a new developmental milestone. He hadn't read any of them in ages, and he sneezed as a cloud of dust billowed when he pulled them down from the shelf.

He flipped through the yellowing tomes one by one, smiling whenever he came across a dogeared page. Each bookmark and scribbled note he could trace back to a specific period in Silver's life, and the memories of those first few stressful years he now counted amongst his greatest treasures. He worked through the tall stack throughout the night, giving up at dawn with a sigh. Were he a more sensible man, perhaps he would've taken note of the fact that his entire collection was made up of books concerning a human's first few years of life, and that his son was now thirteen.

III.

A massive thunderstorm exploded into the valley in early June. It seemed to have materialized from nothing, catching the residents off guard like a cottonmouth's strike. On the first day of the storm, Lilia presumed it was nothing more than a typical summer shower, and felt confident it would quickly pass. On the third day, he remarked he had never seen anything like it before in his life. By the fifth, he was too stunned to speak again. The rain fell down in sheets as thick as pure marble. The sun and moon and stars all vanished beneath a sky as dark as bruised flesh, and only the candles melting above the fireplace gave any indication that time had not stopped. Some days, the rain would harden into hail, and it would pelt the earth like white meteors for hours on end. The deluge pounded on for over a week. The first morning after the storm, the valley denizens stepped cautiously into what seemed like a brand new world. Entire villages had been washed away in some areas, and miles of farmland now stood underwater in others. The river, engorged with rainwater, had flooded over, transforming large swaths of the surrounding forest into a veritable swamp. Carcasses of the animals that hadn't escaped the disaster - deer, boars, turkey, elk, wolves, snakes, predator and prey, young and old - drifted in a black line down the muddy waters. Buzzards whirling their death dance filled the skies.

The Vanrouge's clearing, located uphill, had been mostly spared - a drowned chicken the lone fatality. But the corn fields had been left flattened, and the thatching on the cottage roof lay in shambles. Silver and Lilia worked quickly to dig a maze of deep trenches to help drain the excess water from the garden and pasture. They ripped out the molding stalks of corn and salvaged as many of the clean cobs as possible, hanging them to sun-dry from a wooden rack they'd erected in the yard. "The animals will be glad to have them, at least," Lilia had sighed.

Realizing they were quickly running out of nails and boards to finish making the repairs, Lilia decided one morning to head into the nearest town and replenish their dwindling supplies. Before leaving, he found Silver lying on his stomach in the living room, peering intently into a bird identification book he'd received for his birthday. He called out to the boy while he finished getting dressed.

“Silver, darling?”

Silver’s face, framed on one side by an illustration of a juvenile blackbird peeking out from its nest, and on the other by an adult in flight, emerged from between the pages of his book. Without looking up, he replied, "Yes, father?"

He still on that “father” thing? Lilia swallowed the annoyed groan building in his throat. “While I’m gone, could you butcher one of the shoats, please? I just noticed we’re about to run out of pork belly.”

“Yeah, I’ll take care of it today.”

“Perfect, thank you.”

Lilia grabbed his leather coin purse from the table by the door and secured it to the hook on his belt. He threw a light cloak over his shoulders, anticipating more rain, and glanced at Silver across the room while he fussed with the clasps.

The boy had retreated into his book.

Lilia sighed. The past week had been quiet. Even with the hail exploding all around them and the wind howling and the rain pounding like sledgehammers against their home, it had been quiet, because Silver had hardly spoken a word the entire time. The child's voice seldom rose above a pleasant murmur as a habit, and yet its absence had made the little cottage seem so much vaster and emptier than it really was; there were times during the storm Lilia had felt like the only living thing in the world trapped within its black fury. He hovered at the door for a moment, debating if he should try to kiss the boy goodbye, but his every attempt at parental affection the past month had been met with hostility, scorn, and disgust, and he feared any further attempts would only end the same. Electing for the path of least resistance, he opened the door and departed without another word.

Silver waited for the door to click shut before he pushed his book aside, sitting up with a grunt. He grabbed his pig sticker from his room and slipped on his work boots and gloves. Butchering was laborious work, more so than even his father's rigorous training regimes, and he gripped his knife expectantly while gathering his things.

The clearing glittered with rainwater as he stepped outside. The air was heavy, weighed down by a thick layer of petrichor, smelling somehow both earthy and sweet at once, and it felt like he had to push through it as he walked, as though he were swimming upstream. While struggling towards the pig pen, he contemplated his soggy surroundings. The wet ground was as dark as umber. The chickens, equally as wet and as dark, were scratching dejectedly at the mud, and the cows looked on wisely from underneath their dripping lean-to. He was thankful the garden hadn't been harmed. The brightly colored heads of the newborn squash peeking out from their leafy cradles lifted his heart where the rest of the world drooped and dripped so miserably around him. On the second day of the storm, when it was evident the rain and the wind would not soon abate, he and his father had rushed to cover all the plants with heavy sheets of plastic in a last-ditch attempt to save them. The covers had served them well, having prevented the incurrence of any vegetative losses, and though they now sported deep abrasions where the hail had struck them, Silver found the markings as noble and as handsome as any other battle scar.

Upon reaching the pen, he selected the smallest of the shoats, doubtful he could handle one of the larger animals on his own. The blade of his pig sticker shone dully in the dappled light. The mahogany handle felt cool in his sweat-slicked hand. With a practiced surety, Silver plunged the knife up into the pig’s rib cage, and the animal collapsed to the ground. He cleaned the blade in the grass while he waited for the body to stop moving. After the shoat finally stilled, he hoisted its heavy body onto the metal gambrel hanging from the tree by the shed, and then he began the long work - extracting the tender leaf fat hidden deep within it.

He grabbed the set of butcher knives from the shed and used the longest one to cut into the hide. The skin was rough against his hands, coated with a thick layer of wiry hair, and he grunted as he ripped it off. The head and wet mass of guts and other organs he removed from the torso as quickly as possible, discarding them in a pile far behind them, where he did not have to look at them and remember what he had just done. He slowed down to a comfortable pace as he began removing the leaf fat. The pigs had been enjoying a hearty diet of sweet potatoes, mulberries, and corn for most of the year, and the shoat he'd selected was richly packed with thick sheets of candle white fat. He plunged his knife into the carcass and began separating the fat from the muscle, working in a rhythm, stopping at times to put down his knife and use his hands to tear back the white slab, then picking it up again to continue cutting. He dislodged the mass with one final flick of his knife and deposited it into a bucket by his feet. Once rendered, it would be used not just for cooking, but also to make soap and candles, as a poultice for minor burns and wounds, and as lotion for chapped skin.

After swapping his knife for a bone saw, he split the carcass in half, and then hung both pieces inside the smokehouse. In a few days, once the meat had tenderized, he and his father would finish quartering them and divvying up the meat, grinding some of the portions to make sausage, and putting aside others for bacon and jerky.

He could feel beads of sweat crawling down his back like a line of ants as he plodded over to the water shelf to wash his hands. He figured by the sun's position there were still a few hours of morning left. Might as well see if I can't hunt something he thought, having already exhausted all the distractions the clearing and the cottage could offer.

He washed himself hastily, glancing in the mirror as he dried his hands against his pant legs. He was a demonstrably plain boy – not outstanding in height or wit or strength or speed. His body was lean and wiry, his hands prematurely calloused from years of grueling work, and only the few meager lumps of baby fat that clung to his face protested weakly that he was, indeed, just a child. The only remarkable thing about him was his eyes – they were a brilliant blend of amethyst and steel blue, almost prismatic in nature, seeming to change color with the rise and fall of the sun. The few adults in his life often remarked on their beauty, but Silver never paid their compliments any mind - in truth, he rejected them. He'd always thought his eyes plain, just as he thought the rest of himself plain, especially in comparison to the fae, and if there was any one thing he begrudged Sebek for, it was the serpentine pupils he'd inherited from his forefathers. He frowned at the mirror, then averted his gaze from his dissatisfied reflection.

Before leaving, Silver printed on the back of a used envelope a short note for his father, letting him know he was going hunting, and that he would return home before supper, and this he left on the counter, held in place with a coffee tin. He then retrieved his crossbow from his room, and left the clearing, cutting a path straight North, far away from the bloated river and its poisons. Huge puddles of muddy water dotted the trail before him, and the damp ground squelched noisily under his boots. The trail was bordered by a lavender frame of honeysuckle in full bloom, but the trumpets sagged poorly, still heavy with water. His father had said it would likely take another week or two for the land to dry completely.

Silver had observed the storm with great interest. Pa Zigvolt had once told him how people in other countries conceived of the beginning of the world, and in one version, he spoke of when the planet was all water, and a god had sculpted the land and the sky and all living creatures, and Silver had wondered during the storm if this was how the world had looked during those primordial seven days, or if perhaps that wrathful god had come back to restart its creation. Never before in his life had he seen so much rain, so much wind and lightning and hail all at once before. The sky was one ocean and the land was another. The rain seemed to move back and forth between them, falling and rising, the drops of water shining like the million wings of a dragonfly swarm. He processed novelties such as these almost programmatically. If he understood something, then he determined he would not fear it. His comprehension was a beam of light he could shine upon his abhorrations, it would cut through the shadow of his uncertainty and allow him to see the face of the thing, to touch it, and to understand it. He was afraid of very little: the forest at night, adders (he'd been bitten once as a small child), all the various tinctures and teas prescribed for his occasional afflictions, and his father's Halloween performances. Darkness was one thing he'd studied and studied since he was very young, but had never been able to puzzle out, perhaps because it did not end. It was too broad, too immeasurable; he could lift up one corner of it and step underneath it and walk a thousand miles and still never glimpse its face. Even when it receded during the day, he felt it prowling beyond the safety of the clearing, like a panther in waiting. The storm, too, had seemed infinite in its wrath, but it had ended, and now it was gone. Now there was only a liquid world, shimmering, iridescent, like one great droplet of water sitting on an endless spiderweb.

The frenzied drumming of a male grouse sounded off in the distance, beyond a thick wall of fir and aspen. Following the clamor, Silver slipped into the underbrush. He moved over the wet leaf litter as quiet as a shadow. The performer soon came into view, perched atop a fallen cedar tree. It was in the midst of a thunderous crescendo, beating its spectacled wings so feverously the air around it seemed a solid tawny blur. Silver dropped to a crouch, stalking slowly forward until he reached a mass of undergrowth tall enough to conceal him. Kneeling in the grass, he loaded an arrow into his crossbow, disengaging the safety as he raised it to his shoulder.

A noise above drew his attention. A red squirrel, high up in the tree beside him, was glaring at him, its eyes blazing as fiercely as its bright copper fur. Silver held his breath. If the squirrel let out a warning bark, the grouse would surely hear it and scatter. His gaze flew between his observer and his target - the bird had paused in its performance, its small black eyes scanning the tree line where he was hiding.

After a few tense moments, the squirrel disappeared into the privacy of the canopy with a huff. The grouse cocked its head, alert, but not alarmed, and then resumed its drumming. Silver quietly let out the breath he'd been holding and moved his finger over the trigger. The arrow soared through the air and struck the grouse with a heavy thud. It fell to the ground, disappearing behind it's earthen stage.

Silver stood up and thrust his crossbow behind him. He rushed in long strides to the log and hoisted the grouse's limp body with one hand, his own body still thrumming with adrenaline. A scarlet blot bloomed in the animal's chest where his arrow had pierced it. The sight of the blood immediately muted all his excitement. He whispered an earnest "Thank you" to the creature before slipping its thin neck up under his belt and turning around. As he stood there, awash in the late morning light, contemplating the still-warm body resting against his thigh, his mind finally acknowledged that he knew this place.

One day, a few months ago, on his way home from collecting armfuls of wild sorrel and burdock in the forest, Silver had discovered a great horned owl sitting atop a towering oak tree while passing through there. The creatures were rarely seen during the day, typically active only during crepuscular hours, and Silver carefully set down his leafy bundle upon spotting it, taking the opportunity to quietly study the bird for as long as it allowed him to. He concluded that its long, brown ear-tufts reminded him of the projections in his father’s hair, and he smiled, pleased by the genius of his observation. When he walked up to the tree and craned his head back, the owl slowly blinked its yellow eyes down at him in perplexment.

“Could you please help me?” Silver asked.

“Whooo?”

“You, silly bird!” he laughed. He explained that he'd learned a new word recently, and desired an audience before which to practice his pronunciation.

The owl obliged his request and swooped down to a branch directly before him. He unfastened his cloak and draped it around its neck, carefully hooking up the fastener so as to not pinch its feathers.

He stepped back to admire his work. “Looks good to me,” he murmured to himself, nodding. “Now, I want you to please pretend to be my papa- I mean, my father.”

The owl stared at a toad loitering by Silver’s feet. It looked up and blinked its spotlight eyes at him slowly.

Flustered, Silver continued. “Oh, if you just sit there, that should be okay! I’ll go ahead and start now. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

He cleared his throat and straightened his back, crossing his arms. “Hello, Pa-, erm, Father. Today, I’m going to go play- I mean!! I’m going to go train with Sebek. I’ll be back for dinner. Farewell!”

He spun around and marched off, swinging his arms importantly, just like he’d seen the imperial guards do on his rare trips into town. After a few heavy steps, he stopped and turned around again, nervously searching his spectator's face for any sign of reproach.

“...How was that?” he asked after a moment.

The owl bobbed its head excitedly, but Silver could not determine if the gesture was meant for him, or for the toad that was now clinging plaintively to his feet. He reset his stance and repeated the exercise from the beginning. Again and again he stuttered through his short speech and pumped his arms and stomped across the ground, and then turned around to be greeted by a feathery face as unintelligible as some ancient cipher. This cycle continued for so long his pile of greens had begun to wilt by the time he was at last satisfied.

His request had been sincere, if not misguided. The new moniker he'd chosen for Lilia sat as heavy and awkwardly as a foreign word on his tongue, and he'd often lapse into calling the man "Papa" as a course of habit, which he'd aimed to rectify through this practice. But there was another, graver reason why he'd felt so anxious that day - a secret dilemma had been plaguing him for weeks.

He had discovered, unwillingly, and to his great alarm, that the adults in his life had suddenly developed an irritating air about them. He wished, for example, to push away Ma Zigvolt’s pinching hands when they reached for the roundness of his face and to flee from Pa Zigvolt’s awkward attempts at conversation. Baul and his father’s stories had lost their wonder, too, no longer coloring the quiet expanse of his dreams. And his father, by far, presented the most extreme case of this mysterious ailment.

It was as though, after thirteen long years of worshiping the very ground he walked on, Silver had woken up one day with his mind rewired to find everything the man did purely annoying. When he'd suddenly start to sing in that strange, deep voice he could conjure on a whim, or when he’d pester him with questions, asking him how his day was, and what he and Sebek had gotten up to, or when he'd declare to the world what a splendid, hardworking boy he was, instead of laughing or smiling or nodding along, as per his customary response, Silver instead found himself praying for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

Even Malleus had changed. All his life, Silver had approached the young prince unabashed and forthcoming, as he was never taught the fear that lurked in the hearts of many of the valley’s citizens. Indeed, for Silver, Malleus was one of the precious few cornerstones of his meager world – he was a comforting shadow in the dim haze of Silver's infantile memories, and the green glow of his magic was as reassuring to him as the North Star’s guiding light. More than anything, he was someone - the only one - who’d come visit Silver when his father was away.

Lilia had resumed traveling for leisure after Silver was old enough to look after the homestead on his own. He was never gone long, in his own opinion, only a week or two at most. He'd pack the fridge full of questionable food for the boy, leave him a list of chores and rules to follow that was, at times, as questionable as the food, kiss his cheek goodbye, and then promptly disappear to whatever locale he'd selected for his itinerary that month. He'd always send Silver postcards of the places he'd visit. They often arrived faded and torn, or sopping wet from the rain, but Silver kept each and every one of them, regardless if damaged or illegible, or otherwise totally destroyed, in a little box underneath his bed. When he lay down to sleep at night, in his mind he would reach his hand underneath his bed, open his box, and quietly step into the distant worlds contained within the postcards.

Some nights, he and his father would stroll through the glass-topped bazaars of the Shaftlands, their arms heavy with paper shopping bags filled to the brim with newly purchased clothing and trinkets and toys, slowly moving through the crystalline cloud of cologne and parfum drifting out from the stores and boutiques, each establishment a gem of its own, the arcade an endless line of diamonds, amethysts, pearls, topaz, and rubies; then this vision would vanish, and he and his father would be pulled another thousand miles away to the golden plains of the Sunset Savanna, where sky touched the earth, where a boiling sun raged like an angry god above a scorched plateau of rock and grit and sand and red clay dust, and they would journey across this shimmering land marveling at all the beasts and vegetation Silver had only ever read about in his books, and would likely never see for as long as he lived.

He'd spend the entire night thus traipsing from one postcard to the next, so that by the time he awoke in the morning, he'd crossed nearly half the planet in his sleep.

This habit he continued for over half a year, at which point Malleus at last learned of Lilia's departures. Often kept detained at the castle by mountains of paperwork and other bureaucratic trivialities that left him too exasperated and too occupied for leisure, he did not regularly call on the Vanrouges, and when he'd taken a rare opportunity to drop by their cottage one day, many years ago, he was surprised when Silver opened the door and informed him that his father was gone. Silver did not notice anything strange about Malleus's reaction, at first. He'd gotten another postcard recently. On the front, an image of massive, stone towers rising high into a cloudless turquoise sky, their spires terminating into crowns shaped like pyramids; on the back, in his fathers prim script, a short note explaining the structures were called "obelisks'', and that they were monuments dedicated to the local gods of that region. All of Silver's dreams lately had been of endless deserts and great golden towers and the ancient kings and queens that once ruled over them, and when he saw the pair of black obelisks that were concealed in Malleus's slit pupils, his fantasies materialized temptingly in his mind once again.

But Malleus's low voice, inquiring on Lilia's return, pulled him back to the clearing and the small cottage and its plainness for a moment. Trying to focus, he stated bluntly that his father would not be back for another week.

"A week?" Malleus said, his tone halfway between a scoff and a cry.

"A week," Silver repeated absentmindedly, busy trying to determine how a pharaoh's headdress might sit between Malleus's horns.

When his gaze drifted lazily back to Malleus's eyes, he finally realized the man was angry. The black obelisks had vanished, and all the kings and queens in his mind bowed their heavy ornate heads, crumbling away to nothing in the face of the prince's quiet rage.

From that day on, Malleus dedicated himself to visiting Silver as much as possible when Lilia was away. He would bring with him cakes and pies he'd stolen from the castle's kitchen, and books he'd snuck out of the royal library, and they would sit together and enjoy these treasures in the living room, or stroll through the forest when the weather was fair. These visits made Silver feel very important, a sensation he seldom had the privilege to enjoy, and he'd imagine he was a duke welcoming a fellow aristocrat to his palace whenever Malleus stopped by. The lonely late-night journeys through his postcards melted away into this new pleasure.

As Silver matured, he slowly began to comprehend the gravity of Malleus’s periodic decampments. It first felt like nothing more than a small discomfort, as though he were wearing a garment a size too small. As time went on, the discomfort only grew, transforming from a minor inconvenience into an ever-present malaise. But Silver was attentive as he was reticent, and he’d noticed how, when he’d caper with Malleus through the forests, the pixies living in the oak trees and the river would whisper and whisper all around them, their high voices a chorus of reproachful chimes. And he’d noticed, too, the confusion that had flashed across his father’s eyes the day he’d confessed to these secret visits. Silver collected these observations as his evidence, examined them, and concluded that Malleus was doing something wrong. But to accuse their crown prince of misconduct required a level of brazenness that far exceeded his capabilities, and he'd waited several months until he finally voiced his suspicions.

He broached the topic the spring prior, when his father had departed for a week-long sojourn in the Shaftlands. That first night, Malleus appeared at the cottage door with a pan of freshly baked apple strudel in hand. After they were sat at the table and Malleus began cutting their portions, Silver at last revealed all his concerns.

When he finished speaking, he watched Malleus’s hand slow down as it moved the knife through the steaming pastry.

“I…” Malleus pursed his lips in thought, lifting them into a soft smile a moment later.

“I remember how I felt whenever Lilia would vanish on one of his excursions when I was little, and I suppose I simply wish not for you to feel the same.”

“But that’s-”

“You needn’t worry, Silver.” Malleus laughed gently, pushing a plate heavy with warm strudel towards him. “I shan’t get into any trouble - so long as my grandmother remains none the wiser about all this, that is,” he finished with a wink.

Silver was at once overcome by a rush of joy and shame and guilt and relief all combined together. His body, unable to process this strange emotional amalgamation, resigned to color itself with a vicious crimson flush. The chameleonic display was so severe it shocked even Malleus, and he spent the rest of that evening marveling at the different shades of red human skin could take.

Something shifted in Silver's relationship with Malleus that day. He felt it before he understood what it was. When his father returned from his trip, he revealed to Silver the truth that had been looming over him all of his life, and explained to him all the different rules that Malleus had been egregiously breaking for him for years on end. When the lecture was finished, Silver asked his father to leave his room so he could ruminate. He concluded that if it was wrong for Malleus to show him this kindness, if it had to be locked away and kept a secret, then he would keep his own secret - he would take his love for Malleus, for his brother, and he would bury it. He would construct a pedestal in his heart, as all the other valley citizens had long been taught to do, and place upon it the man he'd been too ignorant to realize had never truly been his equal and his friend.

He was bothered greatly – by his father’s antics, by the dullness of the adults around him, by the solitude of his strange and sudden affliction – and yet he never could find a remedy for his discomfort. It was like an insect had stung him in a spot his hands couldn’t quite reach, and the words to describe how he felt evaded him just the same.

All of this he considered once more as he left the forest, stumbling back home in a haze of speculation. By the time he reached the clearing, the darkened sky looked like a giant raven's wing stretched out over the land, and the treefrogs had already begun their evening serenade. Even in the low light he could feel their beady eyes staring at him as he approached the door.

Inside, the cottage was warm, and his father's humming radiated quietly from the kitchen. After slipping off his muddy boots by the door, he set the limp grouse on the counter and went to wash his hands at the basin.

His father stood before the cookstove, stirring a pot bubbling with a substance as black as tar. He looked up, and the smile he’d been planning to offer Silver rapidly faded away. Knitting his brow in concern, he asked, “Is everything okay?”

Silver swallowed thickly and nodded. “I’m fine.”

IV.

Summer crept forward like an inchworm. The land dried out completely within a matter of weeks, as Lilia had predicted, and one could now comfortably move around outside without fear of the humidity's oppression. The linden trees, made anxious by the pounding wind and rain, had been steadfastly clutching their bright yellow flowers against their leafy breasts since the start of the month, and had only recently just begun allowing the satiny petals to unfurl, as though acknowledging the valley's languid recuperation. Their delicious perfume billowed out across the entire nation, eventually overshadowing even the contaminated river's foul odor.

The Zigvolts had fared well through the disaster, their tall, white house still standing proud and pristine amongst a mess of downed trees and waterlogged foliage, not a single red brick from the chimney missing or otherwise harmed. Their neighbors, however, had not been nearly as fortunate, and the elder Zigvolts had agreed to close the dental clinic while they helped their friends repair their homes. The children eagerly assisted wherever possible, and they spent the better part of June lugging armfuls of wood and shingles, readjusting crooked fences, and clearing out dripping debris from the trails that weaved around their home. The entire family would work from morning until late at night, reserving one day a week to either relax or to see to any high-priority dental cases.

It was on one of these holidays, in late June, when Lilia and Silver dropped by in the morning for a scheduled call. The two families gathered in the parlor, the adults chatting amicably, while the children competed to see who'd had the most interesting experiences during the storm, but as noon rolled around and the boys lost interest in conversation, Baul suggested they go outside for an impromptu sword fighting lesson. The group thus disbanded, Lilia remaining with Pa and Ma Zigvolt in the parlor, while Iris joined her grandfather and the family cat in supervising the boys, taking turns cheering for her brother or for Silver as she saw fit.

After they left, Ma Zigvolt went to the kitchen and refilled the pitcher of ice tea she'd prepared that morning, topping up Lilia's glass for him before retaking her seat. Looking at him expectantly, she asked, "Now what were you saying before? About Silver."

“Ah, about Silver acting strangely during the storm?” Lilia waited for her confirmation before continuing. “Well, there was this one day I was able to get the fireplace going and I gathered up some blankets on the couch. And when I asked Silver if he wanted to come cuddle with me for a bit, he… he…”

Ma Zigvolt balled up her apron in her hands and leaned forward, wide-eyed. “He what?”

“He said no!” Lilia cried, throwing his arm over his face with a flourish.

“No?!” she gasped. “Not Silver!”

“Yes! I could hear my poor heart breaking in two on the spot.” Lilia slumped back in his chair. It was the first time he'd spoken to anyone about the problems he'd been having with his son, and he felt somehow encumbered by the weight of his confession.

Ma Zigvolt gently asked if he'd had any luck talking to Silver about his behavior, and he begrudgingly shook his head.

"He always says he's fine, and that's about as much as I can get out of him." He sipped his tea, setting his glass down on the table beside him with a frown. "It almost feels like he doesn't even like me anymore..."

Pa and Ma Zigvolt exchanged a pointed look. It was not unlike the one they'd share with each other at the clinic, when a patient, complaining of mysterious symptoms that had "simply popped up out of nowhere!" would throw themselves into the examination chair with a huff, only to confess after much prodding that they had been consuming a poor diet, and had been practicing even poorer dental habits.

Pa Zigvolt spoke first. “It’s normal for kids Silver’s age to go through a phase like this. It just means he’s growing up.”

Lilia blinked. “Growing up…?”

“Mm-hmm,” Ma Zigvolt continued. “We went through the exact same thing with Horace and Iris. Horace especially had it rough, the poor thing. You remember, honey?”

“Yeah, I remember it clear as day." He nodded solemnly. "He’d stay holed up in his room all the time, and trying to get him to talk to us was harder than pulling a tooth. It’s like he thought we were the most embarrassing people in the world.”

“Oh, but he still thinks that way about you, dear.”

“Tally!”

Laughing, Ma Zigvolt reached over and patted his knee soothingly.

Lilia considered their words. “If that’s the case, then I suppose I just don’t understand why he’s trying to grow up so quickly. For most of his life, I pushed him much too hard, had him undergo training better suited for soldiers thrice his age. The day I finally realized what an awful mistake I’d been making, I don’t think I’d ever felt so ashamed of myself in my life.”

“From that moment on, I swore to ease up on him and just let him be a kid, and to make sure he could enjoy his childhood as much as possible. Especially since I… Ahh…”

Lilia thought of the castle barracks. There had only been one window in his room, a pitiful little square cut high into the stone wall adjacent to his cot. It faced East, and for a few, meager hours in the afternoon, when the sun was positioned directly before the castle, a singular column of light would enter the window and illuminate that small, dark space. He thought of how he would lay transfixed in bed, watching the light glide across his body like a golden serpent, how he would thrust out his hands, trying to capture it, trying desperately to stop this one thing from exiting his life as everything else had, and how each time it would slip through his groping fingers like water and evaporate into nothing. He thought of marching for days, of the sharp iron stench of the battlefield, of the bone-deep ache that would weigh heavy like a stone over every fiber of his being. He thought of all the things he experienced growing up that he never wished for his son or any other child to go through.

Lilia swallowed the lump forming in his throat. Looking past Ma Zigvolt, focusing on the wall clock behind her, he finally continued, “When I was a child, I didn’t have the… the kinds of opportunities that he has, so I just want to make sure he makes the most of them while he can.”

"I see..." Ma Zigvolt sighed, folding her hands in her lap. She had grown up knowing Lilia to be an evasive - if not frustrating - man, and her father had warned her repeatedly over the years to be cautious in her prodding. He was like an uncle to her, and she dutifully acknowledged his seniority, if only in regards to his age, but he was also a fellow parent, and her neighbor, and where the wellbeing of children was concerned, she was known to reveal the full extent of her caustic rhetoric, so that more than once she'd had to quit all civility and rebuke Lilia for his parental failures. Still, she considered each of her questions carefully, as though treading across a sheet of ice, knowing full well that if she chose her next step incorrectly, it would shatter the man's trust and terminate the conversation.

After a moment, she asked, “And you two haven't had any fights recently? You don't think you've said anything that might've upset him?"

Lilia paused for a moment, and then shook his head again. “No, not at all.”

Ma Zigvolt pressed further, sensing his hesitation. “Well, regardless, you don’t think there’s anything you’re doing that might be making him act this way?”

She'd stepped too far. Lilia frowned. “I think I know my own child, Thalia. If he had a problem with me, he’d say so.”

"I wasn't trying to insinuate anything, Lilia."

“Alright.”

Pa Zigvolt glanced rapidly between his wife and Lilia. Confrontation historically made him nervous, and it was clear from their stony faces they'd reached an impasse. He rubbed his clammy palms against his pant leg and rose from his seat, asked politely if anyone would like another round of refreshments, and fled to the kitchen before receiving a response. Lilia's gaze followed him as he walked off, his thoughts drifting away together with the man's receding figure.

He could hear the children's laughter floating in through the open windows, Sebek's loud and exuberant, Silver's quiet and breathless. Other sounds poured in, blending together like a symphony. There was the harsh percussion of their wooden swords clashing together, ringing out at times as viciously as gunfire; there was Baul's voice, low and clear, gruffly barking out his commands in tune with each thunderous strike; and there was the shining thread of Iris's singsong voice, interweaving amongst the clamor as she called out her gentle encouragement.

But still through it all his son's voice came to him, as direct as a beam of light, sounding sweeter and brighter than the goldfinches chittering away in the cottonwood trees.

It'd been so long since he last heard his son's laugh he'd almost forgotten what it sounded like. For over a month, he'd failed to elicit from the boy anything beyond the faintest imitation of a grin, yet here he was, just out of arm's reach, laughing and smiling so freely it was like his body demanded it more than breathing. He looked away from the window and glanced at Ma Zigvolt. She sat with her back erect, her hands folded primly in her lap, her eyes closed, awash in her children's joy, her round face as radiant and golden as the sun. Lilia fought back the urge to call out to Silver, knowing he would only destroy this moment.

He thought again of the past few weeks, scrutinizing everything he'd said and done to his child. He sifted through his memories, upturning each one and twisting it around and inspecting it from every angle, but still he could not find any evidence of his error. And he couldn't make comprehensible, either, the notion that his son was "growing up", as the Zigvolts had claimed. How could he, when Silver only had taken his first, wobbling steps just the other day, when it was only just yesterday that he'd learned to string his words together and share his quaint little thoughts, when he was still so small - his body, his voice, his hands, all no greater now than they had ever been before in his entire life? Lilia bit back an incredulous scoff, humored greatly by the absolute absurdity of the notion. And yet - his son's laughter drifted into his consciousness like a spring breeze. Why this drastic change in his demeanor, then?

Maybe there is something I'm doing wrong. But I just...

Lilia cleared his throat. "I'll certainly need to mull this over some more, but if you have any advice, I'm all ears."

“Well…” Ma Zigvolt smiled, smoothing out her apron before folding her hands in her lap again. “I know I’m no expert, but I’ve found that sometimes, being a good parent means you gather your babies in your arms and you hold onto them as tight as you can. And other times, it means you let them go. And he's at a point in his life where you might just have to start letting him go.”

"Hm."

The Vanrouges departed for home that afternoon. Before they left, Pa Zigvolt pulled Lilia aside, and let him know he was more than welcome to come speak with them again about Silver's behavior at any time. Lilia thanked him, reassuring him that his wife had already given him more than enough to think about for a while yet, and politely declined the couple's offer to meet for dinner later that week. As he stepped through the door, he winked at Ma Zigvolt, and she grinned at him audaciously.

Silver retreated into his shell as soon as they stepped off their neighbor's property, but Lilia was for once too occupied to take offense, busy ruminating on his conversation with the Zigvolts. Their dinner that evening was silent, and he later fell asleep dreaming of the boy's twinkling laughter.

Lilia would come to regret rejecting the Zigvolts' offer. Over the next several weeks, Silver seemed to burrow deeper and deeper into himself with each passing day. The boy's emotional carapace was thicker than any suit of armor or garrison Lilia had encountered during his time in the service, and some days he receded so deeply Lilia would have to call his name multiple times and rap his hand against the table just to wrest the child's attention away from himself. It was all Lilia could do to maintain the fraying strand of his composure from completely snapping. He'd been hotheaded as a youth, and positively vicious to his troops as a general, but had sworn off his every inclination towards corporal punishment once Malleus was born. During this period he often found himself questioning the rationality of his vow, and would sometimes envision giving the boy a lashing, only to immediately chide himself for his own weakness.

Something sinister seemed to be building up inside their little home. It was as though there was a great coil lurking underneath the floorboards, one that wound itself tighter and tighter with each of their disastrous interactions. The palpable tension only further stymied Lilia's every attempt at repairing their relationship, and the blowout he'd been fearing finally materialized one afternoon in early July.

Silver had spent the better part of that day in a state of quiet agitation. He would approach Lilia, open his mouth, close it, open it again, and then spin around and march off to his room, proclaiming hastily he needed to close his window, or make his bed, or any other excuse he could find to justify his escape. Lilia would only laugh in response. The previous day, while cleaning the kitchen, he'd glanced out the window and noticed the boy speaking animatedly with the chickens. He watched for hours as Silver paced back and forth before them, waving his arms and moving his mouth rapidly as the birds pecked indifferently at the ground.

Since then, Lilia had been eager to learn the truth of Silver's recital, but he did not press the boy, choosing instead to bide his time sprawled out on the couch, flipping through a stack of traveling magazines he'd been meaning to read.

After an hour of consternation, Silver planted himself before Lilia, his spine erect, his shoulders drawn back, and stated with perfect confidence, "Father, there's something I'd like to ask you!"

"Hm?" Lilia lowered his magazine, his eyes peeking over an editorial on deep-sea diving in the Coral Sea. "What is it?"

Silver's shoulders slumped. He'd not gotten this far in his rehearsals.

"Erm." He nibbled on his lower lip. "Is it okay if I go to the Zigvolt's by myself today?"

Lilia blinked. He'd been hoping - expecting, even - to hear from the boy a teary-eyed apology for how poorly he'd been acting recently, or perhaps a plea for his forgiveness, but not this. After a moment, he muttered, "What?"

"Is it okay if-"

"Sorry, I heard you." Lilia sat up and placed the magazine on the coffee table. "Why are you asking that?"

"I dunno. I just thought I-" Silver licked his lips. "I guess I just thought I could go by myself now. And I know it hurts your back to walk all that way, so."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about me, darling." Lilia said, inwardly cursing at himself for allowing the boy to notice his infirmity. He made a note to check the bathroom after they were finished talking, wondering if he'd neglected to put away his pain relief balm and bottles of medication where he typically hid them, at the back of the medicine cabinet.

Sitting up as straight as his bruised back allowed, he offered Silver a smile so brilliant it was as though he wished to expunge the shadow of the boy's doubt with its radiance. "I'm fit as a fiddle!" he proclaimed through gritted teeth.

Silver returned the smile, unaffected. "I'm glad. But I still wanna start going by myself."

Lilia's lips dropped into a frown. He shook his head and sighed. "I'm sorry, Silver. But the answer is 'no'."

Had Silver heard those words at any other point in his life prior to that moment, he would have conceded, and bowed out of the conversation in recognition of his father's perfect judgment. But this time, rather than his usual disappointment, he felt a strange anger welling up inside of him, instead. He clenched his fists and set his jaw, ignoring the hiss of his instincts warning him that he was about to step into a fight.

"No? Why not?" he asked, interrupting Lilia as he reached for his magazine.

Lilia leaned back into the couch and bit back another sigh. "Simple, because it's not safe for you to go all that way by yourself." He spoke slowly and carefully, hoping an air of manufactured calmness would mask his irritation.

Silver's voice, in contrast, blatantly swelled with indignation. "But I stay home by myself when you're gone."

"Staying home by yourself is different. My magic is all over this land. Magical beasts and fae know not to come here, and you know that, too."

Here, Silver paused again. The hiss of his instincts had at that point deformed into a mangled screech, which he knew would soon summon the animal panic that had struck him before a handful of times in his young life - once when he'd gotten lost in the woods as a small child, and another when his father had fallen gravely ill after returning from one of his trips, and Silver had been powerless to help him. There was one, final question that he now wished to ask the man, though he knew the answer to it might hurt him. As his mind frantically tried to draw back the words already forming on his tongue, he hastily wrenched them out and spat:

"Well, what about when you drop me and Sebek out in the middle of nowhere for our training? We always get along just fine without you."

Lilia crossed his arms and looked away. "That's... different, too."

Silver's heart skipped a beat. "...How?"

"It just is-"

"How!" the boy cried, his voice bursting into a screech.

"Because I watch you guys the whole time! I've always been watching you when you train. I would never leave you alone like that, you're just a child."

Lilia realized too late the poison of his words. It spread immediately into Silver's heart. His eyes were two perfect shining wet opals; his tears fell silently - gliding, almost, lifting off as they fell from his face, as though afraid to mar his skin. He turned and ran to his room, hesitating as he took the door into his hand before, for perhaps the first time in his life, he slammed it shut. Lilia leapt from the couch and raced after him, hissing out a choked "Damnit!" under his breath as he tried the knob and found it locked. He pressed his ear against the door and called out Silver's name. At first, he heard nothing, and feared for a moment the boy had slipped out his window and fled into the forest, in repeat of that awful, wretched night from so long ago, but then he heard it - it was like a whisper at first, nearly as imperceptible as the clap of a butterfly's wings, but still he heard it, heard the stifled, quiet sobs drifting through the heavy panel of hardwood separating him from his son. Lilia stood there, petrified, listening, feeling as each of the boy's sobs pierced his flesh and bore down into the deepest folds of his heart, as if seeking him; as if they were his own.

V.

Once a month, when the moon casts aside her shadowy veil to grace the valley with all her beauty, the Zigvolts and the Vanrouges and their neighbors gather together in a log cabin at the edge of the forest, and they dance.

Regular merriment was a necessity for the fae - mirth coursed through their bodies like the blood in their veins, and any opportunity for celebration, any chance they had to raise their voices together and join hands under the soft light of the stars, they would take it. Baul would scoff and say they were all plagued by a sickness, Ma Zigvolt would click her tongue at him and say it was rather an inclination.

The monthly dance was a rare opportunity for Silver to socialize freely with the townspeople. His father had always been honest with him about his species' general attitude towards humans, and the boy understood very well that the glint in their gemstone eyes - some of them deep ruby red like his father’s, others mesmerizingly green like polished emeralds, or as molten as bright blue sapphires - was not always a kind one. Only on those full moon nights, when the whine of the band’s violins accompanies the forest symphony of nightingales and tree frogs calling out their lonely verses, when the humans and the fae breathe each other in and twist and turn and dip and whirl and spin each other out, only then was it safe for Silver to take their clawed hands into his own and look unabashed into the fire of their eyes. They could and they would return to their quiet judgment and whispered denouncements later, but not on those nights, not when their bodies burned hot with jubilation and the music bewitched them so.

It was for this reason, and for his love of the communal mirth he habitually longed for, as isolated as he was at home, that Silver looked forward to the dance each month with great excitement. The night before the July dance, however, a war had raged inside the Vanrouge household.

Partway through their silent dinner, just as Lilia had gotten up to refill his glass of water at the sink, Silver had announced, plainly, and without a moment's hesitation, that he would not be participating in tomorrow's festivities, and offered neither an explanation nor any willingness to compromise when prompted. But Lilia was equally insurmountable in his parental concerns, and he questioned the boy until his blood boiled. The conversation rapidly crumbled into an argument, before further disintegrating into an all-out screaming match.

They volleyed their rebukes at each other from across the dining table, both unbending in their determination, Silver deflecting each of Lilia's pleas and demands with an iron-clad defense that bordered on hostility.

"You're going to that dance whether you want to or not!" Lilia had nigh snarled at one point as he launched his next attack.

But his words had ricocheted off Silver as harmlessly as though they were filled with air, and he ultimately fired back a retort so scathing it made even Lilia's marble white skin flush in mortification.

Their clamor poured out the open windows and flooded the clearing, where the sows and the heifer in the pasture looked at each other in concern. A songbird that had perched on the windowsill for a moment’s respite burst into the sky a second later, alarmed by the ruckus within. After an hour of tense contestation, they finally reached an agreement: they would go to the dance, but would not stay the entire time. But the foul atmosphere from the great storm of their quarrel lingered in the small cottage, and the pair kept to themselves the next day, Silver sulking in his bedroom, and Lilia fussing in the kitchen, busy preparing a dish for the dance's customary potluck.

They convened in the evening. The partygoers traditionally wore their Sunday best, and Silver and Lilia both donned their black slacks, white button up shirts, and leather-soled shoes. Their jackets and vests they left hanging in their closets, the threat of the summer heat overpowering any inclination for gaiety. When Silver emerged into the living room, he was finishing buttoning up his shirt, and did not look up as he called out a quiet greeting to his father. It was the first time Lilia had seen him all day, and once the boy had completed his toilette and finally met his gaze, Lilia offered him a reconciliatory smile, which Silver at first returned, reflexively, then retracted a moment later, substituting it with a scowl in its place.

Shortly before dusk, underneath a blue-gray sky streaked with clouds of pure amber, they departed for the cabin, joining up with the Zigvolts as they neared the edge of the forest. Baul was not with his family, having excused himself to instead partake in an evening nap, and the small troupe reached its destination just as the last golden wisps of the sun had withdrawn into their equatorial den.

While Ma and Pa Zigvolt and Iris set off for the dancefloor, Lilia headed towards the tables at the back of the one-room cabin, Silver and Sebek in tow. He gingerly set down his tray of charred cookies amongst the other desserts while the boys took a seat. As Sebek gazed at the rows of meat pies and pound cakes spread out before them, Silver fidgeted in his chair.

The last of the partygoers having finally assembled, the band picked up their instruments and began to play. There was no electricity in the valley, and aside from the small handful of families that could afford imported record players, music was traditionally played live, both for private enjoyment, and for public celebrations. Most fae children, as a result, learned to master at least one instrument as part of their general education, and while Lilia and Malleus both were highly skilled in a wide variety of stringed instruments, Silver could play only a few, clumsy chords on the guitar - and nothing else - having suffered greatly under his father's abstract instruction.

The theme that night was "Rhythm and Blues", and the band played a selection of human songs that had lately entered the valley's cultural zeitgeist, a record-short 50 years after first debuting overseas. The partygoers danced uproariously, all of them eager to show off the new steps they'd been practicing the past month - twisting and turning and stomping their feet so thunderously the entire cabin shook from their gesticulations.

After the first song ended and a transitory lull settled over the party, Silver took the opportunity to finally voice his discomfort. Sitting up straight in his seat, he said, “I’m gonna go sit outside, it’s hot in here. You wanna come, Sebek?”

Sebek tugged absentmindedly at his suspenders while he thought. “I should like to partake in some of the fare, so I shall remain here with Sir Lilia for now.”

“Okay,” Silver replied with a shrug. He walked into the swarm of dancers just as the next song began, vanishing amongst the undulating crowd a moment later.

Lilia wished desperately to follow after him. He'd apologized repeatedly for snapping at Silver the other day, and for their fight the evening prior, both times attempting reparation through the offer of a new sword or other training implement, or ordering dinner from Silver's favorite restaurant in town - methods that had always proven successful in the past - but the boy had shot down any notion of making peace. Deciding to allow Silver his space, Lilia rose from his seat and cut a large piece of cake for Sebek, grabbing for himself a glass of berry juice before sitting back down again. He drank deeply; a familiar warmth began to pool in his stomach and radiated pleasantly into his skin, gathering up and pushing out the restlessness that had been plaguing him since the night prior, so that it lifted away from his body like the mist after a rainstorm. He downed the rest of his glass lethargically, only getting up to move whenever Sebek politely asked for another slice of cake.

The pair observed the dancers in silence together, Lilia apathetically, Sebek with great interest, his bright eyes jumping excitedly between his parents and his sister, narrowing in contempt each time the latter's current dance partner whispered something in her ear that made her smile. He resolved not to dance with the perpetrator, a young woman he recognized as one of his sister's classmates, if offered, and the prospect of this future rejection delighted him even more than his final bite of cake.

Half an hour later, Pa Zigvolt came staggering over to their table, his pinched face dripping with sweat. He stood before them for a moment, swaying slightly, trying to catch his breath, then cleared his throat and announced, meekly, “Seb, your ma said she wants to dance with you next.”

Sebek's heart plunged into his stomach. He nodded and slowly stood up, wobbling a little as he marched stiffly towards the dance floor.

After watching his son leave, Pa Zigvolt sank down into one of the empty seats with a groan. He took out his handkerchief, and as he began dabbing at his wet face, a pained smile formed on his lips. “What a woman!” he panted, amazed. “I’m telling you, she’d go all night if you let her.”

Lilia smirked. “Sounds like she’s just like her father.”

“Yeah,” Pa Zigvolt sighed. And then he frowned. “Wait, what…? What do you mean by that?”

“What did you mean by that?” Lilia countered with a gentle smile.

The color drained from Pa Zigvolt’s face. The layer of sweat he’d only just managed to wipe off suddenly rematerialized across his skin, and he nervously balled his soaked handkerchief in his hands. “I- I was just talking about dancing!!” he stammered in defense.

Lilia laughed. “Then we’ll say that I was, too.”

Exasperated, Pa Zigvolt clicked his tongue. He timidly glanced around the room, and, upon confirming none of the other partygoers appeared to have heard them, deflated in his seat once again, kicking out his still quivering legs in front of him to let them rest. He set his used handkerchief on the table and extracted a fresh one from his crumpled breast pocket while scanning the dance floor, and quickly spotted the shock of his son's bright green hair weaving through the crowd, heading towards Ma Zigvolt at the front of the cabin, where she stood towering above the other partygoers. Smiling, he resumed mopping his face, and quietly breathed a prayer of good luck for the boy.

“There you are, honey! I was waiting for you.” Ma Zigvolt smiled brightly as her son approached, and Sebek nodded in greeting. In stark contrast to his father, whose haggard breathing still rang out far behind them, his mother was the very definition of radiant; the cabin walls were lined with rows of glass lamps, each one burning a magic flame of an amber hue, and where their dim incandescence reached out and cupped her rosy face, her skin seemed to effuse its own milk white glow in return. She grabbed his arm and drew him flush against her, causing him to yelp in surprise, but he quickly regained his composure, and placed his trembling hands on her broad waist as she instructed.

They stood directly before the band, so close that Sebek could see his warped reflection in the gleaming brass of the saxophones; next to his doppelganger, within the piano's raised lid, was an umber copy of his mother, smiling gently at him. Turning his gaze, he watched as the singer stepped forth and clapped his hands, casting a simple spell to amplify his voice. The band members, thus signaled, each became animated in turn; one after another the horns swung in golden arcs up to their players' lips; the drummer and the pianist sat rigid in their seats; the guitarist and the bassist hovered their fingers over strings that seemed to vibrate in anticipation; finally, the singer, glancing around him, issued with a nod of his head a silent affirmation of their readiness, took a deep breath, and began to sing.

“Here they have a lot of fun

Puttin' trouble on the run

Man, you find the old and young

Twistin' the night away”

The dancers convened before the band immediately, some forming pairs, others choosing to shuffle on their own. The song called for a basic step, if danced solo: one need only to dig one's foot into the floor and twist it, as though "squashin' a damn bug", as Baul had once commented - with the elbows and hips swung in a similar, rhythmic fashion. Those who'd coupled up alternated this movement with a variety of turns, spins, and other footwork predominant in the swing style of dance. As they moved, the sound of their shoes scuffing and squeaking against the hardwood floor became a backing beat to the music.

The cabin was formed from stacked logs of hewn pine, affixed together with a mixture of mud and clay; the night's heat slipped through any miniscule gaps it could find in this rudimentary sealant - through the walls, the flooring, the roof - combining with the warmth that radiated from the mass of bodies packed together in that small space, so that the air within the building was as heavy and hot as the air without. Sebek's face quickly bloomed bright pink from the heat, and then dark red and splotchy; the impudent strands of hair he’d spent over half an hour in the bathroom slicking down fell limp over his eyes, heavy with perspiration. He understood at once his father's fatigued condition, and discarded the disgust he'd felt when he saw the man staggering to their table earlier, a newfound compassion taking its place.

“They're twistin', twistin'

Everybody's feelin' great

They're twistin', twistin'

They're twistin' the night away”

It was all Sebek could do to brace himself against his mother's thunderous exuberance. She swept him across the dancefloor as though he were a leaf caught up in a storm. His gaze shifted rapidly between her smiling face and his own shuffling feet, worried he might stumble and fall. Noticing this, Ma Zigvolt’s heavy body shook with laughter, her voice deep and rich like a dove’s call, and Sebek decided that he would never hear a more wonderful sound in his life. He soon forgot all his apprehensions; his shining white smile accompanied his reddened cheeks, and he nuzzled his face below the swell of his mother’s breast, as content as a nursing kitten.

A moment later, several of the dancers detached themselves from their partners and floated away. One of the Zigvolts' neighbors caught Sebek's mother, and his sister drifted over to take her place. He steadied himself against the thick trunk of her arm. She was wearing a pleated, pearl white dress, with a floral pattern sewn in golden thread along the neckline, the bottom falling down to just below her knees. The dress billowed out as she twirled, so that the hem unfurled around her like the petals of her namesake. Her pretty face was just as flushed as his, and her bright green eyes shone like pure jade; it was as though she had grown several years younger that night, no longer appearing to him as the young woman who had departed for college a year ago, but like the little girl of his infantile memories. They whirled and whirled, giggling until their stomachs hurt, as if sharing together in some great secret.

The floor groaned under a storm of stomping feet, the windows shook precipitously in their crudely cut frames. The crowd roared, voices low and high emerged from the swaying mass to accompany the singer at the end of each verse. Though there was not a drop of alcohol to be found in that cabin, many of them moved belligerently. They were intoxicated purely by the clang of the drums, the blare of the trumpets, the rumble of the singer's low voice - each of these more potent a drug to the fae than any other known substance on the planet.

At the back of the cabin, Lilia and Pa Zigvolt laughed and clapped along from their seats. Lilia's eyes darted around the room as he clapped, trying to locate his son, but the wall of dancers surging back and forth blocked his view.

“Lean up, lean back

Lean up, lean back

Watusi, now fly, now twist

They're twistin' the night away”

Outside, Silver sat alone on the doorstep. The sounds pouring out of the cabin washed over him in tumultuous waves. He'd heard many of the songs before, at prior dances, or on Pa Zigvolt's record player, and the familiarity of the music felt like a reassuring hand on his thin shoulders that night. He swayed gently to the beat, noticing at times how the slurred voices of the partygoers would rise above the band’s thunderous performance, and at one point he looked up and wondered if they had all grown drunk on the wine-dark sky.

He yawned loudly. The hot anger from his father’s recent injury still burned dimly in his stomach, and he wavered between his desire to snuff out the last few dying embers, or to let them fester still. He wasn’t used to this feeling, this irritation that clung to his tired flesh like a tick. His father had upset him before, over trivial matters that had seemed substantial to his child’s heart at the time – and once over something he understood was sincerely very grave – but he could not recall ever feeling truly angry towards the man.

All his life he'd thought himself plain and unmemorable, a pale, living blemish upon the fair folk and their preternatural beauty. But that day, when his father had revealed the truth to him, that was the first time in his life he'd ever felt ugly. The lone attestation to his maturation - all those miserable nights he'd spent in the wilderness as part of his training, often alone, other times accompanied by Sebek, cast hundreds of miles away from the clearing and all its conveniences, relying solely on his magical prowess, his wit, and a small set of tools to make it through the night - had all this time been a lie. Had any of his accomplishments been real? Had a single jot of his father's pride for him ever been genuine? What good was the torture of his training! What good was the endless exhaustion, the cold fear wrought by those awful, lonely nights, all the callouses and scars he'd been led to attain as a child and would now forever mar the alabaster of his flesh! To have ascended the black crags of the Forbidden Mountain, to have crossed endless deserts and forded raging rivers with trembling arms and legs, and yet to have failed to notice his father had been there with him the entire time! Or, perhaps he had noticed, perhaps he had noticed and merely pretended not to, to assuage the frightened little boy he now realized he truly was. Or, perhaps the man had secluded himself somewhere far beyond Silver's reach, perhaps he'd been observing him from behind the stars or the moon. But this last thought only wounded him further, as though even the heavenly bodies had betrayed him, too. He turned away from them now, not wishing for them to see him cry.

Humiliation is one of life's cruelest teachers, and that day it had taught Silver that nowhere in his house, nowhere in that land was he safe. Nowhere could he escape from the prison that was his father's gaze.

The dance proceeded languidly, drawing on as the stars drifted quietly through the night sky. Pa Zigvolt, having at last recovered from his wife's fervor, had left Lilia to go dance with his daughter. Alone, Lilia remained in his seat at the back of the cabin, tapping his feet on occasion, or humming along to the songs he recognized, but did not otherwise participate any further in the festivities. He tiredly declined each of his neighbors' offers to try their cakes and their pies, raising an eyebrow when he noticed, an hour into the party, that his own plate of cookies was still untouched. He angrily crunched one of the charcoal black disks - frowning not at its flavor, which he found as decadent as anything else his impotent taste buds could detect, but at his neighbors' general ignorance towards good food.

Upon exhausting their repertoire of fast-paced numbers, the band called for a short interlude, at which conclusion the singer cleared his throat and announced, “Alright, ladies and gents. We’ll be slowing things down a bit for these last few songs.” The band behind him reassembled itself; the guitarist and the bassist returned their instruments to their cases, trading them for a pair of violins, and a portion of the brass section retired entirely. The violins, perched proudly on their players shoulders, let out a long, plaintive note, and then the singer parted his lips once more.

His voice hitherto had been brash and booming, a perfect accompaniment to the vibrant music, but now it melted into something as smooth as velvet, flowing like a summer breeze over and around the audience, dripping into their hearts with the sweetness of honey. The thunder of shuffling feet was no more. There was only the slow swaying of couples - lovers with their partners, mothers and fathers with their children, and neighbors with their friends.

“I wish you bluebirds in the spring

To give your heart a song to sing

And then a kiss

But more than this

I wish you love”

Lilia perked up as the first verse concluded, his gaze darting immediately to the front of the cabin. He recognized the song; he'd first heard it decades ago, while on a weekend trip he'd taken to the Queendom of Roses. It was during a period of his life where he'd been "going through the motions", as he'd regularly complain to Baul, plagued incessantly by an ennui that so often strikes those transitioning into their twilight years. In desperate need of a distraction, he spontaneously booked a flight to the nearest country - he didn't care which one, only that the ticket was cheap enough to justify paying for a farmhand during his absence. On the evening of the first day of his trip, while having dinner in his hotel, he learned from the waiter that there was to be a jazz orchestra - or "big band", as the humans called it - hosted in the ballroom located on the establishment's ground floor, and that patrons could attend the performance for free. His interest piqued, he rented a suit from a local tailor, freshly pressed, and perfumed with a crisp eau de toilette he'd brought along with him, and ordered a bouquet of fresh roses sent to his room, the brightest of which he trimmed and placed in his lapel.

Fae and human relations had long cooled down to a congenial level by then, and he danced comfortably with a number of human partners that night, free from the vicious admonishments that had disturbed him on his prior travels. They danced the same dances the fae before him had been dancing all night, and the performance concluded with the same song the band at the front of the cabin was playing now. It was the only number he'd sat out for, not wishing to engage in the cumbersome intimacy that slow dances demanded, and he'd observed the other couples with great interest; they all swayed in a gentle unison, moving like the fields of tall grass that grew near the meadow before his home, so that he felt like he'd been cast under a trance while watching them. When he returned to Briar Valley later that week, he promptly disremembered everything about the song - its lyrics, its rhythm, its melody - his attention wrested first by his responsibilities on the homestead, and then by his young son.

It was a few months after his acquisition of Silver, when he and the child both were still suffering from the boy's interminable fits, for which Lilia had long exhausted all his patience and energy into locating a cure, that he finally recalled the song he'd once heard all those years ago. One morning, with the wailing infant in his arms, its little face bright red and puckered, he was despaired to find his usual consolation tactics - rocking the baby, swaddling it, offering it a moistened rag to suckle on - had all lost their effects, and he paced back and forth across the living room, debating if he should call on the Zigvolts again, or attempt to find an alternative solution on his own.

He was tired, both mentally and physically; the weeks lately had been passing him by in an endless, uniform blur, each day demarcated by whatever twilight hour the baby would surrender to its circadian needs and drift off to sleep. In the midst of his fatigued panic, something that had for decades been slumbering in the recesses of his mind finally awoke then; the lyrics and melody he'd long forgotten burst forth from the cerebral pit they’d been cast into, reassembling themselves as brilliantly as the molten birth of a newborn star. Parting his lips, his voice nigh higher than a shaky whisper, he began to sing, “I wish you bluebirds in the spring…”; by the end of the first verse, the child's loud cries had hushed into a quiet whimper; before the conclusion of the song, it had fallen fast asleep. It was like he'd discovered a panacea; from then on, any time Silver was upset or fearful, or on stormy nights when the thunder was too loud and the lightning too bright for him to be able to fall asleep, Lilia would gather the boy into his arms and sing to him, dispelling the child's every perturbation with the low hum of his voice.

Lilia's heart sank, realizing in that moment just how long it'd been since he'd last sung it for Silver, likely not for months, or for a year, even, and yet - he smiled; this was their song, and now here was the perfect chance to finally reconnect with his withdrawn and sullen child once more!

Trembling with excitement, he shot up from his seat. He fought his way through the throng of dancers until he found Silver, still sitting alone on the stoop outside. He grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him back into the cabin, but Silver dug his heels into the ground as they reentered the crowd.

“Stop it, I don’t want to dance,” Silver said with a glower.

Lilia sighed. “Oh, come now. Can’t you entertain your old man just for one song?”

“I don’t want to dance!” Silver repeated louder, putting as much stress on each word as he could muster. Some of the partygoers turned to look at them, and their curious stares made him flush.

Lilia tugged on the boy’s arm and offered him a reassuring smile. “Just this one song, and then we'll go home and you can sulk all you want.”

Silver ripped Lilia’s hand away, his face contorting into an angry grimace. “I said stop it! You’re embarrassing me!”

“But Silver! This is-!”

He pushed past Lilia and stormed out the door. Outside, the sky and the ground below it had merged into a single, black swath, so that his white head contrasted like a point of light against it, appearing like a star floating through the darkness. Lilia watched him walk away from where he stood frozen in shock, his rejected hand still hanging in the air. He did not move as the dancers silently drifted all around him; most of them did not turn to look at him, as though he were nothing more than a small obstruction in a stream.

“I wish you shelter from the storm

A cozy fire to, to keep you warm

But most of all when snowflakes fall

I wish you love”

Later, long after the last notes of the music had faded away, Lilia whispered, “But this is our song.”

VI.

Silver awoke the next morning long after the songbirds had concluded their matinal performance. The world outside was grey and silent, and he stepped through it as quietly as the pine boughs brushing together in the wind. He moved with confidence, his eyes habitually adjusted to low light, and followed a patch of wild coreopsis and daylilies that spread lace-like on the ground before him. They appeared to have claimed for themselves all the meager drops of sunlight that percolated through the clouds, shining like gemstones in the dim darkness.

He'd slept poorly last night, plagued by dreams of the dance, and his thoughts once more drifted away from him while he plodded through his chores, traveling far beyond the clearing, down to the cabin just past the forest's edge, where they pooled within it alongside the stagnant summer heat. Last night at the dance, a warmth had flowed from his father and into him where his fingers had touched his arm, and again and again, as he lay in bed upon returning home, he'd felt it anew, felt it erupt into the hot rage that had coursed through his veins when he'd stormed out the door. A part of him was sorry to have upset the man, having now belatedly realized his harmless intentions, but a greater part of him was struck by a deep frustration - his body ached with it; it prickled at his skin as though he'd bathed in poison oak, so that more than once he felt his face twist into a scowl while he worked.

The animals, too, noticed his contortions. The chickens coalesced at his feet as he gathered their eggs; the pigs butted him gently as he refilled their trough; and the young calf, renown for its stubborn shyness, detached itself from its mother for once and loitered by his side, unsure of what to say. Silver sighed at all of this. His whole life he'd had a peculiar connection with animals. They would sense his vexations and his fears, and would come to him, unbidden, offering him their crude affections in a variety of forms - sometimes pinecones or hickory nuts covered with specks of leaflitter, other times poorly picked wildflowers still dangling with heavy roots, each of these gifts held with utmost tender in their mouths or little hands. But he had not the patience for their ministrations that day, and he dismissed the chickens and the pigs and the calf each with a scoff and a wave of his hand. The heifer, however, he failed to evade.

She was the eldest of the Vanrouge's livestock - a wise, if not shrewd, creature; only a year younger than Silver, they had tumbled across the clearing together in their infancy, and most of what he knew of animal husbandry he'd learned from her. That morning, she had refused to vacate the lean-to in protest of the dismal weather, and she was waiting for him there when he approached her with his milking pail and wooden stool in hand. Once seated, his hands and his attention preoccupied with stripping the foremilk from her teats, her broad body blocking the exit, she turned her heavy head towards him, and issued from her liquid eyes the same question that had been tormenting him all that morning: Are you alright? Her plaintive gaze struck him like an ambush. Ensnared, he fumblingly released her udder and stroked her sides, ensuring her through gritted teeth that he was perfectly fine. Satisfied by his response, she turned away, and leisurely resumed her meditations.

After finishing his chores, he returned to the cottage and forced down a tasteless bowl of oatmeal and some scraps of white bacon. His thoughts raced while he ate. Within his mind flew bits and pieces of anger, trepidation, worry, and sorrow, and these he took into his calloused hands and pressed together, trying to mold them into something he could understand, but they ultimately formed into an idea, instead. This discovery satiated him where his meager meal had not, and he smiled as he brought his dishes to the sink.

When Lilia stumbled out of his bedroom an hour later, half-asleep, and still clad in his dress shirt and pants from the night prior, he found Silver waiting for him by the front door, his canvas knapsack slung across his shoulders. As he began to yawn a greeting, Silver stiffened and cut him off, rapidly spitting out a gruff request to go to the Zigvolt's before turning to face him. His tone was so severe that his words struck Lilia's skin like a splash of ice water, causing him to sober immediately, and he numbly gave his permission with a slow nod of his head. They left together after Lilia got changed, Silver leading the way, Lilia trailing far behind him.

The grey curtain of the sky had pulled back to reveal an angry red sun behind it. Summer had reached its height then, and the entire valley was plainly sullen. The trees, seeming to sag in the heat, stood with their great branches drooping weakly; the songbirds concealed amongst them cycled between a restless dozing and a fitful agitation, too uncomfortable to sing. Silver, however, cut unphased through the stifling air. His hair blazed like white fire, and the shimmering light around him made him appear at times like a mirage to his lagging father. Upon reaching their destination, and after an exchange of curt farewells, Silver glanced behind him as he opened the front door, but all he saw was the thin line of the man's back receding into the haze of the forest.

Silver found Sebek upstairs in his bedroom, pouring over sheets of magical formulae spread out across the floor. He stepped gingerly into the room, being careful not to disturb any of Sebek's materials, announced himself with a throaty, "Hey", and then promptly launched into a recount of last night. He spoke so rapidly it felt like his words were slipping blindly off his tongue. He blinked away hot tears as he talked, his anger and his hurt boiling up each time he mentioned his father. When he finished, he sighed, and then began nibbling on his lips, unsure of what he next wished to say. Sebek waited patiently for him to continue.

Finally, after a tense pause, Silver grumbled, “He keeps treating me like I’m a dumb kid and It’s driving me nuts. I just dunno know what to do anymore.”

Sebek frowned. “And you’re certain you’ve cast aside all your childish whims?”

“Yeah,” Silver nodded solemnly.

“Hmm…” Sebek thought for a moment, and then his lips pulled up into a smirk. “Then I should think the solution is obvious, you twit!”

“And what’s that?”

Sebek crossed his arms. “Recall Sir Lilia’s and my grandfather’s old war stories. Whenever they carried out some grand feat or other, they’d be lavished with adoration upon their return home. Clearly, you simply need to accomplish some sort of heroic act, and then your father shall finally recognize the man that you’ve become.”

“Yeah…” Silver murmured, nodding his head again. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Sebek. That’s a great idea, thank you.”

The praise made Sebek swell like an adder. He puffed out his chest and jutted his chin. “Truly, you are fortuitous, Silver! To have a friend as clever as I!”

Silver smiled. “I sure am.”

Sebek was taller than Silver by a single, coveted inch. And he was stronger, too, heavy and thick everywhere his companion was gangly and thin. But still Silver was more skilled at magic and combat than him, and he could count on one hand the number of times he’d bested his fellow apprentice in battle. Silver held over Sebek's head something he would never be able to reach no matter how much taller he grew: namely, the fact that Silver was older.

Sebek was only twelve, still just a child. Adolescence fascinated him severely, having watched it radically transform his older brother and sister before his eyes, and he was jealous that Silver got to enjoy all its mysteries before he could. Every morning, gripped with excitement, he’d snatch the desk calendar from his bedside table with trembling hands, eager to see if it was finally the day when he, too, would be permitted to enter that strange and curious world of young adulthood. And every morning his little shoulders would sag in disappointment as he read the date. He’d begun wondering lately if it would ever be March 17th again, thinking that perhaps the planet sought to deny him his wish, and was intentionally dawdling in its flight around the sun. The idea of a great conspiracy pleased him, which helped to placate his usual disappointment.

Now presented with the chance to prove his capabilities before all the adults around them, he trembled with excitement. They fell immediately to their plotting. First, Sebek suggested they apprehend a robber or other trivial criminal, but Silver quickly dismissed the idea, doubting its feasibility. He additionally dismissed Sebek's propositions that they search for long lost treasure and other such artifacts for similar reasons. When Sebek mentioned they could contact Malleus for assistance, Silver balked. He hadn't seen the man all summer, and hadn't heard his name in weeks - the young prince had been preoccupied with helping their country recover from the aftermath of last month's monstrous storm, traveling from waterlogged village to waterlogged village, magically repairing homes and rejuvenating flooded farmlands wherever he went. Silver rejected this proposal, too, explaining that Malleus likely wouldn't have the time available to help them, and noting internally that he'd only betray their schemes to his father, anyways, and they quickly moved onto their next point of contestation. After much debate, and much grumbling and whining, and following a short intermission to enjoy some of Ma Zigvolt's lemon pie, Sebek finally proposed an idea that the both of them agreed on.

A rogue grizzly bear had been making a feast of the local livestock over the summer, a missing sow of the Zigvolts and a milk calf of their neighbors amongst its victims. Any attempt the past month to detain or eliminate it had ended in failure, and it'd been outwitting the small community unlike anything the elders had ever seen. Recently, for example, a family living down the road had attempted to capture it after it had devoured several of their chickens during one of its nightly jaunts. They placed a series of foothold traps around the coop, buried under leaf litter, and totally de-scented using a complex spell, and awoke the next morning to find their yard blanketed with bloody white feathers, not a single trap containing within its undisturbed jaws even one strand of the creature's hair. Silver and Sebek decided they would bring an end to the terror themselves.

Its massive tracks had last been spotted heading into the Obsidian Forest - a congested strip of towering firs, spruce, and pine trees located to the north of the Zigvolt's. The trees there grew so closely together that hardly any sunlight was able to pierce through the thick canopy, casting the land inside of it into an endless shadow. One had the feeling Nature had forgotten that place in her designs; it was quiet as something alive should not be. There was no birdsong during the day, and neither the soft gurgle of the river nor the wind brushing against the trees. Tawny owl cries could sometimes be heard emanating from it at night - lonely, sharp trills that rang out almost like a warning. The fae were not known for being a judicious people, but they were perceptive, able to detect on their skin the slightest gradations in magic and other immaterial energies that even the finest tuned devices could not, and they stayed far away from the forest in confidence of its dangers.

Silver, however, was a human, and Sebek, a half-fae, and they had long viewed the forest with a simple, innocent curiosity, both unable to sense the unseen forces that made their countrymen so cautious of that unknown realm. As such, and with Silver consumed with thoughts of his redemption, and Sebek thinking of little more than all the praise their great adventure would earn him, they boldly made plans to meet together early the next morning before their parents awoke. Lilia regularly went to bed shortly after 11 o'clock, and Silver would make his escape several hours later. He would cut a path straight to the Zigvolt's, avoiding the long, winding trail his father had erected for him through his land, and would rendezvous with Sebek behind their home. They talked until the sun set and shadows flooded the room, but neither moved to turn on the light, for the excitement in their hearts brightened that dark space better than any candle or lamp ever could. Silver returned home that evening feeling lighter than he had in weeks.

Silver dipped his hands into the kitchen basin and splashed some of the cold water onto his face. The windows above him were a pair of jet black panes, dotted with a smattering of stars that twinkled distantly like lightning bugs. He couldn't remember ever having seen a sky so desolate before, and he marveled at the miniscule pinpricks of light as he slowly dried his hands with a terry washcloth, anxiously aware of each and every sound he made.

He completed one final circuit throughout the house before leaving. Moving on his tiptoes, he double-checked that the covers were drawn over his bed and the pillows beneath them were positioned correctly, and that his father was still asleep, the last of which he ascertained with a furtive glance thrown inside the man's room. When he reached the front door, he sank back down on his heels and bent over to re-lace his boots.

He'd packed his knapsack before going to bed, filling it with a handheld lantern, his canteen and compass, an emergency kit, a small bag of cornmeal and a cast iron pan, and some pemmican and soda biscuits he'd wrapped in napkins. His crossbow hung snug over his shoulders; his favorite hunting knife was nestled deep into the leather sheath hanging from his belt. He and Sebek had agreed not to come back until their mission was fulfilled, and if they ran out of provisions before felling their quarry, they'd be well prepared to secure more.

The house breathed him out like a sigh. The moon unfurled overhead like an orchid in full bloom, vastly outshining the indolent stars hovering around it, and it bathed his surroundings in a pale film of argent light. The broad, black blocks of the cows and the pigs asleep in their enclosures jutted out from the darkness, and the black pyramid of the chicken coop rose silently above them. He crept past the dozing creatures and slipped into the woods. His legs instinctively followed the same trail he'd taken countless times before. His feet he lifted and placed methodically, stalking as he did when he hunted, fearing that the soft crackle of the twigs and leaves underneath him might awaken his sleeping father from hundreds of yards away.

Presently, the felled oak tree that marked the northernmost boundary of his father’s land appeared. Its withered roots splayed out like the gnarled fingers of an outstretched hand, their grasp extending far above his head. He reached out and rested his palm against the trunk. Its bark was soft and brittle from decay, blanketed with a thick layer of moss and algae. He knew not if his father had struck down this once mighty giant himself, or if it had merely collapsed in its old age, only that he was forbidden from passing by its sentinel gaze on his own. He grabbed onto the slippery bark and scrambled atop the trunk, letting out a shaky breath as he stood up.

All of the land before him stretched beyond the confines of his father's territory. Each and every bush and tree and creature, every shadow, every undefined mass lurking in the darkness there was to him an alien, a stranger. Somewhere further beyond lay the Zigvolt’s homestead, and further past that, the Obsidian Forest. The mountains erupted in the distance like a row of black fangs piercing the sky. Behind him waited the clearing and the cottage, the toolshed and the garden, the wheatfield and the pasture and the meadow – each of these forming another slat of his boyhood cradle, another barrier around the only world he'd ever truly known.

He lifted a trembling hand and groped at the air. He'd been expecting some sort of rebound from broaching his father's magical perimeter, but it did not come. He leapt off the trunk and landed on the ground with a loud crash. The sound echoed viciously all around him and yet - there was nothing. No harsh cry of his name. No thudding of feet racing up behind him. Nothing. Had he successfully escaped? Gasping, he rapidly swung his head this way and that, scanning his surroundings. Here was the copper blur of a fox slipping through the forest undergrowth, there was the heavy grey body of a raccoon lumbering slowly behind it. And here, again, the silver outline of a barn owl peering at him from the thicket yonder.

He could see now that these were no specters, no apparitions - they were living things, with eyes like his and beating hearts like his, things that drank in the same sweet night air as him. All his fears vanished - it was as though he'd finally let out a breath he never realized he'd been holding in all his life. Re-shouldering his bag, he set off once more, his heart pounding with excitement, his body coursing with the ecstasy of this newfound freedom. He swept through the forest like a beam of moonlight. The five miles to the Zigvolt's he crossed in what felt like five steps.

Why was I ever afraid of this place? he wondered. Why was I ever afraid of anything in my life?

At three o'clock in the morning, less than an hour after he'd left the clearing, Silver stepped onto the dirt road that led to the Zigvolt's farmhouse. Breathless from his record flight, he took in long, quiet gulps of air as he neared the agreed-upon rendezvous location - the left-side porch, for there were no windows there - his eyes flicking occasionally to his sides, and to his rear, and to the spider web of starlight draped across the cottonwoods towering around him, his steps falling lighter than even the cloven feet of a vigilant deer. He immediately noticed the small, darkened figure hovering by the porch, and watched as it detached itself from the greater mass of shadows, revealing itself to be Sebek. His friend flashed him a triumphant smile, his little fangs shining bright white in the darkness.

"You made it!"

"Hush!"

Sebek's hands flew over his mouth. "Sorry!" he yelped as he turned to look at the house, his heart racing, but the stalwart building gave no reaction, remaining stone still, silent. Through his fingers, he sheepishly repeated, this time quietly, "Sorry." He quickly readjusted his knapsack from where it'd slipped down his shoulder, then hurried to join Silver in the road.

Silver rolled his eyes, grinning.

They padded cautiously through the darkness, their feet kicking up small clouds of dust from the earth beneath them, each one rising like an ochre breath before dissolving a moment later into the blue-black of the night. After walking for a length, Sebek pointed out from a row of identical log cabins his neighbor's home - namely, the one who'd recently tried to apprehend the beast after it'd feasted on their flock. They circled around back, ducking as they passed the lower story windows, and found, by a pair of crooked fence posts surrounding a small vegetable garden, a set of lumbering bear tracks that trailed away due North. Sebek crouched down and placed his hand in one of the prints. The massive groove was as broad as a dinner plate, so that even when he splayed and stretched out his hand as wide as he could, his fingertips stopped several inches short from the rim. The indentations from the claw marks looked like a set of daggers had been dragged through the ground. Silver swallowed thickly as he observed this. Tugging at Sebek's sleeve, he whispered hoarsely, "Come on, let's go."

The tracks led them further and deeper into the bowels of the adjacent woodland. Neither spoke, both of them gripped with a nervous excitement that bordered at times on trepidation. Occasionally, Silver's hands reached behind him for his crossbow, finding reassurance in the solidity of its metal stock. Sebek, too, had taken with him the children's rifle he'd received for his birthday last year. Purchased by his father while traveling overseas for a dental conference, he'd gloated joyfully to Silver upon receiving it, and had been treating it with the utmost care the past year, polishing it daily, and keeping it secured in a case he kept hidden underneath his bed. The fall prior, Silver had accompanied Sebek and his father when they'd gone duck hunting at the river and had received a turn using the weapon, with both boys dispatching several birds, each. Though Silver was amazed at its great strength, and though he found it a very lovely piece of craftsmanship, indeed, the sound of it firing hurt his ears, and he secretly hoped they wouldn't have to use it.

The trees gradually thinned out and fell away, receding into a tall, grassy meadow that, in turn, soon bowed down and terminated before another stretch of forest. But the shadowy structure looming before them was somehow different than all the other natural places they'd ever come across in their lives. It was darker than the night, silent; foreboding in a way that left them wondering if it was about to reach out a gnarled, earthen hand and strike them. This was the Obsidian Forest, and the bear's tracks disappeared within it.

The boys, having simultaneously come to a standstill at the edge of the forest, their hearts pounding, exchanged a tense look, then turned back to face the verdant bulwark. The moonlight fell like a curtain before them; Silver took Sebek's larger hand into his own and they stepped through it together. The air within the forest was several degrees cooler than without, and the shock of the cold was like jumping into the river on a warm Summer day. Sebek shook off Silver's hand with a grunt, and once freed, zipped his jacket and pulled up his collar. Silver, ignoring his friend's indignation, extracted his lantern from his bag, and lit it with a simple spell. He held up the device and slowly swung it back and forth it as he turned around.

All the light in the world was now contained within Silver's hands; everything around them was only an abstraction of what they understood to be total darkness. The copper glow from his lantern struck the surrounding fir trees, dimly illuminating the bone white bark covering their emaciated trunks. Their scraggly canopies converged together and formed a single, continuous, vegetative wall that strangled the moonlight within its matted foliage. The air was heavy with the clean smell of pine, underlaid with the rich musk of a humus that had been forming undisturbed for centuries. It was quiet, as the adults had described, but not completely devoid of sound - they could hear, emanating like an invisible vapor from the leaf litter, the silver song of crickets drawing their bows across their instruments; the wind had dropped its voice to a whisper, but they could hear this, too, threading through any microscopic gaps it could find in the leafy barrier overhead; and as they walked, there was the soft crunch of their boots sinking into the plush carpet of pine needles underfoot.

After a moment's consideration, Silver declared, "It's no big deal," and Sebek nodded mutely in agreement.

They'd been misled countless times before by the adults in their lives, having been warned of dangers they'd later discovered were, in truth, harmless in nature, such as cracking one's knuckles, or staying up until the early hours of the morning, and the Obsidian Forest they now added to this ever-growing list. But they remained cautious - Sebek walked with his hand looped around his rifle's strap, and Silver's eyes followed wherever the roaming light of his lantern touched the earth.

Their abscondment from home and their entry into the forest having now been completed, the final phase of their plan would be simple: they needed only to track the bear to its den, and kill it. This would not be unlike their usual training exercises, during which Lilia would deposit them in a remote location - often high atop some distant mountain range, or in the middle of a barren ravine - and they would be forced to survive on their own for days or weeks at a time, typically with an additional command to secure a target of Lilia's choosing, such as a wild animal, or an object he'd hidden deep in the wilderness. They had felled various species of direbeast before, both together, and on their own, and a bear would be no different. Knowing the creature's massive body would be too heavy for them to drag out of the forest on their own, they planned to cut off one of its paws to bring back as proof of their accomplishment, and would come back later to retrieve the rest, with assistance from the adults. Bear meat was a popular delicacy in the valley, and after the carcass was carved and distributed amongst the local community, Silver was determined to request a bottle of its golden oil - renowned for its anti-inflammatory properties - as a gift for his father.

Silver swept his lantern low over the ground, and with its pale glow as their beacon, they followed the tracks deep into the forest. They would occasionally notice movement in the darkness, fleeting figures and shapes that their nervous minds would automatically warp into the hulking mass of the bear, and each time, as they would begin to reach for their weapons, they would realize a moment later they'd stumbled upon nothing more than a small raccoon or an opossum on the prowl for food. They jumped at every such encounter, and at every unexpected noise that entered their peripheral - a heavy branch Sebek mistakenly stepped on rang out like a gunshot; a tawny owl's sudden cry boomed like a crack of thunder. For hours they proceeded tremulously; fear had been stalking them all that time like a shadow, and as the veil of darkness surrounding them lifted and gave way to daybreak, it vanished together with the night. They could not see the sun's yellow face above them, but they could feel its dappled light falling down on them like a warm and gentle rain. The canopy, which had hitherto been a solid, dark green streak, was now dotted with flashes of a vibrant cerulean blue.

With the night's vanquishment, they steadily grew more and more confident, feeling now important - older, even. They walked with their heads held high and their backs erect, pumping their arms and swinging their legs as though on the march. They kicked up cedar chips and pine needles as they walked, scattering them onto the ground like birdshot. The blood coursed through their veins hot as liquor; the temptation of glory drove them on like a whip. Each child began to envision himself seated like a king in the Zigvolt's parlor, regaling this tale to their neighbors and family, and joining a long line of men who had come before them - heroes and explorers, great and mighty conquerors of the strange and unknown.

They would stop - intermittently, and only for brief sprints - to rest, to drink water, or to re-lace their boots, and would then immediately resume their march as zealously as before. They hurried as fast as their legs could carry them, knowing that the creature would likely have returned to its den by that point, and that it would be fast asleep in preparation of its nightly activities - tracking it down before it awoke that evening would be vital to their success.

When they came across a noticeable gap in the canopy - a hole ripped open where a pine tree had collapsed, through which they caught their first, true glimpse of the sky since that morning - they agreed to take another short break. Amongst the various survival skills that Lilia had taught them was the ability to derive the time, and working together, they erected a rudimentary sundial using some branches they gathered from the ground. They calculated that it was presently midmorning, and that they must have covered several miles since entering the forest. They remained there for a few minutes longer, Silver sipping quietly from his canteen, Sebek dismantling their earthen clock. Languid clouds passed through the gap overhead. Silver recalled how, every winter, the pond near his home would freeze over, and yet he could still see fish swimming undisturbed beneath the thick panel of ice. He wondered if this was how they felt, watching the world pass by them silently up above. As he wiped his dripping mouth with his sleeve, he glanced over, and noticed that Sebek was frowning.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm getting hungry, that's all."

Silver put his canteen away. "You brought some food with you, right?"

"Of course I did!" Sebek bristled. He slid off his knapsack and rummaged inside it, cataloging each of his belongings out loud, more so to himself, than to the half-listening Silver.

"I've got biscuits and cornbread, some jerky, some apples..."

"Uh-huh," Silver said, stifling a yawn.

"My water bottle, of course. Aaannnd..." He reached deep inside, smiling when he felt his fingers touch what he'd been looking for.

"Some of my mother's snickerdoodles, freshly baked." He pulled out a brown paper bag, shaking it with a grin. "Sissy has been hogging them, but I was able to pilfer a few without her noticing." He poured several of the cookies onto his hand before returning the bag to his knapsack.

"Would you like one?"

"Sure, thanks."

Silver gingerly took one of the cookies from Sebek's outstretched hand and bit into it with a sigh. The soft dough crumbled in his mouth deliciously, each piece dissolving like a sugar cube on his tongue. The almost overwhelming smell of cinnamon, the faint hint of vanilla, the rich, buttery aftertaste, all made him think of Ma Zigvolt. He'd overheard her lamenting the loss of the family's sow a few weeks ago - she loved each of their livestock like her children, and the bear's cunning attacks had wounded her pride and her heart, both. He imagined, upon their return home, how her face would break into a smile when they told her what they'd done, presenting the news to her as though it were a freshly picked bouquet. The image was somehow sweeter than the cookie itself, and he licked the sugary crumbs off his fingers, tasting little more than a delicious contentment.

They resumed walking. For over an hour the forest stretched on unchanging and uninterrupted, before it began to angle sharply downhill, transforming eventually into a semi-exposed slope. The incline was so severe they had to descend on their hands and knees, slowly zigzagging from one tree to the next, at times using the exposed roots and fallen branches to rappel downwards. The plateau they arrived at was bisected by a meager creek, appearing as blue and as thin as the veins running down their arms. They lay on their stomachs and drank deeply from it, bringing the crystalline water to their mouths with their hands. Silver shook his head like a dog when he was finished, spraying ice cold drops everywhere, and Sebek pushed him away with a laugh. A school of minnows, each one a silver grain of rice, darted away at the commotion, but the water striders on the surface above continued their skating, unaffected. They washed their hands and refilled their canteens before moving on.

The sunlight filtering down through the forest canopy gradually became more intense as the morning rolled into afternoon. Silver and Sebek had been talking with one another at length ever since daybreak - discussing their plans and their upcoming glory, and pointing out all the flora and fauna around them - and their conversations slowed to a comfortable lull as the air grew increasingly warmer. Unable to tell the time without a further break in the canopy, one hour blended seamlessly into the other, so that occasionally, when they blinked, they would open their eyes to a world remarkably brighter and warmer than the one they'd been in just a moment before.

Late in the afternoon, as they picked their way through a pleasantly mild Summer haze, Sebek suddenly stopped walking and threw out his arm, blocking Silver. His bright green eyes bore laser-like into the distance; his whole body stiffened like a bird-dog alerting to game.

Unmoving, he stated plainly, "I do believe we've been here before."

Silver blinked. "Huh?"

"That spruce tree yonder, with all the moss on it," Sebek said, now pointing, "I've seen it before."

Silver studied the tree indicated for several moments, but could not determine how it differed from any of the other dozen trees surrounding it. Shrugging, he said, "It probably just looks like one we passed earlier. Tons of trees have moss on them."

"I know they do!" Sebek huffed, gritting his teeth. "But that patch there's shaped like a star. That's how I recognized it."

Silver looked again. The patch of moss did indeed resemble a child's simple depiction of a five-pointed star, but his mind refused to accept what it had just heard.

"That's impossible," he murmured, shaking his head. "We've just been following the bear's tracks this whole time. How could we..."

Silver frowned. His incredulity obscured his mind like an eclipse. As he stared at the bear's tracks - crisscrossing the ground in some areas, and issued in a straight line in others - they began to swirl before his eyes, forming a nameless thing that Silver knew he'd seen before, and after a terse moment of contemplation, he finally recalled where.

He thought of a time, years ago, when he and his father had spent the whole Summer attempting to snare a devious buck. The animal had pillaged their vegetable garden every night for weeks, tearing up their sweet potatoes and corn, and even daring to defile Lilia's prized tomato plants, and had avoided all their various traps and attempts to trail it. One day, after sitting together for several hours in a cramped tree stand, they were able to witness its genius. After passing directly before them, it disappeared for approximately fifteen minutes, then doubled back, retraced its steps to just before the stand, and cut into the forest in the opposite direction, at a sharp angle, so that its path formed a "V" when viewed from above. Even the most experienced hunter - whether human or animal or fae - would likely follow the original set of tracks, which would appear - and smell - fresher, having been laid down twice, and by the time the error was realized, the quarry would have long escaped. The buck, as if having calculated all of this, strode off that day waving the chestnut flag of its tail in victory.

And now here again was that same whirlpool of footprints, now here again was that same irrefutable display of animal cunning. The eclipse passed his mind; the light of his revelation nearly blinded him - they must have been going in circles for hours.

His eyes flew wide open; his heart thundered so viciously he wondered for a moment if it was about to burst. His eyes darted wildly about him, as though hoping to find some form of consolation hidden amongst the leaf litter. And then, in a moment of clarity, he recalled a new trick he'd recently learned, the very same one he now knew adults had been using on him and other children all his life: he lied.

"It's fine, Sebek. I know exactly where we're going." He turned away, so that his friend would not see him nervously biting his lip. He pulled out his compass and held it out this way and that, making a show of orienting himself.

"The bear just circled around here to try and shake us off its trail. We'll find it if we keep going..." His eyes scanned the ground, trying to deduce which set of tracks looked the freshest. "That way."

Sebek, frowning sternly, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. After a moment, his face relaxed, and he slowly replied, "If you insist..."

Silver let out a shaky breath. Sebek's immediate acquiescence, which he at other times would only earn after much coaxing and arguing and persuasion, excited him. He experienced once more the feeling of being much older and more important than he really was, and wondered for a moment if this was the true pleasure of being an adult. He made a note to emphasize this part of the story when he'd later recount it to his father - how he'd outwitted the terrible beast where all others before him had failed, and how he'd led himself and Sebek through what was sure to be their darkest hour. They would return home heroes, indeed!

"Come on, this way."

Thus continuing their journey, they picked a new trail in the direction Silver had indicated. Portions of the sky peeking through the canopy slowly turned a golden orange, others light pink or red, forming a mosaic of the sunset. The bear would now likely be active again, and out roaming the forest with them, and when Sebek mentioned this, Silver hurriedly explained that they could still locate its den in the meantime, and lay in wait for it to return, to which Sebek, still in an unusually agreeable mood, only nodded. Their enthusiasm from that morning waned together with the fading sunlight. They plodded on halfheartedly for hours; identical trees and shrubs and rocks extended all around them for miles. They nibbled on their sticks of jerky and pemmican as they walked, breaking off and exchanging pieces of dried meat with each other in lieu of conversation. Sebek's apples and corn bread and most of their biscuits they soon finished off, too.

Finally, evening gave way to night, and the world around them was plunged once more into darkness. As Silver fished in his bag for his lantern, Sebek suggested they quit for the day and set up camp, but Silver adamantly disagreed.

"Just a little bit further and then we'll stop," he said, struggling to relight the lantern as he spoke. "The den's gotta be close by."

"Hmph!"

And again, an hour later:

"We're almost there, I promise."

"Hmph!"

They slogged on wearily. Periodically, Silver would command they stop, and, taking out his compass from his pocket, would double-check the accuracy of their orientation, then indicate with a satisfactory grunt that they could continue moving. They did not rest, otherwise. Low hills and mounds they climbed felt to their leaden legs like mountains; meager creeks and streams they crossed seemed to stretch on for miles. The trees, crowding down on them, reached out and scratched at their arms and legs and faces with wooden claws as sharp as needles. Foxes and barn owls screamed out from deep within the forest, and their fatigued minds, instinctually recalling legends of all the various monsters that lurk within such darkness, heard amongst their mangled cries the laughter of evil witches, and the terrible roars of bogeymen and other foul beasts. The stars shone coldly above them, ignorant of their torment.

Eventually, the line of the bear's tracks duplicated, and then further split into a third and a fourth set, all at various points overlapping and crisscrossing the first one. Silver felt his heart sink further and further at the discovery of each new set, and when they all converged and disappeared into a tangled copse of towering spruce and fir trees, he felt it stop moving entirely. Stopping, he drew the lantern in a wide arc before him; his steady gaze swept across the rows of identical giants like the roaming beam of a lighthouse, moving slowly, searching them, daring them to offer him what he was looking for, as though conducting a silent interrogation. His pale watercolor eyes, always so soft, hardened into steel. Sebek became at once afraid of him.

"Silver, what are you-"

"Quiet!" Silver hissed, waving him off with his free hand, his other hand tightening its grip on the lantern until his knuckles bloomed white.

And then - he saw it.

There, deep within the copse, standing just off to the left, partly obscured by the long shadows cast by its brothers, was the same spruce tree from earlier that day, wearing the same star-shaped patch of moss upon its wooden breast. They'd simply gone in another, massive circle around the forest.

"Damnit!" Silver spat. "Damnit, damnit, damnit!"

"Silver!" Sebek whined, but Silver ignored him.

He ripped his compass from his pocket and held it before him with trembling hands. Its needle pointed North. He spun around 180 degrees, yet still it pointed North; he spun a quarter further - again, North. His jaw dropped. No matter which way he faced or how he held the compass, its needle only spun and spun, racing in time with his pounding heart. He threw it to the ground in disgust.

His adam's apple bobbed precipitously. "I swear I..."

"You see! I told you so!" Sebek huffed, stamping his foot. "We're lost!"

"Shut up!" Silver growled. "I need to think."

For several, long hours leading up to that point, Sebek had been languishing under a terrible secret, the truth of which was that he had known, ever since he'd first glimpsed that verdant star, that they were utterly, and completely, lost. However, he did not wish to embarrass his friend, for although he found pleasure in showing off his strength and his intellect, and in being able to do things that other children his age could not, he was not a cruel boy, and had no interest in causing others pain, for which reason he'd decided against questioning Silver's judgment. He had trusted that Silver would architect for them some miraculous solution, just as he always had done any time they'd encounter an issue when training, but Silver had failed, and now Sebek was scared. The volcanic plug that was his faith in his friend having been destroyed, he finally erupted. "I don't like this! I want to go home!" he cried, his voice quivering. "This isn't fun anymore!"

"Fun?" Silver spat. "We didn't come all the way out here to have fun, Sebek!"

He stormed towards the other boy; the pine needles snapped and popped like firecrackers under his feet. His voice rose to a crackling scream. "We came out here so I could get my dad to trust me! And now it's all ruined!"

Sebek sniffled, cowering. His eyes shone with the threat of crystal tears. Silver's anger shot out of him as rapidly as it had come.

"Everything's ruined..."

Their venture was over, and what had they to show for it but their knobby little elbows and knees, scraped and bruised and smeared with blood; their filthy clothing, torn and stained with their tears; their ruddy, dirt-smeared faces; and their eyes, red and swollen from crying? What were they, but two scared little children, who would now sit down and fold their hands, prim and proper, and wait for their parents to come wipe their faces and clean up their mess? There would be no glory, no praise; no retribution against Silver's father. He half-expected the man to suddenly emerge from the shadows and begin chastising him.

Silver picked up his compass, wiped it against his shirt, and shoved it back into his pocket. He quickly glanced at Sebek, then ducked his head again, ashamed. Staring at his shoes, he grunted, "Sorry."

Drawing his sleeve across his soiled face, Sebek grumbled through the fabric an acceptance of his apology. He then turned and stepped behind the wall of foliage to collect himself in private.

Silver waited for him. He rolled a pinecone back and forth under his boot for a few moments before gently kicking it away. The air buzzed with the sounds of nature's nocturnal choir; its leading members, a cloister of tree frogs hidden amongst the copse before him - each one a piece of peridot, emerald, or jade - sang quietly, joining their crystal voices with the crickets and katydids plucking their chitinous strings. He could hear Sebek's hushed sobs filtering through to him, carried upon the silver chorus like a pine needle pulled down a stream. He wished to go join him in his anguish, to throw his arms around his friend and to weep with him, but the shock of his failure had drained his body of all its frustrations, leaving him numb. He knew there would be time to mourn later; for now, his only focus would be on getting through the night.

Once Sebek returned, his eyes and his face cleaned and dry, if not still inflamed, Silver cleared his throat and said, "Remember what my father would always tell us: Best thing to do if you get lost..."

"...is to sit your ass down, and stay put." Sebek finished with a shaky sigh.

Silver set down his lantern and knapsack, and after taking out his emergency kit and placing it to the side, began clearing out a broad perimeter in the leaf litter, attempting to erect a small fire pit. Sebek, as if suddenly roused from a stupor, dropped all of his gear and moved automatically to help him. They labored slowly, dragging their long, weary arms apelike by their sides, fighting weakly against a sea of pine needles that seemed to never end. Their calf muscles, having been deflated of all their adrenaline and fear, burned with each of their languid movements. Ten minutes later, with the ground now barren, and their skin freshly pricked and bleeding, Silver used his magic to ignite the pile of tinder they'd gathered, then turned to rummage through his belongings once again. Beside him, Sebek flung himself against his knapsack and kicked out his legs with a groan. He pillowed his heavy head under his arms and observed the fire silently. The flames dyed his face in a wash of vermilion, elongating the shadows under his eyes.

Silver glanced at him as he removed the emergency blanket from his kit, still disturbed by his outburst.

"I brought some corn meal with me. We can make some hoe cakes or something later, if you want," he offered gently.

Sebek sniffled again. "Ok."

Silver circled their meager camp, searching for a place to hang the blanket, ultimately deciding upon the outstretched branch of a sagging pine tree. One side of the blanket was coated with a bright orange material, which he positioned facing away from them.

"That's to help people find us, right?" Sebek asked, pulling out the remaining biscuits from his bag.

"Right," Silver replied without looking back. He straightened out the blanket and frowned.

If anyone's even looking for us.

VII.

Had you stayed behind at the Vanrouge's cottage after Silver embarked on his misadventures, electing to observe Lilia as he went about his day, up to - and including - his ultimate reconciliation with his son, then you would have witnessed the following:

Lilia awoke, as usual, shortly past 7 a.m. He did not own an alarm clock, preferring instead to let his body awaken naturally, gently roused by the golden sunlight filtering through his curtains. He lay in bed for a few moments, wrapped in the warm pleasantries of his blankets and his lingering dreams and the ebbing darkness, yawning leisurely, listening to the song thrushes chittering softly outside his window. Then, with a snap of his fingers, the curtains drew back and fixed themselves into place. That morning was a fine one. Where the sky had been grey and congested the day prior, it had since been painted over in the brightest blue, reminiscent of a stalk of larkspur, with not a single cloud in sight.

For five minutes Lilia indulged in this his usual morning pleasure, before, like clockwork, his reality struck him - he suddenly remembered every vexing instance of his son's tumultuous behavior from the past few months; felt anew all the dull aches and pains tugging at his limbs, felt the impending exasperation of the long list of chores that awaited him that day; each recollection pricked at his mind and his heart as though they were bee stings. He threw off his blankets and sat up with a scowl.

After grabbing a cup of tea, he settled himself at the dining table together with a gardening catalog that had arrived in the mail recently. He flipped through it halfheartedly, circling with a pen any seeds and supplies he planned to purchase for fall, his gaze occasionally drifting away from the pages of colorful produce, wandering over to and slipping out of the kitchen and living room windows. He thus swept through a third of the catalog before noticing the animals' absence in the yard, realizing a moment later that he had yet to see Silver that morning, too. Presuming the boy had slept in again, he waited half an hour further before checking his room, at which point a dull uneasiness had begun to form in his stomach.

The darkness in the little room yawned cavernously as Lilia pushed open the door. The heavy linen curtains were drawn tightly shut; the comforter was pulled up flush against the headboard of Silver's bed, a long lump protruding motionlessly underneath it. His uneasiness exploding all at once in a poisonous concern, Lilia flew across the room in rapid, broad strides, alighting to his son's bedside in an instant. He whispered, his voice slightly trembling, "Are you feeling alright, sweetheart?", and, after receiving no response, reached out to stroke the head of the lump, his lips pulling into a frown as the mass gave buoyantly under his hand. He wrenched back the blankets, stifling a cry as a mound of pillows tumbled out before him. He gingerly picked up one of the pillows and dropped it to the floor again, as though expecting to find his child concealed beneath it.

"Silver!" he shouted, glancing wildly around him, but the only response was his own disgruntled echo.

Frowning again, he put his hands on his hips. Where the hell is he?

Upon completing a thorough search of Silver's room - including his closet, his chest, his hamper, and underneath his bed - Lilia swept through the rest of the house and the root cellar, opening every door, and upturning every piece of furniture he could find, and when this, too, proved fruitless, he continued his efforts outside. He looked in the pig pen and in the chicken coop, checked behind the cow's lean-to and inside the shed, and, for good measure, even stopped to peer inside the empty flower pots in the garden. But each of these places and their inhabitants, whether living or inanimate, offered him no leads, and rejected all his inquiries.

Standing in the middle of the garden, he crossed his arms and considered all the oddities he'd noted that morning. Several items from the house were missing, including Silver's knapsack and crossbow, as well as some candles and other supplies from the kitchen, and the trick with the pillows was one he'd used himself in his youth for late-night abscondments from the castle. All of these observations he could trace back to only one conclusion: This was all just some sort of childish prank.

"That little...!" Lilia grunted, balling his fists. He turned and stepped towards the gate, intending to continue his search in the surrounding woodland, but the sound of the cow's mournful lowing stopped him in his tracks. None of the animals had been fed or watered yet, and the garden was in desperate need of another weeding. After a brief deliberation, he decided he would tend to Silver's chores in his absence, and then, he would return to the cottage, and he would wait - he would not indulge the boy in his games.

Any fatigue he'd felt that morning was immediately flushed out of his body and replaced with a venomous rage. He swept across the clearing like a tempest; the animals scattered before him in terror. He tore open their bags of scratch and grain and threw them to the ground, careless of the waste. He stormed back to the garden and began ripping up the tangled mass of weeds suffocating the ground, tossing muck-covered fistfuls of crabgrass and dandelions over the fence; the pigs, having recovered quickly from their fright, dove noisily for the mess.

His mind raced, his thoughts jumping rapidly between all the different ways Silver's return could occur. Likely, he would try to sneak into the house later that night, coming in either through one of the windows, up through the cellar. Or maybe, made shameless by his caper, he would stroll through the front door, kick off his shoes, and throw his bag to the ground, moving with the bold swagger of a yearling buck. Lilia would be ready for him either way. He would wait for him in the living room, on the couch, facing the door, his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed and blazing. If the boy tried to sneak in, Lilia would hear him. If he came in through the front door, Lilia would see him. If he cried, so be it. If he whined and begged for forgiveness, Lilia would not give it to him. He'd had enough of the child's attitude, his insolence, his unwillingness to talk, his newfound proclivity to brush off each and every act of kindness Lilia tried to offer to him. Perhaps his own parental failures truly were to blame for their ongoing disputes, but he would not allow this blatant defiance to continue a moment longer. He would ground Silver - for a week, at a minimum - double his training exercises, forbid him from seeing Sebek- He crushed a dandelion in his fist. And have him do all the weeding that month! An impish grin flashed across his face as he plotted. The sun beat down on him reproachfully.

Hours later, frustrated and in pain, his clothes caked with dried mud and bits and pieces of crabgrass, he marched back to the cottage and threw himself face-first onto the sofa. He lay there for a few moments, unmoving, before a sharp spasm in his calf forced him to slowly, wearily, sit up. Palpating the now throbbing muscle, he realized in that moment just how much his anger had blinded him. Why didn't I just fucking use magic to do all that? Another stream of profanity poured from his lips.

He sat watching the hour hand of the wall clock slowly inch forward. He rose periodically, to glance out the windows, to refill his tea, to pace back and forth across the living room, his gaze fixed on the front door, his thoughts slowly congealing into the perfect, incendiary speech with which he'd lash the boy upon his return. But Silver did not return, not as noon rolled around, nor as Lilia prepared their dinner. By that evening, the molten rage in his body had cooled, hardening into a tense knot of worry.

Shortly before sunset, just as he'd risen to check the kitchen windows once more, a commotion sounded outside - something heavy was pounding across the clearing, heading rapidly for the cottage. Lilia leapt from the sofa and raced to the door, throwing it open with a scowl, the first in the long list of scathing remarks he'd been preparing for Silver all that afternoon poised on his lips, but both his anger and his relief evaporated when he saw that it was only Baul, rushing in long strides down the dirt path leading to the cottage. As the other man approached him and opened his mouth to speak, Lilia put up a hand to silence him. "Uh-uh, I don't have time for this today. If you're here for-"

"I'm not!" Baul huffed, tiredly swatting Lilia's hand away. "Please just listen to me, General."

Lilia crossed his arms and jut his chin, indicating for Baul to continue.

"You seen Seb today?"

"Sebek? No, I haven't. Why-..." His words trailed off, the answer to his question instantly forming in his mind.

"He's not... Don't tell me you can't find him?"

"We can't," Baul sighed. "We tore up the whole damn house, looked down by the river, all through the woods. Got some of the neighbors out helping us look. We figured he mighta snuck out to go play with your boy, so I came by to check."

"Sorry, but no, I haven't seen any sign of him today." Looking away, Lilia muttered, "...And Silver's gone, too, actually."

"Huh?" Baul's eyes widened in surprise. "Have you looked for him?"

"Of course I have!" Lilia scoffed. "I checked the whole clearing twice over. I'm thinking he just ran off somewhere because I..."

Baul raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, mirroring Lilia.

Lilia rolled his eyes. "He blew up at me the other night and probably just ran off for a while to get back at me. You know how kids are."

His apparent apathy inflamed Baul. He stalked over to Lilia, the dense column of his body twitching as he loomed over his former superior.

"That's it," he snarled, his nostrils flaring like an enraged bull's. "You're coming with me."

"Wha-"

Moving at a speed that belied his great size, Baul threw his arms around Lilia, caging the smaller man in his vice grip. One moment, they were standing in the clearing; the next, the ground disappeared beneath their feet, and the world exploded into kaleidoscopic streaks of color rushing all around them. Caught off guard, Lilia hardly had time to close his eyes before they landed on solid ground again a few seconds later.

Baul released him carelessly and walked away. Lilia slowly staggered after him, clutching his head, his vision swimming.

His quivering eyes concentrated first on the red beam towering before them, then moved to the smaller white block standing beside it. A sudden shift in the breeze carried with it the clean smell of cottonwood. He knew this place - they'd hurtled five miles away to the Zigvolt's home.

"Fucking warn me before you do that!" he hissed. Over the ringing of his ears, his mind vaguely registered several voices - some talking softly, and at least one other crying, but he could not discern amidst his blurry surroundings whom they belonged to.

Baul asked if there'd been any sign of Sebek while he was gone.

A broad green shape came forward and congealed rapidly into Ma Zigovlt. She was dressed in her dental scrubs, her dark green hair pulled back in a fraying ponytail. "No! Nothing!" she cried while pacing back and forth.

The two shapes behind her then revealed themselves to be Pa Zigvolt, also in his work attire, and Iris, sitting together on the steps of the front porch. Iris was weeping quietly, her head buried in her father's neck.

Turning to Lilia, Pa Zigvolt explained that Iris had been left alone to watch her brother that day, and it wasn't until late in the afternoon that she'd discovered him missing, having gone to check his room after he'd failed to appear for both breakfast and lunch. When a frantic search of the house and the backyard proved fruitless, she rushed into town and alerted the elder Zigvolts, who promptly canceled all their appointments for that afternoon to help her look. They rallied the neighbors, forming several search parties to sweep through the surrounding forests and the river, and after several hours of unsuccessful canvassing, it was ultimately Baul who suggested they inquire by the Vanrouge's.

Pa Zigvolt turned again to his daughter, gently squeezed her arm, and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and raised her head from his shoulder, allowing him to descend down the stairs. The family cat, which had been dozing elsewhere on the porch, promptly stood up, stretched, and padded over to Iris, taking her father's place. She scooped the animal into her arms and held it against her chest. She blamed herself bitterly for not noticing sooner her little brother was gone, and had been inconsolable for hours.

"Thank you so much for coming to help, Lilia." Pa Zigvolt said, shaking Lilia's limp hand. He glanced behind Lilia, then behind Baul, before asking, confused, "Where's Silver?"

"He's, erm..." Lilia hesitated, fearing another unpleasant reaction. "He's actually missing, too."

But the Zigvolt parents simply exchanged a silent look with one another, and Ma Zigvolt's voice was only gentle as she asked him to explain.

Lilia proceeded to recount his own experiences that morning, and by the time he finished speaking, the small group was in agreement that the boys had likely snuck away together. As they loitered in the front yard, heatedly discussing their next plan of action, a group of neighbors approached. One of them, an elderly fae known for his avid hunting, stepped forward, waving his hand.

"We found their tracks!"

"You did!? Where!?" Pa Zigvolt asked, his eyes shining in excitement - this was their first lead all day.

"Yessir, two little sets of feet headin' due North," the neighbor explained leisurely, scratching his arm. "We followed 'em a long ways and think we know where they're at. That's the good news."

Their hearts plummeted at his next words.

"Bad news is it looks like they went right into the Obsidian Forest."

The forest was still, the night air punctuated at times by the sound of Baul softly cursing at the branches and bushes impeding their way.

“I swear, when I find that boy,” he growled as he smacked away another insolent branch, “Ooh, I swear! When I find him, I’m gonna…!”

Lilia rolled his eyes. Baul had never so much as laid an unkind finger on any of his children or grandchildren, and his grumbled threats never resulted in anything more than a glare or a scowl or a frown.

They'd split up, Baul and Lilia forming one search party, Ma and Pa Zigvolt another, each covering their own half of the forest. The Zigvolt's neighbors remained at the house with Iris, ready to send out an alert should the boys return on their own, partly to keep the still despondent girl company, and partly out of a reluctance to come with them.

And so Lilia and Baul, and Ma and Pa Zigvolt, elsewhere, had been canvassing the forest for several hours, intermittently calling out Silver and Sebek's names, with no response other than cricket song or the occasional owl's cry. The bear's tracks - several sets of them, as it were, overlapping one another and forever winding like a loamy, coiled serpent - provided their only guideline, as the plush leaf litter hadn't absorbed the children's much lighter prints.

However, to their great luck - and to Silver and Sebek's misfortune - the boys had misoriented themselves as soon as they'd stepped foot into the forest, for as they'd trudged through the early morning darkness, their senses and their judgment obscured both by the endless shadows and the heavy fear in their hearts, they had failed to notice the numerous times they'd looped around and mistakenly followed a different set of tracks, some which had been laid earlier that week, others at the beginning of the month. The combination of the forest's perfect uniformity, its paucity of light, and its impregnable secrecy had been leading its diminutive invaders astray from the very beginning. As such, the children had only wandered a few miserable miles during their entire journey, and Baul and Lilia did not have to walk very long to find them.

Presently, the direction of the wind shifted, bringing with it the heavy smell of smoke; Lilia and Baul automatically moved to follow it. The spectral grey tendrils, unable to fully penetrate the canopy, congealed, hanging in a bloated cloud above them, through which murky haze the red light of a fire glowed softly in the distance. The men picked up their pace as the light grew stronger; Lilia soon rushed ahead of Baul, breaking into a run. But it was not the fire's glow that urged him on, that guided him, that drew him through that endless darkness - it was the moonlight of Silver's white hair, brighter and dearer to him than any star, that was his beacon.

"Silver!" Lilia shouted.

"Who's there!?" Silver shouted back, whipping his head around. Spotting the two men, his jaw dropped, and he turned to shake Sebek, who'd been dozing on his shoulder. The boys rose, Silver quickly, Sebek groggily, rubbing his eyes in confusion. Before Silver could take more than a few stumbling steps, Lilia ran to him and pulled him into his arms, and for the first time that summer, Silver allowed his father to embrace him. He ducked his head into Lilia’s neck, felt the man's pulse thundering against his skin, felt in turn as his own tempestuous heartbeat finally calmed after so many long hours of strange terror. Overwhelmed, Silver opened his mouth, and he cried.

Watching the pair, Sebek, the poor creature, threw a nervous glance at his grandfather - the man’s stony face was anger itself. The child felt wretched, and he wished for nothing more than to be held. He drifted towards Silver and Lilia, his wet eyes downcast, feeling as guilty as a whipped hound approaching its master. Before he could begin his pleas, Lilia opened his arms and pulled the trembling boy into a hug. He was at once unburdened, and his relieved sobs soon joined Silver’s.

For Silver and Sebek, the men were their heroes in that moment, their guardian angels - two mighty pillars of light within the black maw of that abominable forest. Go ahead, weary children, dry the pearls of your tears against their shining wings. But do not forget – the Lord’s angels must deliver judgment and salvation in turn. Look now as the one takes up his golden scale, and the other his blade.

The interrogation proceeded as follows:

Although the boys had, while waiting for their rescue, vowed not to reveal the true purpose of their mission, fearing the truth would only worsen Silver's predicament, they had failed to devise an appropriate excuse for their disappearance. Caught off guard, they first claimed that they'd merely wandered into the forest on accident, after having lost their bearings in the woodland behind the Zigvolt's property, but Lilia dismissed the claim at once, knowing his apprentices would never dare be so careless.

The boys retracted this statement, drew a few paces away to convene privately, and then offered a new story, one of a monster that had chased them all the way out into the forest.

“What kind of monster?” Baul pressed.

“A scary one?” Sebek shrugged.

A jury of nosy tawny owls convened spontaneously in the trees around them. They balked wordlessly at the children's flimsy defense.

Just then, and by chance, while shaking his head in frustration, Baul noticed that Sebek's hands were trembling. The movement was so subtle, so minor, that it was only perceptible when the breeze shifted towards them, so that the light from the campfire hit the child's hands just so. Baul nudged Lilia with his elbow and jut his chin towards the boy, indicating his tremors. With both men now focusing their gazes fully on Sebek, Lilia asked once more why the boys had gone into the forest; Sebek crumbled immediately under their wrath.

“W-We just… We wanted to go hunt the bear that’s been killing off the livestock so we…”

“…So you snuck off without telling anyone?” Lilia asked.

“Yeah…”

“It’s my fault, sir,” Silver said, stepping in front of Sebek.

“What?” Lilia and Baul replied in unison.

“I was the one who wanted to go. Sebek didn’t wanna come but I made him. Please don’t get mad at him.”

“Silver!” Sebek squeaked. He opened his mouth to object, but Silver silenced him with a pointed glare.

Baul crossed his arms and looked over Silver, directing his gaze at his grandson. “Is that true, Seb?”

“…Y-Yes, sir.”

“God damnit,” Baul hissed. “You damn kids had us tearing up this whole fucking forest just for-”

“Baul, please,” Lilia sighed. “It’s been a long day. Let’s just get the kids back home.”

“Fine!” Baul threw his hands up and stomped off, muttering under his breath.

Lilia clicked his tongue and turned to the children. “You two, put out your campfire and follow us - and be quick. I’ll light the way with my magic.” Sebek and Silver’s pale faces shone faintly in the cold darkness, as white as the moon. They nodded dully, stunned from Baul’s outburst.

Lilia sprinted down the path Baul had taken, calling after the green and white hurricane crashing through the trees ahead.

“Baul, wait!”

“What!” Baul shouted without looking back.

“If you’d just stop for one second so I can apologize to you-”

“Apologize for what!?”

“For Silver!”

Baul finally stopped.

“I’m sorry, General, but what in the actual hell are you talking about?”

Lilia shook his head in exasperation. “Are you kidding me? I’m trying to apologize for what my child did. He caused you and your family a lot of trouble, so I-”

“Oh, for crying out loud. I was standing right next to you when he said sorry. He doesn’t need his damn pappy covering for his ass.”

“I understand that. But regardless, I need to take responsibility as his parent.”

The thick pillar of Baul’s neck tensed as he worked his jaw. “…You really do still think he’s just a little kid, don’t you?”

“What?”

“I said,” he growled, taking a heavy step forward, “you really still think he’s just a little kid. Don’t you?”

“Yes? He’s only thirteen, Baul.”

Baul blinked at him slowly. “You know, I’ll be honest with you. The day you brought that kid home and said you were going to raise him, I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard in my entire life. But that right there takes the cake.”

Lilia pinched the bridge of his nose. Clinging onto his last, frayed strand of patience, he hissed out through gritted teeth, “Would you please enlighten me to what it is you’re trying to get at?”

Baul spat at Lilia’s feet. His yellow-green eyes blazed like canary diamonds. “Your boy’s growing up, General. He’s becoming a man. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

Lilia scoffed. “You think I don’t know that? I just-”

“Bullshit! You know what I bet?" Baul licked his lips. "I bet you haven't even noticed he's already taller than you now, huh. All that fucking yapping you do, bragging about each and every little fucking thing he does, and not once have I ever heard you mention it.”

Lilia stared at him incredulously. He recognized the taunt - it was the same one Baul had attempted to provoke him with earlier that Summer, but as Lilia opened his mouth to rebuke him, he quickly closed it again, suddenly overcome by an almost paralyzing sense of apprehension. He's not taller than me... right? He tried to recall the last time he'd looked at Silver - truly looked at him, not in anger or in contempt; not as an object of his frustration nor the progenitor of his grievances; not begging him to please tell him what was wrong and to just talk to him already. He realized with a start it must've been months ago, before the sudden change in Silver's demeanor, perhaps around his birthday, or earlier, for he saw nothing more than abstract glimpses flash before his mind's eye, of Silver's back turned to him, of Silver storming away from him, enraged; of Silver snapping at him with heavy tears welling up in his opaline eyes. But still- No, it wasn't possible, he would've noticed. For what were the past thirteen years of him centering his entire life around the child if he had not? What right had he to call himself the boy's father, to claim the child as his son, if he had failed to notice something so monumental? His son was just a young boy with cherubic little cheeks and bright blue-grey eyes, who would beam at him with the most precious little smile - half-crooked, his thin lips pressed into a rosy crescent moon, and that was the truth. 

“That's not...”

Baul roared over him, drowning out the rest of his halfhearted response. “And now he’s sneaking off and lying to you and taking the blame for shit he didn’t do, and you honestly still think he’s just some dumb little brat who needs his pappy to wipe his ass for him!”

Lilia winced at each of his words, as though they were daggers striking his skin. Noticing the other man's sudden trepidation, Baul paused.

"Honestly, you just..." Slowly, he began summoning the patience one required when attempting to convince Lilia Vanrouge of his own failings, and as his anger dissipated, he thought suddenly of his daughter. His expression softened, settling halfway between a scowl and a lopsided smile; his voice softened, too. “I know how much you're hurting here, but my god, you seriously need to get your head out of your ass.”

Baul continued speaking, but Lilia could no longer hear him, could not wrest his attention away from the uneasiness still gnawing painfully at his heart.

Just then, Silver and Sebek emerged from the surrounding thicket, as if beckoned by Lilia's anguish. His gaze flew instantly towards his son.

The boy's face was filthy, covered in a greasy film of sweat and grime and dirt, with pine needles stuck to his forehead and leaf litter entangled in his hair, and a thin line of blood on his cheek where a branch had scratched him. The steely blue-grey eyes peering at him from above the sharpened cheeks evoked an almost hawkish appearance. He was angular, scrawny, gaunt - nigh spectral in the pale glow of the lantern in his hands. Who was this gangly youth? This stranger? Had his mental image of his son been all this time nothing more than an exaggerated caricature, a farce cobbled together months ago, or years, even?

“We got the campfire put out," Silver said, panting, trying to catch his breath. As he raised his arm and drew his sleeve across his wet brow, the pale circle of lamplight suddenly fell upon his father's face. His skin blazed bone white, and his bloodless lips, parted slightly, were frozen in a silent gasp, as though he were dazed; he looked cadaverous. Silver gulped and took a step back. "...Is everything okay?”

"Silver, stand up straight." Lilia's voice curled out into the chill night air like a fine mist, softer than a whisper, yet the pure animosity with which he spoke betrayed the threat underlying his words, so that the boy immediately drew himself to his full height without a second thought.

Lilia stumbled mechanically towards Silver and cupped his face in his hands, swept his eyes down from his chin up to his lips, to his nose, tilted his head back to meet the boy's gaze- Ah! There it was, Lilia felt it, felt the microscopic contractions in the taught fibers of his neck as he yawned his head back, hardly more than a few degrees, scarcely lifting it above his eye level, could almost hear them as they cried out in pain, and yet - he was looking up at his son! Lilia's palms suddenly grew cold despite the warm flesh they cradled; his hands moved on their own, weakly pressing into the face, as if making one final, feeble, desperate attempt to mold it into the infantile visage beginning to rapidly crumble inside his mind. He choked back a quiet sob and dropped his arms to his sides, receding a few steps away, visibly distraught. The whole torturous act had lasted but a mere moment, during which time Silver had stood petrified, as though caught in a trance. He now sluggishly raised his own hand and traced his cheek where his father had touched him. He shivered; his skin felt like ice.

Baul went to Lilia and spoke at him rapidly in fae language – talking too quickly for Sebek’s mind to translate, and wholly incomprehensible to Silver’s – before turning around and walking off.

Lilia stared at Silver again, opened his mouth after a moment, then closed it, deciding he would talk to the boy later, in private. Taking a deep breath, he began telling the children to follow him, but was interrupted by a thunderous crash off in the distance. The three of them pointed their gazes simultaneously to where the sound had erupted - a freshly felled pine tree, behind which stood a black shadow so towering the boys feared for a moment that it was the bear come to ambush them.

However, to their great relief, it was only Ma Zigvolt who stepped out into their lamplight, casually shaking off the pine dust from her hands. Upon spotting her son, her face broke immediately into a wide smile, while Sebek's, in turn, scrunched up as he began to cry.

“Mama!” Sebek wailed.

Ma Zigvolt rushed over and engulfed his small body between her arms. He nearly disappeared underneath her frame. “Oh, thank goodness!” she heaved, swaying gently as the tight coil of her nerves slowly unwound.

“Is everything… Okay…?” Pa Zigvolt panted as he emerged from the darkness of the forest a moment later. He coughed into his sleeve, and then gasped once he heard Sebek’s quiet sniffles floating out from the cage of his wife’s arms. The long search had exhausted him, had strangled his lungs and poisoned his mind with fear, but the boy’s hushed sobs invigorated something within him, rousing a force in his heart greater than even the weariness hanging heavy from his limbs like iron chains. He lurched forward, breathing heavily, taking one shaky step after another, stumbling as he covered a short distance that to him felt like miles. At last, he lifted his leaden arms and wrapped them as far as he could around his wife’s quivering back, collapsing into her with a sigh.

“Oh, thank goodness! Oh, thank goodness!” Ma Zigvolt whispered again and again.

Lilia and Silver watched them from afar. Silver soon looked away, awkwardness prickling at his skin.

Presently, Lilia cleared his throat, announced loudly that he and Silver would be leaving, and, after waiting a moment for Pa Zigvolt to wave them off, he turned to his son, and motioned with his head that it was time to go home.

Lilia threw himself on the living room sofa with a mangled groan. He and Silver had reached the clearing shortly after midnight, their long trip culminating in several grueling miles of Lilia carrying his exhausted son on his back, trudging almost bent in half for over an hour. He'd set aside Silver's portion of dinner that evening, a plate of sausage links and biscuits that had since grown cold, and this Silver bolted gratefully before excusing himself to take a much needed bath. Consumed with a sudden restlessness, Lilia busied himself while he waited, returning the animals to their enclosures, washing the pile of dishes festering in the kitchen sink, and straightening out the piles of books and toys and other various knick-knacks strewn across the living room. He went to rap his hand on the bathroom door after fifteen minutes had passed, concerned Silver might have fallen asleep in the tub, and, after receiving a quiet response, had staggered back to the living room, where his own fatigue finally struck him.

He clenched and unclenched his hands nervously, occasionally wincing as hot tendrils of pain shot up through his spine and flared out into hips. His thoughts flit rapidly between each of his aching limbs, between the anger, the fear, the sorrow that clouded his mind. While they were walking back home, he could hear Baul's words repeating over and over again, overlapping with Ma Zigvolt's remarks from a few weeks prior, and mixing together with his own, anguished thoughts that had paralyzed him as he'd finally realized how much his son had changed. A part of him, a part that he'd for so long fought to viciously stamp out and silence, knew that Baul was right, and that Ma Zigvolt was right, too. He realized now he just hadn't wanted to admit it.

When Silver at last emerged from the bathroom and came to sit beside Lilia, he did not react at first. The boy - the youth, his child, his son, the stranger - stared at him silently. His eyes, though sharper and slightly narrower than how Lilia remembered them, still bore that same, auroral hue that had first captivated him so many years ago, and he found himself being slowly drawn out of his frantic ruminations as he met Silver's gaze.

Folding his hands in his laps, he took a deep breath, and asked, "Alright, so what's the real reason you did all this? Because you were mad at me?

Silver fidgeted in his seat and nibbled at his lip. His eyes darted to a corner of the living room. "No. I mean, yeah, I was mad at you."

"Over what happened at the dance?"

Silver's gaze jumped to the other corner. "The dance and... other stuff."

Lilia recalled immediately all their quarreling from the past few months, the long days that would pass without Silver uttering even a single word to him, and the even longer nights where he could hear him quietly crying in his room next door. His heart ached for the boy. He reached out to drape his hand over Silver's. “Baby, you know I-“

Silver swatted his hand away and retreated further into his side of the sofa. “You’re doing it again!” he whined, his voice cracking.

"Doing what?"

"You keep treating me like a little kid!"

"You-!" Lilia swallowed his retort with a grimace. Exhaling slowly, he admitted grudgingly, "You're right, I am. And I'm sorry. I'll try to stop doing that."

Silver's jaw dropped open. He couldn't recall his father ever having conceded to him so easily before, if at all. Quickly recovering from his shock, he sat up straight and said, "Umm- I mean, yeah! Please do that." He crossed his arms and nodded sagely, with the air of one who has successfully negotiated for terms that are completely in one's favor.

"Now, I can understand you ran off because of what's been going on recently, but what about your behavior from the past few months?"

Silver uncrossed his arms and tilted his head quizzically. Noticing his confusion, Lilia explained he meant the very same quarrels that Silver had previously mentioned, as well as his sudden adoption of the moniker "Father".

"I dunno." Silver shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, the "Father" thing's 'cause Sebek told me about it a while ago."

Lilia blinked. "Told you about what?"

“He told me… Ah, wait.” Silver straightened his back and puffed out his chest, pointing his eyebrows sharply together like an arrowhead. “He said, “Silver! Why do you continue to refer to your father as “Papa”!? Are you not turning thirteen years old soon? It’s positively childish!”” Deflating into his usual stoic expression, he continued, “And then he told me if I wanted to be a real knight, then I need to hurry and grow up already.”

Biting back an incredulous snort, Lilia summoned as much tenderness his weary body could muster, and said, smiling, "Listen, you don't have to do everything Sebek tells you to, you know. You can call me 'Papa' all you want. If somebody doesn't like that, that's their problem."

"But I don't..." Silver looked away again. His voice dropped to a whisper, as though hoping that if he spoke his next words quietly, they would hurt his father less. "I don't want to."

Lilia's smile vanished. "You don't?"

"Uh-uh."

"...But why?"

"I just..." Silver frowned. "I don't know. You keep asking why I do this and that, but I don't know how to explain it. It's like every time I try to catch my thoughts, they up and fly away from me. And then you just keep on badgering me more and I just get so mad."

Silver had expressed similar sentiments numerous times before over the past few months, but although there were no stunning revelations to be found in his words, no breakthroughs to be made in understanding the transformation in his demeanor, Lilia, for the first time, listened to him. Lilia had stumbled blindly through that whole Summer, feeling as though he were trying to walk across quicksand, ever fearful that the next blowout with his son, that the next new symptom of his strange ailment would lead to some sort of irrevocable, irreparable damage to their relationship, but as he listened, he felt the ground beneath his feet finally, slowly begin to solidify at last.

They quietly conversed for half an hour longer, at which point Silver began to yawn and rub at his eyes, nodding off a few minutes later. Lilia stood up, intending to carry the boy to his room, only to immediately drop down onto the sofa again with a pained cry. Rubbing deep circles into his lower back with one hand, he leaned over and gently shook Silver awake with the other.

"Go on and get to bed. We can iron out your punishment some other time."

"Okay." Silver rose slowly, dragging his feet as he plodded down the hall. Standing before his door, he turned around and stammered, "I love you," before disappearing into his room.

"I love you, too." Lilia replied hoarsely, fighting to speak past the lump in his throat.

With a grunt, he lifted his leaden legs onto the sofa and lay down flat on his back, sighing pleasantly as the worst of his pain began to subside. For over an hour he drifted in and out of a restless slumber, after which he stiffly sat up, and, this time rising without issue, limped quietly across the floor and down the hallway to Silver's room, steadying himself with a quivering hand against the wall.

Silver lay fast asleep, sprawled out face down atop his barren mattress, his blankets and several of his pillows still scattered across the floor from Lilia's frantic search that morning. A soft smile tugged at Lilia's lips. He must've passed out as soon as he lay down, the poor thing. Not trusting he'd be able to stand up straight again should he bend over in his present state, he instead cast a cleaning spell, and watched as the blankets and discarded pillows silently rose from the floor and arranged themselves neatly into place on Silver's bed. His eyes flicked back to Silver as the emerald sparks of his magic began to fade away, but the boy did not stir.

He cupped Silver's cheek, swept his thumb across the warm skin, moved his hand up to his hair, and began picking out the bits and pieces of pine needles and leaf litter Silver had been too exhausted to comb out while in the bath. His thoughts began to wander again while he fussed with a difficult knot.

Loss had accompanied him all his life; it was as regular to him as the changing of the seasons, as inevitable as the mighty storm that had swept across their nation and all the other natural disasters that would someday follow. But when he found Silver, he'd believed, selfishly, foolishly, stubbornly, that here was something, the only other thing besides his own heart, that he would be able to keep for himself, that life could not take away from him. Perhaps therein lay the reason why he had tried for so long to remain ignorant of his son's maturation, why he had fought so desperately to prevent the boy from growing up, from growing away from him. But he knew now that he'd been wrong, for he had split his heart in half long ago - long before he had ever left the castle. One half he had given to Malleus; the other lay before him now, curled up against the palm of his hand, breathing quietly, the moon's silver glow shining faintly in his hair.

And though he did not have a name for it, he could feel as something new was beginning to slip away from him once again, just as the soft strands of moonlight slipped through his fingers.

“And that's okay,” Lilia breathed out with a shudder. “It'll be okay. And I’ll try. I’ll let go.”

Lilia brought his folding stool into the garden and set it down amidst a semi-circle of empty buckets and baskets he'd arranged between two rows of low bushes, and, after sitting down gingerly, careful not to agitate his back, began picking off handfuls of snap beans from the bush before him. It was the second week of August - time for the Summer harvest at last, and when finished here, he would move onto the squash and eggplants next, then the bell peppers and tomatoes, then the watermelon and strawberries; the sweet potatoes he would leave for Silver to dig up on his own. Having recently satisfied the terms of his punishment, during which period he'd spent several weeks completing additional training exercises and chores every day, Lilia had granted him a short holiday, and he presently lay fast asleep in bed. Though working on his own, he moved quickly, and filled two of his buckets by the time Silver awoke later that morning and approached him in the garden.

He'd already combed his hair and gotten changed, with his knapsack slung comfortably across his shoulder. He'd grown another inch in the past month, and his face seemed miles away as Lilia looked up at him.

“Father, may I visit the Zigvolts?" he said plainly, studying his father's face. "The robins told me Sebek got a new astronomy book he’s been wanting to show me.”

Lilia dragged his sleeve across his wet forehead and nodded. "That's fine. Will you be having dinner there?”

“No, I don’t plan to.”

"Alright."

While Lilia returned to his picking, Silver shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other, his gaze jumping between his father and the forest path beyond their home. After a moment, he licked his lips and asked, “Did you, uh, want me to wait for you?”

Lilia shook his head. He looked up at his son again and smiled.

“No, you go on without me.”

Song credits

“Twistin’ the Night Away” written and recorded by Sam Cooke

“I Wish You Love” recorded by Sam Cooke, written by Albert Beach

Title is taken from the Hannah Montana song by the same name.

Just for the sake of transparency, some parts of this fic took very heavy inspiration from Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's book "The Yearling", particularly the first two chapters.