Missy packed a mouse.
Taxidermy, with clown paint gracing its features. It stands in a pose, furry arms extended upward, sticking the landing of an acrobatic trick. The rest of the troupe sits in a box instead of their usual perch on her mantlepiece, her belongings pre-packed to make it easier for her father. No, it's not an essential in her already filled-to-the-brim suitcase, but it's...sentimental. A memory of a circus that rolled into Grampleton when she was a little girl, where she swore she saw people with pumpkins for heads bumbling around. More importantly, it's her first memory, wonder and adventure that she thought she would never experience again.
And, for the first time in who knows how many years, that feeling tickles at her skin. She can only hope her father understands. The letter she left for him explains it all, possibly far longer than it needed to be. But...she couldn't just leave him. That's what her mother had done. He had to understand why, had to understand that once she's where she needs to be, he'll know. She'll call, they'll talk every day if he wishes.
That suitcase packed with that little mouse bumps against her thigh with each hurried step, her fingers gripping the handle until her knuckles are bone-white. A gold band, a small, modest diamond inlaid in the center, on her left ring finger glints in the moonlight. It's a beacon, guiding her to her future.
The light reflects up to the mill as she approaches, clear on Azariah's chest. It's quick, the way her arms wrap around her; the roots that trap her to Bleeding Hearts Springs loosen, and start to form around him. "I'm here," she breathes out, as if she had been holding it for all too long. And, perhaps she has been, waiting for this exact moment to finally be able to be with Azariah. But, they're not ready yet. Not until Laney is with them.
She can't leave until the rest of her heart is with them.
Slowly, Missy unfurls herself from Azariah, keeping her free hand curled against his bicep. Solid and warm. Her gaze drifts towards the far away tree line, the moon watching the pair with her all knowing eyes. But, she's not watching back. No, she's simply waiting.
"She's coming."
And, it's said with love.
@alainapricity @vespcrtines
Thereâs a single photograph left in Alainaâs place, slipped under her motherâs door in the dead of night. A younger (but just as tall) brunette next to her older male likeness, two billowing trees posed in front of the Birchwood Inn.
Weâll be back, scrawled on the opposite side.
âFuck,â she curses under her breath as she trips over a root, stumbling a step or two like she isnât treading the very earth she knows better than her own palms. It all feels foreign to her in a calming and worrying way, all-encompassing and hungry.
Her eyes are stinging and her cheeks are wet by the time the Mill rears its head. That damned mill, she thinks, blowing shaky air from her lips. Inside the sack slung around her shoulder, a comb clinks against a glass bottle â filled halfway with Healing Hive Tea Time Honey. A kind reminder that not everything Laney loves has to slip through her grasp.
Like this.
She sees them both at once, together in the way they should be. For some reason, the tears come even quicker as she lays eyes on them. Her guiding stars.
It doesnât take long for her to cross to the pair and wrap an arm around each of them, Missy first, draped across her shoulders, and then Aza, curled around his back. Some, upon seeing the sight, mightâve left the couple to their devices, but not Laney. Sheâs holding onto the best parts of her, personified into two magnificent beings.
After a moment, she pulls back just enough to look between the two of them, streaks already beginning to dry on her patchy cheeks. âI wonât stay longer than Iâm welcome,â she says with a shake of her head. She never has. And maybe theyâll end up in different places, eventually, but for now â for now theyâre bound together, the three of them.
@vespcrtines @ofmourningdoves
He's scarcely let his arms fall from Missy's grasp before his chest makes room for the second body that holds his heart, Laney's scent thick in the heavy night. Moss, clean dirt, and the deep hush beneath old trees. The scent of the world before it was paved over. The scent of home, of climbing trees and scrubbing grass stains from their church clothes.
Azariah's the one to pull back first, though his hands don't leave her. His palms cradle the wet curve of her cheeks, thumbs brushing the raw, rain-salted skin beneath her eyes. Laney doesn't cry. Missy doesn't cry. And Azariah Tanaka, for all his sermons on mercy and loss, on grief and the end of days, doesn't cry.
Or maybe they do. Maybe tonight is the night they start.
"By that logic," he murmurs, soft around his edges, breaking against her skin, "you'll stay forever."
The words settle between them like the toll of a cracked church bell, heavy and God, aching so sharply, yet somehow lighter than the hush of their hiccupping breaths. The faint gleam of the band on his finger catches in her eyes, and there's something in the way her eyes sparkle in that glittering moonlight, in the way they're adults, they're children, they've just met, they've known each other forever, that makes his throat tighten. Whole hearts, unpracticed and ungainly, unanchored by anything but each other, floating together in this strange, holy pause. Gently colliding. Gently sticking. Unmoored and desperate to leap. Stuck in a moment where the edge yawns open and all that's left is to jump or kneel. To be brave or be buried.
And for once, Azariah will find bravery in his cowardly hollow. He'll be the first to skin his knees. Let the others fall where he did, if the earth would have them.
They linger in that breathless hush, shoulder to shoulder, a knot pulled tight by the gravity of all they're about to leave behind. He exhales, slow and steady, pressing one more kiss to Missy's temple, resting his brow for a moment against Laney's, before he bends to reach for the suitcases-- his, Missy's, both foolishly, frivolously heavier than the life Laney folds into the sack slung across her shoulder. When he rises again, he takes one last look back at the mill behind them, tall and crumbling and crooked. A relic of their lives coming to a standstill. The final looming image of the world they're about to leave.
He loved her here. He found God here. And lost Him here, too.
His gaze tips toward the east, down the cobblestone path that spills into the farmfields and curls toward the old station. Away from the surprise of sleep-addled eyes catching them from the windows of the square. Away from the looming glare of the church rising above their shoulders. Away from the forest's whispering temptation, coaxing them to lay down in its dirt and close their eyes.
There's no light yet, but he can feel it: the rumble of the tracks, the distant clatter of the engine devouring the miles between here and somewhere else. The train is coming. God help them, it's coming. And Lord help him, because if he let them hesitate now, they might never move again.
Azariah shifts the weight of the bags, glances back to them both. Missy, glowing with the shimmer of the ring he put on her finger. Laney, fierce and shining through the ache in her eyes. His. His people.
"C'mon," he urges, soft as he can manage without the hoarseness of tears tearing through his throat. "We gotta beat the sun."
And he starts to walk, toward the cobblestone road, toward the endless fields, toward the calf out past its bedtime to low curiously at the three of them. Toward the station waiting in the dark to carry them all away from here.
@ofmourningdoves, @alainapricity














