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lov3nerdstuff · 4 years ago

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Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 6.16}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend... and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student, blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 3.6k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

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When Robin took her perch on the edge of the desk again, putting the books she had used during the class back into their place, she finally realized what had bothered her about the entire thing. Dumbledore had been the one to tell Snape to take over Morgan's class, and therefore he must've known that he wouldn't find him down here. That means he had either come here to wait for Snape, which was unlikely, or he had meant to seek out Robin in the first place. In which case he surely had known that she possessed the particular spellbook as well. And he had lied to her without her even noticing in the slightest. But… why on earth would he do any of that?

She frowned to herself, lost in thought until the door was opened once again, without a knock this time. Robin didn't even have to look up to know who it was, but by the time she did, he was standing in front of her already.

"What is it with you and that desk?" Snape quirked an eyebrow at her, and while he was undoubtedly humored rather than annoyed by her having claimed it as her seat yet again, Robin could also see that Morgan's class had taken its toll on him.

"It's the best spot in the entire room. Of course I had to have it." She shrugged with a smile, but stayed right where she was. "How did the seventh years fare with you?"

"It is safe to say they weren't too fond of having me as a replacement. Perhaps because they are unaccustomed to having a competent teacher, or perhaps because I simply demanded more of them than what they are used to. But truly I think it was a matter of personal distaste in the end." He replied in a sigh between exhaustion and annoyance, and Robin suddenly realized that she enjoyed being trapped between him and the desk way too much. She pushed the inappropriate thought out of her mind in an instant, and at the same time he did her the favor of sitting down next to her instead. "I tend to forget that people other than you and me are quite fond of Morgan."

"People other than you and me are bloody idiots."

"Indeed." He looked down at Robin with a not-smirk and an almost openly curious expression. "So, how was having your own class full of idiots?"

"Not half as bad as I expected, actually." She smiled up at him in return. "I did a revision of the entire year with them just like you suggested, but I tried to explain things a bit differently than you do. Perhaps it helped some of them understand it better."

"Did you really?"

"Yes! But honestly, I was more surprised by the fact that they respected me as an authority in the first place. Which means that, other than them being complete dunderhead like almost all students are, they were actually quite manageable."

"I am not sure which class you taught, but it certainly wasn't mine."

Robin laughed at the comment, and nudged him in the side with her shoulder. Something she had dared doing more often recently, and he had never protested. "It most definitely was your class of dunderheads! But they seemed to appreciate having me as a replacement. One girl even came to talk to me afterwards, and after getting her to stop crying, I told her to see you tomorrow morning."

"Why, pray tell, would you do that to me?"

"She needs help!" Robin rolled her eyes at him exaggeratedly, a statement in both directions. "And I already did the hard part for you, so you really only will have to tell her what she can do to catch up with the class."

"Who was it?"

"How am I supposed to know!?" Robin huffed with a laugh. "They're your students, not mine. She was tiny and cried a lot."

"They are twelve-year-olds, they all are tiny." Snape quirked an eyebrow at her. "Could you be a bit more specific?"

"Black hair, bushy eyebrows, really tan skin… Ravenclaw I believe."

"I see. She is rather clever, but has been doing poorly in class for a while now. And she came to you asking for help?"

"Basically, yes. I already explained to her why she needs to learn the basics of potion making, but you will know better what she can work on to actually improve. So I told her to see you tomorrow morning to get the help she needs."

"I was under the impression that you and I were friends. Why would you put me through that?"

"Because you're the professor! Dealing with students is your job!" Robin laughed, shaking her head to herself as she finally got up from the desk once more. "I'm not going to do all your work for you, you know."

"I never expected that of you." He replied in a sudden seriousness. "I never expected any of this, in fact, nor would I ever take your help for granted like that."

"I know." She gave him a small and hopefully reassuring smile. "And you hopefully know that I'm always more than happy to help you, no matter what."

"I do. Thank you." His grave expression made way for the usual calm, which in return made Robin sigh under her breath as he spoke on. "Still, you went out of your way to do me a favor, which means I owe you."

"Hardly." Robin replied with another humored huff. "You help me all the time, in so many ways, this really is the least I can do for you in return. You don't owe me anything."

"In my humble opinion, I very much do."

"Fine, if you insist on it… I will keep it in mind." She sighed, in the knowledge that arguing with him was pointless whenever he had set his mind to something. Instead she came to stand right in front of him now and motioned toward the office. "How about pre-dinner coffee? I still haven't told you about the little visit Dumbledore paid me after class."

"Why do I get the feeling that your afternoon was way more interesting than mine?"

"You're already right about that and you haven't even heard the story yet. Impressive."

"Let me prepare the coffee and you will have my fullest attention."

… … …

The last two weeks before Robin's two N.E.W.T. exams were filled with too much studying and too little sleep. From before breakfast until after dinner she studied for the theoretical part, often enough without actually attending the meals, and after dinner she would practice for the practical examination with Snape. He ended up giving her a mock exam based on what he remembered from his own N.E.W.T.s a few days before the tests, and Robin had a very hard time not crying over how much effort he actually put into helping her. It probably was a bit unfair, especially since he most definitely would never do this for any of the other students (nor any other person in general), but since he wasn't going to be the one testing nor grading her in the end, they both simply chose to ignore that fact. Life just wasn't fair, and if Robin was on the losing end so very often, she believed that she could also allow herself to be on the winning end for once. And really, if one looked at it in a different light, the only advantage she had in the end was that she had the most capable and competent study partner possible.

But there also was another problem, of an entirely different kind. Robin still had to take the normal end-of-the-year exams for all her other sixth year classes, which meant that times were prone to overlap. Once she had realized that a few days in advance, she had straight out panicked, right until Snape had dragged her to Flitwick's office and seen to it that the sixth year charms exam would be moved to a different time. Really, Flitwick was a helpful person in the end and once Robin had managed to state the situation more or less calmly, it had been beyond easy to reschedule his exam.

With the second test that needed to be moved however, they weren't so lucky. Morgan, of course, saw no reason to change the time of his exam just to accustom the 'pathetic ambitions' of one single student, and even Snape couldn't get him to change his mind. By that time Robin was on edge enough to burst, anxious beyond reason, and of course Morgan didn't have a hard time noticing and taking advantage of it in return. He didn't move his exam, and probably hoped that it would cause as many negative consequences for Robin as possible in one way or the other. Unfortunately for him, he had made that calculation without Dumbledore, who upon hearing of the issue demanded for the test to be rescheduled indeed.

Finally, and luckily enough, alchemy and magical creatures had originally been scheduled for such odd times anyway that they didn't pose a problem, and thus eventually all exams fit into Robin's week without overlap. Thank God… or rather, thanks to Snape. While Robin had always done the talking and made the requests, he had been the one to drag her around and make her do so in the first place. He had seen to it that she didn't just stay hidden in her rabbithole of anxiety and stress, and Robin was eternally grateful for that.

The exams came, and Robin found that NEWTs were exactly the same as the OWLs, just a tad more difficult. Fine, a lot more difficult. But she was well prepared, and sincerely believed that she had answered everything to her best abilities. The sixth year exams in comparison to that were a mess. She had spent so much time preparing for the two, way more important NEWT exams that she had hardly studied for the sixth year subjects at all, and she definitely noticed that during the tests. Too bad the bloody day only had 24 hours for her to use to study… But oh well, the sixth year exams didn't actually count for anything other than her pride after all, so perhaps it was alright not to get perfect grades in them for once. Or so she tried to tell herself, at least.

Practical potions was the last examination of the bunch, on Friday afternoon, and it honestly was the easiest out of them all. They were asked to brew a variety of minor draughts and serums, all of which Robin had excessively practiced for, and both she and the examiners (those nasty folks sent by the ministry) were surprised when she finished more than half an hour earlier than any of the regular seventh year students. Uncertain of what to do with her, the ministry workers had her check her work again, but Robin still discovered no flaw in it, so they reluctantly let her go already.

A week later, Friday in the second week of June, the normal exam results were released, and Robin found herself mostly devastated. She had been able to uphold her Outstanding in magical creatures, but that was the only good result she had gotten and the only thing that kept her from crying. In charms and alchemy she had barely made it to an Acceptable, while Morgan had actually gone all out and given her a Dreadful. Really, in Robin's eyes it couldn't have gone much worse.

When she sat in the office with Snape the night after the results had been released, sulking and trying very hard not to cry, the only thing that made her smile in the end was when he offered to break into Morgan's office and steal her exam to have a look at it and quite possibly prove that Morgan's grade was unjustified. While the offer was tempting, and it astonished Robin to see that he was actually quite seriously about it, she declined nonetheless. He would only end up getting in trouble for that, and she wouldn't have that for anything at all. It was only a bad grade that didn't even matter. A grade that counted for nothing. But it was very hard to remind herself of that from time to time nonetheless.

Sunday was the last day of the term, and as always it was accompanied by the obligatory end-of-term feast to celebrate the evening. It usually was a dull ceremony for everyone but the seventh years, so Robin found herself paying little to no attention to the lengthy speech and words of wisdom Dumbledore had to offer to this year's graduates. Neither did she listen to Cas and Jorien though, who were discussing Cas' failed attempt to convince her parents to let her visit Simon over the summer. They still were together and happy in their relationship at this point… obviously Robin had been wrong about them. At least Cas had started treating her boyfriend AND her friends as equal parts in her life after the incident in March, so it was a good thing that both had prevailed after all.

For the moment, Robin found herself amused at the sight of a seventh year Hufflepuff girl who clumsily made her way towards the front after being called up. Time for this year's honour roll, it seemed. All the seventh years had dressed up in their fancy robes and ball gowns for the night, a thing that had only started becoming an actual thing last year. But obviously not everyone could or should walk on high heels just because it was allowed on graduation night, and the sight just was too amusing to Robin not to snicker over. Poor Hufflepuff…

A boulder of a boy followed a few seconds later, a Gryffindor this time, and he came to stand next to the tiny Hufflepuff girl in the front. Robin wondered which subject he had been best in to make it onto the list, but to get an answer to that she would've had to start actually listening from the start. A few more people followed upon that, and Robin thought that this really was the most dreadful part of the evening, until a particular name caught her by surprise.

"Julius Campton," Dumbledore called out, "Top of the year in Divination."

The majority of people applauded like they had before, and Robin found herself frowning deeply as the boy in question made his way towards the front. She hadn't expected him to be good at anything, especially not divination. It was an easier subject, admittedly, but one needed to be a certain kind of person to actually be more than just good in it. And Julius wasn't that kind of person. Oh well… obviously she had been wrong about that yet again. Should the arse enjoy his honours, who cares…

"Lucinda Sparks," The headmaster went on in the same loud voice that Robin couldn't ignore anymore now, "Top of the year in Arithmancy and History of Magic."

If Robin wasn't mistaken, this was the older sister of her ex-roommate Melody. Who would've thought that their family also had children who weren't bloody idiots? Definitely not something Robin had expected. And anyway, why did those seventh years have their N.E.W.T. results already while Robin was still anxiously waiting for hers?!

"Robin Mitchell," Dumbledore called out, and Robin's blood froze in her veins while half of the Slytherin table fell into dead silence alongside her, "Top of the year in Potions and Herbology."

Oh god. What? No way… This was some practical joke, it had to be. Perhaps there was someone who had the same name a year above her. But when she looked around, nobody else was getting up from their seat, and when her gaze met Dumbledore's, he gave her the subtlest nod in history. Oh bloody hell… This wasn't supposed to happen.

Robin's legs made her get up on their own account, while her mind still wouldn't quite grasp the situation. She wasn't part of this graduating year, she wasn't supposed to be on the honour roll! At least not now… not when everyone looked at her like she was an alien amongst them. Approximately six people clapped as she made her way towards the front, four of them being seated at the head table, which however was barely registered in her head. She took her place next to the other students by Dumbledore's side, while the next person was called on already, but she still couldn't focus on anything other than the racing of her heart and the churning of her stomach.

This perhaps was even worse than her first ever day here. Because back then, she had just been one of many, a new face like everyone else. Now however most of the people (who still hadn't ceased gaping at her) knew exactly who she was, and it gave them all the more reason to hate her for standing here. In a place she wasn't supposed to be in, a place meant for some seventh year who was probably working way harder to get here than she ever had. Honestly, the honour roll had been an annoying joke to her until five minutes ago. She hadn't even listened to the bloody ceremony for that past six years, for heaven's sake!!! But now she stood up here in front of the head table, next to people who didn't know why she was here, looked at by people who didn't think she deserved to be here, and yet she was. Top of the year in potions and herbology. Bloody hell.

Three more people took their places next to Robin in the line of students, and it was only then that she realized that she was the only one wearing her school uniform. Everyone else was elegantly clad in dress robes. Great… At least the fitted black robes she had been wearing throughout the entire year were actually fancy enough to somehow keep up with the ball gowns of the other girls. Not that it mattered much in this case, she couldn't care less about looks, but it was something to ease her anxious nerves at least. Something other to focus on than the jealous and distasteful looks the people were throwing at her from the students' tables.

People applauded once more, for all the students up front, while Dumbledore and McGonagall handed out a certificate to each student. Robin took hers from McGonagall thankfully, and the professor offered her a small smile before moving on to the next person. At least Robin wasn't as unpopular among the professors as she'd thought… the head of Gryffindor seemed to like her well enough after all, even if she was in a rivaling house. Half a minute later, everyone went back to their seats without any ado, and Dumbledore went on with his speech for the graduates for a little while, but ultimately declared the beginning of the feast.

Robin didn't feel hungry anymore, even when she was safely sitting together with her two roommates again, who however were happily indulging in the meal themselves. They'd congratulated her for her honours, being sincerely happy for her in that at least, but ultimately they had no mind for the actual meaning of it. It was just a piece of paper after all, and they were still so far from away graduating that Robin honestly couldn't blame them for their short lived interest in the topic. Her mind however couldn't quite put the issue to rest, especially since she didn't even know her grades yet. How could they declare her best in a subject if she didn't have a grade? Or did Dumbledore know more than everyone else did, like always? From what she picked up out of snippets of conversations at her table, nobody else had their results yet either, so that at least was good to hear. Perhaps she should just be happy about her success, and let it be reassurance enough that her hard work had paid off. No matter if she thought she deserved it or not.

When she finally dared looking towards the head table, her eyes met Snape's immediately and that alone melted some of the tension in her body and mind in an instant. At least one person in the room seemed to think she deserved the honours, going by the barely-even-there expression of pride on his face. Then he quirked an eyebrow at her in feigned surprise, putting on that mask of perfect indifference, and Robin finally had to smile again. He just had a way of cheering her up in any situation, without even doing much at all. For another moment they simply looked at each other through the busy space between them, then the corner of his lips twitched for not even a broken second, and Robin looked back down at her yet empty plate with a smile. If that hadn't been an invitation for coffee later, she would return those honours straight away.

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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years ago

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Negative Space || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Following Lydia’s death, Morgan and Deirdre search for ways to pick up the pieces.

CONTAINS: discussions of death, dying, and grief. brief mentions of Lydia’s human captives.

“The clinic was a mistake.” Deirdre grumbled as she drove, hissing her complaints as she pulled the Subaru to a stop, massaging her temples in a desperate attempt to summon back her vision and the senses it offered. Her mind had been imprinted with the beeping and whirring of the clinic’s machines, the very same that had kept her sustained, and lent her the energy now to be driving at all; the doctor’s droll voice, asking her to stay another night, because she needed it; and the whispering of other fae, annoyed that a non-fae was in their presence, in their space, and her own voice, shushing them. She slept well, with Morgan in her arms and medicine in her body, but time had a horrible way of eating at memory, and a worse way of moving things around. Lydia’s body might not be in the alley she was murdered in anymore; if someone went to such lengths to kill her, they’d be disposing of her too. The two of them weren’t just too late, it was like they were operating on a whole other timeline. Deirdre hated it. She hadn’t touched the rest of her vision of Lydia’s death; the faces, the voices, the sounds and scents, those she wanted to save for when her mind needed them. Right now her mind needed a location...and a drink. Deirdre groaned and threw her head back. “If she was trying to leave town, then she should be here. But I’m not feeling anything.” She eyed her doctor-recommended crutches and then the sidewalk. “Maybe we should go by foot.”

“The clinic made you better,” Morgan mumbled. She didn’t especially enjoy being looked at like she was a dog wetting the living room, or being whispered about in Gaelic like she hadn’t made time to learn the words for ‘human’ and ‘filth’ online. But Deirdre had held her all night and she’d been able to follow the monitors tracking her recovery and listen to her heartbeat and believe, to an extent, that they would be okay. “I can pop out the wheelchair they gave us, if you want to take a swing around the next block or two,” she suggested. “I can take over driving, if it’ll help you concentrate. I won’t go so fast, or slow or…” Or whatever she’d done that had contributed to missing Lydia and her body. She knew by the light of day that there wasn’t much to be done about having a mental breakdown under the double trouble trauma, but having some responsibility meant she wasn’t completely helpless.

“Not the wheelchair,” Deirdre grimaced, turning the car off. “Anything but the wheelchair.” She didn’t have the energy to be wheeling herself around, and there was something deeply embarrassing about having Morgan push her. By comparison, the crutches were slightly less embarrassing, though still enough for her to forgo them as she stumbled out of the car. “Let me use you to lean on?” She called out, hobbling towards the passenger side to meet Morgan outside. “It’s better than anything else.” She smiled bright, and though she’d spent most of the car ride tensely silent or cursing at the air, even in her state, it wasn’t hard to see Morgan wasn’t doing well. Lydia’s death was a rumbling echo, but time had moulded her sadness into anger—her depression to urgency; guilt to stubbornness. She hadn’t asked what plagued Morgan, she’d almost forgotten to. Maybe she didn’t conduct the same alchemy of emotions that Deirdre did. “Do you want to take another break, my love?” She asked, for all her desperation to find Lydia, she was continually astonished and horrified at the ease in which she could offer pause and rest to Morgan. Caring for her girlfriend was not a task that she deliberated on, or regretted, she only hoped that Lydia beyond the grave didn’t hate her too much for wanting to care for the woman she loved. Even if respite was the last thing she wanted. The clinic had been agreeable only because pain and medication captured her brain, if they stopped now, she would start thinking. In that moment, Deirdre could think of no greater torture—except, of course, everything Lydia endured. But that was just it; that was the thinking. “We can think of this as a nice stroll if you’d like. Like we’ve always taken.”

“Sorry. I just thought…” The wheelchair would be faster, smoother, easier on Deirdre’s hands and the rest of her body. Morgan could wheel them around in a few minutes. Even sidewalks without accessible ramps wouldn’t be a problem with her zombie strength. She was three days without a meal now and could bust through or lift most things she put her mind to. “Anyway, you should at least bring your cane. I’ve already ordered a nicer one, but it’s not going to come in for a couple of days.” She stumbled over her words to appease Deirdre’s hardened grief so much she almost missed her love’s gentle offer. “Of course you can lean on me, if that’s what you want,” she said. Her eyes nearly watered at Deirdre’s smile. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours out from when she had stopped breathing in her arms, since she had run and disappeared and fallen apart in bloody pieces and stopped speaking to her altogether unless it was to give instructions. As Morgan got out of the car to meet her girlfriend and pull her into her arms (gently, so as not to upset her healing sores), she couldn’t help but feel like some part of her was still cowering in the driveway, stuck to the ground with all that blood. “We don’t need to stop,” she said into Deirdre’s shoulder, carefully giving her a squeeze. “I know we need to do this. I know why we’re here. Just tell me what you want me to do. I’ll--” She shivered. “I’ll do it. I’m doing a lot better today, and I can carry you if you get tired, and I um…” She couldn’t think of anything else to specifically offer. She looked up into Deirdre’s eyes, promising her anything with desperate intensity. I’ll be good. I’ll find a way to make this better.

Deirdre glanced over at the shoddy stick, more tree branch than cane. The fae enjoyed their ties to nature, Deirdre would sooner use the crutches—which were grey and dull but notably not dirt-stained. “I...think I’d rather just lean on you.” Even in sickness, there were standards to be upheld. And while Deirdre found a measure of humour in it, she looked to her girlfriend to see that she didn’t. “We have time,” she smiled softly. They really didn’t, her stomach churned and her mind battled with her to assert a timeframe. They didn’t have time, except that Deirdre smiled as though they did, and spoke slow, measured, as though there was no rush. She pressed her body beside Morgan’s, just the way the two of them knew how to walk tangled in each other, with added weight against the zombie’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” she gestured for them to walk forward with a careful pace, seemingly unbothered. She felt fractured; there was the part of her that cared so deeply for Morgan that even against her own desperation, she could summon whatever kindness Morgan needed. And the part that burned for Lydia; the slow growing storm that just wanted to find her. In these moments, it was easy for her to remember that Morgan was suffering too. When left to herself, everything else seemed to slip her mind. Storms were often consuming, but she had practice taming them. “We can talk about it, if you want; whatever’s bothering you. Besides the obvious, I guess.” She laughed weakly, staring up at the sky. Something about the early morning air was always acrid, it stung her eyes, but it was of great importance to her that they left the clinic as soon as she woke up. She’d forgotten to ask what Morgan thought. “I’m sorry I haven’t been exactly…” she looked to Morgan with her own desperation. “...like I should be. I just want to find Lydia, I just want to get to her.” Deirdre shook her head, sighing. “You’ve been very good to me, despite everything. And I haven’t even thanked you for it. I’m sorry, my love. Will you let me ask after you now?”

“O-obvious?” Morgan wasn’t sure what counted as obvious and what didn’t. She averted her eyes and started to hobble with Deirdre the way she wanted to go. “No, we can just…” Morgan swallowed thickly, trying to summon up some wall to put between herself and the fear and guilt she didn’t know how to relocate. But she was always herself around Deirdre. She didn’t know how to pretend around her, even if it was what would help the most. “You don’t have to be anything more than how you are. We can go find her, we don’t have to stop for anything, I’m sorry if I’m...I’m not trying to hold everything up, I don’t mean to be so…” Her eyes were burning again and she tried to focus on walking with Deirdre. She never would’ve thought walking up and down their house wrapped up in each other would come in handy before. But here they were, stepping in the way they knew so well, enough that Morgan could remember how they usually were. Not the happiness, but the ease, the intimacy of their openness.

Morgan met Deirdre’s eyes for a flash of a moment, hoping that she could be good and find whatever strength she needed, however unfamiliar, to pull herself up and help Deirdre find what she needed to. But as Morgan held her gaze, the tears came free and her insides crumbled. “You don’t need to thank me, or be sorry. Honestly, I don’t really feel like I--” she hesitated. “I know I...I tried, I did, but I screwed it up...” she clenched her jaw and tried to keep her composure as much as possible and brought them slowly to a stop near a sidewalk bench. “I know I can’t do anything to fix what happened, but if I could just do something to make any of this better or easier for you…” She clenched her jaw and breathed again. “I know you’re angry. And I know I’m at least partially responsible for us being in this situation. But…I’m sorry. I feel like I’m making everything worse right now. I should be comforting you. You shouldn’t have to worry about me after losing your best friend, your family, but...you were gone. I got off the floor and you were gone and then you were bleeding and you wouldn��t tell me anything and you wouldn’t stay or take me with you and...I should’ve just gotten the car, fucking stars above, I should’ve just gotten in the car and picked you up and maybe then we… but I just thought ‘she couldn’t have gone far, we’ll figure it out.’ I didn’t understand what was happening, and...you were dying! You went from running away to looking me in the eye and saying you weren’t going to live and then you couldn’t walk or use your hands and there was so much blood everywhere and I was scared! Out-of-my-mind scared! I would do everything different now, I would, but...I didn’t know anything except that the world was ending. You were dying and it was the end of everything and I was scared and it broke me. I didn’t even realize you’d gotten up after the call, you were just gone, and nothing felt real anymore and I couldn’t...be what you needed. I tried, but I couldn’t. And I’m still--between failing you and almost losing you on the fucking driveway with no warning, I’m just not back together yet...” her voice petered out. Morgan could only just push through her shame to look at Deirdre again, searching for someplace safe in her gaze to hole up in.

“Lydia, I mean….” Deirdre breathed with trepidation; confessing the truth so bluntly was not something she had grown accustomed to in the time between her scream and now. She would have preferred, in fact, to never speak of it. But such wasn’t fair--Lydia deserved to be spoken of, remembered, loved. Even if it would just be her who held the leanan-sidhe in her heart. She frowned and anchored herself to Morgan’s side, pressed as tightly as she could manage. With great imagination, she could pretend this was one of their strolls around White Crest, at some point they’d turn a corner and make their way into a cemetery. But the gravestones in her head all read Lydia’s name. “You didn’t screw anything up…” She fell on to the bench, gesturing for Morgan to sit beside her, nearly pulling her down too. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything, my love. I wouldn’t have gotten myself anywhere on foot, you know that, and it is true that my body needed rest. You can imagine the state I would be in now if you hadn’t chased after me.” Deirdre tried to laugh, the gentle, light way she did when she wanted to lift Morgan’s spirits, but the sound came out as a cough. And then another. And then a tug, taut and strange in her chest. She grimaced, leaning forward to clutch the rough fabric of the clinic-lent sweatshirt she was wearing---equally as gaudy as the cane and wheelchair. Morgan’s voice throbbed in her ears, she made out a few sentences and a handful of words. Distantly, she knew Morgan was talking about her near-death, and the trauma that followed it, but her head pulsed; vision spotty. “You don’t need to...do anything...different…” She spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s okay. Don’t be sorry. I don’t need you to be anything but how you are. It’s oka---” The cemetery with the Lydia gravestones screamed at her, ringing loud and demanding. Deirdre stumbled off the bench. She stared down the road, watching it narrow. The pull she had been searching for was clear, and it was persistent. It tethered her, strung her limbs up and pulled her like a doll.

If she was thinking, she’d realize it was in poor taste to be running off again. But she wasn’t thinking, she was sprinting down a foregin street. Pain forgotten, she burst forth with temporary speed and composure. “Morgan!” She called her girlfriend’s name just once before she turned the corner. The cemetery. The Lydia gravestones. They lived in a nameless alley; not that alley’s often had names, but she’d make sure people knew this one--the place where good died. Deirdre stumbled into it, filled with perverse relief to find Lydia. To find Lydia. To find--Where was Lydia? Deirdre threw herself to the ground, equal parts frantic and too weak to hold herself up. Where was Lydia? She committed herself to vision, to everything her death-cursed body could drum up.

Morgan thought the clinic and the waking up and the sitting tensely in the car was a trick and this really was a magic nightmare drummed up to torment her. Deirdre coughed, ragged and painfully unlike herself. Morgan scrambled for the water bottle in her bag and handed it off to Deirdre. “Drink slowly, babe,” she whispered. “Slow, okay?” She felt brave enough, forgiven enough, to stroke Deirdre’s cheek the way she liked to when it was her turn to comfort her. But Deirdre shuddered and sank against her body. “I’ve got you. What is it? Hey—” And then Deirdre was up, running away from her again, knocking her way through the street, drunk with pain. “Deirdre! Deirdre, please!” Morgan didn’t care about the pedestrians turning their heads to look at the crazy woman shoving past them. She was just seeing their street and the trail of blood and Deirdre’s dead, icy look. Morgan couldn’t do this again. She didn’t have it in her.

Morgan turned the corner and caught Deirdre’s hand as she called her name. “I’m here. Tell me what’s happening, just fucking tell me, I don’t even care what it is!” She pleaded, falling to her knees with Deirdre, holding her up in her arms. “Are you in more pain? Do I need to drive you back to the clinic? What do you—did you find something?” She brushed back her love’s hair, searching her face for some tell about what new twist of the cosmic knife was working through them this time. She held onto Deirdre, too tight for her to break away from easily. “Please. I can take it. Just talk to me…”

Where was Lydia? Deirdre burned, clawing at her skin with bandaged fingers. She felt cut upon cut across her chest, the weight of wounded wings she didn’t own, spear through her shoulder. She felt Lydia’s pain, splashed up against the walls and spilled across the floor, but she didn’t know where she was. Her body took flash fever, starting at her knees against the ground. Where was Lydia? She heard voices, saw figures in the dark of her vision–one, two, three...just how many people had watched Lydia die? How many of them caused it? At the center, a blonde girl flared to mind, but Deirdre already knew about her; had already committed herself silently to dealing with it. She began to paw at the ground. Perhaps Lydia had been buried below, somehow, but she searched and searched and found nothing. Her body burned.

Deirdre blinked, turning slowly to her girlfriend. The apology for her actions that wanted to sit on her tongue had been swallowed down. She took dirt and ash into her hands, letting them stain once pristine bandaging before peeling Morgan off of her. The process was slow, she was in no rush now. She had found Lydia, after all. Once unfurled, she opened Morgan’s palm and dusted ash against her skin. “That’s Lydia,” she said, “we found her.” Deirdre turned back to the ground, the ash was nearly indiscernible from the rough cement, but she leaned down and scooped it all up into a pile—every grain of dirt along with it. In time, by hand, she would pick everything that wasn’t Lydia out. For now, she just wanted it all. She thought she could mold her back, like clay. She tried it; holes for the eyes first. But the nose wouldn’t stick. “How is she going to wear something nice, for the funeral?” She asked, “what if she wanted to be buried? Didn’t they ask her? Didn’t they think about her family? This is all they get to see of her now. Who would want that? Who would want ashes?” In her scraping the ground, the charred remains of Lydia’s phone mixed with the pile. Deirdre plucked it out. There was Lydia, pile on the floor, and this was the place she died. This was the place she saved Deirdre’s life. And they gave her ashes. “Didn’t they know…” she sobbed, unaware she had begun tainting the ash with her tears (she would apologize for this later, seek repentance in the familiar places she knew). “....didn’t they know? Didn’t they know that I loved her. Why would they—what did they think I would do with a body? Couldn’t they have just left her in a river or—“ Deirdre curled up on the ground, pulling Lydia to her chest. There wasn’t much left of her now, even with the ash; a byproduct of the time she wasted (she would apologize for this too). “She couldn’t stand looking at a dead body, not the beautiful decayed kind. But I think she—I think she wanted a coffin. Didn’t they ask her? Why didn’t they ask her?” Deirdre sobbed, a horrible and pathetic whimpering sound, but she knew the answer.

Morgan tried to fasten Deirdre’s hands together in her grasp to no avail. “No! If you can leave me behind like I don’t matter you can use your fucking words and tell me what’s happening!” She shook her, aching and desperate, but Deirdre was somewhere else, and nothing Morgan said meant a damn thing, if they’d even registered as words at all. And then she spoke and all of Morgan’s fear and grief punctured, crawling miserably into some dark corner inside herself to hide. There wasn’t time for this. If Deirdre was right (and when it came to death, Deirdre was always right), then Morgan didn’t get to matter right now. She quieted and let Deirdre have her way, carefully folding away her hurt in box after box to fester out of sight.

Morgan had never looked at flesh ash before. Somehow she thought it would look different, more distinct and impressive. But aside from being a little paler, there wasn’t anything to differentiate it from the dregs of a regular bonfire. Morgan closed her hand around the grainy nothing Deirdre had put in her hands. Lydia. If she hadn’t been an alchemist in another life, she wouldn't know the connection between these little particles and the woman they had both known. But Morgan did, just as she knew that whatever kind of soul fae had, Lydia’s was off becoming part of something else. Strangely enough, Morgan couldn’t find it in her to hope for peace for Lydia so much as a second chance, an opportunity to be kind, to understand that the world wasn’t stratified the way she’d been raised to believe, to feel connected to the affection that had vanished from her life over its final weeks. That’s what Morgan wanted.

But death didn’t care for wanting. Deirdre had explained that to her plenty of times. And as Morgan held her girlfriend, rubbing her back and stroking her hair as she sobbed, she reminded herself that she was part death too. She could hold and speak and not want anything. She could, if she remembered the pit inside her and let it take her a little. After watching her tiny world implode on a loop so many times in less than a day, it was almost easy. “I don’t know, my love. I’m afraid I don’t know.” she said faintly. “But I do know that her soul and her energy have already passed on and transformed. Maybe she’s in the winter flowers, or the wind, or some happy, gentle creature that was just born. But we can put what’s left of her in a nice urn, maybe something from her house. I don’t think she’d mind her house pieces being with someone who can appreciate them. Or we could get an alchemist to turn her into something you can keep with you always. She would like her body turning into something beautiful, I think. When you’re ready, you’re going to finish the water bottle, and I’ll clean it out and we’ll put her in there for the time being. And we’ll go home, and you’ll decide what you think is best for her remains when you’re ready for that too.”

“There’s no winter flowers in an alley!” Deirdre bellowed, rumbling the world around them. Her tears felt like fire against her cheeks now, and she pushed herself off the ground. “This stupid man-made shit. She doesn’t get to go anywhere! Not back to the earth that bore her, not the forests of her ancestral home. This human garbage is what she gets. You can’t grow a tree in cement! They killed her here! And they didn’t even leave a body.” Deirdre slammed her fist to the ground, shattering bone on impact and undoing her body’s attempts at healing her torn nails; she reacted to neither, an instrument of pain and anger. “You don’t know what they did to her,” she spoke to Morgan now, trembling in the force of her words. “We didn’t even get to hear all of it. But I saw, I heard, I know. They took Lydia from this world, she begged and they ignored her and now she’s ash. She didn’t want to die this way. And I promised her, I promised her—“ ‘A good death’ shouldn’t have been something impossible to give. It was her job, her livelihood; everything she was born for. “She was my sister and they took her.” Deirdre huffed, calming herself just enough to remember who she was speaking to, and what had been said. “Not unless you can dry it all out,” she gestured at the water bottle, gently taking it with her good hand. If drinking water would please Morgan, she would do it, but the point of the gesture was lost on her now. “Water will ruin the ashes. Or taint them. Nothing touches Lydia anymore, nothing that will hurt her. No water.” She took a sip, hissing as it went down. Drinking water felt like a waste of time, so much so that she stopped at just the first sip. “And no home. We go to Lydia’s.” Deirdre pulled off her sweatshirt, pushing the ashes onto the fabric. She considered that the water bottle just might have been better, but she wanted everything and she wanted it pure. “No one will be turning her into anything, not unless I know I can still feel her like that, and, anyway, not a human. I’m not letting another human touch her. Her family will decide what’s best. I’ll leave that to them.” A work of art might’ve sounded good to Deirdre, if her mind could bear to stir itself from thoughts of rage. “Are you good to drive?” She asked Morgan, speaking mostly to the ash though. “We can take a break, if you don’t want to. But we’re not going home. I don’t want to go home now. We need to go to Lydia’s, as soon as we can. Time—“ she snarled, “—clearly has done terrible things to my sister.”

Morgan took back the water bottle as soon as Deirdre made her disgust for the idea apparent. She had dumped out the rest and begun cleaning it with her sleeve when Deirdre dismissed the idea. Morgan stopped, screwed on the lid, and put the empty bottle away. Nothing to do about it now. Taking off the sweatshirt from the clinic was a stupid mistake. The ash would get caught in the fibers and almost impossible to fully separate. Some of Lydia’s remains would end up in the wash, or some cotton blend would end up in her urn, or whatever happened in the end. And Deirdre shouldn’t have promised a good death, not when she knew from Morgan’s death that sometimes there wasn’t time enough to fix anything. But nothing in Morgan’s head mattered, and nothing broke the surface of her blank face except a ‘fine,’ and later, when the silence had been long enough to make Morgan sure that Deirdre was finished, she said flatly, “You just re-broke your hand, of course I’m driving. We’ll go to Lydia’s and then swing by the clinic again.” Deirdre didn’t have enough clarity of mind to set her own bones, and she probably couldn’t, with her fingers in their state. She scooped Deirdre up in her arms and walked them back to the car. She buckled both of them in, started the car, and took them away.

Time washed away funny when you were in the pit. It was both a long time and a short time back into town and up to Harris Island. The light had changed, bright and desaturated. Morgan pulled up the drive and turned off the car and came wordlessly around to wait for Deirdre to let herself out whichever ways she was going to insist on next. Deirdre had been right about time, the air crackled with the sound of tarp bubbling in the wind. New windows still had the stickers on them, ready for the final approval that would never come. At least the security team was absent, now lacking someone to follow and crime scene tape had been strung around the perimeter. Morgan only needed to twist the handle hard enough to break it free and let them in.

Deirdre hated being carried, despite its convenience. It made her feel like a child, and of all the things to be, a child was the worst. But she did not argue this time, she had her eyes glued to Lydia, and they remained there. In the car, which she hadn’t noticed they’d gotten into, she tried whispering her friend’s name, as if coaxing her out of her ashen hiding place. Then she spoke to her softly in Gaelic, mostly nonsense, but partly apologies she could not find the words for in English. Every so often, she subjected herself to the vision again, this time she took account of every detail. She had been cataloguing sounds by pitch by the time they came to Lydia’s. “We’ll be back,” she told the ashes, which was a silly thing to do, but Deirdre’s mind had gone to a strange place. A different place. She made sure Lydia was comfortable before she left, wrapped safe in the cheap sweatshirt. Inside, there would be nice vases for Lydia to go in until she found a more permanent home. It would be better than her shirt, at least. Deirdre looked at the ashes. “Do you want to come?” She asked them. They did not respond, but she turned back and picked them up carefully, unable to part with Lydia anyway. Lydia’s house was not even in an acceptable state; too messy, too taped up and put together all wrong. Lydia wouldn’t want that. “I should clean up,” she announced to no one in particular. “But first a good home for the ash—for the ash—for the—for Lydia.” But everything was toppled over, not where it should be. Her mind was still reeling from visions, she didn’t have the capacity to log every change here. Her eyes raked over the sheer number of them, and she felt sick. “This isn’t good.” She said, sitting on Lydia’s couch. The same place she would sit, feet tucked under her, as her and Lydia chatted over wine. Deirdre’s gaze settled on Lydia’s empty spot beside her. “This isn’t right.” She looked to the ashes again, bundled with more care than she had ever held anything. “What do you think?”

“You’re not gonna clean anything. It’s a crime scene,” was all Morgan said. She walked through the first floor of the house, or as far as she could manage while keeping Deirdre in her sight. There had been a struggle, and there had been an investigation underway. Spots were marked up with numbered tags as evidence. If they only knew the worst of it, they wouldn’t have bothered, Morgan thought. She went systematically through each room, stopping in the kitchen to work on the cabinets. It was fitting and cruel and pitiful, to put Lydia in something meant for food, but there weren’t going to be many options on this floor. She took out a sculpted rice serving pot and a ceramic sugar tin, both more form than function. She washed and dried them carefully by hand. There was a lot wrong with this place, a prickling awfulness that wanted to pull Morgan out of her numbness and shoo her out the door. But Morgan didn’t matter right now, and neither did Lydia’s crimes. Maybe another day, but not right now. Morgan brought the two vessels out to the living room where Deirdre still sat. “You don’t care what I think,” she muttered, setting them down in front of her. She’d found fault with everything Morgan had put forward so far, and this was probably going to be more of the same, so Morgan stepped away in an effort to get ahead of the next blast. “I’m going upstairs. Don’t do anything to hurt yourself.”

“What crime happened here?” Deirdre turned to the ashes, whom she thought might laugh and tell her something silly. But with things numbered up, the humans hadn’t infested Lydia’s home to try and look for her; they didn’t care she was ashes. But what crime happened here? Lydia had never done anything wrong, as far as Deirdre could think—which wasn’t very far, now. “The vases and art are missing.” She assumed because Regan had done her number against them, but it was wrong to see Lydia’s house so barren. She would’ve hated this. Likewise, she would’ve hated the options Morgan presented. Deirdre eyed them, and a moment too late, spoke softly. “I always care what you think, Morgan.” But Morgan had gone already and left Deirdre in the place that was wrong and empty. She pulled the serving bowl close, and carefully poured Lydia inside. “I’m sorry,” she told the ashes, and though she was vigilant not to spill anything, she couldn’t help but think she was losing some of Lydia in the transfer. She slipped the sweatshirt back on, bundling the ash-stained front in her hands, tugging them close to her chest. Deirdre turned her attention back to the house, she thought about mixing the numbers around, rubbing dirt over the places they thought were evidence. She didn’t know what crime they assumed was committed here, but they were wrong, and Deirdre needed to protect Lydia’s legacy. But instead she hobbled to her feet, and stumbled her way up the stairs. Falling down and over, revisiting old scrapes against her legs, wasn’t so terrible now that she had no space in her mind to think of it. “Morgan?” She crawled to the bedroom, “what are you looking at?”

Morgan had only been upstairs to visit Remmy before, and so wandered the rooms on rooms on rooms without purpose. She found Remmy’s first: empty. Morgan frowned to think that she and Lydia felt the same way about them and their absence. But there it was, a hollow shell where a life used to be. If Morgan didn’t know any better, she would have taken it for some overly personal art installation. It could be called something like, ‘regret’ or ‘disavowed’ or ‘why the heck did you stick around for so long if you were going to make me feel bad for what I need and fuck off’? That last one was more about her than Lydia, she liked to think, but she shut Remmy’s old door and moved on all the same.

There were more spare rooms and suites, some that looked lived in recently enough to make Morgan’s stomach clench. Clothes folded with neurotic care. Pencils and paper on a desk. Shoes tucked under a bed like they were hiding. It had to be Chloe. Other, too, from the looks of things. Where had Lydia found the time to take more people? How long after leaving Chloe or Sammy dying had this happened? Morgan lingered for several moments. She was one of the few people who could begin to understand the crimes that had happened here, she owed Chloe that much. How many times had she been tormented here? How many times that this felt like some sick safety compared to the torture basement? How much harder was it to bear this alone? Morgan didn’t have the stomach to bear it at all, not with the memory of Chloe’s cries in her ears. She stumbled backed away from the hallway and turned down a different one. The house seemed to change, performance and display falling away to simpler aesthetics, cozier furniture. Morgan entered the room at the end of the hall and found herself in Lydia’s bedroom.

It was the kind of room someone’s mother would have liked: soft textured fabrics fresh out of a bedding catalogue, warm light coming through the curtains, fat photo albums and well-loved poetry books stacked on the nightstand, and on a vanity shelf, miraculously intact, were arrays of trinkets and knick knacks. Morgan went up to look at each one, noticing the particularities, the mish mash of styles. This wasn’t curated the way the sculptures and paintings downstairs were. If there was any logic here, it was known only to Lydia, mysterious and personal. There were runes and gaelic dialects that must have been fae and off in a corner was a collection of bones, including a bell jar terrarium arranged around a racoon skull.

“My bones,” Morgan whispered. She had given Lydia the gift on their last planned meeting. She always came with a gift for Lydia, but this one had been her most involved; crafted by hand instead of purchased. “I thought you hated this,” she said. “I thought you hated all my presents, but I worked on this for days, hoping you’d be impressed. I wanted to remember what it was like creating something, and I thought you of all people would understand. But you never really said you liked it, so I figured you put it in some reject closet...” But it was here, carefully tended to along with Lydia’s other treasures, the moss even looked like it had been nurtured recently. Morgan surveyed the collection again, the strange hodge lodge of it, and the care they were curated with. These were gifts. These were people she wanted to keep close to her heart, and for some reason she had chosen to remember Morgan along with them, even after everything. And looking at this, how could Morgan not think of Lydia over at the house, sipping wine with Deirdre, or next to Morgan in the car, begging silently to be accepted? And then all the times they fought online and Lydia’s patience when Morgan said something stupid and offensive to her fae ears and that time they sat in the warmth of a fae funeral pyre, pressed together with Deirdre in the middle? That was real. As real as Chloe’s cries in the basement and everything else that had happened here. This stupid terrium that only mattered because Morgan had made it--this was Lydia too.

Morgan lifted the bell jar terrarium and held it to her chest, bundling her arms tight until the glass broke. Morgan whimpered. No, she didn’t matter. None of this mattered. Not the glass pressing into her skin, not her hurt, her betrayal, her grief. And yet. “What was wrong with you?” She asked Lydia. “Why couldn’t you have been this kind to—what was wrong with you?” She sank to the floor, staring into the broken offering like it might hold any answers. She reached deep inside herself for that calm, dead balance again, but it was no good. It wasn’t a place Morgan had ever known how to keep herself in. As she curled her body over the mess, sobbing into hand, it seemed that it, too, had abandoned her completely.

Morgan sensed Deirdre only faintly. She gasped for control, scrambling for something inside her heart to protect herself with. She wiped her eyes furiously and curled her body away, crunching the glass further. It came apart on her shirt, but Morgan didn’t care. She wasn’t ready to get off the floor and face whatever Deirdre would do to her next. “...Stop.” She said, her tear-choked voice just above a whisper.

“Morgan?” Deirdre called out again, crawling across the floor. If she had sense, she would have hated the child-like quality of it. If she was thinking, she would have apologized for it. “Are you oka—“ Stop. Deirdre flinched, Morgan would not catch the flicker of pain across her features, though her whimper was audible. “But—“ her argument caught in her throat. Somewhere beyond her, there were the words of care and love: you’re not okay, I won’t stop. But there, right then, all she had was quiet. Tell me what’s wrong, turned into the slow reaching for Morgan, grimacing at her flinching of the touch. Whimpering as it happened again when she wrapped her arms around her love. The Lydia spilled across her shirt spread on to Morgan, but Deirdre’s mind was a simple beast now; it did not possess the intelligence to consider intricacies. “Let me see your hands,” she asked softly, then set about picking the glass out of her. That, like all of the Lydia that had been defiled around her, was also wrong. She was learning that she didn’t like seeing the people she loved in ways they didn’t belong; Lydia to ash, Morgan to pincushion. “You were right about the water bottle,” she said, “but I do like wearing Lydia. It feels like she’s hugging me again….almost. I miss that. I held her while she cried, in that bed right there, and at the time I didn’t think to cherish the feeling. I thought I’d always have it.” She paused, trying to pull Morgan close to her, like always was—like she also imagined she would always be able to. But she had lost Morgan once, a few times before if loss by her own doing could be counted, and she knew to always hold her as if committing the feeling to memory. “What’s wrong?”

Morgan continued to cry, shrinking and cowering from Deirdre’s touches as she searched for the cold, effortless grasp of death, and a voice that at least resembled her own. She tried pulling her hands away (the cuts didn’t matter) and she tried dissolving out of Deirdre’s arms and slithering back to the car alone. But Deirdre had her, and she was trapped, and maybe it would have been the only trap she wanted to fall into if it wasn’t all a meaningless lie. “I said stop…” she croaked. “Stop lying, stop touching me like you…” Her voice snagged and whined in her throat. “Like you suddenly care. Just stop, please…” The back and forth felt more cruel than the rejection; at least when Deirdre had abandoned her before, Morgan never had to question their reunions. She could count on at least a week, often more. Deirdre’s strong, slender arms had pushed her away so rarely before today, Morgan had thought they were the key to knowing she was safe. But that had been before the nightmare day, before she’d stopped being able to do anything right or important in Deirdre’s eyes.

“I can’t do this again,” she begged in a whisper. “Don’t act like you want to stay anymore. I believed you—I believed you last time and—” And Deirdre couldn’t have been bothered to do things differently even once. For all Morgan knew, she hadn’t been listening all. “I can’t anymore. Please just stop and tell me what you’re angry about next. Were the dishes I picked out too ugly? Do you hate the windows being messed up? Do you hate me for wanting to go back to the clinic? Or do you—stars, I don’t even fucking know anymore because you’re never going to tell me what’s really wrong or listen to when I try to explain, you’re just going to leave!” And in that case, why was Morgan saying so much now? Catching the irony, Morgan slumped in on herself, trembling as she searched in vain for the dead, nothing parts of her for comfort. “Please, don’t lie anymore. I don’t understand what I ever did but doesn’t matter, so just do it...” Just go. Leave me behind.

Deirdre pulled her hands back, tucked carefully in her lap, as she listened to the strange words tumbling out of the strange Morgan. She thought it was a dream, for a moment, until a dull pain throbbed across her hand, and she noticed for the first time how swollen and misshapen it was. She couldn’t remember when or why, but she noticed it. And she looked at Morgan, and she noticed more—the betrayal claimed in her features, the torment in her voice. “What did I do?” She asked quietly, she tried to search her mind for the answer but could not remember anything outside of entering the peculiar dimension that housed this wrong imitation of Lydia’s home. “I do care about you. I always care. I don’t understand…” she blinked, found herself crying, and blinked some more. She wanted to touch Morgan, but Morgan had told her to stop, and in her obedience, she did not dare. She thought the good Deirdre, the one that could have kept her promise to Lydia, would have known how to fix this. She wouldn’t have brought Morgan to this point to begin with. But as she was now, she couldn’t logic out what was wrong, what she needed to apologize for, and what she could do to make it better. Her mind was jumbled with thoughts of Lydia, memories intertwined with regrets. She could feel the leanan-sidhe on her chest, holding her steady. “The dishes were ugly.” But that was only because any dish would be ugly to hold Lydia, it wasn’t Morgan’s fault. And she didn’t like the windows being all broken either, but Morgan had nothing to do with that. “I don’t understand,” she said again, usually Morgan was good at explaining for her. And so she waited. And waited. And blinked, and cried, and waited. “I love you. I promise I love you. I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you, I promise I do. More than my life, if I could do that. It would be such a great honour. It is the only thing I want, everyday.” Deirdre cocked her head to the side, as if the new angle might provide answers. “Do you….want me to leave?”

There were limits to how much a zombie could shrink her body, as it turned out. Morgan’s bones bent as she tried to shield herself from Deirdre’s next absence and the hateful, drowning feelings that would take her after. There were limits to her nerves too. How did Deirdre not understand? What part of anything she’d said had been unclear, now or anytime before. She lifted her head, bewildered and horrified. Was this some sick joke? Was she toying with her now? (She wouldn’t. Even like this, she wouldn’t, right?) “All I have ever begged you to do since yesterday was stay with me!” Morgan tried to scream, as if climbing near banshee decibels would make Deirdre finally hear her, but her voice came out ragged and choked with the hurt she was too frightened to let go of. “How can you…” And Deirdre cried and promised and Morgan couldn’t bear it. The two pieces didn’t match up and she couldn’t keep guessing wrong forever. “Do you not even hear me right now? Did I die again with you in our driveway? Because I have told you and begged you! All I did today was try to please you, to make anything up to you from before, and you told me it was okay! You told me you were here, you asked me what was wrong like you wanted to know and it mattered and I believed you! And then you left me! You can’t say these things and make me feel--” Safe. So safe that she never had to hide, that even when it made no logical sense, she mattered in a way that was only possible with love. “You can’t do things like that and then leave me behind like I’m not even there!” Morgan’s voice broke with an ugly sob, forceful enough to make her sit up on her knees. “If I didn’t do anything wrong, why are you punishing me like I did? Why...why are you acting like everything I say is awful if you’re not mad at me? Why can’t you stay with me when I need you if you don’t hate me for letting her die? Why can’t you tell me anything if you love me? My whole stupid little life is built on you, and you were gone. You were dead! And then you couldn’t get away from me fast enough or bear to talk to me and I know I was too busy being broken over your bleeding fucked up body to get to her in time, but you keep acting like you forgive me and then taking it away!” In a way that struck Morgan as cruel now, she still felt too safe around Deirdre. She could hear the pitiful, child-like anguish under her cries. There was no dignity, no mask of anger or cold, deathlike apathy. She was just hurt and afraid, and though she hated herself for the pathetic quality of it, in a way she was still begging, too.

Deirdre sat very still and listened. She repeated Morgan in her head to make sure she was understanding the words, she asked herself their meanings and parsed them from English to Irish to English again until she was sure she understood. “I would’ve died for Lydia,” she said softly, picking at the ashy remains of Lydia on her shirt, rolling them against her palm. She wanted to weave Lydia into her skin, she wondered if it was possible. “I would die for Lydia. Still. My only regret with that promise was that she had to take it back. I would’ve died on our driveway for her. I would’ve died and thought nothing of it. I think of dying for her now. I think it’d be nice. I understand why my family spoke of our lives having no value, why we take no ties. We are fae, we carry their deaths, we avenge them; no matter the cost. I would die for Lydia.” Dread dug its cold fingers into her stomach, churning and pulling. “I’m so sorry. I would’ve died and left you, and I wouldn’t have regretted it. I would still do that now, and I can’t---I can’t shake it from my head. I want peace for her so badly I would wrench it from myself. But that’s not fair to you. I’m so sorry, my love.” The things she had to do, and the new life she carved with Morgan, never had learned how to fit nicely together. But her love for Morgan was not a whim to be cast aside, and not a treasure she would so easily give up. It was that same perseverance that marked her love for Lydia, too. “It’s not your fault Lydia died. It’s not your fault she’s ash. I don’t blame you, I’m not angry at you. I’m trying to stay with you. I’m trying because I want to. But it’s hard because---” Deirdre lifted her bandaged hands, one bent wrong and one normal, and tried to demonstrate a split road. “But I’m sorry.” She dropped her hands, lacking the energy to keep them up. Deirdre, unlike Morgan, had no torrent of emotion inside of her. There was anger and pain, neither she showed now, and then deep, unshakable, sadness. Something like self-loathing, but more desperate around the eyes. “I’m sorry.” Was all she could think to say; was all she knew how to say now. “I’m sorry.” And she sat very still and straight as she offered it, just the way she’d been taught. She could be a stitching of instincts and half-feelings, a mannequin of memory. But she could not be Deirdre anymore.

Morgan shook her head. In her awful, bleating explanations, she’d closed some of the distance between them on instinct. She was close enough to touch Deirdre now, and her arms twitched, aching for her, but she held back, still tense with fear, like an animal that had been hit too many times. Morgan scoffed at the idea that Deirdre was trying, that forgetting her not five minutes after insisting she bare herself counted as trying. “I knew,” she croaked. “You would never choose me over a fae. I knew that when we started. I just thought… you would care enough by now to try to take me with you. Or to tell me that’s what you were doing. I would’ve driven you anywhere if you’d just said she was in trouble. You think I don’t still love her? That I don’t hate what they did to her? I would go with you anywhere if it would just occur to you to ask me, especially for her. I’d pack you a bag if you swore to me you could only do it by yourself. I don’t need you to look at it like it’s one or the other. I needed you to choose me too.” She looked up at her, eyes searching her strange, faraway face. “How do I know you aren’t going to drop me in five more minutes if I believe you right now? How do I know anything will be different? That this isn’t going to be like every other sad choice I trusted in before you? How can you tell me that you can choose me too?”

“I did choose you.” Deirdre blinked. “Always. I did when I said I loved you the first time, I did when we drove to the clinic instead. I am choosing you. Do you know it’s sacrilege to let a non-fae hold a dead fae’s body? But I gave you that ash.” She didn’t exactly get it, but she understood enough to try and wrap herself around Morgan again. “But this isn’t about choosing, I don’t think…or maybe...maybe it is. I don’t know. Is it? Is it?” She buried her head into the crook of Morgan’s neck, taking her in by way of her senses. With her nose pressed up against her like this, she could smell the decay--Morgan was due a meal soon, she realized, then tried to think back to the last time she ate. “I’m sorry.” How had she let them go so far without noticing? Why didn’t she stop to ask if Morgan wanted something to eat? “I could give you a promise,” she said, wincing as she realized her offer was in poor taste. “I don’t want to leave you, Morgan. I just don’t know what to do. I didn’t think Lydia could die, and I didn’t think there was time to say anything about it. I don’t---I don’t know what to do. I said it’d be okay when we found her, but it’s not. She’s ash, Morgan. Ash!” Deirdre trembled, clinging tighter to her love. “Y-you don’t know, I suppose. Can you trust me? Can you trust that I love you more than that?”

Morgan sank into Deirdre and let her hold her. “I didn’t ask for her ash, I know she’s yours. I just want us to have gone together,” she whimpered. “I just want you to take me with you next time so we can go together. Or talk to me. I can be strong with you. Don’t you believe in me enough for that?” She latched on tighter as she felt Deirdre shudder and cry. She could’ve sworn they’d each been so strong before, that they could each stand on their own two feet without being afraid. Maybe, when the worst of this was over, they could be again. Morgan flinched and clutched Deirdre tighter at the mention of a promise, but in this moment, it still looked to her like salvation. She was so tired of holding herself in, she ached with hunger and grief, and even as her heart expanded to accommodate more anguish, there didn’t feel like enough room to mourn Lydia as just herself. (She didn’t want to, she didn’t have the same blinders that Deirdre did. She knew too much, enough to think that she and Deirdre might be the only ones crying over the good in Lydia that was lost. Grief was a cruel feeling, but grieving alone was punishing.) One death she was old hat at managing. Two, this close to her heart, and she didn’t know which end was up, even if Deirdre had come back in the end.“But I trusted you before--” she said pitifully. “You can’t do this to me again, Deirdre. And don’t tell me you’re ready for something you’re not. I would’ve waited for you to ask me later, I would’ve tried…” She might not have succeeded, but she wouldn’t have given up everything to Deirdre’s deaf ears if she’d known better. “I was right there with you on the bench, you didn’t even take my hand. I would’ve gone with you…” She shuddered, crying into Deirdre’s shoulder, trembling with tension her body was desperate to release. None of this was fair, or right, she didn’t even want to be crying over Deirdre when there was someone else who was never coming back. Not by zombies or necromancy or anything else. Her fingers dug in, heedless of any limits or habits she’d learned. Her body wanted to fasten itself to safety and hear the heartbeat that she had come to think of as safety. Somewhere, in that desperate, pitiful place, Morgan realized they already had a promise thread between them she could pull on. “Can I ask for you…?” She said in a shaky voice. “I feel like I lost you too and I need you. I want you. Can I ask you to come to me? Stay close for just… you haven’t even let me have you back for a day, can I at least ask for until morning? Can you love me enough to give me that?”

“No, you have to hold her,” Deirdre explained quietly, “you know who she was, so you have to hold her. No one else knows and loves like you do.” But her words fell away in a matching whimper, her body slumped against Morgan and the rest she just gave up on. All the fire and brimstone raged quiet and frail. She was tired now, as she had been for so long. But that was only this Deirdre; the woman who loved Morgan. She was not whole; she was part anger, part sadness, part ash. As the parts could not exist together, not any more, she hand-picked the one that needed to perform. “I’m sorry,” she said again, “I love you.” The only things that remained feeling right inside of her; apology for her inadequacies and love that would forever hold for Morgan. “Of course you can,” Deirdre pulled back and smiled, running her broken hand against Morgan’s cheek, as if nothing was wrong with it or her; a facsimile of the affection she knew to offer. “Of course.” She couldn’t tell the promise apart from her own desire to be by Morgan’s side, and she didn’t exactly know where she had been lost, but she nodded and urged for Morgan to take it. “Ask for me,” she smiled again, a small thing though her face pulled in memory of a larger one. The corner of her lip twitched. “I love you. Ask for me.” She pitched her voice up, the way she remembered warmth and affection sounding. She was trying, but she wasn’t sure if it looked more like lying. She wanted to be good, that was it. She summoned the woman who loved Morgan and told her to sit still and smile, even if emotion was a strange taste on her tongue now. She wanted to be good.

“Okay, I’ll hold her. We won’t tell anyone, but I will,” Morgan whispered, her voice smoothing out as her body eased to the tune of Deirdre’s assurances. The tune was familiar, even if it was off-key. Deirdre was hurt. Deirdre was lost, in a way. Latched onto her the way she was now, with permission granted and settling over her like a shock blanket, she could sense that as easily as the tremor in her love’s voice and the quiet outside. The rest of Morgan’s heart unlocked and she sagged,nodding and nuzzing into Deirdre’s hand as she stroked her cheek. “I need you. Will you please come to me, Deirdre? Just until morning?” She said softly. And in the saying, she knew that it was a question and no question at all. Not just because of the magic threads Deirdre had given her outside Al’s that sad night, but because that was how Deirdre loved her, as a matter of course. Morgan took Deirdre’s broken hand gently in her own and kissed her wrist, pressing in as hard as she could. “I’m sorry I need you,” she murmured. “I love you too.” She took several deep breaths. “Thank you for trying for me right now. I just need a minute…” She breathed deep again. “We shouldn’t stay here much longer, in case the police come back, and you can’t set your bones with your hand like this, we really do need to go back to the clinic. But we can take a minute…” She breathed again. Deirdre was here. Deirdre had promised. Deirdre loved her. They were both just lost and spun in different directions, groping clumsily for some kind of stability. They’d never both needed each other so badly at the same time before and they stumbled through the crisis like idiots. Morgan looked down at the terrarium pieces on the floor. Would you be angry with me, for using our promise? She silently asked Lydia. Would you be proud that losing you didn’t break us? Morgan breathed again. “We can take that jewelry box on the vanity for her ashes, if you think that would be better than what I brought you downstairs. I think everything up here is a gift.” Morgan gestured to the array of knick knacks above her. “It could be like being held by a friend…” Morgan stroked Deirdre’s cheek and searched her eyes, wondering if there was enough of Deirdre leftover to latch onto her as dearly as Morgan latched onto Deirdre’s efforts at gentleness.

Deirdre sighed in relief, falling against Morgan like the steadiness of a bed. She could rest there, she thought, and maybe when she woke there would be more of her to work with. “Of course,” she mumbled, and couldn’t tell if the promise blossomed warmth in her chest or if her love for Morgan did. She always felt tethered to her with something far stronger than a promise. “Don’t be sorry about that,” she breathed, “I need you too.” And though the fact made her feel horribly selfish to admit, it was a truth she could unearth from herself despite her state. “We can stay here for a minute.” It sounded nice, or it sounded like it should be nice, Deirdre wasn’t sure. She only had one hand to cling desperately to Morgan with, and she gripped the fabric of Morgan’s clothing tight between her fingers. She didn’t want to lose her, that was another truth easy to unearth. “And the clinc’ll be okay. I’ll be okay to go there.” Her gaze followed along to the jewelry box. “I’m worried…that if I move her again, there’ll be less of her. I know that box is better looking, I know she’d like it more, but whenever her family comes, they might want to move her into something else. And I was thinking---she gave me that vase, the one I have the magnolias in. Maybe she’d like it there. Just for now.” She closed her eyes, and shooed away the sight of Lydia’s empty bedroom for her memories of the one she occupied. Deirdre had always been so pleased to watch Lydia go about her day, as if she might learn from her how to be just like that. This house would never know her again, and she’d fit so well here. She’d been Lydia for so long, Deirdre thought it suited her. Maybe she liked it too. Maybe she found a place to stay. Maybe this was home. She wouldn’t know now, no one would. “Lydia cared about her friends,” Deirdre opened her eyes, “people didn’t care enough about her, as it seems. But she was good. She loved, just like everyone else. And she did care. She did. I know it seems weird to you, because of how she could treat--” Deirdre swallowed thickly, leaving those words about Lydia in a different place and time. “---When I first came over, I gave her this deer skull. I thought she hated it. It wasn’t pretty like a work of art to her, and I knew she didn’t like death much. But she kept it, and she liked it. And she cared. About me, about the people she loved. They’re not going to see that, are they? They’re going to find the basement and--” She swallowed again. Deirdre didn’t know how many people knew how Lydia liked to feed, but she had a feeling that the number of them that knew and were okay with it was something she could count on one not-broken hand. Except for the fae, she reasoned, they’d get it. “I want to take some things she liked; dresses, art...I don’t know what’s going to become of this house and its belongings. But I want some things to be hers, for as long as I can keep them.”

Morgan stroked Deirdre’s hair and wove careful kisses around her temples as she spoke. There was relief in knowing that she wouldn’t have to fight her on going to the clinic, or on staying huddled together on the floor. Deirdre had promised, and so there was no need to hold onto her fear and no need to cling, except to give comfort to one another. “Then we’ll keep her where she is until we can put her in the vase. Nothing else will be lost, not anymore.” She listened to Deirdre’s story, more attentively than she had the others, and made a note to ask her for more, as many as she would give, over the next several days, which were doomed to be awful. “I know she did. I don’t know if you could hear, but her last words were to you. She loved you more than anyone else here. And I have to believe that love goes somewhere too. No energy is completely destroyed. Her love still exists, and it’s yours. And--” Morgan swallowed thickly. She had just regained her composure, but with her fear for Deirdre abated, Lydia rushed in to fill those empty spaces. “I know she loved us. I don’t know why she loved me too, we argued so much, and I think I got on her nerves--” Morgan sniffled, gasping out a sad laugh. “But I know she did. She wouldn’t have kept this stupid terrarium if she didn’t.” Morgan looked down at the mess she made of her own present. There was no more chance of repairing it now, just as there was no turning Lydia’s ashes into the woman they knew again. “And I...I don’t understand how what she did was good, but I would’ve given anything for her to be here to explain and argue with me about it.” She shook her head. “No. No, they aren’t going to understand. But we know she wasn’t just anything. Stars, she was so many things. And we’ll remember the truth, okay?” Her heart sank at Deirdre’s simple, heartbreaking request. She pulled away enough to look at her girlfriend so she would know how disappointed she was to not be able to grant her this to the extent she wanted. “We can’t, my love. Not as much as I know you want to. This is a crime scene, and people took pictures and inventory of the things that happened here. It’s risky enough taking one of her dishes to put her in. Whatever you take, it has to be small. Something easily missed. She wouldn’t want you to get involved in this mess. She spent her last time protecting you, and I want to do that too.” Morgan stroked her love’s cheek. “One or two small things. Nothing more. Do you want me to help you up?”

“I wish I could feel it, the energy that’s left. The only thing I get is her death.” Deirdre slumped further against Morgan, as if she might mold their bodies into one. Shell of herself, she would’ve died to be filled with something else, someone else. If only she could let Morgan carry her all the way, out the otherside of time where everything was okay. “But it’s better than nothing. It’s always better than nothing.” She had heard enough prattle about grief and bereavement, some she had offered and some offered by her family. But in actuality, loss was something she had experienced very little of--a child by banshee standards, emotionally unattached by every other. She didn’t know what to do about it. But Morgan did, Morgan understood it very well. “When you lost your father…” she started quietly, “...how long was it until you started to feel whole? Did you ever?” She couldn’t live like this, she was admitting in her own way. With all the pain she held for Lydia. She felt each cut, every stab, the desperation in her cracked voice--she knew her death, and she knew the ways to cleanse herself of it. The peace she could bring was not one she wanted to commit, for the quiet of the moment, sheltered in Morgan’s arms, she felt safe enough for one last truth: she didn’t want to hurt anyone, not really. She had grown tired of it, and she knew better now. Quickly, the thought would be swallowed by ones of anger and revenge, but she offered it to Morgan, asking her to keep it. One day she would need to remind her that she didn’t want this, and she feared that day would come very soon. Lydia’s peace would be a hurricane. “We’ll remember the truth,” she repeated, “Lydia as she was.” With weak strength, she tried to nudge Morgan up; silent answer to her question. Her own legs couldn’t hold her, and she needed Morgan in more ways than she knew how to admit. “Then I’ll leave it. I can come back...later, maybe, when it’s not a crime scene anymore. I-If it’s---If they found the---this stuff might not be Lydia’s anymore. I don’t know what they do about kidna---kid--” Deirdre swallowed. “A-are you good to leave now? I think I want to---I think I--I just---I don’t want to think about huma--people--people...t-touching her things. I don’t--” Her words trickled off into whimpers and sobs.

Morgan cradled Deirdre as close as she could. Without her fear clouding her mind, she had enough wherewithal to take care with how she used her hands, her grip firm but not painful, her soothing strokes gentle but not too soft. “Oh, my love…” she sighed, pressing a long kiss to her head. “It felt like so long. It felt like...there was this heavy spiked weight inside me, and I couldn’t move without getting hurt or crushed by it. For the first week, it felt like that pain was all there was of me.” Another kiss. “But in time, the weight gets smaller. The cuts it sliced into you scar over. And eventually it’s so small and light, rattling around your chest, you don’t really feel it cut you at all, except on a bad day. You’re whole already, my love. There’s just something else for you to carry now. And you can. It’ll be a little while, but you’ll be able to as it gets lighter. And I’ll help however I can.” She looked into Deirdre’s face and smiled as tenderly as she could, trying to offer her the best hope instead of the recollections of her worst nights. I came out okay, right? I was happy again, and sometime so will you. I’m here, and I carry this, and I love you.

Deirdre’s face seemed to be reaching out with a message of it’s own, some strange thought, embarrassed, even ashamed. It seemed to be asking Morgant to help her, to get her out of whatever sunken place she was in. If it were as easy as getting to her feet and lifting Deirdre up, she would have done it in a moment. “I’ve got you,” she whispered in her ear. “We’re together, and I’ve got you, okay?” She half carried, half dragged them to the nightstand where the picked up the first book she could reach before scooping up Deirdre’s legs and walking out with her, bridal carry, and coming down the stairs. “I’m going to bend without putting you down, and you’ll get the dish you put her in, and then we’ll go, okay? We’ll go by the house first and put her in your safe and get you a change of clothes, and we’ll go back to the clinic, and if you want, I’ll read to you from her book, and we’ll be together. Is that okay?”

“But I have so much to carry…” Deirdre half-whined, half-sighed. She nodded along to Morgan’s words and willed them to help her, somehow. She latched on to Morgan’s expression of love and devotion, and willed that to stick with her too. She found they fluttered down, like someone trying to press paper to a wall, but she picked it up and tried again. And again. “Thank you, Morgan.” She said, slumping as the last of her energy drizzled down. The last words she managed to get out were a grumble, petulant in a way that felt familiar even to her now, “I hate being carried.” But she smiled softly, in a flicker, and didn’t protest. She nodded along to Morgan’s plan, though she would have agreed to just anything then, and let herself be carried away. She picked up the dish, just as Morgan said it would happen, and cradled it against her. Then she was in the car, as planned, and fatigue set into her. Her spiked weight was foregin, and heavy, and she could only just imagine how much worse it would be alone. Whenever she would wake next, memory jumbled, she would thank Morgan. She might just have died on their driveway, but the only reason she was breathing around the spikes was her love. When she woke, she would thank her. When she woke, she would...

#negative space #wr deirdre #wr chatzy #wr deirdre chatzy #domestic abuse tw #wickedswriting

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kaiju-z · 4 years ago

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Seon Adventures Episode 38: Bathhouses and Bonds

After a month of travel, successfully retrieving the King’s Blade, Ena, learning who their client is, i. e. Akar’Niel and choosing to learn more about the circumstances of the mass elimination of dwarves and dragonborn on Seon, the party have reached Guan.

And straight off the bat, no pun intended, the group discover they are followed by an imp. After a quick discussion on whether to take it down or not, Malak stils his hand from sending the denizen of Hell back home, as it approaches the group.

Through a quick inspection of the party, the shape changing critter flies over to Mournimar and delivers the Tiefling Ranger a Sending Stone, of a blue diamond make. After which it does a JoJo pose and poofs.

As stated previously, this was a Sending Stone, allowing someone to cast 2 sending messages a day. But only to the person that has the other one. Rocky Talkies, as Malak puts it. (Or Hayden, I’m not sure. They’re both wholesome and we love them).

Mournimar gets that explained to him and calls the person that gifted it to him. And he hears a familiar voice from the other end say " Well you are alive, then!”. Much to the tiefling’s frustration, he recognizes the voice as that of his ex-boyfriend, Lazarus, follower of Potencia.

Mourni tries to ask what he wants, but instead Lazarus does the “kh-kh” noise (you know the one, where someone does a double pistols and a wink???) and that’s about all the messaging that goes on for that day.

Again. Much to Mournimar’s frustration.

Malak suggests getting rid of the stone. But Mournimar wants to keep it.

Luck suggests flipping a coin and he even brings one out from his journal bag. But Jun suggests Mournimar hold onto it and in the end, they agree on that.

(Also Mournimar gets a praise from Jun, which makes him feel validated).

The rest of the day passes uneventfully and they carry on, as the ground beneath their feet becomes more and more rocky. WIth the most perceptive in the party taking note that there’s a slight silhouette in the near distance of a town.

During the night, Belli receives a dream, like everyone else, but Mournimar, before her. As everyone had kept their dreams to themselves, for the following day, the group find themselves walking into a small and cozy town, which Arryn guesses would be Sodinvorg, most likely.

Very different from what the group had been used to so far. In a wasteland such as this (which funny enough is the right temperature for Luctan to feel at straight up at home?!) Sodinvorg’s constructed of tall buildings made out of clay, all painted red, white or red and white. Most split in multiple flats as they can tell from the windows. A variety of people in the windows, mostly Yuan-Ti, Kobolds, Tabaxi and Lizardfolk.

People here know each other and are close, mingling with each other.

Notable locations are the bathhouse, the tavern and the marketplace.

Luctan makes a b-line for the bathhouse, all excited and swept under the positive nostalgia of the enviroment he find himself in, with Jun joining him, all the while Belli would go and buy certain supplies. Cement included for some reason?! And then go to the apothecary.

A pair of young lizardfolk women run the bathhouse, which the pair of Jun and Luck can discern is constructed very intricately and with a style to it. (The place is essentially a roman bathhouse.)

Mournimar woud go to the Rolls and Scrolls place, where one could buy spell scrolls and delicious breads, as advertised, while Malak would check with the antique shop.

Inside the bath house, Jun takes on her mask of a beautiful Drow woman, named Valencia, having noted that there aren’t really any humans in the area. Valencia is a bit posh. Long white hair in a bun.

As they score themselves a place in the bath, The Disguise Duo enjoy a relaxing bath, unbothered by the cramped and crowded enviroment, as they are confident about themselves and their bodies.

No juicy gossip in the area and even if there was, a loud comment about Mommy Milkers from another of the patrons would distract the duo.

Arryn eventually joins the two, but after an unfortunate bomb dive goes wrong, he leaves, as the pool was too shallow for any acrobatics. Luctan’s Healing Word aids him in recovering from at least the physical pain, at least.

The duo have another talk, where Luck learns of Jun’s origins. Though she began her careers in Sa Doma, she was originally from Elmeria. Which, to say the least, was a neat coincidence, as the party had gotten their initial name there, when asked by Morticia.

Jun would share that, given her race as a Changeling, few doors were truly open for her, as a Shapeshifter in a world that had a bias against them, and so, the bounty hunting life and that of an escort were ones that she could slip into easily. Luck would bemoan her fate, how opportunities were taken from her due to things she couldn’t help. But was glad for her being able to make the best of it.

“When one door closes, another opens”, the two would agree.

Luck would tell her his story, in turn, being candid about the facts, though, naturally, given they were speaking around others, he’d of course avoid using the “H” word as to where he had come from. Besides, the yalready knew about that from the fight at the barn.

Luck would come to a point, admitting that he was unsure what to do with himself now. He was content helping people, but he had no plan on what to do with himself now, when he didn’t take on the rest of his revenge quest.

Jun encourages him to take the time and consider. And she’d admit that conversations weren’t generally something people would approach her for, given her non-violent work ethic.

But Luck would compliment her for her talk, appreciating being able to talk openly with her on matters. Jun would note that he was about the 3rd person to praise her for that.

Meanwhile, at the Rolls and Scrolls, Mournimar spends big money on several rolls and scrolls, making Matiro, the Yuan-Ti’s day with all the cash that comes his way.

Feather Fall, Aid, Calm Emotions and Find Steed are all bought and paid for by the Ranger, with the latter three being bought for a collective 500 gold.

Furthemore, the tiefling buys 7 loafs of bread, for the party and Arryn.

And then. Before he leaves, Mournimar leaves the man a tip of 5 platinum. And upon leaving, he can distinctly hear the Yuan-Ti scurry off, screaming to a friend: “PHILLIP! I’M IN LOVE!”

At a convergence point, Mournimar gets a gold piece from Jun and a pat on the head. Getting validated by an older female figure boosts his morale. Quite evident from his tail wagging like crazy.

From the calico Tabaxi, Jolly Sunrise, proprietor of “ Happy Belly Rubs “, Belli gets a healing herb, a root that healing potions are made from.

(It is at this point that we spend 10 minutes on Tabaxi bathroom name jokes. It’s just-you had to be there.)

Jolly makes a “Jolly Secret Rub”, which gives the party 1d8 Temp Hp. Gives special smelling salts, which are used as Spare The Dying as a bonus action. 165 worth. And lastly, upon Belli’s request, she delivers onto the Half-Orc Bard a pair of extra spicy peppers, referred to as “Dragon’s Breath”.

“Don’t give it to halflings. It could genuinely kill them.” she would note.

Also Belli learns that Jolly has a tiefling brother. Due to his fire resistance, she had learned that these could kill anoyone, without fire resistance. (Though that could’ve been a joke0

After the bread, the party go to the Cozy Leaf. An older tabaxi man, orange and graying around the nose, heads the place. He has a menu. There’s coffee, milk, honey milk. Maple Milk! The man’s name is Leaf On The Water. He has a strange clockwork device playing relaxing music nearby, giving the place a wholesome atmosphere.

His Grandson, an Artificer, built this contraption. Travels and sends new stuff to the old cat. There’s a stick figure drawing at the counter, drawn by the youngest in the family, his granddaughter. The grandson is taller than him. Grandson is 30. Grand Daughter is 3.

There’s even a portrait that gets showcased of the family. One big orange family. Himself, his three kids and his two grandkids.

Most of the group, but the bearded ones, get themselves a warm beverage. Honey Milk and Maple Milk.

While the patrty slowly unwind for the day, Belli asks Jun if she has any expertise with chemicals. Interesting enough, the Bloodhunter does have skills with alchemy supplies. And the two work on making pepper spray. Super. Spicy. Pepper Spray.

Malak find himself buying several items from the antique shop, run by the kobolds Zett and Nix, Red and Bronze respectively.

From the items presented to him, he takes what he could consider lucky charms.

Among them a coin of a strange material, a stone figurine of a snake, as well as a small silver rod with no decoration. It makes a harp noise. Notably, the rod gives off faint evocation magic.

Before purchasing these, he asks the Kobolds, just to be sure, that they hadn’t pilfered these from any gravesights and the like. They specify that any item they have in their shop has been brought in from families, who found no use for them.

They are established businessmen here. And the price for the collection of items bought is 25 silver. Enough to cover rent for the month.

Malak thanks them in Draconic and leaves after the monetary exchange.

At the end of the day, as everyone prepares for the night’s rest in the tavern, Jun keeps an ear and eye out for gossip, while Mournimar takes a single room for himself (and Morgan).

One, where he has himself his own little dream.

End of Episode.

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the-forest-library · 4 years ago

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All done! This challenge was good for me as it pushed me to get to some books that had been lingering on my TBR forever.

Fantasy: The Lady Alchemist by Samantha Vitale Historical: Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller Retelling/Adaptation: Pride, Prejudice, & Other Flavors by Sonali Dev #OwnVoices: The Bride Test by Helen Hoang Non-American Author: The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe LGBTQ+: Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner Author of Color: Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev

Rom-Com: Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert Ensemble Cast: The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan Mystery/Thriller: The Safe-Keepers’s Secret by Sharon Shinn Disability/Mental Illness: Disability Visability by Alice Wong Graphic Novel: Snapdragon by Kat Leyh Paranormal: My Calamity Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, & Jodi Meadows Award-Winning Book: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi First-Person POV: Bloomability by Sharon Creech Feminism: The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee Illustrated: You Matter by Christian Robinson First Book in a Series: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

One Word Title: Vactionland by John Hodges Middle Grade: Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman On TBR Forever: Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

YA Gems BOTM: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor Made Into a Film: Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis Found Family: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

#summer reading challenge #reading challenge #book bingo #books #booklr #bookish #reading #bibliophile

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talesofealdancynedom · 4 years ago

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Sunaeth, in makeshift fairy robes.

Tale 0: Death at the Wolf Gate (chapter 3. Sunaeth, Eaowaeth, & Behxfineth 3/4) part 2. Stories of Fey

none

Sunaeth was the eldest remaining daughter of the wolf kingdom. She loved to hunt in the shadow veil, and bring carrion to the griminthrope raven princes, in the death tree; just to tease her younger siblings by showing how close she could get. When Sunaeth ran through the veils, she was unmistakable; for her coat was as white and bright as her mothers. Unlike Eobreth, she did not admire the day veil and humanity. She preferred to be one with magic, and a strong Aliki Wolf protecting and teaching her siblings. The vibrance of the day veil was dandy and all, but it was scary; so many Aliki Wolves had been forced into war or hunted for fur. Sunaeth had even witnessed one of her sisters die protecting her as a wandering pup. To be a wolf running freely, in the magic ether of Ealden Cynedom, was all she wanted. She wanted to be free of judgment, hate, expectations, and rules. Sunaeth liked running on fours, hearing, seeing and smelling everything in detail, and possessing the strength of a powerful warrior. She could not imagine being anything other then a great white wolf. Staying in the shadow veil with her family, made her a good caretaker and big sister to all the fey, and kept her safe. By the time she was fully grown, she was only middle child Flowen had left. If Eobreth had inherited Flowen’s love of humanity and the day veil, Sunaeth had inherited her free spirit and caring.

Sunaeth mainly cared for the youngest Aliki Wolves; the twelve-year-old twins. Flowen had more then one puppy on a few occasions. Most Aliki Wolves lived longer than most men, and in fact did not die until killed. but Flowen accepted she would always outlive her children, as a beast queen. It made them even more precious to her. It also made Flowen happy to see Sunaeth each day, caring for her family with youthful energy. Sunaeth, also had the qualaties Flowen loved most in her husband. The Wolf King had that same childlike way about him, and a stupid amount of loyalty, courage, and an undying love for his family. Suna, alongside her father, taught her younger royal siblings to hunt, play, act around humans, and transform into human form. While Suna was a wolf whiter than sunlight, the twins Eaowaeth and Behxfineth, were grey and chestnut respectively. In human form, their hair and wolf kingdom robes were the colour of their pelts; adorned with gilded steel armor about their heads, collars, back and breast. Engraved with the symbol ‘Ing’ for the rune of the wolf kingdom. Their human faces were like that of their mother’s people, in the Far North. Out of all the wolf children, Sunaeth was the Aliki wolf who spent the most time in human form. She did it to see and appreciate her human half, which her mother gave her. Even though she spent time in a human form, Suna still loved being a wolf most of all. Thus, when she arrived to the scene of her father’s death, unable to turn into a wolf, she was destroyed. As if her father’s death wasn’t bad enough.

Suna had lost her father and identity at the same time. Even her lovely royal robes and armor had gone; leaving her cold, bare, and completely human. She appeared no more then a normal young lady of the Far North. All that remained of her former self was her hair; which was still white like her fur. It scared her to be vulnerable in the day veil. Sunaeth did not want to accept she was a murderous human, and her father was dead. Sunaeth would not let go of the fact she once was a princess of the wolf kingdom. She did not want to admit she was no longer strong, keen and skilled. ‘I am not a human mage like mother says, I am not going to be restrained to the day veil, I will not give in. I am not weak.’ Sunaeth thought to herself, sobbing and grasping her remaining two siblings. Only the twins accepted their humanness while grieving their father; they coped by helping their mother Flowen restore the gate and live in the village. It had been two long sad days, before the Fairy King came with wolf kingdom fairy robes to protect the new mages. They needed new armor, now that they were no longer powerful fey. The Fairy King said nothing, while delivering the gifts. though she likely also grieved her brother, and did not know what else to do. Faries, and fey, are not the best at offering emotional support to humans. Sunaeth graciously accepted, but she didn’t want fairy robes: she wanted her fur coat.

Flowen had little free time left after opening and restoring the Wolf Gate. The silver was now completely chipped off, leaving behind the polished soap stone it was originally made of. The rest of the time, Flowen was caring for Eaowa and Behxfin, because they were her youngest remaining children. Caring for them, and the magic forest, gave her life meaning. Eaowaeth was easy to care for; they wanted to be a warlock, and had a calm and curious nature. Behxfineth was also only a slight hassle; he was picky about everything, and wanted to be a witch by apprenticing his mother. There was no local magic school, so the village and forest helped teach the two former wolf children. Flown considered sending them to the same school as King Mage Morgan, near Tiberius Gate; but she wanted Eaowa and Behxfin to adjust to being human first, and prove they could cope with the loss of their father. They were still quite young. For now, North Moon would have to do.

Like many magic forests, those who chose to live here, were happy to have magic in their lives every day. Especially now that Flowen solved their qualms with the fey. Then there was Sanueth; Flowen’s personal nightmare. She was not serene like the common folk, nor becoming adjusted like Eaowa and Behxfin. Sunaeth would have been a good paladin, or seer, if she took the time to accept her new reality. Every time Flowen asked Suna to do something for their cottage, Sunaeth did it the wolf way. Flowen would ask for Suna to fetch something for dinner; Sunaeth would return in an hour, naked, covered in blood, carrying four rabbits she caught; with three in her bare hands, and one in her mouth. Then Sunaeth would rant about how the forest was doing, while uncouth in the cold. She had no focus, and was determined to remain an Aliki Wolf. In the past, Flowen would have been endeared, but this time horror overcame her existence.

“Suna. You’re going to get sick eating that raw! You’re not a wolf! And you’ll catch a cold without clothing! You can’t keep acting inappropriately like this. There is no problem with you wanting to pursue magery; aside from modern discrimination towards old magic in most places… But you can’t live a normal life in the day veil, by acting like a literal animal. I know it’s hard, but you can talk to me; I am only interested in what is best for you and your happiness. I don’t know what to do anymore. I heard the other day you bit men who were trying to help you cut firewood!” Flowen exclaimed in distress.

“But mother, I got us dinner! And I will not be wearing uncomfortable clothes, thank you. Neither am I using complicated tools when I don’t need them. Humans are soft little pigs, who are violent and touchy; I refuse to be like one. I am still a princess of the wolf kingdom; even if father is dead, and I am no longer fey.” Sunaeth growled.

“I understand this is a big change for you. You were never one for rules, or liked the day veil. But fey or not, you were always part human; and thus, a part of me and the day veil. It brings me shame when you do thing’s like this. Now go take a hot bath while I cook dinner. I trust you’ve learned enough magic here to alchemize water and heat?” Flowen scolded. Sunaeth looked away from her mother while entering the cabin. Eaowa and Behxfin sat at the table, reading magic text books and mage journals. They shrunk into their seats from the tone of their mother’s voice. But decided to tattle nonetheless.

“Na, mother. Sunaeth does housework all day; she hasn’t attended a single demonstration, or read one of these books.” Eaowaeth said. Suna grumbled as she grabbed a level one alchemy book from Behxifn, and headed to the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, Flowen heard Sunaeth call for Eaowa to help her start the bath. Flowen gave a big sigh as she stood over the boiling pot of rabbit stew. Hopeful, Flowen looked out the window and into the brush for another wolf child. Anything to know Eobreth was ok. Or at least, doing better then her and Suna. Flowen wanted to focus on anything that wasn’t her feral eldest daughter. Then Flowen had a thought: ‘sunaeth isn’t legally fully grown yet, she would be considered seventeen by human standards. She is still young enough for magic school... Maybe this village is too lenient for her.’

After dinner, Flowen took Sunaeth aside to clean the dishes. Sunaeth loathed this chore; she hated wet hands. Flowen looked out the window in a daze while she dried. There was a thin coating of old snow on everything, giving it a soft glow.

“A few weeks ago, I saw a grim in those trees. If there are new wolf children, that means there is a Wolf King. Are you happy for your older brother Eobreth? In your uncouth hunting games about North Moon, have you seen other wolf children?” Flowen asked

“Yes mother.” Sunaeth said despondently. She had gotten along well with Eobreth when she visited him in the day veil years ago, but they were never close. A centuries long age gap will do that to siblings.

“Do you remember Morgan? The King Mage who I would heal and snuggle? Morgan would hunt and rough house with the three of you; and Eobreth had a great liking for him,” Flowen smiled, rinsing a dish. “He was a young boy, and said he wanted to go to magic school; and he had his dream come true. A special school by Tiberius Gate, for troubled youth, and international students. It pained me to see Morgan hurt himself, or come to me with injuries from his family when I first met him. Yet, when he went to that school, and opened the gate, he found friends and seemed to be more adjusted.” Flowen said. She was now feeling a little uplifted recalling those fond memories. However, Flowen had an agenda.

“Yes mother, I remember him. He was a blast! Didn’t realize he was just a kid; probably because I was a fey, and age means nothing to us. Morgan felt more like an uncle then a human child. And now I’m sad, because that makes me think of the shadow veil and father,” Sunaeth whined. “and Eobreth, he must have a special lady. Wonder if her family misses her… like I miss my old life. She must miss her old life too.”

“Well, you’re in luck Suna! How would you, in proper dress, like to go through the shadow veil to Tiberius Gate, and attend school with Morgan? Tell that family were their daughter went, learn to alchemize water, and socialize with humans your age! Make friends, and find new good in your future. You’re human now; which means you will age, and need those connections for your wellbeing. You get to go to the shadow veil on your free time, and I will rest easy knowing you’re getting reformed into a civilized capable lady.” Flowen said. She had already made the arrangements for a dorm room and classes; Though it did take a while for Eaowa to show her how to use a computer. It was worth the pain of experiencing dial up internet. Flowen had even packed Sunaeth’s things to leave the next day. Sunaeth, finished the last dish, pulled the drain plug, and stormed into bathroom to get away. It was the only door in the cabin with a lock. Sunaeth could not say no to her family. Particularly not her mother. Flowen was not asking however, she was informing Suna of her plans, and Suna had no choice in the matter. Suna proceeded to take off her uncomfortable clothes, grabed a towel, and then scream into it for a thirty-minute breakdown. She was freezing; the bathroom was right next to the cold room.

NEXT--->

<---PREVIOUS

#art #tales of ealdan cynedom #short stories #fantasy #death at the wolf gate #flowen #sunaeth #morgan #eobreth

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nelllraiser · 5 years ago

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skin and bones | morgan & nell

LOCATION: the vural coven daycare center. (a coven member’s house, made into a daycare) PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems and @nelllraiser. SUMMARY: a zombie and a witch walk into a room full of emotionally turbulent children who have magical powers directly linked to said emotions. what could do wrong?

It wasn’t that Nell didn’t like children. In fact, she quite enjoyed spending time with them and their funny little brains and ways of thinking, the world not yet having a concrete grip on them and their minds. But she would have appreciated it if Nisa had at least asked her if she had any plans before volunteering her for coven daycare. Of course, it also doubled as an after school program, providing for kids who needed a place to be while their parents still went about their work day, and a place to ask magical questions as well as work on their mundane homework. Nell guessed it didn’t matter all that much that her plans for the day had been detoured. After all, Morgan could still come drop her things off here. It just meant that Nell had needed to send her the address of the modified house turned children’s center. The buzzer for the door rang, and Nell set down the toys she’d been using to play along with Heather, a rather precocious little witch. “Alright, time for homework, now. I’ll be back in just a second with my….friend.” Morgan and her were still friends right? It only took her a second to open the door, revealing the smattering of children behind her to Morgan. “Hey, sorry for the change of plan.”

After the week of the mimes and Rebecca coming back, Morgan’s willpower to do anything out of her admittedly basic routine had flattened. So of course she was only getting to her book donations today. It stung too much of failure and disappointment to sell the family grimoires to The Archive or some online retailer, She couldn’t bear feeling the stiff spines watching her from the attic space, and Cece hadn’t wanted them when she offered. And the coven was, or had been, a kind of family to belong to. It made sense for them to keep the books safe. Maybe they would do better for some other, less cursed kid. Morgan was as resolved in this as she could have been. And yet, when Nell opened the door, Morgan couldn’t help but avert her gaze to the plastic storage lid in front of her. “It’s fine,” she said. “Stuff happens.” Sometimes big, woops now you’re dead stuff. And others-- the sound of a child’s wailing caught her attention--spur of the moment babysitting stuff. “I just wanted to make sure you guys have these. I know there aren’t uh...that alchemy isn’t a big thing in the coven. But there’s uh, there’s other stuff. Practical magic. Potions. Herbalist notes. And so...maybe it can help you guys. Or something.” She held the box out to Nell, still not quite looking at her.

Morgan wouldn’t even look at her, and Nell could only guess as to why. Had their awkward, strange online interaction really been all that bad? Or was it simply that Nell was a reminder of all Morgan had lost? Either way, it made Nell’s heart sink, and fumble a bit for words. “Yeah, totally uh- stuff.” She hated this, the not knowing and the wondering, and she’d done it too many times before with other friends. Nell wanted to ask how Morgan was doing but- it hadn’t gone all that well last time, had it? The sound of one of the kids upset had Nell whipping her head around over her shoulder, trying to make sure that nothing was being set aflame or anything of that like. Babysitting little witches was certainly a job that required a lot of...attention when they had the powers they did. But the books and bin in Morgan’s hand pulled another tug of worry from her gut, and Nell accepted them tentatively. “Are you...sure? I know that-” Her words were broken off by a louder yell, and Nell turned to find a Heather that had been perfectly peaceful and quiet a few moments ago, now glowing with magic, her mouth open with a childish yell pouring out of it.

“I’m sure,” Morgan said quickly. “I’m not a witch anymore. I can’t use these for anything. But you can. You and your family, the coven…” She was cut off by the sound of more wailing. Morgan followed Nell into the house, leaving her storage tub of books in the hall. There was no obvious sign as to what had started the problem, the other children were staring at her, some frightened, some annoyed, some fixing to start wailing just by the contagious quality of distress. Morgan gave Nell a sidelong glance. She looked at a loss. “Okay,” she said, summoning the voice she used on her students. “Who can tell us what happened?”

Nell didn’t have time to argue with Morgan whether or not she was a witch at this point, not when there was a ticking, magical time bomb in the middle of all the kids, threatening to set off the rest of the magical time bombs with her distress. She went to Heather, crouching down a bit to meet the girl’s eyes and place soothing hands on her shoulders. “Hey, don’t worry. It’s alright.” The last thing she needed was the little girl to show off some of the power she’d already started exhibiting, and it seemed like Morgan was doing well-enough with getting to the bottom of the matter. One of the little boys stepped forward to answer Morgan’s question. It was Bartie, short for Bartholomew, and the self-appointed policeman of the group. “It was Wren!” he said without hesitation, pointing towards one of the taller girls in the group. “She pulled Heather’s hair!” Wren, sufficiently indignant, puffed up as she prepared to defend her name.

“Was not!” she yelled back, her own cheeks turning a little pink. Somewhere behind the girl, a heavy stack of books began to hover, as if ready to obey the youngster's unknowing command.

“Snitches get stitches, kid,” Morgan said, coming over to the table. “You can help without throwing your friends under the bus. Wren?” The little girl nodded, thinking she had been vindicated. “Lying is bad. Don’t get in the habit. You’re a good kid, say you’re sorry instead.” Of course, as luck would have it, seeing her tormentors being taken care of by the adults wasn’t making anything better for the crying Heather. Morgan exchanged a concerned look with Nell. Was there a set protocol for this sort of thing? A how-to manual? Being an only child hadn’t prepared her much for this, and Morgan didn’t know if she could bring herself to calm the way her own mother had. Books were rattling in the bookcase, glass was trembling off their shelves. Behind them, something shattered. The children screamed. “Heather?” She prodded. “It, uh, it is heather, right?”

Nell, of course, had been the youngest sibling, and therefore usually the one who’s tantrums were being taken care of by either Bea and Luce, or her parents. Thankfully, her time here in the daycare had taught her at least a couple of tricks for dealing with children. Heather nodded through her trembling bottom lip, somewhat taken with the two adults lending all their undivided attention to her. “It’s alright, Heather. Like I said, Wren’s gonna apologize and she won’t tug your hair again. What if we get some juice? I know we have some more graham crackers leftover, too. You can do that dipping thing you like.” Heather seemed to be decently placated by the mention of snacks, reaching out to take a hand of Nell’s, and one of Morgan’s into each of her tiny hands, latching as if they were human security blankets. Unfortunately, it seemed that Wren’s anger stemmed more from Heather getting more attention than anything else, and a soft whoosh filled the air as the rather heavy coffee maker in the corner of the room flew towards the comforting scene. Nell’s hand shot up with fight-ready reflexes to catch the thing by its cord as it flew, just barely keeping the thing from careening into Heather as hot coffee spilled out onto the floor.

Oh. Oh, Morgan had got this all wrong. She looked, panicked at Nell. “Shit.” Oh, that was bad too. And that coffee maker was a really close call. “Good catch,” she said, eyes flitting helpless between the two children. Heather was fine, maybe even too smug that she had been rescued from flying coffee. But Wren? Wren looked betrayed. How could she. How could Morgan pretend to be her friend and then only care about Heather? The toy cars on the floor started spinning and rattling. The other children huddled together, yelling at Wren to stop. Nope, nope, nope, this was no good at all. Morgan didn’t know which problem was more appealing, but she gestured with her head for Nell to handle the crowd control. They trusted her, right? And she had sisters. Morgan--well, she liked to kid herself that she was good with kids, but this wasn’t anything like the one-on-one tutoring sessions she’d done at the volunteer center.

“Hey,” she said, extracting herself from Heather and sitting down directly in front of her. “Hey, Wren?” She moved to touch the girls shoulder, but she was having none of it. Morgan caught sight of Nell again, mouthing, Any ideas?

“This hasn’t been a great day for you either, huh?” she tried. “Can you take a breath and talk to me about it?

Nell grimaced, only having just barely managed to not swear in front of the children as well when the coffee pot had flown. It was really only one magical child disaster after another with these guys, and Nell hadn’t expected Wren to feel so...well- emotional. “Hey, hey-” she began, following Morgan’s indication that she should help calm the brewing mob of ankle-biters. Of course, Morgan and she weren’t even that much taller than some of the older kids here. “Look- come over, here! I wanna show you guys something.” Nell was blessing the name of whoever gave kids an attention span inversely related to their tempers as the children huddled on over to where Nell was drawing a hasty summoning circle on the floor. In a few moments, there were some vegetable lambs playing within the confines of it, sniffing the little fingers of the children that were being offered to their fuzzy, little noses. Nell looked back to Morgan, and simply shrugged, signally that she didn’t know what baggage it was that Wren had brought along with her from school. Wren was all too happy to share, though.

“I don’t wanna talk!” Wren exclaimed, tiny fists throwing themselves down against her sides. The toys around her tumbled, one breaking clean in half. But then Morgan’s voice was so soft, almost as soft as her fluffy hair looked. “Can I touch it?” she asked nicely this time, pointing towards the locks near Morgan’s shoulders. She didn’t wait for permission, simply reaching out to gently pat the stands. “They are soft. I like soft things. My kitty-” Again her lower lip trembled. “My kitty’s soft. Mom said my kitty was sick, and now she’s over the rainbow bridge and with the other nice kitties, and her fur was the same color as Heather’s hair and-” She cut herself off, her lip quivering again. “But I want my kitty! She’s mine!”

Morgan leaned in to let Wren pet her hair. Whatever made her feel better. She nodded along to her story, listening carefully. Oh, this was bad. Her heart sank, understanding. How old was this kid anyway? Was this the first thing she’d seen die? “That would make me really mad too. I had a kitty like that once. And it really sucks, you know? It’s the worst feeling when something that’s yours goes away.” She leaned in dangling her hair before Wren’s little fingers. “Can you tell me more about her, Wren? What was her name? Mine was named Catty. And she loved to play with this one plushy bunny. Did your kitty have any favorite toys?” She held her arms up to block a flying box of crayons. As they rolled around the floor, she reached for her little hands, offering hers out in turn. What she needed most was to burn off some of the energy she was holding over this. You know, before she broke the house.

Nell stayed where she was making sure the kids didn’t grab too harshly at the little lambs who were frolicking around on the rug. “Gently,” she reminded one while listening to the conversation between Morgan and Wren. She hadn’t known about the cat, and Nell’s own heart ached for the little girl. Wren seemed to be warming to Morgan, though, happy to continue petting the woman’s hair.

“Your’s is Catty? Like a cat?” she asked tentatively, as if wondering if this was something she should smile at. “Mine’s Fluffy, because she had lots of fur. She liked feathers the most. Sometimes mommy would bring some home, and make them fly around, and Fluffy likes to chase them.” It seemed that Wren hadn’t yet completely made the transition to past tense. Wren put her small hands in Morgan’s, squeezing them a bit once connected. “It’s not fair that she has to go! Why can’t she come back?” The toys seemed to have calmed a bit with Wren, their shaking looking more like trembling now.

Morgan smiled back, encouraging the little girl to smile. Fluffy was a good cat, as far as cats went. She squeezed Wren’s hands tight, encouraging her to do the same. “No, it’s so not fair. It's the worst. It’s the worst feeling, that she can’t come back.” She got on her knees, encouraging the girl to stand up. “None of it’s fair. It just happened and it sucks. It sucks so hard. And it’s okay to be upset about it. You can squeeze my hands as hard as you want, with how upset you are. All that energy? All of you that you miss her with. Just pour it out, through here.” She squeezed Wren’s hands again and nodded as the little girl began to tighten her grip. Her eyes began to water again, but the room around them was turning quiet. “Yeah, just like that. Think about it real, real hard and let it go. You can squeeze harder, it’s okay.” Zombie touch problems could come in handy sometimes after all. “Tell me more about fluffy. Anything at all. I bet she was the best cat. And talking about her? That’s the best thing you can do sometimes when you get all bottled up, okay?”

Wren nodded solemnly, and did her best to follow Morgan’s instructions, letting her feelings dissipate around her and her magic release the energy it needed to. “She was the best cat,” the little girl mumbled modelling Morgan’s use of past tense back to the woman, like she was suddenly exhausted after all that she’d gone through in the last few minutes. “The fluffiest. And she liked to meow at the birds. She wasn’t supposed to sleep with me at night but- I let her in anyway. And mom said ‘you’re both too cute to do anything about it’.” Wiping at her face, the little girl’s shoulders finally relaxed before she simply came out with. “I’m tired.” Meanwhile, Nell heard from across the way, picking up on Wren’s words as she sent the vegetable lambs back from whence they came.

“It is getting close to nap time.” A groan went up from a few of the other kids, even though it didn’t apply to the older and school-aged ones. “Why doesn’t everyone go get ready, and then we can have a story. And you all-” she signaled the older bunch. “Can keep going with your homework.”

Morgan followed the kids’ lead, half carrying Wren as she trailed behind the others to where the blankets and pillows lay. Each child seemed to have their own spot and ritual for settling down. Even Wren, too young to be self conscious, toddled over to pick up an alien stuffed toy almost her size to cuddle with. Satisfied enough, she went back into the main room to find Nell, wiping her brow. She had no idea where the little girl’s magic energy had gone, exactly, without her being able to consciously absorb it. She had no idea just how intense, how heavy it might have been. Sometimes the smallest bodies bent under the heaviest weights. But most of the house was intact, and only a few toys had been broken. ‘SORRY’ she mouthed to Nell, gesturing with her head to meet discreetly in the hall. “Well that was...something,” she sighed. “Sorry, again, if I overstepped. Is this what things are like here all the time?”

Nell followed after Morgan once she’d told the oldest, most responsible child to come get her should anything be needed, and left the door just slightly ajar so that she might hear her name if called. “No, no, you did great!” Nell exclaimed, her previous awkward energy replaced with an earnest one. “It would have been much worse if I had to deal with it by myself. And like- you literally did wonderfully with Wren. I didn’t even know that her cat- well- you know.” Another little stab of guilt filled Nell for not having realized there was more going on than she’d realized. “And it’s not always...quite that exciting but- getting this many magical kids together— well it’s hardly ever boring. I’m honestly surprised the house is still standing at this point.”

“You can say dead, Nell,” Morgan reassured. “Fluffy’s dead, I’m dead, only difference between us is I’m still kicking and talking.” She shook out her hands, as if there might actually be some energy pent up in there. “And, you know, you couldn’t have figured out what was up. Even I didn’t think it was more than just some kid being petty. But I guess grief can make jerks out of five year olds and adults alike. You were good, getting the rest of them to cut it out long enough for her to calm down.” She offered the young witch a smile. She’d missed being around her, and the way chaos seemed like just another day in town whenever they were together. She hadn’t thought that feeling could find her again, and sensing its echo in her silent chest made her ache. “Well, with someone who rolls with the punches as good as you, I bet they’re in pretty great hands. And I bet you’ll take good care of my old stuff too.”

“I mean- I know. It was just sad- thinking about a kitty that’s gone,” she finished somewhat self-consciously. Nell was generally tough as nails, ever-ready to fight the world and anything it might hold, but kitties held a special place in her heart. “I don’t see you kicking, though,” she tried to tease, wondering if it was in good taste. She just wanted things to feel normal again. “Yeah, looks like grief is the true, universal unifier.” The comment seemed a little uncertain, as if she weren’t sure whether or not Morgan was talking about the strange grief her and those close to her were going through, unsure whether or not to mourn something that was dead yet still here, living in front of their very eyes for lack of a better word. “Thanks anyway, though. Even if I’m ready and able at all times,” she chuckled with a touch of sarcasm. Her bottom lip tucked between her teeth, she began to nibble it gently, not sure whether she should say what was on her mind or not. But worry had never stopped her before, had it? And they’d already had those strange words online. What was there to lose that wasn’t already lost? “I’m sure we can make use of the old stuff. But Morgan...you know...I mean it when I say you helped. You did something not everyone can do, and well- even if you’re undead now-” How to say this? She’d tried her best online, and where had that gotten them? “I’m not trying to upset you, or try and downplay anything that happened, or how you feel, or anything like that. But you still have...those parts- like I was talking about. The things that are you and no one can take. Your identity. That’s what that was in there- talking to that little girl.”

Morgan let out a sad, breathless laugh. How lost must she be, to have the same lifeline thrown at her over and over again and still not know how to catch it and reel herself in. Every time she thought she had a grip, that she might know what being ashore would feel like again, she slipped, or she crashed into a moment that proved just how far she still had to go. “The bones are good,” she said, rapping her knuckles on her arm as she held herself. “I’ve got good bones, or so I hear, but I just can’t seem to dig them out all the time.” She started for the door. “You’re fine, Nell, really. You’re not being--you’re fine. But the thing is--” What was it? Why was she clamming up and pushing Nell away. A minute ago everything had been nice, even normal. Was that the problem? That she’d almost forgotten what she was for a second, and then she’d remembered? Morgan held herself tighter. “I’m not coming back all the way, Nell. I got lucky in there. I still know some things maybe, but I’m not a witch anymore. The next thing that happens--I don’t know. At some point, I do become functionally useless! And you could’ve handled that just as fine without me, and...it was nice, okay, to be able to do something for you, it was! I miss...being able to help. To do things, be things besides miserable all the time. And I even forgot I was dead for second there, but I am, and the whole thing was just a fluke!” She lifted a hand to tug at the roots of her hair, grounding herself back in her body with the sharp feeling. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “For everything.”

It was happening again, wasn’t it? Just like it had online, though it seemed to be overlayed with more sadness rather than frustration this time around. A flicker of panic found its way through Nell as Morgan went for the door, not wanting this to be how they ended things today. “You don’t have to, Morgan. Even if- even if not all of you comes back, this is still you, even if it’s changed. And being a witch isn’t just- magic.” Right? Being a witch wasn’t just the feel of that power coursing through her. “It’s family, isn’t it? And you don’t- you don’t get kicked out of family just because-” you couldn’t do magic. She faltered, trying to push down the part of her brain that was wondering...was that not what Nisa had done to her, in a way? Perhaps not in the same sense, but Nell hadn’t been able to do a particular kind of magic and...it had left her worse off in the eyes of her mother...hadn’t it? So she rephrased. “You don’t get left out of- of this family for not being able to do that. “Don’t we all just...become useless at some point? Isn’t that what we have each other for? To fill in those gaps? Like you did today? It’s okay if-” She’d been readying to say more until she saw just how upset Morgan was becoming, and stopped mid sentence, recalibrating. “Morgan- Morgan, it’s alright,” she said softly, reaching up to try and grip the hand that was clenched in the woman’s hair. “You don’t have to say you’re sorry. This isn’t your fault. None of it is. You didn’t ask for this shit to be handed for you.”

The saddest part was not knowing what Nell’s hand really felt like. She wasn’t much of a touchey-feely sort of girl. When they bonded, there was always some pride in the way. The only other time they’d held hands had been for a spell, and Morgan’s concentration had been on the summoning to think about much else. She had no memory to tether this moment to. She only knew that Nell must miss her to reach out like this, that she must have left some little hole behind when she died. Morgan reached up to pat her fingers, gently, the way she practiced with Deirdre. She didn’t know what was more frightening, more awful: that she could never fill the space she’d left behind, or that she could, all along, and simply hadn’t yet. “I know it looks bad, but it helps,” she said, giving her fingers a careful squeeze. “I don’t feel things like you do. It’s...filtered through a haze, pressing in through this big, cold blanket. Something has to be hard enough to get through.” She lifted her eyes to meet Nell’s, just holding her tear ducts in line. She didn’t understand how this balanced out, how she’d earned her kindness, and it took no small amount of concentration to keep her frail reserve somewhat in place. “Thank you, Nell. I uh...I think I’m gonna go, but I do wanna still, I mean, I’m trying. I’m trying to figure my shit out. And maybe...I don’t know. Maybe we can talk more some time. I can crowd control the kids sometimes in a pinch, apparently. It’s not like I get normal-tired anymore. And I’d like...I’d like...what you said. But right now, I think I should go.” She held her gaze, mouth quivering, willing her to understand.

It’d been nice, working together for those few moments like they had before, falling back into those somewhat chaotic rhythms. It was only natural for Nell and Morgan to fall into them. After all, their first meeting hadn’t exactly been peaceful. Then there’d been the few times she’d been blessed enough to do magic with Morgan. It always felt strangely intimate, melding energies with another to make something together, or solve something together. With a pang, Nell realized that...perhaps there was more to grieve for than she’d initially thought. To think she’d never know Morgan in that way again- to feel them becoming one to create something good and beautiful- it took her by surprise, though she still firmly believed her words about witchdom and family. “I know,” she simply said, not wanting Morgan to feel like she had to explain herself if it made her uncomfortable. “I just- I didn’t want you to...hurt yourself.” But that’s all Morgan seemed to be doing lately, at least in Nell’s eyes. Tearing herself down, and ripping scabs off of wounds that couldn’t heal fast enough to handle the rate at which Morgan seemed determined to reopen them. It hurt to see her friend like this, more than she could put into words, and it seemed that all she could do was go along for the ride, and try her best to support Morgan. “That’d be nice,” she offered, not entirely sure what to say anymore. “I’d like that. Both the- working with the kids- and the talking. It’ll be alright,” she finished as Morgan took her exit, Nell’s hand waving forlornly at the closing door. It had to be.

#chatzy #ch:morgan #skin and bones

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thebickedwitchoftherest · 5 years ago

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This Witch Empty, Yeet || POTW: Cece & Morgan

Cece reveals her secret to Morgan. Then the two track down a magical artifact known as the Imperium, bringing them one step closer to solving the mystery of the chest on the beach.

Cece and Morgan had done their research. Luckily for them, the library had surprisingly well kept records on all different sorts of the town’s history, including a small but formidable group of women who lived as one with nature were frequently seen passing through the woods at night. Though they may not have gotten the happy ending they may have wanted, the headlines about a few of their death had made the news enough that the two were able to learn more about them, including tales of eye witnesses seeing them around Dark Score Lake. Which probably only added fuel to the fire regarding the creepy stories that were told about the place. It could all be a dead end. But Cece had to admit that this chest had piqued her curiosity and she wanted to know more about it. So, the two loaded up in Cece’s car and began driving to Dark Score Lake. She had no idea what the two were looking for, and even less knowledge on how dangerous it may be. All she knew was that she was looking for an artifact that should help her get that chest open and hopefully end all of the weird shit happening around the town. But as the two drove into town and towards the lake, Cece remembered that she hadn’t disclosed anything to Morgan yet about what they were doing or the truth about Cece herself. Still not sure exactly what she was dragging Morgan into, she figured now was better than any. “So, I need to tell you something.”

Morgan was using the drive over to practice her mindful breathing. White Crest had been pushing her anxiety more lately and this, this marching into a purportedly haunted place to follow the story of some mystery thing that maybe killed people was bringing her back to that kind of feeling. She drummed her fingers on her lap. What if something truly bizarre and magical happened? How was she going to explain that? “Oh, yeah?” She asked brightly, maybe too brightly for the situation. “What’s up?”

Cece had planned on living magic in the past. A plan that had already failed gloriously within the first month living in White Crest due to the arrival of the chest and by proxy, the karkinoids. More people than Cece had been comfortable with already knew her secret, and the more that knew the more danger Cece would be in. But Morgan had helped Remmy, and she hadn’t seemed dangerous. When push came to shove, Morgan was the first person that came to mind when she realized that she may need help to find this artifact she knew she was searching for. Morgan and Cece got along. They talked and they laughed, which made the tension even more obvious from the silence that hung in the car. “That chest on the beach, I think there’s a way to open it.” Cece began, which was simple enough. “There was a coven in White Crest that buried an artifact called the Imperium that can be used along with a spell to open up the chest.” Cece adjusted the heat in the car so that it wasn’t blowing directly on her face. Her mouth was dry enough as it is. She reached for her coffee in the cup holder and took a long sip. “I know this because someone sent the spell over to me. The spell speaks in circles but it has the same idea, that somebody with Power or Pure of heart can open it.” That would at least catch Morgan up on the current drama. Now the real juicy bit, “And the reason I know all of this is because I’m a witch.”

Morgan went still the moment Cece said she had a way to open the chest. In all the weeks since she’d pulled the blasted thing out of the sea with Ricky, she’d mostly come to accept her aura of cold. Just one more thing to carry, and not the worst one at that. But now an alternative hung like a gold plated carrot at the end of a stick. Now there was a reason and--- “You’re a what?” A witch. Cece was a witch. A witch who could read spells, who could look for signs of honest-to-universe arcana in a library. “Holy shit. This whole time?” Wait, that was stupid. Morgan began to re-evaluate what she’d left out in the living room, things she said, signs that might’ve been given. “Does that mean you know, uh...about me too?”

Unsurprisingly, Morgan was a bit taken aback by Cece’s confession. Morgan had been very open about the magic prior to even meeting in person. There had been opportunity, ones that she had opted against and blatantly denied her background. She couldn’t feel bad about her decision, not when she knew what was at risk. But that didn’t mean she didn’t hope that things could be different. “Well, at first I couldn’t be sure if you were serious or just claiming to be a witch to be edgy or whatever. But I noticed some of the stuff around the house which all seemed legit.” Cece pulled off of the main road and onto the road that led down to Dark Score Lake. It was coming up, soon. “Look, once we get here I need you to be on guard. I don’t know exactly what we are looking for, but we should be looking for anything that you can sense some magic coming off of.”

Cece was taking all of this pretty much in stride, but then, she’d had however long to sit on and process it. Morgan, on the other hand, was playing catch up. Nothing was really wrong, she supposed. Cece had magic, maybe even alchemy, if she was such a chemistry wiz, and she didn’t mind Morgan’s being the way she was. It would’ve been nice to panic so hard about her finding out about Skylar, or Remmy, but, heck, maybe she knew about them too. Morgan looked at Cece, trying to make sense of her, of why it took the chest on the beach to tell her. “Um--yeah. Right! We should probably have our witchy heart-to-heart later, after we find this Imperium thing.” The car began to slow as they reached the place. “Since we’re disclosing, I’m assuming-slash-hoping you know ghosts are totally real, right? And mermaids, apparently terrifying. I think they just live in the ocean, but this place is spooky enough that it seemed to bear mentioning.” She reached into her bag for the rod of iron Deirdre had sent her and touched it to her pop socket to shape into a knife. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to figure out how to use it. “Ready when you are, I guess.”

Cece was thankful that Morgan seemed to be taking this well. Especially considering the circumstances that the two were in. If it were a perfect world, Cece would have sat Morgan down over a drink and the two would have watched Bewitched when she dropped the bomb. Although in a truly perfect world, she never would have ended up in Maine at all. So maybe this wasn’t the time to worry about the way the universe worked. “Yes, and yes. Though I’ve never actually seen a mermaid myself. A scale from one can be used to make a great potion that lets you breathe underwater. For a short time at least.” That wasn’t important at the moment. Cece pulled the car into a parking spot and glanced back over at Morgan, eyeing the weapon in her hand. “Nice weapon. I like the spirit.” If they were lucky, no weapons would be needed. Just a simple snatch and grab. Cece pushed herself out of the vehicle and stared out over the lake. It had a creepy reputation, but it was hardly something that could scare Cece away. “Remember, we’re out here looking for anything magical. If it’s strong enough, we might be able to just feel it in the air. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.”

“Yeah, well, better than going in without anything, right?” Morgan said, hoping a good stiff smile would keep a lid on her nerves. This was fine. If the Imperium was connected to the chest, there was a good chance it would practically reek with magic. And hopefully in the same vein this iron knife would send off ‘please don’t possess me because I mean business’ vibes to any ghosts lurking beyond the veil. “Any clue on how big it is?” She asked. “Or if it’s buried? Because if it’s buried--” Something invisible rustled the grass ahead of them. Morgan went still “It might be a little hard to sense.” She took stock of the land around them. This was a pretty good spot for hiding something you didn’t want to turn up accidentally. But where would you feel like it would be safe?

“I’m not even sure what the thing looks like, honestly.” Cece admitted, unhappy to proclaim that she was coming in almost as blind as Morgan herself had been when she agreed to help Cece with almost zero prior knowledge. Cece was a planner, though the personality trait may surprise some people. When it came to fun she was all about going with the flow, but this was serious business and Cece treated it so. She hated that she knew nothing about the Imperium down to what it looked like or what exactly that thing did. It bugged her, and like a puzzle to be solved, Cece knew it was going to drive her crazy until she put all the pieces together. “I’ve heard there’s a cemetery around here. If I was going to bury something that I didn’t want dug up, I’d try there.” Cece shrugged, a little too familiar with that exact scenario. “If I had to guess there’s probably a protection spell around it, so we may have to work a little magic.” Cece trailed along the grass beside the lake, stopping only when she heard the grass rustling. After a long moment, she figured the coast was clear and began walking again. “How are you feeling so far?”

“Oh, I’m good! You know, just getting in some girl-bonding time. Plodding around a creepy lake, for buried treasure, making a note to call my therapist back.” Morgan replied, brightly as she could. “A little positivity is good for the anxiety, although at the rate this town is going, I might need something a little stronger.” she explained. “I guess I should tell you now that the living room didn’t get messy that one time over a LARP crafting accident. Blood-clingers. I don’t know if I’m a hundred percent clean yet, from the bite. But it’s been awhile since then, so--” Another sound. Just the breeze of life over the water. Or the creature from the black lagoon. Either way, Morgan stepped a little faster away from it. The cemetery was at least within sight, flanked by tall, ancient looking trees. “How old was this coven again?” She asked.

Things started making a bit more sense now that the two were being more open. Cece remembered the LARPI-ing incident and had believed Morgan despite the obvious signs implying that she shouldn’t have. Honestly, who actually LARPs in Maine? If people legitimately did then Cece offered her apologies. “Blood-Clingers? Well that explains the blood.” Cece shrugged. At least the truth was out. “I have some stuff back at the house that I use to make my own Hot Toddy. Drink that and it’ll clear anything left out.” Another movement out into the forest caught both of their attentions. Cece sure hoped that Morgan was prepared to use that weapon if needed. “The last article that I read about them was around the 70’s.” As they came up to the cemetery, Cece slung the backpack that had been on her shoulders onto the ground and bent down to rifle through it. She eventually pulled out a flask and left the bookbag on the ground. “The spell my source gave me talked about the former coven, saying it was hidden in a veil of mystery. My guess is its some kind of illusion or protection spell. If we can cancel that out, I bet we find it easily.” Or easily enough. Cece uncapped the flask and tipped out, beginning to walk the perimeter as the thick, red liquid poured from the bottle and dripped onto the ground.

So they died out in the 70s, but who knew when they started. Old enough to have planted a tree over something, to mark its place and render it impossible to find? Morgan wasn’t sure. She was about to ask Cece when out came a flask. Morgan screwed her eyes shut. “What did I say about the bloodclinger!” She squealed, and put a hand over her face for good measure. She was familiar with this sort of thing. And, sure enough, the spell began to bubble, boil and spit. They were close to whatever it was. Really close. Morgan could almost taste warmth in her mouth, it was so close. She reached out a hand blindly for Cece. “Wherever it’s leading us, take us there!” The sooner they had it, the sooner things might actually turn around for her for once.

Admittedly, Cece should have thought twice about the blood after Morgan had come clean about the blood clinger. “Whoops! Sorry!” Cece whispered at Morgan apologetically, feeling instantly guilty. “It’s not human blood at least! If that helps at all.” Cece tried, hoping that may help the situation, even if it’s just a little bit. But regardless, this tracking concoction Cece had whipped up was the best bet they had to track down a protection spell. If there was magic around here, this would find it. Unsure if Morgan would be familiar with it at all, Cece decided to explain as she walked. She hoped it would double as a distraction from the blood. “It’s like a game of hot and cold. My own little tracking spell. It looks for magic, if the blood steams when it hits the ground then we’re heading in the right direction.” And so the followed the trail, changing direction when the blood stopped steaming. Eventually, the two came across a tree. Steam billowed from the ground and the blood boiled as it hit the ground around the area. This must be it. “So, would you say this tree was about 40-50 years old?” Cece asked Morgan curiously.

Morgan kept her eyes closed and followed Cece’s lead until they stopped. It was the tree. She opened her eyes and looked. It wasn’t the oldest pine she’d ever seen, but it was robust, certainly far from a sapling. Maybe? “Yeah,” she said, touching her hand gently to the bark. “I think it...it might be?” There was something coming off it, like pin pricks up her fingers, but Morgan couldn’t tell if it was real magic or just her own anticipation. If she could actually do something to make this be over, if they could find this thing together-- “See if it works.”

They must have buried the artifact with the tree. That, or they planted the tree when the buried the artifact. To act as some sort of marker for the Imperium. This close, Cece could feel the magic from the protection spell. Alone, breaking a protection spell would be difficult. Together, her and Morgan had a better chance against a coven’s protection spell. Though Cece couldn’t be sure just how much experience Morgan had with this sort of magic. She realized that while Morgan had been fairly upfront about the magic thing, the talks had all been fairly surface level. She didn’t actually know much about Morgan’s history with magic. “How much do you know about protection spells? And more importantly, breaking them.” She flung some of the blood onto the tree and watched as it sizzled against the tree. She had to admit that was impressive, some kind of protection spell hidden within the tree they had grown. Cece could dig it.

Morgan didn’t have time to duck her face away but, to her relief, her vision stayed clear and she watched, gobsmacked, as the blood mixture seeped into the bark of the old pine, seeped until it was saturated. Then the trunk groaned. “Shit--” She stumbled back. “Okay! That’s-- that’s definitely a sign! That is a hundred percent full of magic!” She clapped her hands with delight. “So, how do you want to get that protection ward down? My dad was really fond of the ol’ corinthian incantation, but I’m not super practiced in it. How about you?”

It was adorable seeing the excitement on Morgan’s face. Cece wasn’t ready to disclose much about her life with the coven, too many gray areas and lines crossed, but she would have to sit with Morgan and talk magic some night over some wine. Without specifics, Cece could think of a few stories to share. Cece hated giving the coven any credit, but most of her experience with magic came from them, and it had made her well versed in the supernatural world. So it hadn’t been all bad. “The Corinthian incantation?” A little biblical for Cece’s taste, but against a coven’s magic it would probably be pretty effective. She liked it. “I can work with that.” She pulled a knife from her bag, one that she had stolen from the coven. It had been soaked in witch blood and used as a ceremonial piece for many spells before this. It served as a sort of good luck charm for Cece. At least, all those spells had worked in the past. She stepped forward, carving a symbol into the tree, a groan escaping its roots in protest. When she was done, she stabbed the dagger into the center of it. “It’s mostly Latin. If you know any of the words, follow along. If you don’t that’s fine too. I just need you to help feed magic into the spell. Here.” She held her hand out to Morgan. Not exactly necessary during a spell, but it seemed right in the moment. “You ready?”

Morgan nodded and squeezed Cece’s hand. She hadn’t done magic with anyone but herself since before her mom passed. But she slid back into it with ease, opening up, filling with want for this twice. Damned. Tree. To open for them. She skimped on the Latin, until the end, the only part she truly remembered. Her voice raised, as if she could sharpen her intent with raw noise alone. As if lightning shot up from the earth, the tree snapped from root to tip. Leaves screamed from their stems and scrambled for air. In the new magic scorched wound was a dark hovel and a heavy wave of power even Morgan could sense from her standing spot. “You’re amazing!” She cried, and raced forward to investigate. She stopped just short of plunging her hand in. “You don’t think it can freeze me twice over, do you?” She asked.

Morgan and Cece’s magic mixed well together and it made the spell even easier to perform. Their magic flowed together and complemented each other. Towards the end of the spell, Morgan jumped in with her own Latin and Cece could feel the spell’s growing even more in power. Then, just like that, the tree snapped with a loud cracking noise. Leaves scattered the area and fell down onto the ground around Cece and Morgan. “Shit. We’re amazing, you mean?” Cece laughed incredulously. Take that you hippy witches. “I won’t let that happen, don’t worry.” Cece promised. Once they got that chest opened, Cece would be able to fix the curse that was afflicting Morgan. And she assumed other people in town as well, but they weren’t really her concern at the moment.

“Okay! Great! I guess uh--we’re going in!” Morgan stuck her arm down the wound in the tree and searched. Her fingers skimmed just over the edge of something wooden and damp. Of course old school witches couldn’t be trusted to make something with an easy grip handle, it just made too much sense. Morgan stuck down her arm nearly up to the shoulder to reach and at last found a grip on a corner and a latch, enough to scoop the thing into her palm. Funny, it didn’t smack her with its whatever-force the way the chest did. She brushed the dirt off and ran her fingers over the latches. At least it looked like it could be open if someone one wanted to. “Huh. Pretty nifty. Feel like the name Imperium is sort of an oversell, but--” Morgan’s body began to feel clammy, like the chills you sometimes got after a flu shot. She looked at it closer, brushing the dirt away to read some of the markings. There had to be something familiar here, right? And there was, it just wasn’t in the right. “Oh, shit--!” In a panic Morgan hurled the Imperium as hard as she could away from herself, and somewhere in the direction of Cece’s face.

Despite the confident look that Cece was forcing, she caught herself cringing slightly as Morgan’s arm reached further down into the tree trunk. She was confident that they had bested the barrier the old coven had set up. But that hadn’t meant they couldn’t have another trick up their sleeves. Luckily for both of them, mostly Morgan, that hadn’t been the case. Morgan pulled out what appeared to be a small wooden box. From afar, Cece examined the artifact that Morgan held in her hand. So this was the imperium? There wasn’t much to it. Until suddenly Morgan was yelping and the ancient, magical artifact was flying at Cece’s face. She flinched back and caught the box in her hands before it could collide with her head. “Jesus, Morgan what the hell?” Then it struck her too. The prickly feeling, the way the world suddenly felt heavier somehow. The Imperium was draining magic. Cece dropped the box to the ground, not wasting any time to consider if thee magic box could survive the 4-foot fall. “Holy shit” Cece muttered, bending down to get a better look at it. Instead of picking it up, she used her finger to gently push at the box, tilting her head curiously when it seemed to be unfold. Woah. It was unfolding. Tilting around and uncurling itself into a different shape. “This thing drains magic.” Cece finally spoke aloud. All this time, Cece had been so dead set on finding this hidden artifact that she never stopped to consider why it had been hidden in the first place. A device used to drain magic? There wasn’t much more dangerous to a witch than that. It would be dangerous for the two to bring the artifact back, with it this hungry for power. Unless…. “I think this thing needs energy. We need to charge it.”

Morgan was taking awhile to stagger up to her feet. That had been one heck of a doozy drain. “Yep!” She called, wobbling over to Cece like a baby deer. “Yep it does!” She caught up to her at last and stared down at the thing. A box that unfolded. Kind of cool, mostly unnerving. Who went around making stuff like this? Why were old witch covens so cruel? Couldn’t you make a magic box of good luck? Or protection? But no. Had to be something dark and awful like this. “Wait, we have to let it drain us on purpose? Isn’t that maybe not the best idea right now?” Then again, it wasn’t like they knew anyone else who could readily take the hit instead, did they?

Cece pondered Morgan’s statement. She was right, of course. Neither of them had any clue to what extent this box could drain energy. It may be enough to drain the magic from a witch permanently, maybe even kill. “It’s definitely a terrible idea. But maybe our only one.” They had Cece’s bag, but until that thing had some energy inside of it they didn’t have a way to guarantee that they could transport it safely. Even if they could get it inside Cece’s bag, without the magic of a barrier spell she wasn’t sure that a bag could keep them safe either. “We may not need to charge it up entirely. If we can give it enough juice that it doesn’t drain us as soon as we touch it we may be able to get it back safely.” Cece sounded more confident than she was but being with the coven had mostly taught her that there was some real merit in faking it until making it. “I have an idea.” Cece exclaimed, resting on her knees in the dirt and eyeing the Imperium. “If we do it together then maybe we can charge it enough without draining one of us too much.” As long as Morgan was down, it was at least worth a try.

Morgan looked down at the box. Her gut instinct was no. Absolutely not. Do not give away free ‘fuck with me’ coupons to the universe. But if she ever wanted to be warm again, if she wanted to claw one tiny bit of normal back from this town, someone had to do the thing, and she really didn’t need a de-powered Cece on her hands. That wasn’t fair, she was trying to help and--damnit. “Okay,” she huffed. “We do this together. But just a quick charge! We still have to be able to drive out of here.” She hovered her hands over the Imperium and waited for Cece to touch it first before gritting her teeth and doing the same.

As soon as her palms touched the wood, it felt like the boxed clamped onto Cece’s hands and held onto them against her well. It felt like needles poking into her skin, and goosebumps travelled up at her skin as she felt the energy dragged from her body and into the box. She could only imagine that Morgan was feeling the same way. The box was strong, stronger than Cece had imagined. It was draining too fast, too powerful unless her and Morgan could regain some control. “Take a deep breath.” Cece managed to speak, trying to follow her own advice. Her hands clenched at the box even tighter, but she kept going. Eventually, after what felt like hours, Cece noticed a slight shift. A change in the flow, as the distribution between the box’s magic and their own seemed to even out. They had matched each other. That had to be enough. Cece forced herself to let go of the box, all but falling backwards to get away from it. “That’s it.” Cece said through deep breaths. Once she regained her composure she moved forward again, running her hand along the box. She could still feel it, the Imperium’s magic pulling at her fingertips, but it was not like it was before. It was more controlled, less hungry for the power that Cece and Morgan held within them. “Fuck. We did it.” Cece laughed, incredulously at first before erupting into a billowing of triumphant laughter. “Fuck yeah, we did it!”

Morgan was still wondering if she could wait a few more seconds to make up for having to pick it out of the hole in the first place when she felt the pull of the Imperium. Her hands fell on the board, fused and locked. “Shit, shit, shit--” This was a really bad time to find out the Imperium was just going to zap them dry for good. The worst time, the absolute worst time ever. Morgan began to panic and pulled with everything she had. The Imperium let her go and Morgan toppled back into the grass, flat on her back. “Shit,” she breathed again. “Are you still alive, Cece?” Then her roommate laughed. Yep, still alive. Did that mean-- “We...we really did it? I did something and it worked?”

Cece was still celebrating in their triumph. What a rush. It had been years since she had done something like that. It felt nice to be able to work through a spell and the magical adrenaline like that again, even if it was just this once. After this chest, Cece would be back to her limited magic, normal life thing. But today? Today she celebrated. “Of course it worked!” Cece danced around, stopping to offer a hand to Morgan and help pull her up, “Because you are amazing!” She reached for the box, picking it up and tossing it into her bookbag with relative ease. “Now let’s get this back to the house! I need to get some stuff together and phone a friend. Then we’re going to make that chest our bitch.”

@mor-beck-more-problems

#c: morgan #morgan #potw #chatzy #wickedchatzy #chatzy: morgan

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