Library of Time

[writing-prompt-s]

after dying god informs you that hell is a myth, and “everyone sins, its ok”. instead the dead are sorted into six “houses of heaven” based on the sins they chose.

[wpsstories]

We arrived first at the House of Lust. “House” is a misleading term. It was more of a camp, spread over acres and acres of lush forest. There was a white sandy beach (nude, of course) full of copulating couples. There were little cabins sprinkled all along the path, from which orgasmic moans regularly came belting out. Men with six pack abs and women with perky breasts strolled by without even noticing me and God. They only had eyes for each other, tickling and pinching each other with flirtatious giggles.

“What do you think?” God asked as we passed a nineteen-way taking place in a pool of champagne. Little cherubs flitted overhead armed with mops and cleaning supplies, thankfully. “Lust is our most popular sin.” I eyed the supermodel-like figures of a couple passing nearby, and could easily see why. “You can look however you want. Hell, you can be whatever gender you want. No fetish is too taboo, and no desire can be denied here.”

It was quite tempting, but I wasn’t ready to make a permanent decision here. “Let’s see the others,” I told God.

We carried on to Greed. We passed rows and rows of mansions, each more opulent than the next. Some of them were so large that they would have had enough bed rooms to fit my entire hometown. And so many different styles: one second, we were in a beautiful French vineyard in front of a gorgeous chateau with the Alps in the background. The next second, a warm tropical beach with a modern mansion atop breathtaking cliffs. After that, a ski chalet in Colorado with a roaring fire in a hearth large enough to fit an ox. Each one had various Italian sports cars and Rolls Royces parked in front, with the occasional smattering of boats, helicopters, etc.

“Any material desire you ever wanted,” God explained. “Your own world, where you can have everything. You want the Hope Diamond? You can fly to Washington DC in your own solid gold helicopter and buy it from the Smithsonian. Hell, you can just buy the Smithsonian.”

Also tempting, but I decided to keep looking.

Gluttony was next up. Tables and tables of the very finest foods: beautiful steaks cooked medium rare; butter-poached lobster tail; fresh oysters on a half shell; exotic wines in dusty bottles that had been hiding in the cellars of the world’s finest restaurants. Everyone had a glass of champagne in hand and simply lounged on couches and chairs near the tables, eating endlessly. As soon as the inhabitants took a bite, the food just instantly came back. My mouth watered even watching them.

“In every other House, the food is practically sawdust compared to Gluttony,” God explained. “You haven’t truly experienced heaven until you’ve been to Gluttony.”

I shook my head, and we kept moving.

Sloth was as you’d expect. An endless sea of the softest mattresses, stacked with cushions and pillows that made the story of the princess and the pea seem minimalist. Little angels visited each resident, giving them massages that made them all melt into their blankets.

Wrath was… well, a lot like what I’d expect Hell to be like. Fire, brimstone, whips, torture.. you know, the works. Except here, you weren’t the one being tortured. Every enemy you’d ever made in your real life was now under your thumb. “Lots of people choose their fathers,” God explained. “Lots of grudges against parents in general, you know. But you’re not limited to that. Someone beat you out for a big promotion back on Earth? Take your pound of flesh here.”

Then we arrived at Envy. It looked… well, a lot like home.

“Go on in,” God said, gesturing toward the door. I turned the knob and walked in… and found Emily waiting inside. She ran forward, wrapped her arms around my neck, and planted a kiss right on my lips. “Welcome home, honey.”

I looked back toward God. “Oh, don’t be coy,” he said. “You have no secrets from me. We all know that you were in love with your best friend’s wife.” She didn’t seem to hear him at all; she went back into the hall. “We all know that you just settled for your own wife while secretly pining after her. Well, this is your chance to live happily ever after.”

I peered into the kitchen. Emily was baking something, wearing nothing but an apron. Her curly black hair fell softly over her shoulder as she whisked ingredients. She turned back, noticed I was observing her, and an enthusiastic smile spread across her face.

“It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?” God whispered in my ear.

I wanted to take it. God damn did I want to take it. But I shook my head.

God seemed puzzled. “You need to make a decision,” he told me.

“I haven’t seen Pride yet.”

He scoffed. “No one ever wants Pride, trust me.”

“Well, I want to see it.”

_________________________

Pride was boring. Just a row of workbenches in a bare white room.

“I don’t get it,” I told God.

“Yeah, no one does,” he answered. “That’s why no one ever chooses it. Doesn’t cavorting in Lust sound better than sitting here building little trinkets for the rest of eternity? Wouldn’t you rather gorge yourself in Gluttony? Or spend time with Emily in Envy?”

I considered the options again. “I pick Pride,” I finally told him.

He narrowed his eyes. “What? Look at it!” He gestured around the room again. There wasn’t much to look at. “Why would you choose this for the rest of time?”

“Because you don’t want me to pick it,” I told him. If he was really God, he’d know what a contrarian I can be. And I knew he was hiding something, trying to pretend like Pride didn’t exist. There was something special about it.

God scowled back. “Fine.” He led me over to one of the workbenches. In the center, there was a black space. A blank, empty void that went on forever. “Here’s your universe,” he said. “You’ve got seven days to get started.” He took his seat at the bench next to me and went back to tinkering in his own world. After a long pause, he finally spoke again: “You know, it might be nice for me to actually have some company for once.”

[feral-flower-child]

FUCKING I MEAN.

IT’S LIKE 7AM AND I LOVE GONNA REBLOG SO I CAN READ THIS SHIT AGAIN

[inkskinned]

when i was seven the sea-witch cursed me.

she cursed my great-grandfather, actually, who had spat on the hands of the ocean and disrespected the beating heart of the earth - for what else are waves but a pulse - who was silly and violent and who tried to rip from the water what was hers by rights. we were wealthy, before that, a family of merchants. my mother says in her youth she recalls white horses, the gleam of candles, early mornings with bread baked fresh by a horde of servants.

he didn’t ask permission to cross her. that’s what my mother tells me while she spoons porridge with no flavor into the wood of my bowl. he had no faith in superstition, rode with boats that were more decoration than strength, the folly of a man who was cruel and vain and proud of his own gold teeth. the sky had been blue, so regardless of what the village witch said, he would sail that day. and when his boat sank; their lives turned blue like the sky that day.

my mother says she thinks the curse on the men of our family, even if they come in when they marry, is that they will forever be violent, too foolish to see the storm on the horizon. she whispers this to me on the eve of my seventh birthday, while father is his own storm, thundering around the house, looking for her. later, when i am cleaning the cut by her cheek, she tells me the curse is on the women to forever be unhappy, to wane until they are shadows, to walk into the deep like a sinking ship. 

we don’t burn candles often, they are too expensive. she tells me this in the silk of a dark room. the moon kisses her hair. 

in three days, my mother will walk into the ocean, and my father will be my own problem. the curse will pass onto me. 

my father does not believe in superstition, no curse to conquer him. when he is gone, and i am heartbroken, i go to the village witch. i ask her to teach me about magic, and other things, and about how the ocean can be coaxed, and how to save my father’s soul. 

and my hands rot too, keeping a house by myself with things i barely knew. i learn the art of a good scrubbing, keep my mind full of white horses while i endlessly clean, dream of candles in dark while i make the bread that he will not allow me to eat. he keeps me from the ocean, from visiting the place that took my mom, from following in her footsteps where the water makes women undone.

i am sixteen when i see her in the water of a bowl. she scares me so completely that i drop it, and my father comes in with his hands, and the curse, and i almost forget all about it. it isn’t until after that i realize she is beautiful, and young, which surprises me. 

i think about it every evening. her face becomes distorted to me. i can no longer remember the exact shape of it, only the impression of beauty. 

i turn seventeen and wait for the high moon. i pin safety to my vest in little witch herbs and runes. i put naked toes on the sand and slip closer, closer, to the avenue of my family’s doom. i find a little private beach, small and surrounded by rocks, hidden from my father in the event he ever thought to come looking. at high tide, it is barely the span of my body. at low, it feels empty.

the witch of the land has given me what i need to call in the witch of the sea, but i do not use it. it feels wrong, somehow, standing here in the wind and the quiet pulse of the world. i put down the incense and sage and i sit just close enough it feels wild, dangerous - but not close enough to get caught up in thrill. 

when nothing happens, i go home and i make bread that i will not eat.

for months i do this. i climb down to my beach. i learn to do it when the moon is half, and then when the moon is empty. i learn to do it so well that sometimes i go to sleep in my own bed and wake up by the water. i take to sleeping with warding runes to keep me from being pulled in the rip out to the waiting hands of a hungry sea-witch.

i don’t know when i start talking. more often i sing, because singing in my house is not allowed, and something about the way the rocks echo my voice feels comforting. the older i get, the more i can pretend i hear my mother’s voice, answering me, harmonizing gently. i sing songs about sadness and lullabies about curses. when i have exhausted every song i know, i write new ones about fathers who have never learned how to be kind, about the house i work in but do not love, about mothers who left, and about a sea witch.

i see her sometimes. in a puddle, in the drop of rain, in the strangest places. i never expect it, although i always hope. i am never able to see her for more than the length of a wave, breaking, and each time, it does something new to my heart.

at eighteen i am too much of my father’s burden. he tries to unload me onto other men. the land witch helps me with this. i rub hemlock, burn wolfsbane. we arrange so these men have other women to marry. the news of my curse is bad enough to scare most away. my father is not happy.

after a particularly savage night, i wonder how bad it could be. i could marry some boy from the village who didn’t quite bother me. i suppose they’re not ugly. timothy had always been gentle to me. i think about a life, and how i am cursed to be unhappy. my father would finally be proud of me.

i walk to the beach and i tell the waves about him and how i could convince myself it was love if i just never wanted from him. how i could be okay, if not content, how i could be free, how i already had learned life down on knees.

but i go home and i write a rune of warding. and the years pass and i find reasons each suitor is wanting. and the sea witch i see, sometimes, peeking out at me, staying long each time in the water, looking, watching. i see her in mirrors when my father storms against me. it is bad because he mistakes the cause of my smiling. it is better when she is there the next morning.

and i go to the ocean. when i am too sad to speak, it seems like the ocean is whispering for me. i picture my mother’s voice and tell myself i am happy. i am seven again and we are sewing. i am seven again and the curse has not been given to me. i am seven and she came home after she walked to the sea.

i grow silly, brave, unthinking. i leave behind the herbs and i wade deep. i teach myself the art of swimming. i am bad at it, at first, but something about it feels good to me. like the ocean wants to buoy me. in the day i think of it, guilty. what if there was a rip tide, and the water took me? who would care for my father if i stepped off the beach into a long drop? wasn’t i clever enough to know that the ocean is uncaring?

it is not this that does it. i go out after a rain and i slip on the rocks and suddenly i am in water above my head but without the moon i cannot see the up of it. i kick and i thrash and the water surrounds me. the tide pulls on my body and in the cold i feel my body grow weary. water spills into me. it punches through my body, up my nose and into my lungs and some part of me knows this is what mother felt before she was gone.

i kick ground by accident, reorient, drag myself heaving and spitting into the air. i lie there for a long time, half in and half out of death, enjoying the sensation of breathing and of life.

when i look up, i think i see her, watching me, her brows knit with something like worry. but we make eye contact and my heart leaps and then she is gone and i am left alone with nothing but the dawn breaking.

my father is furious when there is no bread. he finds my hair wet, and the salt of the ocean still smelling on me. and that is it. that day he goes out and pays someone to agree to marry me.

this feels right to me, i think. i’m twenty-one, three times seven, a perfect number for a curse to fully come down on me. i will be wed in three weeks.

the land witch comes to visit me. she looks like she’s sorry for me. she gives me a spell and tells me to put it under my pillow; i’ll dream of love and it will soothe me. instead i dream of the seawitch, and how wonderful she is, and the sight of her, out on the water, worried.

even though it is risky, i go down to the beach. i do not bother with protective spells, i have already seen that the water can kill me. fear alone keeps me from wandering. i sit on the beach and in the sand i draw runes for understanding and i make the small magicks i’ve spent years learning and i close my eyes and i ask the ocean “why do you do this to me.”

i fall asleep. i dream that the sea witch talks to me. i dream she is my age, that she is the great-granddaughter of the first to curse my family. i dream she has spent years watching, learning, finding the truth of me. that she just needs to get the courage to come and speak, that she has fallen in love with my singing, that she knows no curse but the one in her heart that brings her back to a human, to a creature of air and not water, to a mistake in the making.

in the dawn i know it is a dream and no more. i make bread. i pour water out before it can make mirrors. i do not look. i do not like the ache that has filled me, as if i’ve been looking for an answer and the answer only leads to longing.

the man i meet - my husband-to-be - is delighted by the house i keep. he believes a woman should keep in her place, and her place should be clean. he hears from neighbors that sometimes i sneak out to the land witch’s house. laughter barks out of him. not going to allow that behavior, not me. he does not believe in curses. he will pack me up and move me from the ocean to somewhere in the mountains, where i know nobody. and i will, he promises, learn to keep my place, and that place clean.

i tell myself i could love him. he is not ugly. he says i’m pretty enough after whiskey. my father mentions i used to sing. i refuse to perform for these men so instead i make them cookies. they laugh and talk about me, even when i am in the room, as if they cannot even see. they shake hands and talk about how useless a woman is for much else than breeding. it’s very funny. the man meets my eyes and promises he’ll put a baby in me. i look down and pretend the thrill i feel is excitement, not fear brewing in me.

the land witch comes by a week before my wedding. she is smaller these days, aging. her apprentice and i get along wonderfully. the two women stand before me, holding something. 

a small box, so tiny and lovely. “break the curse,” the witch whispers, “learn to be happy.”

i smuggle the box, take it everywhere with me. it is days before i have a moment to slip away, to open it by the sea. i take a candle with me, even though my father will notice and be angry.

by the light of fire i read the spell they have left me inside, and then i am so full of gratitude i cannot stop crying.

it must be a full moon, so i must wait. in the meantime, i walk home, and i bake. 

i do not see the seawitch, even though i look for her. maybe i have wounded her, getting married. my father asks why i keep smiling. i tell him it is because i am finally with a man. he grunts and says to stop looking so silly. 

the man kisses me. i let him. we are married on a night with a full moon, and i poison him and my father in the bread i did not eat. i think of how these men were cursed so they could not see a storm coming. i watch them as they lie there, dying, and then i put all of the things i own into a basket for the land witch. i leave it there with a song i wrote for her, a spell i know will make her happy, will stop the aging of her joints, will give her the kind of relief she gave me. 

i go down to the water. i find myself running, even though i am in no hurry. i know the way so well it is like i wake up there, panting. i ask permission first. i lay out the contents of the box, i organize and practice and when the needle and pain comes, i am ready for it. i am used to pain at night. i breathe into it and walk naked into waters that swallowed my mother.

i chew bitter herbs. i swallow fire. i feel myself drown as i change from land witch to sea witch. 

when it is done, i open my eyes in the deep of a moonlit ocean. and i see her. 

this time she does not flicker. this time when i reach for her, she is there, and she is pushing my hair out of my eyes, and we are kissing with the ocean rejoicing around us, and i am laughing, and i hear her voice as clear as bell inside me.

and we live like this, a whole world between us where white horses are the size of pinky fingers and swim with their thin snouts, where i need no candles because i was raised lightless, where we have no servants but the water takes care of us. i show her the magic of land and she unfolds the magic of water. together we are unstoppable. when i come up to the air to sing little girls a promise that they can survive the madness, she sings with me, and we make a beautiful harmony.

[shanastoryteller]

A Garden of Secrets

(note: this was done as a commission for an anonymous person who just wishes to be be known as someone who was thrilled for a chance to support one of my writing projects <3 )

so we have the secret garden, a lovely book that i still enjoy to this day, but what if we take it and … twist it, just a little, to see things from a different angle

~

she has had many names over the years.

she has changed over the years, and her names have reflected those changes. she was the garden of hesperides and tended to by hera. then she fell into the care of pan, then priapus when the romans arrived. she was called the hanging gardens in babylon, and the island of flowers in europe.

but the most famous of her names, the most enduring, is none of these.

it’s eden.

she was born as the garden of eden, made by a god, although she can’t remember which one. she was made with knowledge that she was never meant to share, but it seems silly not to share it, not tell everyone all she knows. what harm can knowledge do?

when her only companions are cast out, and she has only herself for company and only herself to blame, she learns her lesson.

adam and eve’s punishment was not for them alone, but for her too.

the humans must not ask, and she must not tell.

she was made, and still remains, a garden of secrets.

~

she moves, sometimes, without meaning to. she can never quite figure out if someone is moving her, of if she’s moving herself, but she settles in england, and does not mind. she doesn’t like the winters, but she loves spring, and she can’t have the latter without the former.

there’s a young bride who tends to her, and eden loves her. lilias brings in gardeners to help her grow, and spends many long hours walking her paths.

she loves her most, perhaps, because of the secrets lilias whispers when she walks. lilias tells her of her husband, who has a hunched back and a sour face, but is very kind to her and kisses her softly and gives her all that she could ask for. people talk, because they always talk, and say that she only married him for his money, but lilias tells her that she would have married him if he were nothing more than a pauper. she wishes he would work less. it’s okay if they have a little less money. she would rather have him home.

eden listens. she doesn’t say anything back, because she learned that lesson the hard way, but she listens and she grows. she keeps her blooms open as long as she can to keep the smile one lilias’s face bright, and grows tree branches perfectly shaped for bird’s nests, so that they can chirp and sing to lilias when she wakes up in the morning.

one of the servants has a little boy with bright blue eyes and a happy laugh, and eden knows instantly that this little boy can hear her without her having to shout. if she wants to speak to most humans, she has to try, has to concentrate and speak as loud as she can. but he hears her naturally, without her having to try at all. she coos to him, sings him songs and calls him a darling boy. it’s been a long time since someone was able to hear her, and she can’t wait until dickon grows old enough to talk to her back.

she never meets the husband, but lilias seems happy, her garden is tended to, and all is well.

then lilias becomes pregnant.

eden is a garden of secrets, so she knows instantly that this will not end in happiness.

she yearns to warn her, to say something, but dickon is still only a toddler, and she remembers what happened the last time she told a human her secrets.

so she treasures her time with lilias, tries to make her last summer as beautiful as possible, and when lilias’s son’s cries pierce through the courtyard, she knows that means her friend is gone.

eden mourns the only way she can, petals falling from flowers and tree branches going bent and hanging low. but she doesn’t let it last too long. she consoles herself with the thought of lilias’s son playing in her garden, with being able to watch over him and take care of him.

but that’s not what happens.

lilias’s husband, the man eden has never met, can’t cope with his wife’s death. he orders a wall built, unable to destroy the garden she loved but unable to bear looking at it either.

eden is locked away and hidden.

she didn’t break the rule, she didn’t tell any secrets, but once again her people have been taken from her.

once again, eden is alone.

~

her garden falls into a disarray, still beautiful, but wild and untamed. the way a garden grows when there’s no one to care for it.

she tries not to notice the passing of the seasons anymore. winter melts into spring, again and again, and she barely notices.

“who’s crying?” demands a voice, high pitched and young, and eden is snapped out of her melancholy by a little boy pushing himself through a small break in the wall surrounding her. it’s dickon. he’s not a baby anymore, old enough to be roaming the grounds alone but still a gangly limbed child. “i can always hear you crying. what’s wrong? are you hurt?”

Keep reading

[charminglyantiquated]

a little comic about kisses and curses. happy halloween!

(all my comics are here!)

[injuries-in-dust]

Give a bored human a screwdriver and you’ll find a pile of scrap where your ship used to be, with a proud looking human sitting nearby. 

[injuries-in-dust]

“Boredom is a dangerous thing to a human.” 

“I don’t understand,” Chuul’s mandibles clicked nervously, “why not simply take the tool from the human.” 

Minxx’s antennae stood straight up, a sign of shock, fear, or surprise, “You don’t simply take something from a human. If you do they will either turn the ship upside down trying to find it again, or they will replace it with something else that will lead to more destruction.

“I speak quite literally by the way. Human-Mark used to have a tool he called an “Hex Key” he used it to remove the doors to the clothing storage areas in his quarters because he was bored. When he lost it he literally turned the ship upside down by reversing the gravity.” 

Chuul’s tentacles curled up defensively, “Gravity controls are locked, how-”

“No one knows how.” Minxx shook her small wings as the memory of suddenly falling upwards returned to her. “but his reasoning was that the tool would fall out of whatever hiding place it had come to rest within. He had not considered that all tables, chairs, equipment, and personnel, would also fall. It took weeks to clean.” 

To be fair to the human, Mark had only intended to reverse the gravity in his own quarters but had, quote, “pushed the wrong button.” A sentence which would send fear through any intelligent creature in the known galaxy. To be completely unfair to the human, there were still stains on the ceiling in almost every room of the ship from dropped food, chemicals, various other liquids, and even a couple of empty bowels. Some races just didn’t find the idea of resting comfortably in their sleeping quarters, only to be suddenly awakened as they fell ten feet toward a ceiling which had now become a floor. Mark was no longer allowed near environmental controls. 

Minxx continued, “He did not find this “Hex Key.” However, he did find the screwdriver and it seemed to please him when an owner was not located. The captain let him keep it since it seemed that it would keep him from doing any more strange things to locate his original lost tool. We did not consider-” she trailed off as her wings quivered again. 

There was silence between them for a few moments, Minxx was almost unwilling to continue and Chuul was almost too afraid to press for more details. Slowly, but surely, Minxx calmed herself enough to speak again. “we did not consider what he may be able to do when armed with a leverage optimiser.” 

“We were given shore leave while the ship was being fixed after the gravity incident. Thank goodness the captain took out act’s-of-human insurance or it would have cost the profits from our next five cargo hauls.” The premiums were high, but it was worth it. “After 14 rotations, human-Mark began to complain over the lack of stimulation, he called it “bored.” On the 15th rotation he disappeared for some time and he had hoped he had found some new activity to occupy his time.” 

Chuul did, but at the same time didn’t, want to know, “Had he?” 

Minxx waved her antennae in confirmation, “he had. He was located in one of the cargo holds, using the screwdriver to dismantle one of the mining probes. To, quote “see how it worked.” It was almost 90% deconstructed.” 

Mark had claimed it was almost 10% REconstructed, as he was trying to put it back together again, but couldn’t quite remember where all the parts went. In Mark’s words, the captain was a “glass half-empty kinda guy” (whatever that meant) and wrote DEconstructed on the claim form for a replacement probe. 

Chuul’s natural camouflage kicked in and they took on the colour of the chair they were sitting on. “Those probes have no screws for the leverage optimiser to use, how did he-” 

Minxx’s wings shivered again, “no one knows how. He just did.” 

Chuul was silent for a moment. He’d never served on a ship with a human before. He’d heard they made things “interesting” and if you ever got into trouble, a human was the very best thing to ever have on your side. It was why they were so many job opportunities for humans in the alliance. All the same…the thought of a human causing such damage and destruction just because of a lack of mental, or physical, stimulation was a more than a little frightening. What if the human wanted to see how the engines worked, or the weapons?!!  “Maybe I should transfer to another ship.” 

Minxx’s antennae curled, a smile to her race. “You are safe. The captain has found a way to occupy our humans free time. During our last stopover, he commissioned a shiny orb be constructed.” 

Chuul coked their head, “what is a shiny orb?” 

Minxx’s curled antennae moved up an down; a sign of mild laughter. “It is nothing. A sphere made of shiny metals, humans do like shiny things, roughly two feet diameter made of a collection of gears, levers, screws and switches which appear complex and should have a function, but do entirely nothing. The captain handed it to Human-Mark and stated: “see if you can fix this.” and Mark has been “tinkering” with it during his off-duty hours for almost 24 rotations now. He can take it apart and rebuild it as many times as he likes, but it will never perform any task.”

Chuul was just thinking about how their captain must be a genius, when the door to the mess hall opened and Human-Mark entered. He was carrying the shiny orb under one arm, and his screwdriver in the other hand. He looked around, seemingly not noticing any of the crew members. He smiled when he spotted an empty liquid container and sat down at the table with the cup. 

Chuul and Minxx watched curiously as Mark set the orb on the table in front of the cup. He used the screwdriver to tighten one small screw and flipped a switch. At once there was a whirring and clicking of clockwork, a blinking of lights hidden in the depths of the machine and even a TING from a small bell. Then a small funnel-shaped piece of metal opened up in the side of the machine and poured a small amount of hot, black, liquid into the cup.

Mark jumped to his feet, pumping the air and yelling loudly enough to send Chuul’s camouflage reflex off again. He grabbed the orb, abandoning the cup of steaming hot liquid, and moved to the door. 

Minxx stared after them, “Human-Mark?” 

Mark only paused for a second in the doorway. He was prominently displaying his predatory teeth. Chuul had read about these “smiles” but it was still disturbing to see. “Can’t stop Minxy. I gotta let the captain know I fixed his coffee maker.” 

With that, he left. Leaving Chuul and Minxx frozen in place, dumbfounded. 

Wherever Chuul was going to transfer to, Minxx began to hope she could get a posting on the same ship. 

[callmebliss]

[slightly-awkward-sunshine]

I made this a long time ago and was very nervous about posting it to Tumblr. I can’t really think of a good caption~ everything I wanted to say is in the little blurb at the beginning. 

‘God of Arepo’ Fan-made graphic novel 

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Read the Original Story Here

[naamahdarling]

Oh shit I forgot the original made me cry.  This is so beautiful.  <3333

Thank you for bringing it to such beautiful life.

[meg-moira]

The Witch Who Spoke to the Wind

Sequel to Eindred and the Witch

In which Severin, the golden eyed witch, learns that his greatest enemy and truest love is fated to kill him.

-

-

Dealing in prophecies is a dubious work. Anyone who knows anything will tell you as much.

“Think of all of time as a grand tapestry,” his great-grandmother had said, elbow deep in scalding water. Her hands were tomato red, and Severin watched with wide golden eyes as she kneaded and stretched pale curds in the basin. “You might be so privileged to understand a single weave, but unless you go following all surrounding threads, and the threads around those threads, and so on - which, mind you, no human can do - you’ll never understand the picture.”

Severin, who was ten years old and had never seen a grand tapestry, looked at the cheese in the basin and asked if his great-grandmother could make the analogy about that instead.

“No,” she replied. “Time is a tapestry. Cheese is just cheese.”

And that was that.

By fifteen, Severin who was all arms, legs, and untamable black hair, decided he hated prophecies more than anything in the world. He occupied himself instead with long walks atop the white bluffs well beyond his family’s home. Outside, he could look at birds, and talk to the wind, and not think about the terrible prophecy which followed him like a shadow.

His second eldest sister had revealed it - accidentally, of course. Severin lived in a warm and bustling house with his great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, two aunts, and three sisters. All of whom were generously gifted in the art of foretelling (a messy business, each would say if asked), and every one of them had seen Severin’s same bleak thread.

He would die. Willingly stabbed through the heart by his greatest enemy and truest love.

Willingly. That was the worst part, he thought.

Severin, who had no talent in the way of prophecies, but plenty of talent in the realm of wind and sky, marched along the well-worn trail, static sparking around his fingertips as the brackish sea breeze nipped consolingly at his face and hair.

I will protect you if you ask me to, it blustered, and Severin was comforted.

He didn’t care who this foretold stranger was. When this enemy-lover appeared, Severin would ask the wind to pick them up and take them far, far away. Far enough that they could never harm him. The wind whistled in agreement. And so it was settled.

Keep reading

[meg-moira]

If you’re looking for more stories about Eindred and Severin, look no further!

The Warrior’s Return (Part 1)

The Warrior’s Return (Part 2)

The Warrior’s Return (Part 3)

The Warrior’s Return (Part 4) - currently only available for patrons , but it will release to the public Sunday 4/4.

These are paced more like chapters, as opposed to short stories, and they follow Eindred and Severin on a brand new adventure!

[libraryoftime]

You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.

 dycefic

I think I’d have minded less if I’d committed a truly heinous crime. Something that warranted death. Or even if I was the kind of person who would enjoy flinging a last defiance at my execution.

It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.

There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.

“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”

The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”

The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”

I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick. 

For years people tried to come up with something the Sorcerer couldn’t do. They wished to drown on dry land, or to be slain by a fantastical beast, or whatever their desperate minds could conjure up. It had never worked. But the spectacle brought people back, kept people afraid, and convinced everyone he was all-powerful. No, I was resigned to death. I was only angry that my death would be so meaningless. If I’d known, I’d have killed that sheriff, and had the satisfaction of it. At least I wouldn’t let him make a fancy show of my terror and my death.

The brawler was unshackled from beside me, and dragged to the front of the platform. Beside me, the pickpocket rocked and sobbed.

The Sorcerer didn’t look evil, to people who expected black robes and gleaming eyes and wicked laughter. No. His was the face of real evil. The face of a wealthy bureaucrat, that has never seen toil in the hot sun, with well-groomed greying hair and soft hands that have never lifted anything heavier than a flagon. The face of a man who measures the worth of a human life by the service it can be to him, the work it can do for him, the coins in tax revenue it can bring him. It was the smooth, serene face of a monster, and I called down every curse I can think of on it as I watched him, though I know it will do no good.

Every year, there were seven prisoners. Seven examples. The brawler was the fifth. When he was dragged up to face the Sorcerer, his feet scrambled through a vile mud of blood and ash and the scattered shards of broken clay that had once been a man. He was still defiant, and stared into the Sorcerer’s face while his arm was drawn forward and the magical shackle locked around his wrist.

The Sorcerer smiled, the faint, pleased smile of a clever man faced with someone he knew was poor and uneducated and couldn’t outthink him. “And how will you die, treacherous one?” he asked.

The brawler spat at his feet. “Of old age,” he growled.

I averted my eyes. I’d seen this tried before, and I didn’t want to see it again.

When the screaming stopped, they came for me. I tried to walk, to approach my death with dignity, but these were old hands. I’m sure no-one saw one of them kick my feet out from under me so I could be dragged, struggling to stay upright, before the Sorcerer. I, too, stared into those eyes, empty of emotion, while the enchanted manacle was placed around my wrist. He didn’t even look pleased. After so many years, it wasn’t even amusing for him anymore. Just another task, perhaps mildly interesting, perhaps dull. I looked down at the withered, ancient corpse that had been pushed to one side, then back up at the Sorcerer. All this show was meaningless, even to him.

Meaningless.

“And how will you die, treacherous one?” the Sorcerer asked, a faint flicker of interest showing in his face. Maybe my expression showed that I was thinking, not only frightened or defiant.

Meaningless.

“I wish to die,” I said slowly, wanting the words to be right, “in the service of my people. A meaningful death, that betters their lot.”

He blinked twice. I’d never caught him blinking even once. Then he smiled. “A dramatic death, then, to show them the perils of crime,” he said smoothly, and raised his hands. Fire formed around them, and I had time to flinch, to step back, to curse myself for not taking the easy way as the fire roared towards me…

And washed around me like a warm breeze, stirring my hair and prison tunic, but passing without a scorch, without a burn.

I looked down at the enchanted shackle, then back up at him. “I said a death that serves the people,” I said slowly, not quite believing it had worked. “Not one that serves you. A death that betters their lot, not one that keeps them in fear.”

He tried again and again. Serpents came for me with poison dripping from their fangs, and bulls tried to trample me. Water rose up to drown me, and knives of ice plunged towards my breast. I could feel the dry brush of scales against my bare feet, the hot breath of the bulls and the wetness of the water, but nothing harmed me. A dark miasma rose up around me, and I smelled a foul odour, but when it passed I was unharmed once again.

Then he called for his guards, and they came for me with swords and spears. The weapons passed through my body like smoke, and their hands slid off my body as if it were smooth ice.

And then, as I stared at him, I finally saw the Sorcerer crack. His rage shattered, and there was only fear in his face. “You can’t hurt me,” I said, and it wasn’t loud, but it rang out in the terrible, hopeful, eager silence that had fallen. “Not with magic. Not with men.”

No weapon could harm the Sorcerer, that was well known. No magic, either. But I had no weapon, and I had no magic. I leaped at him with nothing but my bare hands.

He could resist me, hand to hand, body to body. He could fight me, and he made a good attempt. But he wasn’t prepared for this. He was was more than twice my age, an aging man who’d never worked a day in his life. I was young and strong, with the muscles of a washerwoman and a heart full of fury.

The crowd made no sound, while we fought. But when I brought him down, when I pinned him and wrapped my hands around that soft neck, I heard hundreds of people draw in their breath at once, a thousand tiny sounds combining into a soft gasp that seemed to echo in that stillness.

“Whoever… kills me… will die…” the Sorcerer gasped, his face darkening, his soft weak hands scrabbling at mine. He didn’t even know enough about fighting to reach for my eyes or my nose, the fool.

I tightened my grip. “And that,” I gritted out, “will be a very meaningful death.”

They were the last words I spoke.

*

It seemed like only a moment later that I got to my feet. But the crowd was gone, and the sorcerer was gone, and instead of noon sun I looked up at a sky full of stars. “I am dead, then?” I said aloud, wondering.

Yes.

It wasn’t a voice, and yet I heard it. When I turned, a slender, sexless figure stood before me, robed in undyed linen. It had the form of a person, but it was… something else. Something more.

“Did I kill him? Is the Sorcerer defeated?”

Yes.

“Good.” The shock of it all should be hitting me, now… but I no longer had a body, no heart to race, no skin to sweat, and I only felt a great calm settle over me. “Then I am satisfied. It was a good death.”

The figure smiled, and the smile was as tender as a mother’s, as sweet as a lover’s, and as patient as the sun itself.

You have done well. Come. Let me show you.

It took my hand, and then we stood in sunlight again.

It was the same great square, at the heart of the capital. But it looked different, now. A bustling market filled it, and the few armsmen I saw did not wear the Sorcerer’s blue and black, but simple brown. The banners that fluttered at the corners of the square did not show the black sun on blue, but a raised white hand, palm out, with a silver band ending the wrist, on a field of grey.

I turned to look at where the execution platform had been, and saw a statue where it had been, in the pale beige stone common to this country.

It stood on a plinth taller than I was, so I couldn’t look very closely. It certainly didn’t look much like me, even at a distance. But I looked at the raised hand, with its silver manacle, then down at the memory of my own wrist, where a shadow of the enchanted manacle still rested. “That is meant for me, isn’t it?”

Yes.

“The banners too?”

Yes.

“I didn’t… I didn’t know that would happen.” I would have cried, if I’d still had tears. Instead I went closer to the statue, to look at the words inscribed on the plinth. I knew the look of writing, though I’d never learned to read. “What does it say?”

The figure drew closer, laying a comforting hand on my shoulder. No life without value, it said without speaking, the words simply pouring into me like water into a cup. No death without meaning.

I liked that, and I laid the memory of my hand against the letters for a moment. “That’s better than I said it. I like it.” I sighed. “I wish I’d been able to tell someone, though. Why I did it.”

The figure looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded slowly.

Yes.

So that’s why I’m here, talking to you in this dream. It said that you’ll remember this, and write it down for me. You’ll have to say it’s a made up story, of course, and maybe you’ll even believe it. I just wanted someone to know. I wasn’t a saint, or a martyr. At least, I never meant to be, I didn’t plan any of it, and I never thought until I had my hands on him that I’d actually stop him.

I just knew I was going to die, and I wanted it to mean something. To do some good. Given a choice, I’d have rather live for something that mattered, done good and lived to know of it, but I didn’t die for nothing. That’s something.

Put that in, please. You should do good while you’re alive, not wait until you’re about to die. But keep going up until you’re dead. Never give up.

Never stop trying. Not until your last breath.

[libraryoftime]

Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there a such thing as LAST contact?  Decide exactly what that means, and write about it.

 elidyce

It was too late, when the humans came. They were a young species, still exploring outwards, vital and thriving. 

We… were not. 

War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. 

And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. 

“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” 

It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.

But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. 

They start frantically gathering information. Not our technology, though they accept that when we offer it. But they go into abandoned records, carefully preserving them. They make copies of our books and record us talking about our history, singing our songs, describing the simplest things – our foods, our games, popular stories for children. Anything and everything that we are willing to share, they seem to want. We find it pleasant to talk about better times, the things the youngest of us only know of from the elders, but we don’t understand why they’re so interested.

Then they start to build things. In our abandoned cities, and by our sacred places (never in them, but nearby), and at every spaceport. Stone structures, whose purpose we don’t understand.

I was one of the youngest, and I am still hale enough to go outside and look at the stone thing they are building in the town where the last of us have gathered. It is tall - at least ten times the height of a human, five times my own height, and when I look up at it I see images of both our races, as well as many words in their language and ours, though they’re hard for failing eyes to read. “What is it for?” 

“It is a monument.” The nurse who has become my attendant - we all have them, now, as age begins to rob us of our strength - lays her small hand gently on my forelimb, in what for humans is a comforting gesture. “We make them, to help us remember the past.” 

I don’t understand that, so she shows me pictures. So many pictures… of buildings, and of statues, and of great slabs or spires or pyramids of stone. Some have names written on them, for remembrance, or pictograms, or even faces. Some are thousands of years old, but still exist, zealously protected by the unimaginably distant descendants of those who built them. Others, she says sadly, have been lost, and she sounds as grieved over that loss as if they were living beings she mourns. 

“But what are they for?” I ask again, still groping towards the deeper meaning. My people do not keep records in this way, and never have, nor can I imagine my spirit aching for a lost stone tablet or statue. Perhaps it is because they are more reliant on sight than we are – my species first communicated by scent, and then by sound, with sight always a distant third to us. Nor have we ever valued permanence… we resigned ourselves to the necessities of forged metal and hardened ceramics, for space-flight, and we have a few stone buildings, but we always preferred wood, for its scent and memory of life.

“They are…” She hesitates, seeking the right words. “They are all for different purposes, but… also all for the same purpose, underneath.” She touches a picture of a statue, ancient and damaged, yet clearly of a woman as human as the nurse beside me. “We were here. We mattered. We lived. Do not forget us.” She touches my forelimb again. “We do not want you to disappear and be forgotten. We will remember you, when you are gone.”

I think about that, all that night, looking up at the stars that we once travelled between. About an ancient species that lived always in the present, and a young species so determined to remember not only their own history, but ours. A young species that tends a dying one with kindness and compassion, that records our history and builds monuments to our memory. They don’t know what will happen to this planet when we’re gone. The fighting to take it for one species or another, the destruction of what is left of us to make way for someone new. That is how it has always been.

But the humans are different. Maybe this can change, too.

There are only fourteen of us left, when I call the last Planetary Council together. Fourteen, of a species that once numbered in billions. The Council had once had hundreds. But the fourteen of us were, still, the Planetary Council, every dying member having nominated a younger being to take their place, until the last of us stood in command of an empty planet.

“We should invite the humans to live here,” I tell the others, and I hear murmuring among the nurses who are gathered around us, for several are too frail now to move without attendants. They sound surprised.

“That is not the custom,” says the eldest remaining, an attenuated, fragile thing of chitin so thin that her pulsing organs showed through. “There will be a period of quarantine, then a battle. That is how it has always been.”

“Not always. Planets have been sold, or taken by conquest, or even settled in cooperation.” I fold my forelimbs together carefully. My joints are stiff, now. “Now, we will create a new tradition. We will leave our world to the humans, who have cared for us, by bequest and death-right. We are the Planetary Council. What we declare is law, is law, within our own solar system.” It has always been so. If we do not respect the sovereignty of other species in their home systems, what are we?

Of course, war is different. The Alnathids will be furious, and we all chitter in pleasure at that thought. They were the ones who destroyed us, and no doubt have only been waiting for us to die so they can take our planet. However, if we will it to the humans, the Alnathids will have to declare war on them and defeat them before they can lay any claim to this world… and the humans who have been so kind to a dying people can fight like things out of nightmare when they feel they must, as more than one warlike species has learned to their cost.

The others agree, and my nurse helps me to the old communications arrays that the humans maintain for us. The last mandate of our Planetary Council goes out, and it is this – that if there are those willing to risk plagues and poisons and ill-luck, and tend the dying with kindness and compassion, and preserve their memory, then the beings who have offered that last kindness may be named the heirs of that dying species. Keepers of Memory, we name them, and Preservers of History, and we leave them our planet for so long as we are remembered by them.

They come to thank me, the captains of the two ‘Aid’ vessels that stayed to tend us and record our memories, and water flows from their eyes in their strange, silent display of grief as they promise never to forget. The monuments and the records will be treasured as their own are, they say, and they will tell our stories to their own children, so that they, too, remember.

There are six of us left, when the first colony ships come. We are old now – we are not a long-lived species, not even so long as the humans – but we watch the colonists set to work. They study our planet, its ecosystems and its biology, and the nurses tell us that it is human custom to change themselves to fit the planet, rather than change the planet to fit them. They will engineer enzymes for their own digestive systems, adjust their own biology, until they are comfortable here. For the first time I, the last child of a dying race, hear children playing and voices raised in song. It is a comfort, and I leave the windows open to listen.

I am the last to die. When I am gone, they will do for me as they have done for the others, carrying my body out to the tomb they have built for us, laying me to rest with reverence. We did not preserve the bodies of our dead, but we agreed to this, to let them remember us in the traditions of their own people. I am the last of my kind, but I will not die alone, nor unloved.

The humans will be happy on our world, or so I hope. They will settle it, and adapt to it, and it will change under their hands as it changed under ours. But I believe that they will keep their bargain with us. Their records, their monuments, their images of us will remind them who we were. Because of them, we will not entirely disappear. 

We were here. We mattered. We lived. 

They will not forget.

[libraryoftime]

It’s that typical story all over again: you are a princess. You get kidnapped, some random guy saves you, and then your father gets you married to him. No. Not this Time. You have watched a million versions of the same random guy beat a demon and become your husband even though you don’t love him, so this time, you kill the demon. You kill your father, the king. It doesn’t matter to you… After all, he’s only a program in the video game that is your life.  You will stop at nothing to break this game.

Funnily enough, it’s not the kidnapping that breaks Phaedra. Oh, it’s terrifying every time–the sound of breaking glass in the dark of her bedroom, the feeling of vulnerability as blades tear into the curtain around her bed, the terror as she’s struck and thrown and tumbled over her assailant’s shoulder–but it’s not what keeps her shivering long past the story has ended. 

The attack always goes quickly. The demon screams past her guards and takes her in claws and wings and flees out the window. Her captivity sometimes goes quickly, sometimes takes a while longer, sometimes lasts forever. Sometimes the demon makes her cook and clean for him. Sometimes he tries to make her fall in love with him (as if this were that type of story). Sometimes he hurts her, badly, over and over and over again.

She’s no longer afraid of pain. She’s no longer afraid of mind tricks. She’s no longer afraid of him.

She hates being saved. She hates going home. And she’s always so afraid of the moment her father announces her hand belongs to her savior.

The moment her father gives her away is the moment that the relief from being rescued shatters. No matter how many times it happens, it’s the moment that Phaedra realizes, for all she is no longer with the demon, she is caged and helpless, just like then. Neither her savior or her father look at her when the marriage is decided. She doesn’t matter, in the end. It’s not her decision.

Her story, this horrible story, is never her own and she suffers in silence, like a good princess, as the hero locks her into a carriage and whisks her away or as her father falls ill and the hero takes his throne or as the hero reveals he is the prince of a far off land–

She is never free from her prisons, no matter how the story ends.

In the end, that is what breaks her. That is what hollows her out and starts a simmering fire, deep in her broken soul.

That is what brings death to her eyes and a blade to her hand.

———————-

Phaedra wakes up in the soft linens of her bed. She is alone in her room, the moonlight creeping through the gauzy curtains hanging over the window. There is the yellow light of a torch flickering under the door to the hall–the guards are keeping her safe from intruders. Her lip curls.

This will be the 56th time they don’t keep her safe enough.

Her body is unmarked, as its been the 55 times before. There’re no lingering bruises from her captor or her suitor, no evidence of her attack or her rescue or her wedding night. On her 32nd time going through this, the demon had her climb the stairs to the tallest tower everyday. She misses the strength in her legs. Everything she gains, she loses when the story restarts.

She throws back the covers. She’s can’t stop the kidnapping. The story never gives her enough time to find a sword or a dagger before he comes for her. She tried braining the demon with the candlestick on the 12th, 18th, and 46th time, but she’s never been strong enough to crack through his skull. She’s not strong at all so she must be prepared instead.

She walks into her wardrobe and dresses in the leather pants her father only allows her to wear while attending his hunting parties. She puts one of her riding dresses over it, the one with long pockets sown all down the skirts. She puts the dried fruit her maids leave her for midnight snacks there as well as a change of clothes, a length of rope used to tie the curtains, and a small mirror her mother left her in the left pocket. In the right, she puts some of her jewelry, a sharp-edged comb and, after a moment’s thought, transfers half of her change of clothes from the left to the right.

Her skirt, when she looks in the mirror, sits passingly even. It’ll be jarring, when the demon takes her, and she has no doubt her extra provisions will bruise her, but what doesn’t? This way she’ll have something to eat if the demon forgets to feed her like he did through most of the twentieth times.

She lies back in bed and folds her hands over her stomach. The moonlight creeps down her bedposts, flickering as clouds slide across the sky. 

Glass breaks. The smell of burning pine and wickedness fills the room. The guards shout.

Claws shred the curtains around her bed. Evil red eyes light up as they fall on her, white teeth glinting under the cold moonlight.

“Princess,” the demon growls, wings rising above him menacingly. “You’re coming with me.”

She screams when his claws sink into her arms and her neck nearly snaps from the force with which he pulls her. She can see bits of the guards as they burst into the room, wooden door splintering, and then part of the stone ground as the demon throws her over his shoulder.

She gasps, all breath knocked out of her, as the demon’s grip tightens, compressing her diaphragm. She prefers it when he carries her out in his arms. It’s gentler. She coughs for breath and feebly punches at the space between his great, leathery wings.

He flings himself out the window, laughing like the devil he is, and takes her off into the night.

———————————————-

This is the cave demon, the one who swoops too low too soon and plunges into the very depths of the earth without slowing as she screams in terror. 

He flies through the dark like he can see, though she knows he can’t. He’s more human than some of the demons who have taken her and it’s the adrenaline that he craves, more than her father’s wealth or her beauty (though both will do if he gets bored). 

He throws her into the room she’s been in before, deep underground, where water runs down one stony wall and into a hole with no end. There’s no furniture, no cot, no lavatory. It’s cool and damp in here, but the iron bars across the door show no signs of rust.

“Only the best for royalty,” the demon tells her, slamming the bars closed. He grins at her through them. “Follow the rules and maybe I’ll remember to feed you.”

The first time she was here, she asked him what the rules were. He told her that she must beg to live, must cry her pearl-like tears for mercy, and must be silent when he told her to be.

The second time she was here, he told her to never look him in the eye, to scream when he hurt her, and to sweep the dirt from the dirt floors if she wanted a chance to live.

This time she stares at him, ribs throbbing from the impact with the ground. She says, “I’m going to kill you.”

The demon’s eyes flash with surprise and then curiosity before settling on anger. “Oops,” he says, backing away from the bars, “I guess you aren’t hungry. Yet.”

She watches him sink into the dark tunnels they came through and grits her teeth. She hates the cave demon. She hates him almost more than the water demon, the one who drowned her to bring her to his kingdom, over and over and over again.

She does not hate him more than her father who is safe and warm on his throne as he searches the kingdom for her savior.

———————————

The cave demon doesn’t come back the next day. She reluctantly drinks the water from the walls, knowing from experience that poisons only affect her in the witch demon’s story. It tastes disgusting, poison or no, but she’s not willing to sacrifice her limited strength to dehydration.

She eats half her fruit that night and eyes the hole in the floor. She wonders where it goes. She wonders if she’s brave enough to find out.

There’s no light in her room, except for when the torches flare to life, seemingly on their own. She thinks they signal morning, maybe, but it doesn’t really matter this far underground.

She takes out her mother’s mirror in the faint light and stares at her face. It’s dirty from the floor and bruised from the demon’s rough handling. She touches the purple on her cheek and sighs into the pain.

She wonders if her mother knew what would happen to her daughter. She wonders if that’s why her mother went into the woods and never came back. She wonders if her mother even existed or if she was a lie the creator of this story told to make her feel so very alone with her gone.

She drinks more of the dusty water and eats a little more of her fruit while she plans. The lights go out again, plunging her into darkness.

It’s in this darkness that she hears footsteps coming down the corridor. They’re quiet at first, but then louder, crunching through the dirt so deliberately that she knows she’s supposed to hear them. She’s supposed to hear them and be afraid.

She reaches into her right pocket and touches her comb, made of bone, sharp enough that it used to cut her scalp when she parted her hair. She pulls it slowly so that she’s grabbing it by the teeth, the long handle hidden in her skirts.

Her cell door creaks open and red eyes blink in the dark in front of her.

Phaedra stands. She says, “Who’s there.” She hopes he doesn’t catch the lack of question, hopes he chalks up the tension in her voice to fear. She knows who’s there.

“Poor little princess,” the demon coos. His eyes blink out and then reappear much closer. “Afraid of the dark?”

“No,” she says but knows he doesn’t believe her. 

Sure enough, he laughs. “You are.” Too quickly, she feels the heat of his body slither around her side, to her back. He reaches around her left side (thank god) and grabs her throat, claws digging into her pulse point just shy of breaking skin. “You will be.”

She sucks in a breath, hating how difficult it is to do against the pressure of his hand. She’s shaking and she tells herself it’s not from fear.

Not only from fear.

“Don’t touch me,” she says because that’s what she said the first time he did this.

Just like then, he laughs, low and mean. His breath brushes against her right cheek and then his chin hooks over her shoulder, too much contact. “I captured you, Princess. I can do whatever–”

She plunges the handle of her comb towards where she knows his eyes will be. It connects and she feels the awful scrape of bone against bone. Did she miss that badly? Had she hit his forehead? His horns?

Then the comb skitters to the side and plunges down, down, down, straight into his eye.

He falls back, screaming, hands going up to claw at his face. He loses his grip on the darkness and the torches flare bright in the hall. Her comb is wedged into his eye, almost to the teeth, and he doesn’t seem sure whether he should yank it out or not.

“I told you,” she says, her hands shaking in her skirts, “I told you I would kill you.”

His lone eye rolls until he can see her, the pain evident across his face. “You–you–you broke the rules.”

She knows instinctively that he’s not talking about his rules. He’s talking about the rules. The demon kidnaps the princess. The princess endures her captivity. The hero rescues her. They live happily ever after.

She realizes that means he knows, like she does. He’s known that he’s done this to her before, over and over again. He knows that she’s just as doomed as he is and he chose to do it anyway. He chose to hurt her every time anyway.

An unholy rage rises in her and she steps towards the raging demon, fear forgotten. “You should know this is the last time.”

He laughs, somewhat hysterically. The blood is pouring down his face and his movements are getting jerky. It’s amazing he can talk at all. “It’s never the last time.”He falls to his knees, too weak to stand. “As soon as you get your happily ever after, I’ll be back. And I’ll make you pay.”

She leans over him and gently, so gently, taps the end of the comb. “Do I look happy to you?” she asks.

The demon’s breath stills. His good eye flies wide. “No–”

She twists the comb further into his eye and then yanks it out. His good eye rolls up until she can see the white around the red. He collapses to the ground, spasms, and then lies still.

“No,” she answers for him and heads out the door.

———————————-

It takes her two days to get out of the cave demon’s lair. Some of the routes are too corroded to climb and she has to find alternative ways to the surface. She eats bats for survival and drinks the water from the walls. 

She takes off her riding dress and uses the outer skirt to make a small pack for her jewelry and her mother’s mirror and her rope. She changes into her spare clothes, an embroidered vest and another pair of pants meant to go under a gown. It’s very improper of her to be so scantily clad.

She no longer cares about proper.

She bites back a scream when she finally breaks the surface, stepping into a world that’s too bright for her cave-dark eyes.

She’s not ashamed to admit that she cries at the feeling of the sun on her skin. It’s been longer than she thought, trapped down there, maybe a week. She feels pale and wan and weak now that she’s out.

She did it. She killed the demon. She saved herself.

“Not quite,” she mutters and gingerly takes her hand away from her eyes. She can see the forest now and the thin road winding through the low branches and dense foliage. The demon isn’t the only captor she must slay before she’s free.

She takes a breath and sets off into the forest. She’ll either meet the hero or she won’t. It doesn’t matter. He’s not her captor until her father says he is.

She follows the shadows into the forest. To home.

Her comb is still clenched in one bloody fist.

———————————–

She doesn’t realize how much she doesn’t want to meet the hero until they’re standing in front of each other a day later. He’s on his white horse, alone, his armor gleaming under the high sun.

She’s on foot and her arm is still tacky with demon blood, her eyes hard and cold as she looks at him.

“My lady,” the hero says and jumps down from his horse so quickly he nearly falls. His hand goes to his sword and his eyes go to the trees around them. “What happened? Is the demon chasing you?”

She recognizes this one. He’s the one who’s secretly the first son of the neighboring kingdom. He’s the one who will whisper sweet things into her ear and means it when he tells her he loves her.

It’s hard to let go of that happily ever after, knowing how good he’ll be to her, but she has to. He may be kind, but he’s not who she chose and that means he can’t be part of her story.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, because she really is. He needs to save someone, to prove himself. She can see it in his eyes. “I’ve got to see my father.”

His fingers tighten around his sword. His eyes slide down to where she’s still gripping her comb. His face twitches, breaking into unimaginable sorrow before he hides it behind concern. “I…see.”

She nods and goes to step around him. It’s when she’s right next to him that he grabs her arm, his fingers not meaning to bruise, but bruising all the same.

“Was it me?” he asks. There’s something burning in his eyes. She thinks it might be their future together, burning down to ash. “Was I too late this time?”

He thinks she likes being passive, sitting and waiting to be rescued by a handsome prince. He thinks that this story rides on his performance, his eloquence, his beauty. He’s too good of a man to stop her, but he wants to. If he could do it without being the bad guy, she thinks he would.

But he doesn’t because he would be. His character–whoever he’s chosen to be over and over and over again–can’t handle it.

“You were…perfect,” she says. She leans forward to kiss his cheek. She leaves bat blood behind. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he whispers.

She walks by him. He doesn’t follow her.

“He could have at least offered me a dagger,” she mutters under her breath. Nobody but the trees hears her.

————————————-

She buys a little mare from a passing merchant caravan with too much of the jewelry in her makeshift pouch. She makes them throw in one of the simple, leather bags they carry and a hunting knife. They offer to sell her food, but she declines despite their assurance it’s another five days ride to the capitol. She’s learned enough from her father’s hunts to fend for herself.

She approaches the castle very different from how she left it. Her hair is a tangled bun at the back of her head, held in place by her bloodied comb. She feels like a wild thing, sitting bareback on her little horse, gorged on rabbit she skinned herself, on berries she gathered herself,  on fish she speared herself.

She has never felt so very within her own skin before in her own life.

The blood on her face and arms–demon and bat and rabbit– is gone, washed away in a mountain stream so cold her fingers numbed when she touched it. That’s probably why, when she gets to the gate, the guards lead her to the throne room without a second thought.

They tell her all about how worried the king’s been, how he’s spent every night since the assault pacing the throne room, waiting for word from the hero. They tell her that the candles in her room have been lit since she was taken, in the hopes that she would soon return.

She stares at them–the guards and servants–until their words dry up and their eyes drop away from hers. It’s all the confirmation she needs. They knew, just like the demon, just like the hero.

They’ve known.

She opens the throne room doors herself and closes them gently behind her.

The first eight times, the king was pacing, hands wringing, when the hero carried her dashingly into the castle. He used to worry, a pinched look on his face and his eyes forever darting to her, her bruises, the muck on her dress.

He cried at her first thirteen weddings. He smiled at the rest, the ones he bothered to attend.

(She remembers him from long ago his hands on her shoulders with pride.Back when she believed–well. It doesn’t matter what she believed.)

The king is sitting on his throne now, a heavy frown dragging across his face and a cup of mead in his hand. His eyes flick behind her, then to her face, and then back to the door as if waiting for it to open.

“You’re alone?” he asks.

Her lip curls. His first concern is for the hero, of course. “He couldn’t make it.”

The king doesn’t notice the look on her face. His expression clears and he stands, shoulders sloping with grief as he makes his way to the window. “Oh my god. That poor man, I knew he was willing to lay down his life to rescue you, but…” He looks out the window for a long moment. “We won’t forget his sacrifice.”

Phaedra’s surprised by the spike of irritation that pierces through her.  She’s irritated that he’s assumed that she couldn’t have escaped on her own. She’s irritated that he’s grieving for a boy he didn’t know instead of her, his daughter. She’s irritated that he didn’t hug her like he used to when she came in, safe and sound.

He used to care if she was hurt or scared. He used to care. 

Maybe she feels betrayed.

 She walks to bottom most step of the dais quietly and, after a moments consideration, climbs the first of the three steps. She stands there and waits for her father to look at her.

The king doesn’t look at her. He paces back to his throne and puts a hand on the back of it, steadying himself. He looks at a point over her head, eyes fixed on a far away point. “The lad didn’t want me to know, but he was the first prince of our cousins to the south. With his death, their lineage is at risk. An arranged marriage with the second prince wouldn’t be turned away, not in these circumstances.”

Now she feels betrayed.

“I was just kidnapped,” she says. Her voice shakes and she knows it sounds like she’s about to cry. She’s trying desperately to keep herself from screaming. “I just got home and you already want to send me away?”

The king finally looks at her, salt-and-pepper eyebrows flying up. “Sweetheart, of course not, I’m so grateful to see you home safe and sound. I was so worried. But we must repay the young hero’s sacrifice for the good of both our countries.”

“He’s not dead,” she says. She climbs the second step, the weight on the balls of her feet. Her comb is heavy in her hair, but she finds herself reluctant to reach for it. There’s a lump in her throat. “The cave demon is though.”

“So he killed the demon,” the king says, relieved. “Then I’ll honor his deed with your hand in marriage–”

“No!” She’s not sure who’s more surprised by her outburst–her or her father. But she’s the one who recovers first. “What if I want to stay here? What if I don’t want to go?”

The king’s expression softens. “Sweetheart.” He walks over to her, standing one step above her, and puts his hands on her shoulders like he used to when she was young. “Sweetheart, I’m just trying to make sure you get your happily ever after.”

Happily ever after. She wants to scream. He used to love her.

“I killed the demon,” she says. She’s not hurt when he pulls his hands back. She watches him retreat and tries to feel anything but the anger. “The hero didn’t come to my rescue, papa. I did.”

“You–” the king shakes his head. When he looks at her again, there’s no age in his eyes and a sort of bone deep weariness. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

So he knew too. He doomed her to be the princess forever, rescued and bartered for–what? Trade deals and alliances that reset every time someone out there decided she was happy.

“They hurt me, papa,” she says. Her voice is very soft. “Each time you didn’t put enough guards on my room, they took me and hurt me. The water demon swept me away and drowned me. The witch demon forced poisons down my throat until I could feel them bubbling in my lungs. The wind demon laughed when he cut me–”

“Stop.” The king takes a shaking breath, real pain flashing through his eyes for a second. Just a second. Then he straightens. “We–you get your happily ever after, Phaedra, and our country prospers. Isn’t that alright? Isn’t that fair?”

“No,” she says. She climbs the next step, her hesitance dissolving as his words seep in. He thinks this is fair. Like the hero, he thinks she wants this. “No one ever asked me. That’s why it’s not alright.”

“Phaedra,” he says. He doesn’t retreat when she steps forward. He holds out a hand, beseeching. “It’s–it’s not right of me to ask this of you, but surely you can endure? It’s–the demon is only for a little while. I can be faster with the heroes. I can make sure you’re never there for longer than a day. Then you’ll be safe and you’ll have a handsome suitor to take you away–”

 “Sometimes,” she says, “they hurt me too.” Her hand creeps up and finds the cold teeth of her ivory comb. 

He sucks in a quick breath at that, eyes widening. “N-no, they’re good men–”

"That doesn’t mean I belong to them,” she says. Her lips quirk. “How can I have my happily ever after when I’m not happy?”

Something like sorrow crosses across his face. “Sweetheart–”

When she strikes, she has the mercy to be quick about it. She kills him like the cave demon and isn’t surprised when he dies faster. The king was a monster, but a human one. He bleeds out fast.

She takes her ivory comb with her when she leaves, her father’s body slumped against the foot of her mother’s throne. She could sit in his spot now, rule the kingdom with a more compassionate and honest hand than he ever did.

She knows she should. She is the only child of her father and her mother and their family is practically non-existent considering how poorly this story’s been fleshed out. She could take the throne and everyone would rejoice because her lineage is strong and a demon is dead by her hand.

It’s too much of a happy ending. It’s possible whatever curse is on her, on her kingdom, could decide that it qualifies enough to send her back to that first night. She won’t end up back here. She won’t.

There’s only one person who’s ever escaped this story.

Phaedra leaves the throne room, comb clutched in her hand, and makes her way to the woods.

—————————–

The people in her kingdom don’t hunt game in the Old Forest. It’s too thick, too dark, too cursed. They say they can hear women laughing in there, long past the sun has sunk to the horizon and well into the night. They say that there are strange houses that move around as if they are on legs. They say that Outsiders live in those houses, people (and things) who don’t belong, can’t belong.

It’s not a happy ending to be an Outsider. Not, at least, in the conventional sense.

She follows the ghost of her mother into the woods, knees shaking from exhaustion. Her knuckles are white and red with blood around her weapon. Her embroidered tunic is stained with the last bit of her father she’ll ever see.

She thinks this feeling in her chest is a lot like the one from that first rescue. It’s like when she didn’t know about her repeated abductions and only felt that horrible elation when she first saw the knight break into the demon’s lair. It’s like that moment when she saw the sun on his helmet and knew she might be lucky enough to go home.

It feels a lot like hope.

She walks deeper and deeper into the woods. The ground is thick with ancient tree roots, but she never trips. The branches are low and curling, but they never catch in her hair. The sun goes down and the leaves block out any light the moon might have lent her, but she is never blind.

The Old Forest drags her into its embrace and, when a house appears in the gloom ahead, perched on thin, spindly legs, she’s not afraid.  

She recognizes the skulls on the porch as inhuman, pierced through with stakes and what looks like a scepter. She is not frightened by them–she knows that there’s safety in the dead. There is a warm glow shining through the windows and she can smell something cooking through the gaps in the walls. Smoke slips through the chimney and it’s not normal smoke. It’s green and purple and sparkling as it threads its way through the canopy.

The door opens at her approach. There’s a woman, hunched forward and peering into the dark. Her hair is silver, twisting around her head in a braid and over her shoulder. She’s wearing tattered robes, stained beyond recognition, but the inside is the of the royal color.  Her nose is familiar–it’s the same hooked nose Phaedra has herself.

“Mom,” Phaedra says.

Her mother grins, wide and free like Phaedra never remembers her doing before, and opens her arms. Phaedra is up the stairs in a second, hardly noticing as the house rises on its legs just a moment later. She crashes into her mother’s arms and lets the hope shudder through her. It’s real this time. It’s real.

She’s home.

Hey y’all thanks for reading! I am so happy with how this short story turned out. 

If you’d like to see my writing a full week before it appears on Tumblr, or if you’d like to support me, please consider checking me out on Patreon (X)

Thanks again!

[libraryoftime]

CINDERELLA: REDO

so i was watching cinderella while doing my nails and waiting for them to dry which was clearly a Mistake because now i can’t help but think -

the evil stepmother was always evil, okay. say her abuse of her own daughters was different than that of cinderella’s - but it was still abuse. giving them impossible expectations, telling them they were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough. and then she gets married, and anastasia and drizella are ecstatic because this man seems kind and warm and maybe just maybe he can temper their mother, maybe with him around she won’t be so cruel. so they’re on their very best behavior in the beginning, they do just as their mother taught - they trot out their best upper court manners in an attempt to get their new stepfather to like them. but it just comes off as cold and snooty and they’re trying, they are, they’re just bad at it. and they see how he is with cinderella, the smiling girl their own age, and they are jealous. they don’t mean to be, they try not to be, they know it isn’t becoming of young ladies. but she gets hugs and kisses and affection and they get rulers slapped on their hands when they reach for desert and sharp jabs to their sides when they slouch and - soon they hate cinderella, not for anything she’s done, but for what she has and they dont

but then her father dies. and it’s all a tumble of things and cinderella is crying and they’ve lost their only chance at escaping their mother’s clutches and it’s terrible. and everything settles and there’s no reason to be jealous anymore but resentment is hard to let go of and they don’t know what to do. they’re only kids too after all. and they’re so terribly bad at comforting people, they can do flowery words and know all the right bows but cinderella is so sad and they just don’t know what to do with that, because they’re supposed to be sisters but they’re not even friends

and slowly but surely their mother starts abusing cinderella, starts making her a maid in her own home, and she’s their mother, what are anastasia and drizella supposed to do? she rules them with an iron fist, and cinderella doesn’t even like them anyway, it’s none of their business.

except one night anastasia crawls into her sister’s bed in the middle of the night and wakes her up. “i was thirsty,” she explains, eyes wide and shiny, and they’re bad at this with other people but drizella has no problems with pulling anastasia into her arms. the younger girl clutches her sister and continues, “i was thirsty and i went down to the kitchen to get some water and - and cinderella is still up! she’s doing the dishes, and she should be asleep, mom is going to make her make breakfast in the morning and -” she cuts herself off with a hiccup and whispers, “it’s not fair.”

“life isn’t fair,” drizella says, echoing one of their mother’s favorite phrases. but her sister is staring at her with wet eyes, and it’s not like their mother is likely to get up before sunrise anyway, she hates waking up, so she pulls herself and anastasia out of bed and off they go.

~

cinderella hands are cramping and she’s so tired her vision’s gone fuzzy when a hesitant hand touches her shoulder. she whirls around and drizella presses a finger to her lips. she pulls cinderella away from from the sink, and anastasia steps forward, a determined set to her mouth even though washing dishes isn’t something she’s ever done before.

drizella leads her to her bed in the attic, and her mouth turns down at the corners at the state of it all. “stay here,” she whispers to cinderella before darting away and cinderella is too confused and too tired to do anything but collapse face first into her bed. she falls asleep almost instantly, and is awoken briefly by the feeling of something soft and heavy being put over her, and for the first time the chilly draft of the attic can’t reach her and she falls into the first peaceful sleep she’d had since her father died.

she wakes up the next morning, thinking it had to be a dream, but she’s covered by drizella’s comforter instead of her threadbare blanket. she rushes downstairs, certain it’s all been a mistake. but the dishes are done, sparklingly clean if haphazardly stacked. the ashes from the fireplace have been swept, although the bag containing them has been put by the door instead of taken out, and the counters and floors are scrubbed clean, although the bucket of rags is stuck by the sink, because cinderella doubts they know where the trash or laundry goes. there’s even a basket of eggs waiting for her to start breakfast, which means anastasia and drizella hadn’t finished until nearly dawn.

she stands in the middle of the kitchen and cries. it’s the first bit or kindness she’s been shown in so long - and what a show of kindness, from girls she thought hated her, from girls she knows have never cleaned anything in their lives.

she makes breakfast and wipes at her eyes. her stepmother comes down to eat, but drizella and anastasia brush past them, dressed to go out, and cinderella immediately focuses on the gloves they’re wearing, a fashion statement they don’t normally make. it’s likely to hide the red, blistered hands they must have from cleaning. “we’re going to town,” drizella says imperiously, nose turned up, “we’ll be back for lunch.”

they’re too young to go to town on their own, cinderella thinks, drizella is her age, not even fourteen yet, and anastasia is only twelve.

“very well,” her stepmother says, clutching her tea and not fully awake. “do try not to get lost this time.”

cinderella doesn’t think that’s very fair, because the roads here are very windy and narrow and it’s not like a city, where everything is all neatly planned. many people get lost here. but the sisters don’t flinch, only say, “yes, mother,” and are out the door.

cinderella spends the day gardening, the sun hot and eventually painful. she’s desperate to ask the sisters about what they did, but she doesn’t want to risk it. it was probably just a fluke, a moment of pity that isn’t likely to be repeated. still. it’s not a moment she’s likely to forget.

she drags herself to her room, dishes undone but garden finished by the light of the moon, and decides she’ll wake up early to do them instead of staying up even later.

but when she enters her room, the breath leaves her lungs and she’s suddenly wide awake. drizella’s comforter is gone, but in it’s place is a thick quilt and new pillows and she takes trembling steps closer and lifts back the quilt to reveal soft, clean sheets that don’t have any holes or stains. she was just going to collapse into bed but it’s all too new and clean to ruin with her dirt covered body, so she cleans herself as quickly as she can, cold water and a rough cloth, but she’s so desperate to get into the bed that suddenly looks so inviting.

she wakes up early, more refreshed and energized than she’s felt in a long time, and goes downstairs. but she freezes at the bottom of the stairs, because she can see drizella and anastasia standing side by side at the sink, talking softly as they clean yesterday’s dishes.

she wants to go to them, thank them, ask them why they’re doing this. but she’s afraid that it’s like a spell, that if she acknowledges it that they’ll deny it and take it all back, she’ll be right where she started. so she carefully steps back up the stairs and goes back to bed, grabs another precious hour of sleep and then comes back down at the normal time. the dishes are done and the eggs have been gathered.

~

anastasia likes this, it feels like a secret, and she’s never had a fun secret before. the chores aren’t as fun, but she does them with drizella, laughing and talking together, so that makes it okay. when cinderella does them, she does them alone, and that makes her sad.

“she’s smaller than me right?” anastasia asks, “do you think my old dresses would fit her? we can’t get her new ones, we spent all our pocket money getting the bed stuff last week.”

“and mom would be suspicious if we asked for more,” drizella agrees, frowning, “but she’ll also recognize anything of ours we give to her.”

“oh,” anastasia says, “that’s true.” they’re silent for a moment, then she says, “what if - what if we use my dresses to make - different dresses? plainer ones, ones mom won’t recognize.”

drizella pauses in scrubbing the countertop, considering it. “we can’t sew.”

“but the seamstress can!” she enthuses, and regrets it the second it comes out of her mouth because their mother would snap at her for stating the obvious and call it a waste of air, but drizella only nods for her to continue. “she can do it. and - and we don’t have any money. but you’re really good at embroidery, maybe we can trade?”

“i’m not good at embroidery,” drizella tilts her head to the side, confused, “i’ll mess it up and then we’ll end up owing the seamstress even more.”

“you are,” anastasia insists stubbornly, “i know mom says - but i’ve seen other girls’ okay, and you’re good. really good.”

drizella shrugs, non committal, and anastasia doesn’t push. but she digs out a half dozen of her old dresses that she doesn’t wear anymore, just in case, and tucks away a grin when they disappear and a skirt with delicate, intricate flowers at the border takes it place.

this is another thing they have to hide from their mother, so for a week straight anastasia does the chores alone while drizella sits at the kitchen table and embroiders by candlelight. they’re both exhausted and drizella’s fingers are sore and bloody, but the seamstress is delighted with the work and happily hands over the two dresses made to plain and boring, and four skirts and shirts that she salvaged from the rest of them. “this was a bargain,” the seamstress says when they thank her, marveling over the perfect flowers her sister had done, “you ever want to make a trade again, you let me know. or if you want some side work. i could use hands like yours.”

and this is something their mother would consider to be “below their station” but anastasia sees the way her sister lights up at the praise, and it becomes a thing, whenever the seamstress needs some complicated embroidery done she calls on drizella, who does it not in the bright light of day, but by candlight in the dead of night.

they leave the new clothes for her that night as soon as their mother goes to bed. they’re just leaving when cinderella steps inside, face smudged with ash from cleaning out the fireplace. the girls stare at each other for a moment, each of them terrified to make the first move, but the sisters’ manners kick in first and they give a shallow curtsy and murmur “cinderella.”

she doesn’t say anything, still staring with wide eyes. anastasia blurts, “we’re sorry for going into your room without not asking. but we got you some new clothes.” she points to the parcels on the bed and then wilts a little, “well, not new new. they’re my old dresses, but the seamstress in town spruced them up. or down, really, because we didn’t want mom to know. but they don’t have any rips or stains or anything! so. yeah,” she finishes lamely, and drizella is so tense next to her that she fears her sister is going to snap in two and her face is so hot she has to be bright red, and she regrets everything, they never should have gotten out of bed that night, cinderella is going to laugh at them and call them stupid and -

cinderella throws herself on them, a skinny arm around each of their necks and sobs into their shoulders. “thank you,” she says, “thank you, thank you, thank you!”

and they fold their arms around her, cautious, but when she only cries harder it’s easy for them to pull her close and not let go.

so that’s how they play the game for the next five years, until they’re nineteen. anastasia and drizella get up in the middle of the night to do the dishes and mop the floors and clean the kitchen and clear out the fireplace and gather the eggs for breakfast. they go to bed right before cinderella gets up and sleep for a few more hours until she wakes them up for breakfast.

they keep giving her things, stuff they get at the market and their own things that they think their mother won’t notice, and slowly and surely cinderella’s room becomes a place that’s comfortable and pretty instead of depressing, and her wardrobe goes from rags to simply plain, and the sisters fret that it’s not enough, that it’s not fair, but their mother is a hawk and a tyrant and they don’t know what more they can do.

cinderella says it’s enough. sure her stepmother orders her around, but she also ignores her. she aches to defend drizella and anastasia against her harsh words and constant criticisms, but she knows it’s no use. they’re all stuck under her step mother’s thumb. but she does her best, compliments drizella’s needlework and tells her she’s clever, smuggles anastasia her favorite sweet buns after their mother forbids them because she thinks anastasia is getting fat.

she may be only a servant in her own home, but she’s also invisible. when it comes to her stepmother, invisible is the best thing to be.

then the ball is announced. no one is under any illusions about what stepmother will allow, and drizella and anastasia are upset but cinderella shrugs it off and tells them to have fun for her instead. but that’s not good enough for them, so they go to the seamstress and strike a deal, and drizella spends the time until the ball up to her eyeballs in embroidery. anastasia slips out to the baker’s, her favorite place, and to the baker’s apprentice, a kind boy with a wide smile an stub nose, and asks him a favor. he agrees, eye twinkling, and asks for nothing in return. anastasia leaves before she can get any more flustered.

so on the day of the ball the sisters and their mother ride off in the carriage. not ten minutes later there’s a knock on the door. she opens it to the baker’s apprentice, grinning and holding out a box. “special delivery to one miss cinderella.”

she takes it, confused, and opens it. she gasps and takes the gown out. it’s gorgeous and sparkles like thousands of diamonds, and it looks more expensive than either of the gowns her sisters were wearing. “how?” she demands, wide eyed.

“drizella did a lot of embroidery for the ball, apparently,” he says, “so the seemstress made you a dress equal to that work.” he holds out his hand, a pair of glass slippers on his fingers, “here, these were my mother’s. i don’t know if they’ll fit, but when i saw the dress i knew they had to go together.”

“your mother’s?” she gasps, “oh no, i couldn’t -”

“i’m never going to wear them,” he says practically, “besides, i know it will make anastasia happy. so. please, take them.”

“thank you,” she whispers, accepting the slippers.

he beams and says, “now hurry up and get dressed. i have deliveries to make after dropping you off,” and she looks out the door and the baker’s cart is outside and she beams and gets dressed and made up as quickly as she can, using her sisters’ make up because she knows they won’t mind, and is delivered to the ball.

and it goes just like it does, she meets the prince and they fall in love, and she has to run away to avoid getting caught by her stepmother. her sisters sneak up to her attic when they get home and demand she tell them everything, and they stay up gossiping and talking and she thanks them over and over again for the dress and for this one night they all feel like normal girls

her stepmother discovers part of what happened and locks her up, but anastasia finds a guard who finds another guard who finds one of the royal servants who knows a duke who gets her an audience with the prince, and she tells him everything. so the prince goes marching to their home and frees cinderella and asks her to marry him.

she agrees and she’s about to leave with him when she - stops. and looks at drizella and anastasia and then she turns to the prince and says, “that woman is not my mother, but those girls are my sisters. please can - please?”

and he smiles and looks at them and winks at anastasia and says, “but of course.”

and so the sisters move into the palace with cinderella and their stepmother gets nothing. they teach cinderella how to act in court, how to bow and curtsy and the right thing to say, how to know when someone hates you by the way they smile. drizella becomes a master seamstress in her own right with a particular talent for embroidery, and is eventually persuaded to marry a duke who is head over heels in love with her and whom she likes very much and thinks she could grow to love. anastasia marries the baker’s apprentice who becomes the baker and she’s pregnant almost immediately and is delighted by it. they plan to have at least three more.

and they all live happily ever after.

5 YEARS AGO ON FEBRUARY 13, 2017 AT 3:42 AM

original post

 my ficdisneycinderellajesus christ this was longi didn't plan thati never do honestlyon the bright side my nails are dry nowfandom ficceryretold fairytales

[libraryoftime]

You were once the most powerful villain. You retired early and are engaged to a minor super hero who isn’t aware of your past. They are about to be killed right before your eyes..but you step in.

 She asks him why maybe a dozen times before they decide to get married. It’s not hard to figure out where he goes in the little hours of the morning, not hard to follow him to the edges of forests and abandoned towns and deserts, not hard to smell the spandex, blood and sweat that he wears home. He’s always got bags under his eyes and dirt under his nails and the blood that stains their welcome mat is more often his than not.

So she asks him why before they decide to get married because for all her mysteries, she can’t have him be one.

(Hypocrite isn’t the worst name she’s ever been called.)

He hardly looks surprised at the question, lips quirking as his fingers find the condensation on the glass in front of him. He runs his forefinger up the side, the move thoughtlessly seductive, before drawing it away. The water follows, a thin stream of twisting molecules for a long moment before the tension snaps and it forms a circle hovering above the pad of his finger.

“I may not be a Superhero,” he says, “or even a hero. But when I needed someone, when I really needed someone, a superhero was there. It’s an amazing thing to experience. The rescue. The salvation. It’s…indescribable. It makes you thankful in way you didn’t know you could be.” He allows the water to drop to the diner table and gives her a warm, nostalgic smile. “I want everyone to have that, even if it’s just some guy in a mask with a spray of water at his command. I became Zone for that and I’ve never regretted it. Not once. ”

She’s surprised by the moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes. She hasn’t cried in public for years, normally doesn’t even have to worry about the possibility after years of being on guard. That’s what’s special about Gannon; he makes her feel vulnerable and safe all at once. Comforted. Able to exist within herself, at peace.

She reaches past her empty breakfast plate to cover his hand with her hot palm. The smile she returns is new, her most precious treasure and something she’d never think twice about giving him.

He’s the one who helped her find it after all.

———————————————–

Before they decide to get married, they’re sitting in their two bedroom apartment, his feet in her lap and her book over his shins. She thinks he’s watching TV and lets herself frown as the antagonist taunts the protagonist for pages and pages and pages and pages.

It’s before they decide to get married when he asks, Nadezh, will you ever tell me about your past?”

She starts, hands clenching at just the wrong time. The pages tear a little, the sound discordant against the pleasant hum of the television, and she looks up to find him watching her, studying her.

Mouth dry she says, “If you need it. If you ask.” Because, god help her, she would, she would and she’d lose him because she’d rather he hate her than not have something he needs.

(She doesn’t know if this is what love’s supposed to feel like, be like, but she wants it so much she can taste blood in her mouth. She wants it so she’ll have it, just like always.)

He smiles at her, eyes half-lidded with patience and something that almost seems sad. “It’s not important.”

She dissects that as they sit there, frozen and cold except for where his legs cross her thighs. It is important, what he asks is always important, but he’s not pushing. He doesn’t look disappointed or angry or anything like she’d thought he would when he finally asked about her past.

“It…seems like it’s important,” she says, each word costing her. She clears her throat, tries to talk a little more naturally. “You–you should ask. You deserve to ask.” You deserve to know.

She realizes that she doesn’t want to be the one to condemn him to this not knowing. She doesn’t want to keep this secret from him, doesn’t want to be the one who betrays him in the end. But she needs him to ask because she can’t open the cage around the words that would send him away from her forever. She needs him to (not) do it because she’s never been that strong.

He keeps smiling at her though and doesn’t ask. Instead he says, “I have you. That’s already more than I deserve.”

She chokes on the instinctive protest and smiles helplessly back.

—————————————————————————-

It’s like pretending, sometimes, being with him. Sometimes he looks towards the horizon and the light catches on the hard cut of his jaw and she’s afraid instead of in love. She has to fix a blank look on her face, has to hide the horror, has to act out affection before he turns. 

It’s when he looks far off that he seems most like a hero and she feels most like a villain. Because what else is she doing but luring him further and further away from the light?

You’re greedy like a spider, her father had once told her. He’d been drunk, as usual, and no meaner than her mother when sober. Always taking. You don’t even let your prey go when you’re done.

She’d taken a doll from her neighbor, kept it and played with it until the stitching had come all undone. She’d thought they’d last forever, having never owned one herself, and had hoped she’d be able to keep it more than a month before her parents found out.

She doesn’t have parents now to take and burn Gannon, but the doll had been destroyed long before they’d come to her room with flames.

Heroes, she knows, have seams on seams and seams. It’s only a matter of time until she starts unraveling him.

———————————————————————————————

“You know,” he says the day before they decide to get married, “I’m much stronger than you think, Nadezh.”

She’s sitting on their bed, spreadsheets and tables spread around her like debris. She has a presentation at work tomorrow, a suggestion on how to divvy up the budget so her company can afford new printers and new chairs, and she feels hardly prepared for the sheer normalcy of the assignment. “What?”

“I think we should get married,” he says. He’s putting on his suit, each piece of armor fabricated to mold to his body perfectly. The armor is a gift from her, the sight of spandex having made her physically nauseous with worry when he showed her. He starts buckling his forearm pieces in place. “And I think you think we shouldn’t.”

She chokes on her tongue. “I don’t–you can’t really think–” She breaks off and bites her lip because he’s right. “I don’t think you’re really thinking it through, Gannon. You might cha– we work so well now. Why change?”

“Because I’m not going to change my mind,” he says. He fixes her with his piercing brown eyes, fingers dexterous on the leather and metal on his arm. “That’s what you think. You think that by not getting married, you’re leaving me free to leave you. You think that, somehow, I’ll eventually not want you. You think a lot of stupid shit,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.

If this was a different conversation, she might have laughed. “You don’t know everything about me. The things that I can’t say, they’re–they’re bad. Bad things have happened to me, Gannon, I–I’ve done bad things–”

He puts a knee on the bed, pushing into her space, and stops her with a finger on her lips. “I know you, Nadezh. I don’t need your past, I need your future. Our future. Together. Please don’t make this decision for me.”

There’s a lump in her throat, put there by his warmth, his kindness, and his stupidity.

He sighs and kisses her lightly before drawing away. “Think about it. Please.”

She watches him put on the last of his armor, watches as he pulls his mask out from under the floorboards and fix it onto his face. When he turns to leave, she finds her tongue. “I love you.”

He pauses in the doorway. “I love you.” He grins wryly. “That’s why I really, really want to marry you.”

He leaves her sitting on the bed, heart pounding and mouth dry.

———————————————————————

The day they decide to get married, Nadezh kills her presentation. The executives shake her hand and tell her that they’d been hearing good things, that this confirms it, that she’s an asset to the company.

Her. An asset to a civilian.

She feels high, elated, as she leaves the office. She’s done it, she gone normal and she’s good at it.

She finds Gannon already in their apartment, a frozen bag of peas pressed to his new split lip. He freezes in the act of changing the channel, feet coming off the coffee table at the look on her face.

“Let’s get married,” she says. She can’t stop grinning, eyes wild and feverish, too bright, too loud, too much. “I may never be able to give you my past, but I can do this, I can do the future. Let’s get married.”

She may feel too much, but Gannon’s never shared the sentiment.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, jerking to his feet. His smile, when it blooms, it just as big as hers. “Let’s get married.”

They meet in the middle of the room and agree to get married.

————————————————————-

It’s the second month anniversary of agreeing to get married when Gannon starts packing an overnight bag for a mission.

“It’s just cursory,” he tells her, folding his underwear around his socks. “The League’s been hearing some chatter and they want a presence by the docks to put the city’s mind at ease. My team probably won’t even see anything, we’re stationed out in the boonies practically. I should be home by Monday.”

She pushes off the door frame and comes up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and standing on tiptoe to put her chin on his shoulder. “I’m worried. Isn’t it a pretty big deal when Foresight hands out orders?” As the head of the League and a clairvoyant, there wasn’t anyone better at sniffing out trouble than Foresight.

“If,” he says carefully, “you ask me not to go, I’ll stay.” There’s a lot behind those words, caution and offering all in one.

She stills, chin sliding off his shoulders so she can press her forehead to his spine. There’s a loud voice inside of her demanding that she keep him safe, well, and happy in that order. It’d be so easy to keep him with her, lock him to her side where no villain but her could have a shot at his goodness.

But she fell in love with him and she’s already taken too much. She can’t take this from him too.

She steps away and tugs on his arm until he turns unwillingly to her. She reaches up and cups his face with one hand, fingers brushing where his mask meets his dark skin. She smiles. “Go save the world, sweetheart. I’ll be here when you get back.”

The relief in his eyes tells her she made the right choice. She’ll keep him a little longer yet so long as she keeps herself from stealing his happiness.

Nadezh watches him leave on the 2 month anniversary of their deciding to get married and hugs herself.

Something, the fire in her gut whispers, isn’t right. 

—————————————

It’s Sunday morning when the fire breaks her after a long night of smoldering and taunting. Nadezh is going on her 24th hour of being awake but there’s no sign of the strain. She’s able to go much longer, in the end, so long as the fire burns.

She’s followed Gannon hundreds of times before, but not once since they decided to get married. It feels like a betrayal somehow, like following him is not trusting him when it can’t be further from the truth. It’s the world that she doesn’t trust with him.

Still, she feels guilty as she slips from their apartment and makes her way out of town, collar of her rain coat pulled tight around her throat to hide the clothing underneath. Something had stopped her before she left, some faint trace of smoke that had lead her to her own hidden floorboard in the apartment.

She tends to trust the smoke more than the fire. It never lies about danger.

It doesn’t take long to find the docks Gannon had been talking about despite his lack of information. She follows the coast line up in their car, crisp wind pulling at her hair as she looks out the window for clues. Three hours north she finds what she’s looking for; a police barricade blocking off some of the smaller roads running parallel to the small town ahead.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the officer who waves her forward says, “but Hutchinson Bay’s closed. Bit of a superhero skirmish, you know how it is.”

Her heart plummets far past her stomach. She makes her voice dismissive. “I’m not going to Hutchinson Bay, I’m going to Maine. Surely I can still use the main highway.”

The officer’s face sours at her tone, but he remains polite. “Of course, sorry for the inconvenience. Head straight another ten minutes and follow the signs for the detour.” He waits for her cold nod and then slaps the roof of her car. “Have a safe trip.”

“Surely,” she says and pulls away, heart conspicuously absent in her chest. A fight long enough for police to collaborate with highway patrol?

It’s no longer a battle. It’s so much worse.

She never makes it to the detour. She drives her car into a ditch and takes off on foot. It’s much less likely they’ll be able to see her that way.

“Please be okay,” she whispers, scaling down the steep embankment towards the bay. “Please.”

—————-

The first villain she sees isn’t a fucking superhero at all, just some hired merc dressed in black who doesn’t check his six nearly often enough to have a hope of catching her. She snakes around him from behind, wrapping her arm around his throat so he can’t do much more than gurgle.

“You can tell me what’s going on,” she whispers in his ear, “or you can die.”

He jerks forward and swings his elbow viciously back, trying to get her off. She’s too small for him to get a good angle though and she tightens her hold until his face starts turning from red to purple.

“You could have lived,” she says, voice cold with disappointment. He struggles harder at that, nearly succeeding in throwing her to the ground several times but, as rusty as she is, she’s been at this for a very long time.

It takes almost a painful amount of willpower to release her grip when he sags, sparing his life. Barely.

“Oh, Gannon, what have you done to me?” She’s too soft to survive at this point.

She creeps around a stack of shippinc containers, noting when the concrete platform gives way to a metal deck. The dock is more like a pier, concrete and metal thrusting out into the ocean a few hundred feet. Docked at its side is an freight ship, sitting heavy in the water.

Her eyes slide over tankards, crates, and containers with diamond signs affixed to their fronts.  There’s a turned over army vehicle half-hanging off the far end of the pier. A group of mercenaries are hovering over eight, camoflouged figures, heavy weaponry pointed threateningly. It’s almost too easy to put together, almost disappointingly easy to parse out even from so few clues.

Someone wants a floating evil lair, preloaded with oil, weaponize-able substances and government technology. Someone’s already managed to subdue the normal combat units. Someone’s somehow neutralized the super powered combat units

She’d bet anything they’re on the ship.

——————————————————-

It’s easy to scale the side of the massive ship, less easy to do it without attracting the attention of the normal mercenaries still littering the dock below. She manages purely by being fast, small, and very, very still when their patrol passes close enough to the propellers to see her melting her way into the hull of the ship.

She scuttles inside, molten metal cooling too fast to allow for any drips.

There are a few guards to take out as she starts her methodical search. Each one just confirms her theory. Some nasty little roach is running this show using a mix of hired help and villains so far down on the totem pole that they don’t even have a chance to use their powers before she’s putting them out.

It’s on the level just underneath the deck (the last place she looks so of course it’s where Gannon is) that she finally finds someone she recognizes.

“It’s the Ice Twins then, right?” she asks.

Tumult, a villain with the ability to shift your perception 30 degrees, jerks away from the security screen he’s been messing with, eyes wide. They get wider when he recognizes her and his hands shake as he scrambles up from his chair. There’s something familiar about the shirt peaking out from under his, frankly, over-the-top cape, but she can’t put her finger on it.

“Y-you,” he says. he swallows heavily. “They didn’t tell me they were inviting you.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You really think the Ice Twins would have to invite me?” She laughs. “I’ve been away too long if you think for a moment that I’d work with them.”

“They said you were dead,” Tumult says. He backs away slowly, red eyes flicking from doorway to doorway for an exit. “They said–look, you can have the ship and the-the weapons and everything, okay? I don’t want any trouble.”

“Oh,” she says. “We got trouble, Tumult. We already got it.”

She recognizes his shirt now. It’s not a shirt at all, but the stomach plate of Gannon’s armor.

The corridor fills with heat.

—————————————————-

Nadezh finally lays on her fiancee on the top deck. It’s been two months and three days since they agreed to be married and he’s spending that fourth day on his knees, tied to his two teammates with frozen chains, without her.

“The League will figure out your decoys,” Omit, Gannon’s team leader snarls. For a hero whose only ability is to temporarily delete certain things from view, he doesn’t look too upset. It doesn’t sound like the first time he’s declared it. “They’re on their way right now.”

“Yeah,” Spear says, rolling her eyes. She’s sitting on a throne of ice, one hand propping up her chin as she watchers her brother, Spike, circle the heroes. “We know. We’ve got another hour, maybe two. That’s why we’ll be having a little welcoming party all set up for them.”

Spike grins, casually twirling a spear of ice in his hands. He pretends to lunge at Flare, the team’s flier, and laughs when she gasps.

“Leave her alone,” Gannon hisses. There’s blood dripping out from underneath his blue mask, blood matting what’s visible of his dark, curly hair. 

“Ding, ding, ding,” Spike cheers. “We have a winner!” He jerks a closed fist through the air. At the same moment, the chains around the three–made entirely out of ice–split. The chains around Gannon drag him away from his team, throwing him chest first onto the deck at Spike’s feet. “Thanks for volunteering, cousin.”

“I’m not your cousin.” Gannon struggles up to his knees, biceps straining against the quickly reforming bonds. His jaw tenses at the cries and protests from his team members, but he pointedly ignores them.

Nadezh eases forward to a stack of crates that are just big enough to hide her. The fire in her gut is lashing against her ribs, her collarbones, her tongue.

“Sure you are,” Spear says. She slips from her throne, sliding down an icy ramp until she’s next to her brother. “You’ve got your water trick and we’ve got all this fucking ice.”

“We’re not so different if you look at it that way,” Spike agrees.

“What are you going to do?” Flare grits out. She hovers for a moment and is slammed back to the deck’s surface by her chains. “Let him go!”

“Sorry,” Spear says, not sounding sorry at all. “Can’t do that. Your leader’s right, the League’s on the way and this stupid tub isn’t seaworthy thanks to your little stunt. Which means this is now a negotiation, not a casual case of stealing.”

“Which means,” Spike says, “we’re gonna need a little demonstration to show whatever stuck-up bureaucrat the League sends that we’re serious.”

“And,” Spear continues, “nothing says serious like a human popsicle in our experience.”

“No!” Flare and Omit shout at the same time.

“Yes!” Spike laughs.

“Look on the bright side,” Spear says, raising her hands. They’re already frosting over the ice blue of her gloves, “with your little water show you might die a little slower.”

Nadezh erupts from behind the crates and the deck floods with heat. Flames lick along the metal, racing faster than the blink of an eye. They cut between Spear and Gannon, leaping ten, twelve feet in the air just as the ice blasts from her hands.

Steam fills the air as the two elements meet. She rolls forward blindly, trusting her instincts, and is rewarded when she hears the hiss of ice soaring above her. She sends another wall of flame towards where she last saw the twins, this one pouring from her open mouth.

There’s a scream and voices babbling, mixing together as the steam rolls past them all.

When it finally clears, she’s standing between the heroes and the villains. The Ice Twins are crouched twenty feet from her, Spike desperately icing over his sister’s burned left arm.

“Don’t,” Nadezh says before anyone else can speak, “move.”

“Nadezh?” Gannon’s voice breaks on her name. “You–what?”

“Your girlfriend?” Omit asks incredulously.

“Fiancee,” Gannon says, seemingly be reflex.

She wants to drop to her knees by him, to explain everything, but she can’t take her eyes off the Twins. Her flames are roaring at her to kill them, to end this, but she can’t. Not with her better half watching. Learning.

Learning why he should hate her.

“Who are you?” Spike asks.

“What do you want,” Spear hisses.

In response, Nadezh lets her flames crawl up her body, ignoring the way Gannon yells as the rise above her face. Her rain coat is burned away with the hideous smell of melting fabric, revealing gold and orange and red and yellow.

Her suit is a strange combination of metal and fibers, perfectly fireproof. Perfectly form fitting.

Perfectly identifying.

“Firebreather.” Spear says it like a curse, the worst one she can utter. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I’m not,” Nadezh says flatly. She lets her voice turn cold, lets her persona take over until she feels as empty and dead as it took to be the Firebreather. “The boat is mine. Get out.”

Spike surges up, stepping slightly in front of his sister in the process. His knees tremble almost as much as his extended hands. “We don’t want to fight you. We’re leaving.”

She watches through narrow eyes as he helps his sister up, showing her the whites of his eyes as he fights to keep her in his line of sight and pick his way through the ash and debris her power left behind.

It’s only because she knows Spear that she catches what happens next.

The older Ice Twin’s lip twists into a snarl and she ducks under her brother’s arm, knee hitting the deck hard. In the same motion, her hands come up, palms flat together and fingers splayed towards the trio of heroes now just peeking out from behind Nadezh’s protective stance.

Nadezh’s right foot is already moving, stomping forward and twisting. Flames kick out from her heel, spearing towards the wall of ice Spear has sent flying towards them. Nadezh opens her mouth and roars every bit of the rage and fear and anger her fire has been urging her to feel.

The comet that erupts from her is huge, a fiery and red hot mess of raw power that blows through Spear’s ice like nothing. It’s overkill and dangerous, too much in too little space, too much around oil, but Nadezh is reckless in her anger.

The Ice Twins will not challenge her. Not here. Not now. They won’t take what’s hers, for however little time she still has it.

This time, when the steam clears, the Ice Twins are gone, leaving only the smell of burning flesh in their wake.

She stands there, leaning forward, hands locked to her sides in fists for a long moment. She’s run out of flames, out of steam with that last stunt and her icy persona is stripped after the maelstorm of emotions that had ripped through her.

He knows. Gannon knows now.

He knows that she’s the Firebreather, one of the world’s most wanted Supervillains. He knows that she’s violated the world over and over, has stepped on and torn apart good people for personal gain. He knows that she’s killed, over and over again, without mercy or remorse.

He knows that she lied to him.

She lets her hands relax, fingers tingling from the stress of how tightly she’d clenched them. Slowly, she turns, eyes locked on the deck, somehow unable to seek Gannon’s.

There’s a beat of silence.

“Holy shit,” Flare says. The words are enough to make her eyes jerk to the younger woman. Flare is staring wide-eyed right back at her, mouth slightly agape. “What the fuck.”

Gannon breathes evenly.

“Do you think you could…melt us out of these?” Omit asks. He sounds pleasant enough but his eyes are narrow with distrust. “Or are you taking over the boat now?”

She flinches at the pointed question, arms coming up to wrap around herself. She realizes how vulnerable that makes her look in a second and drops them, lifting her chin in defiance. “I’ve got no flames left. I’ll have to chip you out.”

That’s not strictly true, but she’s got to assuage some of the instincts screaming at her. They want her to run, to book it after the Ice Twins, to leave before she has to see the hatred in Gannon’s eyes.

She very carefully avoids looking at her (ex?)fiancee as she chips at the ice chains binding his teammates. She uses a shard of crate she finds on the ground, uncaring as the jagged edges cut into her hand.

When Omit and Flare are free, they both stand, immediately stretching to get the kinks out of their muscles. She watches them have a conversation with just their eyes,  mute and unwilling to participate.

She has to free Gannon now.

“Right,” Omit says loudly. “You get to that and we’re gonna go deal with the mercenaries. The League too if they ever show up.”

“You’re not going to, like,” Flare says hesitantly, “be super evil right now, right?”

Nadezh’s brow furrows, unsure of what to make of the other woman. “…no.”

“Great,” Omit says, clapping his hands together. “We’ll be right down there.” He points over the side of the ship. “Zone, call us if your girlfriend tries to kill you.”

There’s an awkward pause where Omit is clearly waiting for Zone to correct him and say fiancee. The air seems even colder and emptier for the expectation.

“Right,” Omit says uncomfortably. “Flare? Strategic exit please?”

Nadezh hears the sound of wings, but she doesn’t see what exactly Flare hides under her loose top. She’s staring at the ground, dreading turning around.

It’s so horribly, terribly silent behind her.

She finally finds the strength to go to his side, eyes skipping past his, avoiding meeting him head on. She’s gripping the shard too tight, blood dripping through her clenched fingers, but neither of them say anything. The only sound is the shard hitting the ice over and over again.

He stands slowly when he’s free, each move deliberate. She catches sight of his bare arms, the cloth of his pants, his knees, his shins as he rises. She stays kneeling next to where he was bound, head bowed forward. He stands there, in front of her and above her, completely silent.

“I never wanted you to know,” she says. Her voice is hoarse. She licks her lips and raises her eyes to meet his.

If she thought her heart had stopped before, she was wrong. She feels it literally stop existing at the blank look in his eyes, at the clench of his jaw and the purse of his lips. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out.

Gannon turns on his heel and walks away.

She feels him leaving like a blow, eyes wide and sightless on his back. She collapses to the deck, palms striking the cold metal to keep her face from hitting the ground. She forces herself  to breathe, forces herself to bite back sobs even if she can’t quite keep the tears from leaking down her face.

It’s so much worse than being hated, being left. She never knew, never had anyone to leave her before. She gasps around a silent scream and fights to stay still. If she doesn’t, she’s liable to start running and she can’t run after him, she has to let him go–

Something warm and heavy drops around her, a burgundy cloth pooling around her. It’s a blanket, wool by the feel, and she instinctively grabs at it, blinking as she looks up.

Gannon isn’t meeting her eyes, but he’s there and he gave her something to cover up with. Her numb fingers pull it closer around her shoulders as she stares at him.

“Hey guys!” Flare calls, wings beating above the ship. “Foresight’s here!”

She’s so wrapped up in the way Gannon’s purposefully not looking at her (hating her?) that she doesn’t even care.

——————————————————————–

They take her to the League’s headquarters, still clutching the blanket around her shoulders. They put power binding cuffs on her, power binders that burn, but she very carefully stops herself from crying out. She keeps her head down and her mouth shut as she follows the heroes docilely.

She’ll leave it to them to decide her fate. The game is over, the dream has ended, the fairy tale was just another of her lies. This is the real world and she’s the villain.

She keeps her head down so they don’t see how red her eyes are.

Gannon is the one who opens the door to an interrogation room. He’s the one waiting with that blank expression until she files past him inside.

He’s the one who closes the door between them, leaving her alone and in custody.

All without a single word.

————————————————————-

They interrogate her, a whole line of heroes and psychologists and random personnell. Even Foresight comes to talk to her, asking thoughtful questions about how she found Gannon’s team, how she got onto the ship, how she scared off the ice twins.

Eventually they all leave. She doesn’t know what she said to them, if she was even able to form coherent sentences, nothing. All she can remember is the look on Gannon’s face as she knelt at his feet.

Blank.

She’ll never be able to wake up to his relaxed face or his easy laugh. She’ll never feel his hand in hers again. She’ll never be able to know him like she knew him in that apartment.

They’ll never be married.

She drops her head to the metal table they’ve locked her cuffs to and tries not to shake with the force of her sobs.

She can’t let them know her weakness. She can’t let them see.

(Somehow she doesn’t care if they do.)

———————————————————————————————

It seems like an age later when the door creaks open once again. She weakly lifts her head from the table, completely miserable, and has to blink to make her newest interrogator come into view.

She jerks against the back of her chair, straining her shoulders as her arms pull on her locked cuffs, as she makes out Gannon deliberately closing the door behind him.

They stay there, staring at each other for a long time. She’s drinking in every line of his face under the harsh light like a woman dying of thirst. This might be the last time she sees him (each time might be the last) and she wants to remember him, even like this, blank and uncompromising.

She can’t tell what he’s thinking at all.

“Please,” she says, voice cracking from overuse. “Say something.”

He watches her, studies her, arms folded over his chest.

She breathes out, eyes dropping back to the table. The image of him is burned into her memory now and she squeezes her eyes tight against the emptiness she sees in his eyes.

“I,” she says into the silence, words bubbling up in her throat. They’re words that she’s been desperate to say for so, so long. She says, “I’m sorry.”

He says nothing, but the dam’s been broken. She can’t stop herself, his silence can’t stop her, nothing can until she’s said what she needs to say.

“I used to have nothing,” she says. She swallows heavily, trying to bring moisture to her mouth. Her eyes burn. “When you told me that you became a hero out of gratitude, out of the need to give someone else a chance, I couldn’t–it was so fantastic. So beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Before you of course.”

She listens to the sound of his breathing. 

“I had nothing,” she says. The words are coming faster, a trainwreck of a confession now in their last hours. “I don’t know if you know what’s that like. To have nothing. I didn’t know the world could be so beautiful. Every day I was so..so angry. I couldn’t believe kindness because, to me, it was just another act. Another lie everyone insisted on telling me. Another way for humans to hurt each other. It was easy to hurt people, thinking like that. So easy to paint everyone as ugly as me and exact the toll from all of them. Then you–you came along.”

She leans against the back of her chair, eyes fluttering shut as she remembers that day. She’d been on the down low for months, waiting for the world to pass her by. And he’d smiled at her. Offered her his seat in the cafe. Worked her into a conversation.

Smiled at her.

“You,” she says, “have been my salvation from the moment I saw you. When I had nothing, when I was less than nothing, when I was the antithesis of everything you believed in, you were there. My hero. The moment you smiled at me, I didn’t have the anger to be the Firebreather anymore. Couldn’t find it even if I tried. My hero.” She can’t help the way her lips curl up at the thought, a little bitter smile at the thought of a super villain having a hero.

Laughable.

She clears her throat. “I have always loved you. Will always love you. What–whatever you think of me knowing what you know, don’t forget that. I love you and you deserve so much better than me. I hate that I’ve never been able to give you more than this.” She thumps her cuffs on the table, lets the sound echo around the interrogation room. She takes a deep breath as the sound fades. “Whatever you decide to do with me, I don’t blame you. Lock me away, take my powers, take whatever you need to take. But I hope you can forgive me because the day we agreed to get married will always be the happiest day in my life.”

They breathe together, her breath harsh and ragged compared to his even meditation.

She nearly flinches when he steps forward, metal cuffs dragging against the table as she pulls at them. He walks to the chair across from her and pulls it out, slowly and deliberately. He sits, sighing as he does, exhaustion in every line of his body as he folds his hands on top of the table, just inches from her.\

“Why,” he starts, “do you always think that I’m going to change my mind?”

Her eyes fly to his and she’s shocked to see them red-rimmed and filled with love. His smile isn’t big, isn’t happy, but it’s there in the corners of his mouth, tiny and lovely and hopeful.

“Gannon?” Her voice sounds tiny, small.

“We’re going to need some–some work,” he says and he gives a little disbelieving laugh. “Which we’ll have time to do since I’ve been awarded custody of you until Foresight decides how to deal with this. But I fell in love with you, Nadezh. You’re not that person anymore who hates the world. You’re you and I can’t walk away from you no matter who you were before.”

“You should,” she says. She watches as his hands ease forward, as his fingers find her. She shivers, torn between saving him by pulling away and being greedy just one last time. “You should hate me.”

“I hate the Firebreather,” Gannon says. His hands slide to her wrists, procuring a key from seemingly nowhere. He starts unlocking her. “But she’s not you. Right, Foresight?” He raises his voice on the last word, eyes sliding to the mirror on the wall.

Foresight turns off the opacity, frowning through the glass at Gannon. “It appears that way.” His eerie, white eyes lock onto Nadezh. “You’re not free, young lady. Your past self did too much damage for that.”

“Free?” she asks, not getting past that. “What are you talking about?”

“The League has concluded that the Firebreather is contained satisfactorily where she currently resides,” Foresight declares. “Which is by Hero Zone’s side.” His eyes narrow. “I meant what I said. This isn’t absolution, nor is it forgiveness. Your penance is coming.”

She thinks of the blood and the flames and the screams and feels sick. “I–I know.”

“Good.” Foresight nods. “We’ll be in touch.” The window disappears with another audible click, this time leaving behind a blank wall instead of a mirror.

“Aha,” Gannon says as the cuffs finally pop off. “There we go, sweetheart.” He rubs his hands over her red wrists and frowns at the cuts on her palm from the shard she’d used to break the ice. “Shit, you’re going to need a tetanus shot.”

She resists as he stands and pulls at her hands, urging her to rise. She feels shell-shocked and unreal. “You’re not leaving?”

“No,” Gannon says gently. He pulls her up gently, hand on the small of her back as he ushers her to the door. “I did tell you.”

She stops them in the doorway, still feeling like this is a dream. “What?”

“That I really, really want to marry you,” he says.

And smiles.

And saves her again.

[libraryoftime]

“You could save the world.” “I could,” said the villain, “if I wanted to.” Behind them. the city burned. “But you won’t.” The hero’s voice was hoarse with defeat, blood trickling from their lips. “You won’t.” The villain’s shrug was silhouetted by the flames. “Convince me.”

Sharon doesn’t have a plan today, no schemes, no heists, no kidnappings, nothing. She’d thought she’d take a walk through the city, let people see her dressed up as Ominous Halo, let them remember that she’s here and she’s not leaving, no matter how many heroes they throw at her, notwithout reminding them of all she represents.

And, sure, the best way to do that is to actually be the Class B Supervillain the League has ranked her. She could probably rob a bank or maybe deface the capital again, but, honestly? She’s really tired after a long day of being Sharon, working as a dispatcher in the third precinct, and she doesn’t have the energy to trap a kitten in a tree, much less anything else.

It’s good that she doesn’t have a plan, in the end, because the city is already burning by the time she makes her way into downtown. Fire, ruin, and debris are tricky to plan around and it’s really never any fun without an audience. And since the only people she can see are either dead or actively running away, an audience is in short supply.

“What,” she asks aloud, voice echoing through her synthesizer, the dark rings circling above her head vibrating with each syllable, “happened?”

She’d gotten home at 8 am, slept until 6 pm, come out at 7. Between the end of her shift and now, something’s swept through Chicago, painting flames and gouges as far as the eye can see.

There are supposed to be heroes. Chicago isn’t one of those little, podunk towns that only had small-timers and police offers to depend on when evil came knocking. Chicago is huge, with nearly 20 active heroes and who knows how many vigilantes. It’s got it’s own League Chapter, it’s own structure, it’s own emergency systems after the New York breach of 2008.

Her eyes scan the sky through her aviator glasses, the edges fitting along her cheeks to prevent them slipping off in battle. There are no heroes leaping from the skyscrapers, no rescue choppers circling, no tell tale sound of a superhero zooming in to save the day.

Fuck.

Ominous Halo doesn’t give a fuck about the people streaking past her or even those lying very, very still in abandoned cars. This is the cost of superhero battles, of villain battles, and she knows better than to think she can make a difference by stopping every five feet to watch yet another victim cry. Besides, she’s not a hero (anymore) and it’s not her side of the equation that’s supposed to bring hope.

She walks on and on into the heart of the destruction, heart dropping as the gouges in the street get deeper, as the fires get hotter, as the sound of groaning metal fills the air. It seems impossible that anyone could survive this, that a hero could survive and let this happen.

“Looks like someone slept in,” she says and hates the way her metallic voice just sounds like another part of the chaos. She has to talk though, has to keep herself inside the confines of Ominous Halo, has to keep going because there are supposed to be heroes here and she needs to find them.

She’s nearly to the lakefront by the time she spots spandex, green and pink, like flowers. Her stomach twists because she knows this hero and she’s not a healer or impervious or indestructible or whatever.

No, she’s all too human in all the wrong ways especially consider the fucking building laying half on top of her.

Sharon forgets herself for a moment and is next to Sunrise between one breath and the next. There’s blood (so much blood) staining the other woman’s costume, twists of rock laying across her shoulders, dust turning the red of her hair a mottled grey.

The rocks are easy, still strung together with rusted rebar, and it’s Sharon, no super strength, who lifts them up and off the hero.

To her (not) disappointment, Sunrise immediately takes a deep, shuddering breath and rolls over. The sound that slips through her teeth is pure pain, followed by a rattling cough, but that’s fine, that’s great because she’s alive to fix it.

Sunrise’s mask is ripped to shreds, the barest scrape of fabric masking the left side of her face. The other side is covered in blood and ash, highlighting the deep grey of her eyes as she (thankfully) opens them.

“Not like you,” Ominous Halo says, taking a step back, “to lie down on the job.”

Sunrise’s fingers twitch, then her toes, and Ominous can spot a systems check when she sees one. Lights dance around Sunrise’s fingertips, specks of the the bright, sun-like lasers she’s capable of shooting. She sits up too fast judging by the hiss that slips through her teeth, blood seeping out the sides of her mouth.

Ominous is very careful to not start forward, to not help ease the coughing that ensues.

Finally, Sunrise has enough breath to say, “Were you part of this.”

It’s not a question, not really, because Sunrise’s known her long enough to know the answer. Still, the formality stings for all that they’re enemies. Of everyone she’s met, Sharon thought that Sunrise would understand her.

It’s disappointing (still) that that’s not the case.

Regret flashes across Sunrise’s face as the silence stretches. “Ominous, that’s not what–”

“Unfortunately, no one invited me to this little soiree,” Ominous cuts her off. She looks down the burning street. “So, what? All of the Chicago League out there chasing down villains? Not like them to leave one of their own dying in the middle of the street.”

“Leviathan,” Sunrise says shortly, prodding along her abdomen. “And Coriander. They’re out over Lake Michigan at this point. Maybe in Canada.”

Ominous closes her eyes. Fuck. She remembers when team ups used to only be for the smaller villains, the ones who needed money or attention or something that meant so much less than human lives. Those days are gone if a multi-ton water-snake-dragon-thing is teaming up with one of the most powerful magic-users on the planet. That, at least, explains the level of destruction.

Coriander was always fond of golems and fire. Leviathan, of course, needs no explanation.

“You didn’t say you’re not dying,” Ominous says. She can’t stop Leviathan and she especially can’t stop Coriander. She’s got practically no mental defenses against some of his nastier spells, something she’d like not to publicize.

“Part of being a hero,” Sunrise says, “is knowing that lying is wrong.” Blood drips down onto her chest cut out, streaking across previously unblemished skin. Now there are knicks and hurts stretching down far past where her cleavage ends.

Ominous averts her eyes and kind of hates herself for being attracted to Sunrise right now of all times.

“The people need you,” she tells Sunrise. She watches the flames lick up the nearest building. In the distance, sirens finally begin to wail. “Dying here isn’t very heroic of you.”

“Well,” Sunrise says, “we all fail sometimes.” Her hands shake as she presses them to the ground, trying to stay sitting up. “One less hero to stop you now.” She cracks a bloodied smile.

It’s supposed to be a joke, Ominous knows that, but it sends a shudder through her, unlocks all those emotions she’s been keeping at bay. The snarl that rips out of her mouth is distorted by her synthesizer, crackling in the air like lightning. “Fuck this.”

“Fuck what–”

Sunrise breaks off on a gasp as Ominous extends one hand, black energy gathering there. It moves like water, slow and insidious as is flows down to her vulnerable stomach. The hero tries to move away, but her arms collapse on her, sending her more fully onto the ground.

Ominous watches dispassionately as the cuts and bruises and abrasions littering Sunrise’s skin heal before her eyes. The blood doesn’t disappear, nothing like that, but the rattle in Sunrise’s breath eases and her broken finger straightens and she stops guarding her stomach slowly, slowly.

There’s a long moment between them, of silence, of trepidation, of shock, as Ominous’ true power fades between them leaving Sunrise hale, hearty and whole.

“You’re a healer,” Sunrise says. There’s no thin wheeze at the end of her sentence’s now. Just empty surprise and a growing anger in her eyes. “A distance healer? But there aren’t any.”

Ominous shakes her head, the rest of her unmoving. “Just me.”

“There’s a cost,” Sunrise says. She’s guessing, trying to wrap her head around it. “You can’t heal someone from too far, it drains you, you can’t save everyone–”

“No,” Ominous says evenly. She meets Sunrise’s eyes and tells the truth. “No cost. No limit.”

Sunrise stares up at her, breath stilling in her lungs. Then she bursts into motion.

Sunrise jerks up to her feet, shaking like her body doesn’t quite believe it doesn’t hurt anymore. “You could save the world.”

And that’s what Ominous was afraid of. She stands strong, lifting her chin and says, “I could.” She pauses. “If I wanted to.”

Behind her, the city burns.

”Why?” The word is gasped out, Sunrise reeling. “Why don’t you?“

“Because who would save the world after someone like me?” Ominous asks, the question leaving her feeling raw. Maybe it’s seeing Sunrise so close to death, maybe the destruction is getting to her, maybe she’s tired of Sunrise not understanding. “How do people pick themselves up after I take away their pain? Their hurt? What is the world supposed to do after me?”

“That’s bullshit,” Sunrise says. She jabs a finger towards Ominous, naked anger writ across her face. “Thousands die every day from villains and accidents and you–you could wave it all away. Even just one life is worth more than–” She waves a hand, taking in Ominous’ black uniform, her halo, her synthesizer, ‘–than being this.”

“The world needs Ominous more than they need a healer,” Ominous says. She knows the hurt is leeched out of her voice by her synthesizer, but she tries to hide it anyway. She’d thought Sunrise would understand. “I don’t hurt. I don’t kill. But because of me, the people are ready. They know how to heal themselves. You know how to heal yourself so that when something evil comes you know what to do. They know what to do.”

Sunrise’s chest heaves. “You healed me.” The accusation is there, in her words. Why me? Why now?

“Yes,” Ominous says. “Your work isn’t done.”

“Heal the city,” Sunrise says. “You said no limit. Show me. Heal them.”

Ominous slowly shakes her head. 

She’s not prepared for the way Sunrise lunges, grabbing Ominous by the front of her uniform and slinging her to the ground. The hero pins the villain, thighs tight along her hips and snarls into her face. “You can.”

“I have rules,” Ominous says. She doesn’t bring her hands up to wrap around Sunrise’s wrists though her arms shake at the restraint.  She meets Sunrise’s eyes through her glass, her halo digging painfully into the back of her head, and lets the hero see her sincerity for once. “I don’t heal what heroes and villains leave behind. They don’t learn if I do. So I can’t.”

“You won’t,” Sunrise corrects. Her knuckles are white around the fistfuls of Ominous’ uniform. Her shoulders slump at what she reads in Ominous’ posture. She slides off of Ominous, collapsing next to her as she grasps what Ominous is saying.  “You won’t.”

And Ominous, as she watches the truth settle in, can see it break something in Sunrise. The knowledge that the people she’d seen screaming as buildings fell could be healed, but wouldn’t, that the children she’d failed to protect from sprays of debris could be whole, but wouldn’t, that the citizen she’d sworn to protect could be saved, but wouldn’t.

Please, Sharon whispers inside of her. For her. 

And those are feelings she’d promised herself wouldn’t compromise her beliefs, feelings that stood to destroy everything Ominous had brought about. She can feel her foundations quaking under the despair in Sunrise’s eyes and she wants–

but

Ominous Halo is so much a part of her now that she’s immovable, a monument to the folly of too much hope in finite resources, finite people. She’s not so easily set aside, no matter what Sharon wants. 

She doesn’t know who opens her mouth, Sharon or Ominous, when she says, “Convince me.”

Sunrise jerks, head whipping to where Ominous is sitting up. “What?”

Ominous twists so she’s sitting cross-legged across from Sunrise and swallows heavily behind her synthesizer. “Convince me,” she repeats.

“These people didn’t do anything wrong,” Sunrise says immediately. That’s what Sharon loves about her–she doesn’t waste an opportunity. She doesn’t give up (Ominous had almost made her give up). “You know that. They didn’t ask for Leviathan and Coriander to come in and destroy the city. It’s not their fault that the–” she stutters “–the heroes failed today.”

“Heroes fail,” Ominous says. Her voice is mocking even as her heart drops. Not good enough. “You know that. The people need to know how to recover.”

“They don’t need to recover from asshole supers like us,” Sunrise explodes. She comes up onto her knees, fists shuddering at her sides. “They’re supposed to only deal with high cholesterol and–and car crashes! Dying from an eldritch beast teaches them nothing.”

It’s not enough. 

“Tell me why you want me to save them,” Ominous says. She matches Sunrise, coming up onto her knees, and she doesn’t care if Sunrise can see that she’s begging her. Please. “I’m a villain, I don’t care what the people deserve or don’t! Why do you want me to save them, Sunrise?”

“Because I don’t know if I can keep doing this if you don’t!” Sunrise looks surprised by her words, gutted even. Her hands flex. “Because I’m an A-list hero and there’s nothing else after me. People will die when I fail and I– sometimes I need the day saved just as much as they do.”

“I can’t be there every time,” Ominous murmurs.

Sunrise swipes at her eyes. “I’m not asking you to. I’m–it’s my job to make sure that things wind up okay. That things get to be okay. And today I can’t. I can’t do it.”

The admission destroys something in the hero, Ominous can see it. Sunrise curls into herself, arms pressing into her stomach like she can still feel the wounds there, open and raw.

Ominous reaches up and undoes her synthesizer. Finally, finally, it’s enough.

“Sunrise.” 

Her voice is too real without the metallic distortion, too soft, too feminine, too vulnerable. The shock of it catches the hero’s attention, has her looking up with wide, wet eyes into the depths of Sharon’s aviators. She reaches out without meaning to, skims her fingers along Sunrise’s smooth cheek.The warmth races up her hand, to her arm, and she pulls back with barely having made contact. It’s too much, the feeling of her skin, and not enough all at the same time. Like touching the sun. 

“Today, you can’t make it okay,” Sharon tells Sunrise, gently, the way she barely remembers how to be. “That’s not your fault.” She looks to the burning city and feels Ominous finally, finally relent. “It’s not your fault.”

Sharon stands, heart crashing in her chest and mouth filled with ash because she’s about to break another promise. She can feel Sunrise’s eyes on her though and it’s worth.

It’s worth it.

Her power floods out of her, torrents after so long and so little use, waves of black light that washes across the streets. The fire sputters when it touches it (not going out, but not growing at least) and the rubble can’t stop the healing waves when they go over, around and through it.

Under her skin she can feel bones mend, skin knit back together, lungs inhaling, pain free. She can feel the wavering lights of the people growing brighter and brighter until she’s nearly blinded by them all, shining especially for her.

(And if she mourns the lights she was too late for, wasted too much time for, that’s only for her to know.)

When she comes back to herself, it’s to Sunrise’s arms wrapped around her. They’re both on the ground again, Sharon in the V of Sunrise’s legs, the other woman pressed against her back. If Sharon thought touching Sunrise’s cheek was overwhelming, she was wrong. She’s nearly surrounded by the other woman now, her heat and her breath gentle against the back of Sharon’s neck.

“You fell,” Sunrise says, somehow aware that Sharon is back. “I didn’t want you to hit the ground.”

Sharon doesn’t know what to say to the way the hero presses her lips against the nape of her neck, to where the bare skin peeks out between the collar of her suit and the strap of her synthesizer. “There was a lot to heal.”

“You made it okay,” Sunrise says. A shudder runs through her. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Ominous tenses up in stops and starts, the reminder shoving away her desire to say in the circle of the hero’s arms. “They still need heroes, this doesn’t mean I’ll be there every–” She’s cut off by Sunrise’s fingers on her chin, turning her head up and around towards the woman at her back. “What–”

Sunrise kisses her, lips pressing softly against hers before becoming firmer, more insistent. Sharon responds on instinct, opening to the other woman, twisting so that she’s more on her side and able work her trapped arm around Sunrise to can brace herself against the ground. She loses herself to the kiss, to the feel of the Sunrise’s body against hers, to the sound of their breathing under the distant sirens and the crackling fire.

When they come up for air, they’re both breathing heavily and there’s a pleasant hum running through Sharon’s veins as she blinks stupidly up at Sunrise. She doesn’t know what just happened, why Sunrise just kissed her, she doesn’t–

The look on Sunrise’s face is very soft. “Thank you, Ominous.” Her eyes flash, lips thinning. “And I’m sorry.”

Sharon blinks again, trying to work through the haze Sunrise’s kiss had left her in. “Sorry?”

Pain races up her back, the rays shooting from Sunrise’s hands burning her through her costume. Sharon shouts, trying to twist away, but Sunrise won’t let her, her arms tightening like steel bands, keeping Sharon from moving until the rays are all around her, binding her arms to her side and her ankles together like fiery restraints.

“I can’t let you go,” Sunrise says and maybe it should matter that there are tears and apology in her voice. “I’m sorry, but you could do so much good. I can’t let you go.”

“No,” Sharon (Ominous? They’re the same–) gasps. “No, I told you why I can’t. Let me go.” She hears the back of her costume rip as she struggles and she screams as the white-hot bands of Sunrise’s power burns her bare back.

“Don’t struggle,” Sunrise says. Something hot drips onto Ominous’ exposed cheek. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Sharon grits her teeth, blinking back her own tears. She knew her feelings would ruin everything. “Last chance. Let me go.”

Sunrise tenses, but doesn’t so much as falter. “I can’t.”

This, Ominous tells Sharon, is what we were afraid of.

It’s Ominous who pushes through the pain, twisting so that she’s facing the hero. It’s Ominous who looks Sunrise in the eyes and bares her teeth, all of her rage and fear there for her to read.

“I told you,” she hisses, her voice so filled with fury that it almost sounds like it’s coming through her synthesizer, “to let go!”

Sunrise’s wounds come back all at once, ripping through her freshly healed skin and pounding against her insides. Blood spurts from her lips, right onto Ominous’ cheek and her power fizzles and dies from one breath to the next.

Ominous rips out of the hero’s arms, stumbling back until she’s well out of arm’s reach. Sunrise, without Ominous holding her, collapses to the ground, something Ominous pretends not to notice.She clicks her synthesizer back over her mouth and pretends her hands aren’t shaking as she lowers them back to her sides. 

She ignores the fiery pain ripping across her back. She’s a healer. She’ll get to it when the pain isn’t serving as a reminder.

“You got one free today, hero,” Ominous says. “There won’t be a next time.”

Sunrise twists onto her side, one hand extended feebly towards the villain. “Please…don’t…”

“Don’t worry,” Ominous says, lip curling as she deliberately misinterprets Sunrise’s plea. She knows the hero wants her to stay. To save the world. “You’ll be feeling right as rain in a few minutes.” She turns to go, boots crunching over the gravel. “After all,” she calls over her shoulder, “without a hero, it just isn’t any fun.”

Sunrise wheezes behind her, trying to form words. Ominous doesn’t stick around to hear them. As soon as she’s out of sight, she snaps her fingers, healing Sunrise in an instant.

Then she puts her head down and runs.

(Hey guys! If you’d like to support me and my writing, please consider following me on Patreon (X)! I post stories like the above there a few days early and also exclusive stories that only my patrons have access to! Thanks :))

(via gingerly-writing)

[libraryoftime]

“And so it ends,” the hero murmured. “I crawl away, barely alive, and you die in a tragic accident.” The villain, broken and bruised, looked up at the unblemished hero with blood trickling from their lips. “Accident? You think…you think they’ll believe that you were an accident?” “Of course.” Their smile was blinding. “They’ll believe anything if told with a white enough smile.”

They used to be heroes. That’s what hurts her the most, deep, deep, deep. They used to be heroes, chins up, wings on their backs and the right thing within their grasps. Sophronia remembers the smell of lavender, remembers the sound of the cameras, remembers the warmth of having saved another life.

She remembers and that’s just another obstacle she’s got to learn to throw away now. Especially now that it’s his face being projected up onto the debriefing screen, big and glittering and meaner than she’s ever seen it before.

“Hero Ibis,” a man says from the head of the table. He’s facing away from them all, the only thing visible the thinning hair on the top of his head. Even if he did turn, Sophronia wouldn’t remember his face. The Mirage is only memorable by deeds alone. “It’s come to my attention that his actions have betrayed the ideals of his title.”

She wants to excuse herself from this one, slip out between the men and women scattered behind the table. She’s one of the few awarded a seat, one of the few who’ve paid the bloody cost to be here at this man’s beck and call.

It’s worth it so she doesn’t run even though his face is on the screen.

The lights flicker and Hero Ibis’ face is replaced with footage of a street, torn apart, strewn with debris. She’s been in enough fights to recognize the aftermath of a Super battle.

The camera shakes, the street bobbing in and out of view as whoever’s holding the camera trips, rolls and then leaps behind a nearby car. Their breath is harsh in the conference room and Sophronia has to fight not to react when, over their panting, the sound of wings can be heard.

A moment later, he comes into view.

Ibis is objectively beautiful. His costume is simple, white and grey with gold, metal plating over his chest and vitals. His mask is a brilliant scarlet that feathers up and into his hair, a compliment to the huge, lean wings that are fluttering behind him.

He’s beautiful and she hates him.

“P-please,” the cameraman says. Their voice is thin with pain and, when they raise a hand to ward Ibis away, there’s blood staining the green of their glove. “I-I surrender.”

Sophronia can see an intricate green crest where glove and suit meet and her heart sinks. That’s Stone Breaker’s insignia, a relatively small time villain with big potential if he could live past 20. He could chisel away nearly anything with enough time, like a fungus, but only if he had enough time.

By the look on Ibis’ face, he’s not planning on giving him any.

“You thought you could come into my city?” he murmurs. There’s no one on the street, no one left to witness whatever will come of the darkness in his eyes. He smiles without humor. “What, you thought we’d be easier pickings than New York? Los Angeles? Chicago? You thought we’d be easy?”

“No, I just–please,” Stone Breaker says. He backs away and trips, the sound of a body hitting metal loud over the speakers. “I–I give up. Just arrest me.”

Ibis shakes his head, that smile still curled across his face. Like a cat. Like a predator. He stalks forwards. “Oh no. No, that’s not how this ends.”

Sophronia feels chills ripple across her skin at his voice and a lump forms in her throat. Please, she thinks at Ibis, knowing it’s too late if it’s on Mirage’s screen. Please, don’t do this.

“The fight’s over, man,” Stone Breaker says. A few of his fingers look broken in his gloves, dark blood staining. He coughs and it sounds wet. “I didn’t even get into the bank–”

“I think,” Ibis interrupts, “that it’ll go down like this: I crawl away, barely alive, and you die in a tragic accident.”

The camera shudders with Stone Breaker’s breath, a hitch, and then a surge of motion. Stone Breaker understands what Ibis is saying. “They won’t believe you were in an accident.” He’s trying for bravado, trying for stagecraft, trying for time. 

Sophronia could have told him it wouldn’t work.

Ibis’ smile unfurls into something with actual amusement. It’s not an improvement. “Kid,” he says gently, almost kindly. “They’ll believe anything if you say it with a white smile.”

She doesn’t blink when Ibis snaps his wings open, red filling the camera’s view. She doesn’t so much as flinch as the screen goes dark, the sound of rushing wind roaring through the room alongside Stone Breaker’s screams. She forces her eyes to stay open when their view returns to reveal nothing but blue, blue sky and the occasional glimpse of ground as Stone Breaker plummets down.

Mirage freezes it as Stone Breaker’s camera flips up to see Ibis hovering above, grinning, arms outspread.

The room is silent. Every man and woman is staring at the screen, scarred faces stony and jaws clenched tight.

“He’s got media sickness,” a woman to Sophronia’s right says. Her face is curled with remembered flames, her teeth very white against her dark lipstick. “Did you hear? They’ll believe anything. He wants his moment in the limelight.”

“I’d heard rumors,” another says. They’re hidden in the shadowed part of the table, nothing distinguishing them from the darkness but a faint, radioactive glow. “Villains showing up with broken bones. Civilians paid off. Why was Stone Breaker wearing a camera?”

“All small timers are,” Mirage murmurs. He leans back in his chair, still facing away from them. “I asked them to.”

Sophronia swallows and says, “He knew Stone Breaker’s age. He called him a kid.”

The woman to her right hisses. “I didn’t know that. How old?”

“Nineteen.”

The room erupts, people spitting and snarling. That, more than anything else they’ve seen, is taboo. That, more than anything else, is a crime.

“I’ll take it,” the person in the shadows says. Their glow strengthens with their anger until Sophronia can make out sly, cat eyes where their face should be. “He won’t ever see me coming. I’ll smother him in his sleep so the papers won’t print a word about it.”

“No,” a man says from the back. None of the people at the table turn, not acknowledging someone who hasn’t earned their seat, but he continues anyway. “Please allow me the honor, Mirage. I’ll break every one of his bones just as Stone Breaker’s broke on impact.”

Mirage still doesn’t speak. Sophronia knows it’s because he hasn’t heard the option he likes, hasn’t heard the right volunteer yet.

He knows just as well as her who needs to take this mission. She knows through the sickness in her stomach that she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ll do it,” she says, standing. Her wings, wide and brown and powerful, arch over her head and she lifts her chin. Just like in the old days. “I fought beside him once. I knew what he could become. It’s my burden to bear, Mirage.”

At last Mirage turns. They won’t remember his face.

“Yes,” he says quietly, “so it is, Vulture.”

——————————————

As a kid, she hates her wings. Big, ugly, malevolent things. No cute shirts for her from Forever 21, no formfitting leotards from H&M. She’s permanently stuck in halter tops and mumus with slits cut into the back.

Not to mention the staring. Everyone stares like she’s a science project and, at 16, she already feels like a mistake of nature, thanks very much.

She skips stones across the river, imagining the day that she can get out of this town. “Government protected” they call it, for people like her with powers too big to hide. Mostly it’s just like her last home; artificial.

“Holy shit,” someone says, “should I be upset that yours are bigger than mine?”

She nearly falls off her perch and into the water when the voice comes from above her and not behind her. She stares up into the eyes of a lean boy with dark eyes, but she’s not paying attention to how smooth his skin is or how nice his smile is.

Instead she’s staring at his wings, different than hers, but the same. The same.

“I,” she says around her dry mouth, “like red.”

Judging by his laugh, it’s the right thing to say.

——————————————————————–

She doesn’t fly out to Atlanta though she wants to. She wants to feel the wind underneath her wings, sun on her back as if she’s flying south for the winter and not flying south for an execution. The truth is that she’s got to plan and doesn’t have time to lose herself in the skies.

Ibis is strong, like a runner, and his endurance is a lot better than hers. He can fly for miles and miles, arms stretched forwards like superman.  He’s fast, a lot faster than her, and if he stays out of her reach he has a real possibility of winning.

But if she can get close enough, her heavier bone structure will be enough. Her wings will be enough.

She doesn’t entertain any ideas of arming herself beyond talons and strength. He can and probably will–he’s like that that way. Adaptable.  Sophronia doesn’t want him to die under a knife though. She wants him to die as quickly and painlessly as possible under his past.

It doesn’t surprise her that she’s angry enough to kill him with her bare hands. She has been for a while, bleeding red with her fury, salivating for a chance to get her beak in his flesh. It makes her furious that he could move on without her, move towards the darkness without her, like what happened never touched him. He migrated, she knows, into the future and it makes her bloodthirsty to know she never had a chance of doing the same.

She’s not a migrating bird.

The only thing that can get vultures to move is carrion.

—————————————

They’re a flock, they decide a few years into their strange meeting. The only two birds in this whole town who will ever understand what it’s like to molt or what it’s like to get gum stuck in their primaries.

“Just cut the whole thing off,” he whines, face first on her bed with his wings stretched out into her lap. “I don’t need it anymore.”

“Oh shut up,” she mutters, eyes narrowed on the problem spot. She doesn’t know why there’s so much gum nor does she really want to know. She just wants the peanut butter to work already. “I think it’s coming loose.”

He’s silent as she works on his wings, breathing softly into her duvet. Finally he says, “I’m scared I didn’t pass.”

Her fingers still in his feathers, brow furrowing at the half a stick of gum remaining. “Don’t be stupid.Of course you passed.”

“I fucked up some of the laws,” he says. He flips onto his back, pulling his wing from her grasp and up so he can turn without bending his flight feathers. “There were a lot. And they didn’t look too impressed with my sit ups, to be honest.”

“If they,” she says, “can’t see you for the hero you are–the one you’re meant to be–then they’d better be prepared for a vigilante so good their heroes will look like criminals.”

He snorts. “I don’t think that’s possible. Have you seen the news? Chameleon saved a kitten from a tree. Again.”

“You’ll save the tree from the kitten,” she declares. She waves a hand at him. “Come on, just one more chunk and you’re done.”

He doesn’t move, still staring at the ceiling. “You took the test too, right?”

“Sure,” she says, ignoring the way her own stomach turns at the thought. She’d been as lost as him on parts of the written test and they’d spent a long time staring at her while she did her pull ups. “Last week.”

“You’ll pass,” he says with more confidence than he has any right to have. “If anyone passes, it’ll be you.”

“Well, you’re smarter than me so you shouldn’t worry,” she says as nonchalantly as she can with her hands covered in peanut butter. She wipes them on his wings just to hear him squawk. “We’ll both be heroes. I’ll be Wing Mender and you can be Man Who Smells of Peanut Butter.”

He growls and kicks her off the bed and onto the floor.

————————————–

The beginning of the end is when they both receive letters in the mail on the same day.

The beginning of the end is when they open their letters together.

The beginning of the end is when both read ACCEPTED.

——————————————

She lands to sticky humidity and the sun high in the sky. The landing strip her private plane used is empty, control facing the other way, the only audience a highway droning on in the distance. It might, actually, be the bugs droning. Hard to say.

Ibis did always enjoy the swamp lands.

She’s not an easy person to disguise. Each of her wings is easily the size of her body and, spread, they’re closer to three times her length than twice. Sitting in cars is a challenge so she doesn’t ask for Mirage to arrange one.

She takes to the air and gets high enough the clouds, low in the sky, cover most of her outline. 

Sophronia doesn’t want to find him through his name or alias. She probably wouldn’t be able to anyway considering the level of protection the League probably put on his files when she defected.

Ibis is big. Loud. Showy. It’s only a matter of time until he comes to patrol this city, with or without his teammates, only a matter of time until she sees the shadow of his wings on the ground below.

She circles the city like the vulture she is, death under her wings.

——————————————-

The thing the heroes don’t tell the hopefuls is that fights hurt. Bones breaking, skin tearing, teeth grinding hurt that’s hard to shake off. Both of them see plenty of tears and mental break downs those first few months of training.

“We’re going to make a difference,” she tells him, biting her split lip. She’s one of the fidgety ones, one of the ones who pull and scrape at wounds until the scar tissue turns into mountains. “We’re going to do the right thing and all this? All this will be nothing compared to that.”

He’s one of the hollow ones, one of the ones who runs when told and holds up his fists when hit. “They’re choosing sidekicks next week. I saw Richter looking at you.”

“What, the dirt hero?” she asks to hide the swooping of her heart. Any can choose her, anyone and she’ll be on the streets where she belongs. She clears her throats. “I think I’d like Dirigible, to be honest. She can fly too.”

He’s silent.

She swings her legs off her bunk and drops down to the floor so she can sit next to him. The motion jars the pulled muscle in her calf, but she’s literally had worse. “You know, I got kinda jealous because I think Dirigible was looking at you you know.” He still doesn’t respond and her fingers tap staccato against her thighs. “You’re gonna get chosen, you totally kicked Marco’s ass yesterday and I know Richter saw–”

“What’s the point?” he asks over her. He’s still hollow, still empty eyed, but his finger curl into fists by his sides. “What’s the point of all this if we’re trapped here? Not out there in the streets? Where people can finally see us?” He slams his fist on the ground. “At this rate this is just like back there.”

She knows what he means. This feels like that little government town where guards roamed with power suppressing cuffs and the army families looked and looked and looked but never touched. She licks blood from her lip. “We’ll get picked.”

“Sure,” he says and doesn’t meet her eyes. “Sure we will.”

——————————————————-

(They do and it’s a massacre in the making.)

——————————————————————–

Sophronia used to have a hero name. Sometimes she rolls the syllables of it around her mouth, like wine, and lets them trickle back down her throat. It’s a part of her past, another obstacle to overcome, because it makes her think that she’s bigger than she is. Better than she is.

She’s not better or worse than anyone else, she’s discovered. Maybe the tragedy is that she tried to be.

The city is picking up as the sun sets, cars on the roads and music loud between towers of metal. She’s always had good ears and it’s easy to pick out the beat of the city, exposing its heart with patience and timing.

The click of heeled boots is just another cadence, another song, that she accepts.

“Security cameras clocked you at the first cafe, you know,” Dirigible says from behind her. The older woman’s voice is tight, reed thin, at the end of her rope. She’s been retired for three years now, ever since then, but Sophronia knew she’d be keeping up with the rhythm of the city. Dirigible clicks her way to the ledge Sophronia is sitting on and lowers herself with a sigh. “You know they know you’re here now.”

“If they’re looking,” Sophronia says to her old mentor. She observes her out of the corner of her eye. Dirigible signature cloud hairstyle has deflated with the years, curling around her shoulders elegantly. She still wears her flying goggles. Sophronia looks back out at the city. “They’re not.”

Dirigible sighs and kicks her feet against the stone.  “I don’t think I can play these games anymore. I don’t do hero-villain banter these days, I’m too direct.”

“Good thing I’m not a villain,” Sophronia murmurs.

“You’re not a hero either,” Dirigible says.

Sophronia smiles.

The city blossoms beneath them, lights flickering on and people pouring down the side walks. Atlanta is an eclectic mix of business and pleasure, an ant hill of life.

“I know what you are,” Dirigible says.

Sophronia keeps smiling.

———————————————-

Being a hero is better than anything Sophronia could have imagined. She doesn’t feel like a freak with Ibis at her side, doesn’t feel so wrong when she’s standing between someone and a villain. She fights like she was made for it and, when it gets to be a little more than she can handle, Ibis and Dirigible are right there to back her up.

But then, 2008. The worst year of her life, their lives, the country’s life.

The year of Abomination.

There’s a breach in New York, a breach in the League’s main headquarters. Hero identities are compromised, huge swatches of power data absconded with, giant books of mission reports from all over the country.

And all, of course, for sale to any villain willing to take down a hero.

Sophronia and Ibis– they’re small time. Popular in their city, but nothing more. That changes as heroes go into hiding and villains begin creeping out of their territories to test the skills of their neighbors.

“We,” Ibis says to the cameras, eyes flashing, “are not afraid. We are here to protect. We will protect. I will be here until the end.”

She wants to scream at him. No one’s going to buy their information when they’re low key. They can do so much more without the pressure of a villain knowing who they are, where they are, but it’s no use.

Ibis smiles and the country falls in love.

Synthesis rises from the shadows.

He’s a villain they’ve never had to deal with, a so called “mastermind” despite his powers to defy reality. She knows that he orchestrates villain team ups mostly in New York, Boston, and LA. She knows that the League considers him a Class A villain, worthy of S class heroes, high enough that only teams were sent to deal with him and not individual players.

She doesn’t know what it is he’s hoping to accomplish in Atlanta.

When he captures them (or, more accurately, when he captures their base), he kindly explains.

“Power,” he says, examining the rings on his fingers, “comes from perception.” He’s sitting on the kitchen counter like he hadn’t just magicked them behind some sort of impenetrable, iron-barred cage. Their team is made up of flyers and an empath–they have no hope of breaking through. “And you have gotten yourself quite a bit of power in this day and age.”

Dirigible snarls, white hair a rioting mass of anger around her head. “You will not get away with this.”

Synthesis raises an eyebrow, settling his ragged cloak around his shoulders a little more firmly. “Dear, I haven’t even gotten started. You see, I don’t like this little bit of power you’ve accumulated. It’s annoying after all this work we’ve done to topple the League. You know what they call you? They call you a ‘Beacon of Hope.’ And they call you-” he points at Ibis “- an angel.”

Ibis smiles through bared teeth. “Thanks.”

“Not a compliment,” Synthesis says, features contorting. He presses a button on the remote by his side. “And your little superior attitude is exactly why this next part is so satisfying.”

The doors to their house open as if they aren’t barred behind six different security codes. Their local villain, Marshwoman, slinks into the room, her footprints leaving soggy pools on the carpet.

Behind her, she’s dragging a bound man, barely out of boyhood. He’s struggling and there’s a cut under his eye bleeding sluggishly. Sophronia hits the bars until they ring.

“Of course,” Synthesis continues, “it means nothing if a supervillain like myself does it. All that tells the masses is that you need the best to overcome some B-rate heroes. I couldn’t have that. Fortunately, Marshwoman has been quite a pleasure to negotiate with. For the low, low price of a quarter mil, I set this little stage up for her.”

“I,” Marshwoman says, baring green teeth, “am going to rip you apart.”

“A delight,” Synthesis says with relish. He pulls a key from his pocket and hands it to Marshwoman. “For the cage, my dear, for when you think they’ve finished their time out.” He snaps his fingers and a detonator appears in his hand. He presents this with a flourish. “To the charges.”

“Charges?” Dirigible asks. She pushes against the bars of the cage. “What charges?”

Synthesis fakes surprise. “Didn’t I mention that? Oh, those would be the charges glued to several building foundations all over downtown. I’d say I planted at least…twenty? Maybe thirty? What I just gave this lovely young woman is the detonator. When she presses it, all of them will go off by hook or by crook.”

Marshwoman laughs, the sound like rapids over a waterfall. “I get one more wish, Synthesis.”

“She does,” Synthesis confides in the heroes, the rings on his hands flashing as he waves them. “What can I do for you, delightful villainess?”

“I want a button that can stop the detonation,” she tells him. “A big red one. I want you to put it inside this boy here.” She throws the bound man onto the floor between them.

“Oh,” Synthesis says, eyes widening. “Oh my, that would rather put them out of business.” He snaps his fingers and the man on the ground screams, contorting wildly. When he flips onto his back, there’s something glowing in his abdomen, big and red. “I hope you don’t mind, but I attached it to his spinal cord. Wouldn’t want him to lose it, you know?”

Marshwoman cackles. “That’s your end of the deal done. You might want to get out of here before the explosions.”

“My motto,” Synthesis says gravely. He strides over to Marshwoman and kisses the back of her hand as if he doesn’t notice the thin layer of algae covering her. “If you survive this, my dear, let’s do business together again.”

“Such a charmer,” Marshwoman says. She watches Synthesis leave, a strange smile on her face. “The mastermind. He’s awfully dry.”

“Don’t do this,” Dirigible says immediately. Her knuckles are white around the bars. “You’re not like Synthesis. You don’t hurt people like this. Kill people like this.”

Marshwoman gurgles. “I don’t or you don’t want me to? Frankly, I’m tired of you all. So high and mighty. Life isn’t so easy you know.” She pauses, considering her words. “Life. Isn’t. So. Easy.” Almost absently, she kicks the bound man back onto his stomach from where he’s trying to crawl away. 

“We know that,” Ibis tries. He lifts his chin, spreads his wings. Lets the gold on his chest gleam. “Do you think life has been simple for us? We–”

Marshwoman, expression very flat, lifts up the detonator and presses the button with a resounding click.

Sophronia knows she screams. Her throat tears with the sound, metal blood in her mouth. Dirigible lunges against the bars, their empath collapses under the strength of their terror, and a look of anguish is painted across Ibis’ face. But then it registers.

“I don’t hear any explosions,” Ibis says. He looks at Marshwoman, fire lighting in his eyes. “Synthesis lied to you, Marshwoman. There were never any charges–”

The earth beneath them rolls as a the air splits around them, the sound of tearing metal and grinding rock overwhelming them. Outside their window, outside their very window, an office building splits and collapses with an abrupt finality.

“Oh god,” Dirigible whispers, “there were people in there.”

“That was one,” Marshwoman says. She waves the detonator at them, smile leaking swamp water down her chin. “I’ve got nineteen more. Or twenty-nine more? He wasn’t clear on the number.”

“What do you want,” Ibis says. His nostrils flare. “What do you want?”

Marshwoman stops as if considering it. “I want…well, I suppose I want you gone. I want people to stop building things in fucking swamps. I want the people to see you, fallible, weak. I want, Ibis, to see you all choose.”

Sophronia feels her stomach drop as Marshwoman turns her attention to the bound man and the glowing red circle pressing against his skin.

“Here’s the key to the cage,” she tells the man, dropping it right onto his face. “You can free your heroes, your saviors, if you want. Just know that they’ve got a choice to make if you do.” She’s still speaking to the man when she looks up, but her eyes are dead on the caged heroes. “They might rip you apart to stop the explosions, to take away my ability to blow this town to kingdom come or…or they might leave you to live and come after me. They’ll come and try to stop this massacre at the source.” Her lip curls, eyes tracking over each one of them. “But heroes don’t know what it’s like to make the hard choice. If I were you, I wouldn’t put my faith in heroes.”

She backs away from them, towards the doors, arm held aloft, detonator in hand.

“Don’t,” Sophronia says through numb lips.

Marshwoman, as if waiting for her cue, clicks the detonator again.

———————————————————-

“I know what you are,” Dirigible says now, years later, years after the choice. She’s resolute, eyes hard on Sophronia’s face.

“I’m a lot of things.” Sophronia isn’t really seeing the city now. Just looking. “I’ve been a lot of things.”

“You’re a Hero Killer,” Dirigible says. Her lips thin. “Aren’t you?”

Sophronia tips her head back and smells the coming rain on the breeze. “I’ve killed a lot worse things than heroes, Dirigible.” She opens her eyes and focuses on the other woman. “This is an improvement.”

————————————————————————

The next time, they all scream when the next explosion hits, this one further away, closer to the bigger buildings of downtown. Sophronia can hear the sirens and, at times, the wails of the dying. She fights not to put her hands over her ears.

“I don’t want to die,” the bound man says, curled around the key. His eyes are blue, so blue, and Sophronia will always remember the way they look filled with tears. The man sobs. “Please. My name–I’m Tyler and I just got into University–”

He continues on, spilling the details of his life onto the floor with his tears, hands trembling around the key that can save them.

The conscious heroes look at each other, terror in their eyes. Atlanta is so heavily populated, a million of people at risk at least. Twenty more bombs. Two down. How many dead? How many injured? How much blood on their hands?

Sophronia knows that Marshwoman is fast, that while Tyler’s been crying, she’s been running. Once she hits a swamp, it’s over, she’s in the vegetation like a ghost. 

Dirigible meets her eyes and there’s the same knowledge there. They aren’t going to catch Marshwoman today, not in time to stop all this.

It’s Ibis who decides first, but he’s not the only one who decides.

“Hey, buddy,” he says, smiling wide with white, white teeth. “Tyler. We’re heroes. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“You’re not?” Tyler asks, voice fading in and out with his tears.

“Of course not,” Ibis continues when neither Dirigible or Sophronia can breathe. “We’re heroes. We always save the day.”

Tyler, damn him, believes them.

——————————————

Sophronia looks up into the sky as something darker than the clouds soars overhead.

“Damn it,” Dirigible whispers. She scrubs at her face and stands. “You kids are leaving me with a terrible legacy, you know. Murderers and Hero Killers.”

“If you know what he’s done,” Sophronia says instead of denying it, “then you won’t stop me.”

“I didn’t stop him,” Dirigible says. A horrible truth. She straightens her shoulders. “I won’t stop you.”

It’s all Sophronia needs to hear. She falls from her perch, headlong towards the ground, and flies.

——————————————————–

“We need to move the body,” Ibis says far more calm than he has any right to be. Dirigible and Sophronia haven’t moved from the cage although the door is open, eyes wide and unseeing. Ibis snaps his fingers. “Hey. we need to get him outside.”

Sophronia shakes her head like she’s underwater. “What–why?”

“Because,” Ibis says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “no one can know we killed him.”

“We,” Dirigible says, “didn’t have a choice.” She doesn’t look like she believes the words. She looks like she has a concussion.

“I know,” Ibis says. “But that’s not what they’re gonna focus on. We need to move him to the collapsed building. Say he was a victim there. Then we need to go after Marshwoman.” His voice is dark. “We’ll need to shut her up too.”

Sophronia’s hands are shaking. “No. No, wait, we need to–we need to tell the League. Oh my god, what did we do? What are we doing?”

“We’re making a story the public will believe,” Ibis says immediately. His eyes are steady on hers. “We’re doing the right thing.”

Sophronia staggers a step away and throws up.

————————————————————-

Ibis doesn’t see her coming. She planned it that way, the rain, the storm clouds, stalking him to the outskirts of the city where the mud stretches for miles and miles.

She hits him at full speed, plummets them to the earth like hail, and she’s surprised when they survive the impact with the ground. As it is, it takes her longer than a minute to blink the black from her vision, longer than a minute to feel that she hasn’t broken anything thanks to the soft, soft ground.

And if she’s fine, that means he is too.

Ibis is groaning when she staggers to her feet, feebly rolling onto his side. One of his wings is at a grotesque angle, contorted and crumpled by the swamp behind him. He arches his neck, exposing the line of it to her, as he looks.

“Oh shit,” he says, pain wrecking his voice, “that’s actually never happened before.”

“It fucking sucks,” she agrees.

The sound of her voice buys her his attention. He forces himself up onto his elbows so he can look up at her. “Sophronia.”

“Ibis,” she says and it’s more of a sob than she ever wants to admit. “You did it again.”

“He was just like her, Sophie,” he says. It’s a testament to how far gone he is  that he doesn’t ask what she’s talking about. Pain has always made him truthful. “He was going to take the city away from me.”

“You know he wasn’t,” she says, feet squelching in the mud. Rain begins to fall, tapping at her head, stealing her heat. “He was just a kid.”

He smiles and there’s mud in his teeth. “So were we.”

“You wanted a story.” She feels the mud drip off her hands, exposing the wicked black talons at the end of her fingers. “Ever since back then, you’ve always wanted a story. You, a hero. You, an angel.”

“And you always wanted to fight,” he says. “No easy choices for the righteous Dove.” He laughs and blood joins the mud on his lips. “You’ve got fucking vulture wings. How did no one ever notice that?”

“They’ll believe anything,” she says, “so long as you smile wide enough.”

He winces. “Yikes, that sounds bad out of context.”

“It was bad in context,” she assures him. She holds out her hand. “How do you want to die?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He looks at his hands, lying in the mud, watches as the dirt washes away under the rain. They’re calloused, she can see, and she wonders if she’s read him wrong. Wonders if he’s going to pull the knife from the top of his boot after all.

Wonders if she’ll drag herself into the city or just let herself die out here next to him.

“There’s a lot of red on these hands,” Ibis says eventually. When he looks up this time, he’s tired, very tired. “Just a lot of red.”

“Red,” she says quietly, “is my favorite color.”

This time, it’s not the right thing to say.

“Flying,” he says. He reaches a hand out to her, the worst sort of smile on his face. Small, broken, and pleading. “I’d like to die flying.”

“Let’s go, Deo,” she says. She scoops him off the ground and, though it hurts, raises her wings up high above her. Like the old days. “One last time.”

—————————————————————-

The meeting room is dark. Men and women linger behind the table, masks and capes and eager eyes. At the table sit those few with paid admission, jaws hard, the scars of their lives written for all to see.

The screen at the front of the room flickers with light. A woman’s face is projected there, her eyes sharp and aqua, mouth thin and red.

“Hero Watrina,” the Mirage says. His back is to the room, the only visible part the top of his head, thick with brown hair. They will not remember this. “It’s come to my attention that her actions have betrayed the ideals of her title.”

“Damn,” the person sitting at the shadowy end of the table says, “aren’t there any good ones left?”

Sophronia leans forward. “Not,” she says, “for long.”

[libraryoftime]

Nettie is eating ice cream. The cold burns against her silver incisor, but feels good against the small cut inside her mouth she’d gotten last week. It’s an even trade.

Nettie is all about even trades.

Most think that they liked to be paid in money. Old money, sure, gold and silver that doesn’t have the same sort of inflation risk as paper, but that implies that they have something to spend it on.

No, Nettie’s maybe the only one who knows what sort of things monsters like to be paid in and is willing to provide it. Which is why she’s sitting in the middle of a park at 3 am waiting for her contact to arrive.

At 3:03, her contact’s preferred meeting time, the fog rolls in. Nettie rolls her eyes as it creeps through the sparse trees ahead of her, turning the grass silver under the moonlight with precipitation. So dramatic and not at all secretive. Her eyes flick up to the security camera mounted on the lamppost across the street. She wonders when the government will admit they see monsters at night. She hopes it’s not in her lifetime.

That’d be bad for business.

The outline of a tree several yards away from her begins to waver. It looks like someone might be behind it, a darker band appearing around the trunk as if someone is hugging it. Then they’re gone and the same wavering, black shadow appears behind a tree several feet ahead of it.

Nettie watches and eats her ice cream, glad that her leather jacket is hiding the way her arm hair is standing on end. She’s never been the type to hide her fear.

Then she met beings who enjoyed it.

A dark pool in front of her widens, the shadows twisting upwards. She calmly takes a  bite of the cone as the shade forms, the shadow creature not stopping until it’s reached its full height at seven feet.

She feels the sensation of pumice in her mind and frowns. “Gren? Where’s Mandy?”

The shadow figure ripples, for once not kicking up a fuss at her nicknames for them. An orange light flares briefly in what one might assume was its hand but she knew to be its mouth.

Her spine snaps straight. “What?”

Gren rises to nine feet and then deflates, the air chilling further around him.

“Taken,” Nettie repeats in disbelief. She looks at her remaining ice cream and robotically takes another bite. “Caught? So it’s true then. My target is like me.”

Gren makes a sound like a wind rushing through a lighthouse. Then it widens, lowering down and down until Nettie gets the impression that it’s sitting across from her.

She throws Gren a disgusted look. “Of course I’m going after Mandy. They’re under my employ, after all. I’m just a little surprised that there’s an adult who’s got the Imagination.”

Gren roils.

“Yeah,” she mutters and snaps her teeth over the last of her ice cream. There’s chocolate in the bottom of the cone, something she’d been looking forward to an hour ago. “I guess it’s more common they you’d think.”

Gren blames those violent videogames.

————————————————

Nettie’s been tracking a murderer. She’s a bounty hunter these days, one of the only professions her family’s skills help her with.  The police don’t like her, but that’s never bothered her.

Like her employees, she rather gets off on not being liked.

She slams into her tiny apartment as dawn breaks, chewing on her lip. She steps on the mail someone’s slipped under her door and rolls her eyes when she looks down to see her family’s crest on one of the letters.

Dear Annette, please come home and kindly submit to the match your mother and I have chosen for you. With just a little Imagination, we believe…

Nettie didn’t even need to read the damn thing at this point.

“Get another lab rat already,” she mutters, twisting her foot over the pristine parchment so that the dirt on the bottom stains it. Or, she thinks, keep torturing kids to keep the Imagination. No breeding necessary.

A life of fear had given her enough Imagination to buy monster services. She didn’t owe any more of her life to anyone.

“Except,” she says aloud, “to Mandy.” She scrubs a hand over her face. “Fuck.”

She employed monsters, but, unlike her family, she actually employed them. There’s a contract and everything, one that promises them the right to reinforcements should the dangers of the job exceed those projected at the time of signing.

Since this last job was reconnaissance of a supposed normal serial killer, getting captured far exceeded anticipated danger levels.

Nettie drags the job folder towards her, ticking down each location she’d had Mandy check. The North quadrant’s clear, and the West, but there’s no terrible, inky signature showing that Mandy ever signed off on the South.

Nettie looks up at the map on her wall, push pins each representing one murder. If she imagines the guy’s in the south quadrant, she gets…a fat lot of nothing. No helpful ring or easy pattern to follow him to his little hidey hole and get to Mandy before the guy kills it.

“Which means,” she says, kicking away from her desk, “that I get to be a goddamn bloodhound.”

Shades as terrifying as Mandy are rare. Usually they never reached more than three or four feet, but Mandy’s nearly ten, bigger than Gren even. That’s a lot of monster power cooking up there, and Nettie’s got just the skill set to track that down.

She really hates field work. She much prefers to outsource labor whenever possible, but Jiji, the horrifying eldritch abomination she usually uses for muscle, is out of realm.

“Rude,” she hisses at the ceiling. She stomps back to her front door. With any luck, she’d find them before dark.

———————————————

The sun is setting before she gets to the right neighborhood, feet aching in her boots.

“God damn inconsiderate ass!” Nettie seethes as she leans down yet again to lay one hand flat on the ground. She sends out a pulse of energy and waits. This time it comes back to her much faster with the right texture. Mandy feels like pyrite and Nettie could cry now that she’s finally close.

She really hates field work.

The pulse and echo leads her to a small, one story house. It’s yellow, like half the other small, one story houses in the neighborhood, lawn grudgingly kept and fence beat to shit around the yard.

Nettie staggers right up to the door and kicks it in. She’s really not in the mood to play with a serial killer, not after walking around this asshole town for ten hours straight.

There’s a man in the living room, dark hair and wearing more years than were probably his on his face. He looks up at her with surprise when she charges in, hands stilling around the large kitchen knife and sharpening stone he’s holding.

“I’m making curry,” he says.

Nettie rolls her eyes for the third time in the last 24 hours. “Sure, maybe, but you’re also a serial killer so I’m still going to ask you to put that down.”

“A serial killer,” the man says. “How rude. I’m an artist.”

“I fucking hate you Hannibal Lecter types,” Nettie says and leaps over the couch between her and the man in the arm chair.

Of course this is a man responsible for nearly two dozen deaths, so it’s not as easy as Nettie’d hoped. It doesn’t help that he’s actively trying to kill her and she’s trying to incapacitate him.

“Bet you’re not used to getting your ass kicked by a woman,” she pants after a while. Her knuckles are red with his face blood and her shirt is torn from his stupid knife.

“Can’t say it’s common,” he says through gasping for air. “Considering, you know, my demographic.”

“Yeah,” she says, wiping her mouth. More blood comes off on her hand and she scowls. “I fucking hate misogynists.”

The man has the audacity to look hurt. “I don’t hate women.”

“You kill them!”

“Well, yeah,” he says, “but that’s because men don’t remind me of my mother.”

She gapes at him. “That–that doesn’t make it better!”

“Sure it does,” he says, propping his hands on his hips. “I’m not killing them because they’re women. I’m killing them because they remind me of dear old mom. That’s practically feminist.”

“That’s–” She shakes her head. “That’s not.”

He looks offended. “Are you saying that serial killers can’t be feminist? That’s killer-ist.” He pauses. “That didn’t work out like I wanted. It’s something -ist though. Prejudice–”

She lunges at him before he can say anything else.

Finally, she gets him pinned, one arm around his neck, the other occasionally punching him in the kidney because, fuck, he pulled her hair and that shit hurt.

“Where’s the Shade, asshole?” Nettie asks when she’s got her breath back.

“This is about the Shade?” the man gasps out. “I thought you were a police officer!”

“Bounty Hunter,” she corrects. “But also monster employer. And you trapped my employee.”

“You–you can see them too,” the man realizes. He grins and then chokes as he forgets about the arm around her throat. “This is great! I’ve never met anyone like me who–” his face clouds. “Wait, then you know why I do what I do. We’re one of them, monsters, and it’s our job to spread the terror we felt when we were kids!”

She bashes his head into the floor, stands, and kicks him for good measure. “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. Shade. Now.”

He flops onto his back and frowns at her. Half of his face is swollen already, the other half struggling to catch up. “But–you’re like me. They’re like us. We’re like them.”

“And we’re all one,” she says sarcastically. She only doesn’t roll her eyes for fear of eye strain. She’s met her quota for the day. “You’d know what bullshit that was if you knew what they actually were.”

She sends out a pulse and curls her lip when it comes back immediately. In the room, of course, and finally dark enough that she can just release Mandy instead of carrying it in her shadow.

“What they actually are?” he asks. He doesn’t try to get up, which is smart. She’s pretty sure she broke some of his ribs.

“Parasites,” Nettie says. She follows the pulse to the closet and frowns at the papers stuck to it. Yeah, that’d do it. Religious text, one the serial killer obviously believes in. Infused with enough hope to keep Mandy caught tight. “Though they hate it when you call it that. Probably closer to bottom feeders?”

She rips open the closet door to a wall of spitting and hissing shadow. Mandy pauses its assault at the last moment, twisting as it sees that it’s Nettie.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nettie says, cradling her side. He might have broken a few of her ribs, actually. “You knew I was coming, it was in the fucking contract.”

“Contract?” the serial killer asks. He sits up painfully. “And I still don’t understand what you’re saying. They’re monsters, their one goal is to cause fear–”

“No,” Nettie says. “They eat fear and darkness. Damn bugs. You ever wonder why you only find them in places where bad shit has happened? Why they stayed under your bed and never the kids’ with a happy childhood? Ever wonder why you can still see them even after you got old?”

“I’m not that old,” the serial killer says.

“Sure,” Nettie says and leans against the wall. “Well, trouble is they’re not really allowed to do anything like in ye olden plague days. Something about new leadership, I don’t know. So they’ve gotten a little…hungry. Their society is in a recession. Or something. I wasn’t really paying attention to Jiji’s explanation.”

The serial killer watches warily as Mandy looms forward. “Um, what is it doing? And who’s Jiji?”

“Jiji is what was under my bed growing up,” Nettie says. She sighs and motions Mandy forward. “And Mandy here is demanding overtime pay on account of being held captive for 16 hours, the big baby.”

The serial killer tries to move back, away from the approaching Shade, but his arms give out. “Get it away from me.”

“You see,” Nettie continues like he hadn’t said anything, “monsters don’t get paid in money. They get paid in darkness. And you sir are like 18 karat gold.” She looks at Mandy. “No killing, I still need to take him in alive.”

Mandy ripples and surges forward.

No promises.

[libraryoftime]

Couples receive “parent points”, which they can use to purchase their children. Most parents wait for a few thousand, but you chose to buy the cheaper, 100 point child.

Shane knows what it’s like to be a 100 point child. He knows how it feels to see potential parents–potential families–come through the facilities doors, faces bright with excitement. He knows how it feels to see them reading the little plaques on the nursery doors, scanning the lists there for the right bits of knowledge and etiquette and grace that they want their baby to have.

He knows how it feels to see their faces pinch outside the window before they hurry to the next room.

Shane grew up in a 100 point nursery. They had torn, ratty, books and no teachers, and when snack time came, the tray was pushed through a slat in the door. They were called “unruly” and “damaged” and “stupid.” A lot of the other kids threw tantrums and broke furniture (and sometimes other kids). A lot of the other kids went quiet after the first few years when they realized they’d never be adopted until they were old enough (or pretty enough) to be useful. A lot of the kids cried and didn’t stop until they got taken away or were aged out.

Shane’s grown up a lot since aging out. He put himself through school, got himself a job, shed his 100 points like the torn clothes he’d left the facility in. He’s powerful now, successful, and he’s grown out of the twisted nose, big ears, and gap-toothed smile that had made him one of the less attractive 100 point babies. Or maybe he’s grown into them. Who’s to say?

It’s taken him a long time to get enough Parent Points to do what he wants. Being a man is, for once, somewhat hindering as most of society equates “parental” with “maternal.” He’s lost count of how many social workers have politely hid expressions of surprise when he told them he wanted to adopt stag, that he’s willing to take the classes, get the grades, make the oaths to get even one Parent Point.

Sometimes they ask him about his sealed records. They want to know about his experience growing up (since surely someone as successful as him was a 1000 point child at least). He shakes off those questions with a smile, an offhand comment about protecting his parents, or, if worst comes to worst, a smile.

Finally, finally today he’s got the points. Thousands of points from years of classes, of seminars, of simulations.  Shane’s got the Parent Points to buy a child of his own.

The facility’s staff welcomes him in with open arms, eyes flicking over his suit, his nicely combed hair, the watch on his wrist. Their smiles brighten when he scans his Parent Points and a six digit number appears.

“Right this way, Mr. Carson,” the social worker, Ms. Daily, says, sweeping her arm to the right. “I have just the nursery for you.”

He follows Ms. Daily obediently, looking neither right nor left. She’s clearly taking him to the higher point children, the ones at the heart of the facility, the protected ones. He can hear crying as they pass the first window and his hands curl into fists in his pockets.

“Here we are,” Ms. Daily chirps, stopping in front of a large, viewing window. “Please, let me know if you see one to your liking. I have all the relevant information here.” She holds up her data pad and smiles.

Shane steps forward, eyes dropping to the plaque just under the window. Magnolia Room. Advanced language skills, superior mathematics, excellent athleticism. 80,000-120,000 PP.

The children in the room scream with laughter as their caregiver chases them around a brightly colored carpet. They’re all young here, babies and toddlers. When they’re older, they’ll become cheaper and cheaper until the regular masses can buy a ten-year-old prodigy for just a few thousand.

Shane’s jaw tenses as he takes in the opulence of the room, so different from the nursery he grew up in. There are books strewn all over the ground, intermingled with toys and puzzles and snack boxes. There’s a caretaker for every three children, equipped with radios and first aid training in case there are any injuries. He can see genuine affection on the caretakers’ faces as they play with the children, listening to them, loving them.

“They’re lovely,” Shane says to Ms. Daily, not taking his eyes off the room. “Really.”

“Thank you,” Ms. Daily says, preening. “We begin the educational process early. These children are magnificently bright, you see, sure to flourish in your home.”

“I’m sure,” Shane says, “but no, I think, for me. Shall we?” He turns on his heel and heads back down the hallway, strides long and sure.

“M-Mr. Carson?” Ms. Daily stutters. “Wait!”

Shane doesn’t wait. He stalks past the 50,000 point children, catching glimpses of solid beds, individual heaters, and caretakers beginning to prepare the evenings meal with the kids. He sees smiles and hears laughter and is happy for these children, truly he is.

He hates that not all the kids here are so cared for.

“Really,” Ms. Daily huffs, yanking down the back of her skirt, “I don’t think you’ll find a child to your satisfaction here!”

Shane ignores her and slows down. These nurseries are markedly different now. The 1000-2000 point kids’ room is plainer, still bright and cheerful but not quite so…vibrant. The caretakers here wear scrubs, like nurses, and they sit at folding tables, not oak ones, as they color with their charges. The children are munching on carrots and celery, some trail mix, drinking juice.

There’s one more room at the end of the hallway. Shane knows what it is.

“If you haven’t seen any child you like,” Ms. Daily says, catching his arm, “we have a sister facility in Panama City! I hear they have a little girl with the bluest eyes– Mr. Carson, wait!”

Shane stops in front of the last window. It’s yellow with age and there’s chicken wire embedded in the glass. In the bottom right corner, there is a web of cracks as if it had been hit with great force from the inside.

The plaque under this window reads: Yarrow Room. Disruptive behaviors, low proficiency in core subjects. 100 PP.

There are fifteen kids in this room, which is wrong since this nursery is much smaller than the other. Their beds are metal bunk beds with thin, space saver mattresses. The children sit scattered on the floor, not enough chairs for all of them. They range in age from toddlers to teenagers and their clothing looks old, worn, and doesn’t suit the children in the least.

There are no caregivers at all.

“It takes certain certifications to handle these children,” Ms. Daily says, flustered. “We can’t afford to keep a specialist on the staff 24/7. I assure you, the children don’t particularly mind it. They’re a…slow group.”

Shane sees the bags under each set of eyes. He sees the way they sit, backs too tense and straight to be anything but aware of being observed. He sees the food wrappers littering the ground, the grease in their hair, and the scarcity of color in the room and grits his teeth.

“All of them,” he says. He thinks about his big house, all the rooms, all the money. He hadn’t planned for this, not so soon, but he can’t. Not now. “I’ll take all of them.”

Ms. Daily sputters. “Mr. Carson! I–I admire your charity but a man of your position, if I may speak candidly, can not buy a 100 point child!”

“A man of my position,” Shane repeats, eyebrows climbing up his forehead.

“Exactly,” Ms. Daily says, nodding fiercely. “You are a man in the public eye, Mr. Carson, and you need a child able to do you justice! One of the 10,000 PP children, even, would serve you better!”

“I don’t know,” Shane says, mouth twitching. “I think a 100 point child could handle it just fine.”

Ms. Daily seems appalled at the very thought. “I assure you, they can’t!”

“I could and did,” Shane tells her. Then, while she’s processing, he inclines his head towards the window. “All of them. Shall we start the paperwork?”

All Ms. Daily can do is meekly follow him back towards the front office.

[libraryoftime]

writing-prompt-s:

You’re a mystic who runs a shop full of mysterious artifacts and potions and you’re sick of uninformed middle-aged suburban moms asking for energy crystals and herbal weight-loss mixtures while throwing around made-up terms.

When a middle-aged woman rolled into my shop and told me she was looking for ichor, I didn’t think much of it at first.

You get all kinds in a shop like mine, and doubly so when you put up the right signs on your door. The signs that let certain kinds of people know they’re welcome, not just the collectors or the curious or the new age mystics, looking for this root or that crystal or wanting to gawk at a jar of old bones, but the less innocuous individuals as well.  The kind who mean business when they come looking for their… less run-of-the-mill specialities.

You also get people who are completely out of their depth.  It pays to take a few minutes and be sure of who you’re dealing with.  My Old Gran once accidentally inducted a hapless college student into a coven because she thought he was being metaphorical.  I’ve always made it a point to be a bit more blunt than people in my profession generally are, just as a precaution.

“Are we talking bile, or are we talking blood of the immortals?” I asked from behind the counter, where I’d been sorting what my mother referred to as the ‘tourist crystals’.  They were good enough crystals, I thought.  Nothing you’d use in an actual ritual, but there was no reason to be snide about it.  Sometimes a pretty rock was allowed to be nothing more than a pretty rock.

Pretty rocks tended to be a damn sight nicer to look at than most of my customers, anyway, including the woman I was talking to. She was tall, with stooped shoulders, dressed in dirty jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.  Her face was pale and unmade-up, with an insomniac’s bruises under her eyes and stains on the collar of her shirt.  I took a discreet whiff, but I didn’t smell any grave dirt underneath the sour tang of sweat.  Her reflection showed clearly in the polished countertop.  So she was probably alive, and there was a decent chance she was human, or at least partly so.

“Do people actually come in looking for the other kind?” she asked me, her voice wavering between a put-upon grumble and something decidedly squeakier.  One of my eyebrows ticked up.

“You haven’t even told me which one is the kind you’re looking for,” I replied.

“The – the second one,” she squeaked, and then growled, hastily, like an overgrown cub pretending to be a bear.

For a good solid minute I debated just throwing her out of the shop.  I probably should have.  There was no chance anything good was coming from this.  This sort of high-grade request and low-grade industry awareness could only come about a few ways. Best case scenario, I had some kind of hero on my hands, and yeesh.  The last hero who’d frequented the shop had nearly gotten the place pushed into a nearby dimension, stolen three rings from the supply room, and summoned a demon.  A demon which he had then left running loose.  It’d taken Old Gran, my mother, two aunties, and all six of my sisters just to get the place back into working order again, and even so there was a lingering scent of brimstone near the toilet that never quite seemed to go away.

But the thing is, I didn’t take over running a shop full of curiosities because I lack, well, curiosity.  Even if my mysterious customer turned out to be a thorn in my side, I still hadn’t figured out what she was after, and I wanted to.  So once that minute of hesitation passed, I walked over to the supply room door, and opened it.  

“Don’t touch anything,” I warned her, motioning for her to follow.

She shuffled in behind me, hunching her shoulders even more, as if she was being especially careful not to brush up against the shelves.  Good. The ‘supply room’, as Old Gran had always called it, was bigger than the actual shop front.  It was filled with rows upon rows of shelves and lines of crates, all methodically organized by yours truly, of course.  I had redone the entire place years ago, after my mother handed ownership of the shop to me.  Old Gran’s idea of a filing system had, as near as I could tell, relied on astrology, temporal wind patterns, and metaphorical alphabetization.  Loosely.  And that was before my mother attempted to introduce the card catalogue.

My own system divided things primarily into basic categories – animate, inanimate, animal, mineral, and so on, and then alphabetically and by item size.  The aunties always complained that it was incomprehensible. I led my prospective customer over towards the back wall of shelves, and grabbed the step ladder along the way.

“So,” I said, as her gaze darted nervously around the room.  “What sort of ichor are you in the market for?  The term can cover a fairly broad range of substances.”

“Um…” she helpfully replied.  I waited, but no further response seemed to be forthcoming. Sighing, I ascended the ladder, and directed her attention towards several jars and vials in stock.

“Gods’ blood, demigod’s blood, vampire’s blood, gorgon’s blood, demon’s blood.  Ichor for animating lifeless constructs, ichor for fertilizing lifeless soil. Gods’ blood wine, gods’ blood willingly given, gods’ blood unwillingly spilled, dragon blood – not generally called ichor, I know, but some texts get iffy in translations, and most dragons are immortal – sap from an undying tree…” I glanced back towards her, only to see her staring at the shelves with a sort of dazed bewilderment.  Another sigh escaped me.  “What do you want it for?” I tried asking.

The customer jumped, then flinched, then swallowed.

“I… just, um, do you just have plain ichor?” she mumbled.

I treated her to my very best unimpressed look. It’s a good look, if I do say so myself. According to my aunties I remind them of Young Gran when I do it, and Young Gran is an accomplished necromancer who’s seen so much, by now, almost nothing impresses her anymore, and she doesn’t care to disguise that fact.  Buying birthday gifts for her is absolute hell.

“Plain.  Ichor. You do realize that all of this is poisonous, yes?” I asked, nodding towards the shelf behind me.  “You can’t just drink some and become a god or get high or whatever it is you’re looking to do.”

The customer actually looked faintly alarmed.

“What, even the wine?” she wondered.

“Especially the wine,” I replied.  What were they teaching kids in school these days?  I stomped down off of the ladder, feeling increasingly confident that I wasn’t going to get a sale out of this.  The customer shuffled her feet some, clearly debating something within herself, and then reached into the pocket of her hoodie.  She pulled out an old, stained note.  I caught a whiff of parchment and ink and human blood, and a faint tang that reminded me of Young Gran.

Aha.

“Give it here,” I said, knowingly, and after a moment’s hesitation, she complied.

The list was written in fancy cursive.  The dramatic sort that my mother would say only two-bit hacks use, though I’ve always found a bit of razzle dazzle to be harmless myself.

“Don’t tell me you actually have the phoenix ash?” I asked.  That was tricky to come by, and expensive to boot, especially in this part of the world.

“I got some from the shop on Roadhill,” the customer replied.  “But, um, they don’t stock ichor.  Said it wasn’t vegan.  They told me you might, uh, have it, though.”

“Fucking Roadhill,” I muttered.  Then I wrinkled my nose.  “Wait.  Phoenix ash is vegan?”

“Um, I guess?”

I stared a moment, wondering how they came around to that conclusion. After failing to come up with anything, I decided it didn’t much matter, and thrust the list back at the customer.  

“So,” I said, turning back to the step ladder.  “You’re trying to raise the dead.”

Behind me, the customer coughed, and then sputtered. Her list crinkled in her hands as she clutched it.

“M-maybe,” she hedged.

I clucked my tongue at her.

“Amateur necromancy’s a good way to desecrate corpses and upset cemeteries, but a piss poor way to get anything else done,” I informed her.  Then I retrieved a vial of titan blood, and a pamphlet from one of the boxes on the shelf below it.  “If you want to raise the dead, you really should hire a professional.  There’s a lot of nuance to this kind of thing, you know. It takes a proper necromancer decades to learn their craft, but everyone always thinks they can just look up a recipe online or dig one out of grimoire somewhere and cut out the middle man.  I mean, gods know they’re expensive, my grandmother’s been on the outs with one of my great-aunts for thirty years because she refused to resurrect her for free, but you only get one shot at resurrection.  Well. Mostly.  You don’t want to botch it either way, though, do you?”

The customer hunched into herself yet more and stared out at me from underneath her hood.

“I’m, um.  Um,” she said.  “It’s… um. I’m fine.”

I shoved the pamphlet at her.  The words ‘Abominations & You – A Guide to Responsible Necromancy’ were emblazoned across the top.  One of my younger sisters had printed several dozen of them out during her short-lived Public Awareness phase.  She fumbled with it in surprise, and then followed me back out of the supply room again.

“You have pamphlets?” she asked, as if that was somehow more bizarre than a shelf full of supernatural blood.

“Obviously,” I replied.  “And do yourself a favour and actually read that, don’t just shove it into your pocket and forget it.  I don’t want you rushing back here at the end of the week with a flock of semi-conscious zombies shuffling behind you like the world’s smelliest procession of ducklings.”

The customer gripped her pamphlet so hard it crinkled.

“Do they do that?” she asked, with some alarm.

“On occasion,” I said, and slipped behind the counter to procure a padded box.  The vial of titan blood was fairly small, stoppered in a brown bottle and sealed with wax.  I double-checked the seal and then packaged it up, and stuck a poison warning label onto the side.  Then I set it onto the counter in front of me.  “Do not let it get in contact with your skin.  Wear leather gloves or oven mitts when you’re handling it, not latex. Do not attempt to ingest it, and try not to breathe in any of the fumes when you open the vial.  If you dobreathe in any of the fumes you may experience dizziness, disorientation, delusions of grandeur, or momentary bouts of homicidal rage.  As long as the seal remains unopened, the ichor will last well beyond your lifetime.  If the seal is broken, freshness is guaranteed for three days, viability for up to a week.  After that, you’ll just have a vial of toxic golden goop.”

The customer shuffled her feet, and stared at the box with increasing trepidation.  I waited to see if she would change her mind.  But after a moment, she only nodded in understanding, and shuffled a bit more.

“Now, for the matter of payment,” I said.  The customer reached a hand into her hoodie pocket and produced a battered grey wallet this time.  I clucked my tongue at her.

“Don’t tell me they took actual moneyfrom you at Roadhill?” I asked.

She blinked at me.

“Um.  Yes?”

I let out an appropriate sound of disgust. My mother might have muttered something deprecating about New Age hacks, but I’ve always been above that sort of thing.

“Idiots,” I said instead.  “We don’t do business like that here.  Anything in the front you can buy for money.  Anything from the back requires payment.”

The customer fiddled with her wallet, and darted a glance towards the windows.

“I don’t get it,” she confessed.

I scowled, and tapped the counter as I considered my options.  Dealing with first-time buyers was always tricky.  Everyone had something worthwhile, of course, but people had gotten savvier about those kinds of things in recent decades.  Back when Old Gran ran the shop, you could get two years of someone’s life or the baby tooth of their firstborn just for a swatch of chimera leather.  Now, you’re lucky if anyone will even give you a day, and don’t even think about trying to get anything off of their kids.  You’d assume new customers would be easier sells, but most of the time they’re even more tight-fisted than the regulars, because they have no idea what someone can actually do with their firstborn’s baby teeth.

“Blood for blood,” I finally decided, and the customer blanched.

“What?!” Her eyes went wide as she backed away from me.

I sighed.

“Don’t look so alarmed,” I advised, and ducked beneath the counter to retrieve a clean needle and syringe. “It’s a bargain, really. You get a vial of ichor – which is considerably harder to come by than human blood, I can assure you – and I’ll take a vial of yours in exchange.  A first time customer’s deal.”

“Why do you want my blood, then?  If it’s less valuable?” she wondered.  She hadn’t bolted for the door, though, which was a good sign.

“It’s a new moon,” I said.  “Blood freely given, as part of an exchange involving life and death, is an attractive acquisition. I have some customers who will be interested in that.  It’ll be a quick sell, and since they won’t know your name, as I don’t know your name, they won’t be able to harm you with it.” Any of my regular customers would have refused such an exchange outright.  There would be too much risk of my using their blood against them. But a newcomer, perhaps…

“…Alright,” she agreed.

I nodded in satisfaction.

“Excellent.”

She flinched when I took the blood, a jumpy sort all around, and then held her purchase gingerly, lingering for an awkward moment as she gave the shop a final once-over.  Then she shuffled out of the door, and out of my thoughts.  I was more concerned with Roadhill selling phoenix ash, to be honest.  I had an exclusivity deal with my supplier, and if he’d broken our agreement, I’d have his head.  Literally, according to the wording in the original contract he’d signed with Old Gran.

Two days later I was restocking the candles and handmade soaps when the bell at the door jangled, frantically, as it was thrown open and then pulled shut with an audible bang.  Frowning, I abandoned a box of goat’s milk hair conditioner, and headed towards the front.

The ichor customer had returned.  She was all but plastered against the shop door, dressed in the same dirty jeans and a different hoodie, a hunted look on her face. What I could see of her skin was covered in a myriad of scrapes and scratches.

I let out an internal sigh.

“Did you read the pamphlet?” I asked.

“You!  You have to help me!” she said, which was the very last thing I wanted to hear, to be honest.

“No,” I replied.  “I am a shop owner, not a necromancy mentor.  I sold you a product.  I instructed you in the safe handling of that product, and provided you with additional safety information, free of charge.  I even advised you to seek professional assistance.  What you did with your purchase after you left my shop is not my responsibility.”

“They’re after me,” she insisted.

Wonderful.

“Didn’t I tell you not to come traipsing back in here with a hoard of zombies?  Was that not explicitly one of the things I said to you?”  I checked the windows, but I couldn’t see anything on the street.  Nevertheless, the little hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to stand at attention, and that was not a good sign.

“I, I followed the instructions to the letter. I don’t understand what went wrong,” she blathered.

Had my mother been present, she probably would have informed her that ‘what went wrong’ was that an amateur moron had attempted to meddle with powers well beyond her ken, and suffered the appropriate backlash for her hubris.  Fortunately for the poor woman, I have always been of a more forgiving mindset.

“Get out of my shop,” I said.

“Please, they’re – they’re not normally like this at all!” she begged.

Damn it all, but some small kernel of curiosity kindled in me at her words.

“How many, exactly, are there?” I wondered.

“Two.  Just two,” my former customer replied.

I rolled my eyes towards the ceiling.

“Well that would explain the problem,” I said. “I didn’t sell you enough ichor for two people.  The recipe you showed me didn’t call for enough ingredients to serve more than one.  If you tried to split it, small wonder things went awry.”

The woman swallowed, heavily, glancing nervously through the window in the door behind her.  I didn’t imagine she could see very much.  That was one of the windows I left artfully grimy in order to provide an appropriately mysterious aesthetic.

“Yeah, but, but I figured, with the size difference, it’d work out,” she stammered.

It took me a moment to wrap my head around what she was implying.

“You tried to resurrect children?” I demanded, reeling.  Undead children were the absolute worst.  But even as my dread surged, the woman shook her head.

“No, no, no,” she said.  Then, casting one last glance at the door behind her, she reached into her pocket and fished out a phone.  The battered case and slightly cracked screen looked like they had both seen better days. She fiddled with it, and then handed it to me, clearly intent on showing me a picture.  Would it be little people, I wondered?  Perhaps a pair of pixies, or even imps?  And then I looked.

“That’s Crisps,” she informed me, pointing to a fuzzy white rat napping in the left of the photo.  “And that’s Wrinkles,” she added, pointing at the brown rat peering into the camera from the right.  Both rodents appeared to be sitting inside of a laundry basket.

“You wanted to resurrect your pet rats?” I asked, strictly for clarity’s sake.

The woman hunched in on herself, ducking her face lower into the collar of her hoodie.

“They’re, um, good pets,” she mumbled.  “Not like what people say.  I mean, I know some folk don’t, y’know, like the tails, but they’re really smart and they love to cuddle.  They’re not dirty or diseased or anything. Cleaner than me most of the time, really.  It’s, it’s only that rats don’t live for very long.  Nature and all.”

“Shit,” I said, with feeling.

“Well, well how’s it any worse than bringing back a person?” she demanded, snatching her phone back.  “That’s what I want to know.  I like my rats.  They’re nicer than most people.  Mostly. Um.  Well, they were.”

“No wonder fucking Roadhill sold you phoenix ash for money,” I said.  Damn soft-hearted animal lovers. Then I stomped over to the supply room, pointing emphatically towards her as I did.  “Stay there, and do not open that door, you understand?”

When she nodded, I threw open the supply room door, and headed straight for the emergency cleansing incense on the shelf to my right.  My nerves settled marginally once I’d lit it.  I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and weighed my options.  The situation was either very bad, or incredibly dire. Enough so that I might have called in reinforcements, if I thought there was time for it.  But there probably wasn’t, so instead I gathered up three vials from a back shelf, a small wooden box, and a locked chest from underneath the incense table.

I unloaded my haul onto the front counter. My returned customer was still peering through the windows.

“This is going to be expensive,” I informed her.

She swallowed, visibly.

“You’re not going to take one of my kidneys, are you?” she asked.

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Why?  Are you offering me one?”

“N-no!”

“Well then it’s not going to do me any good, is it?” I pointed out, as I opened the box.

A sleek, black, taxidermy cat glared up from inside with a gimlet eye that had been carefully immortalized long before I’d ever been born.  It smelled of death and sand and old, fearful things, and I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose a bit as I closed a hand around its brittle fur, and set it onto the counter. I made sure to have it facing the door. Strictly for ritualistic purposes, of course, though the fact that it seemed to unnerve the woman hovering beside it was an added bonus.

“Is, um, is that because they’re rats?” she wondered, nodding towards the cat.

I scoffed.

“They are most emphatically not rats anymore,” I informed her.

“But why?” she blurted, gesturing inarticulately with her arms.  “I don’t understand what went wrong!”

Gods help me, but she really did say that. Despite everything, I had to pause and take a moment to marvel at her, and mankind in general.  It was almost a pity my mother wasn’t present to witness her. She would have given her such a verbal lashing, it might have actually split her skin.  I took another calming breath.  Underneath the scent of the incense, and the taxidermy cat, and the pungent odor of fear, I detected a sickly sweet hint of rot.  Time was short.

“Believe it or not, necromancy doesn’t tend to follow a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of operation,” I nevertheless felt compelled to inform her.  “I selected your ichor under the assumption that you were going to use it on a human, because the recipe you showed me was for resurrecting a human.  That takes a lot of kick, do you understand?  Human lives are expensive.  So what’s happened here is that you’ve essentially used a jet engine to try and power a tricycle.  All of the excess power that would have gone into recovering a human life spilled into your rats and then overflowed.”  I shuddered. “Do you have an idea how rare it is for people to over do a resurrection spell? To just let loose a torrent of energy with no particular purpose into the space between life and death?”

The customer’s shoulders had been hunching further and further inwards as I spoke, so that, by the time I finished, she looked as if she was trying to absorb her arms into her own torso.

“It’s not like they exploded or anything,” she mumbled.

I paused in my rant, baffled.

“Why would they explode?” I wondered.

“Well, um, I mean, if you put a jet engine on a trike, it’d probably explode.  Right?” she suggested.  “Just as soon as it crashed, I suppose.”

“For all its pitfalls, necromancy rarely involves a lot of combustion,” I informed her, with just a hint of impatience.

“Oh,” she said.

“It can, however, summon unspeakable evils from beyond the veil of death to wreak havoc upon the mortal realm.”

“Oh,” she said again.

It was at that point that the sound of scratching began.

The sound was faint.  Just a light scritch, scritch, towards the bottom of the doorframe.  But the customer leapt back and away from it as if she’d been burned, her eyes wild, her hands clutching at the pockets of her hoodie.

“Oh god, they’re here!” she gasped.  “They can’t get inside, can they?”

“It’ll take them some doing,” I replied, unlocking the chest I’d hauled out to the front.

“How, um, how much doing?”

“Come here,” I said, instead of answering.  The sound of scratching started up again, underneath one of the front windows instead.  The taxidermy cat tilted its head ever-so-slightly towards the sound. The lights flickered, but the ominous effect was somewhat diminished by the bright sunlight still streaming in from outside.  A baritone squeak drifted through the shop, deep and menacing, seeming to come from all directions and none at the same time.

With a shaking hand, the customer produced a battered sandwich bag full of cereal from the depths of her hoodie.  She clutched it like a lifeline.

“Ah, good,” I said.  “Give me that, and hold this.”  I scooped up the cat, and before she could protest, I snatched the baggie from her grasp and dumped the cat into her arms.  She clutched it, at first, and then did a disgusted double-take and held it at arm’s length instead.

“Why do I have to hold this?” she asked.

“Why does anyone in this shop do anything?” I replied.  She stared at me blankly.  “Because I fucking tell them to, that’s why.  Now, stop asking stupid questions.  I need to focus, unless you’d prefer to spend the rest of your brief existence being gnawed apart by your former pets?”

“I would not,” she conceded, and then backpedalled frantically as I grabbed up the chest and two of the vials, along with the bag of cereal, and carried it to the middle of the room.

The cat’s lifeless head tilted towards the far right.  The sound of scratching intensified, followed by several more ominous squeaks, and the putrid scent of rot was getting strong enough to unnerve me.  Even the customer seemed to notice it, if her wrinkled nose was anything to go by.

“They didn’t smell that bad when they were just dead,” she mentioned.

I uncorked one of the vials.

“This is lich ichor,” I informed her.  “It is more than four hundred years old.  The only comparably valuable substances you could barter for it would be your still-beating heart, your firstborn, or your immortal soul.”  I broke the seal on the top, and with great care, spilled a handful of drops over the circle carved into the floor at my feet.  The customer flinched as each droplet fell.  I stared at her as I closed the vial again, and held up the second one.  “This is a tincture of Night Phlox.  It comes from one of my sisters’ gardens.  She overcharges, and I intensely dislike having to replace my store of it.”  With a flick of my wrist, I tossed it onto the floor, where it shattered.  Then I reached down, and carefully grabbed up a handful of the contents of the chest.

“What, um,” the customer asked, before she seemed to swallow back the rest of her sentence.

The cat looked up towards the ceiling, craning a little awkwardly in her arms, and the sounds of scratching started to coalesce around the skylight.  They were joined by a tapping sound, and then a great, resounding bang.  That was followed by another, and then another, until the entire shop was filled with the cacophony.  It was rather impressive, as a matter of fact.  The crystals on the shelves started to vibrate, and one of the books at the tarot display toppled over.

The skylight cracked.  The banging abruptly stopped.

“That’s going to need to be replaced, too,” I said.

“Shit, oh god, shit shit shit,” the customer replied.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something dart between the shadows in the room.

Carefully, I scattered the handful off dust into the circle. Then I held up the bag of cereal, and began to shake it.

“Here, mousy mousy mousy,” I called.

“They’re rats, not mice!” she blurted at me.

I rolled my eyes, but refrained from correcting her on the front of them not being any variety of rodent at all. Again.

“Here, ratty ratty ratty,” I called, instead, still shaking the bag of cereal.

Massive shadows began to loom along the walls. The cat turned and looked towards a far corner of the shop. Beneath one of the bookshelves, two sets of glowing red eyes appeared.

I shook the bag of cereal again.

The customer attempted to hide behind me.

In a rush, the rats – or, rather, former rats – charged. They were very fast. Not totally surprising, considering that they were bleeding excessive energy into the boundaries between space and time, and were likely possessed by at least a few demons. I almost didn’t snatch the cat away from the customer in time, but you don’t hang onto a job like mine with poor reflexes.

With only a little fanfare, I dropped the unnerving taxidermy specimen into the circle.

There was a smoky boom and the scent of bone dust, and the taxidermy housecat warped and twisted and then sprang to life. The fast-moving rats were already racing towards it too quickly to reverse course, and what followed was a battle that literally shook the foundations of the shop.

Several crystals finally gave up and crashed to the floor.

“You will also be paying for those,” I informed the customer, who was, by then, clutching the back of my shirt and attempting to invoke a god she probably didn’t believe in. Just going off of the general lack of effectiveness. Jupiter was an odd choice, though. You didn’t hear that invocation every day. Especially not when it was being made by someone who, it was becoming swiftly apparent, didn’t actually know that was a name of a god as well as a planet.

Where had this idiot been getting her information from? If she’d actually had a guide, whoever it was deserved to be shot.

The rats were eviscerated.

The cat turned towards us, and I opened the rest of the chest and, before it could get any clever ideas, slammed the box over top of the beast. It took some work to get the lid closed. Furious growls resounded from the inside, but once shut, the chest refused to move. Just as it should. It would be a noisy mess until I could get Young Gran to come and put it down again.

She would charge for that.

I turned, and regarded the customer, who was staring at the mangled corpses of her former pets with…

Well now.

You see a lot of grieved people in my line of work. And a lot of desperate people. A lot of remorseful people, and a lot of angry people. A lot of curious people as well. You get a knack for picking out the genuine ones, and so help me, but that scruffy, smelly, foolish, woman was genuinely distraught over her mutilated, undead vermin. They had been trying to kill her not two minutes ago, and yet she looked as if someone had just pulled the floor out from under her.

I sighed, and scooped up the corpses.

“Where are you taking them?” she asked.

“Failed resurrections need to be carefully disposed of, if you don’t want them twitching their way through lingering unlife and potentially getting back up again,” I replied.

She hung her head, while I unlocked a case beneath the cash register.

“I, um, I guess… does this mean you own my soul now?” she wondered.

I gave her a flat look.

“Are you offering me your soul?” I asked.

“No!”

“Keep up, then,” I advised. “I can hardly accept what you won’t offer. Haven’t I made that clear?”

Now, where was…? Ah, yes, that would do. I pulled out a long, slender box, and an older lighter that whispered about flames until I shook it quiet. The customer watched as I set the rats into the box, along with a few key components.

I did not mention their cost.

“Well… but… you said I had to pay,” the customer reasoned.

“And you do. But how you pay is not solely to my discretion. What do you take me for? A bully? A thief? If anyone has been unfairly harassed and robbed here, it’s clearly me,” I reasoned.

Then I lit the box on fire.

She flinched.

Two seconds later, the fire went out. I caught a whiff of the smoke. Sweet, a little flowery, carrying away the last note of fetid rot.

With a satisfied nod, I opened the box, and moved to quickly catch the living, squirming, perfectly healthy rats that immediately attempted to clamber out of it.

The customer gasped.

That was rather pleasant, actually. It had been some time since I’d done anything to elicit a pleased gasp.

I handed her pets back to her. She took them reverently, letting them sniff at her, tiny whiskers twitching as she cuddled them against her hoodie. I averted my gaze when she started to cry, and instead set about cleaning up the mess.

“You…” she finally said.

“It would have been much cheaper just to mention all of this up front,” I informed her. “So consider those two a reminder of the values of forthrightness, and tread a little more carefully in the future.”

The customer swallowed. She really was a crier. I was glad my mother wasn’t around, then; she loathed criers. Never had the heart to completely take them to task.

“But how do I pay?” she wondered. She sounded rather more resolute than despairing about the whole idea, then.

I Looked at her. Really Looked, mind you. Straight all the way through.

“I am sure you will come up with something for the other expenses. But the resurrection is free,” I decided, and shoo’d her back out of the shop.

A little touch of genuine goodness.

In my line of work, that is invaluable.

(via lostinlifeandbooks)#filled prompt#kinda deviated but eh#original writing#first person#this kind of ate my brain#oops