LIGHTNOVELONLINE "Well that is a rather fascinatin' theory", says Antitia Robeno.
We stand in her office, having just explained Alabastra's wild conjecture. It is bizarre: some part of me feels like I'm here for the first time, though I know objectively it's not. I'm seeing it with new eyes, letting myself grow curious and fascinated at all the little details I glossed over before. The rounded glowing crystals in the ceiling where lightbulbs should be; is that arcryst? The draconic form of that paperweight, it looks like it's made of some strange glowing shale, in a design unlike any human cultures I know of. And the odd bends and turns of the furniture, impractical and overly-ornamental to point of near uselessness, curved and strange and so very much not in the utilitarian style I'm used to.
While the magics of the Faewild naturally piqued my curiosity as a youth, the entirely too-silly whimsy of it all felt no less than wholly unapproachable to me, even as a child.
I think the Gods might have forgotten to put the mirth in me.
But seeing these little vestiges of Fae culture, it no longer feels so storybook. Instead there's something almost occult to the faeries. Mythic and eerie, like they fundamentally don't quite belong here. A certain vastness to their existence, not just unnatural, but wholly supernatural, more real, an overabundance bursting forth from their very souls.
It's clear in none more than Antitia Robeno herself. Though I picked up hints of it before, it seems so obvious to me now that she has shrunk herself down, on a transcendental level. It's as if she's an actress, stepped into the world of the theatre, to interact with us mere characters within.
And now I'm feeling yet more inadequate. This is a true talent of mine, it seems.
She continues, "You're suggestin' we, what, deliver positive affirmations to our transformed, until they get their muzzles back on?"
Alabastra is at a loss of words for a moment, before she shrugs and says, "Yeah, pretty much?"
Antitia's burning white irises drill a hole through Alabastra. Then she sighs, practically falling onto her desk. "I suppose we'll give it a shot, honey."
I add in, "Trust me, I am feeling no more confident in this hypothesis than you are."
Then the fae woman stares in my direction for a moment, and I feel very suddenly like I've done something wrong. "Oh, feelin' chatty today are we?" Ah. I suppose I didn't engage in much conversation that wasn't strictly business when I was here before. The fae tilts her head, struck curious. Much like how I saw her office, it's like she's seeing me anew as well. Then her interest collapses into a knowing grin. "Huh. I see..."
"See... what?"
She saunters closer, sashaying around me as she takes a long drag of her cigarette. "Ain't got the stink of that artifact on ya no more. That devious little bugger ain't cloudin' things." Right. She'd said before she could sense it. Then a little chuckle escapes her, as she continues to peel me apart with her gaze. "Ah... and now it's all fittin' together."
Watch or no, I'm not exactly comfortable with this woman reading me in such a way. Though I am curious about something else. "Did you... know? About the person inside of it?"
"Person?!", Faylie interjects. Oh, right. I must have forgotten to divulge that little tidbit as well. Gods, we still have so much to talk about.
If Antitia Robeno did in fact know the sordid details all along, she doesn't say. instead she continues on with her own thought. "It's a swell thing you ditched it, honey. Though, you do got me a little worried about who might have it now."
The rogue steps forward again. "Well, speakin' of... If you wouldn't mind we'd like that tracker back."
Antitia smirks, letting a beat hang in the air. Then she walks back behind the desk, reaching into a drawer. The red-gemmed stone amulet glows once more, casting her face in her own shadow. "Well, I suppose you earned it...", her words drift, "But before I do - I need one more thing." She looks to her niece.
Her niece: yet another thing I want to ask after. Faylie says, "I mean, you never needed to do the pact stuff to get me to agree, Auntie, so, shoot!" Faylie is perhaps a touch too glib about having been pressganged by her own, well, clearly not flesh and blood, but aunt all the same.
"I need ya to promise that wherever this little doohickey leads ya, ya ain't gonna do somethin' stupid. You'll take every precaution. Can you do that, Faylie dear, and spare your poor Auntie the heart attack for once?"
The faun trots forward and gives Antitia a large hug. "I knew you cared!" That was in doubt?!
Antitia rolls her eyes, pats Faylie on the back, and throws Alabastra the tracking amulet.
She spools it around her hand and looks within the gem, concentrating a moment. "Okay. I think it's... north? And just a little bit down."
I tilt my eyes over my glasses. "Down?"
"Here, see for yourself." She tosses me the pendant.
The strange piece of jewelry in my hand is ugly and carved from granite, like it's a makeshift design for the gem within; a particularly dwarven solution, I'd think. Whoever put this together for Cozzo had no regard for form beyond function. I stare into the red gem, and feel a pulling sensation, like momentum even though I'm standing, sending me northbound. Far, but not so far it's out of the city. Back in the direction of the heights, only... not high enough to be in the district itself. She's taken the amulet somewhere underneath the Augustene Hill. At least, for now; we should keep regular tabs on if that changes.
I pass the amulet back to Alabastra, and the shifting miasma of the Other Side sparks a curious thought. "I am... astounded it functions from here", I say.
Antitia says, "Well, I'll let ya ponder that little wrinkle yourself." She sits and leans into her seat, reclining back, and setting her gaze on me. "Now, honey, let's talk about your debt."
Ah, right. I've spent the last several days with that albatross around my neck; it was the only thing I cared about. My debt, and my hatred. Like a knife at my neck, constantly ready to split me open by taking the watch from me. But now that The Timekeeper is gone, I find I only barely care about it. "I suppose our business is done, then?"
She tilts her head down. "It could be... but I'm thinkin' we hold on to our little contract just a touch longer."
Though I'm not longer as frightened of the consequences as before, I'm still not exactly a fan of being under a magical compulsion. "I would prefer we did not."
"Why? You're gonna do exactly what I'd ask ya to do anyways, aren't'cha? Take the fight to this Serrone woman?" Her hands fold over the desk. And her next words feel off. Like they're coming from somewhere deeper, older, stranger. "Why not hold on to our deal, huh? Mayhaps when things are lookin' hazy, rememberin' our contract is just what keeps ya goin'."
There's something more to this. Something she isn't saying; perhaps can't say. "For motivation's sake, you mean?"
She doesn't answer. Only smiles.
Fae and their word games. She's plotting something. Who knows what, but, I do know that getting in the way of a faerie's scheme is only likely to end with you as its target.
Some part of me wonders if this was all part of her plan, in some way. I'm still not clear on how much of the future she can see, how much is set in stone for her to read at all, and I think it exceptionally likely that I'll never know. But it would be quite the con, to have led me on a string all this time, put me down as a board piece on some great game, knowing I would lose the watch anyways. Perhaps that was their real payback.
The way she phrases this wrinkle doesn't seem like a setup, though. At least, not one with my leg in the trap. She's not playing this trick on me, I don't think: she's asking me to buy in.
And didn't I want things to not make sense anymore? "Very well. So long as you don't use it to compel me any further."
She laughs. "Very well, indeed. Though, if you'd like to get in on that dancin' gig voluntarily you let me know, honey."
My shoulders shrink in. "I would turn more customers away than I would attract."
She sticks out a hip. "That wasn't a no." I swallow a hard lump in my throat. She turns to Alabastra. "And, hells, I know you said you weren't lookin' for employment, but you do make a damn fine ratcatcher."
The rogue turns on a dime, saying over her shoulder, "You'll have to catch me a lot more desperate than that, Singsong."
She leans back in the chair again, smoking out of the end of her cigarette holder. The otherworldly glare of her eyes softens for a moment, and though it's always a folly to assume a fae is being genuine, I could almost let myself believe her when she says, "Don't be a stranger, now."
* * *
Though Alabastra briefly protests that she'd like if we could stop in for a drink, I do still have the setting sun to worry about again. If the urges are affecting people in The Other Side, than I'm no safer here than the real world, only here it's impossible to tell when the sun is coming down to begin with. I wish I had a watch - a real, normal watch that told the time and nothing else.
I speak up, "Do the rest of you still have any Subduant on you?" I'd used up my spare vials at Serrone's manor the other day, and there are serious concerns in the immediate if they don't.
Faylie nods, pulling a syringe of the familiar gray-blue liquid from her bag. "Gotcha covered!"
Then an imminent attack is unlikely. They're safe for now, at least.
Though I'm still having issues reconciling their safeguarding of information, and still have thoughts about the argument that sparked the last few days of torment, I can at least confirm to myself one thing: I care about their safety. I threw away the most powerful magical artifact I've ever known to exist for just that; it would be absurd to continue to claim otherwise. Whatever form our relationship continues to take, if we even still have one at all once this is over, I do at least want them alive and well. I need them to live well.
As for the rest? I still need to consider.
In the meantime, there are still reparations to be made. As we exit the supply store front, I'm reminded of a conversation that took place here last. I turn to Tegan. "I... want to apologize for my rudeness earlier, to you, in specific, Tegan. I was... exceptionally uncharitable. And after you'd been so uncompromising in assisting me, no less."
The knight looks at me, brows knit, but her tail betrays her delight. She lightly socks me in the shoulder. "It's fine, Moodie." The she falters. "I, uh. Wish we figured it out earlier." That's hardly their fault. I do not exactly make it easy to discern when I'm out of sorts. I'm not sure I've even been in-sorts.
I continue, "And I apologize for nearly abandoning you after the theater. And for brushing you off at the temple when you were clearly in distress. And-"
She waves her hands out. "H-hey, you don't need to apologize for every little thing!"
"I am liable to, regardless." I rub at the bicep of my arm where she tapped me. The three crowd closer to me, out of the way of the strange pedestrians of the Other Side's streets. "I..." I'm not sure where I'm going next.
Curse my atrocious abilities in apologies. I've never once given one and felt less guilty at the other end. The horribly ungrateful way in which I've acted crawls up my spine, and feeling sorry only burrows it deeper. I need a shower. No. I need something deeper than water can scrub. A new approach?
Perhaps leaning into honesty is enough. "I am... glad. That we're all still here - as it hasn't been a sure thing. I apologize that I didn't make that gratitude clear earlier." I look to them one-by-one. Tegan looks proud that her knightly valor has some distant dull echo in my words. I only barely catch the look on Faylie's face, as instead she's barreled into my side again, squeezing me too tight, like I might slip away if she doesn't.
And Alabastra's emerald glare is lifting. She's clearly enjoying this, with her saccharine proclivities. There's something deeper to her stare, too, that I can't quite place. "Moodie... it really was worth it." She throws her arms wide, gesturing all around her. "It was always worth it. Even when you hated us - hated yourself. I'll never not be grateful you're still here."
The feeling's gone too soon, of course. I back away, reminded of our argument. In that room, in the weeks before; hells, for a long, long time before that, to Lainey, or even earlier: I'd been so convinced that I deserved oblivion. Now, my mind is in two places at once. I can recognize that thought as a false conviction: not objective truth, but born of the same place that my watch-wrought contempt crawled from. Yet that recognition doesn't quite extend to belief. I can see the thorn in my palm now, but I can't quite pull it free.
Of course I don't say any of that. "A- and, I... apologize again for last night-"
"Moodie." Alabastra crosses her arms, as if to scold me. But then she sighs, looking down, struck guilty. "And... look. I know I said it before, while you were stuck, but just so it's clear - I'm sorry, too, about what went down. Gettin' us into that mess, lying, pushing you. Not being there earlier."
Now that I have space to consider what she's actually saying, I realize I don't quite understand why she feels she could have helped sooner. My happiness is hardly Alabastra's responsibility. I think back to that night, at the Gilded Gazelle in Firvus Heights, what she'd said to me outside my motel room. That she wanted to meet whoever I'd end up being at the other side of this. That she didn't want to see me drown. And that she-
My cheeks go rouge. Surely at least some of what she said was hyperbolic.
She continues, "And I did mean it, what I said on the wheel ride. You don't have to forgive me. Don't want you to even say it unless you actually do. You make your choices."
My initial instinct is to forgive her immediately. I suppose that half-proves her point, in some way. But there's still enough done to each other, on both sides, that it doesn't feel so simple. My thoughts are still complicated, tangled over her choices, over what occurred at the Carlivain, at so much before and since. And I'm finding it difficult to know how much I should factor in the watch: that version of myself it created. I'm at an impasse. A reflection scattered over running water.
"I... I don't know if I can yet", I say. The instinctive hurt in her eyes nearly breaks my train of thought, but she promised me honesty. I can only give that in return. "I believe I need some space. And time. To think on it. Alone."
A cleansing breath fills her, in and out again. "Okay. That's fair."
"But." All three pick up again at my addendum. "I would like to try. And besides, we still have this investigation to finish. Just give me tonight, to mull it all over." Though, not like I'll be mulling much over once the sun is down. A metaphorical tonight, I suppose.
No matter how many times Alabastra Camin has burned her smile into my mind, I never can stop bracing against it. It's like a battering ram. "Can do. We'll swing by tomorrow." She turns to her girlfriends. "In the meantime, we'll put our nose to the grindstone. Check in with Kansis. Maybe we find someone we can try and talk back from the edge."
Ever the optimist. In truth, despite the mawkish sentiment we've shared since the festival, it's difficult to not believe us all doomed. We are aiming ourselves squarely at the Lupine Party now. There's not a fraction of room for error.
Tegan says, "W- wait. Not saying you can't go, Moodie, but... are you sure you should be alone right now? And, uh- not just in, like, that way, but, y'know, the thing at the festival. And there's still people after you. And you've got your hungers."
Alabastra adds with an angry cross-snap, "Fuckin' Vail. Never did find out what happened to him after the theater." Right. So caught in my moping, I nearly forgot about that. "Know you wanna clear your head, but at least one of us should go with you. For safety's sake."
That's a fair compromise.
My feelings on Alabastra are still twisted by the lies and my still-recovering thoughts. I hurt Tegan one too many times in my state, and would too readily slip into self-flagellation...
I sigh. Faylie is already rocking back and forth on her hooves, hands behind her back, clearly seeing the way the wind is blowing.
"... Fine", I deadpan in her direction.
The faun lifts one finger into the air, other hand on her hip, striking an excited pose. "Dream team!", she shouts.
"More like nightmare..." They all stare at me a moment. "That... was a joke."
Alabastra steps forward. "'Preciate the spirit." She pulls us all in for another of their shockingly common group hugs. I still go limp as a noodle within it, but they don't seem to mind. Alabastra and Tegan back away, joined side-by-side. "Right. Be careful, you two. Keep 'em safe, Bug. Drink your potion on time, Moods."
I roll my eyes. "Break a leg."
She shoots me another of her absurd finger gun motions. And the two walk away. I catch just the beginning of the conversation Alabastra strikes up with her partner as they do. "So, think you could wolf out whenever you want, now? Like Thassalia and Forrest?"
Tegan's tail wags harder for a moment. "Uh. Oh. Gosh." And they disappear beyond the crowd.
Forrest... Hmm.
* * *
We pass the necromancer's shop on our way out of the Other Side, and my gait slows. I consider abandoning this little line of thought, but I don't want to fall back into denying my curiosity, wherever it leads. I look behind us at the sign and say to Faylie, "I will just be a moment. Wait out here?"
The faun looks up, curious. "Ooo, you're gonna talk to Forrest? Sure thing - just tell him I still wanna do readings for each other - but if he even thinks about putting his claws on my deck when he might shred them he..." She trails off at my unamused glower. "Actually, I'll- I'll just tell him later."
I follow the roll of my eyes in a turn, and head up the steps into his Emporium of Mystic Attunement.
The interior is as I remember it: the occult shop with strange baubles littering the space. The familiar scent of burning lavender fills my nostrils, with an after-hint of too much charcoal. The amateur is burning his incense too hot. Unprofessional, really.
He stands slouched over the counter, and the second he looks up at me, the growl that curls his ursine lips leaves me without doubts of his dangerous nature. "What? Here to insult my trade again...? I thought I made it clear you weren't welcome back here."
"This will just be a moment", I say, even-keeled enough to sound apologetic without having to mean it. I am still working on extending my empathy back out beyond my circle of three. When it comes to individual people and interactions such as this, it does take some amount of practice. Until I can get there again, it's better to not be belligerent, at least. "I only want to ask you a question."
His claws tip-tap against the glass. "Fine..." I've never seen a bear pout before.
I gather up what strength I can muster. "Do... do dhampirs have souls?"
The scowl on his face drops into surprise, then curiosity, then satisfaction. He readjusts the glasses at the tip of his snout and smiles out of the side of his face. "Ah... That would explain it..."
One shaky, furious breath leaves my lips, and I turn and leave without another word. The door closes behind me as I stomp hard against the ethereal stonework. I keep my face as blank as I can.
Faylie seems concerned. "What was that about?"
"Nothing."
It hardly matters, anyways. A pointless thing to care about, let alone hope for. I already knew that much, at least. I don't even try to downplay or explain away the possibility: he's almost certainly right.
But evidently a lack of a soul does not stop me from moving. So that's what I keep doing.
The faun stares up a moment, unsubtle in her worries, but doesn't say anything else.
Then we pass through the foggy dome of the Other Side. The world feels like it shifts, as if briefly turned upside-down before righting itself again in a total circle, as reality itself rushes through us.
We're back in Marble City proper, and the sun is starting to hang low. We've still another hour or so at least, thankfully. I'd hate for Faylie to have to drag my sleeping body through the streets.
Chatterbox that she is, it doesn't take her long to strike up another conversation. "So... what were we talking about last, just the two of us?"
I don't care to recall the specifics. It was in the theater, I believe. Best we keep this lighthearted instead, for both our sakes. "Likely something of a magical nature."
She claps her hands together, excitedly. "Ooo, hells yes!" Without delay, Faylie launches into another ramble-session. "So, I've been thinking a lot about how my family uses these cards, and about other types of bardic magic, and I've always wondered... what if I start combining them, like in a proper spread? Maybe I could do some way more interesting stuff!"
"That sounds like it would be wildly taxing. You'd be preforming the equivalent of some exceptionally complex magic, if you didn't start producing unique effects entirely." And this is Faylie. Everything she does is unique. "After exhausting yourself yesterday, I'd think you'd want to go back to basics."
"No way! Always gotta stay ahead of the curve!" She shadow boxes a moment, though her form is terrible. "And, y'know, if we're probably all gonna die soon anyways, I might as well, right? I gotta lightning round my bucket list!"
Ridiculous creature. Though, it is an interesting theory. If her magic runs on her own imagination, then what's stopping it from being as limitless as she is?
Though that does remind me of a question I never got to ask. "You said before that the typical methods of casting, the ones that rely on forcibly changing the world, are more effective when channeling emotions that motivate evolution."
"Mhm! We mentioned ambition and anger, but there's lots of others you could use, too!"
"Then I'm curious - which is the most impactful?"
She laughs. "Oh, that's easy." She trots ahead of me. "It's love, silly!"
"Love?" That seems far too saccharine. Simple. Twee, even. Almost certainly a Faylie-esque exaggeration. "How so?"
Faylie sticks her hands out wide in a mimic of Alabastra. "It practically dares you to change!"
* * *
In the vanishing daylight of this untenably eventful day, the exterior of 492 West Mayflower Drive never looked more like a tomb. Dark and foreboding, with the shopfront still boarded up, the home that has served as little more than this hermit's cavern of exile has been left unattended for longer gaps of time in this past week than it has in years. The slate-gray building is shouldered on its left side by a more squat and wide ruddy-maroon flat. I believe that was a tailor's shop when I moved in, but now it's the home of a relatively young couple, seemingly out and away on business more days than not. To the other side, a taller tenement building stacked with dozens of apartments stretches back to the other side of the block, apace of my abode with a tiny alley as a buffer, barely wide enough for a person. And to the shop's back, an abandoned haberdashery. It was once rumored to be haunted by the neighborhood children; they were only one building off.
The cold and empty lack of light from my flat seems all the more eerie on this, Devil's Night, especially: a holiday for haunting and creeping and revelry in the macabre. 'Bromley's Apothecary' may as well be a decoration, no different from the tacky little paper mâché skeletons hung from my neighbors' windows. It's all fun and games for everyone else.
I approach my apple-green door, fishing for my keys, but the second they're out of my pocket another burning twinge of hunger crushes me like a crumpled can. Gods, was my throat always this dry? When I regain control of my senses I realize I dropped my keys on the ground.
Faylie's already clopping over to pick them up, but on instinct I bend down to retrieve them anyways, at the same time that she's standing back to her height, and-
Thwack.
Her antler thumps me in the middle of the forehead. I stumble backwards, holding my head against the place she's knocked it.
"Agh", I seethe.
"Oops! Sorry, Moodie!", she says with a guilty little smile on her face.
Though it does hurt, I'm of no mind to grouse about it. In fact, I can't stop the little laugh that leaves me. "It's fine." Then I straighten myself out, coughing into one hand. No need to get carried away.
She could light the depths of the oceans, the way she brightens. Then giddily, she unlocks the door. I flip the lights as we go, and lead her upstairs. I slide my satchel somewhere towards my office. I'll clean up later.
Already I'm folding with guilt at what occurred between us last night. Sending them away like that, not even showing remorse that they were out of house and home. Which reminds me.
"I am sorry that you were evicted." Though I'm saying sorry in a more general sense, even this feels like it is my fault in a roundabout way. If I'd never started attacking in the first place, they could have paid their rent instead of worrying about their own survival.
Faylie hops up on a stool beside my kitchen counter. "Eh. It happens all the time - we were gonna get kicked out of that place before the year was over, anyways." She scratches her cheek, contemplative. And then her stomach rumbles. "Oh. 'Scuse me."
That does somewhat betray their current straits. "If you're hungry, I can make you something."
She smiles, and claps to herself. "Ooo, okay! Taking requests?"
My core spins a spiderweb of hunger pains through its own corridors. "I'm not going to eat anyways, so, go ahead."
"Then can you make those pancakes again?"
Endlessly ridiculous. "That's not quite a dinner food, but, why not?" I step into my kitchen, and say over my cooking prep, "So, then, are you going to be able to find a new living situation soon? What about your finances?"
An awkwardness strikes her, and she squirms in her seat. Faylie shrugs. "I'm sure Allie has some sort of plan for that." She's so quick to abdicate responsibility; clearly not a fan of this sort of conversation.
I don't mean to upset her, but I cannot help but worry. "And your belongings? When is this auction that she mentioned taking place?"
"Um. Two days?" Clearly I fail to hide my own distress at that as she follows up, "But, don't worry about us, Moodie! We'll figure it out. We have each other - that's enough!"
In my experience, togetherness and love do not put food on the table. I mentally resolve to revisit this in the unlikely scenario in which we survive the coming few days at all. In the meantime, I don't have it in me to continue to dampen her optimism.
After all, they do have each other. That should count for something, even if not monetarily. Even if it's only to the trio of lovers. And that thought sparks another, as I start to mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
But, agh, I shoo it away before the foolish question can leave my throat.
"What?", she asks.
Of course she noticed. Gods I'm transparent. "I... had a thought- a-a question, but... I don't believe I should ask it." She's staring with big, wide eyes at me. Pleading. Pushover. "It's of a personal nature. I don't feel as though I have the right to ask those of you, anymore." Or ever, in fact.
"Um... why?"
I reach into a carton and crack a single white egg into the mixture. "I was horrible to you. You have every right to refuse me any amount of familiarity."
Her hands fold in her lap, contemplating her next words like a strategist. "Well", she says, "That's stupid."
"But-"
"Yeah, okay, you were a real jerk. And it sucked. A lot. But, like, if you shut down about it then how does that help anything?"
'Help anything'. As if she's implying that there's a future where I'm still in their lives at all, to be helped. She's truly offering out that hand again. Just like that. "I... How are you forgiving me so easily?"
"Well, don't get me wrong, we were pretty angry with you by the end of all that..." She lets out a nervous laugh. "But, it wouldn't have hurt so much if we didn't care in the first place. So, y'know, it's not that it's easy, but that we want to."
That makes even less sense. Perhaps I should simply give up on trying to understand these three.
"Fine", I sigh, mixing the pancake batter in circles. I return to that previous thought. I'd only just learned they were in a relationship shortly before everything fell apart between us, so I'd never gotten to ask about it. "Again, do tell me if I've overstepped my bounds, but... the three of you. How did that happen?"
Now her spirits are well and truly picked up again. "Well, Tegan and Allie had a sort of like, complicated thing going for a while. They both had some stuff to work out. Especially Tegan, but, that's kinda their stuff to talk about." She starts to circle her index fingers around each other in loops. "I was sorta on the periphery for a while? I mean, I slept with both of them, like, plenty of times, but, it wasn't ever really serious."
I am a little taken aback by her bluntness, admittedly. It's not that I am a prude necessarily I just-
Actually. I cannot think of a single reason why I do not count as prudish. I've had exactly one paramour and I've been actively repressing my thoughts of her for five years, I'm dense as can be, and even the mention of the concept of sex feels like ice water on my skin. Though I can hardly fault her for shocking me; I did ask.
She continues, "But then, over time we kept getting closer? Especially once we moved in together, and eventually we kinda just... fell into this? Accidentally? Like - 'Oops! Guess we're doin' this now'!" I nearly interrupt at the revelation that they moved in together before they were even technically partners, but she's talking too fast. "And then one day a couple years ago we just sorta cleared the air. Y'know, made things official-official! Officially!
"And, before you ask, we did think about telling other people, but... it just didn't seem like a very good idea. I mean, we had no clue if you'd see us different, and, well... no offense, but... you humans are really weird about love and sex and gender and stuff."
I wasn't going to ask, but I likely would have thought to, at least. That's a reasonable enough explanation, though it does sting a touch. I haven't exactly made myself a bastion of open honesty and available compassion; it wouldn't have been a leap to think I harbored ill opinions on the matter, even with Alabastra's circumstances taken into account. Though I'd never feel entitled to know about their relationship, I'm... surprisingly glad to have been told anyways. There's a genuine lightness, almost an honor in being trusted with this.
And I desperately tamper the small, unbecoming buzz of jealousy that follows those thoughts, as I pour the pancake batter onto the middle of the hot skillet. That sugary sweet scent fills the air, and I find myself grateful she didn't ask for something with meat in it. Grateful, too, for the opportunity to do something for her. This, too, feels like its own sort of honor, in a strange way. If nothing else, perhaps I'll make cooking for them a more regular occasion.
"You know, not all human cultures are so reserved", I say. "Anily is especially repressed. I'm not sure why you chose it - Caskia's egalitarianism would have suited you better. Or Rivola, or the Enderin Isles, if you would have just settled for tolerance - even Skjöldr would have been better."
"True", she says, "But then I wouldn't have met you three!"
Strange that she'd include me in that. "I suppose so."
"Plus, at least you're not Stottin!"
"Thank the Gods for that." And as I'm about to start looking for a spatula and ask Faylie why it was she chose Anily in the first place-
A sudden chill crawls up my back. There's a strange noise outside.
"Do you... hear that?", I ask.
Faylie shakes her head.
No surprise that she doesn't when I do: my hearing has always been annoyingly fine-tuned. It sounds like rumbling, in the far distance. As if some great beast lumbers through the streets. I wait a moment, to pick up the finer details. It gets louder, a little more clear, and I realize it's not one colossal footfall, but many. Dozens of figures, discordant and beating into the brickwork of the street.
Then there's shouting.
I switch off the burner and put everything down, sliding out of the kitchen. At my still-broken upstairs window, my breathing starts to get tighter, winding into sharpening organs as my mind starts to spin worst cases. My fingers wrap around the cloth of the curtain, and I peel it back inch-by-inch. I almost don't dare look.
Below us, a crowd of people, a dozen or two, march west to east, coming down Mayflower Drive. At first I believe it to be a Devil's Night parade of some sort, but there are no costumes. There is no mirth-making. These people are of the poor and bedraggled sort, and they carry lanterns and-
And weapons. Makeshift weapons, or real ones: swords and spears and shovels and stakes. An angry mob, crawled right out of the history books. My vision turns and twists and tunnels; the world feels like it's spinning.
Because at the mob's head, a familiar red-skinned fiendling looks up, locks eyes with me, and Vail the monster hunter points a sword at my shop.
I close the curtain and lay myself flag against the wall, gripping my chest against my beating heart. Faylie looks to me wide-eyed. And I say, "We have a problem."
