You arrive at the Ministry after a clear cut but with no clear purpose, just a slow new start, a place to stay, and the weight of a past you haven’t named yet. The Abbey is vast and strange, filled with softspoken clergy, ritual magic, and a rock band made of something burning with warmth and love.
You’re not here to change anything. But sometimes, being seen changes everything anyway.
A slowburn, deeply worldbuilt journey through found family, sacred spaces, and the quiet gravity of being noticed.
Chapter 1: The Arrival 🔗
Link to all my Worldbuilding Lore / Links to Maps
It's a longform fic, I'm 50 plus chapters in btw.
There's always going to be the main story linked here, wholesome as fuck.
There's also going to be the B-Side story, where I will post parallel Chapters, same plot, but include the more explicit scenes, maybe some smut, when our FMC Star eventually experiences those things! It's all explicitly consentual, careful, a learning experience. Still super wholesome. But will also describe what it's like to experience certain things for the first time! If you're not into that, stick to the main work. I'll link it here when we get to it in Chapter 46. If I forgot and 46 is up already, look there. I'll also link it in each main work Chapter that has a B-Side.
Worldbuilding, Domestic Fluff, Fictional Religion, Abbey Life, Jobs at the Ministry, Found Family, Slice of Life, Cozy Gothic, New Beginnings, Soft Nameless Ghoul(s), Reader–Insert, Slow Burn, Ritual Magic, Magic Realism, AI Assisted, Translated, Rain and Dew are Boyfriends, Cirrus and Lus are Wives, The Dark Lord Has Influence, Emotional Intimacy, Taking It Slow, First Kisses, First Touches, Starting Over, Hurt/Comfort But the Hurt Is Mostly Internal, Bisexual Disaster Human Finds Love and Belonging in a Church Basement, Emotionally Repressed Roleplay Flirtation as Character Development, Pre-Relationship Intimacy, OC Alex Blackwood Deserves Therapy, Half the Angst Is Just Silence, The Den Is a Character, Domestic Infernal Creatures and Their Human Emotional Support Friend, Platonic Hand Holding (And Also Romantic Hand Holding), Kissing "Practice", Wholesome Vibes, Tenderness as a Narrative Arc, Emotional Support Church Basement AU, Soft Ghouls Being Themselves, Touch-Starved But Learning, Gentle Monster Romance, Post-Cult Recovery in a Liturgical Framework, Second Person POV, Long Slow Burn, Eventual Established Relationship, No Smut in Main Fic
and now in context and amended order: Star watching King Julien hit on Gus, Rain high af dancing, Star watching Phantom & Aurora dancing, Cirrus clinging onto Star at the end of the night
also these two were in my meme inspo pics for this scene
The other tent had been good to you. Hours of it— the buffet, the painted pots, three conversations you hadn't planned on having, two you'd genuinely enjoyed, one that had gone slightly too long and left you nodding in the particular way that means I've run out of things to add. The kids had long since been walked to their wing. The bonfire had burned itself down to something manageable and quiet. The grounds had settled into a later key, looser, louder, the kind of crowd that had moved through several drinks and gotten comfortable.
You'd found a plate and eaten standing at the buffet table, bread and something savory and two of Gus's little glazed pastries, not sitting, just grazing with one hand while the other held your cup, the way you do when you're between things. That's when you'd started to notice the shift. The canvas wall between the two tents is just that, canvas, and the music next door had been audible all evening in a low, theoretical way. But it changed while you stood there. The bass dropped into something heavier, more deliberate, and you heard the crowd move with it, voices getting looser, footsteps crossing from your side to theirs in ones and twos. The more adventurous guests. The drunker ones. A cluster of people you'd clocked earlier as the kind who were just waiting for the night to tip far enough in the right direction.
You'd finished the pastry. Listened for another minute. Then set your cup down.
The entrance is right there, just around the shared edge of the structure, close enough that you feel the temperature change before you've fully stepped through. You step in from the dark and it hits you all at once, the heat, the noise, the press of bodies. The light is doing something good: overhead, a low wash of warm amber strings runs the perimeter and does its job, but it's fighting with the booth's rig, which throws color in pulses across the floor and ceiling. Deep violet. Electric blue. A deep red that flares and drops. The kind of light that makes everyone look slightly otherworldly, a little more than themselves, which is probably the point.
The dancefloor is packed. Bodies moving in that loose, collective way that only happens when its late.
And the music. Slow, but not. There is a bite to it. Church bells processed into something sinister, a choir turned inside out, a bassline with a crawl to it that suggests something primordial and terrible and completely delightful. The kind of music that belongs in the catacombs beneath somewhere very old. A spring festival, technically. A church spring festival. And this is what Swiss picked. You feel a laugh move through you, quiet, not quite reaching your face, because it's also just. It works. The Abbey, the night, the crowd that ended up here, it all fits the music in a way that shouldn't make sense and does anyway. It doesn't ask you to be cheerful or present or conversational. It simply asks you to exist in your body for a while, and after a night of talking, of managing, of being someone people could find and address and corner, you appreciate this explicitly. Your shoulders drop a little on their own.
You can see him across the floor, half-lit behind the booth. Headphones pulled to one ear, the other side loose against his neck, head moving with that particular economy, in it but not performing it. He's saying something to the person beside him you don’t recognize, mouth curved, smiling to himself in between. He has his sleeves down now against the cooler night, but the silver still catches, the rings, the star ring in his ear, every time the light sweeps through.
You stand at the edge of the floor for a moment. Let the bass do what it wants to your shoulders.
And then you look around, meaning to find someone. The floor is right there and something in you wants to be on it, but not alone, not yet, the self-consciousness of it sitting just under the wanting. So you scan the crowd, looking for a familiar face, somewhere to anchor.
You find them. Phantom and Aurora are near the center of the floor and they are, genuinely, a lot. Phantom with his whole hips in it, committed in a way that is several degrees past enthusiastic, Aurora matching him move for move, the two of them in that locked-in frequency they get that makes everyone within a three-foot radius feel like they're intruding on something. They're not oblivious to the crowd. They just don't particularly care about it. You drift closer, moving through the press of people, using them as a destination if not quite a landing spot. Phantom catches you before you've decided whether to stop, his eyes finding yours through the crowd with that particular radar he has, and the smirk that follows is immediate and completely insufferable. He winks. You roll your eyes and keep moving. Aurora catches your eye briefly as you pass and gives you a look that is entirely too knowing before Phantom spins her back into him.
You look back at Phantom and Aurora for a moment. They'd make space for you, you know that. But they're very much in the middle of something and you are not quite ready to be in the middle of it with them.
But then there's Rain.
He's not hard to find. Rain always has a kind of gravitational quality to him that makes your eye land on him even in a packed room, but tonight it's something else. He's close to them, but on his own, and he is absolutely, comprehensively gone.
His previously pristine white button-down is open several dangerous buttons too far, the fabric gone soft and slightly damp now, clinging at his shoulders and stomach in a way that suggests the evening has had its way with him. His hair is slightly damp at the temples too, curling just a little where it meets his jaw.
He has sunglasses on. In the tent. At night. You clock that for a second, then clock the rest of him, and it makes complete sense actually.
He's not dancing so much as moving with the music in a way that suggests the music and his body have reached some private agreement nobody else was invited to sign. Fluid, unhurried, completely self-contained. Every so often his chin tips up, or his free hand lifts slightly, tracing something in the air. You drift closer, mostly out of concern, a little out of fascination.
He doesn't notice you for a long moment. You start moving too, self-consciously at first, finding the beat, watching him. Then he turns, not quite looking, just orienting, like something in the air shifted and he followed it. He reaches out. Takes your hand without asking. Pulls you gently into the orbit of whatever he's doing.
You go, laughing, and he doesn't say anything, just keeps moving, and somehow you find yourself moving with him, the beat doing most of the work. It's easier than you expected. Rain doesn't perform, doesn't lead exactly, just exists in the music and leaves enough room for you to exist in it too, and that's all you needed really.
At some point his hand finds the back of your neck, cool and unhurried, not steering, just resting there for a moment while he sways. It cuts through the heat of the tent so cleanly that your eyes close without permission. Nice. That's genuinely, specifically nice right now. But then he's moving again, turning, the hand dropping away as naturally as it arrived, and you follow the motion without thinking, the two of you orbiting something neither of you could name. He turns you once, hand settling briefly at your waist, and for a few measures you're actually dancing together, properly, Rain fluid and unhurried and you finding his rhythm without much effort. Then he turns you again and you're facing the other direction, the crowd shifting and closing and opening around you, flashes of the booth visible between bodies when the gaps open up.
You glance toward it when one does. Swiss is there, headphones half on, leaning over the decks, and he is absolutely watching you. He straightens up when you catch him, and gives you a thumbs up with a grin that is frankly too smug for someone who is technically working.
You narrow your eyes at him across the crowd. Point at him. He catches it, and points back at you, easy and unbothered, like he's saying yeah, I see you, and?
You're still deciding what to do with that when Phantom slides in at your side, the song having shifted into something lower and slower. Without announcement he finds the rhythm alongside you before you've even registered he's there. His dancing is still very much hip-forward and you laugh at him for it, which is apparently all he needed, because he loosens up immediately, adjusting to you without being asked, his hands settling at your waist as you find the beat together. He's warm and a little breathless from whatever he’d been getting up to with Aurora.
You glance back toward Rain and find Cirrus there now, which is new, sliding into the space you left like she'd been waiting for it. Okay. Rain is fine.
Phantom shifts behind you at some point, easy about it, swaying with you, his hands still at your waist. It's comfortable. Warm. You're not thinking about much, just the music and the movement, when you catch the angle of his chin over your shoulder and follow it. He's not looking at you. He's looking past you. Toward the booth. And he's wearing an expression of deeply suspicious contentment.
"You know," Phantom says, close enough that it carries over the music, his voice low and very casual, "Swiss has a shift change coming up."
You miss half a beat. "Does he."
"Mm." Phantom glances back at you, and his expression is the picture of innocence, which means he is up to something. "Just saying. He's been up there a while."
Your stomach does something involuntary. You think about Swiss stepping down from the booth, coming across the floor, that shirt, those hands, the way he looked at you earlier across thirty feet of grass. You think about what it would be like to be the person he walks toward.
Your face is warm. You look away.
"I'm going to go get him," Phantom announces simply, already moving.
"Phantom—"
But he's already gone, sliding into the crowd, swallowed immediately by the press of people. You try to follow his trajectory toward the booth and lose him within seconds. The floor is too full, the light too warm and shifting, and you've lost your reference point entirely.
You turn back.
A hand closes around your wrist.
Aurora.
She has materialized out of nowhere, her expression bright and fully decided, and she is already pulling. "Aurora, wait, I was just —"
Her hand finds yours and that’s it. She’s moving, already turning, already pulling you toward the crowd.
“Come on, come on.”
The music swallows everything. You catch the shape of her voice more than the words, the rhythm of it, the insistence. You try to plant your feet for half a second, just enough to get a sentence out—
“I was literally just about to—”
—but even to your own ears it comes out thin, dragged under by the bass, broken apart by the bodies moving around you. Aurora doesn’t even react, not ignoring you, just… not hearing you. She’s already threading through people, shoulder first, laughing at something someone says as she passes, still pulling you along behind her like a fixed point.
By the time you reach the edge of the tent, you’re half-laughing yourself, breath caught somewhere between protest and momentum.
“Aurora—”
Too late.
She ducks through the opening in the canvas, and you’re yanked out with her into the cool dark, the sound dropping off just enough to make your ears ring.
She doesn’t stop.
She keeps going, hand tight around yours, already angling away from the path, across the grass.
"There you are."
Dew's voice cuts through the dark just off the path, near the edge of the trees where the lantern light doesn't quite reach. He's standing, Haze beside him, both of them already there like they'd been waiting for exactly this. Something small burns between his fingers, the scent of it drifting warm and sharp through the cooler air.
The smoke passes between them mid-motion. Dew holds it out, Haze takes it carefully, her attention narrowing in that quiet deliberate way she gets, like she's focusing on doing it right even as she steps into the flow of things.
Dew doesn't wait for anyone to agree before he starts walking, just moves toward the treeline, hands in his jacket pockets.
Haze follows without question, still wearing the soft, slightly unfocused expression of someone whose edges have recently dissolved in a pleasant way. Aurora takes your hand.
"Guys," you try, breath catching more from the pace than anything else, "I was literally in the middle of something."
Aurora doesn't even slow. She tugs you forward, back toward the path, like the direction's already been decided for all of you.
"You were about to what?"
You don't even know how to start answering that. "Where are we going."
"Woods," Dew says.
"I can see that. Why."
"Because the tent is loud and I'm done with it." He doesn't look back. "Keep up."
It's gonna be so damn long. That's why here are the next two scenes. (Just imagine Gus as any hot cook you could have a professional crush on.)
The path into the woods is narrow, two people wide at most, the crowd tapering into a loose single file where the trees press in close. Lanterns mark the way at intervals, warm and small against the dark between the trunks.
You can hear the gathering before you reach it, the low murmur of people finding their places, the occasional laugh carrying through the trees. Underneath it, higher and less restrained, are the kids. You can pick them out by sound alone, the particular pitch of children who have been waiting for this part and can no longer pretend to be patient. This is ritual, but it is also playing with fire, which children are drawn to like moths to a flame. The sisters will be up there too, keeping an eye on the little arsonists.
You see it as the trees open and the path tips upward. It is a gentle incline. You feel it in your calves for just a moment, that small effort, and then you crest it and the canopy breaks all at once.
A low hill, the grass worn flat along the crown where countless feet have passed. The lake must sit further and lower to the east, still and dark at this hour. Above the treeline, the sky is open and vast, that particular early-darkness where the blue has gone but the black has not fully arrived yet, just a wide, breathing expanse of almost-night.
People crowd on and around the little hill, orienting themselves toward the top the way they do when a space makes its purpose obvious. Kids have claimed the high ground, already fighting for position near the unlit fire build at the crest, sisters stationed at the edges. Older guests fill in down the slope, talking in small clusters, breath beginning to fog faintly in the cooling air.
Rain and Dew are at the top.
They've been up there for a while, you think. Dew circles the outside of the fire build, not restless exactly, just in that state he gets before something. Hands loose at his sides. Head slightly down.
Rain is just there beside him, not doing much of anything visible. But somehow the crowd knows where to stop. How far up the hill is too far, how much space to leave, when to quiet down. Nobody's been told. Rain hasn't said a word that you've seen. He just stands there, and people arrange themselves around it. Like water finding its level.
Rain says something to Dew, too low to carry. Dew tips his head, listening, and nods once.
You've climbed a little higher for a better view, and you take the moment to let your eyes roam over the hillside, the people scattered across it.
Something soft opens in your chest.
Just to your left and below, Phantom stands behind Aurora, arms looped over her shoulders, chin dropped toward her temple. Aurora has her phone up, angling it toward the crowd or the sky or both, tilting the frame without dislodging him. He doesn't move. Comfortable and certain in that way they always are.
Back toward the treeline behind them, Haze is crouched at its edge, a little apart from the crowd, watching the hill with the focused attention of someone who wants to take all of it in. She looks content. Beside her, dressed down in a way that takes you a second to place, is Papa V, not presiding, not performing, could be just another guest tonight. Probably intentional, you’d think. He says something to her quietly, then crouches beside her.
When you look to your right, between a cluster of guests, you catch Lus and Cirrus standing close together. Lus’s arm is around Cirrus’s waist, and Cirrus has her head tipped just slightly toward them. They’re watching the hilltop too, talking quietly. Lus laughs, soft, and Cirrus turns to look at her with an expression you catch for only a second before you look away, feeling like you’ve seen something that wasn’t meant to be private but is anyway.
You're standing by yourself. It doesn't feel lonely.
Your breath comes out visible now. The sky has finished its last transition, that bruised blue finally surrendered to something darker.
Hush moves through the crowd without anyone calling for it. The kids settle. Voices drop.
Dew's posture shifts. Just slightly, a small straightening, his head coming up. He takes one step closer to the fire build, and something about it changes the air on the hill without anyone being able to say exactly how.
He doesn't announce anything. He doesn't look at the crowd. He crouches down to the small, carefully laid build at the center, a tight structure of dry wood and tinder, and he's still for a moment. Very still. Rain stands a half-step back, watching him.
Then Dew moves. It's quick, too quick to fully track, his hands working through something that looks like a sleight-of-hand trick, which you know it isn’t. There's no lighter visible. No match.
His fingers move in one sharp, practiced pass and then there's fire, small and clean and immediate, sitting in the center of the build as if it had always been there and was simply waiting for permission to show itself.
A few people near the front make a sound, one woman laughing from surprise, a cluster of kids erupting into delighted noise that cuts off almost immediately when the flame begins to rise.
Because it rises. Not all at once. Slowly. Dew's hands move above it, not touching, and the flame climbs and shapes and settles into something that is, by any practical measure, just a fire. But it's perfectly controlled in a way that feels like showing off and isn’t going to explain itself.
The torch beside it catches next, one clean transfer, and Dew straightens, holding it. You get goosebumps, the good kind, arm hair rising under your sleeves.
The oohs come in a wave, a few people clap. Someone near you says something to their neighbor in a hushed, appreciative voice. The kids on the hill are fully losing their minds about it in the best possible way.
Dew glances out over the crowd once, just once, and you catch the edge of his expression in the torchlight. Not smug. Something quieter than that. Satisfied. Like he did the thing right and the thing mattered. You’re the one smiling then, maybe a little smug in the knowing.
The small lights come around after. Someone moves through the crowd with a basket of them, little handheld candles in glass, and they're passed from hand to hand and lit. One of the kids carries it down from the hilltop with tremendous seriousness. You accept yours when it reaches you. The flame is tiny. It barely puts out heat.
You look around at a the small flames held in so many pairs of hands, wobbling gently in the dark, and the hillside looks like something from a long time ago.
The procession begins without signal. People simply start moving, back down the path through the trees, and everyone else follows. Voices pick back up as they go, looser now, warmer, the particular tone of a crowd that's been moved by something and is deciding not to say so directly. Somewhere ahead, the bonfire is waiting to be lit.
You fall into step. Your little flame bends and holds.
Somewhere behind you, one of the kids is already asking Dew how he did it.
His answer doesn't make it to you. But you hear the laugh that follows.
The pot-painting station has been, against all reasonable expectation, a real hit.
Now there are about fifty pots painted, which means you're out of pots, which means someone has to go to the shed by the dining hall, and Mountain is currently elbow-deep in a bag of soil, in the midst of a demonstration for a very serious eight-year-old and cannot be extracted.
So that's you, then.
The festival is in full swing as you cut across the grounds. The bonfire is going strong to the north, a column of orange light and heat visible above the treeline, the smell of it everywhere. The dancing tent is loud, the bass from thumping out through the open canvas and across the grass, warm and persistent. You pass close enough to catch a glimpse inside, people at the bar, people on the floor, a ghoul here and there, the lights shifting— and keep moving. Later.
You're almost to the path alongside the dining hall when you hear footsteps behind you, fast and deliberate, and then a voice.
"Hey— excuse me, hi —" A beat of breath. "Someone just pointed me in your direction. I'm looking for a Gus Cantarini? They said you’d know where— he is, I guess."
You turn. You look at him for exactly three seconds.
He's dark-haired, slightly out of breath, wearing a linen shirt with the sleeves pushed up and the collar open in a way that suggests he started the evening tidier than this. Good-looking in a slightly rumpled way, like he knows it but isn't doing anything about it. He has one hand braced on the back of his neck and an expression that's equal parts sheepish and charming.
"Are you—"
"Julien Blackwood," he says, with the particular satisfaction of someone who has always liked the sound of it.
"Thought so." You tilt your head. "Your brother mentioned you were visiting."
He tips his head, smile easy. "And you are?"
You introduce yourself and the smirk that follows tells you everything about what Alex has and hasn't said, so you ask him before he has a chance to imply anything, "Are you enjoying the festival?"
"Yeah, yeah." A beat, slightly too long, his politeness doing most of the work. "It's a good night."
You look at him sideways. "You could have come painted a pot. Alex did. It turned out—" you pause, choosing words, "well, he did mention his siblings were the more artistic ones."
Julien's mouth curves. "He's not wrong. He's got his skills elsewhere."
"Fair." You turn back toward the path. "Come on, maybe Gus has special treats set aside for special guests who pay him a visit."
"So who is this Gus?"
You slow your step just slightly, looking at him. "Aren't you looking for him?"
Julien does a small, unhurried shrug. The kind that contains multitudes.
You stare at him for a full second. "He warned me you'd be finding targets."
"That's a little reductive," Julien says, so unbothered it loops back around to charming.
"Is it wrong?"
"No," he concedes pleasantly. "But I’d say I’m being 'enthusiastically sociable.'"
You smile, turning back toward the path. "Well. Gus is the sous-chef. Basically holds the whole kitchen operation together. Everyone here has a bit of a professional crush on him, I've heard said." You give him a look that communicates exactly what you mean by professional.
Julien's expression sharpens with interest. "A cook."
"A very good one."
The kitchen is just a short walk across the dining hall. You swing open the doors.
Warm air, something sweet underneath the savory residue of the evening, sugar and butter and the particular heat of an oven that's been running since morning.
Inside, the main lights are low, but the kitchen is still moving. The big dishwasher runs, filling the room with steady steam and background noise. The buffet trays from the main service are stacked along the far counter in organized rows, scraped and waiting. Someone has already wiped down the prep stations.
But at the far end, Gus is at his block, broad-shouldered in his apron, assembling what looks like a late-night dessert spread: small plates, something with pastry and glazed fruit, the kind of thing that appears at midnight at a well-run event and makes everyone feel looked after. He works with the focused, unhurried efficiency of someone who has been doing this for twelve hours and isn't bothered by it.
"Gus," you say.
He looks up. "Hey. You need more—" He stops. His eyes move to Julien, standing just behind your shoulder. The moment stretches about two seconds longer than it needs to.
"This is Julien," you say. "Alex's brother. He was looking for you."
"Hi," Julien says. Just that. His voice has gone slightly different. Warmer. Less performative.
"Hi," Gus says, setting down the pastry he's holding.
You look between them. You think about what Alex said, standing outside the guest house two days ago, completely resigned. So, you excuse yourself.
"I'll go find some pots," you say, to no one in particular.
You let yourself back out into the cool night, the bass from the dancing tent thumping steadily across the grounds.
I am motivated to finish this for actual March 30th but who knows loll
here are the next two little scenes! (3&4! why did I plan 10 scenes??? is that why I'm overwhelmed and avoidant? probably)
Aurora arrives eleven minutes later, slightly out of breath, carrying a small wooden tray with both hands like it contains something that might object to being jostled. She's already in her festival fit, the skirt catching the air as she moves, her top catching the last of the room's warm light and throwing it back in flickers, like someone bottled dusk and forgot to close the cap. She edges the door open with her hip and sets the tray on your desk with exaggerated care.
"Stand back," she announces. "I had to queue."
"You queued?" Phantom says, looking up from the bed with genuine skepticism.
"I absolutely queued." She straightens, pulling her hair over one shoulder. "Three people ahead of me. Brother Maxence got there right before me and spent the whole time telling Mountain about the tablecloths, apparently someone had put the white linen ones on the buffet tables instead of the waxed cotton, and now he's worried about candle drip and staining, and what that does to the integrity of the presentation, and Mountain was just standing there nodding, very patient, doing that thing where he makes you feel like your problem is the most reasonable problem anyone has ever had. And I had to just stand there and be patient about it."
She draws out a long, suffering breath. "Buuut," she says, and gestures at the tray, “worth it.”
The tray holds a small cluster of flowers, white-petaled, a few sprigs of pale violet, two or three stems of something darker at the edges, almost burgundy. They look impossibly fresh. You can sense something more about them, a quality in the air just around the petals that your instincts catch before your eyes do, the faint sense that these have been seen to. Attended. The edges are too clean, the stems too bright for flowers cut this morning.
"He enchanted them?" you ask.
"Subtly," Aurora says, already sorting through them. "They won't wilt. He said, and I'm quoting, 'they'll hold as long as they're meant to.'" She tilts her head. "Very Mountain." She holds a stem up, assessing. "Sit. Hair down."
You drop onto the edge of the bed and Aurora is already behind you before you've fully settled, fingers moving through your hair with the ease of someone who already knows what she's looking for. She works quickly, pulling the front sections back from your face and gathering them loosely at the crown, securing them there with a few pins from her own pocket, leaving the rest of the waves down. Then the flowers go in, stems tucked along the gathered section, threaded through until they hold.
"The violet ones," you say, when her hand pauses over two options.
She makes an approving sound and places them. Steps back. Looks.
"Yeah," she says, quiet and satisfied. "That's it."
"When does the fire walk start?" Phantom says from the bed.
You glance at the window. The light has shifted while you weren't paying attention. Twilight, arriving faster than you accounted for.
"Oh," you say. "Oh, we need to go."
Aurora is already moving toward you, her hair loose and half-braided from earlier, the freshly toned sections shiny and soft in baby pink, lilac, a streak of pale blue threaded through the braid like she planned the whole thing around the flowers. Which she did. She sent you three reference pictures this morning.
You're already reaching for the tray, pointing at Phantom without looking at him. "You. Get up. Hold these."
He's off the bed immediately, taking the stems you hand him without complaint. You position him in front of Aurora and he looks at her hair for exactly one second before his hands are in it, working with a quick, unhurried precision that shouldn't surprise you anymore but still does a little.
"Along the braid," you say.
He's already there, fingers moving through the colored sections with more care than the situation technically requires, finding the places where the stems will anchor without disturbing what's already been done.
Aurora has her eyes closed, performing stillness. "Am I going to be pretty?"
"Devastatingly," you say. "Don't move."
Phantom tucks the last stem and steps back. You check it, tilt your head, adjust one violet bloom a half-inch to the left. Aurora drifts immediately to the mirror before either of you can say anything, turning her head once left, once right, lifting one careful hand to the braid without touching it.
"Okay," she says, to her own reflection. Then she adjusts a pink streak so it falls exactly where she wants it. "Okay. Now we can go."
The three of you spill out between the wings a little breathless and a little late, and the grounds hit you all at once. The smell first: damp earth, woodsmoke, and something green underneath it, that particular alive scent of early spring after dark. Then the light. Lanterns strung between posts in long, warm rows, small against the deepening sky, swaying just slightly in the evening air.
The last stripe of orange sits low over the treeline to the west, the sky above it turning that bruised blue that means you have maybe twenty minutes before it's properly dark. People are already everywhere, moving in loose groups across the grass, voices layering over each other. Not everyone is heading for the fire walk.
Some of the younger kids have claimed spots near the wings, supervised by a Sister. A few guests you half-recognize from community evenings stand near the tents on the first sparse growth of spring grass and the worn earth between, the ground walked into smoothness over many years and many seasons, holding their drinks and going nowhere, just taking it in for now. Maybe they don’t care for the fire walk, maybe they’ve seen it before, you wouldn’t know.
The festival tents sit to your right and slightly off the path, warm light spilling out of open canvas faces onto the grass. As you pass the buffet tent, the smell catches you— something savory and spiced, the fresh bread too. Inside, long tables are half-set, bottles already out, hands moving in and out of the glow.
The dancing tent is further along. That's where the light is moving.
Mountain is near the entrance, unhurried, adjusting something at the side of the structure with his easy competence. Jeff is crouched near the ground a few feet away, re-taping a cable run with the focused expression of a man who has done this a hundred times and will do it a hundred more.
And Swiss is just inside, one hand braced against the speaker stack, saying something to Jeff over his shoulder, half-turned. He's in the black shirt. The one from the thrift, the one that drapes soft and low at the collar and catches the light with that almost-not-there shimmer. Dark dress pants, silver details on: the rings, the star ring in his ear catching the light.
The whole thing is put-together without being dressed up, like he made one easy decision and it all fit perfectly. He looks, honestly, a little devastating. You don't mean to slow down. But you do, just for a step, and he must catch the motion in his peripheral because he turns, and finds you across the stretch of grass between you.
For a second it's just that. His eyes land on yours, warm and direct, the kind of look that doesn't ask anything, but still takes something with it anyway. You haven't been close to him all day. Not really. Just glimpses, and the awareness of him at the edges of everything. And even now there's thirty feet of grass and noise between you. But all that anticipation that's been sitting low in your belly since this morning does something when he looks at you.
You glance away first, which is when your mouth apparently decides to handle the situation. "You look fancy," you call out, before you've decided to say it, your voice carrying clean across the noise.
Something shifts in his face. He looks at you, the dress, the flowers in your hair, the last of the twilight catching along all of it. Whatever he'd been about to say to Jeff doesn't happen. He just keeps looking, warm and unhurried, like he has all the time in the world despite the sleeves rolled up and the work half-finished behind him.
"You look like the whole reason for the season," he says. Straightforward. No smirk behind it.
Your chest does something involuntary. You open your mouth—
Haze materialises at your right elbow, stepping into your view of him, her hand finding your arm with the quiet certainty of someone who has decided she needs an anchor point right now.
"We have to go now," Haze says, not unkind. Just factual.
"I know, I—"
But she's already pulling, and Aurora and Phantom are three steps ahead, moving with purpose, Aurora's gauzy skirt catching the air behind her, Phantom's hand finding the small of her back as they go, the two of them following the crowd into the woods.
So you're moving again, swept back into the current, and when you glance back over your shoulder Swiss is already turning back to the work, back to whatever needed doing, though his mouth is still doing that thing, that almost-smile, the quiet one that sits just under the surface.
You face forward. The path narrows as you leave the grounds behind, lanterns marking the way into the trees, the sky above the canopy going dark and vast and full of what's coming.
(Ghesties, the ao3 curse that was more of an ao3 hex (light version) did hit me and I think the big Chap 60 was dooming in the distance and I needed a break. I'm gonna take my time with it though because I already have 10 scenes planned and even then I had to cut out scenes that could have been shown but... gotta focus. But I've had Scene 1 ready for months and now I'm mid Scene 2 and I thought as a treat, I'd just share it. Might be some little errors in there still.)
Chapter 60, The Spring Festival
The sun is already high enough to burn the last mist from the courtyard stones when you step out of the dining hall. Morning chill still clings to the air, thin and bright, but the light softens it. The stone breathes out the cold slowly, as if deciding whether to give in to spring before the festivities begin.
You find Cumulus where you knew you would. She has claimed the brightest patch on a bench beside the little shed between the wings, right where the sun pools against the wall and holds the warmth. Her jacket lies folded behind her, legs kicked out, ankles crossed. A basket of flowers rests at her side, spilling color over the wood. A finished crown sits in her lap, neat twists of white petals and boxwood woven tight and sure. Another grows between her fingers. A single flower is tucked behind her ear, light catching in the white petals when she turns her head.
She glances up when she sees you. "Morning, darling," she says, voice warm and unhurried.
"Morning," you answer, already smiling before you mean to.
She pats the bench beside her. The wood is cool under your palm when you sit, seeping through your clothes at first. Then the sunlight reaches you head-on, warming your face, bright against your eyes, spreading down wherever it touches.
You tilt your face up without thinking. The air smells of damp earth, coffee drifting from the doors left ajar, and the green sweetness of freshly cut stems.
Your shoulders loosen.
A soft breath leaves you, something between a sigh and a hum, quiet enough that you barely register it.
Beside you, Cumulus lets out a small, knowing chuckle.
Somewhere up the west wing, a door slams open. Voices spill into the morning, Rain's steady tone followed by Dew's laugh, then the scrape of boots on stone as they start hauling supplies toward the grounds. You catch flashes of movement through the glare of the sun.
You squint, lifting a hand to shield your eyes as light pours across the courtyard, trying to make out what the boys are hauling, who's arguing about what, who's pretending not to supervise.
Crates balanced on shoulders. Folded canvas. Strings of paper lanterns adding dots of color in the distance.
You free a strand of vine from the basket and start twisting it between your fingers. Three blossoms across the top. A slow spiral down. Your hands move without looking. You fix the spacing when one petal sits crooked. You always fix things.
Cumulus hums under her breath, something soft and tuneless, the sound rising and falling with the motion of her hands. A breeze slips through the courtyard, cool against your neck, lifting the loose strands of your hair and stirring the petals in your lap.
It is early enough that the Abbey still feels half-asleep. Bright enough to promise everything.
The rhythm builds around you. Carts clatter over stone. Laughter bounces between the walls and echoes back thinner. Benches scrape as they're dragged out from storage. Somewhere a hammer knocks twice, measured, patient.
Swiss steps into view from the far side of the west wing, a coil of cable looped over one shoulder. His sleeves are rolled high despite the early morning cold. His breath fogs faintly as he crosses from shade into sunlight. Every movement is economical. Easy. He adjusts the cable with one hand, checks the path ahead, nods once to someone out of sight.
You watch the flex in his forearm as he shifts his grip. The way he tips his head when listening. The quiet competence of it. He has been up since dawn, you realize, and he looks settled in it.
You tell yourself you're watching the work. The way the Abbey stirs. The way everything lifts itself after frost. But your pulse gives you away the moment he turns into full light and the sun catches along the line of his cheek.
He glances up once, scanning the courtyard, and finds you across the space. The look is brief. Acknowledgment. He lifts a hand in a small wave, casual, nothing that would draw attention. The coil of cable rests against his back like it belongs there. You wave back with a flower between your fingers.
His attention does its usual magic to you. A tightening that doesn't hurt. Heat that spreads and settles. You hold his gaze for half a beat too long, then drop your eyes to the flowers in your lap as if they suddenly require serious attention.
Beside you, Cumulus says nothing. You can feel her grin in the corner of your vision.
She adjusts the flowers in her lap, threading another stem into place. "You excited for tonight?"
You draw in a breath. The air still bites a little on the inhale. "Yeah," you say. Then you add, quieter, "Maybe a little nervous."
Cumulus hums in approval. "Good kind, I hope."
You nod, fingers tightening around the vine before you loosen them again. "Feels like something's about to change."
You don't mean the music. Or the lanterns. Or the fire path at sunset.
"It always does this time of year," she says, eyes half-closed, face tipped toward the sun.
Beyond the courtyard, Rain and Mountain emerge again, arms stacked with lanterns and lengths of folded cloth that slip and sway as they walk. Dew's voice carries from the field, bright and unruly, laughter breaking loose behind it like something that refuses to stay contained. Someone pushes open a window along the east wing and the reflection throws light back into the yard, a sharp flash that makes you squint again. The Abbey looks awake now.
Cumulus says something beside you. You hear the cadence of it, the shape of her voice, but the words slide past without landing.
You follow the movement instead. The way Rain steadies a wobbling crate with his hip. The way Mountain adjusts his grip before anyone asks. The way the lantern glass catches sun and throws it back in brief, blinding sparks.
You're not just attending tonight.
The thought rises without ceremony. You're already folded into the machinery of it. You know who is hauling what. You know which tent will need extra hands. If something goes wrong, someone might look for you to fix it. The difference sits under your ribs, quiet and firm.
Cumulus threads another bloom through her crown. "You're not listening to me anymore," she teases.
You blink, drag your eyes back to the petals in your lap. You realize you've twisted the vine too tight and ease it apart carefully. "Sorry."
She laughs, low and pleased. "Don't be. You've got spring fever like the rest of us."
You huff a soft breath. "Guess I do."
The sun climbs higher. A door shuts somewhere behind you. A bell rings from the kitchen. The courtyard fills in around the edges. More movement. More voices. The air warms by degrees until the chill thins and thins.
Under it all there is a hush. As if the Abbey itself has paused between breaths, holding the moment before the festival begins, before the first flame is lit, before you decide to lean in and mean it.
---
Your room smells like hairspray and the faint warmth of steamed fabric— you'd borrowed the iron from the laundry room earlier, and the air still hasn't quite let go of it. The window is cracked an inch, enough to let in the cool of late afternoon. Through it, you can hear the grounds filling up. Car doors. Voices layering over each other, strangers and familiar ones mixed together. A laugh that carries.
You pause at the window for half a second without meaning to.
A hundred people, maybe. That's what they’d said. Give or take. The whole Ministry contingent, guests, families, half the town that's been quietly adjacent to the Abbey for years. You'd nodded when he told you like it was a manageable number and now, listening to the courtyard, you're doing a quiet internal recalibration.
A hundred people.
Okay.
The late March light through the curtain is already turning amber at the edges, the particular color of an afternoon running out of time. It catches on the green of your dress where it hangs against the chair. You're already wearing it, the kace and floating sleeves and all, though your hair is still very much a work in progress. A funny-looking twist at the back, some curls pinned up in a way that's meant to hold them but is currently conducting its own negotiations. In progress. Fine.
Phantom is sitting on your bed.
He's been there for the better part of forty minutes, doing very little actual getting ready and a great deal of watching you get ready, offering opinions nobody asked for.
You're standing in front of him now, close enough that you're between his knees to get the right angle, brush working through his hair with the focused attention of someone attempting a specific vision. The ivory shirt is the one you found for him, wide at the cuffs and throat, the thing you pulled off the rack at the esoteric shop. His trousers are dark, tucked into boots. His hair is its usual state of eloquent disaster, and you're attempting, with moderate success, to do something intentional with it.
The curls are not cooperating.
There are three of them. Maybe four. Every time you get one section to lie flat, another springs back. You smooth the same curl for the second time and watch it immediately reverse its decision.
"You have so many cowlicks," you say.
Phantom tips his chin up slightly, unbothered. "Cows love me."
With a deep sigh you try the part from a different angle. He sits patiently, hands loose on his thighs, letting you work.
He looks like the hero of a pulpy romance novel. The one on the cover with his shirt half-open and a ship burning in the background. Entirely intentional about it.
"You look like you should have a rapier," you tell him.
His face lights up. "I know."
You work a small amount of gel between your palms and smooth it over the worst of the damage. The part almost cooperates. One strand at the front springs back immediately, a single section with strong opinions about its own direction, and you look at it for a long moment before accepting that this is simply who it is.
Your eyes drift to the pale streak near his temple. You've always liked it. You twist it gently between two fingers, coax it into something deliberately rakish, and step back to assess.
Good enough. Better than good enough, actually.
He tilts his head slightly, giving you better access to the right side. His eyes are still closed. "You look extra pretty today, by the way."
You huff a quiet laugh. "Thanks. Even with the hair like this?"
"Even then," he sighs, content as anything.
You give his shoulder a small pat. "Done. Don't touch it."
He twists to look at the mirror, tilts his head once left, once right. His expression moves through three distinct stages and arrives at deeply pleased. "I look bouncy," he says.
"It's giving renaissance fair," you tell him.
He considers this. His eyes track from his own reflection to yours, standing in front of him in the green dress with your hair half-twisted and three pins still between your fingers.
"I mean," he says. "Is that wrong?"
You think about the crowd noise coming through the window. Ministry clergy, abbey families, visiting guests, probably some of the town. "It's technically a church spring festival," you say. "Should we look more—" you gesture vaguely at the general concept of solemn.
"Have you been to a ren faire?"
"Obviously."
"Okay so you know." He raises both hands. "There's always a viking. There's always a ninja. Somebody shows up as a pirate every single time, there's always someone in full anime costume, and nobody asks any questions. Everybody's just doing their own thing in the same field." He gestures between you both. "This is that. Except the field has free food and a dancefloor."
You look at him.
He looks back. The pale streak sits exactly where you put it.
"Nobody's going to think twice," he says, gentler now. "Half the sisters are going to wear their good veils and Mountain's going to show up in that one sweater and Dew is going to look like he just stepped out for a smoke and that's just… how it goes here. It's the Abbey. We kind of just do what we want.”
You let the last pin drop into your palm. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He shrugs, easy. "Show up, look like yourself, drink some punch. That's the whole thing."
The window lets in another wave of voices from outside. You breathe in the last of the steamed-laundry air and the hairspray and the cool coming through the gap.
"Okay," you say.
"Okay," he agrees, and turns back to the mirror, clearly very pleased about the whole situation.
Update Update I have NOT been writing because I have been so busy with lots of other important and productive things irl but I think about ya'll all the time and about the ghouls and I'm not abandoning you or the fic I swear 🧡
Update Update I have NOT been writing because I have been so busy with lots of other important and productive things irl but I think about ya'll all the time and about the ghouls and I'm not abandoning you or the fic I swear 🧡
little update: I'm much better with the anxiety, now I'm just BUSY and I need to commit to getting back to writing the Chapters. I did a little bit for Chapter 60 already. Not promising any return dates yet as soon as I put myself on a schedule I avoid it like the plague lmao
i love going through vintage t-shirts on pinterest and then thinking through a) which ghoul would have bought it, b) who was supposed to wear it, c) who stole it to wear it
oof readers, my anxiety has been really high in the last two weeks, I haven't been settled enough to write, tbh. Might take a while longer for those next chapters 😩
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