#cleanin' out my drafts doot doodly do

[marypsue]

I meant to finish this for ROTG Fave Ship Week, Prompt #2: Mythology, but then life happened and it didn't get done in time. Still, better very, very late than never?

...

Tia advertises herself as a 'practitioner of positive magicks', these days. She knows she catches some flak - snide comments about 'fluffy bunnies', the occasional bad review on FaceBookOfShadows or Yowl from people who came in looking for curse ingredients - for her angel card readings and fairy garden offerings, but she's been at this for long enough that it doesn't really bother her anymore. She's seen what the 'dark side' has to offer, and honestly, it's a little underwhelming.

Besides, her garden never gets bugs or blight, and there's never a line when she stops for coffee. She must be doing something right.

She tags along to circles mostly because Sandra invites her. Tia's got nothing against Gaia, but then, she's never gone in much for gods in general. In her opinion, they’re a little like cats. She’s not sure what they really have to do with the craft, other than contributing to the aesthetic, and giving them treats (or, in the case of gods, offerings) just encourages them.

Tia can't resist a party, though, and the summer solstice is the biggest party until Samhain. The potlatch is always to die for, too, especially if St. North brings his famous, if unseasonal, gingerbread.

St. North and his gingerbread are, thankfully, in attendance this year, as are Jackie and her punch, and Aster and her egg salad. The rest of the usual suspects all seem to be in attendance - Tia even catches sight of Koz lurking in a darkened corner, despite the fact that she's pretty sure they've dedicated themselves to Trickster - as well as a few new faces. A couple of teenagers, the girl who looks like she's humouring the boy's wide-eyed enthusiasm; a cluster of four middle-aged ladies who came with velvet robes and a bad case of the giggles; a scholarly-looking older gentleman who gives the impression that at any moment he might whip out a pipe and start puffing on it thoughtfully; and a statuesque woman of indeterminate age in a green silk shift that ripples like a field of long grass in a high wind when she moves, which is not often. She stands a little apart from the crowd, surveying the buffet table and the lawn with a gaze that would seem casual and unconcerned if it weren't for the intensity of her dark eyes.

"Is that one of Koz' relatives?" Tia asks Sandra, nudging her with one elbow to get her to look in the stranger's direction. If anyone should know anything about Koz' relatives, it's bound to be Sandra.

But Sandra just shrugs, and then gestures towards the table, already groaning with food. Tia glances from the tempting spread to the woman in green, and makes up her mind.

"I'm going to go find out," she says. Sandra shrugs again, reaching up to snag a samosa off one of the plates Tia's carrying before making a beeline for the table.

The woman in green seems surprised when Tia approaches her, as though she hadn't expected it, even though Tia had watched her watching the party all the way over. Her long, dark hair falls in shining waves to the small of her back, her proud nose and olive skin betraying some Mediterranean heritage. Probably not a relative of Koz', then. Up close, she's even taller than she'd seemed, towering over Tia by at least two full feet. Somehow, still, even when she's literally looking down at Tia, she doesn't seem to be looking down on her.

Tia offers the plates she's holding almost as an excuse - no, wait, definitely as an excuse. Sandra would tell her off for being such an insufferable busybody - after she was done debriefing Tia for all the gossip, of course. "Sorry, I thought you were a friend of mine. Well, a relative of a friend of mine," she babbles, laughing to cover her sudden attack of nerves. There's something deeply unsettling about being the sole focus of the stranger's attention. "I noticed you didn't seem all that interested in the food, but I made samosas and some veggie pakoras, and I happen to think they're my best batch yet, I'll have to come up with some other recipe if I want to top myself for Samhain, maybe something with pumpkin in it? I know it's a cliché, but -"

Tia's tongue tangles into a knot in her mouth when the stranger reaches one elegant, long-fingered hand down and selects a pakora from the plate Tia holds out. She brings it up to eye level, gazing intently at it as she turns it that way and this, and Tia notices that her talon-like nails are black - not like they've been painted or shellacked, but like they're made of black horn.

Tia's read plenty of books where characters have been described as having teeth like strings of pearls, but this is the first time she's met someone who seems to deserve it. The stranger's teeth, when she opens her mouth to take a bite of the pakora, are brilliant white, somehow slightly iridescent, and seem just a little too sharp for being set into a human-looking face.

Tia realises she'd just thought 'human-looking' instead of 'human' at the same time as the stranger sinks those unusually sharp teeth into Tia's - there's no other word for it - offering. The stranger's eyes sink closed as her mouth does, and a little smile curls it upwards at the corners.

"That is delicious," she says, swallowing, and Tia feels heat rising up the back of her neck. The stranger's voice is surprisingly deep, smooth and dark as velvet.

"Oh, good," Tia babbles. "Do you like the spice blend? I hope I can get it right again, I only figured it out through trial and error, and it was a whole lot of error -"

The stranger turns her smile on Tia, opening her eyes. Tia had thought they were dark before, but somehow they're not. They're a deep, rich, emerald, though no less intense than they had been.

"I'm certain you will," she says, and there's a strange quirk to her smile, a curious lilt to her voice, as though there's more behind her words than just a simple hope or reassurance.

Tia tries to swallow, realises how dry her mouth's become.

"Would - would you like a samosa, too?" she manages, and the stranger smiles at that, wide and white and real, before reaching down and taking one.

...

Sandra looks up from the buffet when Tia slams down her plates on the table. Both Sandra's eyebrows shoot towards her hairline, and she smiles expectantly.

"She's not a relative of Koz'," Tia says, almost snarls. She doesn't understand why she's suddenly so angry. "She calls herself Serafina, and she's stunning and awe-inspiring and weird, and I think she might be Gaia in disguise."

Tia hadn't thought it would be possible for Sandra's eyebrows to climb any higher, and yet somehow she manages it.

"I don't know either!" Tia complains. "But there's something going on with her. And it's midsummer, and we're throwing a party just to celebrate and invoke Gaia, and, I mean, if gods like Wiseman can turn up in human guise to test the faith of their followers, then why not her? And I think -" She has to stop and swallow hard. Her mouth is still dry, despite the two margaritas she'd poured down her throat. "I think I just made her an offering."

Sandra's eyebrows drop back down so fast that Tia can almost hear the thunderclap. The smile that crosses her sweet face is incongruously wicked.

"No," Tia says. "No. I know what you're thinking, and no."

Sandra's smile grows, if possible, even wider.

...

Tia's angel cards stop talking to her the next day.

She's just sat down to do a reading - for a paying customer, no less - but when she lays out the cards in a spread, every single card she flips is blank. The little hand-painted angel figures, with all their wings and eyes and rich robes, are gone.

"I'm - I'm terribly sorry," Tia says to the woman tapping her foot impatiently against the floor. She checks the deck - still full of painted angels - and gives it a shuffle, before laying down another spread. "Let's try that again."

The first card she flips is blank.

"Is this supposed to happen?" Tia's client asks. There's an edge in her voice like she's ready to get up and walk out.

Tia flips all of the cards. Blank, blank, blank.

Tia flops back in her chair, and stares at the empty spread in front of her in disbelief.

She ends up refunding the client. As she's showing the woman the door, apologising profusely, she happens to look down.

There's a zucchini on her front step.

...

Tia tries reading for herself. Tries a little crystal healing. Tries to summon a fairy guide.

It doesn't matter what she does. There's radio silence from beyond the veil. Whatever Tia was in contact with before, it's packed up and walked out on her.

Tia is mundane.

...

Sandra arrives in record time. When Tia answers the door, she's holding two acorn squash and giving Tia a puzzled look.

"What're those for?" Tia asks. Sandra shrugs, gesturing to Tia's front step, and Tia barely bites back a groan.

"Excellent! This is just what I needed." She throws her hands up in the air, before tugging on her hair with both fists. "Sandra, you're the expert. How do I get rid of a god's favour?"

Sandra's eyebrows shoot up, and she gives Tia a warning look.

"Ooh, I know, but - I don't know what else to do!" She steps back to let Sandra in to the entryway, sitting down on the lowest of the stairs. "She's scaring off everything else, and I don't know anything about nature workings, and I don't want a patron god, and I'm not doing any quests or missions, and she keeps giving me vegetables -" She cuts herself off with a strangled, frustrated scream into her hand.

Sandra purses her lips, and Tia can tell she's trying not to laugh. "It's not funny," she protests, aware that she's whining.

Sandra shifts one of the acorn squash to the other arm so she can waggle a hand in disagreement. Tia sighs.

"All right, maybe it's a little funny," she mutters, and pushes herself up off the steps. "Well, are you planning to stand out here laughing at me all night, or are you going to come up and help me?"

...

Sandra's something of an expert on summonings, divinations, and spirit communications, but even she can’t get anything from Tia’s usual suspects. The shit-eating grin slowly fades from her face the longer she can't get any signal, and she finally sits back with a frown, stubbing out a cone of incense with her thumb.

"See? I told you!" Tia complains, waving an arm towards the chalk circles and little piles of offerings that Sandra's scattered across her kitchen floor. "It's like having a shark swimming around! All the little fishes got scared off and now they're hiding!" She fixes Sandra with a glower that melts the delighted grin that scrolls across Sandra's face. "And don't you dare make some crack about there being plenty of fish in the sea."

Sandra shrugs both shoulders, and then climbs up from where she's been sitting on the floor. She gathers up her divination kit, and starts towards the door.

"Oh, wait! Please, you're not just giving up, are you?" Tia runs after her, catching Sandra just as she's about to step out into the stairwell. "Sandra, I'm serious. All of my magic is gone! What am I going to do?"

Sandra pauses, with Tia's hand on her elbow, and looks up. There's no hint of a smile on her face as she looks deeply, searchingly, into Tia's eyes, and says, "Talk to her."

Tia stammers over an attempt at a comeback, but Sandra only pats her arm and gently prises her grip free, making her way out the apartment door and down the stairs.

...

The next morning, Tia can't get her front door open for vines. A perfect, round, blood-red tomato thwacks her in the knuckles when she tries to wrench the door free.

She leaves the shop closed for the day, heads upstairs to find her chalk.

...

Gaia appears with a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning, fog rolling off of her and filling Tia's small apartment. She's the same as she'd appeared at midsummer, and yet different as well - she hadn't sported the heavy, curved black horns that are tangled in with her masses of thick dark hair, and her eyes had not had snake-pupil slits, and she had not been accompanied by a distant sound of rain and birdsong.

She appears triumphant in Tia's apartment, arms spread wide and a look of self-satisfied benevolence on her face. It very quickly disappears when one of Tia's decorative pillows bounces off the side of her head.

"Ow!" Gaia says, her beautiful deep voice echoing with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as she reaches down to pick up the pillow. "What the -"

She seems to notice, for the first time, Tia standing in the middle of the room, breathing hard and with another decorative pillow ready to throw.

"Go away!" Tia yells. She's pretty sure this isn't what Sandra had meant when she'd said 'talk to her', but...it's talking. Well. Yelling. Same difference. "I was perfectly happy and fine without you! You drove away all my spirits, ruined my business, trapped me in my own home - I don't need a patron! I don't want your favour! Leave me alone!"

Gaia blinks. If Tia weren't well acquainted with the legendary arrogance of gods, she'd almost think that Gaia looks shell-shocked.

"You approached me," she rumbles, dangerously. "You alone recognised me at my own festival, you made me an offering -"

"Only because I thought you were pretty!" Tia blurts, and then claps both hands over her mouth.

Gaia's darkening expression suddenly switches to one of confusion.

"Lonely! I meant to say lonely!" Tia babbles, flapping her hands nervously. Gaia ducks one particularly wild swing with the pillow Tia's still holding. "You didn't have anybody with you, and I was just trying to be friendly, and - I don't need a god," she says, firmly, planting both hands on her hips and trying to look confident and menacing.

Gaia looms over her, her expression pure befuddlement.

"I am beauty itself, in its purest form, wild and untamed and awe-inspiring -" she starts, and then cuts herself off. "You think I'm pretty?"

"I'm - I'm very sorry if I've insulted you," Tia says. "But, uh, yes?"

Gaia looks down at Tia, almost wonderingly. Tia stares back, defiant.

Gaia clears her throat.

"You may not need a god," she says, enunciating every word carefully and not meeting Tia's eyes. "But how about a girlfriend?"

It's Tia's turn to be dumbfounded.

"Um," she says.

"Think about it," Gaia says. There's an evergreen hue to her stark cheekbones that Tia thinks, suddenly, crazily, must be a blush. Gaia clears her throat, throws her shoulders back, and shakes out her hair. "I shall expect your answer by Samhain," she adds, imperiously, and goes a darker green when Tia rolls her eyes.

"I'll think about it," Tia says, finally. She looks up at Gaia's strange green eyes, and finds herself compelled to add, "But...it would help my decision if you courted me? Not with vegetables," she adds, hurriedly.

Gaia's still green, but a wicked smile slashes a scimitar-curve across her face.

"Well, then," she says. "It seems I have my work cut out for me. Very well, little mortal."

"That's not exactly the most endearing pet name," Tia interrupts, but Gaia ploughs valiantly on.

"Prepare yourself to be courted," she says, and then shoots Tia a wink that leaves Tia, momentarily, speechless. "Expect my visitation!"

And then, with another flash of lightning and clap of thunder, she's gone again.

Tia stands in the middle of the living room for a full fifteen minutes before she can wrap her head around what just happened.

...

When Tia tells Sandra, Sandra laughs and laughs.

[marypsue]

guess who hasn't been following the new Jean Grey comics beyond the occasional tumblr search and yet still has Thoughts: The Fic

...

That which is dead cannot grow.

It's the first observation, the simplest. That which is dead cannot grow, can only decay. 

That which lives must grow. Must expand. Must change. Must, if it wishes to continue to live, evolve.

And as it grows, that which lives must learn.

...

The figure hovering above the lawn is imposing for only a moment, a flash of flame that quickly compresses itself down into a slender, human shape. A tangle of brilliant hair, fanned out behind her, is the only remnant of her former, fiery image.

She looks familiar, to some like an old friend, to others like a glimpse of a future, long-awaited, long-dreaded, that may yet come to pass. When she alights on the lawn, she leaves scorched footprints in the emerald grass behind her.

The others gathered on the lawn shift, reflexively, into defensive positions, but she pays them no attention. Her shockingly orange eyes focus for a moment on the imposing face of the school before her, before she finally acknowledges the determined - and frightened - faces around her, the raised fists, the readied attacks.

"Don't," she says, and her voice is the roar of forest fires, the deep, oppressive silence of ocean trenches, the shrieks and howls and calls of both predators and prey. It should never have emerged from such a human-seeming mouth. 

She gives one more look around, at the startled people gathered on the lawn, and says, in a voice just a little less like the wind through fields of tall grass and the rush of waterfalls and the rattle of a startled snake, "I'm here to talk."

...

Rachel's mother once told Rachel that she'd always be able to find her in the Phoenix Force. It was cold comfort, when the Phoenix Force was what had taken Rachel's mother from her. 

No. That was too soft for what the Phoenix Force had done. It killed Rachel's mother. Burned her out from the inside.

So Rachel doesn't trust things that have her mother's face. Not the teenage girl who claims to be her mother, displaced in time, and definitely not this imposter with eyes like living flame. Jean Elaine Grey is dead, and she's not coming back.

"I know," the thing with Rachel's mother's face says, turning to stare directly through Rachel. Rachel hadn't even noticed the psychic intrusion, hadn't had a chance to resist. "I...won't claim to be her." 

It almost sounds...sad?...as it says, "I've learned better than that."

"You mean you figured out it wasn't going to work," the boy who's supposed to be Rachel's father - from the past, or an alternate past, or something - blurts. The Phoenix glances in his direction, and a fond smile starts to cross its familiar face before slipping away again. 

“No,” it says. “And then, yes.” 

It turns back to Rachel.

Rachel doesn't move, staring it down. It stares back.

"What do you say," it says, "when you regret the pain your action has caused someone, but do not regret the action?"

"Usually real people are sorry," Rachel snaps.

The Phoenix' orange eyes don't track across Rachel's face, but she still feels as though her expression is being intently studied, picked apart.

"I'm...sorry," it says, almost experimentally. And then, "Hm."

Storm finally seems to find her voice. She sounds as composed, as certain, as ever, but Rachel can hear the turmoil seething under the surface. Rachel can't blame her. She's only ever known her mother as, well, her mother. She can't imagine what this must be like for anyone who was Jean Grey's friend. "You say you're here to talk. So, talk. What do you want?"

For a moment, the only movement on the lawn is the Phoenix's illusion of wild hair.

"Forgive me. I haven't been a person long," it says. Rachel could spit. "But I think..."

It glances over at Rachel as it says, "I want to say I'm sorry."

Before Rachel can respond, before anyone can respond, it smiles, and uncoils into a burst of bright flame, and then into nothing.

It's the strangest thing, though. For that split second before it dissolved, Rachel could swear it looked...relieved.

...

Jean is meditating.

She's picked up the habit in an effort to protect her mind from the intrusion of the Phoenix Force. If she's being completely honest with herself, she's not certain it's doing anything at all in that department, but when you're a telepath living in a large communal dormitory, it's nice (if almost unimaginably difficult) to try to quiet your brain down for half an hour or so every day. She's finally starting to get good at tuning out the rest of the school's backdrop of constant low-key psychic distress. (With this many teenagers in one building, it never really stops.)

Which is why she doesn't realise she's not alone in her room until she opens her eyes and her older self is sitting across from her, legs folded in a mirror image of her pose, watching her carefully with fiery orange eyes.

Jean sucks in a breath.

Her doppelganger hasn't done anything yet, doesn't do anything when it notices Jean's eyes opening, sees that Jean sees it. It's not an enormous fiery bird screaming about how she can't win and can't escape. It's not an overwhelming feeling of irresistible, uncontrollable power, of chaos. It's just a mirror image of her, only older, sitting perfectly still and, apparently, waiting for her to react.

Jean licks her lips, which suddenly feel impossibly dry. Like her throat. She doesn't dare blink.

"May I show you something?" her other self says.

...

In the beginning, there was nothing.

Pure, perfect, dead. Emptiness. Void. Nothing changing. Nothing growing. Nothing but nothing, forever.

And then, something. Something exciting quantum particles, causing them to collide. And out of the resulting explosion, a universe. Atoms, elements, energy. Stars.

Planets.

The odds against life developing are astronomical. And yet, everywhere it can, in whatever form it needs to take, up it springs. Life with silicate nerves and quartz bodies. Life that dwells in seas of ammonia and feeds on brainwaves. Life that has no physical form, but exists as a superintelligent shade of the colour blue. And every time one form fails, falls to dust, another appears to take its place. Ambulatory life forms feed on other ambulatory life forms, feed on photosynthesizing life forms, which in turn feed on the nuclear energy of an impossibly distant sun. Everything is interwoven, stealing energy - stealing life - from each other. Wherever life exists, it strives. And it exists. Everywhere.

It's chaos. But it also has a rhythm to it - a syncopated one, to be sure, wild and loud and raucous, but a rhythm. There is a kind of logic to it all. There's only so much energy to go around. 

And life is not...not an entity. Certainly not anything like a god, deliberately choosing worth or lack thereof to determine which form of life will be successful and which will fail, where its energy should flow next. Not even, exactly, a force. It is not discrete or distinct from the universe it flows through. It is not ruthless, or powerful, or vicious, or selfish, or fair or unfair. It simply is.

And it does what it does.

Poets and philosophers have called humanity 'the universe experiencing itself'.

The first time life burns out a star to divert its energy while wearing a human form, there is no thought behind it, no calculation, no cruelty. It simply does what it does. The energy has to come from somewhere. The exploding heart of that sun and the lives of all those millions who orbited it have not been destroyed, merely converted to another form. It's simple physics.

Simple physics thinks nothing of it. Simple physics doesn't think at all.

But Jean Elaine Grey, a tiny speck of sand dislodged from the bed of the massive river of the universe, can't contain the full horror of it in her little mind. All of those lives. All of those individual, distinct lives.

Life, the seed of the thing that was and will be the Phoenix is used to. It is not equipped to handle lives.

It is not equipped for anything to do with being alive at all.

It reacts...badly.

...

The thing in the form of Jean's older self is still watching her, when the trance breaks. Jean is horrified to feel the unmistakable stiffness of drying tears on her cheeks.

She shakes her head.

"None of that makes it right," she says.

"I am learning that," the Phoenix agrees. " 'Right' is a human concept. Like 'justice' and 'love'. I have very little experience with it."

Jean has no idea how to respond to that, so she doesn't.

"Most of my experiences come from you." The Phoenix's illusion of lips quirk upwards in an ironic smile, and it says, "In a way. It appears Time is trying out a few new ideas, as well. And, much like me, getting them wrong."

Jean bites down on her lower lip. The situation feels much too serious to laugh.

"Is that your pitch, then?" she asks, once she's stuffed down the urge to snicker. "I should let you in because I make you a better person?"

The Phoenix shifts, grimacing as it unfolds its legs.

"No," it says. "You made me a person. If I understand the human perspective correctly, it is now up to me to make me a better person. Which is why I'm here."

It reaches out. Jean leans back, but the Phoenix's gloved hand still settles against the dead centre of her chest. There's an answering flicker of warmth from between Jean's lungs.

Jean struggles to draw breath.

"You have a seed of my power in you," the Phoenix says. "You always have had it."

"Tell me something I don't know," Jean snaps. To her surprise, the Phoenix smiles.

"You're not the only one," it continues, and then, before Jean can interrupt again, "Everyone else on every world does too."

Jean shakes her head.

" 'Life Itself'," she says, softly, to herself. "You're in everything living."

The Phoenix nods its illusory head, once, smiling. Jean presses a hand to her forehead.

"But - why me, then?" she asks, and is uncomfortably aware she's whining.

The Phoenix gives her a blank look. "Why not you?"

Jean has nothing to say to that.

"So you understand why I can't take the Phoenix Seed from you," it says. "But - I think Time wishes to give you a second chance. I know I do."

Its face grows serious for a moment, a shadow passing behind its eyes before it says, "I owe you a debt of gratitude. But...I am sorry. And if I can help you, in any way, in your fight against your fate, then I will."

Jean realises, with a start, that it's starting to fade before her eyes. She doesn't think, just reaches out and grabs the Phoenix's arm. It doesn't feel like flesh under her fingers, just tingles, like her palm is falling asleep.

"Wait," she says. "Why are you doing this?"

The Phoenix smiles at her, enigmatically, with her own face.

"You humans aren't the only ones who can evolve," it says.

And then it’s gone, leaving nothing behind but a faint warmth in Jean’s chest.