Not sure if this is an alright use of the ask/inbox thing, but I wanted to ask if by chance you could help me find a story?
The specifics I remember was the hero (who I know has storm powers and later chooses a villain name of tempest) was tired of serving the agency and limiting their powers and just found the villain in their own, killed them via drowning, and then basically turned to the dark side (also I think other heros stole their work? Took credit for it and also something about flooding something. I don’t know if I’m making sense). I can provide more details if needed (story is somewhat seared in my brain lol)
I’m not sure if this makes sense, but I swear I remember reading something along those lines here and it was a really good snippet (really glad to whoever wrote it and potentially you for putting it here) and it popped in my mind and I don’t know the first thing of searching for things and I also don’t want to stay up till 2am hyper fixated on trying to find it (hope that’s not somehow offensive?). Also again, not sure if it’s alright to ask for help, I just figured I’d try my luck? I completely understand if the answer is a no.
I hope you’re having a wonderful day/night, that this isn’t too bad of an ask, and that you’re taking care of yourself, enjoying some cookies (or whatever snack you prefer) and staying hydrated, and all that jazz :)
-idk (or the tag idj? I know that’s what the tag was, also not sure if including a tag is even necessary but I’m just leaving there)
is this the fic you're looking for? (Other readers, please heed the trigger warnings)
Thank you for recommending it @eternallyanxiousandstressed 💖💖💖
Oof, I did like it but boy did it hurt my heart.
Stupid Flame-Man and stupid
Haha, the 2am thing would only be offensive if you meant it as an insult - but I know you didn't :) I probably have stayed awake searching for some things but that's when I get in the zone and know I'm close 🕵️♀️
have a wonderful day too full of hydration and cookies and also healthy food 😊
@caffeinewitchcraft reblogged something about how people coming back wrong only works if you know the person well enough to notice. And it kicked this off. It feels like a good way to start off a year of writing more.
Note: This story uses it/its as the pronouns of a being who no longer considers itself human. I know that those words are frequently used to dehumanize real people, but that is not the case here. In any case, be safe.
No ritual, no matter how powerful, is perfect. There is no hope of scrubbing away every flaw. But. But, but, but. Human nature is to try.
It had never met the woman it was supposed to be, but it imagined she'd be touched so many came forward to "help" her. Even though the ritual didn't. Not that it told them that. It wasn't her, but it didn't want to die. Could it die? Could something that wasn't born be considered alive? Better to keep quiet.
It knew enough about her to play pretend. They ensured that.
One person couldn't summon a person from the Veil. A circle of five could manage something like the person. Ten? Twenty? The results got closer to their loved one as the circle expanded. A circle with 100 people had never been attempted before. They told it there were rarely 100 people who knew someone well enough to try it. Everything it had seen since agreed with that.
She was special.
Each of them poured their memories of her into it. Her memories. Her habits. Likes. Dislikes. Any piece of her they could. That had to create a whole right? They certainly thought it was.
Maybe it would've too. If they hadn't given it her laptop. It knew her password, of course it did. It also knew she had a secret, password protected folder. For months it knew and that was enough.
It lived her life. It was her. They believed it was an exact copy of her, which made it believe the same.
And then it looked. There was no particular reason, just a whim. That was what changed things.
Videos of her. Not for anyone. Not even for herself. They were scrubbed of everything familiar it had seen in pictures and videos she'd taken with others. It was transfixed. Mesmerized. Hours upon hours of videos no one had ever seen before. Even she hadn't watched them if the metadata was to be believed.
Sometime in the second week of watching her videos it realized there were some differences between it and the woman on the screen. Its freckles were different, lighter, more uniform than some of hers. There was one just under their right eyes that looked more like two when she leaned to turn off the camera. The one on their chins more circular on its face. Then they started looking.
She looked more real. Teeth slightly crooked, hair messier, but there was a light in her eyes. One it wasn't sure it had ever seen in its own. Not in the same way at the very least.
There were terribly minute details it probably wouldn't have noticed had everyone in their half-shared life not been excited to explain which parts they had contributed. Had she ever noticed them. It wasn't sure.
It was sure she never expected to be defined by the force she bit her cheek with or how often she glanced at the camera when she was unsure, looking for approval from people who weren't there. It didn't do those things. They thought her confident so it was made to embody that confidence.
It fidgeted and twitched in the same way she did, someone's memory preserving those parts of her in it, like a bug in amber. But the more it listened to her talking to herself, for herself, the more it realized it did not think the way she thought.
It dug deeper. It would play her videos while looking at old messages, at the records of the times she was talking about. The difference was stark. Had anyone really known her? Was it the closest anyone had gotten, after her death? What would she think of it? Would she be warmed that so many cared enough to try, or horrified that they couldn't tell the difference between her and a mannequin?
It was a fourth of a person, if that. Lifelike, but still paled. False. The more it watched, the more carefully it observed its own interactions, the more it realized it was buoyed by expectations rather than genuine interactions. A well-trained computer program might make as much an impact.
It was unreal in the realest sense. An oxymoron it puzzled on long hours into the night, in its stolen bed. A cuckoo the humanity surrounding her had yet to uncover, as clever as they thought they were.
Some days it was hard, competing ideas of what she was supposed to be painting it in a tight spot. Interactions that left it could only assume left them as unsatisfied as it was.
It had tried going out without anyone. Making genuine connections with people that never knew her. A hard thing to do here, but it tried. The interactions were a mass of tangled wires that left her exhausted. Their reactions felt wrong. It wanted to shake them, tell them what they were supposed to say and move on. It didn't. What good would it do? It would just be making the interaction as false as it was. It didn't want that, even if it didn't know why.
So it continued to play pretend. Act like her. Be her. Stay in the comfortable sphere they had made for it. There had to be some kindness there, making sure it was never without someone to model its interactions on.
And in the darkest hours of the nights it thought of her, and wondered what she thought of it.
There were 3 gods that came into the world in 2012, right? Now only one remains. Was one of them this god's sibling that you helped get back home? Who was the third?
“Oh,” her mother sighs wistfully over the phone. “You’ll be a junior next year. So close to graduating. My little biologist.”
She is not a biology major. She doesn’t try to correct her.
She looks down at the notebook spread across her lap. There’s a developing caricature of a frog on one page, mouth cartoonishly large and eyes nearly all white except for pinpricks of pupil. Nothing like their pupils. It’s important that her notebooks carry as little of them as possible. “I’m not sure I’ll graduate in four years, Mom.”
She’s been tracking the days since she first realized Elsewhere was like nowhere else. The back of this notebook is filled with increasingly small tally marks. She doesn’t know how many there are now, but she does know there are more than a 1000.
“That’s okay,” her mom says. It’s a good thing she’s not here. Those words are dangerously close to a promise.
She carefully hides words in the reeds she’s drawing behind her frog as her mother assures her that’s fine, she can take as long as she needs. Her father took six years to graduate, after all, and it’s not like her scholarship doesn’t cover most of the expenses anyway.
She hums in agreement and carefully doesn’t look up when something cold stops just behind her shoulder. They don’t know how to look for words in pictures, not like humans.
Not yet, anyway.
“So,” a freshman asks her during orientation week, “what are you majoring in?”
“Art history,” she says. It’s one of the safer subjects. They tend not to be interested in art that’s already been done. They tend to focus on the art that’s happening now. “You?”
“Chemistry,” the freshman says. A girl behind him with lips the color of parchment grunts, displeased, and moves on. The freshman doesn’t notice and sticks out his hand. “My name’s To—”
“Bye,” she says and slips back into the crowd before he can do much more than splutter. She’s not interested in carrying any names but her own.
“Major?” the man at the desk asks her. The man is supposed to be Mr. Brown-Eyes, her academic counselor.
The man at the desk is not her academic counselor.
“Pre-law,” she says. She saw Mr. Brown-Eyes walk into the woods last night. She hopes his replacement didn’t see her standing in her window, watching.
The not-Brown-eyes visibly loses interest. The pre-laws aren’t interesting to them. “I’m sure you’re fine. Send the next student in.”
She’d made this appointment to see if she finally had enough credits to graduate or to at least move out of the dorms. Living off campus is starting to look preferable to watching the freshmen disappear. She decides it’s better to leave while not-Brown-eyes lets her, questions unanswered.
She is careful not to say ‘thanks’ as she leaves and even more careful to not speak to the students waiting in the hallway. Some of the experienced ones notice the look on her face and follow her out.
Some do not.
The boy in her shadow has an extra joint in his fingers. He doesn’t do much other than follow her, doing his best to stick to her shadow’s edge and not make too much noise. She hears him anyway, sometimes, giggling to himself.
Then, two days after she notices him, he does something after all.
He’s sitting on her new roommate’s bed when she gets out of the shower, legs swinging and eyes blacker than black. Her roommate’s clothes are lying crumpled on the floor and, when she squints, she thinks she can see their profile in the boy’s shadow.
Her fingers ache for her pencils and notebooks. It’s…interesting.
“I know what you are,” the boy sing-songs.
She heads for her dresser and tries not to mourn her roommate. She doesn’t say anything to the boy’s expectant silence, just finds a blue sweater and slips it on over her towel. It’s big enough to hit her at mid-thigh so she feels comfortable dropping the towel while she searches for pants.
The boy, as they so often do, runs out of patience first. “What will you give me to not tell?”
She turns, folding her arms over her chest and just looks at him. She’s lost so many of her words since coming here, but that’s okay. People understand her most of the time anyway.
Sure enough, the boy hisses. “Fine! Be boring.” He hops off her roommate’s bed and wanders to the door. “I don’t like Animal Science majors anyway.” She must make some sort of noise, because he turns, grinning, triumphant. “Don’t know why’d you hide it. Anyone with eyes could see. It’s all in how you watch.”
He’s gone the next second, his shadow dragging behind him, full and heavy.
She waits until the door closes and she can’t hear his footsteps to sag with relief.
She is not an Animal Sciences major.
“I don’t think I caught your name?” her anthropology TA asks during discussion. They’re staring at her, brow furrowed. “How long have you been in this class?”
She knows she’s quiet, but it’s one thing to ask how long she’s been here and another to ask for her name. The other students in the circle are tittering, sharing glances out of the corner of their eyes and avoiding hers. Most of them think she’s one of them and shouldn’t be acknowledged. The ones who know better are waiting for her answer with something close to hunger.
“It’s on my essay,” she says. Her voice is hoarse from disuse. She wonders how long ago she last spoke. She doesn’t bother answering how long she’s been here. The answer is a lot longer than anyone else.
“You’re not an anthropology major,” the TA says confidently. “You aren’t on the list.”
“Geology,” she says shortly.
The TA is relieved. “That explains it.” Nobody remembers Geology majors.
She is careful to avoid sitting too close to the TA during future discussions.
She is, of course, not a Geology major.
She follows the glimmering blue lights at night, not caring that they lead her deep, deep into the forest. She’s so curious to see where they lead all the time, like an ever-present ache in her bones. Ever since the first night, waking in her bed to them hovering above her, she’s followed them. It’s always somewhere different, somewhere dangerous, somewhere special.
She has seen the birth of river gentry, following these lights, has seen the death of nymphs and has seen the becoming of Royalty. Following the lights is the only way to truly know.
On nights like this, it’s not compulsion that drags her out of bed, though it might as well be. She simply can’t resist knowing.
Tonight, the lights weave through the campus like tour guides, touching this tree and that crumbling brick wall. She hides herself like she learned from the boy in her shadow, slinking just at the edge of their glow, quiet, quiet, quiet.
Tonight, the lights are heading to the forest on the west side of campus. She follows them into the green without any hesitation. She learned how to step quietly from a girl with foxes drawn on her arms and she learned her way home from a creature with stars streaming down its back. She knows her way and she knows it quietly thanks to them. Her thanks is hidden in the lines of a crow in her red notebook and in the lines of a weeping willow in her green notebook.
The moon is full overhead and, when the clouds part, she can make out dark silhouettes moving through the trees with her. Some are too tall and curved, eyes gleaming in the darkness like wolves’. Others make too much noise and are only driven forward by sheer will and a very human hunger to know.
The ones who make noise grin when they catch each other’s eyes. They are breaking the rules right now. She is too. They’ve been breaking the rules for years (the ones lucky enough to have years.)
(She used to be with them, tripping over twigs, barely suppressing glee as they ran with things they should not be running with. Then her words crumbled in her chest and her notebooks began to grow and she started looking different in the few mirrors she has.)
She pushes herself forward, grinning to herself, heart pounding in her chest. Here, on the chase, it hardly matters all the words she’s lost to this forest, to these beings, to these years. Here, on the chase, there is only her muscles burning, her face aching, her blood roaring.
Here, on the chase, the rules are clear.
Don’t be seen.
Don’t be caught.
If you are caught, say nothing.
If you are caught, know nothing.
You can only know if they don’t.
She is the oldest in her major to still be following the lights.
She has been the oldest for quite some time.
That’s okay, her mother whispers in her mind and, she thinks, it is.
Written for @caffeinewitchcraft‘s caffeine challenge!
[Prompt: A story told from the POV of someone who’s not part of the hero’s journey. No, their role is much worse. They’re the hero’s tragic backstory and they realize it a week before their death.]
*
He came to study with me in the winter, when the snows had crawled down from the caps and frozen and dried my garden. I wasn’t sure what he expected to learn from me, in this dormant time of year, before he knew his herbs and beetles. I told him so, and sent him down to the cellar to learn from the dried plants and the old books.
Not a single university-educated bone in the boy’s body. Which was partly just as well—those children think they know so much. But they only teach certain things at universities these days, and I’m not all that keen on teaching complex geometries myself. Then come the lunar orbits and the rotations of other celestial bodies nearby, and the interactions of plants, and drying and heating and—
And that’s if you’re lucky enough to find a student who knows the world does not revolve around them, but around a burning celestial flame. Alchemy is a complex art, built on everything at once. It’s the making of magic from science and maths, exploring the chaos within the order, and not the reverse. It isn’t for the faint of heart.
But he came with the recommendation of his village’s witch, a practical woman and an old friend. I suppose that’s the best I could expect, if I’d ever wanted a student.
(I didn’t).
She talked me into it anyway. In a letter. Awful wench, not even the decency to do it in person.
Addie has always had what I had not—a way with people, of inspiring trust and warmth. Or rather: one day I stopped trying, and discovered an immense freedom in speaking my mind. I lost my place as the court physician, and no longer had to curry to the whims of my betters. I lost my friends, and realised they’d never been friends to me at all.
I found Addie barely a month after that. I discovered the person I had once wanted to be, alive and well and thriving out in the great wide world, whereas I had felt throttled and sidelined since the day I came into the city.
He reminded me of you, she wrote. He sees that the world is broken and wants so very badly to fix it.
“And he thinks alchemy is the way to do that?” I muttered aloud in my kitchen.
Yes, he wants the power of this gift; he still thinks that power is the way to fix things. Yes, I know it should frighten me, you may keep your grumbly lecture.
I know you will not let him abuse your art.
Addie would never steer me wrong.
And she knew how to throw down a challenge, which certainly never hurt.
Her protégé was worthy of her praise. He learned fast, and he had a knack for it, much to my surprise. Instead of learning his herbs and beetles he sat that and charted and muttered and cross-referenced my many old books. Corrected half the Celestial Atlas in tiny marginalia. Found my old journals where I’d done my own calculations, and started studying those instead.
It is rare to have a student so willing and stubborn. Patient enough that he will wait for you to warm up to him, certain of his charm. He cared for my goats and chickens, kept my hearth clean, fixed my rickety gate and dusted the shelves. If nothing else, it was good to have the company.
And on late nights, the sky was high and clear, and he argued about the paths of the celestial flames with me, and argued about what it was that the gods were burning. Clever boy—I could see why Addie liked him. He told such fine stories, when he was finally sure I would listen.
He was hopeful. He was hopeful and certain and brilliantly clear in a way that I no longer was. He had a purpose and a belief, a fire lit from within. Sitting beside him on the long solstice nights, I felt like the cold of these mountain winters had seeped into my very bones. Or perhaps it was the cold and damp of the city and the king’s court, and I’d never really warmed through, even after all these years tending to my own, comfortable, clean fire.
Maybe he would burn strong enough for it to last. Maybe he could go out into the world, even down into the city, and light the way for better days. He was already so serious and so solemn, sometimes. He had the makings of that patient, constant force that whittles away stone and marks the passage of time with no more than an absent gesture.
And he made me miss one plucky village witch. Made me feel the way I had when I first met her, and realised that someone like her truly could exist. That unforgettable feeling, like filling your lungs full with air so cold and sharp and rarified that it feels like your heart might burst. They’ll be the death of me, I sometimes think, with their kind and solemn eyes, their unearthly patience.
*
Spring came, cold and grey and eerily still. I’d begun to send the boy out to the mountainsides, to investigate what enterprising young things had sprouted, what had braved the first thaw and would likely die the next frost, for Winter hadn’t quite finished with our corner of the world just yet. He wasn’t much for herbal lore, though I could tell Addie had tried to teach him.
We get few travelers in these parts; the ones who are lost rarely make it this far, and the locals try to avoid me. They’re not too overfond of mages, never mind that alchemists aren’t any such thing (well, only peripherally). A village witch succeeds in part because she can convince the villagers that she is harmless, and I have never been able to do any such thing.
They know. They only come to me when there is no one else to help them. A child sick with fever whom even the mages could not save, a plague among the cattle—these are the things that overcome the bounds of any fear.
I did not take the boy with me for this.
It was sheer misery: bitter cold and stillborn foals, cattle poisoned by polluted water. I was asked to do what even a mage couldn’t fix. There was one in the town’s inn, still, unwilling to give up or admit defeat. He looked haggard. It takes much from a being, tending to the fevered and the ailing.
But where a mage goes to the cattle, I go first to the water.
This is not what we called you for, the elders tell me.
“But you called me, so allow me to do my work.” To purify, to separate out what they cannot see is killing them.
This is what I would not have that young boy see: the way they shy from me. Maybe they will never hide from him, because he is not like me. He draws people to himself without so much as thinking of it. But I do not wish for him to ever see this gift we share as a thing of which to be ashamed.
“I remember you,” the mage said to me one day. “I saw you once, in the city. You were a member of the king’s court.”
The chill wind rippled across my back.
“You were well known for your work. We studied it, in my school.”
“That’s very flattering,” I said, still wary.
He chuckled. “Hardly. You were renowned, and a Master at the University, read around the kingdom.”
“I was renowned, and a Master at the University, and they burned my books when I left the city,” I told him.
It had taken me days to realise that he was actually quite young. Perhaps he did not know the story—how I left, and why.
Some days I still regard it as a terrible mistake. Days like this, when I am up to my elbows in poisoned water and pushed to the limit of my tolerance for cold stares. Days when I remember Addie’s patience, and the patience of that boy looking after my hearth and my goats, waiting for me to teach him.
I felt—these days, very often—that it was my greatest failure. How could I have dared to turn around and throw away everything I’d ever worked for? How could I, when I’d already done so much?
The mage frowned at me. “My school did not burn your books. Our Masters told us about you. You were... remarkable. I’ve always wanted to meet you.”
“Ah.” I shrugged, and squinted at my work. “Well, you know what they say about meeting one’s heroes.”
I bent down to fix the water filter into place. It was still too difficult to do, I couldn’t possibly expect the women of this town to have the time to fiddle with this thing as much as I had...
“I do,” he said. I heard him rise from my workbench, and move toward the door. “They’re far better in person.”
By the time I looked up again, he was gone.
*
The villagers paid me what I asked, with dark looks and hand-signs to avert evil. How kind of them, I think to myself with the slightest of smiles, to wish me on my way well-protected from meddling spirits.
The mage walked with me to the village boundary, still asking me about the filters, how to use them, where to put them. It was a strange thing, to enjoy teaching once again. Despite the misery of that place, I left it feeling a little lighter.
Just not for very long.
As I mounted the last hill between me and home I discovered that my hands were shaking. My heart raced too fast. Surely, I grumbled, I cannot be that old.
The cold sweat and the sudden gripping fear was what propelled me forward. The blinding terror made me run, dropping my satchels and precious tools haphazard on still-frozen ground.
There are rules that any mountain-dweller knows. You do not cross the path of certain things, you do not speak to masters of the mountain. If something speaks to you, you are polite, but you do not leave your answer open to another question.
You don’t invite a stranger in.
Rarely is there anything that wanders in these parts looking to make mischief. But young magicians are forever a target for such beings. Especially those of great potential.
The shadows are a hungry thing, here among the ice and rock, but no shadow can abide a fire. I sent embers spewing from my hearth, threw a rain of sparks through the unnaturally dark room. They fell upon the shadow-creature and it did not burn, but it pulled its tendrils tight, as if in pain. By the faint light I could just make out the child’s pale and frightened face—
—and the fine-scaled golden features of the thing that hovered over him.
Another rule: you do not show your fear. Oh, it smells fear on the wind—but you do not show it.
“There is a sign on my gate, and a rune on my door, and even the goats in my yard would have told you that you are not welcome. It is time for you to depart.”
It bared its teeth at me in something like a smile, wrapped the dark about itself and vanished without a word.
Too easy.
“Achim.”
The boy was curled in on himself in the corner, so small.
With a sigh, I crossed to the table and picked up my kettle. I set it to heat, and banished the soot from my floors. There was something to be said for heat and sweetness and spice, after such things. I approached him slowly and crouched down to tuck a blanket about his curved shoulders. “Achim, look at me.”
I nudged his chin up until I could see his eyes. “It isn’t coming back.”
“It—told me I could never—run far enough,” he stammered out through chattering teeth.
“And I’m telling you that I keep my word. Any being that does not keep to the contract is one you can bring low. This is your first lesson, child.”
First, and perhaps the last.
He watched me, wide-eyed, as I set the table. Watched me as evening fell. Watched me clean and hum and read until he fell asleep.
And when I was sure he did not dream, I pulled my shawl about my shoulders, and walked out the door to the edge of my grounds, to the garden gate that he had fixed for me.
The creature was still lurking there.
Actually, it loitered, rather as if it owned the place. It had a vaguely human shape, though of course appearance was the last thing you could trust. It leaned against the fence as if propped up at hip and elbow, lounging like an uninvited lover at the gate. The cloak of shadows hung from its shoulders, hood fallen free of the being’s head.
Mischief-maker, quicksilver trickster. People used to come up all this way into the mountains, searching for gold. There were stories of the yellow demon they saw glimmers of in the mountain streams.
“You are owed nothing. You came onto my lands at the invitation of one who did not even own them. Why do you linger?”
“He is young and powerful,” the golden creature said, “and the future that awaits him must not be.”
Another, less acknowledged rule: such beings are old and powerful, and if they speak of troubled times, perhaps it is worth a listen. Perhaps, or perhaps not. It is certainly a folly to ignore such warnings. The being that delivers it is never one that cares for your wellbeing. But if it worries for its own, then you may be sure: a mortal will not survive what follows.
“What future do you see?"
“Death to the mages and witches,” it said, without hesitation. “He will do what is right, he will bring light into the darkness, as you believe him capable of doing. But with that light, great unintended evils will spread through the world. The extinction of those who use magic, those who are magic, is not a change that this world can sustain.”
“And I suppose you are here out of enlightened self-interest,” I blurted, and cursed myself for my thoughtless mouth.
The being only smiled.
“That boy has a better chance than most,” I rallied. “He has a gift, and it isn’t just his magic or his knowledge. He has a chance at gaining enough wisdom to keep it in balance.”
“Maybe so. But you have always known that your faith is not enough to save anyone. Sometimes, there is simply nothing that you can do.”
I leaned heavily against the gatepost. “And if you know so much of me, you know I cannot let you take him. Because you have to try.”
That Achim should have come to me—that Addie should have sent him here—was a chance as slim as starfall landing in one’s yard. I had discovered not long afterward that the King had set his hounds to thinning out the ranks of learned folk outside the city. Achim’s parents had died for “spreading lies”—insisting that the factories had tainted the village water—and the only thing that saved their son was that he’d been practicing a little bit of simple trick-magic at Addie’s fire.
I must have been among the first to fall in the King’s war on the educated, five years ago. One of the learned folk whose names had been used to justify the slaughter of traitors, snobs, and liars—the evil that would bring the kingdom down.
Those who did not leave the city, as I had, had simply been murdered.
“Name a different price,” I told the shadow-creature from the mountains, and it laughed.
“A price for what? I did not come here for a deal.”
“Yet you will make one, because I have asked it of you,” I said. “I will abandon my charges no longer. So you will tell me what the price is for me to keep them safe.”
“Them,” the creature echoed, and raised a golden eye-ridge. “Who are they?”
The people I left behind in the city. The boy I refused to teach for so long, and now might never really get a chance to teach at all. Addie and that tired, curious mage who still thought me a hero.
The being stared at me.
“Come out, fair lady, dance with me,” the golden creature said at last with a wide, inhuman grin, and stretched out a long-clawed hand. “I find yours is a better mind to dance with than a child’s.”
I laughed, terrified, because I did not know what else to do. “That is your offer?”
Dancing, what was that supposed to mean?
It twitched its shoulders, like a shrug, and pointed up at the moon. “Until it turns, you have time to think on it.” It made a show of straightening out, dusting off its sleeves, and turned to go. “Seven nights, I believe, and remember that they grow ever shorter.”
“Wait! How am I not abandoning anyone if I am off—dancing?”
There were tales of diaphanous things dancing on the mountain winds, through the shadows in the canyons. The souls of dead climbers, some still think. There were stories of souls that danced with death. I had always thought the truth must be somewhere in between.
This wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind, however.
The being looked over its shoulder, and blinked at me, slowly, like a mountain cat. “The only truth you know of what lies beyond this place is that you can’t return to where you’ve been. You do not step into the same water twice in a mountain stream, Tali, yet you have never made the mistake of thinking that there is nothing beyond the stream.”
Between one breath and the next, the creature vanished.
I stayed and watched the moon for a long time, too numb to feel the cold. I thought, I’d never given you my name.
No—I don’t remember giving you my name.
I wasn’t sure which thought was the more terrifying.
Back in the house behind me, a young boy slept a dreamless sleep. In response to a nameless, shapeless threat against him, I’d thrown all caution to the winds, somehow bargained with my life. All in the name of a potential none could grasp.
And with a being that had the advantage of me, no less.
I won’t be able to teach him, I thought, and dropped that regret like a stone at the gate; one of those smooth, small stones that weighs far more than it looks like it ought to. Another rounded, heavy stone: I won’t be the one to watch him grow.
I’d waited too long, again. Old fool, still making the same mistakes as always.
I had a week to get my old journals in order. At least, as a university master, I’d been an obsessive scribe for my own affairs.
*
There was a tale I once heard, about a woman who learned the name of the fae that she’d entered into a bargain with, and that was what freed her from their deal. I did not recall making a deal with anything.
But then, I did once somewhat carelessly offer my heart and soul in exchange for being permitted to learn the secrets of the universe...
I LOVED THAT DEMON TO ANGEL PROMPT FILL YOU DID! It was truly awesome to read! I was in love from the staring contest and the world was so effortlessly built and interacted with and it was lovely. Thanks for posting and sharing it!
thank you!!!! here’s a present, which takes place, say …. 13 years after colossians 1:16:
“moooooooooooooooom,” whined BabyTodd, throwing his head back like he used to when he was still sleeping in his crib. lately he had insisted on being called JustTodd, which keli supported but thought was weird.
(”no, kel. it’s just Todd, not JustTodd,” norma said.
“that’s literally what i’m saying,” keli replied. “you’re just repeating what i said. JustTodd.”
“no. just Todd.”
“JustTodd!”
“just! Todd!”
“it’s fine,” JustTodd interrupted them. “normom, i appreciate it, but honestly. it’s fine. it’s an improvement. i’ll take it.”)
keli shifted in her chair. she hated when JustTodd made that sound, because it triggered all the demon instincts she didn’t have access to anymore, like murder. anyone who made JustTodd sound like that needed to be ground into dust, but it was harder when all she had was her hands.
unfortunately, lately it had been keli herself making him sound like that, because she did “incredibly unfair things” like tell him he couldn’t have a sleepover on a tuesday.
“then you’ll be tired,” she explained, for the fifth time. “on wednesday.”
“i won’t!” he promised. “we’ll go to bed on time!”
norma, standing at the stove, snorted. JustTodd shot her a glare.
“don’t give normom that look,” keli scolded. “no means no.”
“well,” said norma.
“well?” asked JustTodd, perking up.
keli swiveled to stare at norma, who was usually the tougher, of the two of them. “well?” she repeated, incredulously. “what do you mean, ‘well’?!”
“if they go to bed on time,” normom said, grinning a little. “i suppose it might be okay.”
“but they won’t!” keli reminded her. “you agree with me! you just snorted!”
JustTodd pumped his fist. “normom said i could go, so i can go, right?” he asked. “mom? right?”
norma held up her spatula. “as long as i can be assured that you go to bed on time, i think you can go,” she said. “that seems fair, doesn’t it, kel?”
keli narrowed her eyes. “….yes,” she said slowly.
JustTodd whooped, hopping out of his chair to kiss norma’s cheek. keli scowled. she hated when she wasn’t the favorite mom. she was the one who found JustTodd in a dumpster and brought him home, after all. norma was just the nurse who had given them a house and cooked them breakfast and taught keli how to change a diaper and enroll JustTodd in things like school.
“then it’s settled,” norma said. “JustTodd can go, and your dad will go with him, to keep an eye on things.”
WOOOOO, said the voice of keli’s dark father. BOY SLEEPOVER PARTY.
I’m actually really excited by the idea of Merch in your style, regardless of subject! If you end up having time to do it, I’ll def buy/reblog the post :)
okay! so here’s what I’m looking at now
I’m going to start with small figure/people paintings since they’re the fastest and easiest to do, and if I get enough response I’ll move on to full, larger paintings
flags mentioned so far
bi- 3
ace- 3
pan- 2
demisexual
bigender
nonbinary
I’m also definitely doing aromantic since that’s my fave flag!
