#lonan's goal is: ahhh someone has stabbed me i'm dyingggg

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

too lazy to transcribe what I wrote for BB today so why don't you have all of Seventh Virtue chapter 19 instead! :)

this is probably the shortest Fostered-verse chapter I've ever written (300 words). also if you want to see what a degree in poetry teaches you, it's this HAHA

context serious: after Lonan barrels back into both of their lives under mysterious (and borderline murderous) circumstances, Harrison & Reeve separately rush to find him.

context silly: Harrison and Reeve are like "wow Lonan really tried to take us both out literally a day ago why don't we both be guided by our joint custody bestie brain to separately do crimes in order to see what the actual fuck is up with him even tho this is against the wishes of our very logical friends."

under the cut!

Seventh Virtue. Contemporary fantasy (2022).

Chapter 19: Half/Half

They both get in their own way. Harrison with the bobby pin he’d stolen from the nurse, Reeve by kicking in a stained-glass window on the roof’s dormer. He could use the key card Estelle gave him but doesn’t want any surprises. She could charm someone else like she charmed Daniel from Orange County but has had enough of sweating into men for one night.

Harrison doesn’t need to see in the dark. He’s been in the library once and navigates it a second time with ease. Tunnels in the library’s basement, he reminds himself as he hustles between shelves.

Tunnels in the library’s basement. Reeve finds them easy enough. She spent a year learning to be invisible out of survival, learned exactly how to move through crowded streets as if she were not there at all; she does the same inside an empty library with grace. Down a hall, then a staircase, turn left, right.

Left, right. Harrison might not be as graceful as Reeve, but he sure is determined. A door labelled EXIT in cherry red letters blazes near the drink cart he and Foster had previously taken their share of. It can’t be that easy, can it?

It’s easy, how Reeve drops down another flight of stairs, and then another. She is air, a feather falling from a raven’s wing.

A wing of hallways beyond the EXIT door. Harrison follows them until he reaches a staircase on the right, yanking off the security guard’s jacket and gloves as he goes.

Go. This is the only thought in Reeve’s mind. She needs to move like a spider effortlessly scaling its web. She needs to find Lonan.

Lonan. What will Harrison even say to him when he sees him? He races down another flight of stairs, and then another, until there aren’t anymore, the thought and his pace juddering his heartrate. Go, he thinks. Go.

Go.

Go.

They collide.