#curses and other magical oddities ~ m!a

[kandadiff]

Doin' Time (2)

~~~

Let me tell the gist of the beginning of the story. Basically from 1970-1999 the government was using mutants / superpowered people to try and get an upper hand on the Cold War. When the government found out Russia was making super soldiers. The three of us were hired in the early 1990s to investigate this and destroy the mutants. After we found them we discovered most of them were there against there will and were just experimented lab rats. Here we met Katya.

We refused to destroy them so we were considered traitors and they tried to kill us. They soon realized they could not do that since we were too strong together so they got a magic user to make us forget each other and our powers. In an attempt to stop them, I countered saying as long as we forget each other - everyone will forget us as well. Durning this draven operated the both of you from me and then from each other. The spell worked partly but not before I killed the traitor and he drove a holy dagger into my heart temporarily stopping me. I forgot less then the two of you.

Unfortunately, due to the spell not only did the government forget us but humans or just mutant humans like Marky Mark and few of the others we were close with only have vague memories of us.

~~~ January 31st : present day Philadelphia, PA ~~~

“Holy shit!” One of the grave robbers exclaimed when they saw the body. “This is gross, man I’m not grabbing anything from here.” The body before them was a mess of bugs, muscle and bones. The younger one keeled over, nauseous at the sight. His older brother yanked him harshly on the arm pulling him away from the body.

“Get your shit together.” He barked at him. “We don’t have a lot of time!” He kicked his brother away from the casket, splintering himself on the cheap wood, it was made for people who either were poor or were unknown. He almost turned away but the lack of prizes in his knapsack kept him going. Maybe the body would have jewelry. He cursed under his breath, using the crowbar to fully undo the casket. They didn’t have a lot of time. This cemetery would be crowded with grave diggers moving the bodies in the morning to a new location and construction workers would be paving it over for a new building. They had to work now and fast.

He braced the surgical mask over his face ready for the stench that never came. He pushed the oddity from his mind and scanned over the body looking for anything they could take. “What the?” A jewel encrusted jeweled dagger was stuck between the rib bones of the body. His hands ran over it carefully, his fingers gliding over the precious stones. A smirk came over his face when he realized they were real, he yanked it out of the body and turned triumphantly to his brother, thrusting the dagger at him. “Look!”

A cold gust of wind chilled the cemetery as the pile of muscles and bone quickly formed back together. The two men oblivious to the fact that the body in the casket was looking more and more like a person instead they debated how much the enchanted dagger would get them at the pawn shop. My entire body felt like it was thawing from a long time in the freezer, feeling came back slowly in my fingers and toes first shooting up to my arms and legs. I could feel the clothes I was wearing in 1990 stylish then, now raggedy with age. My eyes once over white came back and I could see nothing but stars in the night sky. I opened my mouth and air rushed into my lungs so suddenly I gasped loudly. The men to preoccupied with there score didn’t hear me. My hearing came next, I heard one of the foolish men exclaim “what else does she have?”

I felt my heart beating in my chest as the younger brother peered over the wood of the casket and let out a shriek. I sat up as quickly as I could, my bones still not used to moving in the past …. I was unsure how many years? How long has I been locked in that tomb?

“Stop being a fucking baby!” The older brother scolded his back to me. The younger one looking up at me horrified as a puddle formed in his pants. “Donny! Did you fucking piss yourself?!”

“S-s-she’s alive!” He cried out a pudgy finger pointing directly at me. His brother not believing him at all, turned to me. His eyes quickly widening when he saw me looking back at him. “She’s a fucking vampire!” He screamed both of the men scrambling over each other dropping whatever they had managed to steal in the meantime. I stood up on shaky legs and climbed out of the casket.

“Wait!” I called out. My voice horse with lack of use.

“Help!” The younger one screamed but his brother clamped his hand over his mouth.

“You idiot! We’re stealing! No one is going to help us!” He shouted and grabbed the handle of a nearby shovel breaking it over his knee. The wood splintering off into a point. He lunged at me and I stumbled back. “Fuck you! You vampire bitch!”

“I’m not a vampire!” I spat at him, a moth falling from my mouth. I gasped leaping back from the bug and realized I was still covered in them. “Help me!” I pleaded but he lunged at me again barely missing me.

“I’m calling the cops!” The younger one shouted still on the ground. He fumbled with his phone and with shaky hands found it hard to even unlock it.

“I’m going to kill you bitch!” The man with the makeshift stake yelled at me. He lunged at me aiming for my chest, I moved my wrapped my hands over my chest and the wood stuck painfully into my arm. He went to lunge at me again.

“Stop!” I order throwing my hands down sharply. The wind around us once again plummeted and with two quick snaps the men’s necks twisted so suddenly it shocked me. Both men fell on the ground there necks twisted unnaturally, blood spilling from there mouths.

I looked down at my hands and then at the fallen screen the man called his phone. I tapped at the screen, a picture of a naked girl as the screen saver. I scowled my eyes drifting to the date.

January 31st 2023. I cold washed over me I had been buried for nearly 24 years. The thought made me sick and I couldn’t contain my nausea. I threw up bugs and whatever else was in that casket all over the oldest of the men and sat next to the men trying to think of my next move.

I sat there for maybe an hour, maybe more and dug through the men’s pockets, they had about a $100 between the two of them and dagger they removed from me. I left the cemetery and right into a police officer.

~~~ February 2nd Present Day Jersey City, New Jersey ~~~

The quiet stillness of her jersey apartment would normally be a blessing but right now it felt like nothing but a curse. Draven sat by the open window, the smoke from her cigarette floating out and away from her. She wished she could follow out after it. The lack of Francisco’s persuasive power invading her head could not even comfort her right now, no matter how much she wanted to celebrate it. He had spent the last 4 years invading her mind, intruding on all the thoughts she ever had making her fall in love with him against what she wanted. He used her powers strength for his own gain masquerading it as for the betterment of there lives. When his powers started to wane over her she felt free again. And she left him. He found her because of course he did, he spent every waking hour in her head, he knew her next move and he found her.

She was unwilling to be his victim again and when he cornered her in the alleyway by her apartment she snapped. The peace she was briefly given from when she squished his head into a mess of muscles and bone faded as soon as she saw a man watching her in awe. In an attempt to get away she threw Francisco’s limp body at the man and ran up into her apartment until her lungs felt like they were going to burst. But she knew that that man saw her. She had seen him a couple of times around the building. He knew where she lived and she knew the police would come for her.

So she waiting by the window with her cigarette to calm her nerves. When there was a knock on the door she put out her cigarette and looked down at her scraped up hands, Cut from squishing Francisco’s skull, and took a deep breathe. “Come in.”

The man who saw what she did entered her small apartment. He wore gloves on his hands and a thick coat around his body. For a moment they didn’t speak, both sizing each other up. “He got into your head, didn’t he?” The question took her off guard and she stood up and shrugged in response. “I thought so.”

“What do you want?” She asked eyeing the door. Did he come alone? Or was the cops waiting for her just outside?

“They’ll be after you soon, I can help you.”

“I don’t need help.” Draven said quickly “help means I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I’m not.”

“I know” he said softly. “I’ve been keeping an eye on Francisco for a while. I lost him for a bit but he couldn’t stay away from you. What he did to you, he did to someone in my family too.” Draven said nothing to this confession but relaxed slightly. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He said “I’m like you.” She cocked an eyebrow and the stranger pulled up his sleeve revealing a type of electronic bug attached - no embedded into his arm. Her eyes followed him closely and he pressed the bug wincing as he did so. All of a sudden, the mechanical bug grew on his arm surrounding it in a cylinder and then creating a makeshift cannon where his arm was just a minute prior.

“What the fuck?” Draven breathed. The stranger gave her a small smile.

“There are others like you- like us. You’ll be safe there. No one would look for you there.”

She placed the cigarette she was still holding back in her mouth amused. “And if I refuse?” She challenged throwing up her hands as a reminder of what she could do to him. Arm canon or not.

“You don’t have to come.” He said with a shrug. “But you’d be safer there. Maybe get some training learn to deal with it.” Draven mulled it over. He was right. They would be looking for her - Francisco was smart and probably put in a fail safe incase Draven every did anything to him. For all she knew he had the plan for someone to call the police if he didn’t return within a couple of hours. What’s the worse that could happen if she went with this boy? She could take him if he tried anything. She took the cigarette from her mouth and nodded.

“I’ll pack.” The boy nodded watching her walk to the bedroom. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Namjoon Kim.”

~~February 3rd : Present day Westchester NY ~

The happy birthday decorations around you felt so forced. The colorful happy birthday banner splashed against the white of the cafeteria tiled walls. The balloons hung from every corner of the room, in pastels of your favorite colors and streamers hung in the spots that weren't filled with balloons. Your classmates and teachers gathered around you singing happy birthday while Taron, your boyfriend (if you can call him that), brought the baby pink frosted cake filled with burning candles and a sweet sign that said 'Happy Birthday!'.

Your shifted uncomfortably at everyones eyes on you, your eyes tinted brown with annoyance but you slapped on your best smile and tried to hide it. After all it wasn't there fault, it was Wades (Deadpool). you were surprised that he was able to send you a birthday card from the prison he was in but you still smiled when you received it. That was until you realized that the headmistress read the mail coming in and in an attempt to get you to open up more she threw this impromptu birthday party.

You had only been in the school for about 2 months and in that time you hadn't gotten to know many people. Maybe thats how Taron and you 'got together'. You looked at his smiling face as he placed the cake down in front of you. He was doing his very best to make you feel as welcome as possible but you still felt lonely. You used to have Wade until he was arrested and you were given the choice to come here or go to prison. It was an easy choice at the time but now here you were just bored and lonely. You had a few friends but since you came in the middle of the school year - you were treated like the new girl and looked at as more of a tourist attraction rather then a person. Plus, you were behind in the training since you were still unsure of all your powers. You met Wade only about 4 years ago when he says he found you working in a bar and while he physically trained you to work with him - you only discovered your powers about 2 years ago.

"I think I speak for everyone who knows Adi" Taron said pulling you out of your thoughts. You looked up at him, the fake smile on your face getting wider. The smoke from the candles billowing up and making your eyes sting. "She might be new but she is like a shining star in our little school." You heard a few scoff and you knew by now your eyes were fully brown. Looking at the snickering girls towards the edge of the crowd. "I am happier to have met her and we as a whole are lucky to have her here. Happy birthday!" Cheers filled the air around you.

You blew out the candles, puffs of gray smoke circling in the air around you while claps echoed in the large cafeteria. You gave a fake smile until gasps around you were heard. "The banner!" someone shouted and you quickly turned around. The Happy Birthday Banner now yellowing from the fire that seemingly started out of no where. Your eyes instantly shot to Emma, her red lips curled up into a smirk.

"Miss Roberts!" Mr. Rosenthal chastised her as you watched another student put out the flames. In the few months you were here, Emma had it out for you. You weren't sure why and you didn't care - you didn't like her. But instead of retaliating you just wanted to head back into your dorm room and be away from all these people with their fake smiles and faux interest in you. You pushed the cake away from you so Mr. Rosenthal could cut pieces for all the faces looking at it greedily

"I got you something!" You heard next to you. Well maybe you didn't want to get away from everybody. Looking to your side you saw Jackson and the boys he considered his family all holding various boxes wrapped in multicolored paper. He excitedly took a seat next to you shoving present that was very obviously a skateboard in your hand. Unwrapping it you saw that it wasn't only a skateboard though there was one. It also had a box with a beautiful diamond necklace wrapped around the wheel. Bam bam had gotten you a bottle of your favorite liquor, JB a record player, Yugyeom - a purse you pointed out in the mall, Mark a teddy bear and Youngjae a box of sugar cookies. You thanked them all with a hug.Jessie, one of your only girl friends, shoved her away to you handing you a bottle of perfume you also pointed out in your mall visit.

However, Katya probably the person you were the absolute closest to here slid next to you with a plate of cake in one hand, a spoon in her mouth and an envelope in her hand. She shoved it in your hand and whooshed the other boys away. "Move, it is a present for her not you!" You giggled and opened the envelope seeing two tickets to a rave on the following weekend. "We're going to sneak out!" she whispered to you "Happy Birthday!"

~~~

Jackson woke you up bright an early to ‘try out’ all your birthday presents. By the time early afternoon hit you were exhausted and was grateful that you came at an odd time in the year so your three room dorm was just for you. That was until you came home and saw a man sitting on your couch and a girl walking out of the room across from your own.

“I’m not going to leave Mark.” I said with my hand on my hip. Mark was the police officer I ran into and after freaking him out with my power he brought me head while also cleaning up the mess I left in the cemetery and getting met fresh clothes and something to eat. But he did not believe I would stay here considering I didn’t want to come in the first place. “So you can leave.” 

“Yeah I’d be more inclined to believe you if you unpack the clothes I got you.” He said lounging and not inclined to go anywhere.” I huffed.

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Frisk had been planning on sleeping in today, that was the plan, it was a nice plan, she liked that plan, but now the sounds of Revaew-knows-what decided to put a stop to that plan. The pup wandered down the hall towards Aiden, her hair an absolute mess, and a blanket where he cloak should be. "What's going on...?" She asked tiredly, rubbing her eyes. "It's too early for this..." Pup, it's almost the afternoon, you just stayed up too late.

Aiden had been pacing the hall when Pup showed up. Letting out a frustrated huff, he gestured towards the door. “Someone decided it would be a good idea to use their magic and make Roo turn into his feral form,” he grumbled. Aiden? Grumbling? Well, that was new. He hardly ever got angry at the magic shenanigans around here. Or in general. “I’ve got Roo locked in there so he doesn’t do any more damage to the apartment, or accidentally attack someone. I’m just not sure what to-“

A loud roar interrupted the two. Muffled slamming rattled the door on its hinges. Aiden winced.

“... what do to,” he finished flatly. He sighed, rubbing his temples. “Sorry if he woke you up. Im just at a bit of a loss. I’m not small enough to slip in there without almost letting him out, and I doubt knocking him out would do any good. It’s a nightmare.”

[wolf-and-bard]

Drown With Me If You Can

Prompt: White Frost/Apocalypse

Relationships: Arnaghad/Erland of Larvik (from one of the witcher-centric cards)

Rating: M

Content Warnings: swear words, grief, themes of giving up on life and hopelessness at the beginning

Summary: After the fall of Kaer Seren, all that is left for Erland to do in his gloomy cave is write his journal and let the cold take him. He doesn’t expect to be saved, especially not by his former-lover-turned-nemesis Arnaghad. In which: Erland wallows and Arnaghad calls him out on his bullshit. A lot.

Word Count: 5.6k

AO3 link

I.

I close out this account with a warning: the knowledge I hereby hope to preserve is essential for the day the monsters return to our crypts, our battlefields, and our gardens. It is a call to battle and heroism and in that it is treacherous. If you use these pages with the intention to do good in this world, you will soon find yourself to be an outcast among humans. You will save them and they will spit at you. You will beg for fair payment and they will burn you at the stake. Be prepared for that, and take up the sword nonetheless for if you do not, no one will. Peace, brothers and sisters of the future, peace and blessings of the Gods. May you never need this journal.

Erland signs the bottom of the last page with fingers gnarled by the cold, trembling from how his muscles have hardened as a result of his lethargy. When it is done, he grips the quill hard, clings to it. It is a childish instinct that makes him do this, but this feather has been his lifeline for the past… past. A lifeline to the past. Time flakes away from Erland the same way the tattered pieces of the quill do once it breaks under his tightening fingers. The last few pages of his journal are barely legible and he can’t tell whether that is because his vision is fails him, like a pane of glass slowly devoured by a sheen of ice, or because his script has fallen prey to his tremor. As Erland waits for the ink to dry, he uses his weak hand to arrange his good one into the proper gesture for an Igni and casts it down the dark tunnel of his home.

A perfect cone of lightly crackling flames shoots outward, illuminating the glazed rock all around. The sign holds for several breaths, steady and sturdy and its heat singes Erland’s frayed cuffs, has the ceiling drip crystalline melt-off.  Erland smiles grimly to himself and shuts the journal. This time can’t take from him and the ice won’t feast on, this his body will always know how to do. A perfect channelling of what Chaos he may access.

Shaking, Erland crawls over to his makeshift bedroll – a dirt-hardened pellet of furs he collected on his way up here, a long hike with Kaer Seren a steady ruin at his back and the names of his brothers and children a steady weight on his shoulders – and collapses on top of it.

It is done. His lips trace the outlines of these words, but his tongue is too heavy to lift. Erland sneezes into his pillow and draws a ratty quilt over himself. It used to be bursting with reds and oranges, a gift from an old woman for saving her granddaughter from an early death by harpy, but now it is faded and as grimy as the rest of him. Erland cannot distinguish the colours of his belongings any longer, not even in the stale light of the last sparks of the Igni that cling to the cave’s walls.

It is done.

His journal is finished, his life chronicled, his school honoured and his knowledge preserved. All that is left to the former griffin master is to wait for the sparks of his life to die out alongside those of his magic. Erland flops onto his belly and uses his weak hand to arrange the fingers of his good one into the shape of Axii. His wrist creaks when he angles the hand at his own face and he casts it with the same impeccable precision. The spell hits instantly and his body goes slack, his mind punctured through by holes. Erland sleeps and hopes a harsh wind will blow through his abode tonight.

II.

There is a long interval of darkness that is marked by bursts of hot and cold shivers that wreck his body, but Erland doesn’t truly wake and by the time he does, he isn’t sure that they were real at all. He goes through a stage of sleep paralysis in which all he can do is to stare at the coarse ceiling of the cave. It has frozen back over and if there were any light, Erland would see his own face reflected in it. Sunken cheeks, eyes reddened from burst capillaries, undercut grown out into shaggy strings of hair. The griffin tattooed on the side of his skull drowns in them, just like the griffin witchers drowned in dust and snow the day their school was buried in an avalanche.

Erland sighs. He cannot move a muscle for half an eternity. His nose itches and another sneeze finally frees him, releases him into an unsettled slumber that pushes him along the maze of corridors that is his own memory. He retraces every step he took along the Path, faces all the monsters he slaughtered and all the humans he failed to convince that he shouldn’t be slaughtered alongside them.

There is no lesson to be learned from these dreams. Only patience. Erland has long lived with his regrets, knows them as intimately as the beasts whose traits he noted down in his journal. Only patience, yes. In all his striving to be more than a mere mercenary or rat-catcher perhaps his most undervalued and least practiced virtue.

Erland can be patient.

He vaguely remembers one who never was, an old friend, a former lover who faced the world with steel first and foremost, steel accompanied by a detached pragmatism that was so at war with everything Erland believed in. That friend – now less than an enemy – would not have lain here so wallowing in the drawn-out pain of his end days. He would not have waited for his death, he would have summoned it by drawing his slowly rusting blades and cutting himself open, would have watched his hot blood hiss against the ice at the heart of this mountain and would have born a proud curl of his lip until the moment the fire in his own heart extinguished.  

Erland smiles and his jaw creaks.

He takes the high-road.

He…

He sleeps.

He thrashes.

He recites every lesson the knight Gryphon ever taught him. They are the foundation of his life’s work, they are all he has left.

He is patient.

III.

Erland is caught in a sleep paralysis once more when it enters the mountains. The monsters usually haunt him when he’s somewhere in the realm of insanity, but now he is wide awake, body one rigid line under the quilt that has long since lost its ability to keep out the winter, which means the thing could be very real and out for his blood. Its steps boom and quake through the rock for hours before the giant passes into the dead end that is Erland’s makeshift dwelling. Even with no light to illuminate it, Erland can see it glittering, can see its giant head swing left and right, can hear the scrape of its fragile marble skin against the walls.

An ice elemental.

If Erland is extra lucky, this used to be its lair and he accidentally usurped it. There is no moving away, no putting up a fight and he resigns himself to a quick and violent death after all. How graceful of Destiny to show her face now, after everything else has passed her by.

But then the ice elemental shakes off the snow, hundreds of flakes that rain down to cover the floor, and Erland blinks. The outline of the monster softens from harsh crystals to wet strands of fur that hug broad shoulders. A werewolf? Erland can’t draw breath, doesn’t trust his ears when the thing opens its mouth and speaks, a deep baritone. Not nearly raspy enough to be of anything other than human origin.

"Alzur’s rotten balls, Erland is that you?"

Erland wants to laugh. Of all the demons the depths of his consciousness could have summoned to this cursed place, it had to be Arnaghad. Arnaghad with his hulking form and his smooth voice, his tattered bearskin overcoat and his terrible timing. Always terrible. He can’t laugh, of course, can’t do more than wheeze faintly.

A torch flares up, casting eerily long shadows at the feet of the apparition, more real than anything Erland has thought in a long time. At the same time, Erland catches Arnaghad’s eyes – dark ochre with narrow slits, eyes that are set deeply under bushy eyebrows which underline the blocky shape of Arnaghad’s face as though it was whittled from planks of red birch – and Arnaghad starts.

“It is you,” he says and follows that up with a curse Erland can’t discern, courtesy of Arnaghad’s Gemmeran linguistic oddities that persist to this day. With them comes a harsh edge to all his syllables and a tendency to mouth-breathe. Funny how after decades of reciprocal avoidance, Erland still remembers these details. Casting his mind down the drainage canal of history, he also remembers himself: a young fighter, just two decades of age, stuck in a body that was overflowing with emotions of visionary self-determination, of rough-and-fast passion, of compassionate anger. Erland waits for the spark of that anger to rekindle, especially as he watches Arnaghad toss his swords and pack and drop to his knees by Erland’s pellet, the torch held close. It’s heat licks across Erland’s cheeks and cradles his skull.

It remains the only heat.

His anger is but a relic of a more complicated time.

“By all the gods,” Arnaghad breathes, hand passing over Erland’s sweaty forehead. His touch too feels familiar, feels too familiar, but his scent isn’t and neither is the concern that drenches his tone. “You look like a giant lump of bird shit.”

Erland’s nostrils flare. Slowly, ever so slowly, his lips peel back in a snarl. He still can’t move, no matter how much he tries. He wants the ice elemental back, if only for the simplicity of its puny gravel brain. Arnaghad’s may only be a smidge bigger and more substantial, but with that comes so much. Arguments that have been left unburied, thoughts that have been left unspoken, memories that have been left unfinished.

Erland hisses weakly through his teeth and Arnaghad growls in reply. He doesn’t extinguish the torch, he sticks it into the ground somewhere to Erland’s right and sits back on his heels, the growl building and building. Erland drifts off again, waiting for Arnaghad to speak. He hopes that when he wakes, the phantom will be gone.

IV.

If anything, Arnaghad has solidified by the time Erland opens his eyes again. He sits by Erland’s bedside still, even cross-legged tall enough that his head grazes the ceiling of the cave if he straightens. Before him he stokes a small campfire with several crude bursts of Igni.

“That is a waste of precious firewood,” Erland says, voice croaky. He pushes himself up onto his forearms, head sluggish to lift from the scratchy pillows. Arnaghad doesn’t turn around, instead he retrieves an iron pot from his belongings and presses it against the cave’s wall, using his dagger to scrape off the ice there. Practical, first and foremost, that is exactly how Erland remembers his lover of yore. Lover being a euphemism for something Erland still cannot name.

“I’m hungry,” Arnaghad says and fires another sign. Briefly, the cave explodes with heat and Erland just about stifles a vulgar moan. When did he last have the pleasure of warmth this intense and indulgent? The fire slowly seeps into his blankets and furs and nestles against his skin. He sinks back into them and closes his eyes. “Besides,” the bear witcher continues. “You might have died of hypothermia if I hadn’t started it. It’s almost funny, Erland the righteous asshole letting himself freeze to death, where is the glory in that? Alas, I find it hard to believe that you have developed a sense of humour since last we met.”

“Neither have you.”

“Ha,” Arnaghad says and that’s it for a while. Erland listens to the water boil, to Arnaghad hacking at dried vegetables and jerky. It doesn’t even smell bad and despite his self-imposed fast, Erland’s stomach rumbles and the inside of his mouth feels coated in dirt. How long has it been since last he drank? It didn’t matter until Arnaghad stampeded into his life again, shaking him awake.

Erland sneezes.

Maybe not all of him.

“Bless you,” Arnaghad grumbles. “So, how did you end up here, little birdie? Your wings broken?”

“I’m not little and griffins aren’t birds.”

“Smartass.”

Erland snorts. He isn’t about to stoop down to Arnaghad’s level and start bickering and he has no inclination for small-talk. That’s what he tells himself anyway. A part of him is almost… glad for the company. Glad for this company in particular. Fuck that.

“I will allow you to stay the night,” Erland says, and squints to see Arnaghad raise one of his caterpillar eyebrows at him. It isn’t like either of them can tell day from night, and depending on where Arnaghad entered the tunnel system of the Dragon Mountains, the last time he saw sunlight may have been weeks ago. “Fine, I will allow you to have a rest. After, I want you gone.”

“I don’t care what you want. If it hadn’t been for me you would be a corpse right now. Take a peek.”

Erland follows the gesture of Arnaghad’s hand and glances down himself, gingerly lifts the blanket. He is swathed in thick, padded linens, an extra pair of breeches and woollen-knit socks. The bearskin that usually hugs Arnaghad’s shoulders is draped across him and what is more, his lips do not feel chapped any longer. His hair curls around his head in a long, neat braid, like a viper in slumber. Shit, how long was he out for?

“Have you considered that it might have been my explicit wish to die?”

“I have,” Arnaghad says on a low chuckle. “A ridiculous notion. You’re sick, that is all. Sick people lean towards melodrama.”

“I’m not being melodramatic,” Erland replies and, oh, there it is. Frustration breaking through the hard-packed stratum of the years like a flower through the earth in early spring. It’s fast to burst and blossom. He does try and sit up after all, but before the world can start to spin around him, Arnaghad has roughly pushed him back into the sheets.

“You are always melodramatic,” the bear witcher replies and glowers at him, face cast in darkness by his bulky outline. Erland’s eyes narrow.

“One night,” he says. “And then you’re gone.”

“We’ll see about that. The stew is going to have to cook for a bit, and you should go back to sleep. Want me to Axii you?”

“And have you make minced meat out of my brain? No thank you, I can do that myself,” Erland snaps. He’s being petulant, why is he being so petulant? It’s all these rifts tearing open in his chest, all these holes he abandoned when he left the order with his friends to found the griffin school. These holes pull him back to life and reality, pull him back through time and into a persona he thought he buried. Erland is not a child. Erland is the griffin grandmaster, Erland is a knight, Erland is a witcher. It doesn’t matter that these functions are all theory now, they make up his identity. Not Arnaghad and his quarrels. And yet…

Erland turns away, facing the wall. When he makes the gesture for the Axii, he doesn’t even have to use his hand to arrange the fingers. He didn’t want to live. Now he does. And that’s more than he can take after everything he’s lost. More than he deserves, really. Erland puts very little force behind the sign, letting it spill to the tips of his fingers then gently touching them to his own face and thankfully, the world blots out around him.

V.

Arnaghad’s voice pulls him up again, like the detonation of a bomb.

“Wake up, stew’s ready.”

Before Erland is fully awake, a coughing fit grips his body and although it scratches at the back of his throat, it also feels freeing in a way, loosening the plaque on his bones and the dust in his chest.

“So you’re still a victim of your winter sickness,” Arnaghad laughs. “I wondered.”

“What do you know of it?” Erland’s voice is muffled as he wipes his mouth, the words come out spiteful, acidic. This time, he does have the strength to sit up on his bed, but he needs the sturdy stone wall at his back to keep him upright. It’s a cool antithesis to the slight swelter of the cave’s air, a gracious counter-force to the merrily burning fire and the bubbling stew.

“Erland, you have spent twenty odd winters in my embrace, would you not think some of that has stuck with me?”

“In the face of your betrayal, no, I would not,” Erland says, crossing his arms, though admittedly, Arnaghad is right. Erland has always been susceptible to the cold, more so than any of his fellow witchers. Perhaps that is because Skellige, in the shape of his mother, rejected him when he was young, or perhaps it is because of his father whose origin Erland still doesn’t care to investigate. Either way, when the frost’s first tendrils start to wind their way into the atmosphere, he falls ill with sneezes and shakes, fevers too. It must be winter already then.  

“My betrayal, yes,” Arnaghad mutters and retrieves a wooden bowl from his pack into which he shovels some of the stew. It smells prickly and hot, thick with Ofieri spices and has Erland’s mouth water. Now that he is fully himself again, his senses have returned, an assault on his mind. As with any battle he ever fought, Erland decides to be methodical about it. First the food, then the fight. He reaches out for the bowl, but Arnaghad scoffs at his trembling hands. “Don’t think I’ll let your atrophied muscles spill any of this. It’s too damn good, here.” Arnaghad settles into a cross-legged seat before Erland and the fire paints a halo around him. He’s so big that it cowers at his back, which suits Erland fine. This way it is easier to ignore the concentrated, caring expression on the bear witcher’s face as he submerges a wooden spoon, scoops up a chunk of whatever dried meat he put into the stew and gently blows on it before holding it out.

“Why do you care?” Erland asks weakly, lips parting around the spoon. As soon as it hits his tongue – the perfect degree of scolding hot and spicy – he can’t help a small groan. Blunt though Arnaghad may be, his cooking has always been phenomenal. Erland’s stomach mewls for more.

“I always cared.”

“Funny way of showing that.” Erland gives him a pointed look and Arnaghad’s eyes dart along the scar that neatly sections Erland’s face. He has yet to receive even an attempt at apology for it. “Back then you didn’t seem too caring with me. In fact, I acutely remember your sword flaying me.”

“If I’d wanted to kill you, you would have died. But I didn’t want that then and I don’t want it now. I hold to my promises, Erland.”

Accusation is slabbed thickly onto those words and Arnaghad holds out another spoonful of stew which Erland dutifully swallows. It’s not the first time the sickness held him down so hard he had to be fed, but it feels strangely agitating for Arnaghad to be the one to do it. After he left and founded his own school, the only snippets Erland ever heard about the bear witcher were rumours of his death, especially with the vipers splitting off the bear school. Perhaps, Erland liked to believe that Arnaghad was dead because that took away the possibility of whatever was happening now. Perhaps, Erland left the one promise he spent all his life circumventing at Morgraig Castle the day he set out for Kaer Seren. Perhaps, Arnaghad didn’t change at all and neither did Erland.

“Do you even remember?” Arnaghad asks quietly, then allows himself a few gulps of soup before refilling the bowl. He doesn’t meet Erland’s eyes, but Erland can see the faint glow of anguish speckling his cheekbones. Oh, but this is bad. If Arnaghad goes berserk in here, they’ll both be buried in rock and ice and Erland is too awake and vivacious now to want that.

“Remember what?” Erland asks, feigning ignorance as long as that leaves him the proverbial high ground, the only place from which he can match Arnaghad’s sheer height. He accepts another two spoons, then shakes his head. His stomach feels brilliantly full, close to bursting, and he rubs it weakly. Arnaghad puts the bowl to his lips and drinks the rest of the stew. They’ll both want more later, especially with the firewood dwindling, but for now the next field is to be played. It all gets muddled anyway, who is he kidding. Erland sighs and that lets Arnaghad’s gaze snap upwards, latching onto Erland’s. They silently glower at each other for a handful of breaths.

“Of course, you do,” Arnaghad says eventually. “Knowing you, you remember your exact words.”

“I do,” Erland says and the ghost of his own voice flashes through his mind.

My heart lies at the end of a dream, Arnaghad. And as long as that dream remains unfulfilled, I cannot give it to you.

“You lied.”

“I didn’t lie, I never lied,” Erland protests, but Arnaghad shakes his head.

“I don’t understand. You obviously felt something for me, feel something still. Oh, don’t give me that look, I told you I care. I always paid attention to you, you know that.”

Erland does. It pains him to admit it, but he does.

“I didn’t lie,” he repeats, hands balling into fists.

“You threw me scraps of affection when it would have cost you nothing to invite me to your table,” Arnaghad says.

“Do we really have to do this now? I told you I want you gone.”

“I saved your life.”

“UNBIDDEN,” Erland screams and his arm shoots out in an arc. It is only by Arnaghad’s quick reflexes that the Aard doesn’t have him fly into the back wall. Erland heaves, watching Arnaghad’s thick Quen dissolve with a buzzing static, and he doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. After everything, he doesn’t want to hurt Arnaghad, of course he doesn’t.

“Why couldn’t you love me?” Arnaghad says, so fucking stubborn in his resolve to have this conversation. What a stupidly vulnerable question.

Back then, Erland bought in to the delusions he liked to paint for himself in blood and gore. He was destined for more, he was a noble knight, he was to rid the world of evil forevermore. Arnaghad didn’t fit in with that dream. He would try and keep Erland from it because he didn’t understand, had no ambitions for himself. And while that was, and likely still is true, it was never the reason Erland didn’t allow anything more than physical between them. But it was the reason he clung to and dangled before Arnaghad’s eyes over and over. After the night of the sundering… it didn’t matter so much anymore and Erland locked the true reason away in a dark corner of his heart, huddled together with the feelings he held hostage in the hopes they would fade to nothing.

Erland listens to his own heartbeat thump at his temples in a nagging ache and he forfeits his answer. Arnaghad doesn’t deserve forgiveness for what he did to Rhys and Erland and whomever else his sword cleaved, but he deserves the truth.

“You really want to know why?” he asks weakly, cringing inwardly at Arnaghad’s curt nod. Erland continues on a sigh, feeling fragile now that his anger evaporated with the sign he just cast. “I was afraid. I ruined my mother’s life by existing and I couldn’t spare Jagoda the experiments Alzur put us through and I never managed to make the humans see us as anything other than aberrations. I can slay monsters and teach others to do the same, but I can’t save the people I love.”

“That is horseshit, just complete and utter horseshit. Your mother was a right old cunt and nothing could have saved Jagoda. All the girls died, remember? Do you blame yourself for their deaths too?”

“My school,” Erland whispers, blinking rapidly to do away with those questions. “I loved them too and now they all lay buried under rubble. My brothers, my sons, my whole life. I loved them and I couldn’t save them. I’m a curse.”

“…why did you never say anything?” Arnaghad reaches out and his thick fingers brush Erland’s scraggly face. Erland stifles a dry sob. Some truths are better left unspoken and this was definitely one of them. He never dared to utter it to himself, in the quiet safety of his own mind, and now Arnaghad knows it. Arnaghad his ex-lover, used-to-be friend, nemesis for some years, phantom of his past for more, saviour of his life. Arnaghad who does, when it comes down to it, have a claim to his heart.

“Because you would have ridiculed me, as you itch to do now.”

“It is true that I was never good at understanding how other people feel,” Arnaghad says and his thumbs come to rests against Erland’s temples, smoothing out the ache there. He shuffles closer and their knees bump together which sends a jolt through Erland’s weakened frame. “But if you would have told me this, I would have found it impossible to demean you. I care, Erland, why won’t you believe that?”

Because you don’t care about anything other than your own survival.

Because it took five years for you to ever look at me twice and double the time for you to answer my frequent knocks on your door.

Because you attacked our brother and cut me and your eyes were filled with pure hatred.

Because you spent decades on your mountain, pretending like that was the only life you ever knew.

Because…

Because…

Erland grasps for more reasons, grasps for the steely indifference he felt for Arnaghad ever since the day he left Morgraig for Haern Caduch. He stops. No forgiveness, not yet. But perhaps, in the face of his grief and all that he lost, it would do well to cast his gaze into the future. Erland releases his tense muscles and lets go of something. After, his breath comes easier.

“You would have me believe that your care is rooted in love? Even after all this time?” he asks.

“Yes,” Arnaghad replies. So simple, huh?

“So maybe you love me. That doesn’t change the fact that I would have let you down.” Or Arnaghad him. Or maybe they were fated to let each other down.

“Look, birdie. I don’t know what it means to dream big, but I know this, and I know it for certain: you did what you could and because you’re a persistent shit, you did it exceptionally well. There are forces at work in this world one man alone cannot overcome. You did what you could.”

Erland doesn’t know what to say to that. Because that isn’t simple, that is insightful and attentive and not at all Arnaghad’s usual refrain. Maybe he did change and Erland is the only one who stagnated. He feels stupid, all of a sudden. Stupid for holding himself up to such high standards, stupid for being afraid in the face of his own bravery, stupid for ever calling himself honourable.

What man gives up on love because he assumes himself to be cursed? No knight. A coward.

“Could I have stopped you?” Erland asks. “If I had loved you, could I have stopped you from attacking Rhys and from waging your war on the rest of us witchers? Could I have changed the course of history?”

“You’re doing it again,” Arnaghad replies with a sly smile. He shakes his head and leans over his own legs to press a dry and warm kiss to Erland’s lips. In a way, it’s a homecoming. In a different one, it’s completely novel. Erland tilts his head for a second kiss that has his body thrum with wanting more, and Arnaghad allows it, for a bit. It’s another kind of warmth, that of their bodies re-learning one another and before long, Erland finds himself on Arnaghad’s lap, held close in a way he thought he’d never be held again. It isn’t forgiveness. It’s far from forgiveness. But it’s a start.

VI.

“Erland, there is something I have to tell you,” Arnaghad says long after they have spent the pent-up emotions of the last centuries in drawn-out kisses and frantic clashes of their body. They’re both tucked under the quilt and the bearskin, Erland’s beaten body sheltered in Arnaghad’s mountainous embrace. Erland gives a sated mumble, basking in the magic of the moment for just a heartbeat longer. Of course it couldn’t last, contentedness with Arnaghad is always the eye of the storm. “Listen to me,” Arnaghad continues and a sense of urgency replaces whatever fluttery feelings Erland just had. “I didn’t come to the Dragon Mountains to find you nor had I head of Kaer Seren’s fall. I came here for a reprieve from the storm. Have you seen it before you entered?”

“It will pass,” Erland says, unwilling to match Arnaghad’s frantic cadence. His chest is a warm rumble behind Erland, an upset sky. Damn Arnaghad and his terrible timing. “Winter is always brutal in these parts and the storms bite, but they pass.”

“It’s not winter, we are coming up on Belleteyn.”

Belleteyn… that means it’s almost May. Erland blinks stupidly before the implications sink in. Snow storms in May simply don’t happen.

“By the gods,” he breathes, and grips Arnaghad’s hand which is splayed over his own chest. His body tenses up and the cave feels stuffy now. “How long has the storm been going on for?”

“October,” Arnaghad says warily and that is so much worse than Erland expected. A harbinger of conflict Erland can deal with, an old love he can squabble over, but he is not at all equipped to handle an apocalypse. It has to be the end of the world because October is only a month after Erland entered the mountains and straight-out winter for close to eight months can only mean one thing:

“The White Frost.”

Arnaghad nods, cheek rubbing against Erland’s head. A branch in the fire bursts with a mighty crack right then, as though it is afraid too. The prophesised end of the world. Erland always assumed it was a tale to scare children and he doesn’t believe in foresight. There is no other explanation. Arnaghad’s other hand draws Erland closer and his steady mass of muscles help anchor Erland as the emotional storm resumes alongside the one that rages outside.

“I know this is a lot, but we don’t have much time. Is there anywhere we can go? You are weak still and these peaks will not protect us for long.”

“I… yes. There is a gulf that runs deeply under Kaer Seren, it carries heat out of the earth’s core and disperses some leagues out into the ocean. We have dug our cellars deep enough to tap it for the winter months… we might have food stores left too, but… I don’t know that there is a way in any longer and with a snow storm we might die trying.”

“Better to die trying than to die giving up,” Arnaghad says.

“If this truly is the White Frost, is there any chance of survival?” Erland asks closing his eyes. This is not how he wants to go out, not when he still has so much grieving and loving to do. Not when he just discovered that he can.

“I’ve never been through an apocalypse before, I couldn’t tell you. We got this far, though, so we might as well try.”

“Might as well,” Erland sighs, pulling on Arnghad’s fingers to bite the tip of one of them. The other witcher grunts indignantly. “But I’m not spending the rest of eternity stuck in a damp basement with you if you are going to keep wearing that bearskin. My nose may be clogged up with snot, but I can still smell it and it reeks. Did you piss on it?”

“I didn’t, but you might have with all the feverish thrashing and moaning you did.”

“Fuck off,” Erland snaps and they both laugh. It’s a glimpse of a relationship they barely scratched the surface of back then. If they survive now, they could learn its ins and outs yet.

And if Erland is anything, if he’s ever been anything, it is determined. He is determined to give his long life one last purpose. It’s a selfish purpose, lacking chivalry and heroism, but Arnaghad was right. He did what he could and now he can allow himself this, a shot at love in the middle of the apocalypse. Erland’s had more idealistic and futile dreams.

“What a horrible retirement Destiny has chosen for us,” he says.

“This isn’t worse than being dragged away by an ugly mage and suffering his experiments for years and years.”

“Speak for yourself, big bear, speak for yourself.”

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

@witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo , @littoraly-art

[kurtty-drabbles]

Ocean au (the plan)

N/A: Merciful short, I hope.

Contrary to what Peter Ross may believe, Kitty does not live with Gwen, in fact, she has her house/loof where she lives and plans her next move along with her two babies, but, as the woman enters in her loof something is amiss and she looks around making no sound(what good thief would she be if she alert her presence) hovering on the air by a few inches the woman has a knife on her hand ready.

(Who would visit a thief at this time?)

"Darling, this is your house?" a honey voice rings in the loft as a woman with platinum hair is sitting in one of the couches with a sultry smile on her face.

"No, I came here to steal this place as well" Columbina replies and takes a knife out her back "and I may be so bold to ask...what are you doing here?"

"Oh, my, my. You have a knife. No need to go physical, I´m not here to hand you to my husband nor to steal from you" Felicia promised to make a cute signal with her fingers "You can trust a thief´s word, Columbina"

"No, I can´t, much less yours, where are my babies?" Kitty asked dropping the knife.

"Your cat and dog? sleeping on your bed like two angels" Felicia states and points to the corridor where one can see the only door open and Kitty could verify that Cosmo and Jupiter are sleeping soundly over the pile of dresses tore apart.

"Goddamnit," She mutters tiredly and goes back to deal with Felicia who is all smiles now. "Ok, what do you want? And never again break in someone´s house...that may or may not be mine" she orders in a strong voice as she puts the knife on the kitchen site.

Felicia was never nervous to see Columbina with a knife(odd, as she knows Columbina can cause more damage with her hands than with a knife) and speaks freely as if she was restrained by any means. "I heard you are planning a heist and I want in"

"No," Kitty said a bit acerbic. This didn´t stop Felicia in the slightest.

"Darling, you´re one of the best, in fact, I would be happy to pass down the name Black Cat to you" she has a more serious attitude now as Columbina is sitting in front of her. "But this heist is something too big even for you"

"I have a plan" she states confidently.

"Your last plan involved green goo"

"Why everyone mentions that...ok, back to the point, how did you heard about that? " she asked and Felicia is offering that enigmatic smile of hers as if she won´t tell the secret for immortal life. "it was Gwen" and now the smile is dead.

"Yeah, I blackmail her to talk...you love to take the mysticism out of my words" she explains pouting a little "But I want to help, my husband is, well, let me tell you something, Shield deals with cursed diamonds ALL DAY, to the point I´m sick of diamonds and if that could make Bruce that a chill pill for a moment ...I´m in"

"Felicia....is cursed diamonds, you can´t keep with them"

"Wasn´t thinking in that, darling"

"If I say yes, you´ll stop coming to this place?"

"I can try to invade your house but I can promise to make this a secret"

______________________________________________________________________________

Kitty, on the next day, was walking with her cat and dog as any owner should and is not minding the oddities in the New Gotham Park. Cosmo and Jupiter are walking in their usual way, that as always, got the attention of people ("uhm, lady, your cat walks on the back of your dog?" "yep")

"Lady" a new voice gets her attention and Kitty turns to see a teenager chewing bubblegum and offering an amused smile. "I want to get in the heist"

Kitty almost had a heart attack, but, she´s Columbina for a reason. "An excuse me? I´m a semi-normal citizen of New Gotham walking with my cat and dog"

"I´m Jubilee Wayne and Felicia told me to speak to you"

"Urgh, Of fucking course"

__________________________________________________________________________

The place for the meeting was on Gwen´s penthouse, which the blonde was happy to offer as she is more than enthusiastic with this plan now that Columbina did get the heroines to help and ("no green goo so far" "IT. WAS.ONE. TIME") and soon all the heroines are presented.

"So, what do we know about cursed diamonds?" Columbina begins and White Witch explains the matter of such cursed items, but, sensing she notices the stares everyone was giving she realize that didn´t need to go full encyclopedia. "Well, thank you, Wanda, but the point is...where those diamonds come from?"

Meggan and Wanda's side-eye each other for a moment as this was a question they never did until now. Lorna, the green-haired hacker takes the powerpoint presentation.

Lorna takes the lead. "Those diamonds are magical and sentient enough to form a bond with human" she has a winning smile as she wants to give a big spoiler but Columbina is muttering to her (''keep going'') "now, think about, in all those cases of diamonds cursed, what we learned about the victims?" Lorna really wants to give a spoiler and Columbina is not letting.

Sparrow being invited here by Felicia that did invite herself as well, something that Columbina loves to point out, raises her hand. "All of them are very rich to buy a diamond...by the way, what you do with the diamonds you steal?" Sparrow asked intrigued and Columbina puts her finger on her lips and wink at the teen.

"Yes, they´re rich and yes, we have questions about Columbina, for example why your cat and dog are so...odd?" Lorna asked as Cosmo and Jupiter are in Gwen´s penthouse and are raiding the fridge together.

"Focus, Lorna, Focus"

"I think your cat and dog..." Wanda looks at them for a moment as they steal something and are gone from their eyes "are very familiar"

"They´re my babies, now, Lorna..."

"Ok, back to the topic, all of those rich people buy their respective diamonds in one place..." and clicking on the bottom it shows an image of Emma Frost with a moustache and devil´s horn "this woman here is responsible. She´s the owner of the Hellfire jewellery and is getting money, too much money for normal or even successful jewellery" Lorna explains and shows some dates.

"Look, this is the normal ratio that jewellery makes...but Emma´s is making the triple...is not normal" and Lorna then concludes "and is very convenient that she has very strong insurance in case of robbery or if the diamond takes over your body"

Felicia is looking at this for a moment while Jubilee Lee is surprised, how Dark Claw let this one fly under his radar? "But" Felicia states "if the diamonds are cursed and are sentient enough...why to stay with Emma?"

"They make a symbiote relationship with Emma, maybe, because she can turn into a diamond too" Lorna finally gives the spoiler and Meggan is making questions. Lorna has no problem in showing the picture of diamond! Emma to her and Meggan is shocked, how come they never noticed this?

"Yeah, she can be a diamond but I can still phase her" Columbina explains and continues "anyway since she has a symbiotic relationship with the diamonds...it means they trust her to deliver the cursed to every citizen and " pressing the button for a moment "the number of clients that buy diamonds is increasing...she´s disguising the diamonds as bijous making more accessible to everyone. She won´t stop until the last one is infected, everyone"

Wanda and Meggan are visibly shaken. Jubilee is impressed, Felicia is ready to do something and Gwen is drinking wine. Lorna is watching Cosmo and Jupiter raid the fridge again.

"Why we just don´t go there and beat her up?" Meggan surprised even herself with this suggestion but Columbina gestures her to sit down.

"Because while is a symbiotic relationship, I have a feeling they can search for other hosts" she clicks on the button and now there are 3 photos on display "some of the possible candidates Victor Savage, a millionaire that loves everything expensive, Sophie Muller a woman who has a mine of diamonds in a few countries of Africa" they notice Kitty´s mischievous smile "suddenly is noticing the missing of money on the mines as the cities around her are getting more prosper and finally, Alex Simsan, the man is an old enemy of JLX and loves magical items, so far they all are fact but...maybe with the cursed...what can happen if those diamonds were put together with those fakes? How can we be sure they are fakes or just dormant?"

Meggan sits down and is a tick that the situation is that dire. Wanda never foresees this situation. Lorna is sharing lunch with Cosmo and Jupiter and Jubilee raises her hand again. "How can we stop this?"

"Glad you ask, Sparrow/jubilee, the first part of the plan: Emma Frost loves to give the most lavish parties in her mansion...we need someone to be there and talk with White Queen to get a hold on the magical protections that place has" Columbina looks at Gwen who is sibilating ("green goo")

And no one makes any question.

"That´s why we need Wanda there" Kitty speaks and Wanda herself is shocked. "Yes, you, Emma seems to be a big fan of you, and, no offences Meggan, but, Maximoff´s name has more worth for her than Braddock"

"I see, I´ll be undercover then, talk with everyone mentally?"

"Oh no, you´ll give info to Lorna and Felicia who will be the waitress of that party" Kitty states and Lorna is confident enough to say she can hack the database of the company who provides the buffet for those parties and put their names there.

"Meggan will shapeshifter and speak with Sebastian Shaw. He´s one of her partners and is getting a big sum of money to be quiet about the location of the cursed diamonds, but, if the boss asks" Kitty trails off and Meggan nods.

"Now, here comes the big part, we will need to take all those cursed diamonds calmly and quickly without attracting anyone´s attention. Me and Jubilee will do that...yes, kid, you´re very athletic and that could work" Jubilee does not want to show how she´s happy for those words but fails on that.

"And Gwen your mission is to advocate new jewellery that has nothing to do with Emma"

"Yes, being an influence, but, while I have some influence can this really work?"

"Yes," Meggan states looking at Gwen "Because the ladies of JLX will support the new jewellery and we have a certain influence too" and Wanda nods. Jubilee states that since she´s the daughter of the billionaire and Felicia works as a socialite in her spare time they can work on this to help Gwen.

Lorna and Kitty aren´t billionaires or influencers, but, they are changing the world...well, they´re about to change Emma´s world.

"Kitty, what are Cosmo and Jupiter?" Lorna asked as the cat and dog are watching the commotion with somewhat confusion in their eyes.

"Two excellent boys" Kitty respond proudly.

[polaristranslations]

Mayumi Red Eye

001

Doujima Mayumi was a member of the Pretty Boy Detectives Club. Just from the name "Pretty Boy Detectives Club", it sounded like a rather suspicious and puzzling organization, but I couldn't help but admit that learning that such an organization existed in this world was very much a new kind of surprise for me, as a male high school student. Well, each land had its own strange features, after all. If my town could even be visited by a vampire, then it perhaps wasn't any different to be visited by a pretty boy, as well.

Be that as it may, the Pretty Boy Detectives Club was a group that was formed within a middle school, and if I were to look for a similar concept from my own surroundings, then, embarrassing as it was, I could only think of the unit of justice formed by my two sisters, Araragi Karen and Araragi Tsukihi, known as the Fire Sisters, and that made it easier for me to imagine such an unfamiliar situation. However, while the Fire Sisters in their own way were a pretty unfamiliar bunch to begin with (and the fact that I could call my own sisters unfamiliar was something I should probably take seriously, but I'll put that problem aside for now), there appeared to be one major difference between them that made them fundamentally incompatible.

Because, if the aim of the Fire Sisters was righteousness.

Then the aim of each and every member of the Pretty Boy Detectives Club was beauty.

Righteousness was not always beautiful, and beauty wasn't necessarily always righteous—and, for a minion of darkness like me, I couldn't even begin to imagine where to start distinguishing between the two.

However, if it was a matter of distinguishing them, then, even among the Pretty Boy Detectives Club, the member named Doujima Mayumi seemed particularly suited to that task.

Because she was someone who happened to have exceptional eyesight in their possession.

Beautiful Sight Mayumi.

It seemed she was known by that nickname among the members of the club.

As someone who had had the experience of being a vampire, if only for the brief period of time of spring break, I still boasted an eyesight that was capable of, for example, seeing a lost girl, or witnessing a magical girl flying in the sky—but apparently, the eyesight of Beautiful Sight Mayumi was far beyond just that scope.

Because she had even been able to see a star that didn't exist, it was almost awe-inspiring—such a thing had to be a treasured episode that someone like Senjougahara, who loved astronomy, would envy.

Though I didn't dig any further, it seemed that she'd entered the Pretty Boys Detective Club after having gotten entangled with the discovery of that dark star—although, contrary to such a romantic-sounding anecdote, and contrary to the showy image of the words "pretty boys", Doujima Mayumi's personality was considerably warped.

Rather than pessimistic, she was almost spiteful.

Since I myself also had a rather gloomy character, I couldn't speak carelessly, but her gloominess was on the level of a dark star—for example, when I brought up the subject of the Summer Triangle that Senjougahara had taught me about, she had this to say.

"Orihime and Hikoboshi and the constellation Cygnus are together called the Summer Triangle, but, on the day of Tanabata, the ones that form a bridge over the Milky Way are not swans, but herons... That's why I can't trust swans at all. But if you think about it, it's pretty ironic to say that I trust herons more..."[?]

It's amazing that you can think of something so negative while looking at such a majestic triangle, was what I'd thought, unable to hide my shock, even as someone who was more a fan of mathematics than astronomy. But, despite the exceedingly negative attitude this pretty boy had, when it came to trying to escape from the trouble she encountered in our town, I want to make it clear that she never gave up at any point.

"There's no way I would do that. Normally, I'm the kind of person that gives up immediately—but, if it happened to be our leader, that leader would definitely say something like this."

Leader.

That surely meant the leader of the Pretty Boys Detective Club.

"'Giving up on your dreams can sometimes be beautiful—but giving up on reality is never beautiful.'"

It was definitely something that, not only the Fire Sisters, but also I, their older brother, would never say in our entire lives, but it was an exceedingly beautiful saying. It was flowery prose that was enough to make even that negative girl think more positively—I could even say that, although I was a prisoner to derivatives (bibun) and not flowery prose (bibun), it still resounded plenty in my heart.

Anyway, in this case, Doujima Mayumi, who looked up to such a leader, had unfortunately encountered in our town neither swans nor magpies—although, because it was the Milky Way we were talking about, either of those would have been more reasonable.

What Beautiful Sight Mayumi witnessed was—a fish.

In particular, a fish that could be described as a symbol of brutality.

A piranha.

002

With Tanabata coming up, I was steadily doing some mountain climbing, aiming for the Kitashirahebi Shrine—however, my goal wasn't a simple shrine visit. That shrine had already been destroyed, and no god resided there anymore. It was totally empty in terms of a shrine and in terms of a plot of land, and the main shrine had half-collapsed, with only the torii remaining standing.

It had been so empty that there had a risk of it becoming a source for trouble, so this Hawaiian-shirt-wearing old man named Oshino Meme who had visited this town had even gone out of his way to place a "seal" here. That was the kind of place it was, and even I had played a part in the placing of that seal, but in this particular case, I wasn't climbing the mountain for any oddity-related reason.

In short, it was for a preliminary inspection.

After the hellish spring break I experienced alongside the near-death vampire and after the nightmarish Golden Week I'd experienced alongside a classmate named Hanekawa Tsubasa, the girl that I had met by some strange twist of fate—the girl named Senjougahara Hitagi—had her birthday on July 7th, or, in other words, Tanabata. So it was to make the preliminary arrangements to celebrate that birthday that I decided to go mountain climbing on this very day.

Since she was someone who loved the stars, and the day was none other than Tanabata, I'd figured, why don't we all go stargazing together?

Celebrating the birthday of a girl born on July 7th by going stargazing was such a special idea, unparalleled in its originality, that I trembled at my extremely unique creativity.

In the first place, trying to celebrate the birthday of a classmate was behavior that would be completely unheard-of for the me before spring break, who would say stuff like "I don't need friends, because they lower my intensity as a human"... But anyway, this was about the present me.

Be that as it may, even if we wanted to go stargazing, July 7th fell on a weekday this year, so we didn't have the luxury to go as far as visiting an observatory—we needed to settle on a closer location.

At first, I'd thought it would be fine to do it on the roof of our school, but unfortunately, Naoetsu High's rooftop was not free to access.

And we wouldn't dare try to sneak up there.

And so, because it was the tallest point in our town, and because it was a place that people rarely went despite its wide range of vision, I decided to look into the Kitashirahebi Shrine, a good, little-known observation site.

After all, Oshino had called the Kitashirahebi Shrine an "air spot", so it didn't feel wrong at all to interpret that as a spot to view the skies.

However, as I laboriously climbed this mountain trail, I felt that this location hunting wouldn't bring about any favorable results—first of all, I had calmly begun to think that there was no girl in this world that would want to celebrate their birthday at a dilapidated shrine, but even before that, as if I were being cursed by my past self, the most important thing—the weather—was not looking too good.

The clouds had started to look menacing.

It hadn't been that way when I'd left my house, but once I'd arrived at the foot of the mountain and started climbing uphill, the sky had started to become cloudier and cloudier.

Far from the Summer Triangle, I couldn't even see the moon!

It was a dark night.

And it wasn't just cloudy—it actually seemed like it would start to rain. At this rate, if rain started to fall when I was on a mountain with no umbrella, it would just be a dreadful state of affairs.

If this really was a curse from my past self, then my past self must have really been carrying a profound darkness within him.

Well, considering I'd actually turned into a vampire and become a minion of darkness for those two weeks, perhaps that was actually the case, but I wanted him to at least be considerate on the day of Tanabata—but, fortunately enough, that was just needless anxiety.

Well, no, it wasn't needless in that there was suddenly a gap of sunny weather (even though it was night) that peeked through, but needless in that, even if this awful weather was indeed a curse, it wasn't a curse from my past self—at the summit, on the steps of the half-collapsed shrine.

There sat a pretty boy looking gloomy enough to be almost depressed, his head in his hands.

"......"

He looked like a boy in his second year of middle school.

However, there was so little of the liveliness or cheerfulness befitting such an age that I could even say I felt none at all—or rather, it felt like only the air around him had completely stagnated.

It was a gloom dreadful enough to make me think I'd met yet another oddity on the verge of death, just like during spring break. He seemed so much like a black hole that absorbed all light, that I was sure he even had a negative lux value.

I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that the reason for these dark clouds hanging above us was due to this kid—just what exactly was this pretty boy that contained so much grief?

I felt compelled to say that the way he hid his beauty seemed like some sort of youkai in itself, but, as a former vampire, and as someone who was not a specialist but an amateur who had come across various oddity stories—as someone with that level of experience, I could say for certain that he was definitely human.

Well, there had even been a half-vampire that wore a white uniform, this wasn't something that I could make a sweeping statement about, but—which school was that uniform from?

The blazer didn't seem like anything I'd seen around here...

"Ah... Waah...."

The pretty boy, not having noticed me after I stopped underneath the torii, began to shake his head in his hands.

"Oh no oh no oh no oh no... What do I do what do I do what do I do... I don't know I don't know I don't know... Why do I have these eyes why do I have these eyes why do I have these eyes..."

"......"

I'd faced off against a number of people with their own troubles, the near-death vampire being the number one example, but this could be the first time I saw someone being so blatantly troubled like this... It was like he was making his surroundings even gloomier, with no sign of stopping.

By now, even the sky had been completely covered in clouds without a crack, with not a star in sight.

Far from making this an advance look, at this rate, I wouldn't even be able to see an inch ahead of me.

"Leader, you said it would absolutely be all right... You're really all talk, aren't you... Why did I fall for this..."

He was muttering stuff like that.

Leader (danchou)?

Was he talking about heartbreak (danchou no omoi)?

It was true that, if I just left him like this, he could even be at risk of committing seppuku—at any rate, it was no longer the atmosphere of doing a test run for a classmate's birthday celebration.

I couldn't just ignore someone so blatantly troubled.

Also, it seems that recently, there have been rumors out in the world (although they were mainly rumors spread by my friend Hachikuji) that I was being called, not a "storyteller that helped girls in trouble", but a "storyteller that helped only girls in trouble".

It was an impressive way to circulate rumors.

It almost made me want to ask her if she was playing the stock market.

My attitude was that gender didn't matter when it came to people in trouble, and I'd learned that from my second mother, Hanekawa—it was simply a coincidence that, up until now, no worried boy had ever appeared before me. It was quite the coincidence for a series that spanned over twenty volumes, but it certainly was not the case that I was just ignoring boys.

As evidence, wasn't there a troubled middle school boy right in front of me at this very moment? It might be a bit imprudent of me to say it like this, but in order to prove that I wasn't a storyteller that only offered my help to girls, I wasn't going to leave this poor, perplexed boy on his own.

Well, even if not for that, if I just left this boy emanating darkness as he was, then it felt like it would end up never being possible to go stargazing at this shrine, so I had my own circumstances...

"Now then..."

The question was, how was I going to call out to him?

I didn't exactly have a bright disposition myself, so if I multiplied that darkness of his with my own darkness, then I had no idea how things would end up turning out.

In that case, I had no choice but to force myself into constructing a bright personality. It wouldn't do if I made a worried middle school boy overly cautious about me, either. I needed to act like a cool older brother that he could speak to candidly. After all, I even had two little sisters that were in middle school—compared to those two, even a middle school boy would seem cute.

"Yo! Why are you feeling so down, kid?"

"Kyaah!"

When I said that energetic line that I thought I would never say in my entire life and abruptly embraced him from behind, that "kid" let out a very girlish scream—the tone of voice was so girlish that I figured that maybe his voice hadn't changed yet.

"Wh-who!? What!?"

The panic of suddenly being hugged from behind was able to temporarily drown out the darkness that surrounded him—my strategy of sneaking up on him and surprising him was a success.

First impressions were important.

With this, I had surely influenced his impression of me into being a familiar, brotherly character that he could open up to even if it was our first meeting.

At the same time, I felt a certain delight in being able to say, "Hachikuji, I'm not just hugging you because you're a girl—I'll hug anyone indiscriminately, even middle school boys, because I'm just someone that loves hugging people."

Together with that feeling of delight, I took that boy that was still in a state of confusion and hugged him a second time, this time from the front.

"Hey. I'm Araragi Koyomi, a high school third-year," I said, whispering my self-introduction into his ear.

"The, the criminal revealed his own name... Does that mean he's not planning on letting me live...?"

"A criminal? What are you talking about? I'm your savior."

Was it a generation gap? Or maybe regional differences? Either way, the incomprehensible things that the boy said made me surprised.

And when he looked at me, it was as if he suddenly realized something.

"Ah, that's right, the way I (watashi), er, the way I (ore) look right now..." he muttered.

It made even less sense.

I came to the conclusion that it meant that his worries actually ran that deep, so I continued.

"If there's something that's bothering you, then let me help!"

As I said that, I placed an encouraging hand around his shoulders. And—were middle schoolers really like this?—his shoulders were awfully slender, like the shoulders of a girl.

003

The middle school boy's name was Doujima Mayumi-kun.

My first name, Koyomi, was also one that could easily be mistaken for a girl's name, and he surely experienced the same thing many times, so there was no way I didn't feel a strong sense of sympathy for him.

He was a second-year in the middle school section of Yubiwa Academy.

Yubiwa Academy.

Unfortunately, it was a school I hadn't heard of.

As I expected, he'd come a long way from a different town to visit this town.

If so, then I assumed that he came because he was a fan of shrines or maybe a fan of abandoned buildings, but Mayumi-kun was actually neither—the reason he came to visit the Kitashirahebi Shrine was, like me, to look at the stars.

"It was a direct order from Leader, you see... Leader said that, when it comes to stargazing, then that's Doujima Mayumi-kun's specialty, so go and take a look. Whenever that leader starts talking, there's just no way to change that person's mind... Um, aren't you a little close?"

"Huh? Am I?"

It was true that, on the steps to the shrine, Doujima-kun and I were sitting about 5 cm apart, but since we were both guys, was there really a need to worry about how close we were?

Perhaps he was at a difficult age.

Well, he did seem like a rather delicate pretty boy.

However, from my experience, if you already had a fear of strangers in middle school, then it would be hard on you in the future—I didn't want to have this boy live a life that would make him sympathetic to my own sad high school life, so instead I got even closer, stuck right up onto him, put my arm around his shoulders again, and said, "Hey, now, there's no need to be shy."

"H-hiii!"

"Don't worry, Mayumi-kun. People often say that I have an interest in young girls, but I have no interest in middle school boys."

"Th, they say you have an interest in young girls...!?"

So it's not just Sakiguchi-senpai, she murmured in shock.

"Then, I absolutely can't reveal my identity here..."

"Your identity? What do you mean by that, Mayumi-kun?"

"N-no. It's nothing. Yes, feel free to leave your arm around my shoulders like that. You can do it as much as you like."

"All right. I'm really glad, since it feels like I've gotten a little brother. If you were one of my little sisters, I'd probably just knock you out for no reason."

"......"

I wasn't sure why Mayumi-kun was trembling so much, but anyway, considering he'd come all this way to this empty town for some stargazing, I could see why he'd get so depressed at this bad weather.

Or so I'd thought, but that wasn't necessarily it—in the first place, he'd only come on orders from "Leader", which meant that Mayumi-kun himself didn't necessarily enjoy stargazing.

In that case, I assumed that "Leader" had to be the president of the Astronomy Club or something, but it turned out that even this was off the mark.

"I'm a member of the Pretty Boy Detectives Club. And I came to this mountain as part of my detective work—I've managed to fulfill my stargazing duties, but I won't be able to return like this."

"?"

Won't be able to return? What did that mean?

No, even before that—he'd fulfilled his duties?

In this weather? How? Did he mean that he'd finished his observation before it turned cloudy? But no, if it was the time period before it turned cloudy, then it was only the moon that was just barely visible, and if that was all he needed to observe, then he could have done that without needing to climb this mountain.

Actually, the biggest point of uncertainty would be, what in the world was the "Pretty Boy Detectives Club" that he mentioned so casually... So was something like that popular among middle schoolers these days?

Maybe I'd already lost that kind of childlike mindset.

A high school third-year, eighteen years old.

Even though I was still totally a kid, I also got the feeling that I'd matured a lot since my own middle school days—and meanwhile, Mayumi-kun's skin still looked pretty smooth.

"Rub rub."

"Kya, kyaah! What are you doing!?"

"Hm? Mayumi-kun, your cheeks just looked so soft that I wanted to try patting them... Did you have a problem with that?"

"No, no, of course not! After all, we're both guys!"

"Yeah, of course. C'mon, let's rub our cheeks together!"

"Ha, ha ha, ha ha."

In order to soothe the heart of the pretty boy that had emanated darkness on that scale, I'd manifested a Kanbaru-like sociability that was very out-of-character for me, so I was glad that Mayumi-kun showed me a smile as a result.

What, so my social disposition wasn't that bad, after all! So this was what it was like.

I've won, haven't I.

At life.

Well, putting aside the matter of the Pretty Boys Detectives Club as being some sort of school club, I next asked about how Mayumi-kun was able to go stargazing with these clouds.

Did he have some sort of special tool he used, like a telescope that could observe stars even through clouds? It didn't seem like he would normally tell someone so easily, but perhaps thanks to my conversational skills, Mayumi-kun responded.

"I don't need any tools," he said. "If anything, I need a special tool in order to not observe them... Ah, shoot. I said it out loud."

"C'mon, don't be so standoffish! There are no secrets between us, all right? We're brothers who just happened to not be related, aren't we? If you don't keep talking, I'm gonna tickle you! Coochy-coochy-coo!"

"I'll talk I'll talk I'll talk! Ahahaha, stop it stop it stop it! I said I'll talk!"

Ah, it sure is fun for dudes to mess around with each other. This sort of relationship was hard to forge with someone of the opposite sex, I felt deeply in my heart, but then...

"Beautiful Sight Mayumi."

Those mysterious words that he uttered piqued my interest.

"That's what they call me—basically, my eyesight is extremely good."

"Extremely?"

"Yes. No matter how thick the clouds are, in the end they're just bundles of water, so I can see through them—so that's how I could observe the star that I needed to."

"Wow..."

It was pretty hard to believe just like that, but it wasn't something that was impossible—so that was his strong point as a member of his "Detectives Club".

"So that's it. Then, can I lick your eyeballs a little?"

"Of course you can't!? Even if we're both guys, that's way too weird, right!?"

It seemed that I wouldn't be allowed.

However, if he possessed such outstanding eyesight, then it felt like it would be quite a hindrance in your everyday life. Was he really all right?

"Yes. That's why I normally wear glasses, to keep my eyesight in check."

In other words—a special tool.

Well, glasses were tools used to correct one's vision, so even if you used them to keep your vision in check, you could still say that that was still a proper use for them.

"But I lost those glasses somewhere around this shrine... That's why I've been so troubled."

He lost them.

So basically, when he took them off in order to observe the stars, they went missing?

"Mm, I don't wear glasses so I can't say for sure, but in these cases, isn't it usually something like you unconsciously having put them in your pocket or something?"

"Yes... I thought of that and checked myself, but they weren't in my jacket pocket or my slacks pockets..."

"You might not know just from looking by yourself. Here, stay still. I'll look for you!"

"Hyaah! Don't grope around in my pockets! I'm telling you, they're definitely not there! Definitely! Absolutely! I swear on my life!"

I looked with this eyesight of mine, so there's no doubt!

Said Mayumi-kun, stubbornly resisting.

He'd put up quite the struggle, as if his own chastity had been in danger.

He was quite bashful for a boy.

Although, thinking about it, everyone was like that during puberty—in that case, perhaps I didn't really need to worry about Mayumi-kun's future at this stage.

Then, instead of the future, the present was more worrying.

"Well, you can't help it if you lost them, so maybe you should give up and go back home? If you don't go back down the mountain soon, the trains will stop... And it looks like it's going to rain. I can stay behind and look for them for you. If you can just let me know your address, I'll mail them to you later."

"My, my address..." Though he should already have opened up to me by now, he said, "Yes, um, well. In the worst case, I have a spare set, so that won't be necessary," still openly wary about me for some reason. "However—I can't go back down. After meeting you, Araragi-san, it made me want to go back down even more, but even so, I just can't."

From the way he said it, it sounded like him meeting me turned into a form of encouragement for him, but what did he mean by he couldn't? Worried that my snuggling up to him wasn't enough, I decided to show off my powerful side to this young friend of mine and slipped my arm underneath Mayumi-kun's thighs with my other arm still on his shoulders, lifting him up and setting him down on my lap.

He was so light!

Were middle schoolers always this light?

"It's fine! Araragi-san, you're snuggling up to me plenty as it is!"

"Really? Well, all right... Then, why can't you go down?"

"For, for now, would you please let me get back down from your lap..."

"Now, now, no need to hold back, kid. Besides, you've already sat down! Feel free to stay just like that. Here! Now you have a seatbelt!"

"H-hiiii!"

"Whoa, your waist sure is thin. It's not like I was expecting you to be muscular, but I can't feel any stomach muscles at all! It's like I'll be able to feel your ribs. Shouldn't you really be eating more?"

"Hiii, hiii!"

Mayumi-kun had been hesitant to speak, but perhaps due to my great capacity for tolerance (houyouryoku) or even my great capacity for embracing (houyou ryoku), it was as if he decided that he needed to consult with me as soon as possible.

"It's because I can see it," he quickly said.

See it? See what?

"Swimming above the town—there's a giant piranha."

004

A piranha.

A freshwater fish of the order Characiformes, of the family Serrasalmidae.

A carnivorous fish so famous that I probably didn't even need to describe it—but if he was able to see an animal like that, then of course, it made quite a lot of sense to not be able to descend the mountain.

No, it wasn't an animal.

Piranhas didn't soar through the sky, and even the largest ones were still smaller than 50 cm—the word giant shouldn't be a descriptor at all.

In that case, it was not an animal, but a monster.

No—perhaps, even an oddity.

"I can see a piranha about the size of a whale, floating in the air... Can't you see it, too, Araragi-san?"

When he asked, I could only respond that I couldn't—in the first place, I had climbed up this mountain from that very town itself. If there had been a piranha or something flying overhead, then all hell would have broken loose in town right about now. It was a safe bet that this piranha wasn't just something that anyone and everyone could see.

That is, except for Mayumi-kun.

Except for the member of the Pretty Boy Detectives Club, Beautiful Sight Mayumi.

"I see... You must have been pretty scared."

"Eh... So you believe me?"

"Naturally!"

It was so natural that there was no way I could say that it was just a trick of the light or that it was just his imagination—being able to see something that you shouldn't be able to see, or meeting something that shouldn't exist.

Stuff like that was just an everyday occurrence for me, and I was even aware of how sad one would feel if nobody believed you about it. So what I could do now was to take Mayumi-kun, trembling in my lap, and embrace him even more strongly—it kind of felt like his trembling actually increased dramatically, but of course, that had to just be my imagination.

However, a piranha...? Actual piranhas themselves were already pretty scary, but if they became oddities, then honestly, I had no choice but to say that this was something far beyond my capacity.

A piranha monster?

In the worst case, they were even scarier than vampires.

Actually, a point of curiosity could be that, even though I had been a vampire in the past, my eyesight was still not enough to see that piranha—it was a piranha that only Mayumi-kun to see.

In that case, did that mean that there was a fierce carnivorous fish that resided in the innermost depths of his heart?

"Mayumi-kun. Do you think you can open your mouth for a bit? I want to check to see if your teeth have turned all jagged and sharp like a piranha's."

"Is, is there really a need to check something like that?"

"It's fine, just do it."

"Please don't try to just force things along. It's not fine, which is why I'm resisting! The shape of my teeth is something I can just check with my own tongue."

"I'm telling you, I think it'll be a good idea to check that tongue of yours, too, just to make sure. Just leave it to me!"

If the other person were a girl right now, then even if it were for the sake of humanitarian aid, I would feel extremely ashamed and hesitant when it came to peeking inside a girl's mouth, but considering Mayumi-kun was a boy, I had no problems with performing an oral check.

Hmph, Hachikuji had been thoughtlessly saying stuff like that, but wasn't I actually more suited to helping boys out instead? Perhaps I could actually unleash my full efforts like this. Though I was reluctant to say this, perhaps I hadn't been completely thorough when it came to the girls I'd faced up until now—and as I thought that, I turned Mayumi-kun around on top of my lap, placed my hand on his chin, and began to examine inside his mouth.

"Hmm. Let's see..."

I'd told him to leave it to me, but honestly, I hadn't exactly had many opportunities to check the teeth of another person, so it was hard to declare anything for certain. But, well, his teeth looked to be in perfect shape, and were very pretty. In that sense, you could say it was a set of teeth worthy of the Pretty Boy Detectives Club.

But, for a middle school boy, his lips sure looked pretty soft... If anything, my eyes kept being attracted in that direction.

"Ah, no, my lips only look like that because they were done up... The other members put makeup on me... S-so, they won't taste good if you eat them, okay?"

"Hey, hey, I'm not going to eat your lips. I'm not a piranha. Hahaha, although it might be different if it were a girl's lips."

It was a questionable joke made between fellow guys that you would never tell to a member of the opposite sex, and I thought it would lighten the mood, but Mayumi-kun's response was a "Ha, ha ha ha," with a laughter that was as dry as a desert.

I felt so sorry for him.

He must have been really frightened by the piranha in the sky.

However, if I'd been the one to see something that unbelievable, even though I may not get depressed enough to emanate that much darkness, I might still be completely taken aback and choose to hide away in this dilapidated shrine for the rest of my life—but Mayumi-kun was different.

"It's all right now," he said.

As if attacking a weak point that opened up for just an instant, he jumped off of my lap—it seemed his eyesight really was good, as he didn't miss the chance when my embrace loosened just a bit to perform that oral check.

"I've been depressed for long enough. I've decided to go down the mountain now."

"Eh? Is it really all right?"

"Yes, especially because it feels like it's even more dangerous to stay here... I mean, after hearing what you had to say, Araragi-san, I feel more at ease about this."

Actually, a method existed from the beginning.

That was what Mayumi-kun said.

"Yes. It's pretty simple, actually. Basically, if I can't see the piranha, then I won't be afraid—so all I need to do is close my eyes when I go back down?"

"Close your eyes..."

No, no.

He was saying it as if it was a brilliant plan, but that was far from simple; it was a plan made out of sheer desperation. If that was something you could actually do, then you could've done that from the beginning, without getting all depressed—but I didn't even have the chance to stop him like that.

Because Mayumi-kun tripped on his first step.

It was way too obvious that that would happen.

It was the first time I'd seen something so obvious.

Perhaps he'd do better walking across a meadow, but walking down this rocky, desolate mountain path with his eyes closed was way too unreasonable—not to mention, after you tripped, you'd end up falling onto the rocky ground, too.

"Mayumi-kun, are you okay!?"

I rushed over to Mayumi-kun, who'd fallen forward, and picked him up. And then, I felt his body all over to check for broken bones or sprains.

"H-hiii, um, wait, you're feeling me up a little too much..."

Being felt up, Mayumi-kun resisted violently.

That's good, it didn't seem like he was badly hurt.

What a relief.

Well, it seemed he himself had known that it would be dangerous, as he'd taken that first step very carefully. And he must have properly protected himself as he fell, as his smooth cheeks and soft lips were unharmed—although, he wasn't totally uninjured, there was a minor scrape on his knee.

Blood was spreading onto his slacks.

Hmm, it would probably okay to just leave a scratch like this, but, well, the place we were in wasn't exactly a safety zone. It was an air spot for oddities—it would be a problem if a middle school boy that came from afar got something akin to an oddity-like tetanus, so with a single motion, I rolled up the pant leg of Mayumi-kun's trousers.

"You're almost as skillful as a doctor, aren't you..."

"Well, I have some experience, after all."

"With medical treatment?"

"No, with flipping up skirts. Although it might be the first time I've rolled up someone's slacks..."

"Ha, ha ha, is that so. Um, you're rubbing my legs way too much... ...I definitely can't let this guy meet Bare Legs-kun."

So apparently he had a friend named Bare Legs-kun.

Although, he must be a problematic friend if I wasn't supposed to meet him.

As I thought that, I took a good look at the affected area, that is, Mayumi-kun's scraped knee—and when I got a good look, it turned out there was more blood than I thought.

Even Mayumi-kun was going "Uwaah..." in surprise.

Injuries like these were just a matter of course for middle-school-aged boys, but still, it was obvious that people would hate being wounded no matter what their gender was.

To encourage him, I said with an intentionally light tone of voice, "It's fine, it's fine. Something like this will get better if you just put some spit on it," and then I licked his bare knee.

I licked it directly. Slurp.

If the other person were a girl, then I would definitely have to be more tactful and go through the trouble of licking my finger and then using it to rub my saliva onto the affected area, but since it was a guy, it was a lot easier to not have to hold back like this.

He must have been extremely shocked from scraping his knee, as Mayumi-kun's face turned as white as a sheet. Feeling sorry for him, I pulled his slacks back down.

"I think it's going to be pretty hard to go down the mountain with your eyes closed," I said, reprimanding him.

It was quite literally, not watching where you're going. And, seeing as he wasn't a martial arts expert, there was no way he could pull off something like that.

"No... I'm sure I'll be able to do it this time. If I just be careful... It's just a single path down, anyway, and, I know! If I just use a walking stick..."

"......"

He wasn't going to give up.

From the slenderness of his appearance to the depressed state he'd shown just a bit earlier, it seemed that I'd misunderstood him, but Mayumi-kun was a middle schooler with a lot more guts than I'd initially assumed.

I felt almost sorry that I'd lumped him in together with me.

It seemed his guiding principles would not waver.

In that case—I decided upon my own guiding principles at the same time.

"Then, let's go with that. I won't stop you anymore. But, I have one condition."

"Eh? Araragi-san, from what position are you coming from to put a condition on me, when we're meeting for the first time and are completely unrelated..."

"Don't say something so lonely like we're completely unrelated, Mayumi-kun."

When I said this, it was not an act, but bright words out of the kindness of my heart.

"I'll go down the mountain with you. Allow me to be your escort—and if you would rather have a walking stick, then feel free to use me as your walking stick."

005

Though the preliminary inspection for a birthday party had been hit with some unexpected developments, well, there was still some time before Senjougahara's birthday—the weather seemed like it was getting worse, and I could come back to this shrine whenever I wanted, so it felt like more of a priority to make sure Mayumi-kun reached the station safely.

The idea of closing his eyes to block his unnaturally good eyesight and erase the existence of the piranha was not too bad, so if I simply became Mayumi-kun's eyes and walking stick, then going down the mountain safely shouldn't be too difficult.

Although, if you asked me, as someone who'd fought against invisible oddities before, then honestly, there were still some points of concern regarding this plan... However, right now, getting down the mountain before the weather became even worse was of the highest priority.

"Hey, it's actually more dangerous if you don't stick close to me. Just think of it like a three-legged race. I can see why you might be feeling reserved, but there's no need for that awkwardness."

"It's true that it feels awkward, but by no means am I just being reserved..."

"If you want, I don't mind giving you a piggyback ride, all right?"

"No, if you do that, then I'll be found out... Er, I mean, I couldn't allow you to spoil me like that. It's already bad enough that you're acting as a walking stick for me. I mean, it's already enough."

"Is that so? Well, that's fine, then..."

I didn't really mind spoiling him, though.

Perhaps, like Oshino, he held the same belief that "people could only save themselves"—or maybe he was simply just being shy.

In that case, we had no choice to keep proceeding down the mountain unsteadily like this, with our arms and shoulders pressed up against one another. Even though I was acting like I was in fear of a major disaster, considering the way he fell so dramatically back there, doing this wasn't even really an exaggeration.

Incidentally, if he were simply closing his eyes, then there was a risk that he might open them reflexively if he stumbled a bit, so Mayumi-kun was also blindfolded.

He'd untied the necktie around his neck and used it as an eye mask, but when combined with his pretty boy nature, it made him look weirdly sensual... But, right now, it wasn't the time to be concerned about his looks.

I figured it would be better to avoid talking about the piranha until we got off the mountain, but seeing as his eyes were blocked off, it would be really depressing if we didn't talk at all, so along the way, I tried to deliberately engage Mayumi-kun in some conversation. But as a result, I realized that my first impression of the darkness he emanated had not been wrong at all.

For example, he would say things like,

"I don't like being misunderstood, but being understood in itself is also something that I don't really like,"

and like,

"I respect figure skaters. Because, even when they fall partway through, they absolutely get back up and finish skating to the end, right? If it were me, I would 100% get sick of it and quit when I fell down. Like a yokozuna that refuses to appear after a series of defeats,"

and like,

"They call him the 'faithful dog Hachiko', but considering that dog was given such an unaffectionate name like 'Hachiko', it's hard to think that he was faithful to humans at all,"

and like,

"When you talk about intelligence, then ultimately, it just refers to the amount of endurance you have to study continuously for long periods of time. In the end, you just can't win against the physical types,"

and so on, and basically everything he said was negative, to the point that it seemed like he would swallow up his surroundings with his darkness.

But, well, even so, since it was a middle schooler saying those things, it still seemed pretty cute, so I earnestly tried to respond to each and every one of his sayings with things like, "You might just be misunderstanding that you're being misunderstood," and like, "Figure skaters still have upcoming competitions, after all. If they gave up halfway, then they'd lose their next chance, too. And it's not like yokozuna stop appearing in matches because they got sick of it," and like, "I don't know about the 'ko' part, but 'Hachi' part of the name actually has a surprising amount of affection to it," and so on.

However, regarding his point about intelligence being the endurance you needed to pull all-nighters studying, then considering the fact that I'd used my endurance as a former vampire to study for my entrance exams, it was hard to refute—even the members of Team Good Girls, Senjougahara and Hanekawa, had some pretty good endurance, too.

But for someone as negative as Mayumi-kun, who got all depressed and frightened, to keep up the attitude of trying to go down the mountain without giving up—I felt that it was pretty hard to explain that away as him just having guts.

What made him go so far?

"I don't have any guts at all. If I were alone, I would've given up long ago."

"Is that so? So because I'm here for you, you can keep going? I wasn't doing this just because I wanted to hear that from you, but it isn't bad at all to hear something like that."

"Ah, no, I wasn't talking about you..." said Mayumi-kun.

In the complete opposite way of the aforementioned concept of "people can only save themselves"—though Mayumi-kun was pessimistic even regarding his eyesight that should've been a strong point for him, he sounded just a bit triumphant for this subject alone.

"No matter where I am, I'm still a member, after all. And I know very well that those guys would never give up, even in a situation like this."

006

We passed through the torii of Kitashirahebi Shrine and reached the foot of the mountain, but of course it wouldn't be a good idea to ride with both of us when one of us was still blindfolded, so I figured it wasn't a mistake to leave my bicycle there and head for the nearest station on foot. But as we grew closer to the town, the misgivings that I'd been secretly harboring became reality.

Of course, that didn't mean that there hadn't been any trouble up until that point—even if I was acting in the role of his walking stick, it was still pretty difficult to walk on uneven footing without your sense of vision, so Mayumi-kun, as well as I, who he clung to, were covered with leaves and twigs.

Though we didn't get hurt from falling or the like, our clothes did get torn here and there.

I was just in normal clothes, so it was fine for me, but Mayumi-kun was in a school uniform, so the damage could be pretty harsh.

"It's fine. If it gets to it, then I have a different uniform I can wear... Mumble mumble."

He'd said something like that, so it seemed it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Although, it was interesting that, unlike with his glasses, he'd described it as a different uniform and not a spare.

Did he have two different types of uniforms?

"Well, it didn't take as long as I'd expected, so while we're at it, drop by my house and take a bath, Mayumi-kun. If you want, I'll even go in with you!"

"Uh, uh-huh. Well, I would go if I could."

It was clearly a firm rejection.

Really, this kid was so modest.

I thought it was rather heartwarming, but at that timing, I'd let my guard down a little—as suddenly, Mayumi-kun screamed.

"Hyaah!"

And with that loud scream, he fell onto his behind—and it wasn't because he'd tripped on something.

If he'd tripped, then, like before on the shrine grounds, he would've fallen forward instead.

But unlike before, he'd fallen backwards.[?]

"The—the fish. The piranha."

Sitting on the asphalt, Mayumi-kun pointed.

With a trembling finger, he pointed towards the sky above the town.

There, I could not see anything.

I.

Couldn't see anything.

But it seemed—there was something there for Mayumi-kun.

After coming down the mountain and approaching the town, it must look even bigger to him—that carnivorous fish.

"......"

Yes.

I thought—something like this might happen.

However, I should've taken it into much stronger consideration.

If Mayumi-kun's eyesight could pierce through dark clouds to observe the stars, then I should have guessed at the possibility that he would be able to see through even his own eyelids, or the necktie he was using as a blindfold.

That's why his glasses were an essential item.

Of course, if he could always see through those things, then it would be impossible to even go to sleep at night, so I could guess that he had some way of controlling it arbitrarily, but even so, after approaching the town, and thus the piranha, then if he grew aware of it...

He would be able to see it.

Even if it were invisible, he'd be able to see through to it.

And perhaps, it was because it was arbitrary—the feeling of "the more you didn't want to see something, the more you would end up seeing it" was not something that was limited to people with special eyesight.

I could only feel a sense of ashamed helplessness.

Though we'd somehow managed to get off the mountain, there was no point in the end if we couldn't make it into town.

"What a mistake I've made... For someone like me, who's called the 'Zero Tolerance Butter Knife', this is a huge disgrace."[?]

"Um, do you really have a nickname like that, that sounds like it came out of the newest line-up of light novels?"

Shit.

In the first place, why was it a piranha, anyway?

Oddities had their own reasons for existing—that was what the specialist, Oshino Meme, had said in the past, but in this case, what was the reason that Mayumi-kun held in this case?

"Well, at any rate, you should probably take off that blindfold now, Mayumi-kun. It's backfiring now, and it'll actually be even more dangerous. Can you stand?"

"Y-yes. Can you give me a hand?"

"Of course. You fell pretty badly, but is your butt okay? Let me brush the sand off of you."

"There's no need to trouble your hands for something like that!"

After standing up, Mayumi-kun removed the necktie from his head, and tied it back around his neck—as someone who'd never worn a necktie before, the process seemed pretty tough. It made me feel a bit immoral, like I was strangling the neck of a pretty boy.

"In general, neckties seem a little straining. Wouldn't it feel better to keep your chest more loose?"

"Not at all!"

"But anyway, what should we do about this... If it comes down to it, there's still the option of just forcing our way through."

"B-but, Araragi-san. What if it attacks us when we enter its territory?"

"Hmm..."

It was hard to explain it in a way that would convince him, but personally, I wasn't too worried about something like that happening. If an oddity that was that hazardous lived in the skies above this town, then Oshino would have put some measures in place to deal with it when he came to this town—that collector definitely would not have ignored such a perfect ghost story.

Even if not for that, no matter how gigantic this piranha was, perhaps the level of vampire I had become wouldn't be a match for it—but I highly doubted that it would be able to win against that Oddity Killer known as the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire.

However, it wasn't something I could declare.

I couldn't get rid of the possibility that it was an oddity that would be harmful towards Mayumi-kun alone—just by taking a single step into town, he might end up getting dragged into that world.

And if that happened, I wouldn't be able to protect him.

In the end, since I was nothing but a former vampire, before the question of whether or not I could win against the piranha, I couldn't even see it at all.

"Just checking, Mayumi-kun. When you arrived at this town, you weren't able to see the piranha yet, right? It was when you were about to go down the mountain that you suddenly saw it—is that right?"

"Yes. To be even more precise, it was before I went down the mountain, on top of the shrine, when I got a sweeping view of the town. It suddenly went bam—like a dolphin jumping out of the water."

Although, rather than a dolphin, it was more like a whale.

It was like he'd experienced some crazy whale watching.

However, Mayumi-kun was pretty wild to climb on top of that collapsed shrine just to go stargazing. I didn't know if he just did whatever he wanted because nobody was looking, but maybe he'd received divine punishment from that?

Although, it should be a snake, not a piranha, that was enshrined there, not to mention the fact that that god wasn't even there anymore.

"Would it be impossible to just head in a direction that goes away from the town?"

"It's not impossible, but you'd end up having to go through some mountains, so rather than just making it for the last train, I don't think you'll even make it before daybreak tomorrow... Instead of taking that big of a detour, let's just try to take the long way around to the station, trying to avoid the piranha as much as possible. If we aim for Minaminao Station instead of Nakanao Station..."

If we did that, it might even be better to go back and get my bicycle, even if it took twice the amount of time—as I thought that, my eyes landed on a town map that had been installed to the side of the sidewalk.

Even though I was a local, I was by no means familiar with the lay of the land in these parts—in the first place, I had no reason to come in this direction, except for when I was going to the Kitashirahebi Shrine.

I wouldn't say that I was completely unfamiliar with it, but I was afraid that the piranha might attack us if we didn't choose our route based on the most accurate information, so no amount of caution was too much.

It felt kind of like the game that grade schoolers played, where they pretended that the asphalt was the ocean, and you could only walk on top of the white lines... Although, since a carnivorous fish was flying in the sky, it was like the exact opposite of that game.

Fortunately, the town map was pretty detailed.

However, there was no indication of where we currently were.

Was this a convenient map or an inconvenient one? It was pretty tough to understand... Um, since my house is here...

"Hyaah!"

There, once again, Mayumi-kun screamed.

As if the idea of me brushing the sand off of him pained him that much, he barely managed to not fall on his behind this time, but, just like before, his face was in complete shock.

I'd gotten on guard, thinking that the piranha was finally coming to attack us, but that wasn't it—though Mayumi-kun had pointed at the sky earlier, right now, he was pointing at not even the ground, but the same map that I was looking at.

No.

More precisely—it was in front of it.

"In, in front of that map—there's a piranha. A smaller piranha."

"......?"

Hearing that, I turned back to face the map.

Of course, I couldn't see it.

The map was simply a map—however, Mayumi-kun was saying that he could see another piranha here, on top of the one in the sky. By a smaller piranha, that probably was referring to a piranha of a normal size—although it would still be enough of a threat.

Reflexively, I jumped away from the front of the map.

However, nothing changed after I jumped away—although Mayumi-kun probably wasn't just pretending to be scared as a practical joke to surprise me.

He could definitely see it—and only he could.

...At this rate, I felt like I was cornered.

It was one thing to be able to see a piranha in the sky far overhead, but if there was a piranha floating that close to us, floating perhaps even at eye level, then there was no way we could even walk through the town.

It was like trying to swim through a fish tank.

We would certainly drown.

"Goodness gracious... I never thought that the future when I'd need to perform artificial respiration onto Mayumi-kun would approach so rapidly."

"Um, I'd like to avoid a future like that at all costs..."

Even performing such witty banter at this stage wasn't helpful at all. Mayumi-kun must've started to feel cornered as well, as he was biting down on his soft lip with his beautiful teeth.

In his case, he was showing an expression seemed less cornered and more like he was caught in a pincer attack, between the devil and the deep blue sea—but whether he was cornered or whether he was in a pincer attack, it didn't change the fact that we were completely at a loss for what to do.

Not to mention, the clincher—from overhead.

As if rubbing salt into a wound, or maybe even a piranha into a wound, drops of water began to fall from straight overhead right onto our faces.

Drops of water.

The bad weather had finally reached this stage—at last, it had begun to rain.

Furthermore, it wasn't at the level of just gently drizzling—it was raining with huge drops of water.

Just going off of experience, it was pretty clear that the rain would turn into a heavy downpour pretty soon.

It was pretty clear, even in the darkness of the night.

I'd been thinking that it would be pretty awful if it began to rain while we were still on the mountain, but at this rate, considering that we could still have taken shelter from the rain under the half-collapsed shrine, you could say that coming down the mountain had backfired on us.

To stand here out in the open, without even being able to enter the town, while getting more and more soaked—it was the definition of disastrous.

We were like drowned rats.

That made us sound like animals that would be easy for a piranha to eat—at this rate, it wasn't the time to grumble over trivial matters.

Thinking that there was no choice but to take drastic measures, I looked at my shadow.

The weather made it an environment extremely difficult for shadows to appear, but even so, there was still a faint light coming from the direction of the town, which managed to produce a faint shadow from me.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

An oddity for an oddity—no.

An Oddity Killer for an oddity.

An Oddity Killer (kaii goroshi) that had been kept alive (kaigoroshi)—

"Ah."

Amidst the rain that had gotten to full force in the blink of an eye, Mayumi-kun spoke tersely.

"It disappeared—the piranha."

"Eh...?"

"From the sky—and from the map."

It disappeared.

All of a sudden, he said that.

It was so sudden, so unexpected, that I almost didn't understand what he'd said, but it seemed Mayumi-kun himself was in a whirlwind of confusion, having been left utterly dumbfounded.

Well, of course.

For piranhas of various sizes floating in the air to disappear when it started raining—if they disappeared as soon as they were in water and not air, then wasn't that backwards?

Was it because rainwater wasn't seawater?

No, no, piranhas were freshwater fish.

In the first place, the type of water shouldn't matter if it was an oddity... Considering Mayumi-kun's eyesight which could go through even clouds and neckties, it didn't seem like curtains of rain would be enough to block his view of the piranhas, either.

No, but wait.

Water?

In the first place, eyesight is something that gets adjusted when the information is transmitted to your brain... In the end, eyesight could just be a function of the brain...

And, along those lines, light would also bend.

It would get warped.

And while we weren't talking about Mayumi-kun's warped personality, images weren't necessarily transmitted in a straight line. If they passed through water, then they would get strangely distorted—even the clouds that Mayumi-kun had described as "bundles of water" were similar, although he'd still managed to accomplish his stargazing through them.

They'd passed through and penetrated through.

They passed through too well (toorisugiru)—they were too transparent (toorisugiru).

And.

The floating piranha.

The sweeping view of the town—and the town map.

"...Mayumi-kun!"

In order to confirm the idea that had hit me like a bolt of lightning, I turned to face Mayumi-kun amidst this heavy rain—however, from his appearance, I was hit with an impact like a burst of wind that was enough to blow away my idea entirely.

No.

It wasn't—his appearance.

Having gotten drenched in the blink of an eye from the falling rain, Mayumi-kun's uniform had begun to stick to the body, and the collared shirt under the body had turned see-through even without any power to see through things, displaying the curves of Mayumi-kun's body.

The bulge in the chest area and the narrowness of the waist were thoroughly exposed—and the makeup that had been described as "done up" had been washed away by the rain...

"Ma, Mayumi-kun... Don't tell me, you're actually a girl!?"

"Um, no, you had to have already figured it out at some point."

007

The epilogue; or rather, the punch line.

Though I'd been completely deceived by the name of the "Pretty Boy Detectives Club", the earth-shattering gender-reversal-type narrative trick had finally been revealed, so let us resolve the remaining mystery—namely, the mystery regarding the piranhas that Mayumi-kun, who was actually Mayumi-chan, had witnessed. Of course, it wasn't like I had any specialized knowledge pertaining to "that", so allow me to tell you in advance that the following explanation has been woven together with information that was taught to me the following day by the brains of our group, Hanekawa Tsubasa.

Stereopsis.

To be more precise, it had to do with random dot stereograms—referring to pictures that were constructed as clusters of dots that looked like random noise at first glance, but when you focused on a specific point or intentionally changed up your sense of distance, some sort of design would appear.

Compared to 3-D and even 4-D effects appearing in the movie world, something like this seemed rather analog, but considering that you would be able to see these three-dimensional objects without the use of special glasses, these stereograms were still pretty revolutionary.

Of course, because of how they were constructed, it was difficult to make complicated designs into three-dimensional shapes—only simple constructions like letters or cubes, cups or dice, balls or pencils... As well as simplified animals or plants.

And fish.

In a way, it was a kind of "visualization" similar to how you could connect the stars in the sky to imagine constellations—when Mayumi-chan had gotten a sweeping view of the town on top of the shrine, she'd seen that "visualization".

And she'd seen that same fish when she looked at the town map.

Thinking it through, it was perhaps just a simple matter of coincidence, and although it may not be something that anyone would be able to see, it was possible that someone would have been able to see those piranhas even if they didn't have the special eyesight that Mayumi-chan had—being just one of the functions of humans' eyes.

The function of grasping a sense of distance.

If the bird's-eye view of the town had ended up forming some kind of random dot stereogram.

The roads were generally set up to be straight, and most buildings, when seen from above, took on rectangular shapes—looking at it all from a distance, it could easily appear as a dot pattern of random noise.

In the first place, it was unlikely that a person would look down at a town from above, and even if they were looking at a town map, they probably wouldn't process the information on that map as a single picture. If anything, they'd probably see it from an oblique angle, looking at it part by part.

However, in Mayumi-chan's case, it wasn't just that her eyes were simply good, but also that she had a brain that was capable of processing that information—capable of, say, unconsciously calculating the refractive index of starlight through clouds and then automatically adjusting for it. Therefore, even if it was the sweeping view of a town seen from an oblique angle, she could reconstruct the information transmitted from her optic nerves and reinterpret it in many different ways.

The ability of spatial awareness, or perhaps the eyesight of spatial awareness—as a result, she was able to get an image of the town as if she'd looked down at it from a bird's-eye view.

And had generated a fish above the town via stereopsis.

She'd instantiated it.

When you managed to see the image for just a moment, it ended up being hard to shake it off—it left a strong afterimage in your retinas, so it was like it would never go away.

Since the town map was just a close-up view and not a strict recreation of the town, it seemed hard to say that it formed the same random dot stereogram on its own, but it had simply been enough to remind Mayumi-chan of the bird's-eye view that was already in her brain.

Well, it wasn't really my place to say this, but she seemed like a kid who strongly stuck to her impressions, so after she saw something once, she probably had the tendency of continuing to see it—the reason she called the fish she'd seen neither a whale nor a dolphin nor a sunfish but specifically a piranha could have been because of her preconception of piranhas having jagged teeth.

After all, the construction of the town had most likely only become like a stereogram by chance, and it was unlikely that a person with the expertise needed for something like this did it during the city planning phase just for fun, so the actual design that would appear was probably very distorted—and due to that distortion, it was possible that people would see not the image of a piranha, and instead something like a deep-sea fish. Just like a Rorschach test, there were probably people that saw something completely different.

If it were me.

I would probably see an oni.

Knowing this much, it was pretty obvious why she was stopped seeing it when rain began to fall—obvious (meihaku), or perhaps a blank space (kuuhaku).

It was because there was a blank space in the sky that there was room for the piranha to float around.

But if the falling raindrops continuously filled up that blank space, then she'd end up focusing on that, and there would literally be no more room for the piranha to appear—the visibility of her imagination had been painted over by the visibility of reality.

The amount of information exceeded her limits.

You could perhaps say that, even if her eyesight had no limits, the amount of information her brain could process did have limits—in that case, it was really dependent on how Mayumi-chan's brain decided to interpret what she saw, but at any rate, as a result, it meant that the piranha that Beautiful Sight Mayumi saw above the town and in front of the map was not an oddity at all.

As long as this town didn't used to be a river or a lake or a swamp in the past, it had no connections to fish in the slightest, and there was no way that that held any connections to the Kitashirahebi Shrine, either. That would just be too good to be true.

It was not an oddity, but having said that, it wasn't just a trick of the light or one's imagination, either.

Not a trick of the light, but an optical illusion.

Not one's imagination (ki no sei), but one's functionality (kinousei).

However, if we say that, if we understand all that, then there was no longer any need to fear the piranha—there was no need to close our eyes to it. In fact, it could even serve as a fun attraction to enjoy.

Mayumi-chan and I, unable to see even an inch ahead of us in the rain, ended up walking back into town as if taking an underwater stroll, and I had succeeded in sending, not him, but her to the nearest station.

"Oh, there's no need for you to thank me like that. I only did what anyone would've done."

"Um, I didn't even thank you yet... Although I was hesitating over whether I was even going to. But, yes, you have my thanks. Even if I (ore)... Even if I (watashi) had been on my own, and the piranha disappeared when it began to rain, I think I would have been too scared to go down the mountain."

"Nah, I don't think so. Since you aren't alone at all. But really, I wonder where your glasses went. I'll go back and look for them just in case... But I wonder if there's actually a black hole at that shrine. Will you be fine on your own from here?"

"Yes. There's no trouble at all from here. Sorry for bothering you... Even though you did what anyone would've done, I'm still glad. That you snuggled up close to me, and that you believed what I saw as if it was natural. My leader would probably say something like this. 'It's outrageous to say that you only did what anyone would've done. What you did was absolutely beautiful.'"

"What a cool-sounding leader... Or rather, you could say it's beautiful. Your leader, huh? I'd like to meet that leader someday."

"Ahaha... Of course, I'm sure you'll have the chance to, someday. Because Leader might be as much of a weirdo as you are."

I'd assumed that those words said with that meaningful smile were just said for politeness's sake as she was about to depart, but apparently, it turned out to be Beautiful Sight Mayumi's prediction.

About half a year later, I would end up meeting the extraordinary pretty girl known as the leader of the Pretty Boy Detectives Club with the nickname of "Beautiful Aesthetics Manabu", Soutouin Manabu, and we would end up going on an adventure together.

[a-gay-bloodmage]

—A Living Friend—

Pairing: Platonic Cole & Female Lavellan, Background Solas x Female Lavellan

Pairing: Platonic M&F, Background M/F

Words: 1,729

Warnings: Lots of Death, a Tragically Heterosexual Woman, Implied Borderline Necrophilia, I'm Sorry Okay She's Weird

Ashavise was a very interesting woman. She was very pretty, too, but that wasn't very important most of the time. She was very lonely and very intelligent. Most people didn't know about the lonely part. They just saw her as a bit of a madwoman, obsessed with the dead and horribly rude to humans. She had her reasons for being rude, of course, but most people didn't bother finding them out.

Cole was her only friend in the Inquisition. It was a little sad, really, and he knew how much it hurt her to be so ostracized. She was an outsider even in her own Clan, looked at as an oddity despite being next in line to be a Keeper. She hadn't told him, but he knew. Varric was a little bit of a friend to her, too, but he was a little scared of her and her necromancy, and was put off by the fact that she usually smelled like an open grave. Cole didn't mind, and she liked him because of that.

It was a shame someone so smart was so hardly listened to. Well, they listened to her on Inquisitor business, but not Ashavise business. That was almost like not listening to her at all.

Cole was the only one who took time out of the day to visit her when she wasn't off on whatever quest her Advisors sent her on, in which she usually dragged Solas, Cole, and Varric along—this meant Cole knew Solas thought Ashavise had a very nice rear end, even if he didn't tell her that out loud.

Cole had been quickly granted permission to visit her in her room whenever he wanted. Now was one of the times when he decided to visit the young Dalish woman, slowly making his way up the several flights of stairs and through the winding halls. He approached the door to her chambers, flinching a little when he heard a loud crash and an equally loud string of elven and accented Common curses. He stepped through the oak door, taking quickened steps up the final flight of stairs. Ashavise's hair was pulled back into its usual tight ponytail, and wore a loose top with torn-off sleeves and strange stains. She was behind her desk, all the papers gone as it was turned into a makeshift slab for a decaying corpse she had found quite well-preserved in a ruin they had recently visited.

"Cole!" Cole jumped a little as he was directly addressed. "Can you grab that for me?" She pointed to the floor by his feet, and he saw a small canister laying on the stone. "Damn thing rolled when he jumped," she huffed.

Cole bent down and grabbed the little metal piece, walking over to the messy slab and handing off the item.

"That durgen'len, uh, Dagna's been giving me some advice," she said, taking the canister and popping it open with a small blast of blueish magic. "Wasn't quite interested in touchin' the bodies herself, but she did seem quite excited at the ideas I've proposed." She seemed very proud of the fact that she had gotten a durgen'len on board with her very much so magical and elven ideas.

Cole bent over the table a little to get a better look at Ashavise's current project. The corpse of a male was currently nude, his chest slit open down the center from the bottom of his neck to his pelvis. His organs had been removed, and the elf seemed to be in the process of replacing the ancient insides with interlocking gears and strange pipes. "That... doesn't look very comfortable," Cole said, smiling a little as he looked at the odd corpse.

Ashavise let out a rare laugh, her hands fishing around in the metallic intestines. "Oh, he's quite fine," she laughed, shaking her head. "I was communing with him earlier. I'm pretty sure he's perfectly fine with me tampering with his body. Ain't quite using it anymore." Ashavise was wonderful with the dead. She couldn't talk to spirits too well directly, but she was very good at figuring out their emotions and getting the gists of their thoughts. She wasn't as good at figuring out her own emotions, though, but everyone had their flaws. "Hey," she said, smiling at Cole as she leaned down, her chin quite close to the still-moist flesh of the elven corpse. "Want'ta see something amazing?"

Cole nodded. Ashavise had very unique definitions of amazing, but Cole appreciated whatever she showed him. She set her thumb and index finger gently on the corpse's eyelid, slowly and carefully opening his eye.

"He's so beautifully preserved," she cooed, her other hand caressing the dead man's cheek. "His eyes are just sparkling with dormant life, aren't they?" They were big and as green as the Emerald Graves, pupils slightly widened and flecks of blue almost seeming to move among the greenery of his iris.

"His eyes have seen much," Cole said, squatting down a little to look closer at the corpse. Sure, Cole himself wasn't exactly the most lively person in the Inquisition, but that just made viewing Ashavise's projects all that more interesting. Was this what the old Cole looked like before he became the new Cole? Perhaps.

"And look," she said in an amazed whisper. She let go of his eyelid, and the green eye stayed open for a moment before closing. Then opening again. Then closing once more before resuming his usual corpse-ness. "He blinks." She was grinning. To most people, seeing Ashavise Lavellan grin was a very scary thing, but Cole thought it was nice. She was happy, and so he felt her happiness. "Oh, the things I could learn," she sighed, resting her elbows on the desk and staring wistfully at the now motionless body. "Imagine it, mechanical and magical insides helping this man walk once again to the mortal realm... Sitting up, no longer worrying about his heart decaying in his chest, of worms feasting upon his intestines... Free to speak and share his stories with a new tongue..."

Cole looked up at Ashavise, gazing at her smile. She never smiled at Solas like that. She reserved her real smiles for the dead and for Cole, but that was probably because the dead and Cole had a lot in common.

"With the Inquisition's resources, just imagine how much more research I could get done," she smiled. "Solas' knowledge, dergen- Dagna's tech, your compassion..." She shivered. "Fascinating, isn't it?"

"The cold clutch of the corpses keep me warm, the Clan cannot comprehend, they cannot... cannot understand their meaning to me, the dead do not damn and demand and deceive. They listen," Cole said, words spilling out of his mouth.

Ashavise looked at him, tilted her head a little. "Where did you pull that from?" She asked, her thin ginger brows pushing together a little. She wasn't upset, just curious.

"A mother pulls her daughter away from the graves, shouting, scolding, seething. A young woman does not run off just because she can spark."

Ashavise laughed softly. The memory Cole had gotten snagged on wasn't very sad, really. A mother was angry at her daughter for running off, but the daughter wasn't upset. She had a finger bone in her pocket. "That was on my thirteenth birthday, wasn't it?" She said, memories popping into place on her life's timeline. "Ten years ago to the day."

"Most people have birthdays with friends. Drinks and laughter, love and celebration of continued life. We are forced cherish was was unfairly made important by shemlen hands."

"What friends?" She laughed. The humor wasn't very present anymore. "You and a corpse? That's two outta two, isn't it?"

"Two isn't enough sometimes."

Ashavise sighed a little and pushed a stray hair back behind one of her long, pretty ears. She buried her hands back in the corpse's chest, grabbing little tools along the way to make adjustments to his artificial heart. "Cole, really," she said, almost absentmindedly as her hands sparked, "I appreciate your... friendly concern, but I'm content with what I have. Birthdays don't gotta be some big event. I'm alive another year, hurrah." She rolled her eyes a little, a smile just barely visible. "Should I celebrate every day 'cause I survived those too?"

Cole stopped before replying, considering the question a moment. "Yes."

Ashavise smiled a little wider at his response, but he wasn’t quite sure why. It wasn't a joke.

"You're a real doll, Cole," she said, shaking her head a little. Her hand sparked a little and one of the corpse's fingers twitched. "Here, if you're so insistent, I'll go to the tavern with you in a little bit. I just need to finish installing this copper."

Sure, Cole didn't drink, but he was happy she was finally giving in. It would do her good to leave her chambers every once in a while for something other than Inquisitor business.

He curled up on an armchair that wasn’t covered in papers, quietly watching her work and responding to the occasional questions she asked. Ashavise only really asked him questions. He never thought she was dumb or crazy for asking. Just curious and wanting to better her craft. He couldn't fault her for that. Nobody should, even if they think she's odd.

She took quite a while to finish up, spending far longer than she implied she would installing new wires in the corpse's flesh. They eventually made their way to the Herald's Rest, and Ashavise spent quite a while slowly drinking a bottle of wine. Her eyes never stayed still, always flickering from one shemlen to another. She wasn't very good at relaxing. Cole didn't blame her. She had her reasons.

She didn't tell anyone it was her twenty-third birthday. That was her business, nobody else's. She was a very private person unless it came to magic or elven things. She was always willing to talk about those.

She looked over at him, the bottle on her lips, and Cole could see the little sparkle in her eyes. Her eyes were narrow, irises a pale grey-blue that made a lot of people very nervous. Nobody asked her what she was doing at the tavern with Cole. She liked it that way.

Maybe one day she'd make a living friend.

Maybe.

[batsandbloodmoons]

Pagan Origins: Christmas

WARNING: LONG POST

So I’ve always had a love for knowing why we as people do certain things, it’s kind of a strange marriage between history and psychology. This really blossomed when I became a witch and started working on my craft. As part of developing my Sabbat traditions, and I plan on celebrating the pagan origins of Christmas as well as Yule, I figure I should learn about the history of them.

One of the things that baffled me were the major holidays that are celebrated in the United States. I was raised Roman Catholic, and have long since became disillusioned with the Church and ultimately switched to paganism. But I remember as a child, wondering about why we gave and received presents on Christmas when it was supposed to be Jesus’s birthday, why did we believe in a jolly fat man that delivered the presents, and why did we have a tree in the house? When I posed these questions to my family as a child, I never got a satisfactory answer... until now.

*Note* the following is for how Christmas is celebrated in the United States and are not universal to all cultures. Nor is it a hit at any religion.

❄️☀️🎄🎁🎅🎁🎄☀️❄️

GIFT-GIVING AND MERRYMENT

This custom started as far back as Ancient Rome and thier festival of Saturnalia. Originally, a farmers’ festival that was dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture and the harvest. According to Roman Mythology, Saturn was a titan and the father of Cronus, thus grandfather to Jupiter. Saturn was eventually overthrown by Cronus and moved west into the Italian peninsula. He then taught the people he meant there how to farm the land. In Greek Mythology, Saturn doesn’t have a name.

Saturnalia starts on December 17th and lasts until the 24th. Homes are decorated in wreaths and greenery. Feasts and parties werr thrown. People would overeat, overdrink and burst into songs in the streets (origin of caroling). Originally, the festival was only one day but grow longer and longer over time. By the time Rome converted to Christianity, Saturnalia now incorporated other festivals including Sigillaria, the day of gift giving which was on 12/23, and Died Natalie Solis Invicti, the birthday of the sun god Sol Invictus, which was on 12/25 because that is when it is noticeable that day is getting longer.

Saturnalia was so popular with the people that cancelling it was unthinkable when the Christian Coversion happened. So Saturnalia was transformed into a Christian holy day instead by replacing the sun god with baby Jesus. Despite the fact, that the Bible gave references to the time of Jesus’s birth being around the lambing season, in other words springtime. (bbc.co.uk)

SANTA CLAUS

Santa Claus has a number of origin stories and a number of different forms depending on the country in question. This will focus on the American version of Santa.

He can be traced back to a monk named Nicholas, later St. Nicholas by the Church, who was born around 280 A.D., in modern day Turkey. According to St. Nick’s legend, he was born into a wealthy family but gave away all of his possessions to travel the country and help the sick and the poor. One of his best know of these stories was when he raised enough money to cover the dowries of three sisters so they could marry instead of being sold into slavery or prostitution by thier father who couldn’t afford to care for them.

Over the course of the centuries, he became the protector of children and sailors. He died on December 6th, which became the day of his feast. It is also said to a lucky day for making a big purchase or getting married. By the time of Renaissance, he was the most popular saint in Europe and remained so during the Protestant Reformation, especially in Holland.

St. Nick was introduced into mainstream American culture at the end of the 18th century. In December 1773 and 1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families have gathered to celebrate St.Nick on the anniversary of his death.

The name Santa Claus evolved from his Dutch nickname, Sinster Klaad, which is a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas.

As his popularity grew, St. Nick was described as everything from a rascal with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings to a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a “huge pair of Flemish Trunk hose.”

The Santa that most Americans know today didn’t emerge until 1822, when Clement Clarke Moore, an Episcopal minister, wrote a poem about Santa. He described Santa flying from house to house on Christmas Eve in a sleigh led by eight reindeer, leaving presents for deserving children. He gave Santa the ability to magically squeeze down the chimney and his love of milk and cookies.

In 1881, Santa got his iconic look from political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who used Moore’s poem as inspiration. His cartoon depicted Santa as rotund, cheerful man with a full, white beard, while holding a sack laden with toys. It was Nast who gave him his famous red suit trimmed with white fur, the Northpole workshop, the elves, and his wife, Mrs. Claus.

Other versions of St. Nicholas:

-Christkind or Kris Kringle was believed to deliver presents to well-behaved Swiss and German Children. Meaning “Christ Child”, Christkind is an angel-like often accompanied by St. Nick on Holiday missions.

- In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats.

-English legend says that Fathrt Christmas visits each home on Christmas Eve to fill children’s stocking with treats.

-Pere Noel is responsible for filling the shoes of French children with treats that were left by the fireplace.

-In Russia, it is believed that an elderly woman named Babouschka purposely gave the three wise men the wrong directions to Bethlehem so that they couldn’t find Jesus. Later, she felt remorseful, but could not find the men to unto the damage. To this day on, 1/5, she visits Russian children leaving gifts at their bedsides in hope that one of them is the baby Jesus and she will be forgiven.

-In Italy, a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stocking of lucky children. (History.com)

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSE REINDEER

Rudolph was created over a hundred years after the other eight reindeer, in the 1920’s, by Robert L. May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department store.

In 1939, May wrote a Christmas-themed story to bring holiday traffic into his store, which is the story Americans know today. In 1949, one of May’s friends, Johnny Marks, wrote a short song based on the poem. It was recorded by Gene Autry. The television movie, narrated by Burl Ives, was released in 1964. (History.com)

CHRISTMAS TREES

Plants and trees that remained green year had a special meaning for ancient people. One myth I heard, but couldn’t find a source for, for the reason Evergreens stay green was that. During the first winter, the sun spoke to the trees and told them that he would be resting for a few months and told them not to loose faith in his return. Months later the sun had not returned yet, many trees and plants began to lost faith and dropped thier leaves in thier despair. All except the Evergreens. When the Sun finally returned he saw what had happened, disappointed in those who lost faith, he cursed them to lose thier leaves every year while the Evergreens were allowed to keep their needles.

Another belief is that Evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits and illness when hung in the home.

In the Northern hemisphere, the winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year, which falls on December 21st and 22nd. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and the winter came very year because the sun had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun would began to regain strength. Evergreens remind them of all the plants that would grow again when the sun was strong and summer would return.

Even ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun, in the form of Ra. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from the illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes to symbolized the triumph of life over death.

Early Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. They decorated their homes and temples with Evergreens. In Northern Europe, the Celtic Druids also decorated their temples with Evergreens as a symbol of everlasting life. Vikings would bring whole trees inside to preserve the spirit of nature.

However Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we know it. In the 16th century, Christians would build pyramids out of wood and decorate them with evergreens and candles. It was widely believed that Martin Luther, the 16th century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. The story goes that while walking home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of the stars twinkling amidst the evergreen trees. To recreate this for his family, he hung a tree’s branched with lighted candles.

In 1659 the General Court of Massachusettsenacted a law that made any observance of Christmas illegal because Christmas was too pagan in thier Puritan eyes. People were fined for hanging decorations, singing carols, decorating trees or any other joyful expression. That is until the 19th century when an influx of German and Irish immigrants came to America.

Before the then, Americans found Christmas trees to be an oddity m. The first record of one being on display was in the 1830’s by German immigrants in Pennsylvania, although the trees had already been a long standing tradition in German households. But as late as 1840’s, Christmas trees were still seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

That changed in 1846, when Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert were illustrated in a London newspaper, posing with thier children around a Christmas tree. Due to her popularity, Christmas trees became fashionable through out British and American societies.

By the 1890’s, Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and the tree’s popularity was on the rise in the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about, 4 feet in height, while Americans liked tall trees reaching from the ceiling to the floor.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees with homemade ornaments, while German-Americans continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. The invention of electricity brought about Christmas lights, allowing trees to glow for days in end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition. (History.com)

MISTLETOE

Mistletoe is actually a poisonous plant and its use as a peaceful symbol is rooted in Norse Mythology.

Baldr, the son of Frigg and Odin, was one of the most beloved of the gods. But he was plagued by dreams of his own death. So in an effort to protect her son, Frigg made everything: plant, animal, or rock, living in or growing in the earth, swear never to harm Baldr. As a result, he became invincible and the other gods began to use him for target practice because he always survived. But Loki, being his usual mischievous self, realize that mistletoe had been missed by Frigg, as it didn’t actually grow on the ground. He fashioned a weapon from some mistletoe. Whether that weapon was an arrow, dart, or spear depends on which version is told. But Loki persuades Hod, Baldr’s blind brother, to strike Baldr with the mistletoe weapon during a target practice session. This ensured that Hod took the immediate blame. Baldr died from a single wound and he was mourned deeply by all, especially his mother. Some versions say he was brought back to life, but most agree about what happened after his death, that Frigg‘ tears became mistletoe’s pearlescent berries, and in her grief, Frigg decreaded that mistletoe shall become a symbol of peace and love. Which is why now, people kiss under it today. (Mistletoe.org.uk)

HOLLY

Holly is another evergreen that is believed to ward off evil spirits when planted outside the house. When brought indoors, it increases fertility. Holly is believed to be linked with masculinity and most people use the holly bushes that produce red berries. But it is female holly bushes that produce said berries. Ivy is often the female equivalent to holly’s masculinity.

WREATH

It was difficult to find a definitive source about wreaths but the general consensus is that wreaths were made in a circle out of evergreens (holly, Laurel, or pine) to represent either the sun and life, or the wheel of the year. In fact the word Yule is believed to have stemmed from the Norse word “Jol” meaning wheel.

CANDY CANES

These are entirely Christian and were invented in 1670 when a German choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral bent all white sugar sticks into canes for the children who attended the ceremonies. The shape is believe to represent a shepherd’s cane or the letter “J�� for Jesus. After the advent of mass production, in the 1950’s, the red stripes were added. The red represented the blood of Jesus and the white was his purity. The three finer stripes were said to be the Holy Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Joly Spirit). The hardness is to symbolize the solid foundation of the Church. The peppermint flavor is supposed to stem from an herb called hyssop because, according to the Old Testament, hyssop was used to symbolize the purity of Jesus and his sacrifice. (Candyhistory.net)

ANGELS AND STARS

These refers to the debate of the tree toppers, angels or stars. The angel is represent the angel Gabriel, who came to Mary to ask her to bear God’s son, Jesus. The star refers to the Star of Bethlehem that wise men supposedly followed to find.

However since it was discussed above that Christmas lights are representations of the nighttime stars, then it could be argue that the star on top of the tree and being the largest, could be the sun, as it is the closest thus largest star to Earth.

🎄Please feel free to add to this as I tried to get most famous symbols of Christmas!! 🎄

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Seraph’s earlier walk ended up turning into more of a “day retreat.” Her new wings made it hard for her to stay inside, and once she was out... well. There’s no need to fear heights when you can fly. She spent the day flying around the wintry cliffs. The cold sea wind and gray sky was all she needed. It was nice. Really nice.

Unfortunately, the nice feeling ended the moment she got back home.

Seraph slipped into the shop hesitantly, hoping to get upstairs without evangel noticing. The figure on the stairs, though, said that was impossible. Her wings drooped at the sight of her originator wringing her hands.

“Seraph??? Is that you?” Evangel called, voice pitchy and frazzled. “Where have you been all day? I can’t go out of the house like this, and you know that! What’s going on???”

“N-nothing, Evangel, I just needed to get some air,” seraph said hurriedly. “It took longer than I was expecting. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t leave like that again... I thought you’d left me for real!” Evangel whined.

Seraph just. Put on a smile. Folded her wings tighter to her back. “It won’t happen again. W-while this is going on. Don’t worry,” she trilled softly.

“Well, good... someone needs to open the shop this morning, and it can’t be me...” Evangel’s voice continued as she walked back upstairs, fully expecting Seraph to follow. And... she did. Listening quietly until she was expected to speak. Doing what she could to try and calm Evangel back down. Starting to make breakfast. Coaxing the day’s plans out of Evangel. Just trying her best to help.

... and not to think of the wind catching her wings again.

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Dimentio: Nettles? h-how are you? *seems he's here to try and help however he can!*

Nettles was sitting at the foot of a tree, hands over her ears. Turns out hearing snakes hissing all day is very grating on one’s nerves. Not to mention she wasn’t sure eating would go over well. Would she get poisoned from her own fangs? She had no idea. But she also didn’t want to risk it. So, here she was, hungry and wishing she was deaf. Nice.

She glanced up when she noticed dimentio’s feet. “... what wazzat?” She mumbled, taking a hand off an ear. “Sorry. My snakes are pissing me off.”

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Alex continued to fidget silently when Aiden spoke up, shivering a bit. He was cold. The cold never usually bothered him much, but the not-ice parts of his body were conflicting with the ice parts of his body. Eventually he did speak up, though. "... that sounds nice." He mumbled, glancing over at his cloak. "... I think I have my. Monster Machinations deck. In my cloak. If anyone wants to. Play that." ~ Alex

The three boys looked at each other. After a round of silent questions, they nodded.

“Sounds good to me. I’ll make sure the table’s set up,” Aiden said.

“Been awhile since I’ve played! I gotta find my deck!” Journal replied. “Gimme a minute, I’ll be back-“

“I-I wanna help Aiden...” roo said softly, perking up on the couch.

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

please put yourself first for once. please. you're obviously not in the best mindset, and you can't help evangel when you're not feeling great.

Seraph gave the anon a look- though it teetered between offended and anxious. “... I do put myself first. When things get bad enough, I go on my own to feel better,” she said slowly. “But, if you all insist... I’ll go on a walk.” With that, she headed toward the door. The familiar stopped with a paw on the handle. She cast another glance over her shoulder. “... watch her, please?” she mumbled. “I’ll... I’ll be back later.”

Score one for the anons.

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Alex stared at Journal briefly when he told him to move his hand, though, to be fair, he couldn't exactly blink right now unless he made conscious effort to simulate blinking with his eye-lights. "... o-okay..." He took slowly took his hand out of Journal's, and started fidgeting again, making dull ice-clunking-against-ice sounds as he did so. Someone was not having a good time. ~ Alex

Alex certainly wasn’t alone. Journal mumbled an apology as he held his claws close. Roo was rumbling anxiously on the couch. Aiden’s ears twitched at every little sound, and he was starting to wish he had earplugs.

“... hey.” Aiden finally broke the uncomfortable silence. “How about we four try playing a game? Or storytime?” He sighed, shrugging. “Figure we might as well try something nice. Since we’re here now. And... not doing great individually.”

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

you sound like you need a break

Seraph looked down at the floor. She fidgeted a bit, trilling to herself. “... m... maybe...” she mumbled. “But... who’s going to help Evangel when she wakes up...?”

Someone needs to get a minorly better set of priorities.

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

everything okay, seraph?

Seraph shushed the anon quietly, wings flaring a bit in her haste. The sight of them made her wince before she folded them again. The familiar was sitting in a blanket nest of sorts. It was at the foot of Evangel’s bed. Evidently, the buggy sorceress was still asleep. Seraph cast a nervous glance at her before quietly sneaking from the room.

“... it’s... alright,” she whispered, once out of the room. She couldn’t help but glance behind her when she spoke. “Evangel’s not... doing the best. With this. B-but I’m ok. Honest.” Her wings shifted protectively around her shoulders. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, believe me.”

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Alex fidgeted as his boyfriend fretted over him. This was becoming an increasingly familiar occurrence, and he did *not* appreciate it... "...'m fine." He said, making it quite clear that he was not comfortable with his own voice right now. "It stopped hurting. A while ago." Hesitantly, he placed a hand in Journal's, giving him... as worried of a look as he could currently manage. "Are *you* okay...?" ~ Alex

Journal wanted to ask more questions, but he could tell Alex was uncomfortable enough without him fretting. He just. Tried to bite his tongue. For now, anyway. His clawed hands twitched as he tried to keep from just yanking Alex into a hug. When the icy sorcerer stuck his hand in his claws, though, he tensed up. “I- I- um- I think s-so-?” He stammered. The draconic sorcerer’s eyes were trained on the ice that ran against his claws. He didn’t want to hurt Alex. He really didn’t. His tail flicked anxiously behind him, nearly toppling him over. A strained sounding chuckle slipped out. “Just. Trying to. Y’know. Adjust...” He took a shaky breath. “... Could you move your hand? I’m sorry, my claws are just really sharp-“

[a-familiar-set-of-apartments]

Alex slowly stepped in, giving a little thankful nod to Aiden as he hesitantly hung his cloak up on the cloak rack. As expected, his face was more or less a smooth icy surface, with dots glowing a lighter shade of blue serving as eyes, and his usual messy hair glowing softly and passively giving off a frosty fog. His arms were in a similar predicament, with his hands looking less like hands and more like chunks of ice shoved together in the general shape of hands. "... h-hi, guys." ~ Alex

Aiden shut the door as soon as Alex was inside. He made sure to lock it while the other two boys took stock of the icy sorcerer. A mix of fascination and anxiety was plastered on both of them. Aiden didn’t do more than look on with tiredness and mild concern.

Journal was the first one to move towards him. “Al- alex??? W-what’d they do to you???” He whined. He sorta had to limp his way over, but he was instantly fretting over his boyfriend. He did his best to hold onto him without digging his claws into his arm. “Are you ok? Does it hurt? You’re- you’re not in pain, right?”

“I-I think he’s fine...” Roo rumbled nervously. He wasn’t budging from his spot on the couch. Aiden heaved a sigh, leaning on the wall. “He’s about as ok as the rest of us, journ.”

“Which is not saying much!!!”

“... fair enough.”

“... mnnnh...”