#on the very select list of people whose book i have wanted to throw against the wall

[direslothmegalonyx]

His SF ranges from "mindblowing" to "ugh, that's dated"

But since nobody's mentioned his nonfiction on Propaganda --the job he did during World War 2-- under his mundane name, I'll add a link to the Gutenberg.

It is still, alas, extremely timely

Have you ever read anything by cordwainer smith? Highly recommend

I have not!

[cienie-isengardu]

Lin Kuei: Cryomancers

RELIGION <> ORIGINS / ARCHITECTURE <> FOOD <> FOR THE LIN KUEI <> ART <> CRYOMANCERS <> LIN KUEI SOCIETY <> MONEY & MATERIAL GOODS

The continuation of the morgianesffs-blog’s list of questions about Lin Kuei. I initially divided them into smaller categories and the cryomancers will be the subject of this essay.

For the formalities, the original questions:

Question about the Cryomancers. I know the game lore says that they are supposed to be rare, but I also know that the Lin Kuei have had at least 5 (grandpa, papa, older, and younger Sub Zero,  and Frost). 4 of which are part of 3 generations that inherited it even with mixed blood (I'm assuming Mama Sub Zero wasn't Cryomancer since they left her alone).

That's a lot of generations in a row for a rare trait... So do you think the Cryomancers as a group have figured out they're being hunted and have chosen to live in hiding?

Looking at the sources, my personal theory is that the true problem is not that cryomancers are rare per se but that not every of their descendents:

is capable of using ice powers. 

will survive long enough to develop and control the freezing abilities 

Johnny and Cassie Cage are the best analogy for point A - both are the descendants “of an ancient Mediterranean cult who bred warriors for the gods”[MK9!Johnny’s bio] and thus possess special - and at least in theory rare - genes. Johnny is one of the top Earthrealm Champions yet he, canonically, managed to use his inner power only once, in a fight against Shinnok to protect Sonya. When Cassie was born, she had a very high chance to inherit Johnny's rare genes and because of that was the potentially future champion. Coming from Briggs-Blade-Cage family gaves Cassie a lot of opportunities to develop her fighting abilities, first because of strong ties to military and later also to other meritorious Earthrealm defenders. Yet like father before, the inner power was activated only under strong pressure, while protecting her family from Shinnok. And despite all the access to additional powerful mentors (Raiden, Sub-Zero, Bo' Rai Cho, Fujin and maybe even Scorpion), she still struggles with mastering the power - and with using it at will. And let’s be real here, Cassie is a superb warrior in her prime of life - if someone like her struggles with mastering ancient power, most who happen to be also descendants of these warriors may never use it even once during their lifetime.

And here comes my feeling that Lin Kuei could have even dozen descendents of cryomancers at the same time yet only few will truly be able to discover their potential and even less to master it (and only one, the best, will use the title of Sub-Zero). It is outright said, that freezing powers are hard to control and are usually mastered at the latest stages of life, as we were told by Mythologies: Sub-Zero in-tie material: 

Sub-Zero learned of his ability as a young adult. It was passed on to him by his father, a fourth generation Lin Kuei warrior himself. The ability to harness the element of cold is one that takes years of practice. It's full potential realized only by those who've mastered it at the latest stages of life. Sub-Zero's skills have the ability to develop much faster than those of the other Lin Kuei. [source]

By logic, if naturally cryomancers need years to get a grip of their power but Bi-Han’s skills developed much faster than the rest and it happened when he was already a young adult (a person in their teens or early twenties, max thirty?), then most cryomancer learn how to use their ability as an adult (25-30+ years old?). Now, considering the mortality of warriors in this brutal profession and harsh system of punishment, not many cryomancers will live enough to truly develop ice powers. They do, however, can pass the genes to the new generation and it seems as something happening from ancient times. Except not every baby with their special genes will be taken by Lin Kuei and though limited sources, it seems like female cryomancer are not the main target. 

My personal theory for this is based around pregnancy and how difficult it must be to carry a child with special powers that may or may not manifest itself in the least expected moment. The conscious use of power of course requires experience and control but in the unborn child it could result from independent stimuli that affect both the child and mother. So a mother with cryomancer genes probably has a better chance to give birth to a healthy offspring and not to die in the process (thus producing another child(s)) than a full-blood human one. Also, the two known examples of the not taken by Lin Kuei female descendants of cryomancers were the youngest children (and in the case of MK Conquest TV series, one was born after her brother's kidnapping). So there is a possibility that Lin Kuei intentionally does not take every available child, in order to not "break the genealogical line" and in result, cut their source of new warriors. 

(The other reasons I can think of why female cryomancers may not be the main target for Lin Kuei are: 

A) some biological complications that makes female cryomancer with active ability much rarer, thus the uneven ratio of known Lin Kuei male to female ice warriors. This could fuel Frost’s ego (the rare example of female cryomancer with powerful freezing abilities) but also her anger for not recognizing her skills and/or right to the title of Sub-Zero by Kuai Liang.

B) cryomancer’s strong sense of family ties thus natural instinct to protect their own. So if a female ice warrior gets pregnant, taking the child from her could be a pretty hazardous thing, especially if blood-related cryomancers are somehow emotionally/psychologically bonded with each other. In the past, the one Grandmaster who wanted to punish (male) Sub-Zero for helping Great Kung Lao (who saved Sub-Zero's biological family) got killed in the process. And this Sub-Zero was kidnapped years ago so he knew his family only from some distant memories yet despite the lack of real interaction with biological parents and sister (born after his disappearance), he allied with the enemy to pay the debt and killed his superior without a second thought. Then we have MK9!Kuai Liang who against Grandmaster’s orders ran away from Lin Kuei to avenge brother’s death because the clan did not tell him what happened to Bi-Han. So it seems that once a biological family is threatened, the (male) ice warriors get pretty agressive and openly disobedient. Now imagine how far would a female cryomancer go if her child was put in danger by the clan. I mean, keeping cryomancers in check is a pretty hard thing on normal days and in times of family critical matters even worse.)

Another useful information comes from Grandmaster [MK Conquest TV series, episode 3 - Cold Reality] who said about then currently in-training Sub-Zero:

So rare. Centuries have passed since one such as this has been among us.

Which could be interpreted as either Lin Kuei did not have a cryomancer for centuries or did not have a cryomancer who developed strong freezing abilities so fast(?). I personally think it is the latter because cryomancer power is described as “ancient” and if there wouldn’t be any cryomancer for centuries, the knowledge about the ice-wielder could be lost and forgotten. Of course, as the Grandmaster, the man could be simply familiar with clan history and lore but dunno, it seemed like he knew what to expect and how to force still-in-training Sub-Zero to develop his powers. Which, in all honesty, was pretty brutal and from what was shown on screen, involved throwing hot coals on the warrior’s bare back. What is painful for a normal person, even more for someone whose body is built to withstand freezing temperatures, not the heat. So, either there was a book with all the bad tips on how to train cryomancer in case you get one or the grandmaster actually had some experiences to compare Sub-Zero abilities with other candidates and/or ice warriors.

Frankly, I have this really old theory of mine, that fleeing from Outworld cryomancers had a deal with Lin Kuei - in exchange for the help and shelter, the cryomancer agreed to give some of their children to the clan. Thus from ancient times, warriors with ice-powers served Lin Kuei and passed the duty from one generation to another. However, with the passing time and mixing with native people, their natural abilities regressed to the point some branches of the cryomancer family could be declared as extinct, as in, not possessing the right combination of genes. In result forgetting their own legacy only for the power unexpectedly activating generations later. In Mortal Kombat Conquest TV series, the family of a kidnapped years ago cryomancer boy did not have any(?) clue why Lin Kuei targeted them. Something similar could happen to Bi-Han and Kuai Liang in an alternative timeline, thus the unusual abduction mentioned in Kuai Liang’s MK9!BIO:

"An assassin of the Lin Kuei clan, Kuai Liang commands the power of ice and cold. Unlike other members of his clan, he and his older brother, Bi-Han, were abducted as children by the Lin Kuei and trained in the techniques of assassination throughout their lives [...]”

If that would be true, the Lin Kuei could keep eye on every known descendent of cryomancer species (run away or simply living in ignorance) and kidnap only a few selected children. Of course, some family members tried to hide their children from Lin Kuei, which was seen in the original timeline. In this case, the mother of Bi-Han and Kuai Liang tried to save them from their father, a faithful Lin Kuei warrior. 

I will be honest here, I always thought that mom of ice bros was simply a normal but unlucky woman who somehow got involved in assassin clan matters. Yet Mythologies: Sub-Zero tie-in materials gave an interestingly input about the family situation:

Their mother wanted a normal life for her sons, who had already been chosen by the Lin Kuei to become warriors for the clan. She tried in vein to hide them from their father whose own life in America was only a cover for his true identity and purpose. Eventually they were found and their father returned with them to his homeland. Their mother and sister were never seen or heard from again. 

The most standing out informations (hints):

→  the children weren’t randomly kidnapped but chosen by the clan. In the case of Bi-Han and Kuai Liang, the choice makes sense since they came from a family serving Lin Kuei for at least the last four generations (while their father alone was Sub-Zero himself). Yet their sister, most likely the youngest child, was not included. So she was still too young or wasn’t meant to become a warrior at all. Either due to lack of potential or because of some unknown to us clan politics forbidding taking all children. The most intriguing is how the clan determined who should be chosen or who left in peace. Like, was the clan so versed in genetic science to predict things like that or did they have other (magic?) ways to predict (check) whether it was worth taking the indicated child? Were the children prematurely tested before the decision was made?

Additionally, in MK Conquest TV series, the Grandmaster sounds pretty sure about Sub-Zero’s freezing abilities before the warrior himself started consciously use them:

“He has trained his whole life. His fighting skills are unmatched among us… yet it is only now that he truly begins… for it is his destiny to carry to battle ancient powers. The time has come to unleash them.” [Episode 3, “Cold Reality”].

What could explain why Lin Kuei took only the boy yet did not come for his younger sister born to the same parents (thus having in theory the same chances to inherit the wanted genes).  

→ the mother seemed to be aware about Lin Kuei and the clan's interest in her children, so for all we know she actually could be one of them or be more involved in her partner (husband?)’s criminal activity. This is an interesting idea in context of her desire to give her sons a normal life. The mother tried but failed to hide the boys from Lin Kuei. She and the daughter weren’t seen nor heard of again what may imply both died… or, if mother was truly full trained Lin Kuei herself, she actually managed to run away with the daughter and hide so well. Anyway, if Kuai Liang and Bi-Han’s mother or sister survived long enough to give birth to another child, the Sub-Zero brothers could still have a biological family living somewhere, maybe even ignorant about the whole cryomancer legacy. 

In summary, and this is really just my personal take on the matter, there are many more descendants of cryomancer species around the world than we know about. The problem lies in genetic variation that gives a freezing ability only to a handful of people. Some cryomancers were part of Lin Kuei for generations (and maybe get paired with genetically specific group of people for better breeding thus the continuity of ice warriors generations), some never learned about their true legacy and some knew and either seek out the clan (Frost) or tried shield their children from the cruel life of assassin. Sadly, it seems like Lin Kuei warriors were really good at tracking the right families to get children with certain abilities so even if at some point cryomancers decided to hide it did not save them in the long run. On other hand, cryomancer adepts are very stubborn and unwilling to let themselves forget about their biological family, so Lin Kuei balanced on thin ice with hunting down and training the descendants of cryomancers. 

[roll-for-world-building]

bardic inspiration

Mothen shivered and re-wrapped the thick woolen scarf around his neck. It was not yet quite four hours past noon, but the sky was already dark enough that lamps were being lit across the marketplace, and the wind had picked up a bite. There was a certain feel in the air that told him there would likely be more snow on the way soon.

It had been a good day at the market. This close to the solstice, the marketplace was abuzz with the varied citizens of Lantern Point preparing for any one of the collection of winter holidays celebrated in the city, and consequently the cart full of family goods to sell that they had arrived with had emptied in remarkable time. Mothen had had both coin and time enough to fill the cart back up again with their own purchases while the stalls were still well-stocked. He’d even managed to secure two jars of the pickled fish he and Fhurl enjoyed, which usually got snapped up long before he could make it to the stall.

But it had also been a long day at the market, and though he was well-bundled against the cold, after so long outside in the chill it had begun to find its way through his warm woolen layers and settle under his skin. He was more than ready to be home with his feet warming before the hearth fire and a hot drink in his hands.

There was one more thing still to do before they could set off for home, however.

“Well, that seems to be the last thing on the list,” he said to his son Beah, who was standing in the cart and packing up the last few purchases with great care while an enormous shaggy black dog sat in the seat keeping a calm eye on the proceedings. Their stalwart pony Clara stood patiently in front of the cart, waiting to be hitched. “There’s not anything else we need to get, is there?”

The young halfling looked down over the side of the cart anxiously, wide brown eyes peeping out above the heavy scarf that concealed most of his face. “Da...”

Mothen put a hand to his chin as if he were thinking very hard. “Unless I’m forgetting something? But I can’t think what...”

“Da, you promised.”

“Did I make a promise? Hmm...” Beah was positively squirming by now. Mothen couldn’t hold his straight face any longer. “Ah yes, that’s right! I promised a certain little boy he would get a treat if he helped me out at the marketplace today.”

“I did help,” Beah said, a little uncertainly.

“You did indeed! You helped a great deal. And I always keep my promises.” Mothen reached up and lifted Beah down off the cart. “So, little merchant. Do you know what kind of reward you want for your hard work today?”

“Yes!” Beah took off the moment his boots touched the ground, making with absolute conviction back to the heart of the marketplace. Mothen paused long enough to murmur, “Stay, Clover,” to the dog before following Beah at a rather more sedate pace. He was not concerned about leaving the cart unattended; Clover would brook no interference with it as long as she was on guard, not that most thieves would have bothered in the first place once they saw a halfling-bred guard dog on duty.

He had been rather surprised when Beah had approached him the night before and, rather tremulously, asked if he could have something from the market in exchange for helping with the day’s selling and buying. Normally Beah needed no encouragement to help with the family chores, least of all market day. Getting to come along to the city and watch its motley collection of people as they passed among the stalls had previously been more than enough of a treat for Beah on its own. But now it seemed that his son had some particular mission in mind, and Mothen was curious to find out what it was.

He half expected to see Beah turn to the grocer’s section of the market, in search perhaps of the peppermint candy he was so partial to. But instead the little halfling made for the craftsmans’ stalls, and stopped in front of one where a tired but kindly-looking human woman was selling soft toys.

Mothen’s puzzlement only increased as he watched his son standing on tip toes to peruse the contents of the stall with all the seriousness of a seasoned merchant. Dolls were not something he ever would have suspected Beah to feel lacking in. As the son of a wool-worker, Beah had been gifted with dolls since before he could even walk. They were, admittedly, not exactly of elf-make quality, nor made of the very finest materials, but they were good enough to sell decently well at the market when Mothen was able to add a few to his usual stock of yarn and cloth. Mothen had never been given to pridefulness, but he found to his own surprise that he felt a slight pang of hurt at the thought that his creations were no longer good enough for his son. He wondered if perhaps Beah had begun to grow jealous of the other children he saw in the market, most of whom came from rather more prosperous families than their own.

Or—perhaps not. Beah’s face fell the longer he looked at the dolls until he finally turned away without selecting any of them, although they were all certainly of good quality. Mothen gave an apologetic smile to the stall owner and pulled his son to the side.

“You know,” he said hesitantly, “if it’s a doll you’re wanting...it’s not long now til Gracenight--” In fact he had been careful so far to keep Beah from suspecting anything of the doll Mothen was making for his Gracenight present. It was going to be—he hoped—his best yet. But Beah looked so disconsolate that Mothen couldn’t resist dropping a hint.

Yet Beah barely even seemed to register what his father was implying. “It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for Thyrjka.”

This was so utterly not what Mothen had expected that for a moment he was completely speechless.

“For...your orc friend?” he managed after a moment.

“Yes!” Beah kicked at the ground in frustration. “She said she’d never ever had a doll, not even one. So I wanted to give her one for Gracenight...but I want to give her one that looks like her. And none of those do.”

Mothen glanced over at the stall. There was a good variety there, with human and halfling-shaped dolls as well as a number of brightly colored stuffed animals. There were even—rather optimistically, Mothen privately thought—a couple of dwarf dolls with braided yarn beards. There were certainly no orcs.

He looked down at his son.

“I’m not sure if orcs--” he began, then stopped. He’d never thought that orc children played with dolls much, but perhaps they did. He was hardly in a position to say, not knowing any personally himself.

“Tell you what,” he said instead, reaching down to clasp Beah’s mitten-clad hands in his own. “How about we go home, and I’ll pull out some of my spare cloth, and you can make her a doll yourself. One that looks just like her.”

For a moment Beah lit up at the suggestion. But then, just as quickly, his face crumpled again. “But I’m not good at making dolls,” he said.

Beah had seemed to be rather preoccupied lately with the idea of not being good at things. It troubled Mothen. “That’s rather a bold claim from someone who’s never made a doll before,” he said. “You might find that you’re in fact rather good at it.” When Beah did not seem cheered by this, he added, “I’ll help you with it. How does that sound?”

At that, Beah finally brightened. “Really?”

“Really. I did promise, didn’t I?”

Beah flung himself around Mothen’s legs in a hug that very nearly sent the older halfling tumbling. Mothen laughed and patted Beah on the head. “Alright then, steady on there. Let’s get on home, shall we? I don’t know about you but my toes are cold.”

“So,” Mothen said, “why don’t you tell me about your friend?”

It had been a cold drive back through the quickly falling dark, and by the time they had reached home the drifting flurries were turning to a proper snowfall. Now heavy flakes were swirling past the windows, promising to turn the little homestead white by morning. But inside it was warm and cozily lit, the air still lingering with the comforting aroma of mushroom stew and fresh bread from their recent dinner.

In truth, Mothen was still a little perplexed by his son’s new friendship. Beah had always been an especially quiet, shy lad and there had not been a great many opportunities for him to meet other children since the family had moved here. They were a little family, by halfling standards, only seven all told: Mothen and his wife Torli, her brother Fhurl, their parents Jay and Rosali, Fhurl’s husband Odah, and, of course, Beah. Theirs was one of a few homesteads that dotted the countryside outside Lantern Point, and although the neighbors were friendly enough in their way, none of them were close enough to allow for regular socializing. The local humans considered this a normal enough state of affairs, but to Mothen’s family, who had grown up among the close-knit homes of a halfling community, it couldn’t help but make for a rather lonely existence.

They did see other halfling families in Lantern Point sometimes, at the market or when they visited the Lady’s temple, and Mothen and Torli had had hopes that Beah would get on with the children there—but he seemed to spend most of those encounters hiding behind his parents or sitting alone in a quiet corner with a book. Mothen was enormously glad that Beah had finally made a friend whose company he clearly enjoyed, but he had to admit he certainly had not expected said friend to be a girl who was twice as tall as Beah and could hit a target with a throwing knife from twenty paces.

He knew that Thyrjka was an orc from the merchant clan that camped in the fields not far from their homestead every autumn, and that she and Beah had become friends since the clan had arrived this year three months or so ago--but that was about the limit of his knowledge. He’d meant to ask Beah more about her before now, but they’d all been so damnably busy all throughout the autumn and somehow he hadn’t managed it. But here they were now, sitting in Mothen’s workroom, Mothen at his work table and Beah sitting on his little stool kicking his legs against the rungs, and it was better late than never, he supposed.

Beah mulled over the question for a moment. “She’s very brave,” he said. “And very strong. And she—she knows a lot of things. A lot of stories. She’s going to be a bard and she says she has to practice a lot every day, to learn everything.”

“Oh, really?” That explained things somewhat. Beah had always loved stories—hearing them, reading them, writing them. No wonder they were friends, then. “That sounds very impressive.”

Beah nodded. “She’s been to so many places. She says, they traveled up here all the way from the Graywold. And in the spring, they’re going to sail all the way to the Wandering Isles!” He seemed both awed and concerned in equal measure. “That’s so far away!”

“Yes, it is,” Mothen said, trying not to smile. Beah had made a not inconsiderable voyage himself once, when they’d first traveled here, fleeing up the coast from one too many troubles back home. But he’d been too small at the time to remember it very well now, and since then he’d barely been any farther away from home than Lantern Point. The distances covered by the merchant clan on their travels, impressive enough on their own, must have seemed as good as traveling to another plane to Beah.

“She says...” Beah frowned in that way he always did when he was trying to figure out how to say something important. “She says she doesn’t mind traveling, and she loves her clan, but she still gets lonely sometimes. Because there aren’t so many other kids there, and she doesn’t know them so well because she used to be part of another clan. And she has to spend a lot of time on her own, with her lessons, so she doesn’t always do the same kinds of things they do together. So I thought—I thought if she had a doll—she’d have something to keep her company.”

Mothen couldn’t think of anything to say for a moment.

“Da?” Beah asked uncertainly.

By the Lady, Mothen thought, we’ve not done wrong raising this one here, and no mistake.

He got up and hugged Beah, who was rather surprised but readily returned the embrace. “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Mothen told him. “Shall we start looking at cloth?”

The first time Beah met Thyrjka was in the early autumn, on a bright clear day when the leaves were just starting to turn. He was on his way to the woods north of their homestead, walking out to his favorite secret reading spot. In one hand he held his favorite walking stick; the other rested on his satchel, which in addition to its regular sort of cargo—some interesting rocks, his toy tops, a still-warm cheesebread roll wrapped in a napkin, and of course, Sir Buckley—today contained a very important prize: a new book. He had gotten it only yesterday from the lending library in Lantern Point, and it promised to be an exceptionally good one: an adventure story set on the high seas, full of swashbuckling and treasure and sea serpents. He had been waiting impatiently to start it all throughout his morning tasks and lessons, which he usually enjoyed but had today seemed to last an unbearable age. Now it was finally almost time.

He walked eagerly up the road that wound all the way down the field-lands south of Lantern Point, while beside him one of their farm dogs trotted happily along. Unlike the other dogs, who were all of old halfling working breeds, Patches was a brown and gray mutt of distinctly uncertain parentage who had been found as a stray wandering puppy trying to dig into the chicken coop. She was deviously intelligent and as friendly as anyone could ask for, but distinctly lacking in both discipline and size compared to the other dogs. Uncle Odah, who trained all the dogs, had had to progressively admit that even when fully grown Patches would likely never be suited for herding, or guarding, or cart-pulling, although he hadn’t given up on the possibility that she might be a good rat-catcher. In the meantime, having thus far evaded a permanent occupation, Patches spent most of her time in the woods with Beah, chasing squirrels, rolling in creek beds, and generally endeavoring to get into various kinds of trouble.

The two of them were just about to turn off the main road toward the path that led into the woods when Beah saw a figure standing up ahead, looking into the trees. Beah stopped walking and bit his lip uncertainly. The woods were not his, not anyone’s. They were what his grandfather called greenscommon—land for anyone to forage from or graze their livestock on, although Grandda also usually followed that by grumbling that no one in these parts knew how to use it right. And indeed Beah had very rarely seen anyone besides himself and Patches in the woods, save for when Grandda came out foraging with him. But he knew he had no right to protest anyone else being there if they wanted.

Still, he did not much like talking to strangers at any time, and here was a stranger standing right in his path, where he would surely have to talk to them if he passed by. Nor did he like the idea that they might follow him into the woods and find his favorite special secret reading spot. He decided to leave the road early and cut across the field into the woods before they saw him.

But Patches had other ideas. As soon as she laid eyes upon the stranger she was off, galloping down the road and barking joyfully in anticipation of making a new friend. Beah had no choice but to chase after her, hoping the stranger would not be angry at her enthusiastic greeting.

As he got closer, he realized with some surprise that the stranger was an orc girl, so much shorter than any of the other orcs he had seen before that he had taken her for a human at a distance. He thought she must have been from the merchant clan that was camped up in the fields by the cliffs further down the road; she wore their colors, a blue and white pattern on the tops of her boots and on the band that tied back her thick black braids. There was a knapsack on her back and a couple of large knives strapped to her belt.

Beah slowed down nervously. He was well enough used to the orc merchants, who came every autumn and camped in the fields until spring, but he was still shy of them. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Da when he said that the merchants were friendly folk—it was just that they were all so very much bigger than he was, and they all seemed to have at least one weapon with them all the time. Da had said it was only because the roads were dangerous, but Beah still could not help but feel nervous. The girl up ahead was a lot closer to him in size, but she was still a good deal taller than him, and while she was not carrying a sword or ax or spear, her knives looked a lot bigger and more serious than the little utility knife Beah carried with him, or even than Ma’s biggest kitchen knife.

But Patches was evidently determined to make introductions regardless of whether Beah wanted to or not. Having reached the stranger, she began to jump up and down, endeavoring to lick the girl’s face and bark at the same time. The stranger, to Beah’s surprise and relief, laughed and ruffled Patches’s ears, not seeming to mind that she was getting slobbered all over.

A little emboldened by this, Beah jogged the rest of the way. “Patches, behave,” he panted as he got near. “Down. Get down.”

Patches paused briefly to consider this, and then promptly carried on jumping and barking.

“I’m sorry,” Beah said helplessly, trying to grab Patches by the collar and pull her away. “She’s not really trained all the way yet. She listens to Uncle Odah most of the time, but not me.”

“That’s alright.” The orc girl gently pushed Patches off of her. Patches sat on the path, wriggling in place. “I like dogs. What’s her name?”

“Er...Patches,” Beah said, thinking as he said it that orcs probably did not name their dogs things like Patches. Probably orc dogs were called things like—he struggled to think of something suitably ferocious—like Bloodtooth or Killer or Foe-Shredder or something like that. He wondered if she would laugh.

“Aw, you’re a good girl, Patches, eh?” Patches’s tail thumped hard against the dirt as the girl scratched her on the back. “For a moment there I thought you were coming to chase me off your land.”

“Oh, no, this isn’t our land,” Beah said. “We live away down the road. This isn’t anybody’s land, here. It’s greenscommon.”

She looked at him blankly. “Greenscommon?”

“Er—that’s what Grandda calls it. It means land that’s free for anyone to forage on. Although that’s really more because no one happens to own it, I think, because no one really does use it much, except me and Grandda sometimes.”

“Oh, forage land. That’s what I thought. It doesn’t look like farmland.” She looked up back into the woods. “That’s good, then. I’m out foraging right now. It’s been trail food the past couple of weeks—jerky, mostly. Not much time to prepare anything else. We’ve been in a hurry—the weather’s been chasing us all the way up the coast. Most everyone else is busy in camp right now, but Rosth—he does most of our cooking—he said if I could get him some nuts he’d make pasties tonight.” She looked at Beah hopefully. “Are there any good nut trees around here? I’d take just about anything at this point.”

Beah hesitated. He had spent enough time in the woods by now to know all the best places to find nuts, including what he was sure had to be the best hickory tree for miles and miles, maybe even in the whole world. But it was his spot, his tree that he discovered, one of his very favorite secret places in the wood. He was loathe to lead anyone else to it, let alone a total stranger, and a little selfish voice in his head whispered that if he just took her to one of the little runty trees on the border of the woodland, he could keep his spot to himself and she would never be the wiser anyway.

But that wouldn’t be right, and he knew it, really. If someone came to you asking for food, you didn’t give them scraps of stale bread so you could keep all the fresh loaves to yourself. You gave them the best you could give. That was hospitality. It was the sort of thing Alanya Lighthand taught people stern lessons about in the stories, usually by stealing all their fresh loaves in the night.

So he said, “I know a good hickory tree. I’ll show you. Come on.”

Her eyes lit up. “Great!”

They set off into the woods, with Patches running ahead, barking happily.

He took the girl to a place where the ground dipped just a little into a slight bowl bordered by an old outcropping of moss-grown rocks. Small white and blue flowers poked up from leaves dappled with early afternoon sunlight. In the middle of the depression the hickory tree stood tall and proud, great crooked branches stretching out in all directions, crowned all over in golden leaves. It had done particularly well for nuts this year, branches drooping with the promise of a good crop.

The orc girl stopped and looked up at the tree with a clear admiration. “Now that is a good tree, and no mistake.”

Beah felt oddly relieved, and a little proud. It would have been too terrible to bear if he’d had to give up one of his best secret spots only for it to not even be properly appreciated.

The girl took off her knapsack and began to search around the tree. Beah went to help her, but despite the richness of the crop above them, they did not find very many in the leaves below. Beah had to admit that he had already picked most of the good nuts from the lower branches. “I thought there would be more fallen by now,” he said gloomily. “But I guess animals have already eaten most of them.”

“Well, that’s not a problem.” The orc girl looked up at the tree, rubbing her chin thoughtfully with one hand. Then she unlaced and kicked off her boots and scrambled up the tree so quickly Beah was astonished.

“Come on,” the girl called down cheerfully from a high branch. “There’s plenty up here. You could get even higher than I could, I bet, you’re so small.”

Beah shook his head frantically. He had never had the courage to climb any higher than the tree’s very lowest branches. Just looking up at her so high above the ground made his mouth go dry.

He was sure she would make fun of him, but instead she looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and said, “Alright. You go get my knapsack and hold it open, then.”

Beah did so, and she began to pick off nuts and throw them down into the open knapsack. She was a good shot, and more of them hit the target than not, but a few went wide and Beah had to quickly step this way and that to catch them in the knapsack. Before long they were both laughing as she shook a rain of hickory nuts down from the branches and Beah ran about, catching as many as he could.

When the knapsack was full to overflowing, the girl climbed back down the tree, gingerly picking her way barefoot through the field of nuts that now littered the ground. “That was fun,” she said. “I didn’t expect to get done nearly so soon. Let’s eat a few—there’s plenty to spare.”

“I usually sit on those rocks over there,” Beah suggested. “They’re good for cracking nuts against.”

They both scooped up a few of the loose nuts on the ground and climbed up onto the rocks. Beah picked up the small flat rock he had set aside for cracking nuts and began attempting to break one open, without much success. The girl watched him for a moment, then shook her head and said, “Let me.”

She took the nut and in one quick movement simply bashed it against the rock, then pulled the cracked pieces of the husk away. Beah was in awe. It usually took him several minutes with a stone to get even one crack in a husk. “You’re really strong!”

She grinned, showing a great deal of very sharp teeth. “Tell you what, I’ll break the husks if you’ll get the meats out.”

Beah took his little knife from his satchel and began to pry the nutmeats out of the inner shells, while she broke the husks against the rock. Working together, it did not take long for them to shell the whole pile. Then they sat, legs swinging off the edge of the rock, enjoying the spoils of victory.

“My name’s Thyrjka,” the girl said after a little while.

“I’m Beah,” Beah said.

“Good to know you, Beah.” Thyrjka reached down for the knapsack and pulled a canteen from the outer pocket. She took a swig and offered it to Beah. “It’s just water,” she added, looking amused at his slightly dubious expression.

Beah took a relieved drink and handed the canteen back.

When they had eaten all the hickory nuts, Thyrjka picked up the knapsack again and, to Beah’s amazement, scooped out half the nuts and pushed them towards Beah.

“That’s your share,” she said.

“But—but I didn’t pick any,” he protested.

“You helped me gather them, though. Anyway, I wouldn’t have known this tree was here if you hadn’t shown me. You did some of the work, so you get some of the reward—that’s only fair.”

Beah considered this. Then he scooped up about half of the nuts Thyrjka had given him. “I’ve already gotten to pick some this year. I don’t need them as much,” he explained. “Besides, they wouldn’t all fit in my satchel.”

Thyrjka thought about that, then shrugged. “Alright. If you say so.”

She piled the leftover nuts back into her knapsack, then hopped off the rock and picked up her boots. While she laced them back up, Beah looked into the space at the top of the knapsack and thought about eating mostly jerky for two weeks.

“I know where to find mushrooms too,” he blurted out.

Thyrjka stopped with her lace half-tied and looked up at him wide-eyed. “Mushrooms?”

Beah nodded.

Thyrjka threw up her hands. “Well what are we standing around here for? Let’s go!”

Beah laughed and scrambled down the rock, and off they went.

Evening was beginning to fall by the time the two of them made their way back to the main road, knapsack and satchel now both comfortably full of the rewards of foraging. Beah was very thoughtful.

“Are you going to stay here long?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer. The merchants always came in the fall and went away again in the spring.

Sure enough, Thyrjka said, “We’re staying for the winter. We’ll sell the rest of the goods we have in Lantern Point, and in the spring we take ship for the Wandering Isles to pick up more stock. Then we sail back to Rainharbor and travel up the coast all over again.”

Beah had never really thought about where the merchants went after they left—he only knew that they did leave, and eventually came back again. The Wandering Isles were a long, long way away. He couldn’t imagine making such an incredible journey every year.

“Well, I’m off back to camp,” Thyjrka said. She gave Patches one last scratch behind the ears. “Thanks for your help.”

“Wait!” Beah said. Thyrjka turned to look at him in surprise.“If—if you come back tomorrow, I could...I could show you some more good places. To forage, I mean. In the woods.”

Thyrjka thought for a moment. “I have to do camp chores and lessons in the morning,” she said. “But maybe in the afternoon?”

Beah nodded hopefully.

Thyrjka grinned. “It’s a deal then. See you tomorrow!”

She turned and headed off across the fields. Beah watched her go, then turned down the road back home. He hadn’t read a single page of his new book, and somehow he didn’t mind at all.

Thyrjka came back the next day, and the day after that, too.

It was a rich fall that year, and the foraging in the woods was plentiful. They gathered hickory nuts, and walnuts, and chestnuts; dug up mushrooms and wild herbs and roots; shook small sour apples down from wild apple trees and picked seathorn berries from the edges of the forest where the trees gave way to scrubby grass and the smell of salt on the breeze. Beah’s family had never seen him come back from the woods so heavily laden or so beaming with happiness.

“Now what’s gotten into you?” Ma asked as Beah carefully unpacked a full bag onto the kitchen counter for the third day in a row. “You’ve been especially productive lately.”

“I made a friend,” Beah said.

Ma stopped and stared. So did Da and Grandda and Uncle Fhurl, who had been talking over tea at the table.

“A friend?” Ma said.

“Her name’s Thyrjka,” Beah said. “She’s from the merchant camp. She’s really good at climbing trees.”

The adults all glanced at each other.

“Well that’s unexpected,” Grandda said.

“It’s excellent news,” Ma said firmly. “Tell Thyrjka she’s welcome to come for tea any time.”

But Beah and Thyrjka were too busy most days to come back home for tea. In-between gathering one thing or another they spent a good amount of time simply wandering the woods, tossing sticks for Patches, splashing in the stream, or throwing stones to knock pinecones off trees.  Other times they would simply sit for a while, on a fallen log or a sunny patch of rocks, and enjoy the quiet.

“I’m going to be a bard,” Thyrjka told Beah one day as they sat skipping stones over a small pond. “My uncle Kvast is teaching me.”

Beah knew a little about bards, or thought he did. Many of the stories in his books were attributed to bards who had gone adventuring and come back with amazing tales and songs about their travels. He was in awe of the idea of bards, but he had never had a clear idea of how you went about becoming one. He had assumed it was something that just happened to particularly extraordinary people if they traveled far enough and did enough interesting things. The idea that you could simply decide to be one when you grew up had never occurred to him.

But he came to learn from Thyrjka that being a bard was not very much at all like he had imagined it—or at least, it wasn’t for orcs. Orcs took the business of being a bard as seriously as Beah’s family took the business of their crafting and farming. It was a lot of work, and a lot of practice. He was stunned to hear how much time Thyrjka had to spend memorizing songs and stories and learning history and all kinds of other things.

It was a lot of work, but it was important work. A good bard, Thyrjka told him proudly, was every bit as vital to the clan as a good hunter or horsemaster or haggler. You could keep the clan healthy and fed and safe, you could keep the carts rolling and the animals happy and bring the money in, but without a good bard the soul of the clan would start to die. Bards kept the history of the clan, remembered all the important things that had happened, and sang songs of good times and great deeds to raise spirits when times were difficult. Even more than that, they kept alive the stories of the old great heroes of legend, who never really died as long as their tales were still told.

Beah had never heard anyone talk about stories the way Thyrjka did.

He had always loved stories, loved reading them in his books or sitting at the fire while Grandma told a wild yarn that was more lie than true. But he had had for some time a creeping, guilty suspicion that as he got older he would have to stop loving stories quite so much and think about other things instead.

It was a troubling thought. Beah took turns helping out everyone in the family with their work, and he enjoyed all of his own little jobs: digging in the garden with Grandma, helping Uncle Odah feed the chickens and sheep and the two goats, baking bread and making preserves in the kitchen with Ma. He liked the softness and colors of the wool and cloth when he helped Da with the weaving and sewing, liked the smell of fresh wood and the gentle sounds of Uncle Fhurl’s tools when he helped in the woodshop. But he could not seem to find in any of these things what Uncle Fhurl called a spark, a deep-down love for something such that you could happily do it for the rest of your life.

The only thing Beah had been able to find anything that he might call a spark for was writing his stories, and it worried him. No one talked about it much, at least not when they thought he could hear, but he knew times had been hard for the family when they had first come to Lantern Point. They had had very little money to begin with. Things were better now, but he still wanted badly to be able to do something that would help his family, something important. Stories were a nice thing to have, and they could teach you things sometimes, like the stories about the Lady Goddess the priests told at the temple or the tales of Alanya Lighthand in the book Grandma had given him. But stories weren’t important like working in the garden or raising the animals or making food was important. Stories wouldn’t keep the household running, nor could they be sold at the market like Da sold his cloth and Uncle Fhurl sold his woodwork.

But Thyrjka spoke of stories as if they were not just important, but one of the most important things that there ever was. “Stories are history,” she told him. “Everything everyone’s ever done is a story. If someone doesn’t learn them, and tell them, we’d lose it all—all the great deeds, all the important discoveries, it’d be like they never happened, never meant anything.”

Beah had never thought about it like that. It was hard to argue with her unshakable convictions. But he still had an uneasy sense of doubt that his kind of stories were not that important, maybe not important at all. He was quiet at dinner that night, mulling over the matter.

The next day they were gathering firewood. They’d found a tree downed by a storm and Thyrjka had brought a hatchet and a wood-cart pulled by the biggest pony Beah had ever seen. In fact he was not entirely convinced that it was a pony, despite Thyrjka’s insistence; it was twice the size of Clara, and made him worry a little to think what orcish horses might be like.

Thyrjka was chopping up the tree, while Beah gathered up the logs and piled them into the cart. While they worked Thyrjka sang. Beah didn’t understand the words—it was all in Orcish—but he liked to hear it. The song went back and forth, steady and repetitive, making a rhythm that Thyrjka swung her hatchet to, and was so catchy that before long Beah was humming along to it.

When the tree was half gone they stopped to take a break, sitting with their backs against the cart, and Beah asked, “Do you only tell stories about important things?”

Thyjrka took a long drink from her canteen and gave him a thoughtful look. “Kvast says we don’t always know what’s important,” she said. “Not until much later, or sometimes not at all. You know that song I was just singing?”

Beah nodded.

“It’s a work song. I know a lot of them. That one’s for chopping wood. It doesn’t mean anything, not really, but it helps you keep the right rhythm, and that makes chopping easier.” She took another drink, and splashed some of the water on her face. “That was the first song Kvast ever taught me. I was disappointed, ‘cause I wanted to learn something big and grand, like a saga song. But he said the first thing I had to learn was that that song was just as important as any other song I was ever going to learn, even though the words don’t really mean anything. Because a saga song, it might be about something big, something important to remember, but it’s not important at all when you’re chopping wood. When you’re chopping wood, the most important song you can know is a song that helps you chop wood.”

Beah thought about this.

“So,” he said after a while. “So...there might be stories about things that don’t seem very important...but they could be really important, if you told them at the right time?”

Thyjrka nodded. “Exactly.”

“What if it’s…” Beah screwed up all his courage and blurted out, “What if it’s a story that’s not something that ever really happened at all? If it’s all made up? Could that be important too?”

“Of course,” Thyrjka said, so casually that Beah felt a little disoriented. “Saga songs are important because they tell us about something that happened, something we need to keep alive, something that needs to be told. But there are other songs that aren’t true at all or we don’t know if they’re true, and it doesn’t matter, because they’re good to listen to, or they teach you important things. A story can have something true to say even if the story itself isn’t true.”

“Oh,” Beah said.

And then, because he was not sure if he would be able to gather up his courage like this again, he said, “Can I tell you something?”

Thyjrka nodded. Beah reached up to the seat of the cart, where he had laid his satchel, and pulled out his oldest and most favorite doll.

“This is Sir Buckley,” he said nervously. He had never felt embarrassed of his toys before, but in front of Thyrjka, who carried knives and could climb tall trees and had been all over the continent and seemed to him to be mostly grown up already, he found himself feeling considerable trepidation. He was not sure if Thyrjka had any toys at all. She might think Sir Buckley was silly and babyish. But she had told him a lot about herself, and he had not said very much at all about himself, and besides he desperately wanted to tell someone his secret, small and quiet though it may be. “I make up stories about him. Um. About his adventures. I wrote some of them down, even. But they’re not...they’re not anything like your stories.”

Thyrjka did not laugh or sneer. She took Sir Buckley very carefully and looked at him. He was a halfling-shaped doll, with curly brown hair and button eyes and a green hooded cloak. Age and many adventures were beginning to show on him: his cloth skin and clothing were stained and discolored in places, several popped seams and tears had been repaired with discreet stitches, and his eyes were slightly different in size and color, one of the original buttons having been lost somewhere across the sea.

“He looks very daring.” Thyrjka traced a finger along the line of stitching that made up Sir Buckley’s confident smile. “What kind of stories?”

Beah told her, shyly at first and then, when she still did not laugh, more and more eagerly, about Sir Buckley’s many heroic exploits: climbing to the top of the world’s tallest mountain to pick the legendary sky fruit; swimming to the bottom of a great whirlpool to rescue a lost pearl for a mer-rabbit; meeting the Prince of All Dogs, who was so impressed by Sir Buckley’s heroism that they became constant companions.

Thyrjka listened raptly. When Beah trailed off during the story of Sir Buckley and the Dog Prince’s quest to retrieve a falling star and return it to the moon, she insisted he tell her what happened next.

“I can’t,” he admitted. “I haven’t, um, finished it yet.”

“Well you have to finish it!” she told him. “I want to know how it ends. Do they ever make it to the moon?”

“I think they do,” Beah said. “But I’m not sure what happens after that.”

“If you find out,” Thyrjka said, “You have to tell me. Deal?”

Beah smiled. “Deal.”

Thyrjka looked down at Sir Buckley again, an odd expression on her face. “Where did you get him?”

“Da made him for me,” Beah said. “He’s made me a lot of dolls, but Sir Buckley’s the oldest. He’s the only thing I brought from our old home. He came across the sea with me.”

Thyrjka looked up then. “You’ve been across the sea?”

Beah nodded. “We used to live in Kellsdowne, but we had to leave. I was really small, so I don’t remember it much. Grandda says things went bad there, but no one talks about it much. We had to come here on a ship, and we couldn’t take much with us. I don’t remember it very well now, but I was...well, scared, a lot. I didn’t know where we were going, and I was scared of the water, and all the noise...so I held onto Sir Buckley all the time, so he could keep me safe. I still keep him with me, just...just in case I get scared.”

He said this last without thinking, and was immediately embarrassed to have said it. But Thyrjka only looked wistfully at Sir Buckley.  

“I get scared too sometimes,” she said.

Beah stared. Thyrjka could climb the tallest trees in the woods while laughing, had traveled all the way across the coast, could tell bloodcurdling ghost stories with a grin on her face. She could throw a knife and shoot a bow and fight with an ax. She had a scar on her nose from falling off a horse and one on her arm from a wild dog and one on her hand from a fire that had taken one of their wagons. It had never, ever occurred to him that she could be afraid of anything.

“What do you get scared of?” he asked.

“Sometimes...” she said, “People ask me to give them a song, or a story, that I’ve learned, just around the fire, like. And I say no, because I don’t have it right yet. But it’s not that really. It’s—I do have it right, I know I’ve learned it right, I can recite it to myself, but when people are looking at me—even if I just think about people looking at me—I can’t do it. It scares me so much it makes my stomach hurt. And that’s an awful thing for a bard, you know.” She smiled shakily at him. “I’ve worked so hard but I’m starting to think—maybe I just can’t do it.”

“But...you sing in front of me,” Beah said, still feeling thrown. “You were singing just now. And, and you’ve told me stories. You told me all those ghost stories, and the story about the bandits, and...”

Thyrjka pulled her legs to her chest and rested her chin on top of her knees. “I don’t know. Somehow I don’t mind around you. It doesn’t feel like it would be so bad, if I didn’t do it perfectly. When I’m in front of my clan...I feel like it has to be perfect, or else...” She sighed and shrugged. “I just want them to think well of me. I haven’t been with this clan too long, you know.”

“You haven’t?” Beah said in surprise. He’d assumed that Thyrjka had always been with the clan, just as he had always been with his family.

“No. See, when I was born we were with my grandmother’s clan. It was her and my mam and my uncle and me, and some others. We used to trade horses. But it wasn’t...great. There was a lot of trouble. We never had much money, and we were traveling in the wilderlands in Ulstver. It’s mostly wild down there. Lots of dangers on the road, and not a lot of people to sell to even if you made it to a town. Then Grandmother died, and I guess she was really the one holding it all together, because most everyone else up and left after that. Aside from the three of us, the only one that stayed with us was Basthyn, our horsemaster. Good old Basthyn, she said she wasn’t going anywhere...” She smiled a little. “But we couldn’t make it any more with so few of us, so we had to set off north. It was hard. We didn’t make it out before the snows came, and we lost most of the horses. But eventually we found Clan Szaghrail, and they took us in. And it’s been better. A lot better. They treat us in just like we always belonged there. I’ve got no right to complain, I know. But I just...I feel alone a lot of the time, still. I want to prove myself. I want to make them proud. But I’m scared.”

She rubbed a hand across her eyes. Beah had absolutely no idea what to do, but he felt he had to do something, so he scooted closer and tentatively put his hand on hers. She gripped it back, tight.

“I’m supposed to sing for everyone, on Ravensfall,” Thyrjka went on after a little while. “Not anything big. Just a little song. But it’s important. And I have to get it right, and I’m—I’m not sure I can do it.”

“What’s Ravensfall?” Beah asked quietly.

“You don’t know?--no, I guess you wouldn’t. It’s on the solstice. There’s a legend, see...well, it’s a long one, but it’s about the first winter, a long long time ago, and how it went on so long the world got too cold and dark to live in, until Kyanygach saved everyone. He’s one of the old heroes,” she added, seeing his confused expression. “It’s a great story. And every year we tell it again, in honor of Kyanygach. Kvast’s going to be telling the story. It’s one of the most important things a bard can do, telling one of the great old stories like that. Someday, if I really do become a bard, I’ll have to tell the story on Ravensfall. But right now I can’t even do one song.” She thumped her fist against the ground in helpless frustration.

They sat there for a while, Thyrjka staring gloomily at her knees, Beah thinking hard.

“Well,” he said eventually, “you could—you could practice with me.”

Thyrjka lifted her head slowly. “I could?”

“Sure. You said you don’t mind singing when it’s just me, so you could sing it to me and—and to Patches and Sir Buckley and, and if that’s not enough I’ll bring all my dolls and you can sing to them too. Would that help?”

Thyrjka smiled tremulously at him. “You know, I think it might be worth a shot.”

The weather was turning from crisp and cool to properly cold. The trees were mostly bare, and there was less to forage every day. Beah and Thyrjka spent little time gathering now, and more time sitting around a little fire by the hickory tree, toasting bread and talking. Thyrjka would climb up on the rocks and practice her song while Beah and Patches listened and applauded, or barked, as the situation called for it.

“Do you want to borrow Sir Buckley?” Beah asked her one afternoon when she was feeling particularly glum. “For when you have to perform, I mean.”

It was a hard thing to offer. He’d never been parted from Sir Buckley before. But it was the best comfort he could think to give, and after all he did have other dolls, while Thyrjka did not.

Thyrjka looked sorely tempted, but she shook her head. “He belongs with you,” she said. “What if you needed him?”

Beah was secretly glad she had said no, and guilty for feeling glad. He thought about it all the way home that evening. After supper he took out all his dolls and lined them up on his bed. He would pick one, he had decided, to loan to Thyrjka.

But looking at his dolls—all seven of them!--somehow only made him feel worse. He had so many dolls. Was it really right to give her one only to demand she give it back? What if she needed it again later? She was going so far away, all the way to the Wandering Isles. Who knew how many scary things she might encounter on the way?

No, there was nothing for it. He would have to give Thyrjka one of his dolls, to keep. That was what Alanya Lighthand would say to do, he was sure.

Only...when he looked at the dolls, trying to decide which one she would like best, none of them seemed right. There was Sir Buckley, and the Prince of Dogs, and two more halfling dolls, a rabbit, a fox, and a cat. They were all dolls made for a halfling. Not only that, they were dolls made for him, and only for him. Thyrjka needed a doll that was hers.

And just like that, he knew what to do.

Mothen had sold or used most of his wool and cloth for the season, but he laid what he had left out onto his work table and hummed to himself as he made some measurements.

“We can make it work,” he said. “But first, we need to plan out exactly what we’re going to make. Do you want the doll to look exactly like her?”

Beah hesitated, not sure how to word what was on his mind. “Not exactly exactly,” he said slowly. “I want it to look like her the way Sir Buckley looks like me.”

“Ah...” Mothen nodded. “I see. Yes. I think we can do that.”

Beah helped him dye the cloth, carefully directing his father on the exact right shade, dunking it in the dye basin and giggling when his hands came out stained green. While Mothen cut and sewed the doll’s body, Beah picked out the right buttons for the eyes and the right yarn for the hair.

“She should have scars,” he said, watching closely as Mothen sewed the hair in.

Mothen paused, needle in midair. “Scars?”

Beah nodded. “Thyrjka has scars. Her doll should have scars too.”

Mothen blinked. Then he shrugged. “Alright. Where do you want the scars?”

They settled on one scar on the face and another on the arm, stitched in neatly with white thread. “You know,” Mothen said as he finished the second scar, “If you asked very nicely, I imagine your uncle might just be willing to help you make a sword for her.”

Beah’s face lit up. “Really?”

“Well, go ask and see. I don’t think he’s too busy right now--”Mothen had barely finished speaking before Beah had bolted out of the room.

“Goodness,” Mothen said to the doll in his hand. “You must be something special.”

Fhurl was a little confused by Beah’s request at first. “Slow down there,” he said, putting down his whittling knife. “You’re making what now?”

“An orc doll. For my friend.” Beah was trying desperately to be calm and polite, and nearly dancing on the spot from the effort of it. “Da said maybe you could make a sword to go with it. Um. Please.”

Fhurl cupped his chin in one hand and looked at Beah for a long moment. Beah tried not to squirm. He could never tell what Fhurl was thinking when he had that look on his face.

“A sword for a doll? I’ve never done that before. But I shouldn’t think it would be too hard.” He pushed his wheelchair over to the box of wood scraps and began to look through it. “I think I have...ah, yes. Here we are.” He held up a block of wood that had been cut off the end of a larger project. “Would this be about the right size?”

“Yes!” Beah said eagerly.

“Is the doll sewn yet? Alright. Go bring it to me and I’ll make some measurements.”

Once Beah had retrieved the doll, Fhurl looked at it for a few moments, turning it around in his hands. “Hm,” he said. “Interesting.” He drew some lines on the wood with a piece of marking crayon. “If your father can supply a piece of cord, about so big?” he said, pointing to a small circle he had sketched where the sword’s hilt would be. “I’ll make a hole here to tie it through. Then she can tie the sword to the doll’s hand if she likes, and it won’t get lost.”

He smiled at Beah’s excitement. “Alright. I’ll get to work. You’d best go take this back to your da so he can finish it.”

Mothen dug into his scraps box to put together a tunic and trousers for the doll. Some leftover leather trimmings made a pair of boots and a belt. From an old blanket in the rag basket he made a soft gray cloak and hood and, at Beah’s insistence, trimmed it in blue and white. The sword, as promised, had a hole for a cord, and fit neatly into the doll’s hand.

“She’s perfect,” Beah said, looking at the doll with something like awe.

Beah had often been too excited to sleep the night before Gracenight, but this was the first time he was more consumed with the anticipation of giving a gift than receiving one. He laid awake, staring at the ceiling, trying to imagine Thyrjka’s reaction. She would like it, wouldn’t she? She had to like it. But what if she didn’t? He tossed and turned for what seemed like years before finally, having exhausted himself, drifting to sleep.

Beah was so excited to deliver his present to Thyrjka that he did not think very much about the fact that he would have to visit the merchant camp to find her. It was only when he got close enough to see the patterns on the carts and wagons that his heart began to sink a little. The camp was big, even bigger somehow than he had imagined, a seemingly endless field of carts and wagons, full of animals and people all bustling about with a great deal of noise, the air thick with the smell of campfires and cooking.

He crept closer, nervously clutching the wrapped package to his chest, looking for any sign of Thyrjka. Everything in the camp seemed to be gigantic. Even the cart wheels towered over him. There were orcs everywhere—talking, laughing, singing, sitting on the steps of wagons or around campfires, carrying things here and there—but every one of them that he could see was terribly tall. He could not see Thyrjka or any other child his own age anywhere among them.

Beah stood by one of the outer wagons, so far unnoticed, trying to work up his courage. Everywhere around him was noise and movement. The people walking past him were so tall he barely came up to their knees. He did not even know where to begin looking for Thyrjka, and though he managed to whisper out a faint, “Excuse me--” a few times, the sound was immediately swallowed up by the cacophony of the camp.

And then, just as he was beginning to feel totally hopeless and more than a little afraid someone would step on him, an orc man holding a lit pipe walked over to the very wagon Beah was standing next to. He settled himself into a comfortable lean against the side of the wagon, took a deep draw on his pipe, looked around lazily as he puffed out a smoke ring—and saw Beah.

Beah opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“Well, hello there.” The orc crouched down and looked at Beah curiously. He had thick black sideburns and heavy-lidded eyes that made him look almost sleepy. “What’s a little thing like you doing here?”

“I’m. I’m. I’m--” Beah took a few frantic breaths. “I’m—looking for Thyrjka.”

“Thyrjka?” The orc cocked his head and looked at him strangely. For a terrible moment Beah feared desperately and irrationally that he was about to say that Beah had the wrong camp entirely, there was no Thyrjka here and never had been.

But instead he said, “Now there’s a thing. What’dya want Thyrjka for? I didn’t know she was expecting callers.”

“She’s not. Er, I mean, I didn’t tell her I was coming.” It occurred to Beah then that he really should have, in fact, told her he was coming. “But I-I’m her friend. I brought her a present.” He held up the package desperately to prove this.

The orc looked at the package and slowly lifted his eyebrows. “A present? Well now, don’t that beat all. We’d better make sure she gets it, then.”

Abruptly he stood up and, before Beah even knew what was happening, the orc was swinging him up into the air and onto his shoulders. Beah had been picked up plenty of times by Mothen, but this was something else entirely. He was so high up the ground seemed to yawn away from him.

“Wouldn’t want you to get trampled down there,” the orc said cheerfully. “Now, you just hold on tight and we’ll go find Thyrjka.”

He set off across the camp with Beah clinging to his shoulders, torn between terror and exhilaration. He was so high up he felt light-headed, but he couldn’t help but marvel at how different the camp looked from his new vantage point. From there he could see it was not the chaotic labyrinth it had seemed to him, but laid out neatly and precisely, with the wagons arranged so that they protected the inner camp from the weather.

It did not take long for the orc to find Thyrjka. She was sitting on the steps of a wagon, frowning down at a hefty book on her knees.

“Oi, Thyrjka!” Beah’s new friend called to her. “Stop studying for half a minute. You’ve got a guest.”

Thyrjka glanced up, looking distracted and irritable. Then she saw Beah, and her mouth fell open in shock.

“Beah!” She slammed the book shut and ran forward as the orc lowered Beah to the ground. “I didn’t expect—aren’t you busy today?”

“Yes, but I had to come here first,” Beah said. He took a deep breath and held out the package. “I brought you a present.”

Thyrjka took the package slowly, confused. “A present? Why?”

“It’s Gracenight! You give presents on Gracenight.”

She looked down at the package uncertainly. “I don’t have a present for you.”

“That’s okay. I know you have other things to do today. But I wanted to give this to you.” He shuffled his feet nervously. “I...hope you like it.”

Thyrjka untied the ribbon and slowly, carefully, unwrapped the cloth. Beah watched on tenterhooks, almost vibrating with anxiety as Thyrjka looked at the doll. What if she didn’t like it?

“It’s beautiful,” Thyrjka whispered. “For me? Really?”

Beah nodded, heart singing with relief. “Da helped me make her, just for you.” Then, immediately struck with a nudge of guilt, he said, “Well, really, Da mostly did it. And my uncle Fhurl, he made the sword. I’m not so good at making dolls. But I told them what it should look like. And—um—well, I thought maybe—you could take her, when you go on the ships, and—you’d have someone to hold onto, like I had Sir Buckley.”

He was cut off by Thyrjka lifting him up into a hug so tight he squeaked a little in surprise.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The fires were lit and the clan assembled, murmuring and chattering, children playing with noisemakers, all waiting eagerly for the festivities to begin. Thyrjka walked, knees shaking, to the front of the crowd, where the drummer and the string player were warming up. Kvast walked beside her, his hand firm and reassuring on her shoulder.

“You’ll do just fine,” he murmured.

Thyrjka nodded. Her stomach seemed to be trying to crawl up her throat.

Kvast walked over to speak with the musicians, leaving Thyrjka to take her position in front of the crowd. The noise began to settle down, dropping into silence as everyone turned their eyes to the performers. In a few seconds, the only sounds were from the crackling of the fires and the occasional very small child fussing slightly.

Then the drummer began to a low, steady rhythm. That was her cue. The song that would begin the story, that called everyone gathered there to attend and listen to the tale…

Everyone was watching her.

Her hand went to the doll hanging at her belt, fingers brushing against the soft yarn hair. She thought about Beah, sitting by the hickory tree, clapping and cheering for her.

Thyrjka took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to sing.

[slumberstories]

Falling

February 25 2021

I was in a prison, but not for anything really bad. I was supposed to be there for five weeks and brought my own pillow and clothes and was allowed to have my phone in my room. It was set up very communally and they had different classes for the inmates. I ran out of things to do, so the head warden made me in charge of telling the inmates whose turn it was to go to the bathroom and also let me work in the library.

On the way back one day, all of our rooms were closed because they were doing painting, so we had to sleep on bunk beds piled to the ceiling. Since I was a newbie, the inmates gave me one of the topmost bunks. It was really difficult to get to and the structure was not secured very well. Everyone watched as I tried to get up there, but I couldn’t get my last leg up without the whole thing threatening to bend. Knowing I was going to fall either way, I jumped all the way over it as it was falling and grabbed a rope so I swung over the crowd instead of falling into it. Then I let go and the crowd caught me and I crowd surged a bit because it was cool. This won me points with the regulars.

One day, we went to see a class performance (it was a ‘monster’ themed improv/stand-up show). I sat next to the head warden. There was one woman in the show with a cool haircut. She was blonde and pretty and I liked her immediately.

However, just before the show ended, the auditorium was flooded with soldiers. We knew they were aliens, even though they looked human. They rounded us up and asked for two people for every group to step forward. The head warden shoved me forward, knowingly. I didn’t know what to say but they shuffled her away before I could act. In my arms, I had a Samantha doll she had given me. The other person in my group to be selected was the blonde woman. I asked her name. She said Duran, and we shared a moment before she was ushered away too.

They rounded the rest who weren’t selected up and brought them into another room and brought us to a room filled with mats that would be our beds. I laid down on the floor, not on a mat. They pointed where I was supposed to go and I refused, trying to be an example that we didn’t need to follow orders. The soldiers brought me to a room away from the others and tased me on my side and back.

Finally they said they wanted me to see a movie. A giant screen appeared behind me (or moved out of the way and I saw the real thing). There was a giant pit of darkness like space and everyone they had rounded up was thrown into the pit where they fell foe ages before exploding in a bright colored light and died.

The soldiers asked if I wanted to fall like them. I said “I’ve always been falling.” After some more tasing, I joined the selected again.

We were let out into this world. It looked like Earth, snow covered and filled with woods and paths, but it was unusually tempered- neither hot nor cold- and none of us recognized where we were. We were told to explore and that we would end up where we needed to be.

At that moment, a woman, strangely medievally clothed, with a golden brown skirt under her overdress locked eyes with me. “Come” she said in my mind, so I followed her. She was always disappearing just as I thought I would catch up, so I started running and I could hear her laugh in my mind as I tried to run barefoot up a snowy hill. I slid down it before I could reach the top. And others were doing similarly. I had to get beyond that hill. I tried again and again and each time slipped. Then suddenly I looked to my right and saw a skinny tree sticking up out of the snow, bended towards the other side of the hill.

I abandoned the hill and walked along the tree into a woods that led around the hill. She was there, in the snowy wood clearing, smiling. I had made it to a special place where not many found. As I approached her, she called forth small, moss covered Fae, who wove together bits of string and stone and presented it to me as a talisman. However, as soon as I took it, it fell apart.

So one Fae presented me with a small, simple leaf hat, and he and the lady tied it on to Samantha’s head and she became the focus of my newfound magic. I was told I could come back and learn magic any time so long as I had my talisman. And they gave me a cord of gold, which they called the Sun, which I wrapped around my wrist.

I left the magic place and found myself in a market square, where all manner of people were rushing and being busy. One person was calling a crowd to see the magnificent Aslan. I recognized the name from the book and went to see. The person was a woman, controlling a lion puppet who was jumping and performing tricks. The puppet stopped as he saw me, breaking from the woman’s control. He kept saying “you have the Sun” to me and tried to come closer. In my mind I could feel him wanting me to help him and the people. As soon as the soldiers realized I had the cord, and magic, they tried to get to me. I backed away and fell into a room of white sand.

There was nothing in the room except endless sand and one wall. Soon after I found myself there, a very important soldier appeared too. He asked me about my magic and told me to give it up. I said I would not, that being magic was the most important role to me (as it meant I could lead and help the people).

He sneered and said “even more important than being a daughter?” And revealed he had my mom bound on the other side of the wall. I bowed my head and said no, that was more important. He laughed and was suddenly on the other side of the wall, preparing a spell against my mother. I waited for the exact moment and jumped in front of her, catching the spell and throwing it back at him before it could hit my mom.

The spell burned my hands as I caught it and I doubled over in pain. He was impressed, but also hurt. My mother was nowhere to be seen and the wall was gone. Instead, bent over, I saw something gold gleaming in the sand. I tried to uncover it but the sand just kept pouring back on it every time I moved it aside. The soldier saw what I was doing and helped me uncover a large box covered in engraved hieroglyphs that all pointed to a golden Osiris at the top.

We looked at each other and started opening it. A drawer popped out, with a few pieces of paper, each containing a list of Oaths. Each Oath listed benefits such as endless wealth or revenge and the soldier said it was a thing most powerful. That every Oath had a steep price and we best close it up and bury it again. We did so, but as we were starting to bury it again, the head council of aliens appeared and saw it. The soldier tried to keep them away, but they wanted it. It was the power they had been searching for.

Not knowing what else to do, I opened up the drawer again and took out the source of power- an old, red book. I held the book in my hands and tried to find the least harmful Oath to take. But they were all selfish, calling wealth and fame and beauty, and I didn’t want any of that. The book could tell that, so it tried to pull itself from my hands and get to the outstretched arms of the Head Mistress of the Council.

Just before it got away from me, I swore an oath to protect all peoples and work towards equality and freedom.

There was a deep silence. That Oath had not been in the scrolls and could not demand a price because I had not asked to take anything, only to give.

The book fell flat, it’s power gone. And the soldier and council laughed at me. Was I going to take on the richest and most powerful beings on the planet? I would never win.

But I knew my vow and would act accordingly. I would never stop.

[jonathanalumbaugh]

Weekly Digest

Dec 9, 2017, 2nd issue.

A roundup of stuff I consumed this week. Topics this week leaned heavily towards design, design thinking, with a smattering of research methods-related articles.

Read

5 Prototyping lessons from a BMX backflip

The false art of the feed has been deconstructed before (see: the excellent recent expose by The New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe that reveals the depressing reality behind the bohemian #vanlife movement), but less has been said about the deeper effects it’s had on our collective mental health. For designers and other people who work digitally, the so-called “internet effect” goes particularly deep, but just how deep, and what that might mean for our waking life is hard to tell at this point. 

10 Creative Women Reveal Their Deepest Feelings in RoAndCo’s New Romance Journal—Here’s What We Learned

Echo’s voice-activated features are great for seniors with dementia:

Instantly answers questions, like “what day is it?” or “what time is it?” — it’s a machine, so it will never get annoyed or frustrated!

Plays music and read audiobooks and the news — no need to fuss with complicated controls

Looks up information about anything — like, “what’s playing on TV tonight?”

AMAZON ECHO FOR DEMENTIA: TECHNOLOGY FOR SENIORS

[Mies Van Der Rohe,] pioneer of modernism discusses the Bauhaus as well as his own individual work, all of it interesting to anyone with an inclination toward midcentury European-American architecture and design, none of it ultimately more relevant than the final words the master speaks: "I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good."

An Oral History of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Interviews (in English) with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe & More

Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to ‘tragedy of the commons’ problems. In this paper, we show that the directionality of friendship ties affect the extent to which individuals can influence the behavior of each other. Moreover, we find that people are typically poor at perceiving the directionality of their friendship ties and that this can significantly limit their ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. This could lead to failures in establishing compatible norms, acting together, finding compromise solutions, and persuading others to act. We then suggest strategies to overcome this limitation by using two topological characteristics of the perceived friendship network. The findings of this paper have significant consequences for designing interventions that seek to harness social influence for collective action.

Are You Your Friends’ Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral Change 

Creation knows no multitasking.

Before I Begin

For decades, policymakers have been concerned that poor people will waste free money by using it on cigarettes and alcohol. A report on the perception of stakeholders in Kenya about such programs found a “widespread belief that cash transfers would either be abused or misdirected in alcohol consumption and other non-essential forms of consumption.”

The opposite is true, according to a recently published research paper(paywall) by David Evans of the World Bank and Anna Popova of Stanford University.

Definitive data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash

Some blame human beings’ basic optimism, if not egocentrism, for the disconnect between perceived and actual friendships. Others point to a misunderstanding of the very notion of friendship in an age when “friend” is used as a verb, and social inclusion and exclusion are as easy as a swipe or a tap on a smartphone screen. It’s a concern because the authenticity of one’s relationships has an enormous impact on one’s health and well-being...

[Ronald Sharp] recalled the many hours he spent in engrossing conversation with his friend Eudora Welty, who was known not only for her Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction but also for her capacity for friendship. Together they edited “The Norton Book of Friendship,” an anthology of works on the topic. “The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art,” replaced by volleys of texts and tweets, Mr. Sharp said. “People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”

Do Your Friends Actually Like You?

Dina D. Pomeranz tweet

The next step is this: you have to commit to make a proportional investment in corrective action at every level of the analysis. So, in the example above, we'd have to take five corrective actions...

Because the most common problems keep recurring, your prevention efforts are automatically focused on the 20% of your product that needs the most help. That's also the same 20% that causes you to waste the most time. So five whys pays for itself awfully fast, and it makes life noticeably better almost right away. All you have to do is get started.

Five Whys

We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. As we kept doing root cause analysis, the list grew. In response to Five Whys that noticed that not all new engineers were reading the list, we expanded it into a new engineer curriculum. Soon, each new engineer was assigned a mentor, and we made it part of the mentor’s job to teach the curriculum. Over time, we also made investments in making it easier to get a new engineer set up with their private sandbox, and even dealt with how to make sure they’d have a machine on their desk when they started. The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day. We never set out to build a world-class engineering-training process. Five Whys simply helped us eliminate tons of waste by building one.

How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis

On social media, it is easy to mistake popularity for credibility, and that is exactly what the fakers are hoping for. To most people, a Twitter account with tens of thousands of followers is an easy-to-read indication of personal success and good reputation, a little like hundreds of good reviews on Yelp or a long line outside a restaurant.

How to become internet famous for $68

It’s important designers aren’t the only people in the product organization to feel responsible for the user experience. I’ve made it a point to work with our field team to get more employees visiting clinics, and looking into ways to make patient stories and issues known throughout the company. I love having a team of engineers who will often jump in and defend our user before I’m even aware of an issue (one developer, in particular, handled a lot of debates against requests for a particular modal, dubbed by him: “the nuclear option.” Knowing he was there to defend the user, I didn’t even need to get involved.) 

Interviews aren’t the only way to gain empathy

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Pareto Principle

"I think harm reduction is not giving up on people," said Goulão. "I think it is respecting their timings and assuming that even if someone is still using drugs, that person deserves the investment of the state in order to have a better and longer life."

Portugal’s Example: What Happened After It Decriminalized All Drugs, From Weed to Heroin

The 5 Whys Process We Use to Understand the Root of Any Problem

People are “groupish,” and we tend to form groups automatically. Some have argued that this is due in large part to humans’ tribal past and evolutionary development. Regardless of why we are this way, the descriptive truth is that this is how we are.

The Office Finale’s ‘Miraculous’ Quote — The Scientific Truth Behind It

We share stuff that ignores wider realities, selectively shares information, or is just an outright falsehood. The misinformation is so rampant that the Washington Post stopped publishing its internet fact-checking column because people didn’t seem to care if stuff was true.

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

Providing cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to women in rural Pakistan who were suffering from perinatal depression has had persistent positive effects on their mental health, their parenting behaviour and their financial empowerment seven years later.

TREATING MATERNAL DEPRESSION: Evidence of the impact on mental health, parenting, financial autonomy and child development

One useful technique is to map ideas on a risk/reward space. Those that score high on both risk and reward are considered moonshots, the high potential ideas. Ideas low on both risk and reward are safe bets. Moving along ideas in the different quadrants of the risk/reward space (with the possible of exception of high risk/low reward) preserves innovation potential.

When brainstorming fails, throw an imaginary cat

Last month, the Pew Research Center released a study showing that nearly a third of those who went to graduate or professional school have “down the line” liberal views on social, economic and environmental matters, whereas this is true for just one in 10 Americans generally. An additional quarter of postgrads have mostly liberal views. These numbers reflect drastic change: While professionals have been in the Democratic column for a while, in 1994 only 7 percent of postgrads held consistently liberal political opinions.

Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is "a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point". Moreover, because of hard interdependencies, the effort to fix one part of a wicked problem may open or create other problems.

Wicked problem

Looked at

Satire and Social Activism Come Alive in Images of Death

Watched

How small a hole can a mouse get through? Experiments.

Mies Van Der Rohe - Architecture as language

Mouse trap maze experiments

Pride and Prejudice, Antidote and Antivenom

See How Easily a Rat Can Wriggle Up Your Toilet | National Geographic

Free stuff

[almostafantasia]

more than a name

wayhaught hogwarts au | chapter 6/?

Being an Earp at Hogwarts is tough. Being the youngest Earp and constantly living in the shadows of two older sisters is nothing short of a nightmare.

Willa, newly appointed Head Girl and Slytherin’s sweetheart. Wynonna, the notorious troublemaker who spends more time in detention than out of it. And then there’s Waverly, whose life crumbles into tiny pieces when she doesn’t get awarded the Prefect badge that she spent her first four years at Hogwarts striving towards.

Enter Nicole Haught – Hufflepuff, Muggleborn, and general bundle of sunshine – whose unexpected but not entirely unwelcome arrival into Waverly’s life puts Waverly on the path to discover who she is in more ways than one.

Read on AO3.

The Christmas holidays arrive far too quickly, a blur of festivities and end of term celebrations that Waverly barely notices because her brain is consumed with the fact that she kissed Nicole.

She kissed Nicole. That was a thing that happened. Waverly still can’t entirely believe that it wasn’t a dream.

Even more alarmingly, Nicole kissed her back.

It was everything that Waverly thinks a first kiss is supposed to be; tentative, a little clumsy, butterfly-inducing, but overwhelmingly it just felt right. Like Waverly’s lips were destined to meet Nicole’s.

Waverly thinks that maybe she should be a little frightened of just how right it did feel, or confused about the fact that not even ten minutes after telling Willa that Nicole would only ever be just a friend (and believing those words herself) she was throwing herself at Nicole by the lips and enjoying it, but she isn’t. The only thing she feels other than the all-encompassing peace that comes with finally finding what seems to be her purpose in life (kissing Nicole), is a worry that maybe Nicole doesn’t like her quite as much in return.

They don’t get a chance to speak about the kiss before term ends. There’s always too much going on or too many other people around and it doesn’t seem right to have the “so we kissed, what now?” conversation while Wynonna is right next to them reeling off a list of increasingly creative ways she could get back at Professor Lucado for giving her a Dreadful on her most recent Defence Against the Dark Arts essay.

So they wait, and then the Christmas holidays arrive and because it’s not really the kind of conversation they can have via owl either, then have to wait even longer.

Waverly thinks that they’re okay though. The hug that Nicole gives her as they bid goodbye to each other at King’s Cross is almost slightly too long to be friendly and is full of whispered promises to send regular owls to each other while they aren’t at school.

Three weeks have never passed slower than they do during the Christmas holidays.

There really isn’t much for Waverly to do at home. She commits herself fully to helping Aunt Gus get the house ready for Christmas, but once the towering Christmas tree has been set up in its rightful place in the corner of the living room and decorated with colourful ornaments, and the rest of the house has been tidied to within an inch of its life and covered with festive wreaths and garlands, there’s very little else for Waverly to do except for listen to her sisters squabble and bury herself in work.

But even that isn’t really enough. Waverly finishes all the schoolwork set for her to do during the break within the first three days of being at home, before deciding to immerse herself in a complex Ancient Runes textbook that isn’t even on the curriculum until next year, but she finds it difficult to concentrate, even on her favourite subject, when all her mind wants to focus on is the memory of Nicole’s scent enveloping her body as her soft lips slowly tease Waverly across the precipice into heaven.

Because the problem is, Waverly isn’t trying to alleviate boredom (an advanced runes textbook would usually do a more than good enough job of that), she’s trying to distract herself from thoughts of Nicole before she has a complete mental breakdown from replaying that kiss over and over again in her mind.

It’s all very overwhelming. Waverly is having a difficult enough time comprehending the fact that she does have feelings for Nicole, let alone what those feelings might mean for the future of their relationship, whether that’s as friends or something more. It feels so incredibly sudden – Waverly has never felt like this about a girl before, or maybe not about anybody – but when she compares it to Champ, who pestered her for three weeks until she finally gave in and agreed to go out with him, it also feels very right.

When getting lost in the whirlwind of her own mind gets a little too much, Waverly pays a visit to the local Muggle library and after a failed attempt at using their computers (she knows that there’s a thing called an ‘internet’ that will supposedly answer any question that she asks it but she has no idea how to use it and asking the elderly Muggle librarian for help is just not an option when a Muggle her age would know how to do it by herself) she settles for doing her research the old-fashioned way – with a book.

There are only a couple of books in the library that discuss sexuality, and Waverly tucks herself away in a corner as she pores over them, learning the meaning of words that she’s never even heard of before. It’s all very fascinating stuff to read and is certainly at least a little bit helpful. Waverly comes away from the experience with the knowledge that there are lots of possible labels for what she’s feeling towards Nicole, but that at the end of the day, all that really matters is the fact that she does have feelings for Nicole, and that she wants to act on them.

As promised, she and Nicole correspond by owl every few days. Nicole doesn’t have an owl of her own, instead an orange cat called Calamity Jane that Waverly briefly met on the train from Hogwarts to King’s Cross at the end of term, but they send Waverly’s owl back and forth with letters talking about how fed up Waverly is of her sisters, while Nicole tells Waverly about the work she’s doing helping out in a bakery owned by her aunt in the busy run up to Christmas.

Nicole finishes each letter with a variation of “I miss you” and each time Waverly sees those words written in Nicole’s loopy handwriting, she feels herself falling a little bit more for the girl on the other end of these letters.

Waverly’s owl arrives on Christmas morning laden with so many parcels that it’s a wonder she could even fly carrying such a load. There are three large gifts wrapped in brown paper and neatly labelled and addressed in Nicole’s familiar handwriting, one for Waverly, one for Wynonna, and a third for ‘the Earp/McCready family’.

Waverly tears the paper off her own gift with careful enthusiasm to find an unlabelled white box inside, but when she lifts the lid the aroma of sugary treats fills the air as she reveals the contents. There’s an assortment of cakes, biscuits, and other baked delights inside, as well as a few brightly coloured Muggle sweets and chocolates. There’s a small folded note in the corner and Waverly extracts it from its sticky confines, opening it to read Nicole’s writing.

Dearest Waverly,

Merry Christmas! Here are a selection of treats from my aunt’s bakery. Try them and let me know what you think – she’s always looking for honest feedback and suggestions to make things better!

I also included some Muggle chocolates following that conversation we had a few weeks ago. You can thank me later for enlightening you!

Missing you loads and can’t wait to see you in January!

Love, Nicole

“Holy mother of Merlin,” Wynonna groans in delight from across the room. There’s powdered sugar on her nose and she’s already two mouthfuls into one of the doughnuts in her own gift from Nicole. “These are possibly the best doughnuts I’ve ever had.”

The box addressed to the entire family contains a Christmas cake and Aunt Gus looks positively thrilled at the sight of it, rushing it off to the kitchen for safekeeping away from Wynonna’s already sticky hands, before reminding Waverly to thank Nicole for her generosity.

Waverly agrees as she tears the shiny purple wrapper off something that calls itself a ‘Curly Wurly’, not even caring that the hard caramel almost glues her back teeth together. The conversation she had with Nicole about Muggle versus Wizarding confectionary took place almost two months ago just after the visit to Hogsmeade the solidified their new friendship, and Waverly is both surprised and touched that Nicole remembers it well enough to have sent Waverly a few treats to try.

Not to mention the delicious-looking baked goods. If the obscene sounds that Wynonna is making as she tucks into a second doughnut are anything to go by, Waverly’s assortment of cakes will be just as tasty as they look.

It’s one of the nicest, most thoughtful gifts that Waverly has ever received, and that includes the set of expensive quills she opened from Aunt Gus less than an hour ago, and the fact that it comes from Nicole has Waverly’s heart fluttering like a swarm of excited pixies in her chest.

When Nicole catches sight of Waverly on Platform Nine and Three Quarters in January, she trips over her own feet and almost sends the trolley holding her trunk, her cat, and her broomstick sprawling across the platform. She’s grateful that she manages to right herself at the last minute. Nicole is returning to school with an unofficial New Year’s resolution to be cool and suave around Waverly following their kiss last term, and upending her trolley before she’s even had the chance to say hi to Waverly would shatter her plans in an instant.

It’s just that Waverly looks angelic, dressed in a snow white jumper knitted from the fluffiest wool Nicole has ever seen and with her long hair tumbling in perfect curls over her shoulders. Across the platform, Waverly tips her head back and laughs at something that Chrissy Nedley says, and Nicole’s heart soars at how pure Waverly’s happiness is.

And then Waverly turns her head and her eyes meet Nicole’s across the platform, and Nicole is glad that she’s standing still because if she were moving, she is certain that she would end up in a crumpled heap on the floor beneath a pile of her own luggage.

Waverly excuses herself from Chrissy and then manoeuvres her way through the crowd of students and parents swarming the platform, until she is standing in front of Nicole with a beaming grin on her face.

“Hey, you,” Nicole greets Waverly breathlessly.

“Is that all I’m getting?” Waverly pouts playfully. “Come on, where’s my hug? It’s been three frickin’ weeks since I last saw you!”

Nicole lifts her hands from the trolley, prying her fingers out of the white-knuckle grip they have on the metal handle, and wraps her arms around Waverly’s shoulders at the same time that Waverly’s squeeze her around the middle. Their height different means that Nicole’s face buries itself into the fluffy hair just above Waverly’s right ear and she inhales deeply. Waverly’s scent is intoxicating, a floral perfume masking an underlying musky aroma that Nicole thinks is probably just Waverly herself. It reminds her of the last time she was close enough to fill her nostrils with this smell and how Waverly’s perfume clung to her school jumper for days after they kissed in the library.

A heavy blush rises to Nicole’s cheeks at the memory and she is grateful that it’s January and she can pass the colour off as her reaction to the chill in the air.

“So how was your holiday?” asks Waverly, excitement in her eyes.

“It was good,” Nicole replies with a nod. “It’s always nice to go back to the Muggle world and take a break from all the magic, but I can’t wait to be back at Hogwarts.”

“Thank you for the present, by the way,” Waverly says with a smile. “Those cakes were scrumptious.”

Nicole smiles to herself, because Waverly Earp is the only person who would use the word ‘scrumptious’ unironically and get away with it.

“I’ll tell my aunt you enjoyed them,” says Nicole.

“Wynonna enjoyed her gift too,” Waverly continues. “She even threatened to move into your aunt’s bakery full time when she leaves Hogwarts! She seemed amazed that Muggles are able to make such good doughnuts without the use of magic. Of course, I told her that doughnuts are a classic Muggle treat that probably originated from the Dutch olykoek but she told me to shut up and stop being a nerd.”

“Hey, do me a favour,” says Nicole, reaching out to rest her hand on Waverly’s shoulder as she looks earnestly into Waverly’s eyes. “Never stop being a nerd around me, okay? It’s one of the things I like most about you.”

Waverly’s eyebrows shoot up and Nicole can tell that she’s trying to hide the shy little smile that passes across her lips, which in turn has Nicole blushing again. Nicole suddenly becomes aware that this is the first time they’ve spent one-on-one time with each other since their kiss and that despite their frequent owls over the Christmas holidays, the kiss is not a subject that they’ve discussed, or even mentioned in passing, at all.

For all intents and purposes, it could have been a product of Nicole’s imagination.

Except that the memory of the press of Waverly’s lips against hers, the feeling of Waverly’s soft hands caressing her face and cupping her jaw, the pressure of Waverly’s slight frame pressed between her own body and the bookshelf, are all far too vivid to be just a dream.

Which means that it really happened, and that it’s something that they should probably talk about before things have the chance to get weird.

“So I think that maybe we should talk abou-” Nicole starts, but her suggestion is cut off by the shrill screech of the conductor’s whistle piercing the air, informing everybody on the platform that the train will be departing in five minutes.

“We should get your luggage onto the train,” Waverly says, lifting Nicole’s broomstick off the trolley and tucking it under one arm, while picking up the carrier containing Nicole’s orange cat in the other hand. “Mine’s already onboard. I saved us a compartment.”

Nicole nods with a swallow, frowning as she considers whether Waverly knows what Nicole was about to say and is choosing to ignore the conversation that they so desperately need to have, or if the loud whistle has just distracted her from the fact that Nicole was mid-sentence at the time.

Hauling her trunk off the trolley, Nicole wheels it along behind her as she follows Waverly to the nearest train door and between the two of them, they manage to get all of Nicole’s luggage on board the train with a couple of minutes to spare. Waverly leads the way down the narrow corridor, past compartments full of Hogwarts students happy to be reunited with their friends after three weeks apart, until Waverly slides open the door to one that is empty but for Waverly’s large trunk in the rack above the seats and her owl in a cage on the floor in the centre.

The train rumbles into life, slowly pulling out of the station as it starts its long journey up north, and Nicole decides to make another attempt at talking to Waverly about the kiss.

“Anyway,” says Nicole, as they store her trunk next to Waverly’s, “as I was saying out on the platform…”

“Hey guys!”

Nicole lets out a groan of frustration as the compartment door slides open and Waverly’s friend Jeremy enters. All she wants is to check in with Waverly and make sure that the kiss they shared isn’t going to affect their friendship, as well as possibly testing the waters to see if her feelings for Waverly are reciprocated beyond one spur of the moment kiss following a heated encounter with Willa. But it seems like the universe is throwing everything at her to prevent that conversation from ever happening. And Nicole doesn’t believe in omens – three years of the bullshit that was Divination classes made sure of that – but it feels a lot like there’s a greater force at work telling her not to have this conversation at all.

“Do you mind if I sit with you guys?” Jeremy asks, gesturing to the empty seats in their compartment.

Nicole is in half a mind to tell Jeremy that yes, she does mind, and could he please go away and leave her alone with Waverly for the foreseeable future, but then Wynonna chooses that exact moment to push past Jeremy and sprawls sideways across three whole seats. Nicole realises that the Hogwarts Express is the very last place that she and Waverly are going to find some privacy.

“’Sup, Haught,” says Wynonna. “Good holidays?” Her eyes fall on Jeremy, who is still hovering awkwardly by the open compartment door, and she scowls at him before asking, “What’s the dork doing here?”

“Sorry, I’ll just…” mumbles Jeremy, gesturing over his shoulder as he takes a couple of steps back out of the compartment.

“No!” Waverly protests, grabbing Jeremy by the wrist and pulling him fully inside. “Ignore Wynonna, she can be a bitch in the mornings. You’re more than welcome to sit with us.” Turning her attention to Nicole, Waverly asks innocently, “What were you saying, Nicole?”

Disheartened, Nicole tries not to let it show on her face and shrugs as she sits down opposite Wynonna in the seat next to the window and answers, “Oh, it was nothing.”

Taking her seat next to Nicole, as Jeremy takes the third on their side of the compartment, Waverly says, “Wynonna, I told Nicole how much you enjoyed those doughnuts.”

There is not much that can get a horizontal Wynonna to sit up, but talk about doughnuts is one of those things. Wynonna shoots upright, leaning forward as she says to Nicole, “They were fucking incredible. I would let those doughnuts do some really nasty things to me.”

“Ew,” winces Nicole. “I won’t pass that feedback on to my aunt. I’ll just tell her that you really enjoyed them.”

“Is you aunt single?” asks Wynonna. “Can I marry her?”

“She’s been happily married for sixteen years and has two kids.”

“Damn,” groans Wynonna, collapsing back against the seat. “I’m going to need a constant supply of doughnuts to stop me from falling into a deep depressive cycle.” Wynonna pauses, her eyes flicking between the three of them, before she finally prompts them impatiently, “Aren’t you going to ask what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Jeremy asks obediently, eager to get on Wynonna’s good side.

“I’m glad you asked,” Wynonna says, as if she didn’t invite him to do so beforehand. “Dolls has a girlfriend.”

Nicole’s eyebrows shoot upwards in surprise. She likes Dolls but she can’t imagine him with a girlfriend. He’s always very work-oriented, focused on classes and homework and prefect duties and it surprises her that he’s got the time for a girlfriend, let alone managed to actually managed to find himself one.

It also surprises Nicole that his girlfriend is not Wynonna, considering the fact that she knows Dolls has a bit of a thing for the middle Earp sister, but when she reminds herself of Wynonna’s current state as Hogwarts’ resident hot mess, she realises that Wynonna is clearly not ready to have a boyfriend, whether that is Dolls or anybody else.

“Dolls has a girlfriend?” Waverly exclaims, echoing Nicole’s surprise. “But I thought that he and you…”

“I know, right!” Wynonna nods emphatically in agreement. “I’ve been flirting with him for like, at least a year and a half. I thought we had a good thing going.”

“Flirting with him for a year and a half but also sleeping with Doc Holliday and being quite public about it,” Nicole reminds Wynonna, wincing as she earns a scowl in response to her truthfulness. “Maybe Dolls is fed up of the mixed signals.”

Wynonna grumbles indistinguishably under her breath for a few seconds, before saying, “Maybe, but Eliza fucking Shapiro? He’s going to replace me with that bitch?”

“I’m sure she’s a very nice girl,” Waverly pipes up.

“The only thing nice about Eliza Shapiro is her taste in underwear,” Wynonna replies. With a reluctant shrug, she continues, “That girl can rock a bit of lace.”

Wynonna continues to surprise Nicole and as she frowns in confusion, Nicole dares to ask, “How do you-? You’re not even in the same house.” Nicole shakes her head, before saying, “Never mind, I don’t think I even want to know how you know that.”

Nicole takes a little bit of consolation from the fact that Waverly looks equally as confused beside her, while Jeremy seems positively harrowed by the thought of a girl wearing lacy underwear, his face pale and his eyes wide in revulsion.

Before Wynonna is able to provide them with an answer as to why she is knowledgeable on the underwear preferences of one of her female classmates, the compartment door slides open yet again and Doc Holliday hovers in the doorway.

“Hello ladies,” he greets the three girls, before turning his attention to Jeremy, and holding out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. You can call me Doc.”

“Doc Holliday,” Jeremy says enthusiastically, grasping Doc’s hand with both of his own. “I’m Jeremy. I’m a huge fan … I mean, I’ve always looked up to you and-”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jeremy,” says Doc, interrupting Jeremy’s babbling admiration.

Nicole represses a laugh at the way Jeremy looks like he might pass out from excitement, and she makes a mental note to tease Jeremy about his little crush on the older boy at a later time.

“You doing anything tonight, Doc?” Wynonna asks the newest arrival to their compartment, raising her eyebrows as a suggestive smirk passes across her lips, apparently forgetting her sadness at Dolls’ new relationship status from just a few moments ago. “Wanna hang out? Maybe in one of those disused classrooms on the fifth floor…?”

“Ew,” Waverly grimaces, and knowing both exactly what Wynonna means by ‘hang out’ and what Hogwarts’ older students tend to use those disused classrooms for, Nicole has to agree.

“I’m afraid I have already promised tonight to Rosita,” replies Doc apologetically. “Speaking of, I need to go and find her now. It was nice to see you all again. A pleasure to meet you, Jeremy.”

As soon as Doc is out of earshot, Wynonna lets out a disgruntled huff.

“Rosita?” she asks incredulously. “Rosita Bustillos? As in Tits McGee?”

Rosita is a Ravenclaw in Nicole and Wynonna’s year; smart, witty, and top of the year in Potions for five years in a row. Not to mention the fact that she’s very pretty and, as Wynonna has less that eloquently pointed out, has assets in other areas too. Nicole would be lying if she said that she didn’t used to have a little bit of a crush on Rosita during their fourth year, and she can certainly see why Wynonna is feeling threatened by Doc’s newfound friendship with the girl.

That doesn’t mean that she can justify Wynonna’s annoyance.

“So let me get this straight?” Nicole says to Wynonna, well aware that she’s venturing into dangerous territory by giving Wynonna a harsh dose of the truth. “You’re mad because after stringing not one but two guys along for the best part of two years, they’ve both decided it’s not worth it and are showing an interest in other girls?”

As predicted, Wynonna scowls at Nicole and retorts, “Ouch, Haught. Why have you got to shame me like this?” Wynonna lets out a dramatic sigh and falls back against the seats again, crossing one leg over the other as she says, “Life would be so much easier if I were a lesbian. You’re so lucky you don’t have to deal with men.”

Nicole almost lets out a snort at Wynonna’s words. She’s well aware that Wynonna doesn’t have any nasty intentions with what she’s said, but it’s the fact that she hasn’t stopped to think just how her words could be perceived that hurts Nicole more than what she actually says.

Next to Nicole, Waverly lets out an indignant little huff and folds her arms, and Nicole feels a rush of affection for the way that Waverly must have picked up on what Wynonna failed to think about.

“I mean, the homophobia is a bitch,” Nicole reminds Wynonna, her voice laced with ire, “the dating options are non-existent, and it comes with a side order of anxiety and internalised self-hatred that can take years to overcome, but yeah, at least I don’t have to deal with men. Oh, except that I do because sometimes even being out and proud isn’t enough to stop them from being entitled jerks.”

Wynonna’s face falls and she has the decency to look genuinely guilty as she apologises.

“Shit, Nicole. I didn’t think. I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. Feel free to hex me into next year for making that dick comment.”

Nicole nods and shoots Wynonna a soft smile to let her know that the apology is accepted and that there’s no animosity between them, while Waverly leans across the gap between their seats and rests a hand on Wynonna’s knee.

“Wynonna,” Waverly says to her sister, “Doc and Dolls are both fundamentally good-hearted guys. I know it must suck to feel like you have to choose between them, but you need to stop messing them about or you’ll lose both of them for good.”

Wynonna tucks both hands behind her head and closes her eyes, trying to mask her feelings with indifference, but the slight tremor in her voice as she speaks gives away her disappointment as she reluctantly admits, “I think it might already be too late.”

The compartment falls silent for a few long seconds as the three girls contemplate Wynonna’s predicament, before it is broken by Jeremy, who has apparently not been listening to a single word that has been spoken in the last few minutes. He glances around at the three of them, eyes wide and face thrumming with excitement, his right hand held up slightly in front of him as he looks at it in awe.

“I can’t believe Doc freaking Holliday shook my hand!”

Waverly wants to talk to Nicole about this kiss that they shared but she doesn’t know how to. Well, what she actually wants is to kiss Nicole again and again and again until she’s deliriously drunk on the taste of Nicole’s lips, but she recognises that they need to talk before that can happen. The problem is that starting the conversation with Nicole, the “I kissed you and I like you and I want you to like me back” conversation, is about as appealing as the prospect of throwing herself off the top of the Astronomy Tower.

Waverly thinks that she’s already made her stance on the situation pretty clear. She doesn’t go around just kissing anybody and Nicole knows that, and Waverly is sure that Nicole is more than clever enough to figure out that Waverly would only do that because she has feelings for Nicole. The next call is Nicole’s to make and so Waverly stays quiet and waits for it.

One day turns into two, which turns into three, and then a whole week has passed and they still haven’t talked about it. And it seems weird to bring it up after a week of not doing so and then Waverly’s mind tricks her into thinking that perhaps it would be a better idea to just forget about it completely, and what if that’s Nicole plan all along, to just not mention it and hope that Waverly has forgotten about it too, and sweet mother of Merlin, Waverly hates trying to second guess both herself and Nicole!

When did relationships become so freaking difficult?

Oh, that’s right. When Waverly stopped dating Champ the worthless douchebag and started pursuing somebody that she actually has terrifyingly genuine feelings for. That’s when.

Waverly tries to talk to Nicole about the kiss. At least, that’s what she tells herself each time she finds herself with a brief moment of alone time with the Hufflepuff and the opportunity to finally talk, spending minutes hyping herself up, only to chicken out at the last minute with an internal promise of next time.

Yet each ‘next time’ is exactly the same as the one before, and so the situation remains unresolved.

And with Hufflepuff’s next Quidditch match rapidly approaching, meaning that every spare minute that Nicole has is spent out on the Quiditch pitch training with her team, the ‘next time’ moments become fewer and farther between until Waverly reaches the hopeless realisation that maybe they actually aren’t going to have this conversation at all. Maybe that kiss is destined to fall forgotten, collecting dust like the underused books on the library shelves it took place amongst.

It’s been nearly two years since Waverly last attended a Hogwarts Quidditch match, but on Saturday morning she finds herself making her way down to the stadium with the rest of the student body to watch Nicole’s team take on Slytherin.

The January winds are icy and Waverly firmly believes that nobody should have to go outside in such weather, let alone be forced to endure what could end up being hours sitting outside watching sport, but Waverly made a promise to Nicole and she’s not going to break it again, not when Nicole looked so excited at the prospect of Waverly being in the crowd.

Besides, as well as her thick cloak, gloves, and earmuffs, Waverly is wrapped up in a yellow and black Hufflepuff scarf borrowed from Nicole, and the fact that the scent of vanilla dipped-donuts – the scent of Nicole – still clings to the wool, somehow warms Waverly up against the almost arctic conditions in the Quidditch stadium.

Though she doesn’t share the enthusiasm for the sport that the rest of the crowd seems to have, Waverly claps as the two teams walk out onto the pitch, cupping her hands around her mouth to amplifiy her cheers as the commentator announces Nicole’s name whilst reading out the list of players for each team.

And then, before she knows it, all fourteen players are soaring into the air as the referee blows the whistle and releases the balls.

Waverly doesn’t pay much attention to the game itself. Instead, she is captivated by how at ease Nicole looks on a broomstick. Her canary yellow robes billow out behind her as she expertly steers her broom back and forth in front of the three towering hoops she’s been tasked to defend.

Nicole gets her first touch of the Quaffle a couple of minutes into the game, speeding into its path as one of the Slytherin Chasers tries to send it past her through the right hand hoop, catching the red ball nimbly between her fingertips and then sending it soaring through the air to one of her teammates as Hufflepuff make a counterattack.

Waverly cheers along with the Hufflepuff crowd as Nicole makes her expert save, and it registers in the back of her mind that if she’d known Nicole played Quidditch sooner, she probably wouldn’t have stopped coming to Quidditch games in her third year. Waverly decides that’s she’s really missed out by not watching Nicole play before. Nicole is an elegant flyer, but it’s not just that. There’s a passion that comes through in the way that she plays, an effortless interaction with the other players on her team that can only have come from the hours upon hours that Waverly knows Nicole has spent at training, and not even a hint of the brash conceitedness that Waverly has come to mentally associate with Quidditch players.

“She must be quite some friend if she’s got you coming to a Quidditch game,” Jeremy mumbles from beside Waverly. When she turns to look at him, there’s a knowing smile on his face, and Waverly wonders whether Jeremy’s super intellect extends to being able to tell that Nicole is so very much more than just ‘some friend’ to Waverly.

“I have a confession,” admits Waverly, as the secret that has been gnawing at her for weeks begs to be shared, “but you have to absolutely promise not to tell anybody else.”

“I swear,” nods Jeremy, clenching his hand into a fist and holding it to his chest above where his heart is. “Anything you tell me stays between us.”

Waverly glances around to check that nobody is eavesdropping, but they are all too busy paying attention to the game, where Hufflepuff have just sent the Quaffle flying past the Slytherin keeper and through the central hoop.

“I kissed Nicole,” she admits, her pounding heart settling in her chest as she finally says the three words that have been troubling her mind for weeks out loud. “It was before Christmas. I kissed her and she kissed me back and…”

“Nicole Haught?” Jeremy asks, gesturing to the figure in yellow robes hovering in front of the hoops at the end of the pitch closest to them, as if there could be another Nicole that Waverly is referring to.

When Waverly nods, Jeremy throws his arms around her without warning and wraps her in a tight hug.

“What’s this for?” she asks him breathlessly, the air in her lungs squeezed out by the force of his hug.

“It’s a solidarity hug,” Jeremy tells her as he pulls away. With a grin, he explains, “Us gays have to stick together. Wait, you are…?”

Jeremy trails off and the grin disappears, replaced with an expression of doubt as he waits for Waverly to confirm her sexuality for him.

“I think so,” Waverly nervously admits. “Well, I don’t know what I am, but I’m definitely something.”

After weeks of self-doubt, it feels like a weight has been lifted off Waverly as she finally unburdens what has been playing on her mind. And it feels so good that Waverly wonders why she didn’t tell anybody sooner.

“Labels are for food,” Jeremy shrugs, dismissing the thought with a wave of his hand. “I’m so happy for you though. You and Nicole make such a cute couple.” He pauses for thought, then says triumphantly, “Wayhaught!”

“What?” Waverly asks, frowning in confusion at the nonsense word that Jeremy has just blurted out.

“It’s your couple name,” Jeremy explains, as if it is supposed to be obvious. “Half your name and half hers. Like Jeriday – that’s my name for me and Doc Holliday. Entirely hypothetical, of course, but can you blame a guy for dreaming?”

“Nicole and I aren’t…” Waverly trails off with a sigh as she tries to collect her thoughts, something which is much easier said than done now that she has the idea of her and Nicole as a couple planted in her mind, her brain swelling with blissful imaginings of what it would be like to just be with Nicole, to walk around the castle hand in hand and not have to worry about what anybody else thinks or says about them. It makes her sad that it isn’t a reality. “Listen, I like her a lot, but I don’t think she likes me back. Not like that.”

“Has she said as much to you?” Jeremy arches an eyebrow at Waverly.

There’s a cheer from the crowd at the other end of the stadium, and Waverly glances up at the match she’d almost forgotten was taking place around them to see that Nicole has just let in her first goal of the game, making the score thirty points to ten in Hufflepuff’s favour. Nicole handles the loss well, barking an instruction out to her teammates before shooting the Quaffle off in a long throw to an unmarked Chaser, exactly as she would have done if she had saved the goal.

Turning her attention back to Jeremy, Waverly nibbles anxiously at her lower lips as she answers his question.

“No,” she admits. “But she hasn’t said anything about it at all. I think she’s trying to forget that it ever happened.”

“Okay, here’s my next question,” Jeremy says thoughtfully. He leans in a little closer, then raises his eyebrows as he asks, “Have you said anything about the kiss to her?”

“No…”

“And are you trying to forget it ever happened?” Jeremy presses on, and Waverly can tell both that he already knows the answer and exactly what point he is going to make next.

“Of course not!”

“And that’s my point,” Jeremy tells her knowledgably. “She’s probably feeling exactly the same, waiting for you to bring it up. Think about it – she’s openly gay and there have already been rumours about her having feelings for you. Your sexuality is a mystery to her, other than the fact that you kissed her once and then didn’t mention it for weeks. She’s probably worried about feeling like she’s trying to force herself onto you.”

Waverly hates to admit that Jeremy is right but he is. And maybe, just maybe, if Waverly had realised this sooner, she could have saved herself two weeks of anguish.

A plan is already formulating in Waverly’s mind, a plan where she finds Nicole after the game to either congratulate or commiserate her, before just saying fuck it and confessing how she feels to Nicole. The risk of doing so is that things will become weird and that she could lose Nicole as a friend, but knowing Nicole as well as she does, Waverly also knows that Nicole will do all that she can to not let that become a reality. But the reward, Waverly realises as she glances up at Nicole again and falls a little bit more for the Hufflepuff Keeper, could be the best thing to ever happen to her.

“I’ll talk to her,” Waverly relays her thoughts to Jeremy. “Tonight. I’ll do it after the…”

Jeremy’s hand clasping around Waverly’s wrist, his other arm extended in front him as he points at the Quidditch field, is enough to cut Waverly off mid-sentence and she turns to look at the game unfolding before them.

“Oh my…”

“And it looks as though Slytherin Seeker Willa Earp has spotted the golden snitch!” the commentator announces through his megaphone. “She’s diving from what must be a hundred and twenty feet, and the Hufflepuff Seeker is hot on her tail!”

Waverly watches, her eyes wide, as the green blur that is Willa speeds through the air. The entire crowd falls silent, on tenterhooks as they wait to see whether the capture of the snitch will signal the conclusion of this match after barely fifteen minutes of gameplay.

Despite the excitement of the two Seekers racing each other to the snitch, the rest of the game continues around them. An attack by the Slytherin Chasers sends the Quaffle flying towards the hoops at Nicole’s end of the pitch and she speeds to her left to stop it, catching it deftly in one hand, while oblivious to the other threat hurtling towards her from above.

Waverly realises what’s going to happen a split second before it does and her heart stops in her chest, frozen in time. Nicole’s perfect save has thrown her right into the path of the two oncoming Seekers and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop the imminent collision. It seems to happen in slow motion, but when Waverly opens her mouth to scream out a warning to Nicole, no noise leaves her mouth.

Willa pulls away at the last minute, the tail end of her broomstick just clipping Nicole as Willa swoops out of the way and begins another lazy lap of the pitch, no sign of the golden snitch anywhere to be found.

The Hufflepuff Seeker is not so lucky. Believing Willa to be chasing the tiny golden ball that could make or break the match, he is less aware of his surroundings and where Willa swerves to avoid Nicole, he doesn’t notice her until it is too late. There is a sickening crunch as he collides with Nicole, followed by a unified groan from the crowd, and both players tumble from their broomsticks in a messy tangle of yellow robes.

This time, when Waverly screams Nicole’s name, it seems to reverberate throughout the entire stadium.

[lauraxxtennant]

fic: the trace of pleasure or regret, (2/5)

Previous: One

Ao3

The Doctor was feeling a little bit ridiculous about it, given the circumstances which led to it, but he was experiencing a significant downturn of mood lately, and, however irrational, he wanted to blame it all on his best friend.

His best friend, whose feelings he had, admittedly, probably hurt quite a bit the other night, when he ruined their perfectly lovely snog by rejecting her.

Nevertheless, what she was doing to him now, well. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t his fault that he was a Time Lord, and had to be above such things. It wasn’t his fault that saving the universe was basically his occupation and duty, which was objectively more important than indulging his daft fantasies of unspeakable, indescribable, probably bloody fantastic acts of -

It certainly wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t stop thinking about her for five seconds.

It appeared, however, that Rose was all set to punish him for all of this anyway.

Fully aware of how dramatic he was being, he flopped down onto the sofa in the library, arm flung over his head to add to his aura of angst. Usually, if he was lounging about in this room, Rose would be in here with him ‘til her eyelids started to droop and she shuffled off to bed. Tonight, he’d found her in here, perusing the books, sliding along on the ladder that was attached to the shelves. 

She’d been weird with him all day. He’d taken them to Woman Wept, one of her favourite places to visit. It had been a gesture of...well, he wasn’t sure what exactly, but it had probably been largely to do with all the guilt he felt, plus a helping of nostalgia for simpler times.

Last time they were there, they had wandered the frozen waves hand in hand, not a care in the world. Today she barely seemed to look at him. It had still been nice; the scenery was beautiful, and Rose was…Rose, and she had burst out laughing when he’d slipped on the ice. He was so relieved to hear her giggle that he almost did it again on purpose, but she helped him up and he concentrated on the feeling of her hand in his. As soon as he was on his feet again, she’d relinquished her touch, and this, he reiterated to himself, was weird.

Upon their return to the TARDIS, Rose had gone for a bath to warm up, promising to meet him later for a bite to eat in the galley. And then she’d stood him up, which was also weird, because Rose Tyler never forwent dinner.

At the time, he could only conclude that she must’ve been feeling poorly, so he went on a little search for her to check she was all right. Now, he squeezed his eyes shut, and groaned in embarrassment as he recalled the scene when he’d found her.

“Didn’t think theoretical physics was your jam, Rose Tyler,” he’d said, leaning against the bookshelves.

Rose jumped, and clutched tightly onto the ladder. “Doctor! Don’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” He squinted at her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she muttered, but her cheeks were tinted pink and this lured him closer, curiosity piqued.

“What are you looking for?” He glanced up at the shelf she was eye level at, near the top of the ladder. Before he’d made her jump, she had been reaching for a particular book, but he couldn’t see what it was from where he was standing.

“Nothing,” she said, a touch too quickly.

“Well that isn’t suspicious at all,” he drawled, and he deftly hopped onto the bottom rung of the ladder, to peer closer at the books she was looking at, nearly resting his chin on her shoulder before thinking twice about it. Her breath hitched as he stood directly behind her, and he realised too late that he’d essentially caged her in.

“Sorry,” he said hastily, and moved to back away, which was when the mortifying thing happened that now made him want to throw himself into the vortex.

The ladder was not, apparently, meant to take the weight of two people. It splintered at the top, dislodging from the track it ran across, and the force of the ladder coming away from the shelves propelled them both to the floor.

He landed with a grunt, and the pain in his back was compounded when a split second later, Rose landed on him too. Reflexively, his arms shot upwards to catch the ladder before it could fall on top of her.

They stayed like that for a moment, in disbelief at what just happened.

“Ouch,” Rose said eventually, breaking the silence. “Um. Doctor. Do you have a death wish or something?”

“What?” he asked, and it was more of a wheeze, because she’d knocked all the air from his lungs (literally, this time, as opposed to all those times he got poetic and lonely and pathetic in the dead of night and thought about the way her smile made him feel.)

“Twice today you’ve fallen on your arse, and this time you decided you had to take me down with you.”

There was definitely amusement in her voice, which was the only positive the Doctor was taking from this entire situation, if he were honest.

He used his remaining energy to fling aside the ladder, and tried to match her tone. “Are you laughing at me, Rose Tyler?”

A small chuckle escaped her. “I mean, it is pretty funny, that you defeat intergalactic dictators several times a month without so much as a scratch, but get bested today by a bit of ice and your own library.”

“Yes, all right, hilarious; now do you mind getting off me so that I can catch my breath back?”

Wincing as she rolled off him onto her knees, she gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry.” She sat back, stretching her arms and groaning, probably feeling as bruised as him; he wasn’t exactly a soft landing for her.

“No. It was my fault. I’m sorry.” He sat up, reaching his hand behind him to rub at his lower back. He tried not to think about how typical it was of his luck this week that practically the only time they’d had any physical contact was because of him being an idiot.

Well, to be honest, that they hadn’t had much physical contact at all was also down to him being an idiot, but at least that was him being an idiot for the right reasons.

Besides. Just because he wouldn’t have sex with her didn’t mean she had to stop holding his hand.

These thoughts had plunged him back into his sulk, so when Rose had asked him whether he needed patching up in the medbay, he’d snapped a bit, telling her he was fine.

And he was, really. Apart from his ego, and his stupid hearts, and the way they kept beating too fast when she looked at him like that.

“If you say so,” she’d replied, folding her arms defensively.

They stared at each other for a few moments, and, belatedly because of his distracted thoughts, he asked her if she needed patching up.

“Nah, you took the brunt of it, I reckon. I’m all right.”

Relieved he hadn’t hurt her too much, he sighed, and smiled. “Good.”

He got to his feet, and held out his hand to pull her up, but she evaded his offer, or didn’t notice it. He shoved both his hands in his trouser pockets instead.

As Rose stood up, she tugged on the bottom hem of her pyjama shorts, and he remembered that she’d got ready for bed but hadn’t come to dinner.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked her softly.

Rose shook her head. “No, just tired. Gonna head to bed, I think.”

“Okay.” He nodded his head towards the shelves. “Need me to grab your bedtime reading, now that I’ve wrecked the ladder?”

“It’s fine. Thanks. Think I’ve got something I can read in my room already anyway.”

He intensely disliked the way it suddenly felt so awkward between them. “Right.”

“I’ll, um. I’ll say goodnight, then. See you in the morning.” She pressed her lips together in a tight smile, and made her way out of the room before he even had a chance to reply.

That had been twenty minutes ago, and the Doctor had done nothing but wallow in humiliation in the interim. He peered over the back of the sofa, glancing at the ladder on the floor, and grimaced. What had possessed him to do that? Was he really so far gone that instinctively, his decision had been to get as close to her as he could, no matter the cost to his library furnishings?

He remembered, then, about Rose’s search for something to read. This enlivened him somewhat, because he realised it was the book he’d been so eager to discover, not how Rose would feel all pressed up against his front -

Shaking his head at himself, he got up, and went back to the shelves they’d been standing by. Stretching his arm up to reach the book Rose had been about to grab when he’d wandered in on her earlier, he felt for a good grip on the spine, and brought it down.

He glanced at the cover.

The Essence of Time: A Collection of Essays on Focus, Meditation, and the Ethics of Time Sense.

The Doctor took the book over to the sofa and sat back down, puzzled by what had drawn Rose to this title. Perhaps the TARDIS had been meddling, and told her where to look. But why on Earth would Rose be interested in something like this? For a start, it was written in High Gallifreyan, as were most of the texts on that particular shelf, which was why he’d been so curious about her selection in the first place. He wasn’t even sure <i>he’d</i> read this one, though it had probably been on his required reading list at the Academy several centuries ago.

Very odd.

Confused, and not liking the feeling, he tossed the book onto the coffee table and moved to lie down on the sofa.

His back hurt, his head hurt, and he was fed up, because Rose was being weird, and honestly, he missed her. She was right here, still with him; but he missed her so much.

Nothing, he realised, made sense anymore, which was a suitably melancholic realisation for his somewhat theatrical evening. Sighing heavily, he let himself doze off on the sofa, resigned to the melodrama he’d made of his life tonight.

::

The Doctor had been acting even stranger than usual, lately.

It had to be because of what happened on Desmonia. To say that he had freaked out that night would be an understatement, and though he’d hurt Rose’s feelings with his blatant and definitive rejection, she had tried to put it to the back of her mind for the sake of their relationship. Such as it was.

Every day since, she had woken up, got showered and dressed, and thought positive thoughts as she applied her make-up in front of her bathroom mirror, striving for a smile that would look natural when she greeted the Doctor good morning.

Usually, she didn’t get ready ‘til way after breakfast; bleary-eyed, she would stumble to the galley in her pjs and grumble through her food until her morning tea had sufficiently perked her up. Given the Doctor hadn’t been turning up for their morning meal, however, she had taken to getting ready first, then grabbing a quick slice of toast, eager to seek him out. He’d been in the console room more often than not, doing repairs, or in the library reading.

Speaking of the library, three days ago he’d broken one of her favourite things about it - the ladder that slid along the shelves like something out of Beauty and the Beast. Rose hoped he’d fix it soon, as she had been trying to find out some stuff about Time Lords and his home planet, and she couldn’t reach those books without it, she was too short.

To be honest, she wasn’t sure the TARDIS would even translate them for her; from the glimpses she’d got of the titles the other day, they were all written in that circular loop-y script she took to be Gallifreyan, given that it matched his little post-its to himself that he had stuck on the console screen. But the ship had nudged her towards them, so maybe she would help out some more, and actually translate the texts like she did with the books from everywhere else in the universe.

Rose just wanted to understand him a bit more. Getting him to open up was difficult, and she thought that maybe if she could do a bit of research into how Time Lords were brought up, or what they were taught, then she could see why he was so adamant that they couldn’t act on...whatever it was they were gonna act on last week. And that time on Zen. She shivered, remembering. That had been an even closer call, and she wished - 

In any case, he’d caught her before she could figure anything out, and her mission was aborted. Probably, she wouldn’t like what she’d find, anyway. She half reckoned that the rulebook she’d mentioned he was so keen to stick to actually existed, rather than just a general lesson he’d been taught. She wouldn’t be surprised to find whole tomes dedicated to the negative repercussions of being in a relationship with those his people deemed to be members of ‘lower species.’ Thou shalt not engage in carnal relations with a human, for Time Lords are Much More Important, and Besides, Humans Wither and Die, or something to that effect. Pompous gits.

Regardless, he’d not been himself recently, and she had to sort their situation out somehow. Talking to him directly about it wasn’t her top plan. She hadn’t commented on the way he was secluding himself, not wanting to crowd him. But she soon seemed to cheer him up, she thought, when they got back to normal with their bantering and adventuring. It was just hard in the in-between, when they weren’t sufficiently distracted by what was going on around them. Those easy moments between them, where they always knew what to say or do to diffuse the tension, or having a laugh just hanging out together on the TARDIS; those had vanished, somehow.

He’d withdraw from a hug a bit too soon, or stiffen when she got too close, and it was just so odd. She couldn’t believe that all this time, she must have been encroaching on his personal boundaries or something, if now he didn’t want her near him at all.

They had been so close, before.

Take this morning, for instance. All Rose had done was ask him to hoist her up so she could grab the tree branch (they had been attempting to hide from the Queen of Santabeba’s militia at the time, and the only way to go had been up) and he had looked at her like a spooked animal!

Not for the first time, Rose muttered to herself about bloody Desmonia. He’d have thought nothing of helping her up with a shove to her bum, in an effort to save their lives, before that ridiculous night.

Miraculously, they had made it back to the TARDIS safely today by the late afternoon, and after a short, tense silence in the console room, while the Doctor piloted them into the vortex, he remarked, “That wasn’t our fastest getaway.”

“No, s’pose not,” she said cautiously, wondering what he was getting at.

“You could’ve slipped, you know. Bit risky, that last jump of yours.”

They’d had to swing from tree to tree through the forest canopy, and, admittedly, she’d had a few near misses. “The vine was too far away to reach out and grab,” she said, feeling defensive. “I had to make a jump for it.”

“I have longer arms than you. If you had waited for me, I could’ve got it.”

“It was the adrenaline,” she shrugged, “Didn’t even think, just did it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes, well. That’s something of a trend with you, isn’t it?”

Her hands went to her hips. “Excuse me? What’s your problem, anyway - I didn’t slip! I got hold of it, swung across, and threw it back to you, no problem.”

“If you had waited for me, I could’ve got it, and swung us across together.”

“But it was fine, it worked out okay, so why are you trying to pick a fight about it?”

“I’m not. I’m just saying - and another thing,” he said, changing tack, apparently. “When we landed on the ground again and started to run.”

“Yeah?” she prompted.

“I reached back for your hand but you didn’t take it.”

“Didn’t I?” She frowned, not really remembering. It had all been a bit of a blur. “Sorry, guess I was focussing on running for my life.”

“If you’d taken my hand, we could’ve run a bit faster, like we usually do,” said the Doctor, with a little huff.

Rose watched him fiddle absently with a lever on the console. “What’s going on, Doctor?”

“What?”

“Something’s obviously on your mind, and it’s not about what happened today, so what is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on,” she said softly, leaning forward to touch his shoulder, then pulling back, recalling his reactions, lately, when she’d tried to offer comfort. “You can tell me.”

“You’ve been different lately,” he blurted out, then winced.

“I’ve been different?” Rose repeated, frowning in confusion. “Different how?”

“It’s just.” He glanced away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets. “It feels like you’re...I don’t know. Punishing me.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “What?”

“For not…” He tilted his head. “You know.”

Her heart thumped hard in her chest. “Doctor, what are you talking about?”

He whirled around, leaning against the console and fixing her with an intent look. “You’ve stopped touching me,” he said bluntly.

Rose was speechless; she stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

“All those little touches to my arm and my hand and, and! And, Rose Tyler,” he said, growing increasingly animated as he listed his complaints, “To top it all off, you’ve stopped hugging me back!” He pointed at her accusingly for a second, then looked at his hand and lowered his arm. “When you let me near you at all, that is. So, there we are then. I’ve backed off.”

Rose licked her lips nervously, trying to figure out what on earth to say to that. He was being ridiculous. He was the one who’d stopped touching her first! Wasn’t he? He was the one being all distant and moody and -

“Well?” he prompted, standing up straight and scratching at the back of his neck. “Are you?”

“Am I what?” she asked, bewildered by this entire conversation.

His eyes flashed with impatience. “Are you withdrawing your...your affectionate touches to punish me for not instigating a sexual relationship with you?”

Rose blushed fiercely. “Oh my god. Doctor! Of course not!”

He went still, looking surprised. “Then, why?”

“You’re the one who’s been acting weird,” she protested, shaking her head as she took a few steps closer to him. “I’ve just tried to go on as normal.”

“No,” he protested right back, also shaking his head. “No, normal would be you holding my hand. Normal would be us hugging once a day - at the very least. Normal would be you standing next to me and sitting close on the jumpseat and not flinching every time I so much as brush against your shoulder.”

“I don’t flinch,” she muttered, but he kept going.

"The only time we've had much contact at all was when we accidentally fell off that ladder the other day and you landed on top of me!"

"What?"

“And the only thing I can think of that can be the cause of all these changes between us is that…well, that night. That conversation.”

“When you told me you don’t want me,” she said, not appreciating him bringing it up. An unhelpful reminder, she thought, given that he’d told her to never discuss it ever again.

To her frustration, he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you, don’t twist my words.”

“What, then you do want me?” she retorted. “Because I think you were pretty clear that my, what was it you called them? Advances. You made it very obvious that my ‘advances’ weren’t welcome, so.” She shrugged.

“So you admit it, you have been punishing me for it.”

“What? No, I didn’t say that. I’m not - Jesus, Doctor. I’m not that petty. I’m not gonna deliberately hurt you just because you evidently think I’m repulsive - ”

“Okay, because your tone of voice right now isn’t petulant at all,” he remarked, raising his eyebrows. “And stop doing that, you know that’s not true. You know that’s not why I…”

“Rejected me?” she put in, when he trailed off. She heaved a sigh. “Look. I don’t know why we’re going over this again. You said not to mention it, so I haven’t.”

“Subconsciously, you have, clearly,” he huffed, folding his arms.

“I swear to you Doctor, the only reason I’ve tried not to get too, I dunno, touchy-feely with you or whatever, it’s ‘cos I thought that’s what you wanted. You started behaving weirdly first. I was just following your lead.”

“Following my - what?” he repeated, squinting at her.

“Your lead. You’ve been weird, Doctor.”

“So you’ve said, several times. But I don’t understand, because as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been trying to get things back to how they used to be, and you’ve been shrugging off any hint of, of, of - ” He spluttered for a moment, trying to find the right word.

Rose decided to rescue him from having to utter the word ‘affection’ again, or some synonym for it. She knew he’d spontaneously combust before he’d allow himself to get overly sentimental with her. He already looked supremely uncomfortable that he’d aired any of these grievances at all.

“Hold on, let’s just,” she stopped, shaking her head again, “Let’s just backtrack here. Obviously some wires have got crossed somewhere.”

“Obviously,” he agreed emphatically, and his bottom lip jutted out in a pout. She wished he wouldn’t do that, it was completely distracting.

“That...night,” she said vaguely, eyes darting between his as she searched for a reaction. “When we accidentally...and then you…” Panic flitted briefly across his face before he schooled his features again. She persevered, wanting to reassure him. “I got the message, Doctor. And I’m moving on.”

It was a bit of a lie - all right, it was all of a lie, as if she ever could properly move on from someone like him. But she was trying to put it to the back of her mind, so they could go on like he said - normal. Best mates. Just how it always has been, just like he unfortunately reckoned it always should be.

He opened his mouth to speak, but then a look of realisation came upon his face. “Oh. So, before, that wasn’t...that was just because...oh.” His eyebrows drew together. “Oh.”

“Doctor?” Confused again, Rose reached out, running her fingers lightly down his forearm, following through with the impulse to touch him, this time. But he looked at it, swallowed, and took a step back, dislodging her light touch.

“It’s all right,” he said, after clearing his throat. “I understand now. You don’t have to...it’s fine.”

“I’m glad you understand ‘cos I’ve got no idea what you’re going on about. Again. Can we just be honest with each other for this one conversation? Honest and like, explicit, in what we’re saying here, just so it’s clear?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Good. Thanks. So, what, exactly, do you understand now?”

He exhaled a long breath. “The way we were - the way you were with me, before that night. That was because you thought it was going somewhere. Correct?”

She must’ve still looked befuddled because he continued, waving his hand about as though casting his mind back for examples, “The way you would, for instance, lean against me on the sofa in the library in the evenings, while we read. Or, um, the way you’d sometimes play with the hair at the back of my head when you looped your arms around my neck as we hugged.”

He smiled, as though warming to his theme, “Or, for a particularly noteworthy example, the way - if it wasn’t already in mine - the back of your hand would brush against mine as we walked side by side.” His smile slowly faded. “All that was only normal for us, not because they were inherent facets of our friendship, but because you expected them to lead to...a romantic relationship. And now that I’ve put the kibosh on that, and you’ve apparently moved on, then, well. All that’s stopped.” He smiled tightly and reiterated, “I understand.”

Rose didn’t really know where to start. She could feel her cheeks burning again, probably red as a beetroot, but she was more concerned about the stinging in her eyes. She was not, if she could help it, gonna let him see her get upset over this.

She bit into her bottom lip for a moment, gathering her resolve. “Doctor, do I do those things with anyone else?”

He looked surprised by this line of enquiry. “Um.”

“You know I don’t. You’d’ve noticed, if I did; you’ve obviously been paying great attention to every little thing I…” She paused, swallowing hard. “In that way, I s’pose you’re right. Yeah, I...I dunno, I associate those things with something deeper than friendship, I guess. Okay? Because, well, usually they are, all right?” Wary that she was sounding defensive, especially when she caught the Doctor’s pained look, she hastily added, “But it wasn’t a conscious thing. I didn’t even realise I was doing half those things.”

“Ah.”

She shifted uneasily, fiddling with the hem of her hoodie. “You still don’t get it though. I’ve not deliberately stopped doing those things just because you announced we aren’t gonna have sex - I wasn’t doing them to - what? Entice you? Do me a favour! - in the first place.” She reached out to him again. “Those little touches, they just happened as they did because we were...close and I care about you. A lot.”

“Rose…” His arm lifted, and he cupped her elbow, reciprocating her touch; he always did, always completed the circuit, the connection.

She was finally coming to realise what had been going through his mind. “Obviously they meant something to you, too, if you’re this uptight about me not doing them as much anymore. You’re lonely, I get that, and I’m your best mate, yeah?” She smiled at him, and tugged on his jacket sleeve playfully. “Course you want me to act in that way; it’s familiar, and it’s comforting, and it’s a way of you knowing that you’re my best mate too. Right? That’s what it was for you. We can go back to that. I’m sorry you thought I was mad at you or, or punishing you or whatever other nonsense you came up with in that daft Time Lord head of yours. I wasn’t.”

The Doctor looked like he wanted to say something, but he closed his mouth with a click. However, just as she was about to speak again, he interrupted, “Then, why…?”

Rose shrugged. “I guess I’d just been subconsciously pulling back from anything I thought might cross the line for you.” She gave him a teasing, exasperated look, “You do make it difficult to know what’s allowed and what isn’t, you know. Especially when you get in one of your moods.”

He chuckled a little, and, with a squeeze to her elbow, he drew her against him, into a hug. She melted into it gladly, and he held her tight, pressing a kiss to her temple. His lips lingered there for a moment too long. Rose inwardly huffed; it was all well and good for him to impose or dissolve ridiculous boundaries around the affection they displayed in their friendship, apparently, but if she tried to distance herself, or conversely, push for more intimacy, then he got his knickers in a twist over it! He was a bit of a hypocrite.

She pulled back. “Okay, just so we’re clear, so that I don’t read into things and make a fool of myself again.” She took in a deep breath, hands on his chest as he looked at her with an open face, attentive and listening. “The kissing thing. That’s off the table, right? That’s what you said. Except when it’s you, apparently.”

He looked a little caught in the headlights, and one of his hands left her waist to tug on his ear. “Well.”

Rose was wary of breaking the nice, friendly moment they’d had, but now she’d thought about it, it was a bit of a joke, him demanding all this from her without explaining himself, too.

“Also, while we’re on the subject - do you do this with all your friends? Hug and kiss and ask them to touch you, and it’s all just friendly affection and nothing else, and no one should ever question it because it’s the level of intimacy you are personally content with, never mind what the other person - ”

He groaned, and the hand still on her waist moved round as he slipped his entire arm around her waist, pulling her tightly against him. Rose found this surprising, given that she’d started calling him out on his double standards. She half expected him to push her away and leg it out of the console room. Still, she supposed he either reckoned that, with them standing all pressed up against one another, he could sufficiently distract her - which was not gonna work anymore, she vowed to herself, even if it did feel very nice - or avoid her eye while he spoke, directing his words over her shoulder.

Or both. Now she was eye level with it, that bottom lip of his was twelve times more tempting.

She hated him sometimes.

“Well?” she prompted, when he said nothing further, mimicking his interrogation of her earlier. “Do you?”

Her hands were caught too awkwardly between them, so she slid them up and around his neck, and they found better use delving into his hair, just as he seemed to like. He closed his eyes and hummed. God. He was a cat, she realised. All independent and moody when it suited him, but always coming back eventually, to purr under her touch, unable to resist. She gave one strand a sharp tug, and when he opened his eyes again, she looked up at him expectantly.

He sighed. “Of course I don’t. I don’t recall ever acting like this before. And it’s not just - what you said earlier, about liking it because it’s familiar and comforting. That’s true, of course, but it’s not just that. You know it’s never just been about that.”

Rose could feel her pulse speeding up, and hoped he didn’t notice, just how he was probably hoping she hadn’t noticed how his eyes had darkened as they looked at one another.

“You’re infuriating,” she muttered, watching his gaze slip to her lips.

“I know. So are you.”

“Will you ever make your mind up?” she wondered.

“Will you tell me the truth?” he countered.

“I try to. You make it bloody difficult sometimes.”

“Have you really moved on?”

“Is your hand on my bum?” she deflected. It was, he’d just slipped it there, casual as anything, warm and firm and totally copping a feel.

“Yes,” he said simply.

She made a frustrated noise. “Stop it, it’s not fair. You, teasing me and then…”

“You tease me all the time,” he retorted, but his hand dutifully returned to her lower back.

“At least I don’t go hot and cold on you.”

“No. Just hot.” He grinned, and she tugged on his hair again. “Ow!”

“Shut up, I know you’re into it. Look, Doctor. We’re gonna keep going in circles here. That night, you made it clear it would never happen. Now, because I’ve told you I’ve accepted that and am trying to move on - ”

“Ah, trying to.” He smiled.

“You git, this is what I mean, you’re flipping delighted that it’s so hard for me to stop thinking about you, about us. And so you’re only interested when I say I’m not!”

He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and shook his head. “That isn’t true, and you know it. I didn’t say that night that I didn’t want you - I have never said that.”

“You say on the one hand that you want things to be normal between us, and then you turn a simple hug into something else at the drop of a hat,” she continued, even as her own hand wandered down to tug on his tie.

“You’ve been putting distance between us all week. No wonder I’m overwhelmed now that you’ve finally deigned to hug me again.”

“Be honest. You said you would be, tonight.” She stroked a finger along his jaw. “What’s going on here?”

“What’s going on is, you’re right. It’s impossible for us to go back to normal. After what happened...now that you know. Rose, it’s getting increasingly more difficult to stay away from you.”

“Which is exactly why the pair of us have been wary of touching each other this week. Isn’t it?” she pressed. She let go of him, and he let her escape his embrace, put some air between them to clear their heads. “So don’t pretend it’s just me.”

“Yes, but before...before…”

“What is it, then? What’s changed? You didn’t want me then, or at least, not enough to want to do something about it. So why now?”

“I did want - I just - I - ” He broke off, and sighed. “I don’t know.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t; he just stood there, staring at her, looking a bit helpless.

“I’m gonna stay with you forever,” she stated firmly, watching his face. He didn’t flinch, or look alarmed. Instead, a slow smile crept onto his face. She let out a breath, relieved, and felt emboldened to continue, “So if you keep nearly...if you keep nearly doing something you don’t really wanna do, just because you think it’s what I want, or just so that I’ll be affectionate with you or whatever, then, well, don’t. Don’t, because I’m staying, and I’ll be your best mate, and that’s never gonna change. Whether you want more or not. Okay?”

The Doctor nodded, his hands clenching at his sides. “I’m sorry. I just…get caught up in you, sometimes.” He exhaled. “But, if you can continue to ignore it for the sake of our friendship, then so can I. I’ve just felt a little lost, this week. I’ll work on it. Get back to normal.”

His familiar refrain. Rose sighed. If they both wanted it so damn much that she’d literally just moved to stand the other side of the jumpseat from him, purely because he looked like he was gonna kiss her and every nerve-ending in her body was tingling and begging her to let him, then she really couldn’t understand why they didn’t just bloody well do it. This must have showed in her face, because he spoke again.

“Because what I said before. That night. It’s still true, I still can’t...we mustn’t.”

“Because you’re a Time Lord, and you have Obligations,” she said flatly.

“Yes. Exactly.” He paused. “Wait. Are you being sarcastic?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Right. Well, regardless, it’s the truth.”

She smiled at him sadly, and couldn’t resist asking, “But you do want me.”

The Doctor smiled back. “All the time,” he said, in a whisper; as though afraid the universe might hear.

[ihfsttinuf]

Screw It, I’m Making a Webcomic

So, as I made it abundantly clear on Twitter mere moments ago, I have a real honest-to-Glob New Year’s Resolution for 2017.

I am going to create a webcomic.

I am going to write a sequential art narrative which I will draw and provide various artistic accoutrements to and post it on the Internet. This is going to happen by the end of this year. I am doing this.

Perhaps this sudden outburst and declaration of artistic intent seems a bit out of left field, both in its overtones of grandiosity and relative lack of context given what most of you guys know about me. So let me provide some of that much needed context, both to show you why I am doing this and what I am really saying, which is probably even more ambitious (and maybe pretentious) than you think it is.

I’ve been writing weird little stories and drawing accompanying illustrations for them since I was a wean, as most of us did at that age, but since that point I’ve never really stopped. At a very young age I encountered not only excellent children’s books ranging from the charming and heartwarming to the downright mind-bending—Peter Sís and Henrik Drescher were big in my household—but also illustrated works whose contents and subtext were far too old for me yet entranced me nonetheless, particularly the works of the great New England illustrator and satirist Edward Gorey. By the age of six or seven, I had memorised “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” and would recite it with morbid glee to anyone who would ask (or didn’t). I discovered books through Gorey’s cover illustrations, first accidentally discovering the alternate history genre through his work on Joan Aiken’s Dido Twite series, and was only drawn deeper into John Bellairs’ junior Gothics when I discovered that Gorey had provided the frontispiece and dust jacket to every one of the entries in the series he’d written up to his death—which I mourned, with a mix of vague incomprehension, sorrow, and creeping disappointment. I was eight at the time.

Parallel to this, I spent a lot of time at my town’s local art centre, which provided free classes in all sorts of artistic endeavours. I took most to theatre and improv in particular—I was a wee ham; now I am a large ham—but what stuck with me was drawing and, to a lesser extent, animation. As I fixated on Gorey’s superficial techniques and aesthetics, the simple sunken eyes and odd little triangular noses, I’d also more subtly acquired his less obvious techniques: The way he used cross-hatching and simple, intense linework to suggest different textures entranced me, and indeed still does. I am told that a very strict art teacher, who I thought disliked me and of whom I was somewhat afraid, freely admitted that a sketch I’d done of a horned figure playing a flute on a rooftop by the light of the moon had taken her breath away.

Which is not to say that I was, or am, some prodigy of form, or that I lacked for more prosaic influences. The former, I will get to, but the latter is best expressed in the fact that a recurring scene which I have since revised and transfigured many, many times began life as... well, thinly veiled Darkwing Duck fanfiction, minus the duck part, given a sound twist of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter”. I was maybe eleven or so at the time.

It was in one of these classes that this weird little scene deep beneath a ruined graveyard was born. It was also there that I made plans for an elaborate series of beast fables, set in a world quite unlike our own.

It is perhaps worth noting that one of the handful of these early sketches which sticks in y mind to this day was a tale of two young male lizards falling in love only to be torn apart by a disapproving society. Even at an age when I was functionally unaware of homosexuality and bemused or outright repulsed by what I knew of sex, a queer romance was perhaps the most emotionally intense thing that I had conceived of up to that point. But I digress.

The setting in question and certain characters in it would perennially re-emerge in my other writing, which I was quite certain would be my career path throughout late elementary and middle school. In seventh grade, I was part of an experimental programme where middle and high school students were allowed to enrol in a creative writing course at a nearby university. Only two students wound up attending: Myself, and a classmate of mine who had skipped a grade and would later become known in my high school as something of a mad and insufferable genius. (We got on pretty well.) After several semesters of studying poetry and short fiction, there was a presentation. One of the selections I made for my reading was a list-poem, from the perspective of an older character trying to live day by day with the memory of his deceased wife hanging over him, with the distinction that the final entry was a reminder to keep his claws neatly filed.

It was around that time that I began to come under the influence of Thomas Ligotti, and it was with this exposure to the refiner’s fire of such elegant horror—the kind that brought the same sort of visions into my mind that Gorey brought to the page—that I realised what form my true opus should take, at least in plot. I took it with me into high school, and beyond into the wilderness of these past six-and-a-half years of confusion. The polestar of this mad endeavour formed here.

I had been thinking a lot about epic high fantasy at the time—I was eleven when The Return of the King hit theatres, and I had read enough in the genre and in styles adjacent to it to be aware of the tropes—and it occurred to me that the moral framework and cosmology of a lot of such works rang a bit hollow to me, not because right and wrong did not exist, as certainly people do good and bad things to one another all the time, but because there was always this sense of certainty that the side one was meant to root for was indubitably in the right and some great objective force of Good deemed it so, blessing their struggle against a force similarly ordained by some great objective Evil. It was that last dimension which particularly irked me. It felt reassuring in the most painfully reductive and philosophically trite way possible. And so often the battles were so... literal. I never much cared for war films to begin with, and by putting such struggles in a fantastical framework, you subtracted the one thing that made war films kind of neat: The recognition that these were people doing the fighting and the killing. Not symbols, people.

Very middle school analysis, yes, and unfair to some things I quite enjoy, Tolkien included, but the ultimate conclusions were the important part.

Which is where Ligotti comes in. Much has been made of his non-fiction opus The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, but in terms of his philosophy and its influence on my thinking at the time, I’d rather stick to his fiction, as that was what I was reading and that is what made me. In brief, Ligotti is not a reassuring writer. The universe of his stories reflects his views of our own, which are, in essence, a wholesale rejection of the commonly held notion that human consciousness and life in general are good things that we should all be even remotely enthused about, instead proposing that the very idea that we are aware of ourselves and that we should think of ourselves as individuals for whom some higher power might just be watching out is more likely an obscene and sadistic joke on that hypothetical power’s part or else, more likely, a horrible accident. His stories are filled with personal totems and surreal motifs, the fates of his characters determined by blind chance or the detached malicious prankstery of a party with whom they cannot bargain or reason, the sadistic frenzies of Poe’s maniacal villain-protagonists writ large, often on a cosmic scale. There is the feel of a nightmare and yet also of the sleepless hours after, alone in the dark, thinking, where wakefulness and dream bleed between one another and all the world is a nightmare to which the hells of sleep might well be preferable.

If I’ve lost you, well, I’m sorry; but you and I probably have something to talk about if your first reaction to all this was, “I’ve certainly had *those* days.”

And if you’ve had enough of those days, the rest probably follows easily enough.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, I thought, if one took that quest narrative key to so many epic fantasies, and put it through a world where the rules of the game were so utterly reversed? If our well-meaning hero—of course, as in Tolkien, basically some poor backwater schmo, by no means stupid nor necessarily naïve but very, *very* far from the classical man of virtue—were to bear with him some artefact of power that could, perhaps by its very existence, rend the veil of normalcy that should keep all of the sane and happy citizens of this world from confronting what writhes beneath all that they see, what might he choose to do with it, particularly if he were, say, by some inexplicable invisible bond, *tied* to it?

Now, what makes a fitting antagonist for such a tale? What sort of character provides the ideal foil for a kind-hearted soul confronted with all the horrors of what may be in a neat little package? Rather than some cosmic sadist intent on throwing us all under the bus, why not something a bit scarier: Another kind-hearted soul. Someone who has seen behind the veil their whole life. Someone who has seen the truth and the agony of this world and seeks nothing less than perfect closure

And there it was.

And then it began to get complicated.

For every character that I created to flesh out the story, another came into being, and I wanted to know more about them. A side-plot salvaged from some other silly project merged seamlessly into the new whole, and suddenly there were whole new plots, full of new characters with motives that I wanted to understand. Characters grew, changed, lightened and darkened as my thoughts steeped. Exposure to other writers through classes and forums and variably disastrous shared writing projects made me realise what I did and did not know, what I could and could not do.

It was also in high school that I began taking music seriously, first toying around in Garageband and singing in the school choir and then as part of a band with several close friends. I wrote a lot of poetry, and I sang a bit, so we had lyrics; I still drew sometimes, so we had art when we needed it, although we rarely needed it. I was always ambitious with my lyrics: One of our most successful songs was structured to simulate one character murdering another during a snowstorm in a glade where they had played and hidden as a child. Morbid character studies were common; I was always taking grim little vacations in people’s heads, my own or otherwise. Informed by my middle school studies of haibun and my lyrical adventures, my prose grew more experimental, collapsing into poems or switching into strange persons and tenses. My mind was full of images, yet where to go with them?

My path to sequential art was an odd and rocky one. As mentioned, I loved picture books and illustrated stories as a child, and while I failed to touch upon them earlier (mea culpa!), Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side were pretty important in their own right. I even attempted to create something of a running series at around the time I was in that poetry programme, mainly for the amusement of myself and a very affable art teacher who found the premise amusing. It was only a year or two later that I would read Doom Patrol—the first superhero comic that I would ever admit to liking, and still one of the chosen few—and realise that Grant Morrison, the bastard, had stolen my idea before I’d even been born: Of killing one’s own imaginary friend, only to be tormented by their vengeful spectre years after the fact at the least appropriate of times.

But the comic idea sort of fell by the wayside for the longest time, for the simple reason that I am, to my own mind, an atrocious draughtsman. I cannot reproduce figures to save my life. Hilarious, seeing as I can draw you a teeming alien cityscape, or a perfectly detailed mosquito in flames, but in terms of doing the same thing twice, I’ve spent years hanging my head in shame and self-loathing.

The secret is, though, not that I couldn’t learn this, but that for such a long time, pride had kept me from allowing myself to be bad at things until I was good. As someone to whom a lot of fairly complex ideas just come naturally, someone who just absorbs information like a souped-up Dyson vacuum, the idea of having to draw the same damned thing ten thousand times just to get decent at drawing that same damned thing was a horrifying prospect. It still is.

I got pushed into it. My own fictions put a knife to my throat and told me, “This is what needs to happen.” But it took two different interconnected experiences to understand how, both courtesy of my boyfriend being a huge dork.

The first was his recommendation that I read LAMEZINE 02, at that time the latest salvo from the wonderfully deranged comic artist Cate Wurtz, then going by the moniker Partydog; the second was his use of a Bec Noir avatar on a forum we’re both on, which got me to finally bite the bullet and read Homestuck.

Wurtz’ Lamezone comics are a trip. Her art style is by most technical standards fairly primitive, but it’s a very *refined* jankiness, part and parcel to her overall embrace of scuzzy punk ‘zine aesthetics, immediately recognisable and all-around immediate. Her approach to story and tone is just the same, at once surreal and ridiculous and incredibly emotionally potent, ranging in tone from giddy B-movie absurdity to crushing Carver-esque sorrow, composed of as many little side-stories that flesh out what sort of world these characters live in as of its “meat” and all the better for it. The way that her comics are often framed only adds to the ambience: DVD menus of hit TV series that never existed, tales from the everyday lives of people living on the precipice of madness (and/or suburban Kansas), the wild Lynchian adventures of a man who talks to the spirit of the good ol’ USA through Twitter while traipsing through other people’s comics and the comment sections on furry porn sites. She was even working on a video game at one point about a woman trying to battle her way through deformed iterations of her past selves while maintaining a sufficient ganja supply. I have no idea if that’s still happening. It looked awesome.

Homestuck has already had much said about it, so I’ll keep it brief. Comparisons to Pynchon are not unwarranted. It takes the hypertextual potential of the webcomic to the next level, and is longer than many novel series. The art is, quite intentionally, all over the place, and uses collage surprisingly effectively. The story is a beautiful mess that is, fundamentally, about the process of storytelling and how “things that happen” become “stories” in the first place. It’s very oblique about this, and generally quite funny.

And so I looked to the story I was writing.

I looked at the multiple plotlines growing out of one another, intersecting, snakes devouring their tails, thematic parallels on parallels, spirals of mental imagery with bits of torn wallpaper making the fabric of waistcoats and cathedrals made out of lines of scripture and trees bearing watches like fruit, and I went: “This should be a comic! A hypercomic, in fact, McLuhan-style! This should be a wondrous blend of visuals and text and...

“I...

“I can’t draw. Fuck me. I should stick to prose, like a good loser. Get rejected that way instead.”

So I waffled. For months. And then for years.

But you know what?

I’m done waffling.

Limitation is power in its own right. Ever since I learned of Oulipo in that long-ago three-person poetry class, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of innovation through defining what you cannot do, or what you must do, no matter what. Of forcing yourself to start from a set place or end at one, no ifs, ands or buts.

I am limited. Within that, I am omnipotent.

I am going to draw this comic. I am going to write it and I am going to draw it even if it starts out looking like total shit and the process drives me half-insane. If things that I love, in sequential art but also in music and painting and writing and animation and all sorts of other forms, can make a perceived deficit into a key strength, I can do it, too. Even if I can’t be a classical master, I can be the best at that crazy thing I do.

I guess this is also my grandiose way of saying “fuck last year,” where I made so much progress that felt so thwarted by external circumstances and my own failings, and where so much went wrong for so many of us. So I’m embracing this year as a year of progress. Even if everything else sucks, I’ll be running up that hill.

And just so there’s no mistaking it, I will still be making music and probably writing at least a smidgen of prose fiction and poetry on the side. In the former category, I might even start a band.

Oh, wait. We’re not doing half-measures any more.

I’m starting a band, too.

Tell your friends.

Happy 2017, everyone, and have a lovely rest of your night.