#cool for the summer headers

[devonneicons]

8 years ago today, Demi released Cool For The Summer

please if you save or use like or reblog

[humbuns]

a morning w/ you

[dumpitos]

oii, você poderia fazer algumas headers de bellyconrad?? por favor <33

feito amor!

[aemondsbabe]

Give Me an O!

summary: billy walks in on you in a bit of a compromising situation, and you finally go after what you want

pairing: billy hargrove x cheerleader!reader

warnings: mature/explicit, 18+ (minors dni!), no use of y/n, afab reader, reader is very flexible, minor injury it's fine, piv sex, unprotected sex oopsy daisy, public sex technically, hand over mouth, fingering, breast/nipple play if you blink, dirty talk, reader's hair is long enough that she can have a ponytail but no other physical descriptors are used, billy is a himbo, steve harrington cameo

word count: 5k

a/n: finally getting around to a request from @sweetshifter! thank you for the idea bby & i hope ya enjoy! also, my first time writing for stranger things! yay! images in the header are for aesthetic purposes only!

likes, comments, & reblogs are very appreciated but never required!

gif creds to @unwanted-animal

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“You sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Your best friend asks as she slings her gym bag over her shoulder, “I don’t mind staying a couple minutes.”

“Nah,” you shrug, still panting a little from practice as you lean to the side with a little sigh, stretching down toward your leg, “You go on, I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

“Alright, cool,” she chirps, glossy lips flicking up into that sincere, beaming smile that had become her signature, “Bye!” She calls over her shoulder as she turns, white tennis shoes thumping against the shiny wooden floor as your name echoes around the gym. 

“Bye, Chrissy!” You reply with a smile, glancing up as the heavy metal doors at the side of the room click closed, leaving you alone for the time being. 

With a tired huff, you check your watch, one that matched Chrissy’s exactly – gold with a baby pink face. You’d gotten them at the mall last summer, a joint birthday present. 

4:34pm.

A sigh leaves your lips as you lunge forward, hands planted firmly on your hips as you try to ignore the slight burn in your thigh. So, that’s… like, forty-five minutes until basketball practice starts, you think, eyes pointed up at the white metal ceiling as you do mental math, trying to figure out exactly how long you’ll have to work on your stretches. 

Deciding to give yourself a few more minutes before calling it a day, you breathe out steadily through your pursed lips as you switch sides and lunge forward again, savoring the light burn in your calf. After a fifteen second count, you move onto your hands and knees, needing to stretch out your back. 

You hum softly under your breath, one hand planted firmly against the blue tumbling mat beneath you as the other reaches back and grabs onto one of your ankles, your limbs forming a graceful arch above you. A small grunt leaves you as you pull your leg up as high as you can, before dropping it down and reaching back with your other hand to do the other side. Mid-pose, you swear you hear one of the gym doors click open, the one out to the hallway with the locker rooms and various storage closets judging by the direction, but you’re so focused on holding your pose, you honestly can’t be sure. 

Huffing, you decide to just ignore it – Probably just the janitor or something, you think, keeping your eyes focused, once again, on the white metal ceiling as you roll over onto your back. 

Breathing steadily, you let your eyes slip closed as you press both legs together before slowly lifting them up, using your hands and elbows to support your back as you lift onto your shoulders. Wincing slightly at the twinge of pain from your left one, you work through it, trying to keep your breath steady. As your green and gold cheer skirt pools at your waist, you silently pray that if it is a janitor, that it’s at least not the creepy one.

Slowly but surely, you work both legs up and over your head until the tips of your white sneakers press into the mat, your arms planted firmly onto the floor for support. 

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, you count silently, breathing a little shakily as you focus on balancing… and on ignoring your shoulder. 

Suddenly, a loud wolf-whistle cuts through the silence of the gym, punctuated by a few slow claps and the heavy footsteps of someone walking across the wooden gym floor. 

“Aah!” You squeak as you topple to the side, concentration thoroughly broken. Huffing, you prop yourself up on one elbow as your head snaps up, eyes already narrowed into an irritated glare. Upon seeing who it is, you can’t help but sneer.

“Can I help you, Hargrove?” You sigh, exasperated, rolling your eyes as you angle both legs out in a side split, determined to get through your stretches even with the added annoyance of Billy’s presence.

“Just admiring the view, princess,” he drawls, blue eyes trailing up the length of each of your spread legs in a way that makes your cheeks flush, “You’re real good at that, aren’t you?” He questions, plump lips quirked up into that signature, flirtatious smirk. 

“Good at what?” You ask, brows furrowing as you bend over to the left, easily grasping the toe of your tennis shoe as the muscles in your legs stretch into a taut, familiar ache. 

He chuckles at that, hands on his hips as he studies you, the spicy, woodsy smell of his cologne filling the space around you. He cocks his head to the side, pearly white teeth flashing every few seconds as he chews a piece of gum. 

“Stretching,” he all but purrs, golden curls blowing slightly from the large fans that hum loudly on the ceiling. His tongue darts out to wet his lips as he ogles at you, watching carefully as you bend to the right, “I bet it’d be really easy to just fold you up like a pretzel, huh, sweets?” 

With a sigh, you finally let yourself relax for a moment and tilt your head up to look at the boy as you lean back on your hands, your ponytail swishing across your shoulder blades as you do. 

“In your dreams, Billy,” you murmur, trying to keep the expression on your face plaid, wholly uninterested, which is easier said than done. 

You don’t like Billy, and you’re very quick to correct anyone who says you do, even if it is just friendly teasing. But, well, there’s something about him that just draws people into his orbit – charisma combined with a certain mystique. You knew from talking to the girls in the locker room that he was a lady’s man, and a player, but from how they all talked about him, there appeared to be something more there, some hidden layer that no one had been able to crack yet. He’s different from the other boys in Hawkins, no small town charm to hide behind. 

Plus, come on, he’s gorgeous. You might not be Billy’s biggest fan but you have eyes. 

“Damn right, in my dreams,” he murmurs, pulling you from your thoughts as he draws out every syllable of your name in a low, husky tone, familiar smirk playing at his lips like always. 

Cocking your head, you narrow your eyes as you peer up at him, “Aren’t you going out with Amber now?”

“Wouldn’t exactly call it going out…,” he answers as he bends down on one knee to retie the laces of his shoe, shooting you a little wink as he does so. 

“Does Amber know that?”

He pauses at that, a little huff of laughter bubbling up from his chest as he fixes you with a grin that is much too self-satisfied for your liking. “Now, princess,” he starts slowly, blue eyes narrowing at you playfully as he rests a forearm across his knee, “Why do you care so much about what I’m doing with Amber?”

“She’s my friend, Billy,” you say, sitting up a little more, the chill from the AC units making the hairs at the nape of your neck stand on end. 

“So, it’s definitely not because you’re, I dunno, jealous or anything?”

“No!” You cringe inwardly as you say it, too quick and too defensive and just what the blue eyed boy had been hoping for, judging by the smug grin plastered on his face. 

This is how it’s been between the two of you for months now, ever since his stupid Camaro had rumbled into the school’s parking lot way back in August. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of teasing jokes, sitting through History class after History class as you feel those blue eyes practically boring a hole in the back of your head, and somehow mustering up the willpower to dodge his advances. 

In the nearly three months since his arrival, Billy had managed to charm his way through at least a handful of girls, maybe more depending on which rumors you listen to, but you are determined not to fall for it, not to be just another notch on his bedpost. 

Which would be a lot easier if he’d leave you the hell alone. 

Flustered, you pull your knees up, tucking your chin over top of them as your arms wrap around your calves, silently rolling your eyes as Billy drops to the blue tumbling mat, rolling onto his back with a satisfied sigh, making it clear to you that he was here to stay. 

“Why’re you here so early, anyway?” You question, glancing at your watch once more, “Basketball practice isn’t for, like, another half hour.” 

“Had to drop my stupid step-sister off at some trash arcade,” he grunts, annoyed, “Didn’t wanna waste the gas to go all the way home, plus…,” he pauses, tilting his head to the side to slyly grin at you once more, “I figured I might get here early enough to catch the end of cheer practice.” 

“Creep,” you scoff, much more playfully than you’d intended to. 

The two of you fall into a, surprisingly, comfortable beat of silence. You let your eyes trail over Billy as his own droop shut, one arm propped behind his head as he lazes on the gym mat, jaw clenching every so often as he works the gum in his mouth. You start at his feet, taking in the faded black canvas material of his Converse before you let your eyes roam up his long, tanned, muscular legs. Finally, you reach the familiar dark green shade of his school-branded shorts and your eyes wander up the expanse of his stomach and chest, covered by the grey t-shirt he wears, the familiar eyes of Hawkins High’s tiger mascot staring blankly into your own. 

You nearly gasp as your eyes trail up to his face again, only to find his steely eyes already looking at you, a knowing smirk etched into his face as you feel the apples of your cheeks flush. 

“It’s rude to stare, princess,” Billy drawls, catching you red handed.

“And it’s not rude to perv on me stretching?” 

“Never said it wasn’t,” he shrugs with a little chuckle, sitting up and resting one forearm on a bent knee. You merely roll your eyes as he studies you for a second, the blush on your cheeks deepening enough that you can feel the slight tingle of blood rushing under the surface. 

“Whatever,” you sigh, shaking your head as you stretch your legs out in front of you again. You stretch forward again, letting out a breath as you grab at your ankles and try to ignore the way Billy sits up, propping his forearm up on a bent knee. 

“Could you, like, put your legs behind your head and all that?” 

“Probably,” you say with a little eye roll. 

“Will you?”

“Not for you!” 

The two of you carry on like that for a moment longer — you working through various stretches and familiar yoga poses as Billy seems overly curious about each one, questioning if you can twist into all kinds of poses. 

“Can you do a handstand and do the splits?” He questions, grinning when you groan in frustration, eyes trailing up your long legs to the bottom of your short cheer skirt. 

With a huff, you stand with one hand on your hip, the other pinching at the bridge of your nose as Billy’s incessant questions throw you off the silent count in your head again.

“Did you want something or are you just trying fuck me over?” 

“Mmm, close, princess,” the blond teases, earning another glare from you. Playfully, he holds his hands up in surrender, “You��re single, aren’t you?” He asks, smirking triumphantly at the way you balk.

“I’m not talking about this with you, Hargrove.”

His smirk widens when you don’t deny it, blue eyes darkening as they travel over the length of your body once more. “Look, all I’m saying is that the guys talk in the locker room and… well, I can’t help but notice that your pretty name just doesn’t come up.”

“Maybe I have better things to do than put out for you assholes,” you smirk, quickly stretching out your problem shoulder before kneeling back on the tumbling mat, meaning to finish up with a couple quick pushups.

Undeterred, Billy merely matches your smirk with one of his own, watching as you kneel next to him. “Just come with me to Harrington’s Halloween party next weekend, sweetness,” he offers, his voice a low rumble, “Come on, a couple hours, some drinks. Hell, I’ll even dress up with you, whatever you want.”

“Hmm,” you hum, taking a second to tighten your ponytail as you shoot him a playful little smile, “Whatever I want, huh?” 

“Name it,” he says lowly, watching appreciatively as you get on all fours. 

“Okay, how about…,” you stall, drawing out your words as you extend your legs behind you, grunting softly as your shoulder zings with pain once more, “Willie and Indiana Jo– Ah!” You cut yourself off, exclaiming in pain as you land with a small thud on the mat, wincing. 

“Whoa, hey,” Billy says softly, scrambling onto his knees, brows furrowed as he gingerly helps you roll over onto your back, “You okay?”

You nod, glancing away with a little embarrassed huff as you rub at your shoulder. “Yeah, it’s nothing. I just probably sprained it earlier during practice or something.”

“Lemme take a look at it,” he says, offering a hand to help you up.

Not expecting such chivalrous behavior from Hargrove of all people, you only nod dumbly and let him pull you up off the mat, chest heaving.

“Here,” he murmurs, gently nudging at your arm until you turn your back to him. You can hear the tumbling mat crinkle as he steps closer to you, the warmth from his chest practically radiating through his t-shirt as the spicy musk of his cologne seems to envelope you once again. 

“You better not be using this as an excuse to feel me up,” you warn, albeit playfully, pulling your ponytail over the opposite shoulder. 

“In your dreams,” he teases, goosebumps peppering your skin from the low way he says your name and from the gentle brush of his fingers over the back of your arm as they trail their way up to your shoulder. 

He’s silent for a moment, carefully pressing warm, slightly rough fingers against your skin, watching until you wince just slightly when he pokes at your shoulder blade. “That’s where it hurts?” 

“Mhm,” you nod, lips parting ever so slightly as he kneads around the area. You can practically feel him smirking when you sigh a moment later, his fingers working perfectly over the sore muscle as his other hand anchors itself at your hip, “You’re… actually, like, really good at this,” you murmur with a little laugh, needing to find some way to break the silence. 

“My mom is – was, she was a masseuse, back when we lived in Cali,” Billy explains, leaning in closer, his lips all but brushing against your ear as he speaks softly, like he’s telling you some deep, dark secret, “I might’ve looked at one or two of her books.” 

“Really?” You ask, brows furrowing as you turn your head to look at him over your shoulder.

“Sue me, I was thirteen and they had nudes in ‘em,” he chuckles, biting into his bottom lip when your breathy laugh morphs into a moan when he presses just right against your shoulder. The fingers of his other hand tighten on your hip as he pulls you back against him, his lips just barely grazing over the crook of your neck, “But I still picked up a thing or two.”

“Clearly,” you breathe, brows tugging together as you tilt your head to the side, an open invitation. The blond doesn’t need any more convincing and you let your eyes flutter shut as his lips descend upon your neck, pressing hot kisses against the sensitive skin. 

The rise and fall of your chest grows shallow as the two of you seem to lose yourselves; you gasp as the hand on your hip trails down over your thigh, until Billy can drag the tips of his fingers beneath the white and gold hem of your pleated skirt just as the hand on your shoulder begins slowly moving around your ribs, to your front. Despite the AC units humming away, you can’t help but feel flush as he presses himself against you, already half-hard against the small of your back. 

With a gasp, you jerk away from him at the sound of a door opening and closing in the hallway, muffled voices and laughter filtering in through the closed doors of the gym. 

“Dammit,” Billy mumbles behind you as he quickly glances at the clock hanging above one of the exits, sighing disappointedly when he sees the time – fifteen minutes until practice. 

Deciding to finally give in to the wants you’ve been harboring for months, you grab one of his hands and playfully bite your lip, nodding to one of the sets of gym doors, “Follow me.” 

Smirking, he follows behind you as you quickly make your way to the doors, both of you pausing for a second to make sure the coast is clear before you bolt down the hallway. A second later, you’re pushing Billy through a door into a random classroom.

“This is the old Health room,” you explain, gasping as he turns and presses you against the old door, the metal of it cool against your back as you quickly scan over the empty room, dim other than the early evening light spilling in through the thin slats of the blinds, “No one ever comes in here.”

“Uh huh, fascinating,” he nods, turning his head to spit his gum into a small trash can by the door, before eagerly pressing his lips to yours. He smirks into the kiss as you mewl, his lips parting to quickly swallow the sweet sounds you make.  

Always one to give as good as you get, your lips move against his just as fervently, both of your hands trailing up underneath his t-shirt as you rub over his stomach, muscles taut under your touch. His tongue slips into your mouth in the same second he presses against you, his thin gym shorts doing nothing to conceal the hardness of his length as it presses against your lower stomach. 

You arch into his touch as his hands cup your breasts through your uniform, a low growl rumbling through his chest as you rake your nails over his chest and down his stomach. Boldly, you reach down and palm at his cock, savoring the surprised grunt he lets out before you quickly nudge your hand down the front of his shorts and into his boxers. 

“Shit,” he breathes, one hand still kneading at your breast as the other skates back up your thigh, his forehead resting against yours. Biting your lip, you watch through hooded eyes as you experimentally stroke over his cock, marveling at how hard he already is, like velvet over steel. 

Just as you feel him twitch in your grasp, the blond pulls away from you with a teasing grin and presses one last kiss against your lips before tapping the back of your thighs, urging you to jump. 

“Fuck, there you go,” Billy rasps, fingers digging into the curve of your ass as you clamber up into his arms, your shoulder only barely smarting as you wrap your arms around his neck. “I gotcha,” his muscular biceps flex as he quickly walks a few feet from the door and deposits on you on top of the, thankfully barren, teacher’s desk pushed haphazardly into the corner. 

“Billy,” you sigh, the sound being practically pushed from your lungs as he presses himself back between your thighs, cheer skirt rumbled around your waist as he all but folds you in half – your hands cling to his shirt desperately, one leg wrapped securely around his hip as the other ends up slung nearly over his shoulder.

“Yeah, princess?” He taunts with a wolfish grin, smirking at the way the muscles of your thigh twitch as his fingers move toward your pussy, hardly hidden beneath your boyshorts. You all but levitate off the desk as two of his fingers swipe over your slit, the apples of your cheeks flushing when he chuckles triumphantly, the thin cotton doing nothing to hide how wet you are. “Finally gonna give me what I want?”

You can feel your ponytail bobbing wildly at the crown of your head when you nod, a whiny moan blooming from your lips when he moves his fingers in tight circles against your clit, the flimsy material of your underwear quickly dampening against his touch. 

“Yeah, yeah, Billy,” your hands tremble as you pull at his t-shirt, desperate for what you’ve been wanting for so long, “C’mon, please!”

“Easy, tiger,” he laughs, tongue running over his bottom lip as he easily tugs his shirt over his head, your own hands scrambling to push down your boyshorts. Taking mercy on you yet again, he helps you, eagerly tugging the white cotton down your legs. He damn near tears them in two as he pushes your underwear over one sneaker, letting them dangle from your ankle. 

“Holy shit,” he breathes, crowding against you again as you lean back on the desk, propped up on your elbows. You stare up at him, lips parted, as he all but folds you in half, warm hands pressing against the backs of your thighs, “Fucking leaking and I’ve barely touched you.”

“Oh!” You hiss, trying your hardest to keep your voice down, head thudding back against the desk as Billy quickly tugs his shorts down, just enough to get his cock out, and teasingly runs it through your folds, “Billy, oh my God, just do it!” You all but beg, teeth biting into your bottom lip at the wet sounds of him moving against you, deafeningly loud in the otherwise quiet room. 

Were you anywhere else, Billy would have absolutely no qualms about teasing you to within an inch of your life – payback for playing cat and mouse with him for almost three months straight. Lucky for you, he’s just as nervous at the thought of getting caught with his pants down as you are, shuddering to think what Neil would do if he got expelled over this. 

With a barely contained growl, he pushes into you, his cock sliding easily to the hilt with how wet you are. Your back arches off the desk as he slides home, stretching you beautifully as he fills you completely.

“Oh – oh my God,” you breathe as he stills, giving you a few seconds to adjust. Your hands scramble over the smooth top of the desk before you grab onto his wrists as his hands hook behind your knees. 

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he groans – the way he grumbles your name makes your walls clench around his length, punching another grunt from his chest as he starts shallowly thrusting against you, grinding his hips against yours. 

The two of you dissolve into a flurry of breathy mewls and sighs, each of you desperately trying to keep quiet as the muffled sounds of skin against skin and the dull creaking of the desk fill the room. Your eyelids flutter as you watch Billy above you, golden curls bouncing with each of his thrusts as a light sheen of sweat covers his tanned chest. 

Grunting lowly, he presses harder against the backs of your thighs, practically pressing your kneecaps against the desk below you, blue eyes sparkling as you easily follow his movements. With the small change in angles, the head of his cock thrusts perfectly against that sensitive spot within you, and he grins triumphantly as you tremble beneath him. 

“That the spot, princess?” He questions, smirking when you nod your head with a little broken squeak, “Fuck, I can’t wait to get you in a bed – bet you can bend in all kinds of pretty ways, huh?”

“Y-Yeah, yeah, Billy,” you agree, willing to agree to just about anything as long as he keeps moving. You can hardly contain the moans spilling from your lips as he works you higher and higher, the adrenaline from the possibility of getting caught as well as the rush of finally having him making you rush toward your end faster than you normally would. 

Breathing heavily as your pussy clenches at his cock, he lets go of one of your thighs and shoves your shirt up, unceremoniously taking your bra with it. You bite at the back of one hand as he teases at your breasts, using one hand to pinch and pull at one nipple before moving to the other as he stares down at you with half-lidded eyes, brows furrowed in concentration. 

“O-Oh, my – fuck, I’m –” You moan brokenly, squirming beneath him as you feel yourself nearing the edge, teeth biting desperately into your bottom lip as you claw at his forearm and waist. 

Cockily licking over his lips, Billy leans forward as he grinds against you, his hips putting pressure on your clit as he covers your mouth with one hand, propping himself up against the desk with an elbow as his other still grasps at the back of your knee. 

You squeeze him tightly as the tail end of his happy trail rubs deliciously over you, giving you just enough stimulation to throw you over the edge. 

“Yeah, princess,” he encourages, grunting with nearly every thrust into you as he feels you clenching around him, pushing him further and further toward his own edge as he clenches his jaw, determined to hang on as long as possible. 

After only a few more thrusts, he quickly pulls out with a small groan. “Fuck, fuck,” he pants, chest heaving as he strokes his cock, painting your lower belly with stripes of his release.

Both of you still for a moment, breathing heavily as you each come down. Half expecting Billy to simply get dressed again and leave, you’re surprised when he softly kisses you, more relaxed this time, as his warm breath fans over your cheek. Dazedly, you kiss him back, your lips moving together unhurriedly as you card your fingers through the sweat-damp curls at the nape of his neck. 

After a moment, you part and your lips quirk up into a shy smile as he moves back half a step, giving you enough room to sit up. 

“Oh, uh,” you breathe, looking down when you feel his cum cooling against your skin. Glancing around the room, you pout a little when you don’t see any tissues or paper towels, “There’s paper towels in the locker room?” You offer, looking over at Billy, watching as he quickly tugs his shorts back into place. 

“I got it,” he says with a small smirk and before you have time to question what he means, he quickly tugs your underwear off your ankle and uses them to wipe at your skin, grinning meanly when you look up at him with wide eyes.

“Jackass!” You exclaim, laughing softly despite yourself, “That’s the only pair I have with me!”

“Nothing wrong with going commando, sweetness,” he says with a wink, chuckling when you wrinkle your nose at the thought while you pull your bra and shirt back into place, “Come back to my place and I’ll was ‘em for you, my parents don’t get back until late, anyway.” 

“You just want a round two,” you laugh, hopping off the desk and straightening out your skirt the best you can before running your hands over your hair, trying to smooth out your ponytail. 

“Told you I was gonna fold you up all pretty,” Billy smirks, crowding against you yet again once he tugs his shirt back on and lightly grasping at your jaw, “Something tells me you won’t have a problem with that either.”

“That’s presumptuous, don’t you think?” 

“Sure, yeah, I dunno what that means, princess,” he says, grinning when you laugh, your hands pressed against his chest as he quickly tucks your boyshorts into the waistband of his shorts, “Just come back to my place, hm?”

“What about basketball practice? Jason hates when people ditch.”

“You really think I give a shit about what Carver wants?” Billy laughs, taking one of your hands in his as he makes his way toward the door.

“Okay, okay, fine,” you finally agree, rolling your eyes playfully as you let him pull you out into the hall.

“And come with me to the Halloween party?”

“You have quite a list of demands, Hargrove.”

“Hey,” he says with a little shrug, glancing at you as you walk side by side toward the locker rooms, “That’s what you get for teasing me.”

You merely giggle as the two of you round a corner, nearly freezing and nervously glancing over at Billy when you come across Steve, chest heaving as he leans over a water fountain. 

Standing straight, he wipes at his lips with the back of his hand, narrowing his eyes at Billy, watching as he quickly scoops up his duffle bag from where he’d tossed it down earlier in the hallway. “Dude, why’re you leaving? You’re almost, like, half an hour late for practice.”

“Yeah, well, tell Carver something came up,” the blond boy huffs dismissively before taking your hand once more. You shoot a bashful smile at Steve, blushing as you and Billy walk toward the doors out to the parking lot. 

Behind you, Steve takes a minute to connect the dots, brows furrowing as he plants his hands on his hips. After a second, his eyes widen and he shakes his head. 

“Come on, at school?” He calls down the hallway, shaking his head as you and Billy laugh, “Fucking animals, man.”

gen tags: @helloworldiamnotarobot @drakonflames @marysucks-blog @watercolorskyy @valeskafics @iamaegontargaryenwife0 @aemshaircare @1997babyyyy @lovellies @little-moonbeam-666 @blackswxnn @wickedfrsgrl @echos-muses @imawhorecrux @avidreader73 @marvelescape @rae-11 @ms-morningstarr @chaotic-fangirl-blog @grsveeth0m @twglitching @hb8301 @delulumhaggy @burntliquorlips @fan-goddess @cl-0-vr @kittendoll05 @beautbuck @eponaartemisa @trshngyn @brettlovessuckingcocks @alerisc @moonriseoverkyoto @wolfdressedinlace @do-double-g @kennafild @cruelworldlana @mheraxes @eternallyvenus @chaotic-fangirl-blog @simp-hub-bro @badxbabyyy @venchi-cremino

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[aurumalatus]

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 (𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐓 𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔)

pairing. kinich x fem!reader

word count. 3.4k

genre/warnings. childhood friends to lovers (yes kinich literally invented this trope okay. sue me), mini-drabbles, childhood to university, modern!au, fluff and slight angst, lots of bantering but it's light-hearted i promise

summary.

you've always been a sore loser—kinich is just the only one brave enough to say it. or, you and kinich fall in love over the course of your lives, and one thing never changes—you're both idiots

author's note. credit to @/scythidol for the header images! a bit of a different fic format this time (who is she....). i'm sick over kinich, i have nothing clever to say or excuses to make. that's all, thank you for reading! i'm finishing this at 5am so i'll fix any errors later lol. reblogs/interaction highly appreciated!

I.

“You’re annoying.”

The old TV in your backyard treehouse buzzes with static and the constant thumps of Kinich’s fingers against the controller buttons.

It’s a summer evening—crickets chirp merrily in the grass and lightning bugs float lazily through the air, glowing among the stars. You’re sitting next to him, knees pulled to your chest and the straw of a Capri-Sun settled between your lips.

His reaction (or lack thereof) to your words leaves you less than entertained, a sour pout fixed on your lips as he sighs.

“You’re a sore loser. We said whoever got up here first got to play first.” Despite the intense game occurring on the screen in front of him, he diverts about half his attention to watching you out of the corner of his eye. “And I got up here first.”

“But you always win,” you whine. Kinich nudges at his own juice box with his knee, and you roll your eyes before picking it up and holding it to his lips��he drinks gratefully, still focused on his game. You’re not sure why you keep agreeing to this bet; you don’t think you’ve ever won.

“Then you need to get faster.”

Both of you know that such a feat would be impossible—Kinich has been the fastest kid in your grade since you started school. His athleticism affords him a bit of popularity, still at the age where winning a playground race is essentially the deciding factor between the cool kids and the lame ones. But he’s not interested in any of that, and he makes that quite clear in his actions.

After all, all the popular kids avoid him since he started a fight with them last year. 

“They were saying things about you,” he’d shrugged, like it was no big deal. The school seemed to think a bit differently, and his suspension felt like the longest week of your life.

The screen flashes then, a loud and colorful display that shows the words “you win”. Kinich leans back in his seat, a pleased half-smile spreading across his face. 

“Okay, now you can play.”

He tries to hand you the controller, but you huff, crossing your arms and turning away.

“I don’t even wanna play anymore.”

Kinich is far more mature than you at this age—even your own mother tells you as much—so he merely sighs, accepting of your tantrum.

“Okay, what do you wanna do then?”

You ponder that for a moment. There’s a lot of things you do often, but many of them are things that Kinich is much better at than you. Playing video games, climbing trees, riding bikes—he’s far more talented at them all. It’s one of the reasons you even became friends in the first place—you’d practically begged him to teach you to beat the final boss of Super Mario Galaxy, and the rest was history.

“I don’t know,” you mumble noncommittally, blowing your straw wrapper at him. It lands right on target, bouncing lightly off his forehead as he rolls his eyes.

“Come on, whatever you wanna do, we’ll do it,” he says, poking at your cheek. “I’ll even play house.”

And you know Kinich hates playing house—he has boundless amounts of energy most days, and house isn’t “challenging” enough of a game for him to expend it. But he does it occasionally, just for you.

You brighten at the prospect. 

“Really?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sighs, already descending the treehouse ladder, waving you along. “Let’s go inside first, though. I’m hungry.”

Scrambling to your feet, you jump down to meet Kinich, already standing in the grass.

“Last one inside is a rotten egg!”

II.

The rainstorm ends just as classes dismiss—when you walk out the school entrance, a slight drizzle is still letting up, fresh puddles lapping at your toes. Kinich’s gaze finds you instantly as he slinks out of the school gates, bag tossed loosely over his shoulder.

“My socks are wet now,” you whine, patting down the edges of your skirt to look down at your shoes. You’d only just bought them recently, and your mom likely wouldn’t be pleased with the prospect of you ruining them so soon.

Kinich chuckles at first, a snarky sound as thick as the gathering clouds, only to sigh when your pout persists.

“Alright, alright,” he relents, squatting to the ground and gesturing for you to get on his back. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

He’s a bit frail, still in his growing phase—his bones and muscles shift rhythmically under his skin as he walks—but he’s so distinctly warm. The heat makes you curl closer, nose brushing against his neck.

He walks you home most days like this, spending the day at your house until the sky grows dark with dusk. His home life is something he rarely discusses, but you know enough, and you’re happy to welcome him to yours.

“You’re slow,” you mumble into his shoulder. The steady thump of his steps is comforting, nearly putting you to sleep.

“You’re heavy,” Kinich replies teasingly, adjusting your weight atop his back. His words are biting, but he’s being careful with his steps nonetheless, taking each one lightly so as not to jostle you.

“You’re rude,” you scoff back. His nose scrunches in annoyance when you loop your arms tighter around his neck, pretending to choke him as punishment. “You’re not supposed to say that to a girl.”

He blows his bangs out of his eyes, peering up at the newly visible sun that starts to dip low in the sky. You watch a cat scurry through the bushes to your right, golden eyes peering through the foliage before disappearing into the darkness. 

“Yeah, that’s why I’m saying it to you.”

Kinich is always a bit wittier than you, a bit quicker to the punch, but you like that about him. You like a lot of things about him, and you’re sure he knows it, too. A weighty silence settles between the two of you, unnatural—it’s usually you who fills the silence, and Kinich who patiently listens.

But something bigger sits at the back of your mind, and the words are having trouble surmounting the obstacle of your tongue. 

You’re still floundering for something to say by the time your house appears in the distance. The sight lights a fire under you—you don’t want to discuss something like this with your mother in earshot. You force the words out, voice weak and small.

“I heard Mualani confessed to you yesterday.”

The rumor had flown through the school like wildfire. Mualani is popular with the boys after all, so there’s bound to be quite a bit of heartbreak if she ends up in a relationship. Someone had seen them together at that sakura tree behind the school, and it instantly became a hot topic—it’s all you’ve heard about all day.

And though you know it’s not really any of your business, you can’t help but be curious, and the thought fills you with dread.

You manage a glance at his expression, searching for any sort of unrest, but he doesn’t show any at all. In fact, he seems wholly uninterested in the topic.

He shrugs. “Yeah, so?”

You take a deep breath for courage—you’re not sure you want to hear his answer. 

“So? What did you tell her?”

And it’s nothing against Mualani, really—she’s kind and beautiful, and you wouldn’t blame Kinich for falling for her. She’s never done anything wrong to you at all. But a beat passes, and you’re already halfway through mourning the end of your long-time crush when he replies.

“I told her I was flattered, but I wasn’t interested.”

A sigh of relief escapes you then, but you reel it in quickly—he can probably feel you relax against his back at his response.

“Oh,” is all you say, as aloof as you can manage. Kinich latches onto your hesitation instantly.

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” comes your hasty reply. “...Is there any reason you said no, though?”

He frowns. “I don’t know. She just isn’t my type.”

“...Then what is your type?”

You’re going too far, you know—even just speaking the words has your chest twisting painfully, and you want to crawl into a hole and disappear. If Kinich isn’t an idiot, he can surely tell why you’re practically breathing down his neck over the whole thing.

But maybe Kinich is a little bit of an idiot, at least about these things, because he merely shrugs.

“Not sure. Never really thought about it.”

A frost unfurls in your chest, bitter—of course Kinich wouldn’t know, he’s never thought about anyone that way. Including you.

“Right.” You attempt a laugh, teeth gritting. “It’s all stupid anyway.”

You drop your head into his shoulder, trying to hide the pained expression on your face, and only then does Kinich’s stare flicker to you, soft.

“Right,” he says, a quiet rumble from his chest. “It’s really, really stupid.”

III.

Walks turn to drives when Kinich turns sixteen and buys his own car.

He’d saved up for months, working part-time jobs on weekends and after school, until the day finally came when he pulled up into your driveway, keys in hand. Your mom had been overwhelmingly proud—bought a cake and everything—and you’d merely been grateful that you no longer had to beg her to drive you places. 

It’s nothing crazy, just a simple sedan, but it represents a freedom that the two of you have never experienced together before.

That’s how you end up parked underneath the flickering streetlight just outside your house, excitedly recounting a story to your best friend. He’d driven you home from your club after school, an errand that always ended in several other stops—today, it had been fast food and boba.

His eyes seem to glow in the fading daylight, a pretty jade and amber that you’ve always thought was beautiful. It feels a bit more intense with his stare trained on you—Kinich isn’t the talkative type, sure, but he always ensures that you know he’s listening.

“So then she was asking me about you.”

“Mhm.”

“And get this,” a nervous chuckle escapes you then, “she thought we were dating.”

Everything falls still.

It’s times like this that you really start to hate just how unreadable your best friend can be. Despite how much you tease him for it, you actually enjoy how difficult it can be to force an expression out of him—it’s a little challenge every day. But now, when you’re on the precipice of pouring your heart out, his impassive expression stings.

Nothing on his face changes, save for a slight tilt of his head—he’s considering your words. The silence feels endless; a lump starts to form in your throat, humiliation burning at your cheeks. 

“I know, it’s so ridiculous,” you assert hurriedly, trying to avoid the rush of shame. “I mean, we would never—”

“Tell her we are, then.”

You’re sure that in that moment, your heart stops. 

Truthfully, you hadn’t planned to get this far—you were planning on brushing over that part of the story and moving on, but something deep in your heart had forced it out of you. Now, you aren’t sure what you really want to happen.

It’s always been your underlying fear, that once Kinich finds out, everything will change. Or even if he does return your feelings, it’ll all go up in flames eventually and you’ll never be the same. It’s terrifying enough to have kept your mouth shut all these years.

A tense laugh erupts from your throat, cutting through the silence. “I—I mean, it’s not that simple—”

He arches a brow. “Do you not want to?”

That’s another difference between you and Kinich—he’s far more straightforward about getting things that he wants. It’s one of the reasons that people misinterpret him as cold, but he sees it as being logical.

You gnaw at your lip, fingers tracing over the car door. Do you?

If the countless daydreams and romantic notebook doodles are anything to go by, you do. You really do. You’re just not sure if you’re brave enough to take that step.

When you look at him again, he’s observing you carefully, a delicate fondness lying in his stare. You shrink under the weight of it.

“No, I do,” you admit quietly. 

The moment falls still, and your eyes are drawn to the only movement within your line of vision—the quick bob of Kinich’s throat. Then, his hand advances toward your face at a measured pace, giving you endless opportunities to retreat.

Of course, you don’t.

“Can I…?” he asks, barely a brush of a whisper. The tension runs thick in the air as his tongue peeks out, swiping over his bottom lip at a tantalizing pace. It’s nearly enough to drive you crazy, but you know he’s just as anxious.

“Yes,” you breathe, wincing at the sound of your own voice—it sounds almost too eager.

But Kinich presses his lips to yours all the same, soft and wanting, and your heart flutters in your chest. It’s a chaste kiss, nothing like the fireworks-exploding-making-out-with-tongue types you’ve seen on TV, but it’s just right—it feels like him, and that’s all that matters. He pulls away slightly, lips still millimeters away from yours.

“I like you. If I’m not wrong, you like me too. I think it’s that simple.”

You almost want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Though you’d never admit it, you’ve practiced this scenario thousands of times in front of your bedroom mirror—what you would say to him, what he might say to you. Leave it to Kinich to not follow the script.

But he’s always done things his own way, so really, you should’ve expected this.

Gently, he reaches for your hand, fingers slotting through yours with ease. You sigh.

“I guess it is.”

IV.

“...that far, huh?”

Kinich stares at you upside down, head dangling off the edge of your bed as you sit at your desk, laptop keys clicking rapidly. He knows you’re serious about your future goals; you both are. He just never imagined it would bring the two of you so far apart.

You pause with one hand resting on the mouse, still staring at the screen. The map looks so daunting, too daunting, and you can’t imagine being that far away from him. 

An awkward, weighted silence hangs in the air, and by the time a few seconds pass, you’ve already foreseen eighty different bad endings for this situation. Clearing your throat once, you force yourself to speak.

“Kinich, I—”

“I get it.”

He doesn’t mean to interrupt you so suddenly, but he does. He couldn’t stop himself if he tried. Because while he does understand—he really does—he also can’t help the stinging sensation of tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. It feels pathetic. It feels selfish. Here you are, chasing your dreams and supporting his, and he’s caught on the fact that there will be a little space between the two of you. And it’s not like it’s anyone’s fault, but maybe you’ll get tired of waiting and—

“You’ll come back to me, right?”

There’s an unmistakable thickness to your voice, evidence of the steadily growing lump in your weary throat. It grows larger with every passing second, an insurmountable mass dwarfed only by the impending distance between you and him.

That question catches Kinich off-guard, and he nearly wants to laugh then; not because he doubts you at all, but because he doesn’t, and he finds it ridiculous that you would ever think otherwise. Here you are, worrying about him.

Kinich doesn’t have any doubts or fears. He never does when he’s with you.

Maybe that’s why.

With a light laugh, he lets his eyes flutter closed, finally allowing an uneven breath to fill his lungs. The natural light outside is slowly dimming, the fluorescent lamps dotting your street flicking on one by one. He knows he should go home soon. His car is sitting outside, the same one the two of you have had endless adventures, fights, and make-ups in. It’s the same one he will use when he moves an unfathomable distance away from you. The same one he will use on the day you will cry, clinging to him like your life depends on it, before watching him disappear into nothing but a mere dot in the distance.

His fist clenches at his side. 

But you’re still here, the closest feeling he has to home, and you’re still in love with him, and he is still in love with you.

Maybe that’s why this is enough, for now. 

Turning onto his stomach, Kinich sees you right-side up this time, and it’s like nothing has changed.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.” 

V.

A knock echoes on your apartment door in the middle of the night.

You raise a brow at the sound, a bit unnerved—a lone college girl answering the door in the dark isn’t the safest thing, you think as you peek one eye through the peephole. But there’s a familiar figure standing outside, and it has your hand turning the knob immediately and flinging the door open.

He’s here.

“Kinich,” you breathe, in disbelief. Last you’d heard, he was somewhere halfway across the country, and certainly nowhere near your front door. But he’s here, in a black hoodie and grey sweatpants, looking like he’s just walked out of your dreams.

“Hey,” he says simply, as if his appearance hadn’t been totally shocking. He takes advantage of your shell-shocked state to invite himself inside, curiously looking through your apartment. “Nice place.”

You step aside in a daze. “Kinich—you—what are you doing here?”

He’s holding three flimsy bags in his fist, grocery store logos and restaurant labels stamped over the plastic, keys hanging off his pinky finger. He’d come prepared, clearly, but for what you’re not sure. 

He towers over you a bit more than he used to, hair a bit longer, and everything about him feels so grown up. It reminds you of all the moments the two of you have missed over the years, how much change has occurred beneath your nose, maybe without you realizing. 

He spreads the bags over your kitchen table—the mouth-watering smell of Chinese takeout filters through the air, and your stomach grumbles in reply. But it’s your tear ducts that react initially, a sting at the corners of your eyes as you squeeze them shut.

Kinich doesn’t notice at first, absorbed in inspecting the photos displayed on your wall—photos of you, photos of him, photos of the two of you together. It makes his chest warm that you still think about those times. He does too—after all, it’s rare that you leave his mind.

But he turns back to you, tears running rivers down your cheeks, and his breath hitches.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, carefully cupping your face. A lilt of panic laces his voice. “Does something hurt? Are you sick?”

“You’re here,” you sob, curling into his shoulder. None of it feels real. He’s warm and firm beneath your fingers, and you clutch at him tighter, half-expecting everything to disappear. It’s so much different than FaceTime or calling or anything else you do when he’s away. Because right now, he’s completely within your reach, and everything falls into place.

“Of course I am,” he murmurs. You cry into his hoodie, soaking the fabric with your tears, but he holds you close all the same. “Because you’re here.”

You spend a few minutes that way—you crying until your tears dry over your skin, and him comfortingly rubbing at your back. Air slowly returns to your lungs, and you sniffle, glassy eyes meeting his. 

“But why? I mean, it’s the middle of the semester, isn’t it?”

A rare half-smirk graces his lips.

“We made a promise. I came back to you first. So I do believe that means that I win,” he says. If you weren’t so emotional, you might have rolled your eyes—of course, all he ever focuses on is winning.

He drags you over to the couch, laying down and pulling you on top of him, safe. You draw closer to him, tangling your limbs together until you’re not sure where he ends and you begin.

“You’re annoying,” you whisper, muffled into his chest.

Kinich shakes his head, pressing a kiss to your forehead. 

“You’re still a sore loser. Thought you’d grow out of that by now.”

You grumble a few choice words at him, and he smiles—a sight that only you and the stars can claim to have ever seen.

And he’s right; you are a sore loser, and he’s been right just about every time he told you so. But you find it doesn’t matter, not really.

You could never win against Kinich anyway.

(Maybe you never wanted to.)

[mysteria157]

Pairing: Sheriff!Nanami Kento x Black Fem Reader

Summary: You have a system, and it's worked perfectly until now. But in this dusty Western town, Sheriff Nanami Kento is making things...complicated.

By day, you're the town's sweet schoolteacher, loved by all. By night? You're the very secret that drives Nanami to sleepless nights and relentless pursuits.

You're drawn to each other, so it makes keeping your worlds separate a dangerous game that you can't help but play.

Rating/CW: slow burn romance, mild intoxication, brief violence, cowboy activities?, fluff, suggestive content, eventual smut, angst, explicit sexual content (eventually). MDNI!

WC: ~12k (strap in, I guess lol)

Author notes: Hello! It's finally here! I had so much planned for this story that I had no choice but to break it into parts. I struggled a little because there was a lot more world-building than I expected, but I'm proud of the result. This will be a slow burn, so please don't expect any smut right off the jump, lol.

Thank you so much, @pmpmyread @rahuratna, not only for looking this over, but for your advice and support! And thank you all for your motivation as I put this together!!

As always, likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated.

Happy reading!

Header: myself (image from pinterest) | Divider: @anitalenia @saradika network tag: @pixelcafe-network

Masterlist | Ao3 | Twitter | Part Two

©mysteria157, all rights reserved. DO NOT copy, plagiarize, reupload, modify, or translate (without permission) my work to other accounts and platforms.

The saloon door creaks open, letting in a blast of scorching summer air that does little to freshen the stale interior. Nanami steps inside, the cool dimness a refreshing difference from the blazing afternoon sun previously on his back. It smells familiar—scents of whiskey, tobacco, and sweat wrapped around camaraderie like an old, worn blanket.

Tired eyes flicker up from cards and empty glasses, recognition dawning on weather-beaten faces. A chorus of solemn nods greets him, a silent salute to their town’s protector. Nanami returns each nod mechanically, his own gaze carefully schooled to hide the bone-deep weariness that threatens to consume him.

His leather boots, caked with the dust of another fruitless chase, thud heavily against the worn floorboards. Each step feels like a defeat, a reminder of always arriving too late or right before his goal slips through his hands, touching his fingertips like a tease.

“Whiskey,” he grumbles as he plops onto a stool, the wood creaking under his weight. “The bottle, preferably.”

The young bartender—who he knows means well—sends a knowing smirk that sets Nanami’s teeth on edge. How many times has he found himself here, drowning his frustrations in amber liquid? Far too many, he thinks, as a tall glass of whiskey appears before him like a mirage in the desert.

Nanami snatches the Stetson hat from his head, slapping it onto the bar with a force that sends a small cloud of dust into the air. His fingers, calloused from years of handling a gun and reins and rope, curl around the glass, lifting towards the bartender in question. The young man simply shrugs as he cleans a cup with a dirty white towel.

“You drank an entire bottle two days ago, Sheriff. Gotta save some whiskey for the rest of us.”

Nanami doesn’t offer a remark because he has been drinking a lot more lately. While he’s never been one to be too many sheets to the wind, lately, consuming until his vision is fuzzy seems to turn off his thoughts. He takes a generous sip, the whiskey burning a familiar path down his throat but doing little to ease the sting of failure. As he watches the strong alcohol slosh in its glass, he gets lost in its color. The flaxen hue morphs into the fluttering of long lashes and mocking eyes, of a form quick and nimble—always just out of reach.

“You’ll catch ‘em eventually, Sheriff,” the boy offers, more out of habit than conviction. He’s seen Nanami here too many times, that frustrated look etched on his face, chasing something far too fast for him.

Nanami huffs an admonishing chuckle. “Maybe,” he concedes, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. “Or maybe I’m chasing the wind.”

He takes another swig, the alcohol doing little to dispel the sour taste of defeat or replace the thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of justice served. But it’s all he has right now. As the waning daylight stretches long and hazy into the sky, somewhere out there, a thief laughs at the law’s futile efforts—at his futile efforts.

He downs the rest of his whiskey, slamming the glass on the counter and ignoring the eyes of patrons who dart up to him from the mild disturbance.

“More,” he demands, sliding the glass across the counter to the bartender. As he watches the whiskey pour, he wonders, not for the first time, if he’s lost more than just a criminal in this endless game of cat and mouse. His integrity, his purpose, his peace of mind—all sacrificed on the altar of justice. And for what? A town that still suffers, and a thief who dances just beyond his grasp.

While the whiskey offers no answers, it at least dulls the ache of what he can’t achieve. But that comes at a price. As his mind fades from the present, it ruminates on the past. On how he grew increasingly disillusioned with his responsibility to protect. It broods on that fateful day when a bullet tore through his dear friend’s body, losing momentum enough to strike Nanami’s badge with a dull thud—a cruel reminder of how close he’d come to joining Haibara, and how utterly he’d failed to protect him.

For a time, he disappeared, carving a new life miles away on his family’s ranch. It was quiet there, peaceful and free of the failure he feels now on a daily basis. But eventually…it wasn’t enough. It was one too many desperate souls who stumbled upon his doorstep, knowing that he would be the only one to help, that he finally decided to come back.

Not that it’s made any difference.

Nanami’s reputation precedes him—the best sheriff this side of the state, a lone wolf who gets results. His name alone makes outlaws think twice before darkening his town’s doorstep. Or at least, it used to.

These past few months, a shadow has been making a mockery of him. A bandit, cloaked in night and silence, slips through his fingers like smoke. Jewels, coins, and the like—all vanish under the cover of darkness, present one morning and gone by the time the sun rises again.

The most maddening part? It’s a woman. He’s caught glimpses—the curve of a hip, a mask of charcoal smudged behind alluring eyes, a whisper of a deep laughter on the wind. She’s a riddle wrapped in black leather, a ghost that haunts his waking hours and torments his dreams.

In all his years, he’s never encountered a more elusive creature.

He lifts his glass, ready to down the contents and ask for more when the rays of sun catch, making the amber gleam like a beacon. The flash of light makes him turn to the saloon’s grimy windows, eyes squinting against the sudden blinding glare.

That’s when he sees you.

Framed by the dusty window pane, across the street, you stand in the golden rays, a vision that seems to part the haze of whiskey and self-pity that’s been clouding his mind. Your smile always seems to make his breath catch; it’s warm and genuine and lights up your face when your smooth lips curl at anything you hear. Right now, he sees it as you bid farewell to your students. They swirl around you like an autumn breeze, their laughter permeable through the glass.

The pink-haired boy—Yuji—who loves to follow Nanami around, wobbles from around the schoolhouse, both hands on the reins of your beautiful Palomino Morgan mare, Buttercup, as he yells to you with a toothy smile.

Nanami blinks, realization slicing through his slightly alcoholic haze like a sharp knife. He’s lost track of time, nearly forgetting his daily ritual that you both share. With a muttered curse, he pushes away from the bar, throwing a few coins on the wood and leaving the half-empty glass behind.

The sudden brightness of the outdoors makes him wince, eyes adjusting to the shift, but never leaving your form. With a soft click of his tongue, Nanami’s handsome chestnut stallion, Flint, nickers at his approach on the side of the saloon, nuzzling his master’s cheek as Nanami strokes his mane and grabs his reins. The horse’s hooves kick up small clouds of dust with each step, matching the steady rhythm of Nanami’s spurs. As he crosses the dusty road, he hides his gaze beneath the shadow of his Stetson to take you in fully.

Nanami’s seen many pretty women in his lifetime. Delicate desert flowers that bloom and wither with the changing seasons. And for the sake of not being the hopeless romantic that Deputy Gojo makes him out to be, you are different. From the moment he laid eyes on you, stepping off that dusty stagecoach with determination set in your jaw and hope shining in your eyes, he knew you were something else entirely. It took him weeks to even speak to you.

Your hair, usually neatly pinned back for teaching, has come slightly loose after a long day with energetic children. A few curly strands dance in the hot breeze, catching the sunlight. Your dress, modest but well-fitted, flows down your body in pale blue, the hem slightly dirty from the grass and dirt. You stand with a posture that commands attention—an undeniable grace in the way you move and Nanami is victim to the call of your hips when they sway.

There’s a smudge of chalk on your cheek, dusty white against smooth brown skin that glows in the sun, and the slight furrow in your brow makes the side of his lips flinch to fight a smile. You’re tired—happy to have another day with children, but ready to get home and relax. You’ll probably take a bath, brush Buttercup’s mane, and try a new pie recipe. It’s little details about you that he’s learned over the years since you moved here, the small moments you’ve both shared that seem to make his heart pound faster than what it should when he’s near you.

Your beauty isn’t just the curve of your cheek or the curl of your lashes. It’s the gentle patience in your voice as you help a struggling student. It’s in your laugh, rich and uninhibited, ringing through his ears when he has the blessing to be near you. It’s in the fire that burns in your voice from ranting about yet another student leaving school to help his family’s farm, a passionate frustration that both terrifies and mesmerizes him.

The sun in this small town is unforgiving, but it paints you in hues of amber and gold, careful with its rays so as not to burn you. Nanami realized a long time ago that ‘pretty’ doesn’t begin to cover you. You’re breathtaking, in every sense of the word. A force of nature wrapped in pale blue calico and lace, stealing his breath and his weary heart with each passing day.

You ruffle Yuji's hair, taking the reins from him and nudging his shoulder to move him along, smiling as he takes off down the street towards his home. Sensing his approach, you finally turn to meet his gaze.

For a moment, Nanami feels exposed. Surely you can’t see the slight cloudiness in his irises from the whiskey? Hopefully, you can’t smell the alcohol that carries in the wind from his breath. Your smile only widens, a hint of knowing in your eyes, and his heart skips in his chest, missing a beat.

“Sheriff,” you greet him, a harmonious voice carrying a note of warmth that bubbles like hot oil in his belly. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten.”

Nanami clears his throat, fighting the rush of blood to his cheeks. “Never,” he manages, one hand resting on his horse’s flank.

“Still in the whiskey?” you tease, lifting an elegant brow. “My, my Sheriff, I didn’t imagine you to be the man.”

It’s easy for you to slice him open and leave him exposed to the open air, vulnerable. Nanami has never been one to be caught by surprise, but you always have him on his toes. In a gesture as old as the West itself, Nanami reaches up and removes his Stetson, holding it respectfully to his chest.

It’s a mechanical response, born from years of ingrained politeness from parents that have long gone, but it’s also more than that. The removal of his hat is an unspoken apology, a show of respect, and a moment of vulnerability all rolled into one.

He falters, unsure and throat tight as he struggles for something to say. To prove to you that he’s a good man and not the drunkard he feels like the mornings after a failed chase. He’s sure he looks like a schoolboy caught in mischief. But as he opens his mouth to defend himself, you chuckle, a rich timbre that makes the bubbling in his belly drip in thick rivulets down his pelvis.

“I’m only teasin',” you insist, stroking Buttercup’s mane, a mischievous smile doing little to help Nanami’s resolve.

Relief washes over Nanami’s face and he visibly relaxes, still not used to just how much you kid with him when you’re both together. He can’t bring himself to answer you or admit that drinking was exactly what he was doing. So he simply clears his throat, offering a gentle pat to your horse.

“Shall we?” he offers, moving to help you mount.

You nod, holding your breath as Nanami’s strong hands encircle your waist. With seemingly effortless strength, he lifts you onto Buttercup’s back, watching to ensure you’re secure before returning to his own horse. He swings himself up onto the saddle with ease, sliding his Stetson on carefully parted blonde locks. Side by side, you begin the ride home, your horses falling into a comfortable trot.

You never speak much, content to bask in your surroundings as you both walk together, but to him, just being close is everything he could ask for. He wishes he could whisk you up onto his horse and nuzzle his nose into the soft skin of your neck as you recall your day. He wishes he could smell the lavender soap you bathe with and the rosemary oil from your silky strands that he’s seen you buy at the general store. When he’s around you, he wishes for so much—he wants.

But an unmarried woman and man, both of position no less, would only garner gossip that he refuses to make you the center of. And his job is a dangerous one, filled with brutality and misery, of justice that seems to never be fulfilling, and he won’t be a man that leaves you in pain when he’s unable to come home.

As you both walk, the familiar sounds of the town surround them—the distant laughter of children, the creak of wagon wheels that pass them on the dirt road, the rhythmic sounds of hoofbeats and the occasional jingle of Nanami’s spurs, the smell of fresh-baked bread that floats in the cooling breeze, mingling with the earthy scent of dust and grass.

“How were the children today?” Nanami asks, trying to break through the self-inflicting resignation that clouds his mind.

You smile, launching into a story about Yuji's latest escapade with a frog in the classroom. Nanami listens, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he imagines the always enthusiastic boy causing a fuss. He marvels at the way your eyes light up when you talk about your students, the passion evident in every word.

As you speak, Nanami can’t help but think of all the times over the years he’s wanted to ask for more. To invite you for dinner, to teach you to shoot on the acres of his ranch, to ask for a dance at the town social when you’re sitting alone, clapping along as Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara scuttle wildly in the lantern-lit barn. The words have been on the tip of his tongue countless times, but he always swallows them back. Content to tell himself he’s doing something noble even as every fiber of his being screams the opposite.

Your laughter pulls him from his thoughts, guttural and melodic in the air, and he realizes he’s missed part of your story. It feels like a crime to not be fully in your presence.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” he asks, feeling the flush return on his cheeks. His mind has only wandered off for moments, but already your house is in view, the front door signaling another end to a conversation with you. Another walk over, another day done. But you’re safe, and for now, that’s enough for him.

“Sheriff, do you actually listen to me when I speak?” you begin, playful in your accusation.

“Of course I—”

“Or you just like hearing me speak?” you interrupt, a smirk growing, mirth sparkling in beautiful eyes that always make his throat dry. “I didn’t realize my voice was so alluring.”

Nanami chuckles softly, dismounting Flint when you reach the gate on the side of your one-story house. “I’m not sure I can answer truthfully, ma’am.”

You hum, pursing your lips as you smooth the invisible wrinkles off your dress. He refrains from tracing the movement of your hands as they ebb and flow generous curves that rest beneath the fabric. “So you just like me then?”

I do.

Is what he wants to answer. Because he wants, and wants, and wants.

Instead, he guides you down from Buttercup, savoring the meat of your waist between his fingers, the warmth of your body in his hands. He waits patiently as you guide her through the gate and inside the stable behind your house. When you return, he can’t help but note the subtle disappointment in your eyes, the way one side of your lip pulls in as you bite into it. He wonders if his own face conveys the same, if you can see the subtle sag in his shoulders of having to leave you so soon.

“Same time tomorrow?” you ask, eyes simmering with what he wants to think is hope.

“Because I like to hear you speak,” he unwittingly teases, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, ma’am.”

As he moves to mount his horse, you’re transfixed by the fluid grace of his movements. He places one scuffed boot in the stirrup, strong corded hands gripping the saddle horn as he swings himself up and onto the Flint’s back like it’s nothing.

Atop his chestnut stallion, Nanami cuts an impressive figure. His sheriff uniform fits him perfectly. A tailored deep blue shirt with long sleeves rolled to his elbows and tucked into denim around a lean waist. A sturdy brown leather vest creased from long days under the sun emphasize his broad shoulders. On one side of his chest rests a gleaming tin star, a symbol of authority and responsibility with a bullet-sized dent beneath the words that signify him. On his left hip, a lasso is coiled neatly, ready for action at a moment’s notice. On his right, his gun rests in its leather holster—a weapon you’ve seen him use a few times—and a constant reminder of the dangers he faces to keep the town safe.

The late amber light casts a warm glow over his features, highlighting the strong line of his jaw and the tiny creases at the corners of his eyes—a man who’s seen both laughter and hardship. Laughter he gives you when he can, hardship he refuses to indulge. His Stetson sits low on his brow, casting a shadow over umber eyes that make his gaze seem even more intense as he looks down at you.

No matter how many times you are both together, you are always struck by how handsome Nanami is. Rugged and weather-worn, yet with a gentleness in his eyes and kindness in his warm voice that makes your heart flutter. He’s the embodiment of everything a cowboy should be—strong, capable, and undeniably attractive.

As if sensing your admiration, he clears his throat loudly, dramatically, the corners of his lips twitching as you blink back to the present.

You retaliate in the only way you know how. “And stop calling me ma’am, as if we haven’t known each other for a few years.”

You insist on this every single time the title slips past his lips. And like every time before, Nanami smiles softly, reaches up, fingers grasping the brim of his Stetson, and tips his hat to you in a gesture that’s both gallant and a little playful.

“Have a good night, ma’am.”

You roll your eyes, mouth pulling into a small smile, heart beating like a drum in your chest, before you huff. “Goodnight, Sheriff.”

He watches you enter your home, waiting until the door closes behind you before clicking his tongue and shifting his weight, setting Flint into motion. The ride back to his office seems longer somehow, the town sounds a little dimmer as he gets closer, and the alluring smell of fresh bread he noted on the way to your house is now replaced with an enticing whisper of more whiskey now that you’re no longer by his side.

The church bells chime softly as you settle into your usual pew, absentmindedly picking lint off your lavender Sunday dress. You nod politely to Mrs. Watson, the baker’s wife, as she shuffles past with a hand on her youngster’s shoulder. Your eyes, soft and inviting to all who meet them, scan the congregation with practiced nonchalance.

Pastor Roberts steps up to the pulpit, black hair slicked with too much pomade, enormous silver rings on too many fingers, his voice booming through the small church. “Before we begin, I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to our new railroad station fund. And I’d like to give a very special mention to Mrs. Thompson, whose generous donation has brought us significantly closer to our goal. Your generosity truly embodies the spirit of our little community.”

The crowd breaks into genuine praise and applause. Mrs. Thompson, always seated in the back pew in her faded but clean dress, ducks her head modestly with a sheepish smile. Your heart clenches in despair, knowing she works grueling shifts at the general store just to make ends meet, her children practically raised by her neighbors. You’re sure that she’s only going above and beyond so her husband, who works many miles away, can come home often. She probably has nothing left—you just know it—and the thought makes your blood boil.

“Now, regarding the final sum we need,” the pastor continues, clearing his throat, “I’m sure we can count on our more…fortunate members to help us reach our goal.”

From the front pew, Mrs. Jones pipes up, her haughty voice carrying over the congregation. “Oh, we’d love to help next time, Pastor! We would’ve contributed more, but we had an unexpected expense with some…essential purchases this past week.”

She adjusts the luxurious new fur draped over her shoulders, seemingly oblivious to the irony of her words. You glare at the offensive garment, boiling blood now thickening with unquestionable anger.

Like so many other wealthy families in this town, the Jones are always eager to flaunt their excess, parading their luxury with heartless disregard for those who sacrifice their last penny for the common good. Content to take what they want, they turn a blind eye to those who truly need help, their indifference as cold as the coins they keep to themselves.

To others like them, poverty is a personal failing. In their minds, if people like Mrs. Thompson would try harder, work longer, or simply stop being sad and hungry out of sheer will, they too could reach the heights of wealth and respect. Preaching a gospel of bootstraps and self-reliance, willfully ignorant of the walls that keep the poor trapped.

Stepping foot in this sweltering church each Sunday is a test of your patience and resolve. But, you push through, hidden behind a mask of piety. As the pastor’s words fade into a monotonous hum, your attention shifts to the whispered gossip around you, ears poised for information that might prove useful. If Mama was still alive, she’d probably scold you if she knew your true intentions.

“Shameful,” Mrs. Clark mutters to her friend, her tone leaking with disdain and disbelief. “The Jones had enough for that fancy social at their house last week and an entire shipment of new furs, but not enough for something that we were all asked to contribute to? Just shameful, I tell you.”

“And here’s Mrs. Thompson giving what little she has just so her man can come home more often.”

You shake your head as you pretend to join in the gossip, your resolve hardening by the second.

Bingo.

After the service, you linger, making small talk with a widow about her new rhubarb pie recipe, when you spot your target.

“Oh, Mrs. Jones,” you call out, your voice dripping with misplaced sweetness. She turns around to face you, regal in cosmetics, a shade too bright, her fur sitting nicely on her neck even as she sweats like a sinner. “I meant to tell you earlier. Your fur is lovely.”

Mrs. Jones preens, her chest puffing like a peacock, basking in the attention. “Why thank you!” she gushes, dripping with false modesty. “Got them fresh last week. I would love for you to see the rest when I’m back in town. Jimmy and I leave for Millbrook and we’ll be gone for a week or two. It’s so refreshing to meet someone who appreciates fine things.”

You offer a small smile, excitement filling your body of your plans unfolding before you. “You’ll surely be missed. I do hope you have a wonderful time.”

She beams again, red lipstick cracking down the middle. “Make sure you stop by when we return, won’t you?”

You do stop by, but it’s a day after the Jones leave, a shadow among shadows. Buttercup leans into your touch when you brush a gloved hand along her glossy mane. You hop on her back, clicking your tongue to urge her into the night.

It’s further out of town, which makes this better for you—the fewer eyes, the better. The Jones estate looms ahead, dark and silent. You leave Buttercup a few yards away, patting her side as she lowers her head to graze. “I’ll be right back, girl. Just wait for my call.”

You circle to the back of the Jones’ house, glaring at the clean paint and beautiful greenery. A flickering light from a first-floor window catches your attention, and you duck down on impulse—the night watchman, no doubt. The Jones have enough money but spend too excessively to afford a maid. While this is a hindrance you can easily deal with, it’s still a thorn in your side. Patience has always been your ally, but tonight, it’s tested.

You know the town’s law enforcement, led by Sheriff Nanami, has been increasing patrols around wealthy homes because of your activities. The thought of him potentially catching you always sends a confusing concoction of thrill and dread through your veins.

Still, you wait, hidden in the shadows and the lush greenery around you, watching the guard’s routine. He leaves every ten minutes to patrol the house, returns, and scratches the sparse hair of his beard before plopping in his chair. His yawns grow more frequent as the night wears on, but he seems to alert himself with each distant noise. It takes a few more patrols and a few deep breaths to soothe your anxiety when you think you hear hoofbeats in the distance, but eventually, he settles one final time, his chin dropping to his chest as he dozes off, and you make your move.

A few windows over, a trellis catches your eye—perfect. Years of practice have taught you to distribute your weight evenly to avoid creaks as you climb the lattice. At the second-story window, you pause, listening. From your vantage point, the only source of light dimly from the living room below is the guard’s open door. The sound of his distant snores sets you back in action.

With ease, you manipulate the window latch, easing it open slowly to avoid any squeaks. You slip inside, your feet silent as they land on a plush carpet. The lavishness is an immediate assault on your senses—the air tinged with rose and peppermint, your eyes widening at the guest bedroom walls covered in paintings and deer heads. You grimace. Extravagant niceties that those less fortunate would give their soul for the value.

You pause at the top of the stairs, eyes scanning the house around you for anyone else, ears straining for any sound from the guard below or, worse, the approach of patrol outside. Satisfied, you ghost through well-decorated hallways towards the master bedroom. Without a moment to waste, you scan the ornate space. You know to secure your exits, and your entrances, and you smirk when you spot a sturdy chair on the other side of the room.

Silently, you wedge the chair under the doorknob, its back legs lifted slightly off the ground. It’s not the best, but it should buy you precious time if needed. You turn back to the master bedroom, eyes narrowed as you move on to your next step.

You’ve seen it all before, and no matter what, they keep their valuables in the same predictable places. A bookshelf with too much space that you can push against to open a second compartment. A floorboard slightly elevated than the rest. But for the Jones, it’s the garish family portrait above their bed—the same one Mrs. Jones boasted about at church weeks ago. Another unexpected but essential expense.

Your fingers work quickly as you carefully remove the painting, revealing the gleaming safe behind it. You press your ear against the cool metal, your fingertips ghosting over the dial. With precision, you begin to turn it, listening intently for the telltale clicks of the tumblers falling into place.

First to the right, slow and steady. Click. Back to the left, past the first number. Click. Right again, slower this time, feeling for the slightest resistance. Click.

Your breath catches as the final tumbler falls into place, heart racing with the promise of success as you slowly turn the handle. The safe door swings open with a satisfying creak, and inside, illuminated by a sliver of moonlight streaming through the window, sits your prize. Stack of crisp bills and glittering jewels, a physical manifestation of the good that they can do in the right hands.

As you transfer the wealth into your satchel, a floorboard creaks downstairs. You freeze, every muscle in your body taut as a bowstring, lungs seizing in your chest. You hear the rustle of clothing—the guard stirring in his chair. It feels like seconds stretch into an eternity as you wait, hand hovering over the gun on your hip. Just as your lungs scream for air, his snoring resumes, and you exhale slowly, your racing heart gradually steadying.

You’re hyper-aware of every sound as you work. The whisper of the bills, the soft clink of jewels—each seems magnified in the stillness of this gigantic house. You’re nearly finished, only two more stacks, when another creak echoes through the house, this one closer, more deliberate. There’s no settling floorboards from a new house or snoring night guard.

Someone’s here.

Suddenly, the doorknob jiggles violently, a voice on the other side booming through the previously silent house. You know the voice anywhere, one that haunts both your waking hours and your dreams.

Your heart picks back up, ice water filling your veins as the hairs on your neck stand up straight, but your hands remain steady as you gather the last of the valuables and ease the safe closed. Even in the face of being caught, you have to remain calm. It’s what’s kept you unnoticed and alive this long.

You replace the painting, your eyes already scanning the room for escape routes. You can easily go back out through the window, but the trellis you came upon is in the guest bedroom a few doors over. The jump from this window won’t be damaging, but it’ll hurt, and you don’t have time to use your rope to help you down.

Banging erupts against the door, the wood jumping from the force of the assault. “Sir! I’m here!” The night guard’s voice joins in beneath the noise, and you hear his hurried gait up the stairs.

You don’t have time for schematics. Time’s up. You throw the satchel around your shoulder and bolt for the window, only seconds before the door frame splinters from the strength of two men, the chair tumbling across the floor.

“Freeze!” A deep baritone barks, harsh and volatile, but you’re already halfway out the window, your leather boots pressed to the paneling, your hands holding you up like a spider monkey. You can’t help but pause, your wide-brimmed hat and black bandana obscuring most of your features. Coal-smudged eyes, their true color blending with the blackness surrounding them, meet the gaze of the man before you. He’s never been able to get a photo or any sort of evidence from you, not in times like these. He’ll never know who you are. But you know exactly who he is.

Sheriff Nanami Kento stands in the moonlit room, his stance wide and authoritative. Protector of the town, your number one purser, and a man who, despite your best efforts, has made a permanent home in your thoughts.

Mysterious mahogany eyes, usually kind and warm when they look at you during the day, now burn with determination and anger. That gun that you’ve seen him use to shoot targets and make Yuji laugh now points directly between your eyes.

As you look at him—the tension in his broad shoulders as they rise and fall beneath his shirt and vest, the dark circles under his eyes that speak of sleepless nights chasing your shadow—a pang of guilt slithers down your chest. Maybe if you take a small break with your escapades, he could get some sleep. You hate it when he’s tired, especially when you’re the cause.

But these thoughts are dangerous. Over the years, you’ve let him get too close, allowed him to see much of the real you, and now you’re beginning to feel the consequences.

But you can think about this another time; you’ve stayed longer than necessary. Right now, you have a job to finish. With a hitch in your breath, you drop to the ground. You land with a thud, your ankles absorbing the impact. A sharp pain shoots up your right leg, but you grit your teeth and push through it. You can’t afford to stop now.

The wild grass is thick as you sprint through the open fields, the satchel of stolen valuables bouncing heavily against your hip. Your breath slices through your lungs in short gasps, the cool night air burning in your chest. Behind you, you hear the chaos of pursuit. Nanami’s commanding voice mixes with the night guard’s confused shouts, and the sound of boots hitting the ground tells you they’ve made it out of the house.

You ignore the ebbing pain in your ankle, pushing yourself harder, faster. The grass gets taller with every inch you gain, whipping at your leather-clad legs as you tear through the field, the darkness both a hindrance and a shelter. You use the moonlight to guide you, your eyes scanning the landscape for the rock face you left Buttercup at on your way here.

A distant whinny in your ear cues you instantly. You whistle for her sharply, praying your faithful steed is close enough to hear. Her thundering hooves answer your prayers, growing louder by the second as she matches your sprint.

She appears like magic, slowing enough for you to leap onto her back and urge her into a gallop with a click of your tongue and a squeeze of your knees. With your view no longer obscured by the tall grass, you turn back to the disappearing estate, your heart dropping when you spot several riders—Nanami’s men, no doubt—headed toward you.

Gunshots pop through the air, the whoosh of silver bullets whizzing past your ears and missing their mark. But they’re getting closer. You hold your breath, absorbing the minute fear that blooms in your chest as you risk another glance behind you. Nanami is now at the front, his face grim and emboldened.

A snort from Buttercup turns your attention ahead. You fold low over her neck, your thighs contracting and relaxing in harmonious sync with her thunderous gallops. You taught yourself how to ride after Mama died, determined to do whatever it took to make it through the world. You found Buttercup then, neglected and forgotten, a mirror of your own lost soul. Now, years later, you both move as one, you anticipating her every move born of trust and time, she responds to the smallest shift of your weight as if reading your very thoughts.

Up ahead, the path narrows, winding through a rocky formation that makes you pull in your shoulders on reflex, as if you’re squeezing to fit. You guide Buttercup with a slight shift of the reins and a coo to her twitching ears.

There’s a fallen tree a few yards away, blocking most of the path and making it almost impassable. But you know what you can do. With a click of your tongue and a minuscule pressure of your knees into her sides, she reads your message immediately, huffing before launching over the thick oak in a magnificent leap. She lands with grace on the other side, hooves kicking up dirt in victory. It buys you the seconds that you need, but it won’t be enough. Nanami and his men will find their way around, and you need this chase to end. Now.

Ahead, a boulder ten times your size, with jagged edges and thick cracks, creates a fork in the path. You form an idea that is risky but will buy you the time you need to get home safely.

You guide Buttercup down the left path, your hand reaching for the pistol on your hip. You wind up the reins in one hand, squeezing the leather to hold you steady as you swiftly turn in your saddle to face the dusty world behind you. With the change in position, your hips work against the momentum of Buttercup’s stride instead of with it, and your tweaked ankle stings with every slap against her side. But you’ve practiced this before, and your balance is perfect, hand steady even as you move at breakneck speed.

Nanami and his men emerge from the curve of the path, eyes locked on you with deadly intent, and in that split second, you take your shot.

You’re not aiming to kill or even injure—your target is the lanterns that hang from each saddle horn. Amidst the bucking of your hips and the wind that whizzes past your ears, you hold your breath—forcing your heart to slow as your vision tunnels, and your finger squeezes the trigger. Before Nanami and his men can even reach for their guns, the air cracks, gunshots from your firearm hitting their mark to make the lanterns explode. It has its desired effect—their horses are startled, bucking onto their back feet as they whine in fright.

Nanami doesn’t want to, you can tell from the look in his eyes, but he has no choice but to look away. His eyes leave you as he tries his best to console his stallion and the rest of his gang. You take advantage of the chaos and twirl back around, relaxing your hand on the reins and exhaling the painful breath that was lodged in your lungs.

“Good girl,” you murmur, patting Buttercup’s neck as you coax her into a more fierce gallop and disappear into the night, the sounds of pursuit fading behind you. The satchel on your hip bucks with your mare’s kicks, reminding you of a job well done.

Even with the adrenaline of success thrumming through you, your mind always wanders back to the ‘why’ of it all.

When the guilt tries to curl in your chest when you least expect it, you remember Mama’s sunken face as she divided a molded loaf of bread between the two of you. You remember the hollow eyes of your neighbors too proud to beg. You remember the day you and Mama stood outside the general store in your hometown, staring at a display of fresh fruit, its price more than your weekly earnings. You remember being shooed away by the store owner, muttering about “ill-bred women,” lowering the tone of his establishment.

That night after Mama finally fell asleep, you stole for the first time. So skinny that you could slip through the gap in Mr. Thornton’s fence of his apple orchard. You took only one—a small, slightly misshapen apple covered in dirt—fear rattling your bones at the thought of being caught. But its sweetness, shared with Mama the next morning, was everything you could have asked for.

The concept of right and wrong has always been blurred for you. You’re certainly not right in the eyes of the law, or perhaps even in the eyes of God that Mama believed in so much. But when you distribute your spoils in the dead of night, slipping money through house doors. When you see the disbelief turn to joy on a widow’s face because she can feed her children another week. When you watch a frail old man cry over a warm coat that will see him through the winter—you sleep a little better.

The world isn’t fair. You learned that lesson far too soon in your life. But in your own way, with these midnight heists and heart-pounding adventures, you’re trying to balance some sort of scale. It’s not justice…but it’s something. Something that lets you look at yourself in the mirror each morning, that calms the angry, helpless, and hungry child still living in your memories.

Tomorrow, you’ll begin distributing this wealth to those who truly need it. Yuji's grandpa will have enough to buy his grandson new clothes. Mrs. Thompson will have enough to make up for the remaining savings she gave to the church. And come Monday, you’ll greet Sheriff Nanami with a warm smile as he walks you home from a day’s work at the school, your secret safe for another day.

The thrill of every heist, the satisfaction of outwitting the law, the knowledge that you’re helping those in need—it all mingles in your veins like the sweetest whiskey you tease the Sheriff for indulging in. As the stars twinkle overhead as you wash the coal from Buttercup’s nose that hides her white markings, you allow yourself a moment of pride. It’s probably not much in the grand scheme of things, but to someone in this town, it’ll mean the world.

“Did you hear about Mrs. Jones’s place?”

“Ma says the bandit struck again, cleaned them out in seconds!”

You keep your face carefully neutral as you pick up on your student’s conversations that dance on the hot air, but you’re filled with pride and guilt. You can’t help but think of Sheriff Nanami, of the frustration you see etched on his handsome face so often. Even yesterday, those determined eyes flickered with hints of shame. For a moment, doubt creeps in, whispers in your ears like a tease, threatening to unearth everything you’ve worked for.

But then you look at Sarah’s new turquoise ribbon that compliments her wheat-colored hair as she twirls in a circle on the dusty road. You remember Tommy’s gait as he said goodbye to you just minutes ago, no longer wobbly now that his toes have room to move in new shoes.

The whispers of your students and how surprised and elated they were to find money under their doorstep make you steel yourself. Despite the risks, despite the growing complexity of your feelings—it’s always worth it.

Your life is a study in contrasts. Mornings are quiet affairs—a cup of coffee, a soothing hand down Buttercup’s mane as she eats her breakfast, the silence of an empty classroom. Afternoons explode with energy—eager questions, laughter, and the occasional disagreement amongst your students. You think of Mama, how she read to you as a child, planting seeds of knowledge that would one day bloom into your passion for teaching. It’s another way you give back—maybe some form of atonement you aren’t ready to address—but to fill another generation’s head with knowledge is a gift you wouldn’t trade.

Coming to this town years ago was an escape—from the pain of Mama’s death, from the constant fear of your life as a thief. You only meant to stay a few months, take what you needed, give it back to those like you, and vanish. But loneliness has a way of anchoring a soul.

Months became years. A solitary existence morphed into friendships with neighbors and an undeniable connection with the stoic sheriff who walks you home, an unspoken affection blossoming between you.

Years of experience have made you attuned to the whispers in town. You know how much Mr. Fletcher has hidden away in his safe. You know what date and time certain shipments come in and who they are going to.

Lately, though, whispers of a different sort have caught your ear. Tales of a hidden treasure in the old mine outside of town. Yuji talks about it almost every day, how his grandfather is convinced the treasure is real. The town’s cobbler rolls his eyes at the rumor, often grumbling about how the citizens should focus on earning revenue through hard work and no shortcuts. The more adventurous of the town have scoped the plains around this town time and time again. But it’s never bore any fruit.

Even you have dismissed it as just another local legend. But the thought nags at you, a persistent itch you can’t quite scratch. While you do not doubt the well-meaning residents of this town, they may not have your experience. They may not know how to scale a rocky mountain or where to look. But you do.

You’ve spent years justifying your actions, convincing yourself that the end justifies the means. That it’s a necessary evil in a world that turns a blind eye to suffering. To walk away now feels like the biggest betrayal of everything you’ve fought for, everything your Mama taught you about standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Even last night, you went through your routine of reiterating that what you’re doing is for a good cause.

But the twinge in your ankle when you woke up this morning. The bleariness in your eyes from little sleep. The exhaustion weighs heavily on you. The loneliness is more palpable every morning when you roll over to an empty bed. Because you can’t share the darkness of your secrets with anyone. Is it selfish to want a normal life after being exposed to the rotten core of it? To want stability, a future untainted by the shadow of your past, to want love? Or is it more selfish to continue on this path, risking everything—including the hearts of those who’ve come to care for you—for a cause that seems never-ending?

The infinite revolving of these thoughts makes you think twice about those rumors. So…what if the treasure is real? What if there’s enough hidden away to help everyone in town, to right all the wrongs you’ve seen? Enough to let you hang up this hidden life for good, to just be the schoolteacher—no more lies, no more risks, no more seeing the weight of failure in Nanami’s eyes.

Hours later, after your students have long gone, you’re atop Buttercup, having decided an afternoon ride might clear your head. You break through the bustle of town, the sun painting the landscape of open plains. As you crest a small hill, you scan the horizon, absorbing every detail with practiced observation that’s served you well in your double life.

You remember it all from your first few weeks here—a dilapidated shed outside of town, a small lake where wild animals drink from to the north. But with more focus, to the West, you spot unfamiliar rocky terrain. What catches your eye is how the rocks seem to fit together—not stacked with the random chaos of nature, but with an almost deliberate precision. It’s as if the hands of a giant stacked them long ago, their edges now overgrown and softened by wind and time.

If you were to slowly move the rocks over time, you could find an unexplored cave on the other side—not a mine like the rumors claim. Whatever it could be, it’s definitely worth investigating. You make a mental note of its location, your innate sense of direction and topography—honed by years of midnight runs—ensuring you can find it easily again.

As you make one last sweep across the landscape, your ears pick up on the stressed mooing of cows and the yells of men. After riding toward the source for a few minutes, you finally spot the commotion. Mr. Williams’ well-maintained fence is broken with wooden boards sprawled on the plains as a group of cattle amble and run free. They shuffle as fast as their heavy bodies will take them, mooing loudly in distress.

You’ve done some wrangling as a young girl, a grueling job that paid you very little to feed you and Mama, so you immediately hone in on the weak points of the fence and the patterns of the cattle’s movement.

You spring into action, clicking your tongue and squeezing your thighs around Buttercup to make her take off. The wind whips through your hair, loosening curls from your usually neat bun. As you draw closer, your heart leaps in your chest.

There, in the midst of the chaos, is Nanami. He sits on his stallion with an easy grace that makes your mouth go dry. Eyes narrowed with determination, cheekbones glossy with sweat and dirt. His vest is gone, and you note the navy long sleeve that squeezes his thick form, his forearms exposed and veiny. His strong biceps flex as he twirls his lasso, long fingers cinched tight around the base of the noose, wrist twirling in a motion you’ve thought about late at night with your fingers buried deep inside of you.

Gods, he’s handsome. Even that first day when you both met in front of the general store, Nanami reaching down to collect the books you had dropped, you knew then he would be your undoing. He has proven to be the one constant in your mind when you should be thinking about your goal.

He’s the kind of man that you could bring home to Mama, though you’d have to keep a watchful eye on her so she doesn’t flirt herself. He’s the kind of man who can work the fields and protect a town, that can fend off criminals and walk children the school, that can come home after a long day and kiss you until your eyes roll into your skull. That can grunt in appreciation from the fingernails that dig into his back, your legs wrapped around his waist as he buries himself to the hilt and—

“Need a hand, Sheriff?” you call out, shaking yourself back to reality, swallowing the saliva in your mouth. You can think about him later. Right now, that adventurous itch comes to life at the base of your spine. You love being a teacher, but you miss things like this—the thrill of the ride, the tingling sensation of a challenge, and Nanami’s presence all combine to create a heady rush of adrenaline through your veins.

Nanami’s head turns at the sound of your voice, deep brown eyes widening in surprise. The movement of his wrist stops, and his lasso plops on his head, musing perfectly parted blonde locks as the rope smacks the sides of his face. There’s a flicker of something in his eyes—surprise, yes, but adoration and something more pungent that makes your skin tingle.

“Ma’am, this isn’t exactly—” he starts, but you’re already taking off.

A whistle from your lips springs Buttercup into action, galloping a wide birth around the scattered calves. You free your own rope from your saddle horn, the weight in your hands a comforting reminder of late nights practicing in your stable. You hitch up, bunching your thighs with hidden strength, twirling the lasso once, twice, feeling the perfect balance of it.

Then, with a fluid movement, you send the rope flying towards the calf closest to you. It arcs through the air before finding its mark, settling around the calf’s neck with perfect precision. You ignore the feel of Nanami’s eyes on you as you wrestle to rebellious calf back into Mr. Williams’ yard. The man himself is already releasing the rope and ushering the calf away from the fence that is slowly being repaired by his ranch hands.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Nanami asks when you pace up next to him. The lasso is still haphazard over his head, lips parted in astonishment.

“Are you implyin' that I shouldn’t know how to do that, Sheriff?” you tease, guiding Buttercup in a slow trot around Nanami and his stallion. He fumbles to correct himself, cheeks heating as he pulls at the rope around his neck and shoulders. “Should I only know teachin' and how to care for a home?”

“N-now you know that’s not what I—”

You cut him off with a sharp chuckle, making another rotation around him and his steed, a mischievous glint in your eye. “You’re so gullible.” He throws you a wary look, finally pulling the lasso off his body in a huff. “Now, are you gonna help me, or not?”

You and Nanami fall into sync, working in tandem to herd the cattle back into Mr. Williams’ enclosed space. It’s perfect choreography—when Nanami moves right, you’re already swinging left.

Before long, you spot a flash of white in your peripheral vision. Deputy Gojo leans against the fence, his shock of white hair practically reflective in the sun. He’s been practically absent up until this point and, unlike you and Nanami, seems in no rush to join the action. He eyes you with a charismatic smile, flirtatious in his gaze, but you’re quick to roll your eyes playfully and get back to the task at hand.

There’s a grace to Nanami’s body as he works. His hips roll with each movement of his horse, the rock back and forth, a rhythm hypnotic and alluring. The muscles in his denim-clad thighs flex as he grips his mount, powerful and thick. His face maintains his usually iron-faced composure, focused on the task, but an undeniable beauty to his concentration. The setting sun enhances his features, the shadows accentuate his strong jaw and cheekbones. A bed of sweat traces a tantalizing path down his neck, disappearing beneath a collar that’s three buttons undone.

As you drive a cow forward, Nanami is there to lasso and guide it home. The way he hands his horse, the quiet commands and clicks, the subtle shifts of his body, and the grunts that leave his form when he throws his lasso—it all speaks of a man completely in control, and you find it mesmerizing…and utterly arousing. There’s something primal and enticing about watching him move, about being in such perfect harmony with him. It’s a blaring reminder of the attraction that’s been simmering between you.

At one point, you end up riding side by side, so close that your legs brush against each other. The contact, even through the layers of your dress, is scalding. You steal a glance at Nanami, darting through the disheveled curls in front of your eyes, only to find him already looking at you. Those dark eyes are smoldering—intense with an emotion that radiates from you both and squeezes your throat tight.

As the last cow meanders through the repaired fence, you both are panting from exhaustion, guiding your horses to a slow stroll. Mr. Williams jogs towards you both, followed closely by Gojo, a lazy saunter and an ever-present mischievous look on his face.

“I had no idea you could wrangle so well,” Mr. Williams exclaims, waving enthusiastically as he reaches up and takes the reins of both your horses to lead them towards a water trough. “That was incredible. I have no idea how to repay you.”

You wave him off, trying not to preen under the praise. Gojo's incredibly rare and well-bred snow-white Quarter Horse saunters up to you, the animal indignant in his strides just as much as its owner.

“Well,” Gojo drawls, crystal blue eyes sweeping appreciatively over your form. “Didn’t think a schoolteacher had fine lasso skills. Any other skills I should know about? You can show me at the town festival in a few weeks.”

It’s undeniably forward, enough to make a dignified man turn beet red in anger and a fragile woman faint. But it’s Deputy Gojo Satoru—uncaring of the world that he feels revolves around him.

“Gojo,” Nanami snaps, harsh and biting with an undercurrent that makes your spine straighten. “For once in your life, stop pestering every woman within a few feet of you.”

You can’t help but chuckle, shrugging dismissively and patting Buttercup’s neck as she drinks. “No harm done, Sheriff. I’m sure Deputy Gojo here was just being friendly, weren’t you?” You ask, voice laden with a double meaning that makes Gojo smile warily, suddenly apprehensive. “Though I’d caution against mistaking friendliness for interest. Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea and end up disappointed…again.”

Gojo's jaw drops, Mr. Williams chokes on a snort a few yards away, and you hear Nanami stifle a harsh grunt that cracks on the edges.

Gojo sputters, pale white cheeks burning, his usual confidence faltering in the night air as he flaps his gills. “I’ll have you know, I’ve never been disappointed in matters of the heart.”

You hum nonchalantly, pursing your lips in disbelief. “Oh? So that wasn’t you I saw sulking behind the saloon last month? What was it you were muttering? Something about Geto turning you down for the second time?”

At the mention of Geto's name, Gojo's blue eyes widens, a squeak eeping from glossy lips. Nanami, unable to contain himself any longer, lets out a bark of laughter.

“I—that’s not—how did you—” Gojo stammers, looking between you and Nanami with wide, suspicious eyes. You simply shrug, glancing at Nanami. There’s a glimmer of amusement there, a shared moment of mirth at Gojo's expense. At some point, Gojo grows tired of entertaining you both, clicking his mouth in annoyance and taking off towards town. You snort at his retreating form, giggling with the rush of excitement of the evening.

When Mr. Williams sees you both off, the night is a cool blanket around you both. The moon sits high, a silver pendant on the velvet black sky, while the stars twinkle like scattered diamonds. For awhile, you both ride in silence, the rhythmic clop of hooves a soothing melody to your turmoil from earlier in the day. The air carries the scent of grass and wildflowers, mixing with the sweat that lingers on your skin. It’s Nanami who breaks the quiet, his deep voice a relaxing current of electricity down your spine.

“He will only take your wit as a challenge,” he muses, mildly amused.

“Gojo will forget all about me the minute Ms. Foxworth bats her eyelashes at him.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle, casting his face in a brief flash of masculine flirtation that makes your heart skip. “And Ms. Foster,” he adds, catching onto your game.

“And Ms. Chamberlain,” you continue, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

“And I’m pretty sure Mrs. Jones,” Nanami finishes, snorting to himself because she’s married, and that’s never stopped Gojo before.

Your eyes meet, scandalous realization settling over you both, and in that moment, the ridiculousness of it all bubbles up inside. Laughter erupts from you first, a released cascade of glee as your head tilts to the night sky. The sound of Nanami’s deep chuckles mingles with your giggles, creating a harmony that seems to resonate in your very bones. It feels good to laugh with Nanami. Just like any other time you spend with him. It takes your mind off the thought of leaving this town—of leaving him—forever.

The night is cool against your skin, but your chest blooms with warmth. You’re about to comment on the beauty of the star-studded sky when you notice Nanami reach into his vest pocket. He pulls out a cigarette, lips wrapping around the filter with a firm but gentle grip.

Your heart sinks, a leaden weight pulling it further down your rib cage. You’ve noticed he only smokes when he’s particularly stressed, and the sight of it now, after such a wonderful evening, makes you frown. You know it’s because of his work, the harshness he sees every day, and his relentless pursuit of the bandit—of you—only makes it worse for him. The remorse gnaws at your insides like a rabid animal.

Doing your best to mask the torrent of emotions threatening to consume you, you aim for a teasing approach. “Stressed, Sheriff?” you ask, quirking an eyebrow and hoping he can’t hear the slight shake in your voice.

Nanami pauses, the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He looks at you with a flicker of embarrassment, highlighting the tired lines around his eyes that you wish you could smooth away with your fingertips. “Ah, my apologies,” he says, moving to put it away. “The smell—”

You wave him off. “I don’t mind. Not much of a smoker when I need to relax.”

He hums but doesn’t respond, striking a match and cupping large hands around the flame. The brief light illuminates his face, casting shadows across his face. You find yourself transfixed by the way the flame reflects in his dark eyes, like embers in the night.

He takes a long drag, the tip brightening in burnt orange and gold. Nanami exhales, the smoke curling seductively from his nose and into the air, the sight more enticing than it should be. “So, when do you smoke, ma’am?”

His voice is entirely too low, entirely too deep. You playfully glare at the use of ‘ma’am’ for what feels like the nth time since you’ve known each other. You decide to be mischievous, precariously throwing caution to the wind.

“Oh, you know,” you say airily, looking up at the sky as you try to emit an air of faux innocence. Nanami looks at you cautiously, raising a dark blonde eyebrow expectantly, eyes narrowing as he picks up on the teasing tilt in your voice. “You smoke when you’re stressed. I smoke to unwind from a job well done. Preferably, after taking a good man for a ‘ride’.”

Heat simmers beneath your skin as you speak, low and husky and loaded with suggestive humor that surprises even you.

It’s an immediate effect and more satisfying than you could have ever imagined. Nanami sputters, choking on the smoke. His eyes go wide, and crimson erupts up the glimpse of open chest and neck, visible even in the moonlight, spreading to his cheeks in a way that makes you want to trace its path with your lips.

You can’t help but giggle as he coughs. “You make it too easy sometimes, Sheriff,” you say between laughs.

Nanami clears his throat repeatedly, desperately trying to regain his composure. But you catch the corners of his mouth twitching, fighting a smile that makes you bite into your bottom lip. His chest heaves as he takes in deep breaths, and your eyes watch the way his shirt stretches across his wide shoulders with each inhalation.

“You’re trouble, you know that?” he finally manages in a rough voice, glaring at you with a mix of exasperation and fondness that warms you from the inside out.

“So I’ve been told,” you reply with a wink, reveling in the way his breath catches again at your boldness. He shakes his head with a chuckle, turning back to the open plains in front of him.

You notice that some of the tension has left Nanami’s shoulders, his posture relaxed once more. Your guilt eases a little, knowing that, at least for this moment, you’ve managed to lighten his burden rather than add to it.

“Gojo likes trouble as much as he likes wit. Stay away from him and pick someone else.” He pauses, opening his mouth as he weighs his next words with delicacy. “I imagine you have a line of suitors with far more promise than Gojo hoping to escort you to the festival.”

Nanami’s voice is soft, almost wistful, wrapped around an overwhelming cluster of resignation that makes your heart clench painfully in your chest. His eyes are fixed on the horizon as your horses walk side by side, but you can see a tightness around his mouth, a tension in his jaw that speaks volumes.

“I haven’t really paid much attention, to be honest,” you admit, surprised at his sudden remark. You try to keep your tone light and nonchalant, praying he can’t hear the slight tremor, the silent truth that threatens to spill from your lips—that the only man you truly notice is him. Every day, all the time, from sunup to sundown, it’s always Nanami Kento.

Nanami hums thoughtfully, fingering the sharp cut of his jaw. “That fellow from the saloon a few weeks back? He seemed taken with you.” He pulls in a deep drag, sunset orange ebbing to life at the tip.

You can’t help but roll your eyes. The memory of that particular encounter was both amusing and exasperating. “He was three sheets to the wind, Nanami. Claimed to know my drink of choice and got it wrong when he recommended scotch, of all things.”

Nanami exhales a smoky breath, the wisps ghosting around a smirk that makes him look statuesque with the rolling plains behind him. “You prefer moonshine,” he muses, “The kind Kilmer makes, if I’m not mistaken.”

Your heart skips a beat at his casual observation. Moonshine isn’t exactly legal in town, but when the bartender Kilmer works the saloon on Wednesday nights, most of the residents ask for his prized moonshine if no deputies are around. Of all the things for him to pay attention to, your drink of choice seems like such a small, insignificant detail.

You bite the corner of your lip to keep from breaking into a wide smile, belly warm at the thought.

“Not like I can admit to that,” you tease, digging your teeth harder into your bottom lip as the simmering grows in your stomach. “Aren’t you supposed to be upholdin’ the law?”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, you want to snatch them back. You’re aware of how much pressure the sheriff places on himself. How he feels unworthy of the badge on his chest. There has never been a day in your knowing him where you felt he was undeserving. Of the town, of all of its citizens, of you. If you could turn his face to a mirror and stand by his side while you tell him just how deserving he is, you would in a heartbeat.

Nanami’s smile fades slightly, a heavy weariness etching onto his features. He takes another drag and turns his head away as he exhales. “This town is small, and times are hard. Sometimes…moonshine is all someone can afford if they need to get away from the world for a while.” He pauses, his eyes meeting yours in the moonlight. “A good lawman knows when to look the other way for the sake of his people.”

It’s times like these when you admire the man Nanami is. He’s rough around the edges and stern with the law, but he’s also empathetic enough to know when some rules should be lax based on those they affect. Maybe he could think the same about you? Maybe he could understand your self-imposed noble acts and forgive you for causing him so much pain.

Nanami clears his throat, seemingly eager to change the subject. “The man at the general store two months ago? He could hardly string two words together around you.”

“He was at least five years younger than me,” you counter, giggling at his persistence. “Hardly appropriate. What will the town think?”

“That you’re incredibly picky—” he starts, but you cut him off with a playful swat to his arm.

“Or maybe,” you chuckle with a playful roll of your eyes, “they’ll think I have standards. Is that so wrong, Sheriff?”

“Not at all. Though, I can’t help but wonder what those standards might be.”

Oh.

You’re immediately aware of how dangerous this conversation has become. You’ve never flirted so blatantly before, never with such clear intention. The banter between you and Nanami has always been a harmonious push and pull, as natural as breathing, even though you both treat it as a forbidden dance. But this shift now—it’s palpable, exciting, and terrifying all at once. But the night air, the lingering adrenaline from the cattle drive, that pump of electric fire that pulses through your veins when you can feel free for a moment, all of it makes you bold.

“Someone kind,” you begin, your voice barely above a whisper, as if speaking any louder might shatter the moment. “Intelligent also helps, dedicated to his work and cares about the people around him.” You risk a glance, hiding beneath the curtain of your curls. Your heart races, each beat echoing the recklessness that coats your tongue with every word. “Someone who notices the little things…like a lady’s drink preference.”

The words hang in the air, heavy with implication. It’s as if you’ve finally given a voice to the undercurrent that’s been flowing between you, transforming your ocean of subtle flirtation into something more tangible, more precarious.

Nanami’s gaze, usually so controlled, molds before your eyes. In the flickering embers of his cigarette, you see something molten, a desire that slides down your body with liquid arousal. His lips purse around his cigarette, your eyes flickering to the muscle that curls around the filter, watching with rapt attention as he inhales deeply, slowly.

When you slide your eyes up to meet his, your breath catches at the still-burning intensity. Your vision tunnels to the reflective desire in his eyes, the moonlight on his face, the tension that crackles between you like lightning before a storm. It’s almost too much, your chest tightening with still stolen breath in your lungs.

But just as quickly, he looks away, severing the connection and turning to exhale a plume of smoke into the darkness.

“He sounds like a fool.”

The tension breaks like a dam, and you find yourself choking on a surprised laugh, chortling at the full smile he shoots your way as if bashful. He seems like a flirtatious teenager, basking in the attention from his crush, and you hold on to the sight—to the way it’s making you feel.

As your laughter fades and he puts out his cigarette on the heel of his boot, the atmosphere shifts again. The sizzling lust that danced around you both softens into something more intimate, more tender.

The moonlight catches in Nanami’s hair, turning the golden strands liquid silver. No longer the pristine part he maintains, the strands fall in gentle tufts around the tops of his ears and over his eyebrows. Your fingers twitch on the reins of Buttercup, itching to reach out and brush those disheveled strands away, to feel if they’re as soft as they look.

Nanami, soft when he speaks again, almost reverent. “You’d be surprised, you know,” he murmurs, looking at you once more. “Just how many people notice you.”

His words sway in the air, loaded with meaning. You find yourself frozen, caught in the earth of his gaze, the sincerity making your throat dry. Even as your hips move with Buttercup’s trot, it feels like the world narrows to just the two of you, eyes on each other as everything else fades into insignificance.

Suspended in time and bathed in moonlight, you wish you could push a little further, draw out a confession, or make a declaration of your own. You want to stretch this moment into eternity, to live in this space where you only exist as a schoolteacher, and Nanami could put his own happiness first, just for once.

But reality intervenes, as it always does, with a painful wave of guilt that crashes over you. The weight of your secrets, of your double life, of your part in his pain, settles heavily on your shoulders like lead. So, instead of the words you long to say, you offer only a gentle smile, letting the serene silence of the night envelop you both.

As the first glimmers of the town’s lamplights come into view, you allow yourself this moment of peace. You bask in Nanami’s presence beside you, in the rhythm of the horses’ hooves, in the soft ‘plop’ of his Stetson against his back with each step. You breathe in the memory of shared laughter and adventure, storing it away like a precious treasure.

It’s dangerous—this indulgence—you know. Every shared moment, every word, every loaded glance yanks you further into a web of feelings you can’t afford to have. But as you ride side by side through the moonlight, you can’t bring yourself to regret it. Not tonight.

Instead, you hold this memory close to your heart, a keepsake against the long, lonely nights ahead. It’s a bittersweet reminder of what could be, in a world where you aren’t who you are—a world that exists only in these fleeting moments under the vast, star-studded sky.

By the time you clamber up to your doorstep, Buttercup is already resting in her stable, and that terrible feeling of guilt and confusion roars to life in your chest. You wrap your hand around your doorknob before turning to look at Nanami. He’s still there, with messy hair and sweaty skin, as he reaches into his vest for another cigarette. Handsome and otherworldly and right there. He catches your stare as he places the filter between his lips, one eyebrow quirking up in concern.

“Everything alright?” he asks, the unlit cigarette dangling as he speaks. “I’m not leaving until you’re safely inside.”

You wish you could relish in his concern, bathe in his care, and savor the warmth that blooms in your chest. But you’re not sure you’ve even earned it.

“I’m goin’, I'm goin',” you joke, cracking the door as you step one foot inside your home, still angled to him.

“Well, hurry along then,” he insists, a gentle demand lingering beneath. He lights the cigarette, cheeks pulled in as he inhales full-chested and exhales a deep plume of smoke. Through the haze that dances around him, you find mischief as he smirks. “Ma’am.”

The laugh leaves you before you can stop it, rolling your eyes at his deliberate use of the title he knows annoys you. With a final wave, you step inside, closing the door behind you.

The laughter dies on your lips as soon as the door clicks closed and you press your forehead against the cool wood, eyes stinging with the promise of tears. The clop of Flint’s hooves slowly fades as Nanami gets further away from you, and the only thing you wish at this moment is to yank open the door and run to him. To run away from your terrifying thoughts and forget everything.

Next week, when Mr. and Mrs. Phillips leave town, you have another heist planned. It should feel promising. Another chance to do good, to make others happy at the expense of your safety. But the thought sits heavy in your stomach, the lightness you felt moments ago with Nanami leaving in a flourish.

That nagging feeling from this morning, the festering loneliness born from your decisions, finally breaks free now that you have nothing else to distract you. It makes everything so much harder now. The thrill that once drove you feels muted now, overshadowed by something else—something warm and achingly intimate that’s taken root in your chest.

You slide down to the floor, back against the door, bottom lip quivering as conflict rages like an inferno within you. Tomorrow, you’ll have to start preparing. But tonight, you can’t help but wonder if your heart is truly in this anymore.

Thanks for reading! I hope to have part two out in a few days!

[wowcatboys]

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HEARTSTEEL KAYN/READER : KISSES ♡ Gender Neutral ♡ SFW, NSFW under bold header ♡ TW: Sexual Content ♡ Please don't ask me how much I spent on RP when the skins released!!! IT'S NOT RELEVANT !!

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KAYN

Kissing Kayn is damn near indescribable. It's all his passion, his excitement, his energy, all focused on you. It's like, well...picture this. The pins-and-needles sensation when your leg falls asleep. The burn of sunbaked summer pavement on bare feet. The gasp that comes when you get shocked by static electricity. Hazy neon signs, spicy cologne, ice water after mint gum. Somehow, Kayn feels like all of this at once.

Kayn really likes those double-sided mints, the ones that are half strawberry. He's usually crunching his way through a pack of those, so it's not rare to kiss him and taste a hint of strawberry and the coolness of mint.

If you think you're going to get away with giving Kayn a tiny peck on the lips, think again. Go ahead, try to whisper your lips against his and pull back. "Uhhh," he raises an eyebrow, scowling, "what's that bullshit about? Come back here." Kayn slides a quick hand around the back of your neck, all-but-crashing you back into his mouth. He doesn't let you go until your bottom lip's shiny with his spit, and your cheeks are heating up.

If you catch Kayn when he's extra sleepy, though, you might get some sweet kisses out of him. Pull him close as he's stirring in bed and pepper kisses across his cheeks like freckles. He'll squish you to himself and lazily touch down on your forehead, your temple, the bridge of your nose. He's the sweetest when he's half out-of-it.

Kayn has zero shame. He will kiss you in front of anyone, and he will kiss you anywhere. If you want a kiss? You get a kiss. Anytime, anyplace.

Just because he's gone full-Rhaast doesn't mean he loses the urge to kiss you. If anything, his urges get stronger. The need to have you, to show everyone you're his, to be so close to you there's barely room to breathe in between. Often, he'll tip the edge of his mask up just to put his mouth on yours.

His favorite place to be kissed is his neck. Kayn's extremely sensitive there. If you attack his throat with little love bites, pausing over his Adam's apple, he squirms into your touch, sighing happily—you might even coax a giggle out of him, if you're persistent enough. (If you call him out on it, though? He will never admit to such a cute noise. "I was coughing," he insists.)

Kayn's favorite place to kiss you? Well, if you're in public...he's a classic mouth man. He loves nothing more than the softness of your lips and the warmth of your tongue.

N S F W

If you're in private, though? Kayn's favorite place to kiss you is just below your waistline, right on the edge of your underwear. He lingers there just before catching your underwear between his teeth and tugging them off of you.

Kayn doesn't kiss you during sex, so much as he attaches to you like a leech. His mouth is always on you, always moving, up and down your neck, hovering over your chest, pausing on your shoulders. And he bites. Gently, most of the time, but he's been known to leave bruise-dark hickies in places spilled over your skin. He's especially rough if you're topping him, riding him within an inch of his fucking life. Kayn's been known to leave teeth marks if you're really blowing his mind.

Who would Kayn be if he wasn't at least a little bit disrespectful to everyone, always? He loves to spit in your mouth. Don't worry, though, he takes it just as good as he gives it. If you spit in his mouth right back, he's instantly so hard it's almost painful.

[ladymarvel27]

Frustrated🌹 Carlos Sainz

Carlos Sainz x Reader

Series Master list

Description: Returning after a double header, you thought you would be able to spend time with him, but he is self isolating.

Word Count: 752

f1 masterlist

He just had come back from the run. You were worried all the afternoon. He wouldn’t answer his calls, not reply to your text.

“I was worried, Carlos!” You jump and wrap your arms around his sweaty body, fitting under his chin. But he didn’t hug back. He pulls away instead and says, “Yeah, I was just, my phone was discharged but I forgot it was.” It was a proper excuse, a lie. You could easily tell. Anyone could.

Your eyes scrunched in confusion as you leaned back. “Huh?” He ignored you and disappeared into the bedroom.

“OKAY,” you murmured under your breath angrily. He had returned after a doubleheader, that too after the summer break, to spend time with you, only to isolate himself from you for the last two days. Actually just one, but Tuesday was almost over. The sun had set and you had come home early just to go out with him only for him to go missing for no reason.

Some minutes later he comes out of the room in just boxers and a towel on his shoulder and goes straight to the kitchen.

“You must be hungry?” He asks loudly from the kitchen.

“Yeah!” You replied loudly and got up from the chair you were sitting in to go inside the kitchen. He was busy cooking and didn’t even notice you. You looked at the gorgeous body he had built with all his effort, his back flexing as if he were your own personal Greek god. “Hey, Carlos?” He mumbled out a small ‘mhm?’

“Everything’s fine, right?”

“It seems so,” he replied, completely busy in his coo‘king’.

“Seems so? Just seeming?”

He didn’t reply.

“I was waiting for you all the afternoon! And you went freaking missing!” You argued.

“Afternoon? Weren't you gone to work?”

“I wanted to spend time with you and didn’t even cared about it at all! You freaking muppet!” As soon as you spoke out, he paused immediately and turned to look at you, his lips parted.

“I am sorry,” he rushed to wrap his arms around you, trying to hug you but you rejected his hug and stormed out to the bedroom, slamming the door behind you.

He knocked gently on the door, “Mi Reina, please open the door,” he spoke softly.

You were sitting on the floor, your back against the door. You felt him pushing the door, but he couldn’t open it.

“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t talk to me, but at least have your dinner. Please don’t go to bed hungry.”

“Please, please, please,” you could clearly hear him pleading.

Suddenly you heard Sabrina Carpenter singing, 'Please, please please-' You found it amusing. The song stopped, and Carlos said, “Please y/n, at least have your dinner, please.” You didn’t reply to anything. He is annoying you. He wasted so much time, you had planned to go out with him and spend more time during the afternoon, only for him to be gone missing. You are angry now, upset and mad with him. He wasn't saying anything anymore. You heard him retreating away from the door. But you still felt the anger boiling up in your body. You were already sweaty and wanted to cool and calm yourself down before communicating with him. So, you got up, unlatched the door, grabbed a towel and went to the bathroom.

Few minutes later, you come out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around you. The room door was opened and the door of the closet opened with his shirts dishevelled. A drawer opened and the car keys were gone. “This muppet! He is gone again miss-” You heard the door lock clicking. Carlos enters holding something in his hand and looks around to see you. As soon as his sight lands on you, he rushes and wraps his around you. “I am sorry, y/n,” he said and pulled away, the remorse clear in his eyes. He steps back as your gaze follows his movements. He brings forward a large bouquet of tulips, deep red. You felt your heart melting at the sight of those pretty flowers. “I promise I will make up to you,” he pleads, presenting the flowers. AH! He was gone to get you those flowers. “Can you please let me?”

You take the bouquet from his hands and a small smile makes its way through his face.

“Okay.” He grinned widely and suddenly you are picked up from waist by him.

“Carlos, my towel will fall off.”

“Should we make-” The sound of your stomach rumbling interrupts him. “C’mon, let’s get you dressed and fill that tummy of yours.”

A/n: Thanks to my sister for proofreading.

Dividers credits: @saradika @saradika-graphics

Taglist: @faithshouseofchaos @itsjustvs4

[buttrf910]

A hot day with Finn

warning: none

wc: 1,8k

a/n: i want requests about Finn and his characters

Summer. The warmest time of the year and at the same time the hottest. Especially on this day. It's 30 degrees outside and you and Finn are slowly dying from the heat, although there is a fan and cold soda nearby. But it doesn't really save you. The two of you are dressed in the shortest and lightest clothes you have.

Finn is sitting shirtless in just his shorts in front of a fan. He's looking at you and the way you're lying on your back on the floor, pressing a cold can of soda to your forehead. A smile forms on his face and he speaks softly while looking at you.

– I want snow.

You immediately look at him and grin. Yes, snow really wouldn't hurt right now.

"Me too," you reply, continuing to try to cool your body from such terrible heat.

Finn chuckles softly and thinks a little. Playful thoughts immediately appear in his head, which he is going to embody. He gets up from the floor heading somewhere, leaving you alone with yourself in his room, you think that he is going for another can of soda to cool down, so you calmly close your eyes feeling how pleasant the cold metal on your forehead is. A couple of minutes and a sharp cold on your stomach makes you open your eyelids and jump. Finn looks at you with a playful smile while a piece of ice melts on your stomach. He giggles like a child, even though he is already 21 years old, but he is still childish.

– Hey! – you blurt out loudly and take a piece of ice from your stomach right into your hand. The cold is pleasant on a hot body, but you still frown a little because of its playfulness. Finn giggles again and wipes another piece of ice on his neck.

- What? I thought you were very ill from the heat, I wanted to help. He says with an innocent expression on his face, but you know he did it on purpose just to make fun of you a little. You roll your eyes at his words and repeat after him, also wiping a piece of ice on your warm neck.

��� You could have warned me.

– Then it wouldn't be interesting. – he says and continues to wipe his neck with ice. His words make your eyes roll back, but you can't take offense at him for long, he's too cute, although sometimes he's an idiot.

Such pleasant hot days in the company of Finn always warmed your heart, maybe that's why it was so hot. But the ice really helped to cool down. I hope every hot day will pass in such an easy and playful manner.

cr header: ddaenig

[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.

[puba24]

I love, love, love, love your banner/header here on Tumblr. There is so much happening and it’s been really fun zooming in to each person and seeing what they’re doing, what their mood is, who they’re talking to, what they’re drinking, etc. Did you make the banner/header yourself? If you did, where did you get inspiration for it? Thank you.

Hi! Thanks <3 Yes, I did it a few years ago. I wanted to join some JAM event and was thinking about quick ideas for a game, I can jump in with. So I took my characters from SUMMER story and created a concept of location and mood for this idea.

It was quite a fun to draw all these characters, I love to create crowded places, with many little stories.

There was a super rough idea of a gameplay, other artist wanted to help me with. It never went forward and we stopped, I don't remember why exactly.

This little game never happened, but at least now I have a cool banner :D

[janaem]

Let Me Rule You

Jareth x f.reader

This is Chapter 2 (Wish) | previous chapter Word count: 5.5k (22 pages) Warnings for this chapter: swearing, arguments, blood, use of weapons Key:Y/n= your name | L/n= last name | M/n= mom name |d/n= dog name header image is an oil painting by licieoic

The rest of the day was Y/n spending time in her room reading Labyrinth. She was sprawled lazily on her bed on her back, one of her windows cracked as she felt the warm summer dusk breeze tickle her skin.

She began to feel familiar with the intricate details and made mental comparisons between the novel and the movie. Despite only watching the film once, Y/n felt as though she remembered all of it; it was tattooed in her brain, and she didn't intend to forget it.

Every time she immersed herself in Jareth's dialogue, she couldn't help but hear it in his deep, captivating voice, which sent shivers down her spine as if he was standing right behind her, softly whispering in her ear. She longed for his words from the book to be portrayed in the movie, but reading allowed her to envision Jareth's dialogues in a way that was uniquely her own. It felt like she was directing a personal movie in her mind, one that she never wanted to end.

She was more than halfway through the book when she set it down and grabbed her phone, ignoring the notification on her lock screen. She opened a music app and looked up the Labyrinth soundtrack, scrolling to the song that she couldn't quite resist the most.

She put on her headphones, her left hand in the spot in the book where she left off, and pressed play, allowing the music to electrify her senses like a sudden bolt of lightning.

"How you turn my world into a precious thing…"

His voice trembled with vulnerability and longing, sending a wave of heat rushing down her body. She couldn't help but shut her eyes, savoring the electric sensation as she pictured Jareth in his sleek black leather waistcoat and vibrant red long-sleeved shirt.

"You starve and near exhaust me."

"Everything I've done, I've done for you…"

"I move the stars for no one."

She swallows a lump in her throat. Her eyes began to sting. She allows his evocative voice to seize her senses.

"You've run so long, you've run so far…"

"Your eyes can be so cruel."

As Y/n listened to the melancholic tunes, a sudden rush of excitement overwhelmed her, a feeling she hadn't experienced while listening to a song in a long time.

In her mind's eye, she envisioned Jareth striding towards her, his hand outstretched, offering a crystal ball filled with dreams. She imagined him staring intensely at her with a daring look, his thin lips forming a seductive smirk so captivating that Y/n could swear she felt her body pulsating with anticipation. Her eyes remained fixed on Jareth; her heart seemed to leap into her throat in that instant.

"Just as I can be so cruel."

She found herself unable to pinpoint the exact reason for her attraction. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of his drowsy yet intense gaze and angular eyebrows accentuating his sly grin, or maybe it was the hypnotic timbre of his voice. His words seemed to caress her like a sudden rush of water trickling down her goosebump ridden skin. She so desperately wanted to open her mouth and shamelessly consume it, letting it drip down the corners of her mouth—into her throat.

"Oh, I do believe in you…"

Y/n started to picture herself reaching for the ball; her focus momentarily fixed. Jareth let it settle into her grasp as he continued to outstretch a gloved hand towards her chin. The leather cool against her skin as he gently caressed it. Y/n draws irresistibly closer, feeling the pulsating between her thighs intensify.

Jareth's thumb traced the curve of her bottom lip with deliberate slowness, igniting a flutter of anticipation within her. She stumbled slightly, finding herself leaning into his embrace, allowing his arm to snake around the small of her waist. The sensation of his breath brushing against her face made her close her eyes in surrender.

Her lips parted further, ready for whatever he was going to give her the minute he started to inch closer....

Y/n was suddenly startled by rapid thumping on the windowpane.

She lifted her head up only to see nothing.

"The hell?" She questioned irritably, for no tree branches barely brushed her window. She huffed and thumped her head against her bed, looking up at the ceiling, disappointed that she'd lost her train of thought. But what wasn't lost was the aching between her thighs.

"Y/n, I would appreciate it if I could get some help around here," her mother called from downstairs sarcastically, "you've been upstairs all day. I've barely seen you."

With an exasperated huff, Y/n rolled out of bed, descending the spiral of dark wooden stairs.

M/n was seen chopping up garlic for a salad; she loved to add garlic to almost every meal because it was healthy. Y/n couldn't stand it.

"Can you chop up the lettuce, please?" M/n requested that the garlic pieces be put into the wooden salad bowl. And what have you been doing all day?"

"Reading," Y/n replied dryly, taking a knife and cutting the lettuce stem.

"What book did you get?" M/n asked, walking over to the fridge and grabbing a cucumber from one of the bottom shelves.

"It's called Labyrinth. It's based on a movie I watched last night."

"So that's what you were doing instead of helping. Stuck on a movie and a book that will do you no good."

"Mom, enough."

"What about your prep for college? Did you sign up for your orientation like you were supposed to?"

"Mom, please, I completed those things weeks ago, and you know that. My orientation isn't until next month!"

"I'm sure there are more things you need to complete." M/n continued grabbing the pieces of lettuce y/n and placing them in the salad bowl. At this point, she was interrogating the poor girl.

"I was only having leisure time, that's all," Y/n replied with slumped shoulders, for she was tired of going back and forth.

"You always have leisure time," M/n shot back, "you don't do anything-"

"Alright, that's enough! I don't wanna hear it anymore!"

M/n stopped her work and turned to Y/n with eyes of fire as if she were about to tear her apart.

"Who are you raising your voice at?" She asked slowly.

“What- I-“ y/n stammered.

"No, no, no," M/n's voice was louder, filling the quiet space of the kitchen; Y/n couldn't help but wince, "Who do you think you're talking to?"

Before Y/n could answer, her mother grabbed her arm so hard, digging her fingertips into her flesh.

"No, you listen to me-" M/n began, her voice plummeting fiercely into Y/n's eardrums.

"No! I'm not going to listen to you. Why? Because I'm an adult, and I am sick and tired of you treating me like a child!" Y/n's voice erupted with anger as she forcefully tore her arm from her mother's grip, surprised at how easily it came free. She stepped back, her chest heaving with frustration and resentment.

"You're never satisfied with me, no matter what I do! All you care about is being 'productive,' but it's just controlling! You expect everyone to think and act the way you do, and when they don't, you act like they're wrong!" Her words sliced through the air like knives, each one laced with years of pent-up frustration and hurt.

Her eyes blazed with defiance, daring her mother to challenge her.

Y/n's mother scoffed dismissively, her tone dripping with condescension. "Y/N, give me a break. I'm not falling for whatever tactic this is anymore. This has gone on for too long, and you need to be more mature. You haven't lifted a finger in days, and your dad isn't even here! All you think about is yourself, and I'm tired of repeating myself over and over again. If you want to be treated like an adult, then start acting like one."

Her words landed like a verbal slap, stoking the fire of Y/n's frustration even further. The accusation of selfishness cut deep, but Y/n refused to back down.

"Oh, for crying out loud, Mom, you've hindered my maturity and growth for however long. You never give me a chance to think about things-"

"I wish you would blame me for the way you turned out. You simply don't think."

"That's because growing up, you always had to think for me," Y/n asserted, taking a deliberate step forward. "The reason my friends are so mature and independent is because their parents leave them the hell alone."

"Do you have to swear, Y/n," M/n's mom questioned, shaking her head, "you bless the devil by doing that."

"Oh no, the devils gonna get me," Y/n mocked, throwing her mother off a bit, "so be it."

Y/n and her mother stood in tense silence, the air thick with unspoken words and simmering tension. M/n's initial surprise shifted into a deep disappointment as she absorbed the gravity of the situation. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she began to nod, her thoughts racing for a response.

"You're grounded; hand me your phone, computer, remote, and that book. We're finished here."

The words landed like a heavy blow to Y/n's chest, each item listed a tangible loss in the sudden turn of events. Her mother's decree was final, leaving no room for negotiation or reconciliation at that moment.

"What-why the book? I haven't even finished it–"

"That's alright. Once you're finished with it, I expect it to be turned in. You won't be seeing it until you're packed for college."

That managed to ease y/n's surging anger, keeping it at bay. But why for so long?

Stinging of tears threatened to spill over. Y/n turned away from her mother without a word and headed upstairs, her steps heavy with the weight of frustration and hurt. She closed the door to her room firmly behind her, shutting out the world and the echoes of their heated exchange.

"Phone, computer, and remote!" Her mom shouted from upstairs.

"Yeah, yeah," Y/n muttered. She took the labyrinth book from her bed and looked over its crimson cover, tracing her thumb and feeling its smoothness. Frustration started to course through her veins, knowing that she wouldn't see it for a while after she'd finished it.

She stacked her laptop and phone on top of her desk, oblivious to the various thumping noises she was making.

She went downstairs, not planning to speak to her mother.

She sets the stack on the counter, ignoring M/n's "thank you."

Y/n was more than halfway through the book, with only 35 pages to go. She wasn't a slow reader; she just wanted to soak in every detail the Labyrinth had to offer, making sure to picture each interaction and character vividly. That's what she loved about books: the ability to visualize and submerge herself into foreign lands better than her own.

Back in her room, she sinks into the plush covers of her bed and continues to delve into the land of the Labyrinth, mentally noting each character individually.

Y/n found herself really liking Sarah's character, especially how she kept her cool through such a complex maze of challenges. She admired Sarah's resourcefulness and how she brought her friends into the mix to boost her chances against Jareth.

What really stood out to Y/n was the depth and detail in the book compared to the movie. It gave her a better understanding of the characters' thoughts and feelings, which she loved analyzing. Getting more insight into Sarah's relationship with her mom was a big plus too—it added a whole new layer of emotion and understanding.

She paid close attention to Jareth and was especially shocked when he kissed Sarah in the ballroom.

"That's weird," Y/n muttered as she thoroughly read the scene, "they didn't kiss in the movie."

"Trust me," Jareth said, moving his face close to hers. "Can you do that?"

"Jesus." Y/n breathed, feeling the tension through the words.

As Y/n delved deeper into the chapter where the Junk Lady attempts to distract Sarah with materialistic temptations, she found herself captivated by the poignant symbolism woven into the narrative.

Y/n looked up from the spot, her hand placed gently on where she stopped, eyes furrowed, and lips parted.

"This is quite literally all a setup. The Labyrinth seems more than a maze full of convoluted riddles and pathways." Y/n pondered as she suddenly stopped reading.

Her thoughts started swirling with the parallels between Sarah's journey in the Labyrinth and her life aboveground. The more she reflected, the more convinced she became that something was orchestrated about Sarah's challenges. No doubt Jareth was behind it all, but there was a tint of something else.

"Hoggle was waiting for her... like he knew she was coming," Y/n murmured, tapping her fingers on the page. She remembered how Sarah encountered helpful creatures at almost every turn — the worm, Ludo, even Sir Didymus. Each encounter seemed almost too conveniently timed as if the Labyrinth itself had a hand in guiding her.

"And those doors," Y/n continued, recalling the puzzling moments in the story. "Sarah guessed the riddle correctly, yet ended up in the same place anyway. And the Bog of Eternal Stench, why didn't Sarah smell bad when she hopped on top of those rocks that emerged from the bog water?"

Without warning, the bedroom door slammed open, and M/n stormed in, her sunglasses perched defiantly on her head and her designer purse swinging with purpose.

"Y/n, I need to run to the store. I forgot things for dinner," she declared tersely, not stopping to acknowledge the disarray of Y/n's room or the drawn curtains she criticized. "This room is a disaster. Why are these curtains shut? Open them and let in some light."

Y/n's irritation simmered as she bit her lip, struggling to hold back a retort. She watched with a knot in her stomach as her mother rifled through drawers, criticizing and rummaging through everything in her path.

"Why are your clothes all crumpled? You just did laundry. Why do you always treat your things so carelessly, Y/n?"

"Bye, Mom."

"No, you'll answer me like an adult."

"Adults don't have to answer everything."

"As long as you're under my roof, you will answer every question I ask."

Y/n met her mother's gaze, silently challenging her to leave.

In response, M/n spun around, yanking out armfuls of clothes and flinging them onto the floor with reckless abandon. Drawer after drawer, she created a chaotic landscape of fabric—shirts, jeans, socks—all strewn across the once pristine floor.

Y/n stood frozen in disbelief, her nerves frayed as the room transformed into a battleground of wills. The sight of her belongings tossed aside like meaningless clutter felt like an assault on her sanctuary.

"All these clothes need to be folded properly," M/n commanded, dumping a final heap of swimwear on the growing pile. "And get rid of anything you don't want."

With that final decree, M/n left without waiting for a response, leaving Y/n to confront the aftermath of her fury.

As the echo of the slamming door reverberated through the house, Y/n abandoned the book, got up from the comfort of her bed, and stood amidst the wreckage.

Her chest was tight with unspoken frustration. And right there the helpless girl crumbled.

She sank onto the floor, overwhelmed by a torrent of emotions and the crushing weight of expectations she couldn't wrap around.

The room seemed to close around her, the mess a physical manifestation of her mother's control.

She shook, hiccuped, and sobbed loudly, feeling utterly overwhelmed and disconnected from everything around her. She could barely feel her knees pressing against her bedroom floor.

The house phone began to ring.

Groaning, Y/n trudged out of her room and to one of the house phones that was sitting snugly on a dresser.

“Hello?” she answered upon picking it up.

“Y/n, can you please put your remote downstairs? I forgot to tell you that I didn’t see it. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.” her mom instructed.

“Yeah.” Y/n answered dismissively.

“Love you, bye.” her mom answered.

Without replying, Y/n hangs up and stomps back to her room.

She walked over to the bed looking for her remote which she knew was submerged in the covers somewhere.

Finally finding it, she grabbed it and turned back to the hefty pile of clothes that were still a heaping mess on the floor. There was one particular pile of clothes that she no longer needed anymore, so she lifted up the small pile.

“I wish the goblins would take mom away,” she plopped the remote on top, “right fucking now.”

She chuckled at her silly joke, deep resentment for her mother continued to rise in her chest.

Y/n descended the stairs with a purpose, tossing the clothes into the familiar "giveaway" box positioned by the garage door. It had become a regular chore for the family, ensuring a steady stream of donations to local centers.

Still clad in her navy blue cami top, gray sweats, and white socks, Y/n ambled into the kitchen, where a neglected salad bowl lay surrounded by remnants of onions, garlic, lettuce, and spring mix. Feeling the pang of hunger, she opted for a quick fix—a frozen bean and rice burrito that she tossed into the microwave.

As the burrito spun, heating up, an unsettling sound reverberated through the house, causing D/n, their faithful companion, to emit a low growl from somewhere distant. Y/n paused, dismissing the noise initially as a stray branch from the backyard trees colliding with a windowpane. She retrieved the now steaming burrito, placing it carefully on a porcelain plate, and relished the first bite—a warm combination of rice, beans, and cheese that elicited a contented hum of pleasure.

But the tranquility shattered as D/n growled again, the thumping sound resuming with increased intensity. Y/n frowned, setting down her half-eaten burrito and swiftly grabbing a knife from the rack near the coffee maker. Though violent incidents were rare in Evansville, her avid consumption of crime shows had prepared her for the possibility of intruders.

With determination etched on her face, she crossed into the living room where the rhythmic thumping persisted that was coming from the large windows. The curtains billowed ominously, threatening to burst with each impact against the glass. D/n stood, tail erect, emitting a series of deep barks and growls that mirrored Y/n's own rising apprehension.

Knife gripped tightly, Y/n cautiously approached the curtains. Her heart raced as an eerie, non-human laugh echoed from her left. She whipped around, knife poised defensively.

"Who's there?" she demanded, her voice wavering slightly despite her attempt to sound resolute.

Another unsettling giggle pierced the air, mingling with the relentless thumping that had now grown even more frenzied.

A shadow darted behind the flatscreen television, prompting D/n to shift its attention. Y/n pivoted, ready to confront the unseen intruder, her senses heightened.

Then, a furry sensation brushed against her leg. Y/n looked down in alarm, locking eyes with a grotesque creature—a snout twisted and burned, with jagged yellow teeth set against dark fur-covered skin. Its height stopped right below her knee.

Instinctively, she kicked it forcefully, sending the creature tumbling backward onto the couch. Before she could recover, another creature emerged from behind the curtain, emitting a shrill, disturbing laugh that chilled her to the bone.

Y/n and D/n sprang into action, darting around the room in a frantic attempt to corner the elusive intruders. They ignored the persistent thumping now audible from the other window, focusing solely on defending their territory.

Not wasting another moment, Y/n retreated to the kitchen counter where her phone, laptop, and remote lay in a neat stack. With the knife tucked securely under her arm, she dialed 911, her fingers trembling.

Before Y/n could press the dial button, a small, gnarled hand seized her phone, startling her into action.

Her eyes widened as she found herself face to face with a goblin.

Its snout was grotesquely twisted, resembling a pig's, with eyes that were oddly close-set and resembled googly eyes, complete with red irises. The creature sported a rusty helmet atop its misshapen head, its eyebrows mere wisps of hair.

Reacting swiftly, Y/n lunged with her knife, stabbing the goblin squarely in the shoulder. It screeched in pain, its voice cracked and shrill.

"Ahh! She gots me, she gots me! Ahh!" The goblin wailed, writhing in agony.

Y/n didn't hesitate, stabbing again, this time aiming for its eye. The creature bellowed in pain once more, its shrill cries echoing in the room.

Unbeknownst to her, another smaller goblin lurked, ready to pounce from behind. But before it could strike, D/n sprang into action, leaping on the creature and pinning it down with a growl.

"This dog, oh!" The goblin grumbled in a low, grimy voice, clearly displeased with its predicament.

Y/n's phone clattered to the floor amidst the chaos. She moved to retrieve it, only for it to be kicked out of sight in the scuffle.

“Fuck!” she cursed seeing it skid over to the further end of the kitchen. Her hand was bloodied from goblin blood and she felt disgusting, but she had to keep fighting.

Y/n was still knelt on the ground and she peered behind her seeing that D/n had trapped the smaller goblin underneath their weight.

Y/n scurried over and yanked the goblin from their grasp.

“Good boy/girl.” she praised throwing the goblin so that it hit the wall with a thump, knocking it unconscious.

Another goblin, a taller, sturdier one, charged to the direction of her phone that was at the other side of the kitchen by the refrigerator.

"No, no, no!" Y/n gasped, sprinting across the room with her bloodied knife clutched tightly. She reached the goblin just as it raised its ax to smash her phone. With a surge of adrenaline, she grabbed the creature by its neck, struggling with its surprising weight as she hoisted it up and flung it forcefully to the far end of the room.

"I guess going to the gym does pay off at times," she muttered to herself wryly, her heart racing from the exertion. She quickly retrieved her phone, stuffing it into her pocket while scanning her surroundings frantically.

Nearby, the unconscious goblin lay sprawled on the floor, her faithful dog, D/n, was engaged in a fierce struggle with the bloodied goblin, and the third goblin staggered to its feet weakly, attempting to regain its composure after being thrown down.

Y/n took a deep breath, bracing herself for whatever might come next. Gripping her knife firmly, she remained on high alert, ready to defend herself against any further threats that dared to invade her home.

“D/n! Come here,” She commanded, and her dog was immediately by her side, “stay by me, okay?”

Y/n and D/n cautiously returned to the living room, the thumping noise still reverberating. Despite her fear, she approached the source of commotion.

With trembling hands, she pulled aside the curtains and was comforted by the sight that made her blood run cold.

A white barn owl, its eyes gleaming with an otherworldly intensity, was flapping menacingly at the door. Before Y/n could react, the owl launched itself, shattering the window with a thunderous crash and swooping into the room like a missile.

Y/n gasped in horror, shielding her face as glass shards flew in all directions. She stumbled backwards, landing hard on the cold wooden floor. The shards of glass continued to rain down, and despite her efforts to protect herself, Y/n felt the sting of cuts on her forearm, chest, and face. Pain shot through her, but she clutched her knife tightly, ready to defend herself.

The owl, now inside the room, attacked ferociously. It clawed at Y/n's arms, slapped her with its wings, and tangled its feathers in her hair. Y/n fought back desperately, swinging her knife blindly until the owl finally retreated, leaving her shaken.

As the chaos settled, Y/n slowly rose to her feet, D/n watching her with concern. She gripped the knife tightly, scanning the shattered room. Bile rose in her throat and tears started stinging her eyes once more.

"Mom's gonna fucking kill me," she muttered bitterly, her voice wavering with emotion, “shit.”

"You won't have to worry about that," a voice said, cutting through the tense silence.

Y/n gasped and turned to the direction of the voice.

Leaning against the unshattered window stood a tall, lithe figure, glittering specks scattered at his feet. His black leather boots complemented black tights, and he wore a ruffled black undershirt with a deep vee, topped by a black half corset adorned with intricate designs and buckles. A long, flowing cape draped gracefully to the ground.

She took in his face, noting the striking sharpness of his features. High cheekbones and an angled chin were framed by a wild, tousled mane of blond hair.

"So, this is the thanks I get?" he remarked, his voice laced with bitterness and amusement.

He studied Y/n’s face, dewy with sweat and marked by blood splotches near her eyebrow and upper cheekbone. Her wet lips were parted, and eyes were challenging. His mismatched eyes swiftly scanned her body, noting the strap of the navy blue cami top slipping off her sweaty shoulder. Y/n’s entire body glistened with sweat, a trickle of blood tracing down her pristine chest as it heaved harshly.

"Who the hell are you?" Y/n demanded, though she already had a sinking feeling she knew the answer.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" he replied in a haughty manner, the corners of his mouth twitched.

"Why are you here?" she pressed, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and defiance.

"Why do you insist on asking questions you already know the answers to?" he retorted, his mismatched eyes glinting with an unsettling intensity.

“This must be a dream or something,” y/n breathed, “because there’s no way David Bowie is in my house right now.”

The male furrowed his eyebrows in confusion at her joke, “what?”

“David Bowie…” Y/n repeated slowly, “are you not…?”

“I don’t know who this Dave Bowel you speak of.”

“Jeez, have some respect for the dead..”

“My condolences.” Jareth replied dryly.

Y/n kissed her teeth, Jareth sarcasm was really on a roll this evening.

Jareth points behind her, “Look there.”

Y/n turned around only to be faced by a clean and ordered room. All of the shards of glass vanished and the window is back in its place.

“You’re free now to do whatever you please.”

“I’m free?” Y/n asked, tilting her head slightly.

“Forget about your mother.”

The knife that was once in Y/n’s hand fell onto the floor with a loud clunk.

“You took my mother?” She said in disbelief.

“Isn’t that what you asked for?” Jareth said with a raised brow, for he found Y/n’s reaction quite amusing.

“But—wait—I was kidding!”

“Were you now?”

“Yes. I won’t say anything like that again I promise! Just please bring my mom back.”

Jareth made his way closer to Y/n until he was only a breath away, their eyes locking like old foes reunited in a clash of wills.

“What comes out of your mouth, Y/n,” he murmured, his voice a dangerous whisper. He outstretched his gloved hand, his fingers grazing her chest, “contradicts the desires of your heart.”

A shiver ran through Y/n at his touch, her breath hitching as she found herself unable to break free from the intensity of his gaze, which bore into her with a fierce and unsettling determination.

“Please.” She whispered.

"Please what?" He trailed his fingers to her jaw, smoothing his thumb along her chin with a maddening slowness.

This touch was more electrifying than she had ever envisioned, sending a shiver of anticipation down her spine.

"I'm sure this feels very familiar to you, Y/n," he said slyly, his voice dripping with mischief and unspoken promises.

"What are you-"

"Save the absurd questions for another time," he cut in, his thumb gliding from the curve of her chin to the base of her swollen lips, lingering there with deliberate pressure.

Heat ignited between Y/n's legs once again, more intense and insistent than before.

"There won't be another time," she hissed, tearing her head away hastily, her gaze burning with defiance even as her body betrayed her.

“You are seriously fucked in the head for seducing me into forgetting my own mom.”

“It doesn’t take much to do that.” Jareth retorted in a matter of fact tone.

“Don’t act like you know me. I’m not Sarah!” She spat.

Jarerh’s expression dropped, he irritably sighed, “No you're not,” he regained his composure right then and there, “but you’re just like every other teenage girl.”

“How would you know that?”

“I know the desires of your heart.”

“Like hell you do.”

“Sarah was not the only one who ran my labyrinth.” His voice ran cold suddenly.

“But she was the only one who conquered it.” He finished.

Their eyes stayed locked, and for a long moment, the air between them crackled with electric tension. Neither was willing to back down, both poised on the edge of something inevitable.

“Sometimes I wonder who will be the next conqueror,” Jareth murmured, his voice low and suggestive, his gaze burning into Y/n's.

“So you're suggesting I run the labyrinth to save my mom?” She asked, her voice carrying a challenge of its own.

Jareth smirked.

"Alright," Y/n challenged, bending down to pick up her knife. She flipped it in the air and caught it perfectly. "I'll do it. But don't expect me to give up easily."

"You stabbing and flinging my subjects around proves enough," Jareth replied, looking down at his arm and mockingly brushing it with his hand. "Nearly chopped my wing off with that knife. You are a bold thing." He chuckled, his eyes dancing with amusement as he looked back up at her.

"Alright, save it. Where's the Labyrinth?" Y/n pushed irritably, her patience wearing thin.

“Such haste won’t get you anywhere.” Jareth replied.

“But I already know the rules, I’ve watched the movie, I have thirteen hours to solve or my mom will turn into a goblin.” She recited.

Jareth furrowed her eyebrows once more, “Movie?”

Y/n waved her hand dismissively, “Never mind.”

“You’ve read the book. That’s how you know.”

“Uh yeah.” Y/n then started to wonder if Jareth even knew what a movie was.

"But since you're so confident," Jareth started, circling her slowly, his eyes never leaving her, "I'll give you ten hours."

"You can't just do that!" Y/n protested, incredulous at the arbitrary time limit.

"It is my labyrinth where I can do what I please," Jareth replied nonchalantly, his eyes gleaming with a mixture of challenge and amusement.

"But I never said I was confident; I said I wouldn't give up. There's a difference between determination and cockiness," Y/n retorted, meeting Jareth's challenging gaze head-on.

Jareth's expression tightened, and he took a sharp breath, his stance growing tense as he ceased his circling. Silently, he gestured behind Y/n. Turning, she faced the once shattered window, now revealing the ominous maze of the labyrinth, with the castle looming in the distance like a coveted prize.

"Looks challenging doesn’t it?" Jareth taunted, leaning close to her ear, his breath tickling the nape of her neck.

"Ten hours. That's all you've left me," Y/n huffed bitterly.

Jareth snorted, his demeanor shifting as he backed away from her. "I'm simply treating you as you wish to be treated," he countered.

Turning to face him, Y/n's eyes narrowed. "And how is that?" she challenged, bracing herself for his next barb.

"Like an adult," he shot back, his voice slicing through the tense silence like a blade.

Y/n fought to maintain her composure, her heart racing at his words.

"Such a pity," Jareth added, his tone cold and cutting.

Ignoring his provocations, Y/n began to stride forward, only to halt abruptly.

"My dog," she exclaimed, looking back, but Jareth had vanished.

From behind a nearby tree emerged D/n, wagging their tail in greeting.

"D/n!" Y/n exclaimed joyfully, scooping up her furry companion in a tight embrace.

"Ten hours," Jareth's voice echoed ominously.

Startled by his sudden reappearance through his voice alone, Y/n quickly rose to her feet and proceeded down the sloping path towards the labyrinth's entrance.

"Let's do this."

[twinkboimler]

my fic for the Mcspirk Big Bang is finally here! This thing ended up being around 60k words long and I cannot believe I got it done! AOS, Academy Era, Meet Cute and Meet Ugly - it's got all the shenanigans you'd expect from these three dorks. PLUS Spock keeps pigeons. Need I say more?

I was absolutely blessed to have my buddy Nic @pityroadart /@existentialcrisistime as my artist, and he created some absolutely stunning paintings for this fic (such as this post's beautiful header). His skill is absolutely unmatched and I am just so lucky to have been paired with him.

SUMMARY

Summer just started, and Jim is bored out of his mind. The courses he needs to take aren’t being offered until the second half of the summer, so he has an entire month to bother his roommate Bones. At Bones’ suggestion to get a job, Jim fixes up a motorbike and starts making deliveries to people in town, including a cute Vulcan professor named Spock. But when Jim is beaten up while making a delivery, it’s Spock who delivers Jim back to the apartment he shares with Bones. After the meet-cute from hell, Spock and Bones start dating… and so do Jim and Spock. With neither roommate aware they’re both dating the same man, there’s only so long that things can go well for them before the other shoe finally drops.

Thanks a ton to @mcspirkevents for running this event and @affixjoy and @ncc1701ohno for betaing this behemoth. This is the longest thing I've written for Star Trek, and there's no way I would have caught everything on my own. Shout out also to all the cool people in the Mcspirk Events discord server, love you guys!

Link to Nic's post:

[wandanatss]

heart in hand - chapter one;

things haven't been the same since you came into my life

summary: Summer of 1995 finds you in a cafe with a new-to-town Natasha Romanov. Little do you know, this day is going to change your life.

warning(s): swearing, slight mentions of guns & bullying.

word count: 1,087 words

author's note: i don't have access to the app i use to make covers/headers/dividers for my fics, so this canva one i threw together literally five minutes ago looks good enough. the dividers i used are by @cafekitsune. reblogs would help <3 i'm open to constructive criticism! i especially hope that one anon who helped a lot earlier likes it!

It all began in the summer of ‘95, in a little shop north of town. You sat there every day for want of something to do, someone to talk to. Being the friendless nerd was fine during the school year, but in the summer you always shifted from being alone to lonely. 

Your fingers tapped out an errant beat on the countertop, and you hummed a mindless tune. Your eyes droved over the menu as though your were trying to find something you wanted; as though you hadn’t already memorized it in your countless trips to the shop. In the end, though, you picked your usual - a sandwich, a doughnut, and a Coke. Picking the items up off of the counter once you got them, you sat at the only empty table there - a two-seater near the very back, where no one could see you. Figures. Invisible everywhere in the world, it seemed.

As you started to munch on the sandwich, interspersed with sips of your drink, your eyes watched the windows. Maybe you’d have your ‘movie moment’, where someone walked in that you fell in love with. Maybe it would be the person of your dreams. You looked down for a moment to pick up the cup, and within those few seconds, the door opened and a bell jingled. You looked up.

Y/n: I don’t know, it was fate or something. This absolute bombshell of a girl walked in. Her coppery-red hair tumbled over her shoulders, her eyes were bright, and she had the perfect red lip. She wore a thin white shirt, clinging to her with sweat. Her shorts were blue, and truly made her look like she had legs for days. When she ordered and got her food, she just wandered around for a minute before she saw me. Saw the seat in front of me. She smiled, asking if she could sit. Of course, I agreed. Neither of us knew it yet, but it was the start of something truly iconic. The girl, of course, was Natasha Romanov. We were both seventeen at the time.

Excerpt from ‘Mic in Hand, Heart in Throat’ by Kat S. Releasing 1 May 2028.

You introduced yourself, and started to make small talk about the weather – sweat-soaked Natasha’s body was a sight to see, and under the A/C breeze, her hair fluttered around her face. You were flushed, but you could pass it off to the heat, too. As Natasha waved over a waitress and placed her own order (a strawberry milkshake and a sandwich), you took the time to observe her.

She had her bicycle keys in her pocket, and two bracelets hanging from her arm. One was beaded, with the little alphabet charms reading N A T in different colours. The other was a few simple strings wound together and tied, giving the effect of a young child having made it. Now that you were closer to her, you could see the bottom of her hair bleached and cool-toned, showing her having dyed it blue a while back.

“Y/n? Do you want something too?” asked Natasha, a silent smirk in her eyes. She knew what you were doing.

Eventually, once the waitress was gone, you and Natasha struck up an easy flowing conversation. She confessed that she had biked here in the heat to get out of town, have her own ‘summer experience’. She was new. That explained why she hadn’t been in high school with you. You smiled and told her all about the high school she’d likely be joining, and joked about how she should make it a point to stay away from you. It would be social suicide, you explained.

Natasha turned slightly away at the comment, something catching her eyes, but looked back with a frown on her face. 

“I think people should be lucky to know you, Y/n. You’re a good – a good friend.”

Through the chat you have with her, you discover that not only can she play the guitar, but also the drums. She can also sing, insanely well if the competition awards aren’t a lie, and she’s just a fucking dream. She gave you her home-phone number, and her address. Call me, she wrote on the paper napkin, like she was some kind of rogueish flirt and not a schoolgirl still in her teens.

You took the napkin home with you and pinned it onto a little board, fingers moving over the bumps in the paper where she had pressed too hard with the pen. Call me. Come over sometime. You smiled, idling near the telephone. Maybe you would call her later, you thought.

Natasha Romanov: Y/n, they were an interesting person. My first friend who wasn’t my sister. We’d both been adopted, and been the town freaks for a while. Yelena, she was all spite and rage packed into a little spitfire of a ten-year-old child. It didn’t help that she wanted to give her opinions freely. It was my job to protect her, and when that backfired, we had to move. This far into the story, you already know I wouldn’t be too cut up about it. I had my sister and my adoptive parents. End of fuckin’ story, right? And then the chapter turned. After I met Y/n that day, everything changed. I finally had a reason to stay in the new town. I had made a friend.

Excerpt from ‘Mic in Hand, Heart in Throat’ by Kat S. Releasing 1 May 2028.

As you lay in bed that night, all hot and bothered about the day you’ve had, words start to form in your mind. Fragments; not enough to be worth writing, but you can see where you’ve started to... well, you’ve started thinking up a song.

The next morning, you wake up from a rather pleasant dream to hammering on your bedroom door. 

“Wake up, kid! It’s time to go!”

Oh. It was your mother, a staunch stickler for early-birds-get-the-worm. You would’ve far preferred to sleep in, especially in the summer, but the thoughts from the previous night – the song you thought of – had finally almost fully formed in your mind. You were eager to pen it down in case you forgot, but first, to appease your mother, you showered and had some cereal. Then you were back in your room, ready to write.

She’s got blue hair and a pretty pink smile

Looks that can kill and hands in mine

She’s a girl she’s a gun she’s the newest chapter

She’s a dream and what my heart’s been chasin’ after…

lmk if you want to be added to the taglist! | fic tag

[tgm-all4one]

On May 27, 2022, Top Gun: Maverick was released exclusively into theaters. Almost overnight, it became a cultural phenomenon with a fandom of individuals from all over the globe who loved the movie and its characters.

One of the fantastic things about the TG and TGM fandom is the diverse and innovative creators who have used these movies as inspiration for their art. Whether that be in the form of writing, fanart, GIFs, moodboards, edits, etc, we have all taken the same 4 hours and 1 minute of film to create unbelievably varied and original content. And that is what this challenge is about.

What is the "It's not the prompt. It's the creator." challenge?

The idea behind the "It's not the prompt. It's the creator." challenge is to show that even though we might all use similar tropes or AUs, or create GIFs of the same scenes, or use the same moodboard themes, it is our own personal creativity, innovation, and preferences that make our work unique.

So unlike other challenges, everyone will be using the exact same prompt. That's it. One prompt. And an unlimited amount of participants.

And yes, there will probably be art that is similar (either the tropes, themes, characters, etc), however the point is to show that even when two creators have similar independent ideas, their final creation is unique because they put their own original spin on it that only they could do.

What is the prompt?

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of Top Gun: Maverick being released, the prompt is:

"Last summer was one no one could ever forget. Now, a year later, character(s) still feel(s) the effects of that time."

Be as creative as you want and feel free to use any characters from Top Gun (1986) and/or Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Also, while the prompt says a year has passed, there is no set time your art has to be set. It can be pre-canon, post-canon, during-canon, and AU setting, etc. Whatever inspires you!

What is allowed?

Whatever you want. It can be SFW, NSFW, slash, reader insert, OC, no relationship, poly, AU, fluff, smut, angst, whump, etc.

You can also use whatever your preferred medium is to fill the prompt. Writing, artworks, GIF sets, edits, moodboards, playlists, Pinterest boards, etc. Or think out of the box and build a scene out of Legos, make a stop-motion video, draw a flipbook. Whatever inspires you and your creativity! If you created it, it counts.

And there are no minimums or maximums limits for words, time, number of GIFs, etc. Just however much or little you want to share, even if it is still a WIP.

There are only three requirements:

TAG YOUR WORK APPROPRIATELY so others can filter out what they might not be comfortable with. Each post will be checked before being reblogged, however, mistakes can be made so please tag them correctly.

You must be 18+ to participate. Due to the freedom of the event and the fact NSFW content is allowed, only those 18 or older may participate. And if your blog does not have any age indicated on it (18+, 20s, over 21, 35, etc.), your post will not be reblogged. I am very sorry to any minors hoping to participate at this time.

No AI resources can be used as part of a submission. While AI can create cool works of art, they aren't your works of art. As that is the point of this challenge, it will not be permitted.

When does the event take place?

The event will start on Saturday, May 27 and run until Saturday, June 4. However, if you can't finish in time and post after that, this blog will try its best to still reblog your work whenever you feel ready to post.

How do we submit our work?

You can do this one of two ways:

Post your work on your blog as usual and tag @tgm-all4one. Also, tag the post with #tgm all4one. It will then be reblogged here throughout the week.

Submit a post to this blog using the "Submit your papers" button in the blog header. As long as it is tagged correctly, the blog will then post it throughout the week.

There is also an AO3 collection if you prefer to share over there. Please check the FAQ page for the link.

Please check out the FAQ page if you have any questions and please feel free to reach out either through an ask or DM if you have any questions! There is also a condensed version of this post here for quick reference.

I am excited to see what everyone comes up with and happy Top Gun: Maverick anniversary!

[hibuscuzshorz]

𝖌𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖆𝖘𝖙

MDNI: 18+ ~ Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Francisco Morales x F!reader

Word count:

Warnings/Tags: smut, dom/sub,choking,vaginal fingering, aftercare, unprotected p in v,pretty big age gap,head,loss of virginity, fingering, oral, creampie,degradation, spanking, daddy kink, not proofread, strangers to lovers.

Creds: starry night headers: (above and below) @thecutestgrotto , pictures from pinterest, top graphics made by me.

Chapters: 1/?

Vibes: Ivy by Frank Ocean,Tejano Blue by Cigarettes After Sex, Champagne Coast by Blood Orange

(notes from me, please read) ok so this is my first fic posted on tumblr, still getting the hang of the outline and other stuff, but I really hope you enjoy this fic, and hopefully my writing isn't too bad! Thanks and have an awesome summer!

Chapter 1:

You were absolutely stunned when you first laid eyes on your new neighbour next door. He was tall, muscular, and he looked like a greek god. He was the prettiest man you had ever seen.

Your apartment itself wasn't very spacious, but the best part about it was that it had a ginormous balcony, which now you realised that it would be useful in spying on your hot new neighbour. (not that you'd ever do that-right?) And in your favor, he spent the first few days sunbathing out on his balcony, with nothing but swim shorts on; awesome.

As time passed, your obsession with him only grew, sometimes to the point where you'd wait hours on your balcony just to see if he would come out and the two of you would finally have an interaction. Then again, you really wanted to just knock on his door and introduce yourself, which you were scared to do. What if he hates me? What if he's actually really mean? What if he- your thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a knock at your door.

Oh, its probably just Kaia, here for her lipstick. You thought, sighing to yourself as you walked towards the door. It definitely was not Kaia, but your neighbour that stood in front, towering over you. Your face turned red in an instance, mouth almost agape. "Oh! Hey, you must be the new neighbour? You live right next door right?" You said, voice trembling. "Yeah, hey. I'm Francisco!" He held out his hand, and you grasped it in a handshake; and boy were his hands nice. "Well, I'm y/n, its great to meet you!" You said, definitely still blushing. "Cool, nice to meet you, y/n. I'm here for a power adapter, just wondering if you had one?" He said, his voice was so gentle, yet rough in way which mesmerized you.

"Huh? Oh um, let me just check really quick, I'm sure I have one somewhere..care to come in?" You asked nervously, as you fidgeted with your hands. "Oh no I'm okay, I need to meet up with a few of my friends in like 5 minutes." he said with a chuckle. "Oh no worries, let me just go get the adapter then!" You said, smiling. Ohmygodwhattheheckhowisthismansohandsome you thought, trying to not giggle and act like you've just won the jackpot of all neighbours ever. You ransacked your drawer in your bedroom, and finally found the adapter, rushing back to the door to hand it to him.

"Here! Hopefully this one will work." You said, dusting it off as you gave it over. "Thanks a lot!" He smiled. It was silent for the next few seconds."Standard Heating Oil, I like it." you pointed out what his hat read, only because you felt like it was getting awkward. "Oh, what-my hat? Ha, thanks!" He replied with a chuckle. You smiled back, once again admiring his physique. "Well, I should go, I'm probably already late. It was nice meeting you, y/n. I guess i'll see you around?" He asked. "Oh yeah! For sure." You smiled shyly as you watched him disappear into his own place, with a wink.

That was so hot, what he just did.

Days passed, and the two of you bumped into each other often, most times passing bye with a smile, or a hello, other times you'd stop and chat about the weather, news, and even your personal lives. Francisco was a gentleman as well (like who would have guessed right.), he would hold elevator doors for you, help you carry your groceries, and do whatever men like him do. You were head over heels for him.

The more you two got to know each other, the more you thought that you'd have a chance with him.

July 29th. After many friendly interactions among the both of you, you finally decided to make a move, which was baking...and it didn't turn out great. Usually you were quite good at making food, but today just wasn't it. The blueberry muffins that you had made didn't rise properly, but the taste on the other hand was delicious, which is why you decided to give a few to Francisco; not to get rid of them, well, yes to get rid of them, but also to be nice! You carefully wrapped them up and made your way to his place. As soon as you knocked, he answered. It was like he had been waiting for you.

"Hey y/n, what's up?" He asked, his lips curving into a smile as he made eye contact with you, making your stomach flutter. "Okay, so I made some muffins. They didn't turn out the best, but trust me, they taste really good. I promise-" "They look amazing, okay?" Francisco gazed down at you, his big brown doe eyes seeming to glitter. You swore you could have passed out just by staring at him. "Uh, okay um, do you want to try one now or-" You fumbled with your words, trying to stay calm. "It would be my absolute pleasure." You handed him one nervously. Your hand grazed his and you froze, not knowing what to do. But Francisco on the other hand just smirked. What a guy.

"Oh holy smokes these are amazing. You did not tell me you baked." Francisco said, his face lighting up as he bit into a muffin. "Ughhh oh my gosh.." He moaned, devouring the entire thing in 3 bites. "Sooo, Im guessing you liked it? It isn't my best work." You said quietly. "Y/n, are you kidding me? I swear this stuff is better than drugs, or whatever the kids smoke these days." He said, reaching for another. "Aw thanks!" You grinned from ear to ear, blushing again. "Ohmygawsh this is amazing." He chuckled, finishing his 2nd muffin. "You know...their not that hard to make right? I can show you sometime if you want." You finally said, hoping that your comment won't go two ways. "Are you asking me to a date, y/n?" He asked sternly, his face expressionless. "Oh shoot maybe it's too early-I didn't mean, I-it's-i'm sorry-" You stuttered, feeling absolutely horrible. Holy crap, I messed up big, oh no.

"Y/n, you okay? I didn't say no. What day are you free?" Francisco replied, laughing. "I'm sorry if i came out harsh I didn't mean too." He sighed. "Oh! It's no problem! I'm free any day. Will next monday work?" You asked hesitantly. "Sure i'll check. You need my contact?" "Oh uh, sure thanks." You tried to stay calm, but getting Francisco's number was the biggest move ever.

Holy crap.

Upon arriving home, you crashed onto the couch, trying to gather your thoughts and comprehend what had just happened. Could this be the beginning of a new chapter of your life? Okay maybe don't get too carried away.

Ping! Your phone went off. 'Is this y/n?' read a text. ohmygoshitsfranciscohetextedme. You hurriedly picked up your phone. to respond. 'Yeah it is, is this Francisco?' you typed back anxiously, noticing his profile picture set as him holding a machine gun, posed with what seemed to be his friends. God, how does this man look even hotter in a low-resolution picture. Three bubbles appeared on the screen, making your heartbeat 10x faster. Then, 'Monday works for me! Do you want to do 5pm? BTW, I already finished the muffins. 😉' You could feel your core tighten just at the sight of the text. It took you at least a minute to gather yourself before responding: '5 works for me! See you then?' 'Yep, see you Monday :)' He typed back.

The next two days that passed seemed like millennia. Each hour felt like a day, especially when Francisco was nowhere to be seen. You'd fight the urge to knock on his door every, what, 5 seconds?

Finally, the day arrived: Monday. Yet you'd still have to wait 14 hours until you could see him. (It's 3am and you've been up all night thinking about him. (Crazy right.) After the sun came up, you spent all day picking out a casual yet breathtaking outfit, (finally deciding on shorts and a graphic tee) cleaning the whole house, and buying groceries.

A light knock was heard from the door. Thinking that it may have been a delivery for the new table you had gotten, you messily put your hair in a bun and made your way to the front door. Upon opening it, you soon realised that it indeed was not the delivery guy.

"Oh my-I'm so sorry I look horrible right now, I genuinely thought you were the delivery driver!" You squeaked nervously. "No it's not your fault, and you look great. I was just wondering if this table was yours? It was placed at my door a few hours ago." You noticed his big strong arms curled around a big cardboard box and couldn't help but stare. "I'm sorry about that, maybe I put in the wrong house number. Thanks so much for bringing it over here!" You smiled as you tried to take it from him but failed miserably as of how heavy it was. "You need some help?" He asked, raising an eyebrow, which made you blush. "Oh sure thing, thanks so much." You replied, helping him carry it inside.

After setting it down, you offered he'd stay and just make muffins now, in which he agreed to.

End: Chapter 1.