This is birds

Ash | 29 | he/him/his Hello hey this is a blog with words. If you like words, feel free to stay. I try to keep the stuff in the sidebar updated, so if you're looking for something specific it should be somewhere in there. If you have any requests/questions feel free to drop me a line.

[wizardofvamp]

So!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Anastasia and her husband Roman grapple with the future of their family after the death of Anastasia's father Kliment. Luckily for them an eccentric noble from Kliment's past has offered to patronize them. Unluckily for them, he's only interested in one carpenter, not two.

I've finally gotten around to doing some major updates with Cadmus/Limits stuff. This isn't the new chapter, but it is going to be where I post the 1830's branch of the plot so it doesn't interrupt the flow of the modern-day plot. I'm hoping to alternate between updating this and Limits moving forward!

[bloodshotgun]

all my tzimisce characters fall in one of these two categories

[whatisbirds]

Honeyfungus - Act 1

"All things that are good and right, nest into each other. Arm crook in arm crook, rib in sternum, ball in socket. Where there’s no room, what is right finds it. Child in Cratch. Where there is plenty, what is wrong will bloat. Body in Tomb. What is Right and what is God, we find in the fitting." - A vampire crawls out of her shallow grave while a Minister preps Christmas service. A coterie of old friends meet for dinner. A home is torched. A storm rolls in. Exposure, we are told, kills.

A closet play about vampires and their hunters. Ao3 Link for those who perfer the format. Otherwise, you can read below the cut!

Cast:

Dylan, The Youngest

Mercy/MercyThing, The Second Youngest

Lucy/LucyThing, The Estranged

Catherine, The Third Youngest

Jed, The Fourth Youngest

Daley, The Fifth Youngest

Marcel, The Fourth Eldest

Ada, The Third Eldest

Vana, The Second Eldest

Briggs, The Eldest

Canary, The Apprentice

Mrs Mary Brown/Nurse/Doctor/Cop, The Town

Production Notes

NOTE ON LIGHT:

The division of light establishes a shifting boundary. Whoever controls the light, controls the boundary. Boundaries cannot be crossed without invitation, at least not without great effort.

NOTE ON SPACE:

Scenes in this play are nested within each other. It is expected that multiple scenes will be playing out all in one shared, small space. In this version of the script, the shared space is assumed to be a dining table where each character has a seat. At this table kitchens bleed into bedrooms. Car parks into hospital rooms. Lakes into churches. The entire town folds in on itself and separate corners shake hands in the middle.

1 . Table Setting

It is dark. 

Steady and long, nails scrape against ice and stone.

A light flicks on. A desk lamp. 

Vana, reviewing a sermon. 

VANA: All things that are good and right, nest into each other.

Arm crook in arm crook, rib in sternum, ball in socket.

Where there’s no room, what is right finds it.

Child in Cratch.

Where there is plenty, what is wrong will bloat.

Body in Tomb.

What is Right and what is God, we find in the fitting.

Jaw rigid, she grinds her teeth. There’s something in there, like a kernel of corn, that isn’t supposed to be there. In the periphery, MercyThing’s bleeding, excavating hands creep into the pool cast by Vana’s desk lamp. Her nails hang off her cuticles dragging thin blood lines across winter earth.

A second light. A candle. 

Canary nearly burns himself with a match and drops it.

CANARY: fuck.

He licks his fingers and strikes another, lighting the remainder of the candles: second, third, forth, another and another down the center row of the dining table. Briggs is eventually illuminated. He is carefully peeling back layers of tin foil wrapped around a salad bowl.

CANARY: That for tonight?

Briggs hesitates, checks the bottom of the bowl. #1 MARCEL LEFT EAR scrawled in sharpie.

BRIGGS: For tonight, yeah.

Briggs dips his hand into a slit cut between layers of foil. Canary slides in behind him, arms draped around his waist, watching over the elder’s shoulder.

BRIGGS: Can you hold the corners for me?

CANARY: Yeah.

Canary does, they rock back and forth in a mock slow dance. Canary snickers. 

CANARY: Ghost.

BRIGGS: You’re right, he loved this kind of thing.

CANARY: No I meant–

BRIGGS: I know, I know.

Briggs reaches deeper, slick, then grips. He pulls his hand out, dozens of black gossamer chords cling to his skin.

Briggs lifts his hand further, drawing a fleshy ink black stem from the foiled bowl.

BRIGGS: Glasses?

CANARY: Shit, sorry.

BRIGGS: It’s alright, it’s alright, can you–

CANARY: Of course.

Canary vanishes.

Ada lights a palm frond.

ADA: Grandma needs the ashes for tomorrow, Luce.

MERCYTHING: Ada? Adaadaadabitteadabitteadabittebittebiiiiiiiiitte.

MercyThing, head exposed, digs with greater fervor. Ada drops the frond onto a larger pile and the plume of light illuminates the space beyond the table. A firepit behind a shed. Lucy feeds additional fronds from her seat next to Ada.

Canary returns with a tray of empty wine glasses. He sets one in front of each of the twelve seats.

CANARY: This everyone?

BRIGGS: …eh. How much do you got?

Canary pulls a pouch out of his pocket. In it are nail clippings, locks of hair, a slice of skin. Each one is dropped into its own glass. Briggs lays the stem down the center of the table. It unfurls, tendrils spreading and crawling across its surface. He then counts the glasses.

LUCY: Can’t we get ashes somewhere else?

ADA: No, Luce. Burning the palms is part of the point.

LUCY: :/

ADA: …you can keep one, if you want.

LUCY: :)

Lucy sets a dry frond aside.

JED: It’s the middle of fucking winter.

MARCEL: Snow doesn’t make wood fireproof, Jed.

Jed and Marcel stand under a massive, burnt hole in their living room. Their house is mid-renovation, bare beams and electrical wire. No windows. Marcel itches the patch bandaged over where his left ear used to be.

Dylan and Daley are huddled around an ice hole, fishing. Lightning cracks across the sky. Lucy begins to count.

DYLAN: Shit.

DALEY (waking up) : Hm?

DYLAN:I saw–

Thunder shakes the dining table. Ada whistles.

ADA: That is close.

LUCY: Should we be worried?

ADA: Nah, nah, nah. We’ll be fine and done before it reaches us.

DYLAN: It’s close.

DALEY: ? DYLAN: Were you asleep? DALEY: I’m more lizard than man. DYLAN: Look. They stare up into the gathering clouds. Lightning flashes, and thunder shakes the ice.

DALEY: Yeah. Yeah it is.

Dylan and Daley pack up.

ADA: In fact– did you know that, if it weren’t for a storm, we might’ve never had a church?

Canary rolls a joint.

BRIGGS: You forgot one.

CANARY: I wasn’t able to find anything.

BRIGGS: Really? Doesn’t she own a hairbrush?

CANARY: If she did, it’s not in that house anymore. Both the bathroom and her room were bare save a few boxes of junk. Not single nail or hair.

BRIGGS: Check the trash?

CANARY: Truck went by this morning.

BRIGGS: …did you check–?

CANARY: I didn’t want to check it.

BRIGGS: I can go. CANARY: … BRIGGS: Feelings to share? CANARY: I mean. If she can’t come, she can’t come. BRIGGS: You’re telling me you wouldn’t want help out of a hole?| CANARY: No but I am saying I’d probably try asking first.

BRIGGS: When was the last time you were buried alive?

CANARY: …

BRIGGS: You’re coming with me.

CANARY: Christ, Briggs–

BRIGGS: You want to learn or not?

Canary finishes the joint, sticks it into Brigg’s mouth. Lights it. Briggs inhales.

CANARY: I don’t need to be traumatized to understand.

BRIGGS (exhale): Uh-huh sure thing babe. 

Marcel stands shy of a snowdrift forming under the hole. Jed stands beside him, taking the joint out of Brigg’s mouth and hitting it himself– except for him, it’s a cigarette. They both stare up.

JED: Fucking snow’s gonna rot the floorboards.

MARCEL: We’ll fix it tomorrow. They have heated fans at Lowes, I think.

JED: Doesn’t heat accelerate rot?

MARCEL: Wet heat does. The hope is that it’d dry out. JED: …

What’d–

who’d do this.

MARCEL: I don’t know.

JED: Was this a part of it? Part of Brigg’s little forecast?

MARCEL: It wasn’t for the house.

JED: You didn’t ask about the house???

MARCEL: I apologize, I hadn’t realized that it was this renovation that I had poured over half a century of my life into.

Jed bites down on his cig and paces along the periphery of the hole.

ADA: One evening Luther was walking home and there was a terrible, terrible storm.

Dylan and Daley trudge across the ice. Daley tightly bundled while Dylan’s gear is loose, steadily unbuttoned as he becomes overheated from exertion.

ADA: And as he was passing a tree– CRACK!

Ice cracks beneath Dylan.

Vana slices her finger on a page. 

The floorboards buckle under Jed.

On its own accord, the table lurches over an inch. All the glasses remain rooted except for the empty one, which falls and shatters onto the ground. 

Marcel catches Jed, preventing them from tumbling into a newly formed hole as the snowdrift drops into the basement.

Vana stands from her desk and dips into the bathroom, shuffling through her medicine cabinet in search of bandages. The medicine cabinet is also Brigg’s kitchen cabinet, and she and Canary reach over each other as he pulls a trashbag and a dustpan out from between painkillers and icy hot. A large bottle tumbles out. She picks it up, replaces it, then hesitates. She shakes it. The clattering of teeth, half full, obscured by the translucent orange plastic. Vana plucks a second, similar bottle out of the cabinet. This one is as full of dark powder as the other is of teeth. She sets both down in the sink basin and plucks a well worn manila folder from the cabinet. She scans down a densely filled excel spreadsheet inside, comparing its numbers to the measurements on the side of the bottle.

Briggs stops Canary before he can sweep, pulls out his phone with a resigned sigh and snaps a picture of the mess. Evaluates it. Deletes it. Takes another, better picture.

BRIGGS: Go ahead.

CANARY: What do your seer eyes see?

BRIGGS: Like I said, a hole. CANARY: A Mercy Hole?

BRIGGS: I dunno wanna check?

Canary rolls his eyes and sweeps. Brigg’s attention drifts to Vana, then Daley, then Marcel. Every thread of conversation, however briefly, run through his fingers. He steals his joint back from Jed.

DYLAN: How thick is this ice again?

DALEY: Round 5 inches, last I checked.

DYLAN: Does 5 inch ice crack like that?

MARCEL (dry) : Maybe it’s the foundation settling.

Dylan and Daley continue forward. The ice cracks under Daley’s feet.

JED: Foundation settling my ass. We’re at square one. Square zero. Square subzero, now!

MARCEL: Breathe.

JED: I DON’T NEED TO BREATH. NONE OF US DO.

DALEY: We’re fine.

DYLAN: So uh what’s the plan if one of us falls through?

DALEY: Look. If I go down, just remember to swing back here once spring rolls around to fish me out. And if you go down, I’ll do the same. Alright?

DYLAN: Sure thing buddy.

They move on.

Briggs blows smoke in Vana’s face. Shaken, she drops the bottles and searches her home. First down the hallway– long, dark, still. The master bedroom. The bed is empty. Ada’s slippers are missing. Down the hallway again. The back door is ajar, spitting in snow.

MercyThing, making little progress, despairs. Moans. Frantic muttering. Bitte, bitte, bitte, bitte.

ADA: Right then and there in the pouring rain, Luther made a promise with God.

The ice cracks again. The table lurches again and another glass, Daley’s, hits the ground with a broken stem but intact bowl. Jed and Marcel hop back further from the hole.

ADA: “God, if I make it through this storm with my life, I will drop everything and become a monk!”

BRIGGS: She’s angry tonight.

CANARY: Starting to regret not buying these in bulk.

Briggs snaps a photo of Daley’s broken glass.

BRIGGS: Pretty sure we still got crazy glue in the drawer.

MARCEL: We can figure this out tomorrow.

Jed takes back his cigarette. Takes a long, irritated draw.

JED: I’m not patching a hole on– (with more effort than should be necessary) on christ mas.

MARCEL: Okay, the weekend. Not like it’ll get much worse.

JED: Ugh.

MARCEL: When does service start?

JED: Nine.

MARCEL: It’s almost eight.

JED: Yeah. Yeah. I’m just fucking– fucking, sick of shit like this happening. Ya’know? It’s fucking twenty-whatever and I’m still standing here like a sim staring at nineteen-whatever. MARCEL: I’ll raise you a seventeen-whatever.

Jed ashes his cig in his wine glass and exits. Briggs plucks the joint out of Jed’s glass and relights the roach and sits beside Marcel.

BRIGGS: I miss you, you know.

MARCEL: I know.

Marcel stares after Jed. He kisses Briggs and swallows the roach before following after his husband, leaving Briggs with nothing but a lungful of smoke.

LUCY: …and?

ADA: He made it home. He could have went back on his promise, thanked God for the favor and moved on. But he didn’t. Because he learned what his work would be.

LUCY: Well, it’s God. Not like he wouldn’t notice.

Dylan navigates the last few steps on the ice before leaping to the shore. He stumbles, and Daley catches him. 

Vana hurries to the hall closet, pulls out all of her winter gear, a shallow plastic tub, a flashlight– she finds the empty rifle case.

MercyThing wails. 

DYLAN: Shut up.

Dylan and Daley kiss.

DALEY: You shut up.

DYLAN: I’ll shut up when I’m not boiling over. How am I the only one sweating like a freak?

Canary throws out the broken glass and disappears into the dark. 

Dylan hikes up the ravine back to his car, disappearing. When Daley moves to follow, he catches Ada’s gaze. Ada holds it.

Canary returns with a backpack, winter gear and a shovel.

BRIGGS: Thanks.

CANARY: I’m staying here.

BRIGGS: …

CANARY: Please. I can hold down the fort in case anyone shows up early.

BRIGGS: …alright. Alright.

Briggs bundles up. Canary rolls up his shirt sleeve.

Vana carries her gear into the bathroom and begins to run hot water. She shrugs on her coat, her scarf. She runs her hands under hot water until she can’t stand to keep them under any longer. They are flushed red as she slides them into her mittens. She repeats this process with her feet in the bath before slipping on her socks and red winter boots. Steam clings to and runs sweat-drop lines down the frosted bathroom window. 

ADA: We don’t only do things because we’re afraid that God would be mad otherwise, do we?

LUCY/DALEY: I dunno. Kinda?

ADA: No. Not kinda.

LUCY: Hell is scary.

ADA: You’re not going to hell.

DALEY: But I would if I was bad, right? 

LUCY: And being bad is what makes God mad, right?

ADA: If you know your work, know how to listen so that you know, like Luther, you don’t have to worry about being “bad”. Luther listened during the storm. Listened to what was wrong with the old church. After listening , he could act in confidence for what is good. Listening is what pleases God, what leads to good work so you won’t be bad. We don’t only listen when we’re afraid, but fear’s when our senses are sharpest. So sometimes, God likes to give us a little spook so we remember to keep our ears sharp. It’s for our own good. But that isn’t all the time. Because if you listen, if you learn the first time, there’s no need to keep scared.

Because you are already doing what you are meant to do.

But if you don’t learn, if you don’t listen, the spooks will keep coming. And that, that’s what hell is. Never listening, never learning. Making the same mistake again and again in eternal isolation, stubbornly refusing any and all help or love that could lift you out of it.

Daley leaves. Canary offers his bare arm to Briggs.

ADA: You are not going to hell, Luce.

LUCY: Oh. Okay.

Briggs sinks his fangs in the crook of Canary’s arm. Snow picks up. The fire dies, the candles blow out. Everything goes dark.

ADA: Aw, nuts.

Ada fumbles with his lighter. Vana flicks on her flashlight.

Instead of next to Lucy and the fire, Ada now stands alone shivering in his slippers, bathrobe, hunting rifle clutched close to his chest.

VANA: You shouldn’t be out.

ADA: …I heard a coyote.

2 . Bad, Mad

MercyThing remains curled on the ground outside. She clutches her bleeding stomach.

A door opens, and light carries LucyThing’s shadow and drapes it over MercyThing.

MERCYTHING: Bitte.

LUCYTHING: Half the crop was blighted.

MercyThing stands. LucyThing, in Ada’s bathrobe and slippers, aims Ada’s rifle.

LUCYTHING: Then half the coop turned up dead.

Then, half of mama’s children turned up dead.

She said to shoot on sight.

MERCYTHING: …

LUCYTHING: You turned up dead, Van.

MERCYTHING: Bitte.

LUCYTHING: You’re not supposed to turn back up when you’re dead.

MercyThing shuffles closer, gut pressed against the end of the rifle. LucyThing steps back, lifting the barrel to MercyThings head. 

MercyThing matches LucyThing’s pace, pressing her lips against it. Parts them. Slides them down the barrel. Between clenched fangs, she forces LucyThing to lower her rifle as she sinks to her knees. The gun slides out of her mouth. MercyThing’s hands slide up LucyThing’s arms. A loose, pleading embrace.

LucyThing drops the gun. Takes MercyThing’s hands.

LUCYTHING: Come inside.

They disappear through the door.

3 . That-Mas

Dylan and Daley at Dylan’s apartment. Daley’s frying fish, Dylan’s tucking into some of the finished filets. Dylan will grow sicker over time, until addressing it becomes unavoidable at the scene’s close.

Canary, now alone, continues to set the table. He’s relit the candles and inn gaps between fungal strands he sets liquor, mixers, wine, a deep red punch. He hangs wreaths, garlands, lights candles whenever they blow out. Most importantly, most gingerly, he rests a crown of antlers on Mercy’s empty, glassless seat.

In Catherine’s apartment, Jed and Catherine are at the door, bundled up and about to leave for Christmas Eve service. Marcel is dressed down in the den.

JED: Are you sure?

MARCEL: I’ll be fine.

JED: It’s our best shot to meet neighbors, Marcel.

MARCEL: I’m fine with not knowing our neighbors.

Awkward pause. 

JED: I’ll… see you at the party, then?

MARCEL: Yep.

JED: Okay. Love you.

MARCEL: Love you.

Catherine opens the door, Jed stops her.

CATHERINE: ?

JED: Five hundred dollars.

CATHERINE: On what?

JED: On me lasting longer than you.

CATHERINE: Aren’t you out of practice?

JED: Going to church is like riding a bike.

CATHERINE: …Okay. Deal.

They shake on it and leave. Marcel pokes around on his phone. Itches his bandage.

A present-day, college aged Lucy walks along the perimeter of her grandmother's backyard.The property line is harshly distinct; clipped yellowed lawn rides up to the skirtline of wildgrass, trees and bramble. Eventually, it splits into a deer trail. 

Lucy paces at the mouth of the trail, illuminated by the glow of her phone as she replays the same short voicemail again, again, and again.

MERCY: Luce. If you don’t want to talk, fine. I just wanted to call and say I’m sorry. Okay?

I’m sorry.

Like–fuck you. Truely.

But I’m so, so fuckin sorry. For pretending like everything was fine. For even trying to get it through your thick skull what’s going on here.

I’m sorry for you.

I’m so fuckin sorry for you.

…

Bye.

There's a sharp knock from the dining room window rips her attention away. A bank of warm light reaches across the yard from the dining room window. Vanna waves to Lucy. Lucy waves back before turning onto the deer trail into the woods. A little ways in, her dress catches on some brush. 

LUCY: Motherfucker. 

She gingerly dis-tangles herself and hikes her dress into a bunch, wading through the dead grass as if it were water. She follows the trail into a small clearing. At the center of the clearing there is a hole. A large hovel shrouded in brittle overgrowth, Lucy stops several paces short of it. She crouches down to get a better look. 

Briggs trundles onto the scene with his shovel. He stops at the edge of the clearing.

BRIGGS: So. Ya gonna climb in?

LUCY: No.

Lucy stands. Eyes Briggs suspiciously.

LUCY: What’re you doing here?

BRIGGS: This your property?

LUCY: …no.

Briggs tosses his shovel onto the ground and approaches the hole. Lucy keeps several paces of space between herself and Briggs.

LUCY: So? 

BRIGGS: What. 

LUCY: What are you doing? 

BRIGGS: Hiking.

LUCY: Here. What are you doing here? 

BRIGGS: How long has that hole been there? 

LUCY: I don't know. It wasn't here a week ago. 

BRIGGS: You've been checking? 

LUCY: No. Just the last time I was back here–I think there used to be a tree stump there? I guess somebody dug it out.

BRIGGS: 'suppose so.

Briggs pulls a thermos from his bag and takes a swig.

BRIGGS: Want any?

LUCY: No thank you. Answer my question.

BRIGGS: But you’re so good at answering mine.

He takes another swig.

BRIGGS:…seemed like a good place to rest.

LUCY: Because you’re on a hike.

BRIGGS: Oh, yeah. I’m on a hike. Sightseeing a bit. Rented a place on the edge of town a few months ago. Figured I’d do a little exploring.

LUCY: It’s almost nine.

BRIGGS: I like stargazing.

LUCY: It’s cloudy.

BRIGGS: Is it? Huh.

Lucy picks up the shovel.

LUCY: Have you been digging here?

BRIGGS: Was considering it but someone beat me to the punch.

LUCY: So you’re not hiking.

BRIGGS: I was hiking here to dig, now I’m going to hike back home since the job was apparently done for me.

Briggs packs away his thermos.

BRIGGS: You’re awfully dressed up to be back here.

LUCY: It’s Christmas Eve.

BRIGGS: Merry that.

LUCY: Thanks.

Briggs takes back his shovel.

BRIGGS: Welcome.

A realization.

BRIGGS: Hang on– aren’t you Vana’s girl?

LUCY: I’m her granddaughter, yeah.

BRIGGS: Sure. Right, right. Briggs, by the way.

Briggs holds his hand out. Lucy does not take it. Briggs pockets his hand.

LUCY: You know my grandparents? BRIGGS: Your grandparents know me. I assume they haven’t told you about dinner tonight?

LUCY: Dinner?

BRIGGS: It’s something I manage to put together every few years. I extended an invite to your family earlier this month.

LUCY: Oh. I’ve. Never heard of you.

BRIGGS: I’ve been out of town since before your time.

LUCY: Oh.

BRIGGS: Let Vana know I’d love to hear back from her, okay?

LUCY: Sure.

BRIGGS: Thank you. Merry that-mas eve.

LUCY: Yeah, you too.

Briggs trudges back into the brush. Lucy remains by the hole for a while longer before the cold catches up to her and she does the same.

Catherine’s landline rings. It rings out. Catherine’s voicemail picks up.

CATHERINE: Hello! You have reached the DeMoss residence. I can’t make it to the phone right now, so feel free to leave a message after the beep!

The machine beeps. There’s rustling on the other end of the line, sounds like cloth being rubbed over the receiver. Then a clatter. This grabs Marcel’s attention. He sets his phone to the side, checks the landline caller ID. “Mercy Brown”. He picks up.

MARCEL: Hello?

Silence.

MARCEL:  Hello?

More rustling.. The call ends. Marcel hangs up. 

Dylan steps away from the counter. After a few swaying steps toward the bathroom, Dylan braces himself on a dining chair. He vomits blood and fish, then collapses onto the kitchen floor.

4 . What We Do With Fish

Snow blows in through an open window. A dark trail of filth tracks from it to Mercy. Still covered in mud. Nails still hanging, skin peeling and bleeding, she sits huddled in the corner of her empty room. She paws with frostbitten fingers at her dying phone. She stumbles onto her feet and searches the few boxes of leftover belongings left stacked in the closet. She finds a charger. She plugs it in. She then begins working at untying her boots. They are red beneath clumps of dirt, and tightly laced. The knot is thick and unmoving.

Vanna is in the master bathroom, getting ready for Christmas Eve service. The large medicine bottle is now discarded and empty in the trash. She notices a missed call from Mrs. Mary, and plays the voicemail.

MRS. MARY BROWN: Hi Van, sorry to call you so late, but its beginning to look like we’ll be late to tonights service. I know I was supposed to read, hopefully we won’t be so late. It’s just that Mercy isn’t feeling well, so we’re making sure she’s settled in bed before heading out. But in case I don’t see you, Merry Christmas! Hope you find someone to fill in!

Vana picks up her phone. Thumb hovers over redial, then she thinks better of it and dials and different number.

Mercy’s phone rings. She panics, shuts it off.

Ada is in the living room, watching TV and eating tomato soup. His gaze drifts out the window to an eleven year old Lucy carrying a bucket of water from the treeline. He greets her at the back door and hands her a pair of bright yellow dish gloves.

The two clear a spot at the dining table. As they do, tidily folded lake maps, yellowed calendars, postcards and polaroid pictures fall from between plates, mugs and gravy dishes. Ada posing with different hunting dogs decades apart, showing off various dead waterfowl. Sometimes Vana is accompanying him. In two, Daley is. The most recent and glossy batch is of Lucy, standing in a mess of reeds brandishing a dead mallard by the throat with a grin. We are now in Ada’s Cabin.

Ada pulls on his own pair of dish gloves, Lucy mirrors her movement. The bucket of water, which we now see has a mesh fish trap in it, sits between them.

Vana calls again. Mercy’s phone lights up but remains silent. Footsteps outside her door. A knock.

MRS. MARY BROWN: Mercy?

Mercy goes still. The doorknob jiggles. Locked.

MRS. MARY BROWN: Mercy, are you in there?

ADA: Remember what we do first? 

LUCY: Get the fish. 

ADA: Fish's been got. 

LUCY: We pick up the fish. 

Ada hoists the mesh trap from the bucket, and sets it on the table. We can hear the thumping of the fish struggling inside. He pulls the fish from the mesh. 

Vana dials a different number. Distantly, a landline rings. Footsteps fade from the locked door.

Mercy digs in another box. Finds a pair of scissors. Begins sawing at her bootlaces.

ADA: Next? 

LUCY: ...grab the knife and chop it's head off? 

Ada grabs the knife and moves to the bucket. He submerges the catfish, keeping a firm grip on it. 

He looks to Lucy. 

ADA: That's one way to do it. Can you grab me the water pitcher? 

LUCY: ? 

ADA: Shoot-- On the counter. Fill it up all the way. 

Lucy sees an empty pitcher by the sink. She begins to fill it.

VANA: Hello! Miss Brown! I just got your message from earlier.

ADA: Lost track there. 

LUCY: It's fine. 

VANA: I wanted to let you know that I understand completely. Del used to get sick ‘round this time of year, rest is important.

Lucy returns with a full pitcher.

LUCY: …I dunno what’s next.

ADA: I need you to pour water over the fish’s gills when I make the cut. To help it bleed out faster.

LUCY: …

VANA: Let me know if you need anything after the service. I’m headed across town to visit a friend and you’re not out of the way.

ADA: It’s okay if you’re uncomfortable, Luce.

LUCY: Can I cover my eyes?

ADA: Of course.

Lucy looks down at the fish one last time before she covers her eyes.

VANA: No, no thank you for letting me know! Merry Christmas.

Vana hangs up. Ada slashes the fish’s gills.

ADA: Pour.

Lucy empties the pitcher. Ada bleeds the fish. There’s a knock once again at Mercy’s door.

MRS. MARY BROWN: Mercy, we talked about this. You’re not allowed back into the house.

On reflex Mercy vomits up mud. She now has to expend more effort to remain where she is, cutting her boots loose.

MRS. MARY BROWN: I’m unlocking the door now. You should leave. Please leave.

Mercy gags on a dirt clod and spits it out. The lock turns. She rips her boots off. Pockets her phone. When the door opens, Mercy blows out the nearby dining table candles. The scene plunges into darkness.

ADA: She’s gone now.

Lucy opens her eyes. She stares at the dead fish as Ada lays it out on a newspaper.

LUCY: That was fast.

ADA: That’s how I like to keep it.

Ada walks Lucy through the gutting process throughout the scene.

Canary re-lights the candles and closes the fire escape window. A hospital waiting room is illuminated. Dylan vomits into a plastic bag. Blood streaks the plastic, the handles of the bag wrapped around white knuckles. He’s hunched over, elbows on his knees. Daley sits beside him, rubbing Dylan’s back, watching Ada as he guts a fish. The fluorescent lights are bright here, leaving him squinting behind sunglasses. Dylan wretches.

DALEY: Dill? 

DYLAN: Fine. Fine. I'm fine. 

Nighttime TV chatter in the background. Dylan spits into the bag, then shakily straightens up. Blood flecks his chin. Daley wipes some of it off. 

DALEY: Hey. 

DYLAN: Hey.

LUCY: Will I have to do that? 

ADA: Do what? 

LUCY: Kill a fish. 

ADA: Well, you don't have to if you don't want to. 

Dylan pulls a napkin off the dining table and offers it to Daley. Daley wipes his bloody fingers onto Dylan’s jeans instead.

DYLAN: Gross!

Daley snickers. Dylan wipes his face with the napkin, then his pants before throwing it into the bag.

LUCY: What?? 

ADA: What? 

LUCY: You're laughing at me!

ADA: I'm not laughing at you, Luce! I'm just a little surprised. You weren't this worked up when I took you out on the lake last month. 

LUCY: Those were just ducks. 

ADA: Just ducks? I thought ducks were cute. 

LUCY: Ducks are cute. But the one that Scout brought back was dead already. I didn't shoot it or anything. 

ADA: You asked if you could. 

LUCY: Yeah but... that would've been fun! This isn't.

A door opens, a nurse steps out. 

NURSE: Dylan West? 

DYLAN: Yep. Coming. 

Dylan, with some assistance from Daley, stands. Daley walks up to the door’s threshold. Pauses. 

NURSE: ...After you. 

Daley smiles self-consciously and guides Dylan through the door.

Ada sets his knife to the side and considers his granddaughter.

ADA: I can't deny you that. But you shouldn't forget what you're doing. 

LUCY: I didn't forget what we were doing, it's just easier to kill a duck than a fish. 

ADA: Because it's further away. 

LUCY: Yeah. Is there a way to kill a fish, but also make it far away? Can you shoot fish? 

ADA: I'd love to see you try. 

LUCY: You're making fun of me again. 

ADA: I am. Will you hold this knife?

Ada holds the knife to Lucy. Lucy takes it. He guides her through a jagged cut, slicing meat from bone.

Vana finishes washing up. She checks her phone, dials.

LUCY: I know it's still wrong. 

ADA: What is? 

LUCY: Killing the duck. I know that. 

The light of Mercy’s phone blooms across a dark patch. It’s smeared with blood. Briggs picks it up, along with Mercy’s discarded boots strewn at the feet of a body that is not hers. He ends the call. Climbs out the window.

ADA: Killing the duck isn't wrong, and neither is gutting the fish. You like eating them, right?

LUCY: Yes. 

ADA: Are you going to stop eating them? 

LUCY: I dunno. I don't want to. Should I? Is that the lesson? 

ADA: How about this: hunting is not the same as killing. 

LUCY: But in order to hunt you have to kill something. 

ADA: I mean you're not going to be tried under God for killing an animal. Not in the way you would if it were a person. 

LUCY: ...because you have to ask the person first? 

ADA: I think the difference lies in intent. 

LUCY: So if I kill someone to eat them, that's better than killing them for another reason. 

ADA: ...if there's nothing else to eat, maybe. The particular case would be up for God to decide-- you're not tricking me into endorsing cannibalism, Luce. I have some standards. 

LUCY: Fine. But is there a maybe for fish and ducks though? Does God get to weigh in on them? 

ADA: I suppose a vegetarian would say yes. I personally lean more towards no. 

LUCY: But vegetarians are also killing plants. If God weighs in on every field of corn that'd take forever. 

ADA: Lucky that he has forever! 

LUCY: Boring forever if it's just Plant Court. 

ADA: Like I was saying- it's a lot of death either way. Plants, animals... well. I suppose not mushrooms. But you can't live on mushrooms alone, I'm pretty sure. Not healthily at least. They’d sooner eat you.

LUCY: Well what if I find something that's dead already? 

ADA: Like a buzzard? 

LUCY: Mercy said that some people in the mountains are so poor, they eat roadkill. 

ADA: You're still eating a dead thing. That's like buying meat off a butcher. Something else slaughtered it for you, yes, but the creature was still slaughtered. If you ask me, the distance makes it worse. 

LUCY: ...I dunno. Being close isn't much better.

Ada stops.

ADA: Would you like to go back to the house?

Lucy thinks. She shakes her head.

LUCY: I want to finish.

5 . Three In One

Vanna adjusts a few cards on the pulpit. She takes a moment to look out at her congregation. 

A warm smile. 

VANNA: What an evening.

What an evening.

Silent Night, Holy Night. 

That's how the hymn goes, doesn't it? 

A manger, a mother, kneeling kings and cattle. 

A child. 

Every year we gather together under this roof--one of many. 

We join the choir, holding in our hearts and hands, this child.

When you grow up doing it, it’s in danger of becoming a thoughtless habit.

Come in, go out, peace be with you and also with you, so on and so forth.

But I am old. And I will only grow older.

And I know I’m not the only one in this sanctuary who’s old.

And when we’re old, habits are not only hard to break but hard to understand how they got started to begin with.

So I wanted to take this time tonight to examine this old habit of ours.

To ask, as the young do, why?

Sure you can say faith, say to hold up the Son, 

to remind ourselves what we're doing all year long.

But isn’t that just habit with some hot air blown up it.

So what do we mean, what do we really mean when we make those assertions? 

Making mangers for a child long since passed, 

the lamb of God who has long since been martyred so that we may live.

Couldn’t we keep on living?

Because as we know, that child is so much more than a child. 

In turn: he is a man who is so much more than a man. 

And it can be very easy to miss the man for the child. 

In this same manner, miss the divine for the man.

And so on, the meaning to the habit.

Sure we have the words-- holy, divine, pure, righteous-- 

yet even then we glean over their gravity.

Forgive me, I’m about to quote an Anglican.

In the words of the late Bishop Andrews: 

"All along His life you will see these two. 

At His birth, a cratch for the Child, a star for the Son; 

a company of shepherds viewing the Child, 

a choir of angels celebrating the Son. 

In His life, hungry Himself, to shew the nature of the Child; 

yet feeding five thousand to shew the power of the Son. 

At His death, dying on the cross as the Son of Adam; 

at the same time disposing of Paradise, as the Son of God. 

If you ask, why both these?"

Why is it important to remember? To hold fully in our hearts?

That Christ Child holds within him a contradiction- 

a marriage of the spirit pure and the flesh corrupt. 

The radiant joy of the newborn contained within a body to bear the suffering of all mankind, 

to bear crucifixion.

Where God first moved to divide the dark from the light, a son arrives to marry the two.

A transformation so complete, it escapes distinction.

An example set so that we may follow. 

Every other night of the year we rest with our sin, our guilt, our pain. 

We pray, work, and worship in the shadow of His example.

While all the while, Lord, we feel His disgust.

We become preoccupied with the flesh and leave the spirit starving in our shame.

Can we really believe a babe can carry us?

To be able to transmute the road to hell into that which leads to heaven?

Or shall we all become Calvinists?

They are the same.

The babe and the man.

The flesh and the spirit.

To starve the spirit is to starve the body.

And to starve the body, is to starve the spirit.

Trust the babe as we trust the man.

That, in his arms we do fit.

We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.

All things that are good and right, nest into each other.

Arm crook in arm crook, rib in sternum, ball in socket.

Where there’s no room, what is right finds it.

Child in Cratch.

Where there is plenty, what is wrong will bloat.

Body in Tomb.

What is Right and what is God, we find in the fitting.

And it is us to decide if we fit.

Because he took us on.

Because he took on sins unbefitting of his station, he married himself to us.

So that we may be like him, as he took the step to become like us.

We must hold each, all, as one.

That, that is what faith in Him is.

That is how we may feed the spirit, and be whole.

We are here tonight to feed our spirit. 

To recall peace, silence, to a time that we ourselves were held. 

So that we may hold each other.

We hold this child in our arms tonight. 

We hold him. 

We will cling to the cradle as we do the cross, the communion. 

Tonight is a night to hold onto joy. 

When we embrace joy in the face of our brokenness, we embrace the eternal. 

And may we carry this night through into the next year. 

Merry Christmas. 

Jed, slouched in the pew beside Catherine, is clammy and barely focused on the sermon. It doesn't take long for him to be overtaken by nausea, and he hastily scrambles out of the sanctuary. Catherine ignores this, continuing to attentively listen to Vanna with a small, smug smirk. 

Lucy watches Jed leave, then her eyes settle on Mercy’s empty seat. She checks her phone. While Vana pauses to look at her notes, Lucy slips out a side door. She calls Mercy. Briggs hangs up. Back home.

CANARY: Did you find her?

BRIGGS: No but I found her shoes.

Briggs drops the boots on the table. He grabs an empty wine glass, then fishes a bloody torn toenail from inside one of the boots. He drops it into the glass and sets it at the head of the table.

BRIGGS: Here’s hoping she follows.

6 . What The Kids These Nights Are Calling “A Condition”

 LucyThing sits behind MercyThing as she soaks in a tub of warm water. She pours water over her. Washing mud, blood and leaves from her hair, face, teeth.

Vana sweeps the sanctuary of leaves, flower petals before service. Her joints ache as the snowstorm worsens outside, and she takes a break to sit and massage her wrists. Prop up her ankles. She watches LucyThing and MercyThing. 

Dylan and Daley in the ER. Dylan is laid out on an examination bench, staring at the wall. 

Daley watches the door.

DYLAN: What do you think we're in for? 

DALEY: Dunno. 

DYLAN: Sucks. 

DALEY: Yeah. 

DYLAN: The waiting, one thing. Having blood gush out of every hole unprompted, another. Together? With no end in sight? Without even knowing why? Fuck. I look like shit, right? 

DALEY: ...yeah. You do. 

DYLAN: I look how I feel. Dying. Dead. 

DALEY: Nah. Dead people don't bleed this much. 

DYLAN: You got a point. Be sure to give the nurse a heads up if I start running dry. 

DALEY: Count on it. 

DYLAN: ... 

DALEY: ... 

DYLAN: I'm scared, Dale. 

DALEY: ...yeah. I'm pretty scared, too. 

They sit in silence. The doctor enters. 

DOCTOR: ... 

... 

Ms. West? 

DYLAN: Mr-- (vague motion) trans. 

DOCTOR: Got it. Apologies. 

DYLAN: Paperwork's bullshit, it's fine. 

DOCTOR: How're we feeling? 

DYLAN: Well. Puking's subsided. That's good. 

DALEY: He's upright. 

DYLAN: That, too.

The doctor takes Dylan's blood pressure. 

DOCTOR: Lightheadedness? Vertigo? 

DYLAN: Yeah but it's getting better. I think. 

DOCTOR: How long has this been going on for? 

DYLAN: Since... fuck, six? What time did we get home? 

DALEY: 'Round five. 

DYLAN: Yeah six is about right- I made some dinner- fish. Started with a headache, then nausea. That went on for a bit, then I got up to get some aspirin from the bathroom and then I just kinda... blacked out. 

DALEY: I heard him hit the floor. He was out for around fifteen minutes. 

DOCTOR: When did the vomiting start? 

DYLAN: Right before I passed out. It continued after I woke up.

DALEY: Could be a concussion. 

DOCTOR: Could be. Has this happened before? 

DYLAN: No. This is the first time. 

70/40. The Doctor frowns at the pressure readings. He glances between Daley and Dylan before consulting the Nurse's notes. 

DOCTOR: ...first time you've had an episode like this? 

DYLAN: Yeah. I have no idea what's going on-- maybe dinner? Maybe the fish were weird?

DALEY: … 

DOCTOR: That's something I'll keep in mind. But I'm more concerned about your temperature-- the nurse said you're hypothermic. 

DYLAN: Am I? Must've missed that part. I don't feel cold. 

DOCTOR: Were you outside for any length of time? 

DYLAN: We were ice fishing. Perhaps that?

DOCTOR: Perhaps. If you'll hold still?

The doctor takes Dylan's temp. 90 degrees. He looks to Daley. Then back to the records on the computer.

Jed stumbles out of the church and into the parking lot. He fumbles around in his coat pocket for his car keys.

DYLAN: ...I have a family history of bad circulation-- forget what it's called, but maybe it's-- 

DOCTOR: (abruptly) Is this your partner? 

The doctor gestures to Daley. Dylan, taken aback, nods. 

DYLAN: Yeah. Daley. He's my boyfriend.

DOCTOR: Daley, would you mind if I took your temperature. 

DALEY: ... sure. 'Course. 

The doctor takes Daley's temperature. 70 degrees, room temperature. 

DOCTOR: Ah. 

DYLAN: What the fuck, Dale. 

DOCTOR: Good news, we need to worry about checking you in tonight if you feel well enough. 

DYLAN: I'm so confused. 

DOCTOR: That's completely fair. It's been a long night, and you've lost quite a bit of blood. Right now I think the best thing for you to do is get some rest now that your stomach has settled. I'm going to refer you to a colleague of mine-- he’s on call, so we should be able to get you to see him tonight. 

DYLAN: Okay... but what am I seeing him for? What kind of doctor is he? 

DOCTOR: He's a- local specialist. I think it'd be beneficial to do that, and get a good look at your bloodwork 

before settling on any one particular cause. 

DYLAN: ...any particular cause that seems the most settle-able right now? 

DOCTOR: ...Again, it's impossible to make the call this early. But it appears you are displaying some of the symptoms of deminecrosis. 

So I think it's worth following through on that.

Jed collapses into the drivers seat of his car. A thin sheen of sweat over his skin, he starts the car and blasts the heat.

DYLAN: ...awesome. 

DOCTOR (to Daley): Am I wrong? 

DALEY: No. You aren't. 

DYLAN: Daley! What about Daley? 

DOCTOR: What about him? 

DYLAN: He's hypothermic! 

DOCTOR: Yes. He is. 

DYLAN: Isn't that super fucking bad? 

An awkward beat. The Doctor collects all the records into a folder. 

DOCTOR: I will be... right back I just got to... uh... put in that bloodwork request

The Doctor leaves. Dylan, alarmed and confused, presses the back of his hand against Daley's forehead. Daley waves this away. 

DALEY: I am fine. 

DYLAN: No you're not! You're colder than I am! 

DALEY: That's natural! 

DYLAN: You could die! 

DALEY: I'm already dead! 

Dylan freezes. Stuck between shock and disbelief. 

DYLAN: No you're not. 

Daley takes Dylan's hand and presses it to his chest. Dylan waits for a heartbeat. 

JED: fuck.

DYLAN: No. You’re not. You aren’t.

DALEY: Dylan-

DYLAN: You aren’t!

Daley takes Dylan’s hand off his chest. Long, awkward silence.

A pager goes off in Jed’s bag. With a groan he rolls over and fishes it out. Reads it.

JED: f u c k.

DALEY: Do you want anything from the vending machine.

DYLAN: No.

DALEY: Okay.

Daley leaves.

Jed calls Marcel.

JED: Hey.

MARCEL: Hey– what’s up?

JED: Just callin’ to let you know I probably won’t be coming with Catherine tonight.

MARCEL: …everything okay? You kind of sound like shit.

JED: Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just a little nauseous.

MARCEL: Uh-huh. Right.

JED: And I’m needed at the hospital. So I dunno how long that’ll be.

MARCEL: …alright, well, I’ll see you in the morning?

Catherine trots across the parking lot, opens the passenger door, and sits.

JED: Yeah– I gotta go. Love ya.

MARCEL: Love you.

Jed hangs up with another groan, flops onto his side.

CATHERINE: Need me to drive?

JED: Yeah actually. If you could drop me off at the hospital that’d be swell.

CATHERINE: I thought you had tonight off?

JED: Code azure.

CATHERINE: Oh?

JED: You didn’t hear that from me.

CATHERINE: Who?

JED: I don’t know yet.

CATHERINE: Just when I think this little town can’t surprise me. A new face! Just in time for the holidays too– do you think Briggs already knew?

JED: Fuck if I know.

Catherine gets out of the car and helps Jed into the passenger seat before getting behind the wheel. 

LucyThing guides MercyThing out of the bath, and into her arms. LucyThing offers her wrist to MercyThing.

Jed makes a few jerky attempts to recline his seat, a slow and active negotiation with his nausea.

CATHERINE: What was it that you said? Going to church is like riding a bike?

She holds out her hand with a placid smile. Jed yanks a damp wallet out of his dress pants and drops it into her hand.

JED: Help yourself.

Catherine harvests her bounty and hands the wallet back.

CATHERINE: We sang ode to joy at the end. Shame, since I know it’s your favorite.

Jed flips her off as she pulls off into the night.

MercyThing reaches for LucyThing’s throat.

LucyThing obliges.

Vana watches. In a sudden wash of shame, she stands. She returns the broom to its closet. She double checks each pew. Then, she turns off the sanctuary lights, hastily down the row.

The only light left is the glow of the Sanctuary Lamp in the far corner of the space. In its soft light, MercyThing and LucyThing are shadows. 

Vana lingers a little longer.

MercyThing separates from LucyThing. LucyThing slumps against the tub.

Vana leaves.

7 . Sunshine

Lucy on the church steps, thumbing through her phone while she waits for Vanna to finish locking up.

She drafts, re-drafts, then deletes a message for Mercy. She pockets her phone.

The snow lifts, and the night parts into midday. Mercy strides on, a pot of Easter lilies in her arms.

MERCY: Are you sure?

LUCY: Yeah, yeah. If I don’t finish cleaning up now I’ll have to come in early tomorrow.

Mercy mulls over Lucy’s answer, then sits down on the steps next to her.

LUCY: What?

MERCY: Look. We don’t have to talk now, but… what’s going on?

LUCY: Nothing! Nothing is going on!

MERCY: I’m not stupid, Luce. You’ve been avoiding me all week.

LUCY: It’s been busy, I’ve been tired.

MERCY: Yeah?

LUCY: Yeah!

MERCY: …

LUCY: It’s complicated, Mercy.

MERCY (scratching her neck) : You’re telling me.

LUCY: … not right now. You got time to grab coffee later this week?

MERCY: I can make time.

LUCY: Okay. Uh, Tuesday? 3? Cafe Diem?

MERCY: That should work.

LUCY: Cool.

They sit in silence. Eventually, Mercy stands.

MERCY: ... text me when you get home. Okay? 

LUCY: Mercy I'm not going to disappear on you. 

MERCY: …

LUCY: Get home. I will call you when I do. 

MERCY: ...Okay. Hope the rest of your day is better. 

LUCY: I hope so. 

Mercy heads into the parking lot.

MERCY: Oh, and Happy Easter! He Is Risen! 

LUCY: He Is Risen. 

Lucy stands, but before she heads inside she spots a figure on the far edge of the parking lot.

A jacket hunched up over their head, they hug the shade as they navigate the perimeter of the parking lot. Lucy props open the front doors. 

LUCY: ...you're free to come in. 

The figure stops. Turns. Looks at Lucy from under their coat. A long, considering beat. Then they shuffle forward. Into the lobby, out of the sun. The jacket drops. It's Daley.

DALEY: Thanks. 

LUCY: Don't mention it. Can I get you anything? 

DALEY: ... a water'd be nice.

Lucy fetches him a water. Daley wanders into the sanctuary. He lingers in front of the flowers. Lucy returns and hands him the water. 

DALEY: Thank you. 

LUCY: No problem.

He drinks his water. Lucy leans against a pew. 

LUCY: From around here? 

Daley makes a so-so motion with his hand. 

DALEY: Not from here. But I've been around for a couple of months. 

LUCY: Where have you been staying? 

DALEY: North-side. Near the plant. 

Daley looks Lucy over. 

DALEY: Have we met? 

LUCY: I don't think so?

Daley takes a suspicious sip. 

DALEY: You often let strangers in like this? 

LUCY: No. 

DALEY: You made an exception? 

LUCY: ...no. 

DALEY: Which is it? 

LUCY: I just... had a thought. I don't know why.

Any particular reason why you’re out and about?

Lucy spots a brown leaf on a nearby plant. She picks it. She sees another one. She picks that. This continues through the conversation until she has a small handful. 

DALEY: Is there an office I need to check into?

LUCY: Not open, no. We're just closing up around here before Easter tomorrow. 

DALEY: ...Easter? Easter's tomorrow? 

LUCY: ...yes? Is that a problem?

DALEY: No it isn't. I just. Lost track of time. 

LUCY: When did you think it was? 

DALEY: ...not Holy Week, that's for sure. 

LUCY: It has a habit of sneaking up. What with the fasting. 

DALEY: I have been doing a bit of that lately. 

LUCY: Gave up blood for Lent? 

DALEY: 'Suppose I did. 

LUCY: That must've been hard. 

DALEY: Eh. Went by quick enough. Sharp eye. LUCY: Come now? DALEY: People usually don’t get it first guess.

Lucy takes one browned stem and uses it to tie the rest into a little bundle. She sets it on a pew, and continues picking leaves. Daley watches the Sanctuary Candle flicker. 

LUCY: I have a few friends who’re going through something similar. You a church goer? 

DALEY: Not for a long while, no. 

LUCY: Can't say I blame you. 

DALEY: You don't? 

LUCY: I mean. Given your circumstances. I’d find it rough.

DALEY: Fair. 

Lucy ties off another bundle. Sets it to the side, looks at the cross hung up on the back wall of the sanctuary. 

LUCY: Is it true you can't touch those? 

Daley steps over the flowers and to the cross. He slaps a palm onto it. 

DALEY: Just fine. 

LUCY: It's so hard to keep track of this… stuff.

DALEY: It's variable. I'm sure you can find leeches paranoid enough to think they get burned by “this stuff.”

LUCY: So it's a mental thing? 

DALEY: Not entirely? It's a lot to parse. 

LUCY: Like invitations? 

DALEY: Like invitations. How you interpret them is, yeah, mostly in your head. But somewhere along the line you can't help but run into a thing. 

LUCY: Lots of things, feels like. 

Daley picks up one of Lucy's bundles. Fiddles with the knotted leaf. 

LUCY: Forgive me for saying, but it looks like you've hit a lot of 'em. 

DALEY: Eh. I'll bounce back. 

LUCY: That what you do? 

DALEY: Don't you? 

He undoes the bundle. They flutter to the floor. Lucy frowns. 

LUCY: Pick those up? 

Daley considers, then does so. Throws the loose leaves onto the pew. 

DALEY: There. 

LUCY: Really?

DALEY: I couldn’t find the trash.

LUCY: …is this flirting? Are you flirting? 

They consider each other, then themselves. Then the open sanctuary door. 

DALEY: Who's around? 

LUCY: I'm not alone here, if that's what you're asking. 

DALEY: I figured. 

Lucy thinks. She bundles together one last cluster of leaves before handing it to Daley. She jogs down the aisle, unbuttoning the top two buttons of her blouse before she closes and locks the sanctuary door. 

DALEY:You're serious? 

LUCY: Are you here to break fast or not?

DALEY: I mean, I'm not against it. I just wasn't expecting-- 

LUCY: You've given me one more excuse to put off going home home. Let me take it.

Daley touches the collar of her shirt, then buttons it back.

LUCY: This doesn’t make you a gentleman.

DALEY: This isn’t how acquaintances break fast together.

He takes her hand and turns it over, exposing her wrist.

DALEY: Would you like me to show you?

A sharp knock on the sanctuary door, daylight is ripped from the scene. The snow returns with the present. Lucy is back on the church steps, and Ada is at the foyer window.

LUCY: Ada?

He points into the darkness. Lucy follows this motion. A different shambling figure in the parking lot.

LUCY: …Mrs. Brown?

As she crosses under a street lamp, the damage becomes clear– blood soaks the front of his shirt, and he holds a sweater to the base of his throat to stem the flow. She’s barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

She crumples at Lucy’s feet.

8 . Emergency Visit

Dylan sitting alone in the ER. He stares at the empty seat across from the examination bench. 

Canary smokes while he watches the clock, Briggs pours himself a drink. Brigg’s phone rings and he answers.

BRIGGS: Dale-e-o, what's up? Am I gonna see ya tonight?

Daley is driving, phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. 

DALEY: I'm swinging by. Probably be there in ‘roud… ten minutes?

BRIGGS: Ten? 

DALEY: See you at your place.

Daley hangs up.

CANARY: Who was that?

BRIGGS: Daley. He’s headed over. Early.

CANARY: I thought he was spending the first half of the night with Dylan?

BRIGGS:  Plans are changing.

CANARY: Plans keep changing. Should I tell– BRIGGS: We are not telling Vana shit.

Briggs moves over to where Daley’s glass used to be. What little threading is there, he severs from the stem. He grinds it in a pestle, then dumps whats left into a mug. The front door buzzes. Canary hurries to the call box.

CANARY: Hello?

CATHERINE: It’s me and Marcie.

CANARY: Yeah co–

BRIGGS: NO.

CANARY: No?

BRIGGS: Around the back. Up the fire escape. Landlord refused to take those signs down.

CANARY: Asshole. (into the talkbox) You guys’ll have to enter ‘round the back. There’s a ladder it’ll take you up to the second level.

CATHERINE: You’re kidding.

CANARY: ‘Fraid not.

MARCEL: We’ll be right up.

Canary grabs a knife and, like Briggs, severs two different bundles of fungal thread, peels them from their glasses, and lays them on the counter for Briggs to grind. Meanwhile Briggs fills a teapot with water and sets it on the stove.

BRIGGS: You can’t mention those signs.

CANARY: What’re we supposed to tell them?

BRIGGS: They’re renovating the stairwell, I don’t know.

Jed, still somewhat disheveled, enters the examination room.

JED: Well, shit.

DYLAN: Jed? I didn’t know you worked this late.

JED: Usually not on holidays. I thought you were out with Daley?

DYLAN: I was.

…

What’s happening?

JED: I was hoping you could tell me.

DYLAN: Weren’t you given a report or something?

JED: OH yeah of course you’re dying. What’s going on between you and Daley?

DYLAN: I’m dying.

JED: Yes.

DYLAN: Of what?

JED: Of nothing. Completely natural. Did he really leave you here all by yourself?

DYLAN: WHAT’S KILLING ME???

JED: Woah. Hey now–

DYLAN: WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE YOU DIDN’T JUST TELL ME I’M DYING?

JED: BECAUSE YOU ARE, BUT THAT’S ALSO FINE. YOU’LL BE OKAY. THAT IS MY PROFESSIONAL OPINION AS A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL. NOW CAN YOU PLEASE COOPERATE?

Dylan glares at Jed.

JED: Thank you. Now, let’s walk through this. Shall we?

Dylan nods. Jed takes Dylan’s vitals. Marcel and Catherine climb in through the fire escape. Catherine is stiff and shivering.

CATHERINE: Why–

BRIGGS: Renovation.

MARCEL: We first to arrive?

BRIGGS: Yep.

CANARY: Daley should be here soon though.

CATHERINE: So he did eventually decide to show up. Where’s the bathroom?

CANARY: Down the hall to your right.

CATHERINE: Thank you.

MARCEL: Aren’t Vana and Ada coming over tonight?

BRIGGS: Yep.

MARCEL: When?

BRIGGS: Late. If we’re lucky Daley will be in and out before they arrive.

There’s a shuffling in the ceiling, in the walls. Something, or many somethings, shifting weight.

MARCEL: Day guests?

BRIGGS: I wish I could say they were shy. Or had any respect for privacy. But, it’s the holidays. I can’t refuse them someplace warm.

Briggs sets his work down and pulls Marcel into a quick kiss, then hug.

BRIGGS: Thank you. For coming.

MARCEL: I’m happy to be here.

Briggs resumes his work. Marcel, a little flustered, finds his spot at the table and sits.

JED: Your blood pressure and your body temperature are going to drop rapidly the next few weeks. Your appetite is going to dwindle, and you’ll experience fatigue. When you do eat, I recommend that you keep it simple and iron-rich. When your heart stops, that’s usually when you can transition into a liquid diet.

DYLAN: Won’t I be dead?

JED: Yes, you will. But you’ll remain alive.

DYLAN: Aren’t those mutually exclusive?

JED: Nope. It’s rare, but some folks are both.

DYLAN: So Daley–

JED: Is dead. Yes.

DYLAN: And I will be dead.

JED: Yes.

DYLAN: Is death contagious?

JED: No.

DYLAN: Are you sure?

JED: Yes.

Dylan sits with this information.

BRIGGS: Hey Canary?

CANARY: Yeah?

BRIGGS: Can you grab the bfb?

MARCEL:Bfb?

BRIGGS: Big Fucking Bowl. It should be in the dishwasher.

Canary retrieves the bfb as well as a roll of tin foil.

CANARY: Again?

BRIGGS: Call it a hunch.

The shower is turned on down the hall. Marcel warms his hands against a candle flame.

CANARY: I think you should rest. Party’s starting. If she comes, she comes.

BRIGGS: Thank you. But I am very wicked, so I’m afraid I’ll be working through the night.

CANARY: Kinda goes against the reason of the season, doesn’t it?

BRIGGS: I’ll consider it.

The talkbox buzzes. Canary takes it.

CANARY: Dale?

DALEY: Yep.

CANARY: Cool. Come round the back and up the fire escape.

DALEY: …Alright.

CANARY: (to Marcel) Want to do warm up shots?

MARCEL: Please.

Canary pours two. They each prick a finger and adds a drop of blood to the other’s glass.

DYLAN: So I inherited it? It’s genetic?

JED: I mean… that’s a theory, yes.

DYLAN: You don’t know?

JED: We’re at the bleeding edge, here!

DYLAN: There aren’t any studies?

JED: Would studies make you feel better?

DYLAN: I don’t know, maybe??

Canary and Marcel toast.

MARCEL: To former and future youngest.

CANARY: To former and future eldest.

Clink. Drink.

JED: What do you want me to tell you?

DYLAN: I don’t know. 

I don’t know.

I… don’t have my car keys.

JED: Daley drove you?

DYLAN: Yeah.

JED: I didn’t see your car in the lot when I came in.

DYLAN: Jesus christ.

JED: It’s okay! We could get you an uber home?

The boiling water brings the teapot to a whistle.

Dylan grabs the little paper exam table pillow and screams in it.

[whatisbirds]

Second Summer

Between the split ribs of a death-starved G-man, Sascha Vykos flirts with a whim.

Finally--finally-- posting this onto my writing blog as I do some digital spring cleaning! Obligatory Ao3 link for those who prefer that format. Otherwise, you can continue reading under the cut!

Louisville, KY - 2006

Hands on skin.

You left the nest.

Palm on cheek–cold as marble.

My sweet child–you haven’t changed.

It itched like scar tissue. Frayed like a dissolving suture. 

Cycles repeat and eat. 

Such with your Eldest. 

Such with your Youngest. 

Such with you, my faithful Echo.

…

It was Tuesday.

In one hand, the fluttering breaths of a waking hunter. The other–the entirety of a life, committed to tidy lines of print. Vykos sat perched on a rolling stool positioned between two metal chairs; one empty while the other, a pin to prop up their Mayfly. Off to the side, an array of ice boxes sat waiting in an orderly spread across a stainless steel table.

 “Cecil?” Vykos glanced up from the info packet to the kine cradled in their grasp. The man–no younger than seventy, at a stage of mortal decomposition which stretched the skin tantalizingly thin–barely shifted in his recognition. A shaky cocking back of the head before he hawked yellowed phlegm onto one of the fiend’s boot. Their eyes drifted down Cecil’s arm, to where bruises bloomed purple and black from where his wrists were bound to his chair.

Was it worth licking ribbons of yolk off your fingers?

“Glad to see you’re still with us.”

Once again, the hollow vessel.

The soothing press of fat packed under their nails. 

Once again, an empty nest.

The visceral slap of soft tissue being dashed across metal.

Once again, the laughing shrike.

Eroded molars plucked like pomegranate seeds and summarily replaced with brighter pearls.

Once again, a scorched catalog.

The Mayfly’s eyes darted and rolled with each discarded piece. 

Dreams burn like flesh–nauseatingly sweet.

Youth’s hard to mimic without Vitae. Lucky enough, Vykos wasn’t particularly stingy with theirs at the moment. Cecil could purse his lips all he liked–Vitae beaded upon their fingertips like early morning dew as they set about their work. Capillaries and veins eagerly accept what the spirit wished to reject, chalky pale giving way to the pink flush of youth under the heat of the fiend’s touch.

When they pulled away, they were faced with a younger man.

Count the years. 

Spotted fists clenched as they strained against their bonds.

Count them again.

A familiar question written plain in the crease of his brow–‘ what have I lost?’

Now tell me: how does a title such as ‘Elder’ not slant steeper by the century?

The mayfly’s eyes were wide but less wary. Vitae well at work. “...so?”

“So?”

“Is this a–”

Vykos’s voice layered neatly over the pain-dazed hunter’s, “--an interrogation?”

A blink. “Yeah?”

“...you lonely little thing. No. We got what we needed before you woke up.” Vykos waved, then tossed the packet to the side. The chalky scrape of the binder clip skittering across concrete licked across the small space. They rolled their stool back up to the mayfly, resting their hands on his knees. “This, Cecil, is a whim.”

“...didn’t know blanks had those.”

Vykos smiled and pinched his swollen strawberry nose.

“Once or twice a lifetime, we do.”

With a crack, off it came.

The fiend tossed it to the side, where it hit the information pack with a sickly plunk.

Strings of curses came whistling out as hastily as the breath through his exposed skullbone. Vykos wiped their hand off on his pant leg before continuing their work down Cecil’s throat. Collarbone. Sternum.

The ache never quite quit, there.

A knot of charred flesh no larger than a twisted-off umbilical stump still remained embedded where Vykos’ ribs met. Withered, purged of the death-starved metastasis which had fed spite like ichor into their heartsblood for centuries. A dull pressure-point ache that they nightly flirted with carving out of themselves entirely. But each time they allowed their claw to bite into their skin, something stayed their hand. A formless, brewing thing which only occasionally crested the surface of their consciousness with its rare and subtle shift in intention.

Wait and listen. Listen. Listen.

Swollen spinal discs massaged back into place.

We need no reminder.

Blown out veins mended and restitched into bicep, tricep, thigh and calf.

You pacing, paranoid thing–unable to contain your thrashing, of course you do.

As they leaned forward to wrest the mayfly’s marbled liver from its hollow, they felt the cool tap of the bone ring which they wore around their throat on a chain. It swung lazily between the generous sweep of their dress shirt and calloused flesh of the burn.

No earth is truly barren.

A pendulum keeping time.

Count the years.

From the biting ice, a liver spotless and whole found its new home.

Watch the seed grow.

They disappeared into process. Their hands a tether for their mind to drift along a fracture that they had been nursing for some time now.

Perhaps the Sabbat had mutated past its usefulness.

Perhaps this notion was less myopic in the face of the wailing accusations of abandonment they were met with upon their return from Istanbul. It assessed what remained of the body and seized upon what was immediately productive. After all, any power structure however disassociated was ultimately vulnerable to corruption. It was an easy line to feed out.

Corruption at the hands of elders. 

Kidneys.

Corruption at the hands of their baser impulses. 

Entrails.

Corruption cradled by those sun-kissed children who have for so long been whipped about at the end of Caine’s tail. 

One lung.

Perhaps in its wake we should all go mad and accept, while gnawing on our burial shrouds, that the doomsayers are right in that the Second Inquisition is a divinely ordained cleansing of the weak.

Then the next.

Don’t you feel it?

Simple answers.

 The ground’s cold embrace forever beckoning beneath your soles?

An anathema to Vykos.

Their thoughts were derailed when they realized that the Mayfly’s wailing protestations had already been reduced to tear-dampened whimpers.

“...we apologize.” They sat back, taking in the whole of the Mayfly’s vivisected torso, “We have not been present. Screamed ourselves hoarse already, Cecil?”

Cecil’s breath hitched, the webwork of new and old twitching in beat with his untouched heart. “I don’t… care…”

“Insightful.”

“...kill me.”

“Which is it?” Vykos snorted, “do you care enough to beg for death or don’t you?”

“I. Do not care.” Another shuddering breath, “If I die.”

With an outstretched claw, they caressed where the segments of his shuddering heart met. “We find that difficult to believe. We have laid our hands on many–kine hearts, usually, give out long before we reach this point. Yet yours, as weary as you claim it to be, still beats. Why is that?”

Cecil was only barely able to look them in the eye with how his spine had been contorted. His focus darted between them and the growing mound of discarded tissue piling up on the other chair’s seat. “...what are you doing to me?”

“How’s your son, Cecil?”

Oh, how that heart fluttered like a sparrow in their palm, “I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, there’s the drive you’ve been hiding!” Vykos crooned, “but that was a promise, not an answer.”

 “If you touched my son–”

“You turned down retirement because, quote, ...its the duty of every man with his head on straight to dust every last one of these fucks so our children won’t have to . And, believe us, your son hadn’t the slightest interest in picking up where you left off.” Vykos, with a parting tap of their index finger, stood and moved to the table. All but one of the ice boxes had been plucked clean–they had saved the best for last. “You two make for a very interesting dynamic, Mr. Gats. Almost makes up for the fact that it was you under my care and not Ms. Price.” 

“How–”

“Please. You were picked up on an unmarked airstrip minutes after dusk.” Drumming their fingers on Styrofoam, they settled back onto the stool with the icebox on their lap, “We didn’t even need to pry Thomas for that one.”

“You– no– ” Re-invigorated and freshly plastic, his skin now strained and chaffed a furious red beneath his bonds. The Mayfly’s cardiac muscles jerked, each screaming pump pushing it closer to bursting. Not much left in this one. “Where’s Thomas?”

Vykos gently scooped the frantic organ out of Cecil’s chest, its arterial attachments draped over their knuckles and down into the cavity like a veil of gnarled tree roots. They held it between them, cradled in their palm. “Not many turns left in this ticker, Cecil. You can either accept another turn of the screw, or not. Mind you–most mayflies don’t live past a single summer–we are being exceedingly generous in offering you a second. It is recommended that you do not take this offer lightly.”

“If he’s dead then I don’t–”

“Cecil–Cecil. You are not listening–we already told you, there aren’t many ticks left, but Thomas’s heart is still salvageable.” They threaded the hunter’s aorta between their ring and pointer fingers, threatening to pinch it off between their knuckles. “You need only accept it, and you can give him the second summer he so desperately begged us for.”

When was the last time we chased down a whim?

There’s nothing sweeter–nothing softer for the Beast to nestle into than the rolling velvet wave of a dawning horror. Doubt–revelation–awe–manic, giddy denial strung along then wrapped in the satisfying crush of climactic despair. 

When was the last time we grasped at Desire?

It was a juvenile rush, but one they savored nonetheless.

No. No. Reign it in. This isn’t a productive pleasure this isn’t–

Cecil’s heart had lost time and he had to push his answer past the twitching chimera that his core had become. “...I …do.”

For a moment, Vykos could’ve sworn they had been bitten by a feral sort of madness.

A grin. 

Relief.

“...thank you, Cecil.” They dug a notch into his sternum, a long coil of cartilage splitting off not unlike the burnt tag impressed on their own. “You have been of tremendous use to us, tonight. We would say you have our gratitude but–”

They snipped his aortic line, and his eyes went glassy with shock. “–you’ll learn most don’t seek it, and with good reason.”

They made quick work with Thomas’s heart–it was sewn tight within its new home, safely nestled beneath layers of freshly laid fat, muscle and bone. Cecil remained glassy-eyed through the end of clean-up, Vykos wouldn’t be surprised if some flavor of brain damage did in fact occur, despite their relatively tame intentions.

Once packed, they took a moment to survey their work one last time.

My sweet Echo, you have not changed.

A young man, dazed and slumped in his bonds in one chair.

Have we not?

The formless remains of an old one in the other.

It is true that all things age and die.

A nose, forgotten on a pack of useless paper.

What else will feed the young?

The weight of the bone band on their breast.

Foolish. 

They took the nose, tweaked it, and re-attached it to Cecil’s face.

We’re a foolish creature, aren’t we?

[whatisbirds]

True North

“You’ve always been a free spirit. No shame in it, dear. No shame in wandering, no shame in reaching. We’re human. It is what we do. I only ask… for all our sake… do not forget your anchor.” “I know.” “We were worried sick, dear.” “I know.” “...was it just you?” “What?” “The van. Was that only you?”

A oneshot centering @vandalblood's anarch Alice for the WoD Valentines community event! Ao3 link for those who prefer that format Otherwise, continue reading under the cut!

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Alice.

With her name came a jest within the family– “Alice in Wanderland.”

Be it the park down the block or the private mystery of a home she was visiting, she would always split from the group. The joke continued that often all somebody had to do was glance away and off she would disappear through that looking glass only to emerge an hour later to be found poking around an attic, holed up within a department store clothes rack, or the underbrush of the densest thicket she could find.

Unlike her fictional counterpart however, she needed no white rabbit to guide her curiosity. Because of this it was easy to write off her curiosity as headstrong. Leave her be, off on her own, surely she will return once her explorative urge was sated.

For a time she believed this as well–taking her family and friends observations at face value, tucking them hidden but close in her breast pocket. Beat of a different drummer, they’d say. A wild spirit that needs its space to tire itself out, they’d mean.

Then she met Reed.

Kismet.

That’s when it clicked for her. It wasn’t the wild she was seeking–it was the companionship she found within it. Severed from the mundane procedure of the city, of social expectation–a connection that transcends those labyrinths of niceties in its sheer intensity.

He was her first love.

Only love, in life.

Passion for the ages! 

Shame it wasn’t shared.

It was a good few months, a wild few months. She would run and he would chase–a game that quickly decayed into what he saw as a chore he did not have the energy for. Her constant wandering only reminded him of his own need to take root–to stay put. A tree that she would roost between her flights of fancy.

One day she returned to the nest that she had built among his branches in all her coming and going to find that it had been cleared. It was too much, he said, the coming and going. Nothing wrong, nothing bad, just a square peg and a round hole. 

“I love you. I do. But I can’t keep this up.” “I don’t mind you don’t have to–”

“You deserve to be with someone who can.” Twigs, downy feather, pipecleaner and bauble–dashed across the earth, a nest pushed out of its roost in pieces. In the shade of that same tree, she found herself hastily gathering up those pieces of her broken heart and blindly riding the first gust that could carry her away.

—

“It was me. Just me, with the van.”

“We worried sick.”

“I know.”

—

Everything went into that van.

Every cent she could spend that wasn’t earmarked for food or gas went into retrofitting the back of an old ten passenger van into her own little mobile nest that stood no risk of being dashed. Wherever she would go, it would follow. A companion who would never tire, never excuse itself with that achingly polite cruelty Reed had struck her with.

When she hit the road, she consecrated the journey on social media. She and her new mobile partner wound through hollers, skimmed across swamps, and cut across Rocky spines. All along the way she collected stamps as badges at every stop that sold them–a fine, eclectic lining for the outside of her van. Each one a square inch of where she had been that she could carry with her no matter where she wandered. A way of keeping, a way of girding her nest against any future loss. Sure, she may have moved on. But whatever she touched, wherever she set foot, could always be carried with her in this way.

Months ticked by as her insta notifications ticked up with the mileage of her new home. Despite all this, Reed's shadow cast long across the highways and byways. 

—

“What was it that you were doing?”

“Hm?”

“During the blackout. If it was just you… why didn’t you pick up the phone?”

“I–”

“Did you even check?”

—

Further west, in the vast yet frigid expanse that the desert would become come midnight, she met Montgomery.

A fellow traveller she had crossed paths with one evening on a late night hike. She had gotten turned around at one of many forks in the path and he, showing off a familiarity with the land that bordered on intimate, set her back on the right path. 

She invited him to join her at her campfire. 

He gladly accepted.

They talked through the night.

Alice knew there was something odd about Monty. At first she wrote it off–figuring it was a similar oddness as her own. This must be what it's like, she thought, to meet a fellow wanderer. A bit awkward, a bit disassociated–but ultimately a warm and welcome break from her self imposed isolation. But as the small hours rolled on the oddness became a growing unease. He had a way of staring at her for too long. Listening too intently. Where she answered his questions, he would sidestep hers with unrelated yarns.

“Have you watched the sun set in the Rockies? The purple–everything the light touches dyed royal for a handful of minutes. It’s been a while. Tell me what you saw. I miss it, I really do miss it.”

She never got the chance to ask why he missed it. 

What it was that kept him from seeking it again.

She didn’t even get to say her goodbyes.

Alice had looked away for a moment, only a moment.

It only took a moment.

The embrace took her like a cougar takes a buck–swift and brutal.

In hindsight she was thankful it was so sudden. It lives in her memory as a white hot flash of pain before her shallow grave turned over, her body got back up.

Turns out Monty truly was an odd one, because he did end up sticking around.

“It’s a lot. I know. I’d say to just breathe but– yeah, I know, shitty joke.”

Looking back, it was clear why he did what he did. If not her, it would’ve been the next young thing he stumbled upon. If there was one thing she had understood as well as a kindred in life, it was that aching need for connection. That was her justification, at least, for sticking around with the creature that had just ripped her throat out. 

Monty travelled well with the van, just as so many stamps before him.

He was who taught her to hunt, taught her how to haunt national park trails as to intercept the perfect prey at any given fork or crossroads. Taught her how to lure in coyotes and cats for the more out of the way corners where kine were scarce. Guided her in covering her tracks, disengaging from the social media that had been her one tether to her life before. It was for her own safety, you see. Their own safety.

Monty was always glancing over his shoulder when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Her phone started going off–calls, texts, pings… eventually, she started seeing her face passed around on social media.

MISSING.

LAST SEEN 4/19 AT BACKBONE ST. PARK

IF FOUND CALL–

Monty advised she turn off her phone. Remove the battery.

She told him she would, but never dead.

Even freshly dead, her touchstones across the country were already calling to her. Her people, her place– they were hers, every square little inch of them. Even after all this time, with all that distance she had put between them and herself. Monty, as pleasant as he could be, proved himself paranoid, unanchored and twitchy.

Is this what Reed saw, when he looked at me?

Rootless to the point of getting lost in the night?

Monty never stopped moving.

She never stopped moving.

“They shoot wolves like us from choppers, out here. You can’t just hide in the mountains like you used to. They can reach you anywhere, these nights.”

Weeks of conjuring up phantoms over shared campfires. It was no wonder then, that those very spectres eventually manifested before them in the flesh.

The Inquisition announced itself as a pair of headlights in Alice’s rearview one evening.

They were travelling the backroads, fishing for hitchhikers. A perfect mirror of their own movements, it shadowed them between sparsely populated towns in the Montana backcountry. Monty didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to. In their short time together she had learned how to pick up on his tension, to brace when his focus morphed into a fixation that sucked the oxygen out of the van.

Unfortunately, gas tanks aren’t bottomless. When the gas light came on, Monty placed a hand on Alice’s knee. He did not take his eyes off the rearview. He did not bother to draw in his claws as they threatened to pierce through the thin material of her patchwork skirt.

“When you park, hide in the back. I’ll get the gas. If they engage, I’ll divert them west. If they take the bait and chase me off the lot, hijack it back east– I’ll catch you at the next BP once I lose them in the woods.”

The car–a rusted Toyota Camri–hugged her bumper all the way to the pump. When she cut the engine, she slid into the back and he out the drivers door. He didn’t even make it to the pump before they were out and on him. She could not see the struggle from where she was pressed against the van’s floor, hidden under a spare quilt. A violent outburst that went as quickly as it came–when she poked her head back into the driver’s cabin, the only evidence left of an altercation was a smear of blood where a body must’ve hit the concrete curb of the pump. The Hunter’s car was still idling–headlights still set to their highbeams–with no driver in sight.

No Monty in sight, either.

If her heart still beat, it’d be screaming as she fired up her van and slammed on the gas. Adrenaline flooding her undead brain, affording her tunnel vision as she tore away east. The BP Monty mentioned, thankfully, was only a few miles off, sparing her the worry of hitting an empty tank. It was early morning still, at the next station. She filled her tank, and staked out in the drivers seat watching the treeline.

Monty never emerged.

As the hours crawled ever closer to dawn, however, she was not alone.

—

“Where did that magpie come from, anyway?”

“I–found her by the road. I didn’t want to leave her.”

“A travel pet?”

“I guess you could call her that.”

—

The magpie, like her, like Monty, was odd. Unlike other animals it lacked the survival instinct, the beast sense. The little thing sat with her, kept her company. Perhaps it had been another kindred’s famulus, perhaps it somehow sensed her distress. Whatever the reason, as dawn threatened to break the horizon, Alice was compelled to keep her.

Compass.

She bestowed the name along with her blood, of which the creature partook with the same intensity she had partook in Monty’s. She watched over Alice’s body throughout the day, a tiny guardian until night once again fell across the small gas station’s backlot. When Alice rose again, she was surprised her van hadn’t been towed.

Perhaps another instance of synchronicity–or perhaps whoever was supposed to work that day skipped their shift. Either way, when the sun had set and Monty had yet to show his face, Alice took the separation as a sign.

New York was calling her.

Her touchstones, her flock.

—

“...We’re just happy to have you back, regardless.”

“I’m happy to be back–I’ve missed you dearly. All of you.”

“Promise you won’t disappear like that again?”

—

They shoot wolves like her from choppers, out west.

Perhaps back east, back home, she could hide as a sheepdog.

Perhaps.

—

Alice took their hand. Squeezed it between her own.

“Never. This is where I want to set my roots. Here. With you.”

[whatisbirds]

Limits of an Invitation - Anastasis

Being bound by blood without losing your head is a hard-won skill. This is what Anatol believes. He is also convinced he excels at it... something that his first meeting with the Prince quickly disproves.

Just realized I spaced posting chapter six here. So- here ya go!

If you're new, heya hi! This is part of a longer fic/series, you can start from the beginning here. If you're not new, welcome back! Feel free to hop over the line and read below.

“Will you be a lamb for me?”

The memory rang like a taunt, rattled around in the far corners of Anatol’s brain as Eliza’s footsteps faded out of earshot.  Spread through him like frost, turning him sluggish. The office fell in and out of focus as he succumbed to rumination.

A year. An agonizing, vitae-starved year.

That was how long it had been since they last spoke.

His throat ached. He felt deader than usual.

“Anatol?”

The fiend dragged his attention back into the present. Back onto Victor. “...yes?”

Victor leaned against the doorframe, professional air abating somewhat now that Eliza had stepped out. “...everyone present and accounted for?”

“Unfortunately.” Ana muttered, making a conscious effort not to dig his nails into the leather arm of his office chair, “Also. As much as I… appreciate your enthusiasm for educating the next generation, I will have to insist you never pull that shit again.” 

Victor sighed. “In hindsight, I can see how that might’ve felt… pointed. But I assure you it wasn’t my intention to–”

“Rub my nose in it?”

“...to be insensitive to your current position.” To Victor’s credit, he didn’t shrink away. “Speaking of–how was your meeting with Hermia?”

“Mr. Stamatin?”

“Aye.”

“Please, Come inside.”

The subtle heat, the faint gravitational drag that had radiated from Hermia's office abated. While the Beast’s hackles lowered, it did not cease its nervous pace in the back of his mind. Its claws dug long and sharp into the reptilian part of his brain. It may not understand reason, but it certainly knew when blood is on the horizon. No, not just blood. Vitae. 

It’d been too long.

Its grip made him lightheaded.

The air hung heavy with the scent of time eating paper pulp, ink and inches of dust. Anatol grounded himself in it. Set his beast to gnaw on the sensation, freeing his mind from his ravenous appetite. He wondered how old this relative stranger was. Arrogantly, he had assumed she was young. Now he found himself struck with a strange nostalgia of a long loved space, an aged passion he had admittedly forgotten existed outside of his own tight circle.

“You may sit.”

Hermia was at her desk with her back turned to him. An incredible gesture of trust… or foolish confidence. A bitter scrap of ego hissed that he should pluck her head off her shoulders now that it was within reach. Let the past pent up year uncoil at once, eviscerate them both. This bestial temptation was quickly diverted by the mantra gifted to him from his sire: Let them think they won. Let them think us weak. Let them think us desperate and without leadership. 

Anatol reclined back, waiting on the Prince with a patient smile.

“En- thralling. ” Anatol forced himself to relax as he ran a hand through his hair, hitting Victor with a smile so forced it likely read as a grimace. “What is there even to say? I’m upholding my end of the bargain and she, hers. Little to elaborate on.”

“Really?” An inscrutable smile cracked Victor’s professional facade, "that routine?"

“What?”

“Nothing.” Victor waved dismissively, but the grin remained, “the symmetry between you and Eliza is uncanny, is all.”

“What is a ghoul but an extension of oneself?” As he spoke, Anatol noticed a couple of feathers he had shed scatted around his feet. Stress had a way of making his body… uncooperative. Whatever he had most recently stretched or molded would revert into a more familiar shape. Sometimes to a well worn mask, other times… itching toward something profanely mortal. “You are what you eat, after all.”

“Color me curious.” Victor stepped back into the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. As if Eliza had any reason to sneak back into the shop.  “It is not every day that someone of your particular background elects to join the Camarilla. Especially under such… unfavorable conditions."

Ana toed the feather with his boot, “Is that why you’ve been so helpful?”

“Perhaps.” 

He sighed, “I’ll provide answers as satisfying as your service. how is that for a trade?”

“That's around what I expected.” Victor let his focus drift past Anatol, eyes tracking mental gears the tzimisce could not see, “Where to even begin… ah, well, might as well keep it simple. Did you volunteer, or did your kin do the volunteering for you?”

Anatol smoothed his coat. He studied the spines that weighed the shelf next to him. He thought of Mihal. He wondered what book his hands might cradle now, or what creature, or most likely both. Words still fresh in his memory, as if spoken yesterday–“My sweet. My dear. You and I both know it was only a matter of time before you fell out of our little nest again. Forgive me for going so far as to hurry you along and give you a push.”

His heart oozed poison. 

It burned.

He waited.

Hermia did not look up when she spoke. “Over a year and still bound by the Vaulderie. I don’t know if it is you or your Priest who I should congratulate.”

“I’m happy to accept for him.”

“Then send my regards.” To say the Prince was singular in her tone would be a tactful way to address her affect in Elysium. What was dry humor or a serious assertion was Anatol’s guess. Maybe something he’d grow better at discerning with time. And with blood. “But that still leaves us with the issue–I cannot hold you to your end until it is broken, and I would rather not wait another year to tie this loose thread we have here. I imagine you’re keen to do the same.”

Ana’s eyes rested on the curve of Hermia’s throat, his beast already having grown bored with the conversation. “I am.”

“Hermia asked for our eldest. Seeing that everyone older than me, save Mihal, had been slaughtered and he was the one doing the negotiating…” Anatol plucked up a stray feather from the floor, twirling it between his fingers, “...she considered me sufficient. No one objected, so here I am.”

Victor scrutinized him. “...if that is the case, this has to be the most composed betrayal I’ve seen in my life.”

“It’s well rehearsed.” Anatol replied flatly.

“So well it appears natural.” Victor–                                                                            

   –Hermia handed him a glass ampule. It was the length of his pinky and not much thicker, filled with viscous, marrow-dark substance. 

Ana tilted the vessel to the side, watched the sluggish ooze creep below the airpocket. “...and this is?”

“The hammer.” Hermia’s lip twitched in what Ana assumed was her best effort at a dry smile, “Part of my inheritance from the previous Prince–the fruits of a decades-long effort. While it can’t break the Vaulderie equivalent of a full circle, it’s effective at deprogramming weak or new ones. You should be ready to bond well within–

“–less than an hour before I need to head out, and forgive me if I’ve already proposed this, but I think given your background along with your further integration within the university you could be of particular use–”

“Efficient.” Anatol eyed the substance as if it were radioactive.

The language sat poorly with him–especially coming from a Tremere. However the time for negotiation had long since passed–and it was his ability to dissociate into the required role that was being counted on. So he cracked that glass and knocked back the bitter concoction without another beat of hesitation.

It was as abrasive as boozy blood, with a kick of ketamine. The sourness crawled up his nose and bled into the back of his throat, clouding his attention by packing cotton fuzz along the vertebrae of his neck and base of his brain. The cold, pricking slice of glass dotted awareness as his grip tightened around and shattered the ampule. Shards cut through and buried into palm flesh that, in that particular moment, was indecisive if it wished to remain palm flesh. Focusing his diffused attention and keeping shape took every ounce of effort, zeroing in on the metallic taste hanging in the back of his throat. He clung to it, pulled it back taut and felt his loose stitching retighten. Eventually the taste faded and the spiritual gale had passed.

There was less here than there was before.

A trembling void with pin-hole crimson stars.

A millimeter of skin.

At some point, he had closed his eyes.

“Mr. Stamatin?”

He opened them.

Hermia had turned to fully face him, her hands folded patiently in her lap. Vitae smeared, congealing and sticky across the arm of his chair. “Yes?”

Victor cleared his throat, cutting Ana's silent wallowing short. “...If you’d prefer to take time to decompress and reflect before being peppered with inquiries, I would not blame you Ana.”

How do you feel?” Hermia asked.

“Present.” Anatol croaked.

“I think I do, Victor.” Ana’s gaze had already settled into the same empty corner of the doorway it had before, “Thank you.”

"It's the least I can do." Ever the Ventrue, the professor closed the conversation with a firm handshake. "Have a good evening, Ana."

Victor left.

That twitching ghost of a smile returned, “Good. Give me your hand.”

He did. She cupped her palm against the back of his hand, guiding it to a shallow clay bowl on her desk. A hiss escaped his lips as she squeezed, vitae and bits of glass joining the mixture of ash and earth at the bottom of the vessel. The drops left tarry, crater-like impressions but not much else.

Hermia released his hand. Anatol absentmindedly picked out the remaining ampule still dug into his hand as she watched the contents of the bowl closely. A light smoke drifted up, a slight chemical reaction affirmed by an even slighter nod from the Tremere as she then set the bowl to the side. “Congratulations, Mr. Stamatin. You’re clean.”

“Fantastic.” He brushed the recovered glass into a nearby trash bin. With as narrow as the office was, there were only a few precious inches of space between her knees and his own. A coldly intimate and absolutely suffocating one-on-one. When he looked back to the Prince, she was rolling one of her sleeves to the crook, fingers curled into a fist. Sitting where the bowl had been, a dagger.

Hermia plucked up and unsheathed the blade. Longing once again peeked its head. That longing so familiar he happily rested in its well-worn crook. One that he hadn’t felt this strongly in months, not since the Vaulderie. Since Mihal. The dissonance, achingly, manifested in a grim delight. The Beast meanwhile keened, heart still raw after being so abruptly ripped from the grip of a dozen hands. Wounded, shivering, and alone for the first time in centuries. The warmth of the pack now reduced to a foggy recollection.

Tear it like a bandage, Anatol reasoned. Anticipation is worse than the sting.

Hermia pressed the dagger to her wrist and the wink of vitae was the only invitation Anatol needed. All senses stood at attention, nothing existed beyond that bloom of warmth from the chill. Vitae. Bright. Enticing. He had barely processed the words that left her lips. The detached, condescending bemusement that colored her expression was plainly read as he latched onto the wound. It was humiliating. He knew. At that moment, he did not care. That moment, he slid down his throat with the vitae. He reveled in its charge, with how quickly his body conducted its electricity and saturate his entirety. He did not exist beyond the point where his lips met her skin. He craved it even as he drank, every mouthful expanding his appetite.

He… wasn’t used to this intensity. The Vaulderie had been a net which caught him from such plunges in the past. Now he found himself grasping onto a single line as he was dragged under by an earth-churning riptide. With this sensation came the even more intense impulse to cling to the stable point of her wrist on his lips. Safe harbor. Blood down his throat and the tips of her fingers skimming up the skin of his neck. A caress for a beast, not a lover, but it uncoiled his heart all the same. It slithered like the vitae in his veins and wrapped, possessive, around her. 

Mine.

“Enough.”

He didn’t immediately comply. What harm is a drop or two more? More. More. Though he hadn’t the chance to form the full, rebellious thought when a harsh grip seized a fistful of hair and wrenched his head back. Vitae stained his chin and congealed at the corners of his mouth, fangs bared and eyes dilated in his fervor. Her infuriated stare entrapped him.

“Will you make me regret our agreement so soon?”

Anatol swallowed. Vitae and spit played the back of his tongue, he felt something deep within him shift.

“No, Prince.”

“No, Prince. And?”

“Forgive me.”

“For?”

“My lapse of restraint.”

An impossibly long beat of silence. Anatol’s ears were practically ringing with it. Fear tainted the new blood in his veins.

“You are forgiven.”

Hermia relinquished her grip and he slumped back into his chair. She stared at him expectantly.

“...thank you.” Ana sighed.

Hermia took her time to respond, leaving him with the distinct feeling of being picked over. “So. You have a taste for vitae, I gather?”

He remained silent.

“I don’t intend to punish that, given you keep your appetite in line. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect it to a degree, given what I've been told of your upbringing...” She paused. “You don’t strike me as a foolish creature, Anatol.”

He kept his gaze fixed on that same row of books. Unseeing, unmoored in the unsettling warmth setting in from her backhanded compliment. “I am not, Prince.”

“We wouldn’t be here today if you were.” For another moment, they considered each other. “How did you meet Mihal?”

“Through my craft. I had inherited a carpentry trade through my father and, with my husband, accepted a patronage from Mihal. He, like so many of our line, took great pride in his haven. He took pride in our work. My work.”

“So he embraced you on the spot?” Hermia sounded skeptical, as she should be. This wasn’t a toreador, after all, even if Mihal has been known to fool people.

“It wasn’t only my work that attracted him.” It was strange how easily the memories arrived at his lips. Memories held quiet for decades, plucked out like flowers for a bouquet. First for Eliza, now for his Prince. “He knew my father. To this day, I do not know anything beyond that their relationship was brief. But my sire is prone to fixation, and I inherited his demeanor, his... composition. Of which Mihal was fond of.”

Hermia took note. “So you were the Priest's partner-carpenter?”

“I’m what he needs me to be.”

“And what is that, now?” Hermia’s attention didn’t relent. Inquisitive, bordering in burrowing. “I can’t help but wonder- What is this, sat before me, this gift of the Court?”

Anatol bit his tongue, staring at his shoes. Felt his skin crawl. Considered an answer he wasn’t entirely sure of himself.

“A key, fashioned for a lock. I was ground down to fit your shape.” He… did not appreciate how his voice wavered as he spoke. He was above feeling. He was above running the last decade over and over again in his head, searching for the slightest imperfection, a nod, a tell, a scrap! Any explanation of his expulsion beyond pettiness. “I am what you need to be.”

“How very… traditional, of you.” A flicker of wit caught light in her eyes. “I’m sure the irony of this situation isn’t lost on you.”

“It is not.”

“I appreciate it.” Hermia’s voice softened and, finally, she captured his gaze fully. Immediately Ana’s heart leapt into his throat–a gag. Were her eyes that clear ten minutes ago? Was her intent so intimately direct? Whatever pride had sprung up within him earlier scattered to the wind like seeds off a dandelion head. “I admire your composure. It can be difficult to conduct oneself when your place in the night has shifted so dramatically–sure, you stumbled this evening, but you also allowed yourself to be curbed without curdling into a tantrum. That proves you possess a healthy degree of humility. You understand and are willing to commit to your station. For that, you have my gratitude.”

“..thank you.” Hesitation. Oh, Caine, where had his words gone? None of those things he found particularly flattering or suited to him at all, but he felt like a blushing child all the same. With an equally juvenile shame Ana averted his eyes again. “Your appreciation has its worth, and I return it in kind. Your own deft handling has not gone unnoticed.”

A whisper of amusement, that gentlest twitch toward a smile, a hint of a mild relief. Blood Talking. They both thought it, knew it. And yet Anatol found himself spinning in circles to fill in the justification. She had been gentler than he had anticipated. Had handled him with care, however distant, however clinical. This was indisputable, almost physical in their reality. He was simultaneously grateful and terrified. His scalp stung, he had definitely lost some of his plumage to her grip.  An invasion by inches. She ran a thoughtful finger along the hilt of her sheathed dagger. “So, how is the Court fairing?”

Anatol’s bashfulness soured. He held his tongue. a pause, a consideration. Sucking the venom out of his words before he spoke them. “They are doing well… I imagine. They have provided me with a respectable distance throughout my purgatory, so I am afraid I am not entirely equipped to say for certain how they stand these nights.”

“They’ve cut you off?”

“No. No–” Sharp, sudden, cutoff. Please, no, never speak that. Never. Not you. Never from you. The notion of abandonment stuck like a burr. Irritated. Again he stayed his tongue, untangled and picked out his thoughts with an icy care. “I apologize. That is– they have not. It was agreed it would be… easier for both myself and the members of the Court to wait until after the baton was handed, so to speak, before we resume communications.”

“A grieving period.”

“...yes. A grieving period.”

“I trust you will report to me when these communications resume?”

“Of course.” Anatol assured, forcing himself to return her stare, “The second I receive word, it’s yours.”

The pressure of her scrutiny was already immense, a cool and steady press. “ Good evening, Mr. Stamatin."

“Good Evening, Hermia.”

Anatol locked up the shop and left not long after Victor’s departure.

He walked out the building, past his car. He could… come back to that later. The night was young, and he had no other appointments. Tonight, he would walk Fairhaven on a new set of feet. Break in the soles. Measure out his stride.

Anatol stopped at a crosswalk, dug his heel into the curb. Despite himself, a smile broke out.

He flexed his fingers, reached into his pocket and fished out a pack of cigarettes. 

In a blink and the click of an electric lighter he had one out, between his lips and lit.

Sharp inhale.

Burning, singing heat.

The crosswalk light turned.

Anatol stepped into the street, exhaling a trail of smoke. The muted caress of pain greeted each inhale, a flare, a point to meditate on. Smoke coiling into a small ember on his tongue, a test of endurance to tether his racing mind. 

He felt… grateful? Relieved?

Sharp inhale. Exhale.

Settled.

For the first time in over a year, he felt like he could rest. Did he still miss the Court? Of course. Mihal? Acid. He was estranged, and what a funny, reaching feeling that was.

But now he reached with both feet grounded.

He felt… comfortable.

Dangerous, dangerous feeling.

Slow inhale. Hold. Smolder. Burn.

He closed his eyes.

Saw Hermia’s.

Exhale.

“It can be difficult to conduct oneself when your place in the night has shifted so dramatically and you must take to a new role.”

And what role is that? A leashed Dragon to defend your Tower? Unliving rage bait for the Prisci? 

Anatol laughed, flicked his cigarette to the ground. Snuffed it with a sharp snap of his boot. However false, however dangerous the feeling, he let himself disappear into it. Merge with  and steer it.

After all, how else had he survived these past two centuries?

Last Chapter - Ao3 - Next Chapter

[whatisbirds]

Limits of an Invitation - Mother, Daughter, Tongue & Whip

Eliza has a 'long overdue' conversation with her mother. She gets stoned promptly after, and almost misses her meeting with her new Regnant.

Chapter 5! Ah! If you're new here you can start from the beginning here. Otherwise you can hop right in on Ao3 or below the cut!

“Hey Peanut–”

[Message Deleted. Open next mes–?]

“I know you hate repeat messages, but this isn’t like you. I’m beginning to w–”

[Message Deleted. Open nex–?]

“Eliza. Please. Pick up the pho–”

[Message Deleted. You have zero new messages.]

Eliza stared out the window. It was one of the two her small studio housed, the other being a narrow frosted pane that sat just above eye level in her bathroom. She could not see the sky or the sun past the neighboring building, but the sharpening angle of the roof’s shadow telegraphed a rapidly setting sun as she punched the callback button.

Better late than never.

When the line picked up, her mother’s initial greeting wasn’t audible over the shrill chirping of a backing truck. With a bit of rustling, and the heavy clunk of a metal door swinging shut, he mothers voice rose above the din. “Eliza!”

“Hi mom.” Eliza flopped back into the futon that sat adjacent from the kitchenette, kicking her kitten-patterned socked feet up against the closest counter. Tracing the stitched-in outline of a stretching tabby cat with her toe, she waded into the right words to say. “Just saw your messages–haven’t gotten the chance to listen to any of them yet though, what’s going on?”

“I could ask you the same.” Eliza could tell that her mother was attempting to keep her tone light, but a tinge of accusation crept in nonetheless. A tight line in which the rest of her words were tethered. “Merry Christmas, by the way.”

“Merry Christmas.” There was a clatter in the background, and Eliza frowned. “Are you at work?”

“...yeah. Yeah. They–you know how they are.” Her mother muttered as another door closed and the background noise finally ceased. “Last minute, overtime pay. A backhand-shake. Is that what you were doing these past couple days? Working?”

“Kinda? I keep forgetting my phone in the car while I’m at the shop.”

“I see.” Her mother sounded unconvinced,“Making a gift for me?”

Eliza snorted. “Obviously?”

“Better be a nice gift, with all the worrying you put me through.” Eliza stared up at the ceiling, letting her mothers words hang in the air rather than offer a response. Eventually, her mother picked her train of thought back up, “Would it kill you to send a text?”

“You know it would, mom.” Eliza shrugged to no one, sliding further down the futon. “Sorry. I guess I’m still wiped out from the semester, and some unexpected shit got dropped in my lap. I had tunnel vision for a bit there, I think.”

“...what was dropped into your lap?” There was a wary note to her mother’s voice– when wasn’t there –but this one had a fresh edge. The paranoid creature coiled around her ear hissed that oh no, oh dear, somehow mother knows and if mother knows then the secret’s out and in that case you know exactly who will make your own blood boil–

“I was offered a job at the university.” Eliza blurted. Well. Not a lie. “Shop supervisor–or, er, Co-Supervisor. I wasn’t responding last night because I was in a meeting with Mr. Stamatin about it.”

“A midnight meeting?”

“It wasn’t scheduled or anything–I was in there working on your Christmas gift. He saw me and offered to help. And while he helped, he segued into the job thing.” Eliza, as she spoke, tried to isolate this thread she was telling her mother from the one she fed Omar. Dissect it. No injury, just job. No circumstance, no suspicion this time… hopefully. But if her mother bought it, anyone would. “It’d pay well. Hell, enough where I can cover you so you don’t have to do anymore of these ‘backhand-shakes’. It’d be nice, actually.”

A long pause. In the background, Eliza could hear the door open and a blossom of chatter before it was cut short. What sounded like a muttered apology, and the door swung shut again. Her mother cleared her throat. “...This is the same Mr. Stamatin that you worked on that play with?”

“Endgame, yeah.” She chewed on her lip, praying that her bitching at the time wasn’t about to come and bite her in the ass, “Apparently he liked my work, and he recommended me for the position.”

“How kind of him.” Her mother’s tone was less so, “Promise me you’ll not go dark at the drop of a hat in the future?”

“I promise.” Eliza rolled over onto her side, staring at the wood panel side of the counter. Eyes tracing the darker grooves which orbited then split around hardened knots. The warn-through sealer was beginning to peel the chestnut colored board pale. “Omar says hi.”

“How is he?”

The conversation smoothed into a more regular tempo from there. Bouncing casual topics back and forth–How Omar was doing, how things at the Farm were going. Working at a pig shed was grueling, but her mother was good at drawing a dry humor from it, almost as a simultaneous apology for bringing it up at all. 

“If this job works out, maybe you could take some time off?” Eliza offered, “Or, hell, quit–”

“I have to do something, Eliza.” Her mother swiftly shut her down, the tension from earlier winding between her words, “It isn’t as bad as I make it out to be.”

Now it was Eliza’s turn to sound unconvinced. “Uh-huh.”

A pause. Eliza tilted her head back, watching the shadows as they slid down the bricks of the narrow alley outside. Her mother cleared her throat. “Have you found a church yet?”

Goddamnit.

“Mom.” She sucked in a steadying breath through her teeth, “It’s Christmas.”

“...I know.” Her mother sounded passive. Small.

Something in Eliza’s heart curdled.

Oh, you cut that shit out.

You are neither of those things.

It had been so goddamn long since the last time they had this conversation, the sting of its return cut deeper than anything she could’ve braced for. Eliza had hoped that maybe, after a year and a half, her mother would finally take the fucking hint. But who was she kidding? It took Alanna a full decade to catch on that her daughter was queer. Arguably she was still in the process of catching on.

Eliza sighed, “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“Call me on New Years?”

“Of course.” Eliza sat up, stretching her back. Focusing on a sensation usually helped her ground herself. “Good night, mom. Love you.”

“Night, Peanut. Love you too.”

Eliza hung up.

The sun had disappeared behind the horizon, shadows leeching the red bricks across the way gray. Her gaze drifted away from the window, and to the small glass-topped coffee table that sat knee-knockingly close to the futon’s edge. Two things sat atop it–a stack of wild flora coasters, and a cigar box.

She grabbed the cigar box, cracked it open and rolled herself a joint.

–

Eliza assumed she was running late.

Drumming her fingers, frustrated and idling at the last red light before she could turn off into the theater building parking lot. She might’ve fell prey to a nap after smoking earlier because despite her best efforts it was already 9pm. Sure, she never saw Anatol in the shop earlier than 8, but she had wanted to beat him to the punch. Have some time to walk a lap around the loading dock and collect herself.

To her surprise, she did not see his Impala when she pulled into her usual spot. Thank God I’m not the only one who’s lost track of time.

Shouldering her bag, Eliza hopped out of her car and trotted into the shop. It was, as she expected, dead silent- not a single other soul in the building as far as she could tell. Anatol’s office door was locked, which left her to hover around paint storage. She pulled up a nearby stool and set her bag to the side. She sat, eyes scanning the perimeter of the shop. Floor was polished and swept. Every surface scrubbed, each spare cubby clear. It was aggressively spotless; only the chalky scent of sawdust hanging in the air to imply any recent activity, barely able to mask the acrid tang of bleach which still clung to the concrete.

Warm rain pattered accross the back of her neck.

It was as if the night before never happened.

A twinge of pain shot from her knuckles to her shoulder socket as her eyes landed on the yellow metal side of the machinery cage. Her throat constricted as she stared, awareness two steps behind her gaze, as if a wild predator lurked behind fencelink. 

“Eliza Danielson?”

Eliza, startled back into the present moment, turned to see not Anatol but another professor altogether.

“Yeah…” She trailed off as she stood. She recognized this man–he wasn’t part of the theater department, but with History or English or something else that occasionally overlapped with them. For the life of her she couldn’t stick a name to his face. Between the salt-and-pepper hair, thick rimmed glasses and his general twee getup he looked like what you’d get if you melted every academic down into a single man. No, wait, hang on... what's that movie? Sun... Sundown. Holy shit no actually he looks kinda like Bruce Campbell in Sundown. “I’m sorry, what’s your name again? I’ve seen you around but I don’t think we’ve actually met.”

He smiled and held out a hand to shake. “Victor Ferdinand, I’m a colleague of Anatols. I’m here to assist with your onboarding, and to act as a secondary resource for you when Ana himself is not available.”

“Oh. Is that why…” She trailed off, glancing back at the closed office door, “...huh. Okay. So you’ll be checking my arm then?”

Victor cocked his head ever so slightly. Confused but intrigued, “I’m sorry?”

“My. Uh. My arm?” Eliza’s voice wavered slightly. Shit, does he not know? Did I fuck up already? She cleared her throat, frustrated. Taking a beat to smash the blossoming paranoia outright before it could highjack the conversation. “Should I come back another time for that? Assuming Mr. Stamatin’s not around–”

“Oh! He’ll be here, he’s coming off the heels of an important meeting of his own. He asked if I could arrive ahead of him, so as to not keep you waiting.” He fished a set of keys from his jacket pocket and unlocked the office door, “I’m sure he’ll be able to answer any questions about your… arm issue… then.”

“Okay. I’ll just… yeah.” Eliza scooped up her bag and shuffled past him, parking herself on a swivel chair in the office’s far corner. She felt very much like a mouse huddled beneath loop after loop of bundled lighting cables. “So… what department are you from?”

“History.” Victor, meanwhile, awkwardly hovered at the threshold, glancing between her and deeper into the shop. “I also assist with archival in The Catalog.”

“Cool.”

“I would be inclined to agree.”

They sat in uncomfortable silence.

Eventually Victor cleared his throat, “How long have you known Mr. Stamatin?”

“Year-ish.” She fished the folder from her bag and flipped it open across her lap, “Yourself?”

Victor checked his watch, brow furrowing, “Not much longer, I’m afraid.”

“You new?”

“He is.”

Now it was Eliza’s turn to be taken aback, “He said he was local?”

“New to the university, not to town. He and his… family have been around for a surprising while.” Victor turned his full attention back to Eliza. Close attention. “May I ask you a question?”

She fixed her gaze on the folder, thumbing through the pages, “Shoot.”

“You mentioned your arm.”

“...yeah.”

His voice softened–quiet enough as to not echo in the shop, “So you understand that carpentry isn’t his only specialty.”

The ring finger on her new hand twitched.

She nodded.

Another long, agonizing pause.

“My condolences.”

Eliza looked up, met his eyes. 

Concern creased Victor’s crows feet. The sincerity set her on edge.

“It could’ve been worse.” she flexed her fingers, moving her hand off her folder as she felt sweat begin to bead across the lines of her palm, patting it dry on her pant leg,  “It would’ve been worse if he hadn’t been there.”

As if on cue, they both straightened up as they heard the loading bay door open. Victor swiftly dropped his grave expression for a professional smile in greeting. “Ana! You clean up well, don't you?”

“You patronize me.” Amidst the day's multiple emotional boil-overs, she hadn’t really accounted for how a sober conversation with Anatol would go. Already, she felt her heart crawling up her throat at the sound of his voice, and when he stepped into sight– “Thanks again for keeping Eliza company, Victor.”

Victor was right– Anatol had cleaned up well. Eliza had never seen him outside of the shop, so of course she had never seen him in anything beyond paint-stained jeans and a range of T shirts. Tonight however he looked like he came straight from a wedding. Black slacks buttoned into grey fasteners, the starched collar of his ivory dress shirt clinging atop a felt split tail overcoat so bleached it leeched what little color remained in Anatol’s hands and throat. A lapel pin–a silver dagger of which many mouths of a crystalline Venus flytrap overwhelmed the blade–glinted in the harsh wash of the office light. 

What was also visible under the fluorescent lights were those same dark circles from the night before. His hair, cornsilk blonde usually slicked cleanly back, was mussed. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through it, only temporarily taming it before the same strands fell back into his face as he sat at his desk. Messy and layered, she almost missed another difference–the babyhair at the nape of his neck and which wreathed the back of his ears were now spotted with sprouts of dove white down. Indistinguishable at a distance, but up this close she watched as a stray feather fluttered free, spinning by the weight of its quill onto the floor between them.

Victor followed Anatol, closing the door behind him. For someone who claimed to be a colleague, he sure did keep his distance between himself and Ana. Almost pressed up against the office door, with Ana and Eliza almost knee-to-knee at the opposite end of the office. Despite this, if he was nervous, he hid it well. “It’s always a delight to welcome a new face.”

Whatever composure Eliza spent the past couple of hours building up was rapidly draining out the soles of her sneakers. She dropped her attention back to the folder, but as she shuffled through it–her hands spited her, still damp, smearing the university letterhead with her thumbprints. No heat radiated off Mr. Stamatin. Sitting next to him felt like she was standing next to one of the light poles outside–she could feel the warmth being actively siphoned from her, sucked into an entropic pit. The suspicion, the questions she had batted back and forth with Omar only a few hours earlier–distant islands, swiftly overtaken by the horizon. 

“Eliza?”

Her gaze snapped up and was immediately captured by his own. “Yeah?”

He held a hand out to her, palm up. Whatever exhaustion he carried consciously softened with the gesture. “How was your day?”

Without thinking, she rested the new hand in his. Heart playing scales up and down her vertebrae. “Slept in. Went to a cafe. Pretty okay, all things considered.”

“I’m happy to hear that.” He murmured, turning her arm over. Running his fingers along the subtle rise of her tendon from her wrist to her elbow. Progressing up her arm with a soft and swift press of a clinician, “everything functioning as it should?”

The piano, the twitching, the feeling of a phantom clinging to it just a few centimeters off… all of this swirled around in her mind. But none of these things bubbled past her lips- stuck tight behind beartrap tension locking her jaw shut under his touch. “Yep.”

An uncertain waver rippled through him at her quick answer, his gaze going distant as he guided her shoulder through a forward and backward rotation. But, like her, if he had anything to share he kept it close to his chest. “Good. You should be on track then.”

“So I heard that you will be taking over the shop for Ana here.” Victor chimed in, nodding at the folder in her lap, “I imagine it’s been quite a bit of information to process–professionally and, er, personally. Ana, of course, will still be your supervisor but I will be your liaison with administration. Any questions you have concerning pay, benefits, as well as navigating the campus as faculty–I’d be more than happy to assist you.”

“Taking over?” Eliza parroted as she scanned the fine print–she still hadn’t actually sat down and read more than what she had skimmed over with Omar. Kicking herself, she tried to catch up with Victor, “I thought it was more of an assistant or apprentice thing–I hadn’t realized that I’m… uh…”

“You will be taking my title, but I will still be here. It has been requested that I take on a handful of courses this upcoming semester–something I cannot do in tandem with my current responsibilities. There is no need to worry–I’d ask nothing of you that you could not easily accomplish.” Ana assured, sitting back and folding his hands in his lap, “I know the timing lined up in such a way that you probably assume this is a concession. It is not. I was originally going to make this offer at the top of the semester but… extenuating circumstances forced my hand.”

“So I begin at the start of the semester?” She did the mental math– today was Christmas, the first day of classes was January twelfth… two and a half weeks. She had two and a half weeks to get ready on top of what she already had on her plate for her graduate course. “And would this be a day or a night shift I’d be working?”

“Night, for now. As you have likely noticed, I can only be present during the evening. I do not want to put you in a situation where you need support that we cannot provide.” Ana cut Victor off before he could answer. “I also want you to have the space to complete your graduate course before expanding your responsibilities–though, as I have stated previously, I do prefer to give those in my employ free reign to do what they will during the daylight hours, as I will be insisting on your evenings.”

How considerate. “Graveyard shift, got it.”

“I understand if you might need some time to peruse what you have been given…” Victor pulled a small manila envelope from his breast pocket, handing it to Eliza. When she opened it, she found a plain white key card along with a slip of paper with inquiry info as well as directions to something called the Athenaeum. “But I will be available most evenings before the Spring Semester gets started over in Archival. You may be stopped by one of our librarians–they are ghouls like yourself. If you provide my name and show them that card, they shouldn’t give you too much trouble. In fact I can think of a couple who would be more than happy to help you along as well–it’s just that we take the security of our private collections very seriously, you will come to find.”

“Ghoul?” Eliza could not tell if she had misheard or if he was joking.

“A Ghoul. A human who has consumed Vitae, like yourself.” Victor shot Anatol a quizzical look. “Have you not–?”

“We are going at our own pace,” Ana muttered as he stared past Victor. Thoughts elsewhere, far, far out of view, “it is a transitional period for us both.”

“I don’t remember consuming anything.” Eliza picked through her memories–maybe they were referring to something that was in the IV? “When did I consume–what was it that he said? Veetay?”

Ana sighed, “Vitae. It’s… blood. My blood. Victor’s blood. Cai– Kindred, blood.”

The gears in her mind were going slow but they were still going, “...but not my blood.”

He nodded, “Right.”

“Because I’m…” Her mind was resistant to every word that came to mind, “I’m not that. A Kindred. Which is what you are. I’m, uh–”

Victor's confirmation was laughably surreal, “You are living, yes.” 

…unlike you two, apparently. Eliza sucked in a steadying breath, a swift compartmentalization. She nodded. “Okay. Okay. Alright.”

Ice enveloped her knee. When she glanced down, she saw Ana’s hand resting atop it. “There is plenty that will need to be covered, but you shouldn’t worry yourself tonight. I need to take a couple evenings for myself, I recommend you do the same. Use the card. Peruse the Catalog. Victor has been teaching longer than most kine have been breathing and as you can see he is simply over the moon at the prospect of taking another pupil under his wing.”

Eliza clutched the folder, its corners creasing beneath her fingers, “...I will sign this shit if, and only if, my pay period starts fucking tomorrow.”

“I don’t think–”

“That will be arranged.” Anatol cut Victor off, “You will be paid.”

Eliza turned to Victor, “Can I get that in writing?”

Victor’s lips pressed into a hard line as Anatol also looked expectantly up at him. “...I can have something together by tomorrow evening. You can sign then, and we can see about having you processed and on payroll by the end of this week. Would that suffice?”

“It would.” Eliza, for the first time that evening, smiled, “Thank you, Victor.”

“Only happy to help. Honestly, it’s the least I can do considering your…” Victor sighed, shooting Anatol a sidelong look, “she will not know what I mean when I say Domitor, will she?”

The word instantly put a bad taste in her mouth. “Domitor?”

“Blood donor.” Ana corrected.

“No. Domitor.” For the first time this evening, Victor’s voice adopted a cold edge. “Call it what it is.”

It was breathtaking, how quickly the tension had coiled in that office. Instinctively Eliza felt herself press up against the wall, trying to hide in the shadows beneath the bundles of wire. Anatol had gone stone still, his glare as frigid as his grip–which he hadn’t relinquished, unfortunately. Her leg was beginning to ache. “I said we would be going at our own–”

“Not with this.” Victor turned to Eliza, “Ask him what a Domitor is.”

“No.” The word left Eliza’s lips before she could even process it.

The pity in the professor’s eyes made her want to rip them out, “Anatol’s you’re Domitor. A vitae ‘donor’ to use his preferred terminology.” 

“...which would make me?”

Victor met Ana’s death stare head-on, “Tell her.”

Seconds crawled by in silence. Just as Eliza began to worry that she was about to be in the middle of a physical altercation, Ana relented. His gaze dropped down and away, fixing on the corner of his desk. He withdrew his hand, refusing to face Eliza which left her to count the quills down his spine as he spoke, “A Thrall. Donor is a Domitor, recipient is a Thrall.”

“Thrall. That sounds…” Eliza trailed off, once again finding herself running up against a mental wall. Leaving her just with surface images–Renfield. Lucy. Dead-eyed victims.

“It sounds like what it is. Vitae is addictive. Vitae can easily be a leash. That being said: I have no interest in tugging such a leash.” Anatol said dismissively, gesturing toward the door, “Victor, if you would open the door?”

Victor rested his hand on the door handle, “Eliza?”

“What?”

“Are you happy with that answer?”

She didn’t take her eyes off Anatol. He kept his back turned to her. A pang of concern–she felt for him. But why? That same worrisome voice hissed from the back of her mind, oh, no worry, I’m sure the Thrall’s emotional investment in her Domitor is entirely organic. Didn’t you fucking hate him 48 hours ago? Whatever happened to that? Why the sudden giving a shit?

She stood, handing Victor the folder, “I’ll have time to find a better one.”

Victor assessed her- the coldness from before hadn't entirely faded, something he seemed to clock within himself.  The frost was melted with an artificially warm demeanor as the professor took the folder and stepped aside, “I hope you do. Good Evening, Ms. Danielson.”

Eliza spared one last glance back at Anatol. The thousand-yard stare was back, “Evenin’, Anatol.”

“Evening, Eliza.” Anatol sighed as he leaned back into his chair, adopting a neutral mask. A placid smile, “I will contact you when you are needed again. Until then, I wish you and your studies well.”

With a curt nod, she exited the office.

As she walked back to her car, Eliza's mind couldn't help but notice a V-shaped hole in the conversation. Ungracefully danced around, but never fully acknowledged.

Last chapter - Ao3 - Next Chapter

[whatisbirds]

Souris De Poche

In his mind’s eye a multitude of scenes proposed themselves–a hateful old kine waiting with a warded shotgun. A pair of upstarts lying in wait at either side of the door frame. A pile of corpses.  A pile of sweet-smelling ashes. Anatol shoved the door open.

A one shot covering the aftermath of a second inquisition raid on Ana's pack. It can be read on Ao3 here or under the fold!

They had all been out drinking.

Cleaving from the side of the Rack with its cornucopia of low-hanging fruit had always been a relatively safe bet. A stones throw from their doorstep, swarmed with out of towners sunk into various depths of inebriation. 

It was only for a handful of hours.

Three, four max.

A pregame, a mixer to prop up Adalia before the celebration slated for later that same evening to show off a crowning achievement for Tzimisce– her Zulo. Long time coming, but warmly welcomed by the entire pack. Anatol had caught a glimpse of it a few nights before along with Mihal–her form was traditional, but expertly crafted. A Dragon well suited for the battlefields of old. Nothing to write home about in his opinion…but enough to leave him feeling a touch restless. He knew the anticipatory gaze of the bloodline, which had long rested on her shoulders, would soon shift to him. 

All the more reason to drink, and drink well.

The goal had been to get to a steady flush rather than wasted but they had landed somewhere between those two points. Happy, a bit clumsy, a bit reckless. The Dutchess led the pack, walking toe-to-heel backwards as she faced the trailing group. Despite her drunken sway and the steady stream of foot traffic passing by them, she navigated the walk perfectly. Extra eyes, obviously, but to her credit she concealed them so well even Anatol had trouble pinning down the where and the how. She picked at him as the walked like a kid brother, pinching and needling and loudly wondering when he was going to follow her lead and grow the fuck up. It wasn’t that hard, really. Not for anyone with a lick of imagination, a scrap of self-determination, a bit of spine.

Souris de poche. 

Mihal’s pocket mouse.

“Content to wile away the decades in the garden shade,” Adalia reached out, a drunken swipe at Ana’s nose which he side-stepped. She cackled as he nearly tripped over the curb in the dodge, kept steady by Del linking her elbow with his. “Only rousing when you hear Mihal’s bell, to which you go scampering. Honestly I’m starting to wonder if even that is enough to get you moving these nights.”

“What’s the rush?” Anatol traded a conspiratorial glance with Del. There was nothing to it, aside from layering on some artificial conspiracy atop Adalia’s barb. “I’ll fly when I wish. But I am happy to hear the anticipation is killing you, dear sister. How long do you think you have left in you until you finally croak? Ten years? Twenty? I want to see how long we can stretch this.”

“As if I’d embarrass myself by dying at the hands of a child.” Adalia scoffed.

“I think fifty would do it.” Del’s voice was a flatline which slid easily beneath the back-and-forth. She fished her cell from her coat pocket and popped open her alarm app. “Gonna set it for… this time tonight, 2063. How’s this?”

Alarm 49 years, 364 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes - Adalia greets sun because Ana refuses to scrape himself out of Mihal’s basement.

Kalisto snorted from where he trailed close behind the three, “I’ll save the date.”

“That’s not fair,” Anatol snickered, “We haven’t had a proper basement in nearly a decade.”

“Oh right.” Del updated ‘basement’ to ‘cutting room floor’. “Better?”

Anatol nodded. “Much better.”

As they rounded the block corner the Palace Estates rose into full view. A gem of the Fairhaven skyline, Adalia’s baby. Tonight its walls were bathed in a vibrant crimson light–to passers by, it was a beacon of color in an otherwise bright-white-LED-washed section of downtown. For them it was a promise of expansion–they painted Portside red so they could watch the crimson flow into and cling to Fairhaven like a blood infection.

Anatol pulled out a pack of Camels of which Del filched from without asking as usual, he lit hers and she his. Kalisto’s eyes never drifted away from the skyline, what little of the stars they could see in the light-choked canyon of downtown. Adalia, bored, turned to the Palace Estate doors as they approached. 

The glass doors clattered against the deadbolt when she pulled on them.

Locked.

The silence that rolled over the group was deafening.

Adalia yanked the door again to the same result. Ana peered past her into the lobby which was empty. Valeriy, who usually minded the front desk, was absent. 

Delphine snuffed out her cig on the doorframe, paler than usual. “Am I the only one smelling blood?”

Anatol tossed his own cig into the street and took a deep breath. It had originally been masked by the reek of tobacco but now it was unmistakable. It wasn’t exactly fresh, the sour sheen of coagulation lacing the usually appetizing scent. It was also potent, implying…

“Shit.” Kalisto muttered as Adalia fumbled with her key card. With a beep they were in, and the pool of blood behind the lobby counter became obvious as they entered. The toreador wasted no time in zipping over, Anatol close in step behind him. Behind the counter was grisly–a muddy mix of blood and dust covering the dead body of one of their recent hire ghouls. Shards of ancient bone were scattered in the mix. “Shit!”

“What?” Del jogged over. “Found Valeriy.” Ana’s voice was distant to his own ears. “And the new guy.”

“Who the fuck–?” Del cut herself off, her gaze snapping behind Anatol. He turned to see, slumped in the mail alcove, two more bodies. One of another young ghoul skewered through with a plain pine stake, the other a stranger with his throat cut.

“S.I.” Adalia hissed, hurrying to the elevators. “How? How did they even– don’t they have Ventrue in Seattle to skewer?”

Kalisto jammed his thumb on the elevator call button before, after a second of waiting, abandoning it for the stairs. Even with celerity it would be a beat before he made it to the penthouse, but that didn’t fucking matter. What fucking mattered was getting up there and finding out who even going to be there waiting for them. Anatol had half a mind to follow but…

He’s not… no. 

No. 

I would know, wouldn’t I?

If he’s…

The elevator doors parted, Del and Adalia rushed inside. Adalia shot him an exasperated– terrified–glare as he stood motionless in the lobby. “What the fuck are you waiting for Stamatin?”

Ana pushed himself forward and the doors shut behind him. He sat on the side railing as the car slowly started ticking up the floors. He felt a hand on his arm–Delphine–as he stared up at the counter with Adalia.

They were all thinking the same thing.

The scene was announced to them before they reached the penthouse.

Like a javelin shot, Kalisto’s mourning wail ripped through the elevator shaft, shrill and brutal. Every vein in Anatol’s body froze solid, he gripped Delphine’s hand so hard he could feel the bones begin to bend, threatening to break. She, a mirror, dug her nails deep into the meat of his forearm. A fetter. Don’t do anything stupid.

A ding.

The doors parted to a penthouse in total disarray.

Adalia was off like a shot, ripping through turned over furniture and picking through the mutilated remains of Inquisition agents. Slowly Del and Ana stepped out of the car, stepping over bodies as they cautiously moved deeper into the House. It was quiet, save for Kalisto’s weeping, Adalia’s desperate scraping of every corner she could reach. Ana’s ears sharpened past both commotions, alert to anything that could be scurrying between them.

Scraaaaape.

Pinpointed.

“Cockatrice.” Ana muttered.

“Yeah?”

“Second study, with the stuffed Cockatrice. Something moved.” He made an attempt to push forward but Del kept her grip tight. A blossom of anger. Raw. “What?”

Delphine’s expression was unreadable, her only point of communication becoming how viciously deep her nails embedded themselves into his muscle. The clamor of Adalia’s scramble had abruptly stopped somewhere along the south wing. “Nothing.” She relented her grip and wiped his vitae off on her jeans, “I’ll watch your back.”

With a wary nod, the two crept toward the study. The door was ajar and smeared with so much blood the Lord would spare it. A welling anxiety began to shake his bones, compress his chest as he reached to push it open. In his mind’s eye a multitude of scenes proposed themselves–a hateful old kine waiting with a warded shotgun. A pair of upstarts lying in wait at either side of the door frame. A pile of corpses. 

A pile of sweet-smelling ashes.

Anatol shoved the door open.

A figure lay sprawled at the center of the study. A rough mess of ripped plumage and exposed bone slowly reconstituting into the rough shape of a man perched atop the cracked-open corpse of an SI agent. In a feral twitch, its head snapped to face them.

Its eyes were bright, red, and wild.

“Mihal.”

Anatol collapsed beside him like a puppet cut loose of its strings. Relief and joy, weeping and agony-laden, yanked him down and under like a riptide. Reduced him crawling on jelly-boned limbs to his sire’s side, a wail of his own ripping through the penthouse when Mihal’s claws skewered cleanly through his shoulder like a fishhook, snapping his childe into a thorny embrace. Incisors several inches in length pierced through Anatol’s ear and threatened to crack past skull as Mihal nestled in close, teething. 

“Mihal, Mihal, Mihal.” He chanted his sire's name as if the second he stopped the mangled thing in his arms would decay into dust. The full claw of each of his fingerbones slotted deep between Mihal’s ribs, each engaged in a slow, committed rend to assure themselves that the other was there and feeling and alive. Or, at least as alive as they could be.

Not all was lost.

“What. Happened.”

Anatol could not see Kalisto from where he was folded into Mihal, but he didn’t need to to hear how his voice hung on a thread. Shrieked through. Helena. Where is Helena? Vratislav?“Is it not obvious?” The elder’s tzimisce’s voice was an alien rasp. Equally run through. Bitter. “We lost.”

[whatisbirds]

Limits of an Invitation - Chapter 4 - Ivory Orchard

The morning after always hits different.

Finally got around to posting chapter 4 over here on tumblr! You can read it on Ao3 here or continue reading under the fold.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eliza’s turnaround was breakneck.

It was just shy of three in the morning when Anatol had cut loose the last stitch in her new arm. Eliza, at that point half dozed on a mix of painkillers and exhaustion, was barely coherent. But even through the fog, she could already feel the unpleasant pin-and-needle sensation of nerves reconnecting. Intermittent flares of sensation jostling them awake as Anatol gently slid it in a shoulder sling. 

The blindfold felt redundant as she could barely keep her eyes open anyway, but that didn’t stop Anatol from insisting upon it as she was shepherded out of the narrow surgery. It was a short journey, navigating up two flights of steps before depositing her into a guest room. Even in her half-lucid state she could tell by the concrete floor and persistent echo of their steps that they had began their journey from the basement. Despite it being the dead of winter, it was as hot and humid as a greenhouse down there. The smell arresting–musky, earthen with the abrasive ring of iron to it. A heavy, oversaturated viscosity so thick it was bordering on unbreathable. The air oozed down her throat and coated her lungs like tar. By the time they reached the top of the steps sweat had begun to bead on her brow-it felt more like being spat out by a beast than ascending a staircase.

The rest of the journey however was normal enough. They reached her room, exchanged goodnights and she was out the second her head hit her pillow.

When she awoke, she half expected it to be back in her apartment.

Dark, cherry red sheets contradicted that expectation. The heavy curtains of the guest room had been drawn so tightly she could barely tell it was daylight out from the bed. According to the bright red glow of the bedside alarm clock, it was half past noon. When Eliza moved to sit up, she barely caught herself before slumping back into the mattress. 

Her left arm was still tucked neatly into its sling.

The events from the evening before blew back into her mind in fragments. The lathe, the loss, the basement, the story. The insistence that the man who wove it all together was something a little more or a little less than human. Eliza could only string together at a few scattered bones of the overall skeleton of the night–a grotesque fairy tale that would only occasionally call her attention beyond the discomfort and pain. Winding deer trails wrapped around concerns of husbands, patrons, lovers and fathers–basically anything except an answer to the question which had launched the whole ordeal.

Eliza gave her fingers an experimental wiggle and they twitched to life dutifully. Unfortunately, what she could see she could not feel. Not much beyond a distant tingle, a vague sensation. But a sensation of gaining momentum.

Once she had navigated out of the bed she found her shoes neatly lined up in front of an antique cherrywood dresser. Hand-carved rose blossoms made up the handles and an elegantly rendered garden sprung up atop the back panel. Aligned perfectly with her shoes, folded neatly atop the dresser, was an oversized wide-sleeved T shirt. Eggshell white and of weighty, sound construction hinting at luxury. A considerate alternative to the tattered blood and bile stained sweater she had woken up in. Luckily for her this guest bedroom had an ensuite bathroom, one which was better stocked than her own.

Eliza humored taking a bath but settled for washing up at the sink instead. Her jeans were dark enough that the blood splatter was hardly visible, even under the bright light of the bathroom’s vanity. The worst people would assume was that she was wearing her paint pants. Between that and the new shirt, she’d be fine to uber out. As nice as things were, as much as her muscles ached and that fancy-ass jacuzzi tub looked inviting, there was a patina of creep that she couldn’t quite shake. She was not getting naked in a dubiously monstrous acquaintance's house if she could help it. Miracle arm be damned.

When she emerged from the bath she found a florid, hand-written letter had been set on the dresser in the spare shirt’s place.

Eliza,

You will find your bag in the foyer. 

Inside you will see that I have gifted you a set of keys to this house. Silver for the front door, gold for the cherry room. In the future you are welcome to stay here whenever the need arises, I only require you to provide reasonable notice before your arrival. I’ve had my contact information added to your cell phone, for ease of communication.

You will notice most doors in this house are locked. They are to remain locked.

The first floor fridge is stocked. Take what you like.

The day is yours to do what you will.

I strongly advise you to meet me in my office this evening to assure your arm is in working order.

Warmly,

A.S.

Eliza read the letter over several times, a creeping headache making what she read even more difficult to absorb.

Bag, keys, cell phone, locks, what you like, what you will, you will, you will, you will–

She could feel a familiar pit form deep in her gut.

A floorboard creaked outside the bedroom door, saving her from what threatened to be a pretty intense anxiety spiral. It was a bit disarming, actually, how acutely she was able to focus in on the footsteps- tracking them as they trailed up what sounded like a third flight of stairs. Snatching up her shoes, she hurried out of her room and after the passerby. “Anatol–?”

The door at the top of the steps shut right as she rounded the corner, the definite clunk of a deadbolt sliding home drawing a clear boundary.

Doors are to remain locked.

Eliza took a step back. Closed her eyes. Drew in a steadying breath.

The image of a young woman wandering lost through the halls of a massive estate flickered into her minds eye, quickly followed by that of a blood drained corpse.

You know what, sure.

Fine.

I don’t care.

Keep your fucking secrets, you uptight freak.

She hiked downstairs.

As promised, her bag was waiting for her in the foyer. 

She fished her phone out, and to her mild appreciation it was fully charged.

What she appreciated less was the small flurry of notifications she was greeted with as her phone finished booting up.

Six missed calls from “Maw”.

Thirteen unread messages from “Maw”

Two new voicemails from “Maw”

One new message from A.S.

One missed call from Omar.

Cursing under her breath she shot Omar a quick message– “hey sorry, slept through alarm. Omw asap. Eta like 20ish.” –before punching the coordinates of the coffee shop where she had planned a catchup with her former mentee.

Eliza had only known Omar for a semester but they had become fast friends. They had similar rotating interests–her with her various crafts and him with his figurine warpainting and cosplay. All which helped stoke their conversations past the spark of their respective social anxieties and into a steady ember of a relationship. 

With the uber ordered she hucked her phone back in her bag. Catching up with the world was a problem for future Eliza. Current Eliza felt pretty solidly excused to browse for snacks while she waited for her ride in a suspended state of denial. The kitchen was pristine–stainless steel and impeccably polished marble made up the majority of the surface area. The food was tucked out of sight in the fridge and pantry–not a terribly robust selection but all the staples were there. Fresh fruit and veg, crackers and cheese. She had a ziplock loaded up before heading out. 

It was a blissfully silent ride to the cafe. Fifteen minutes of quietly pecking away at her makeshift brunch while she triple-checked everything in her bag. As promised everything she had brought with her to the shop was there with a couple additions. A new set of keys, a black paper folder stamped with the university letterhead. Looking closer, she puzzled together it was employee onboarding paperwork for a position as co-supervisor within the university theater department.

She let it fall from her hands back into the bag.

That same pit returned, gnawing a hole in her stomach. Anxious, half-formed thoughts buzzed around the worrywound like flies on a carcass.

The uber dropped her off at the cafe and she gathered herself along with her things.

Future Eliza. Not present.

Not now. Later.

Present.

Later.

Omar was in their usual spot in the back of the shop. It was relatively empty, a smattering of lonesome regulars with no holiday plans drinking holiday themed beverages. Eliza crumpled into the seat across from Omar. There was a black coffee already waiting for her–a sweet gesture, a default of his when he knew she was having a rough day. Any other day it would have lifted her spirits. Today however, the order on her behalf only worsened her feeling of being handled.

“...you doing alright there?” Omar asked between sips of coffee. He already had his laptop out as well as a mess of notebooks. Campaign planning, as always with this sort of hangout. Eliza was pretty sure he took his sessions more seriously than his coursework.

She tested the temp of her coffee. Still hot–perfect timing. “I will be. Just shop bullshit ate into my evening which then ate into my morning. And now I’m here.”

Omar gave her a long, measured look. One that eventually rested on her sling. “An accident?”

“Small one. Nothing serious…” Eliza trailed as she looked past Omar, through the front window at a small group gathered around one of the many pianos that populated downtown Fairhaven. There were probably around a dozen of them, never quite in tune but always popular when the weather was nice enough for them to be uncovered. The one parked outside the cafe in the ped mall however was strategically placed beneath an overhang so it was free to use year round. She couldn’t hear what was being played from inside the cafe, but it looked like folks were singing so she assumed a carol.

Absentminded, her new fingers drummed along with an imaginary time signature. 

“...Eliza?”

She snapped her attention back to Omar. “Sorry. Really, I’m okay. I sprained my elbow moving leftover scrap from strike to the dumpsters. It’s already feeling a lot better, dunno if the sling is necessary to be honest.”

“Well, that’s good I guess. Last thing you need is to be in recovery over the holidays.” He offered a reserved smile, one which pinned his concern with a bite of his lip. “If anything it’s a nice excuse to give your mom, with a little embellishment.”

Eliza snorted into her coffee. “I’ll tell her my arm was ripped off and they wouldn’t let the new one through customs.”

“A medical miracle.” Omar added with faux awe as he turned back to his notebook. He was filling out stat blocks. “Any text of hers you answer is an undisputed feat of heroism. Best child, 2014.”

“Honestly though.” Eliza set her coffee down and began rifling through her bag, setting up her laptop. The onboarding packet still sat at the top of the bundle, almost accusatory as she began browsing around her Steam library for a distraction.

They pecked away at their parallel activities for a short while, nursing now lukewarm mugs as they spared each other the occasional anticipatory glance. Too much on the mind, tongue’s got tied, the mantra oft muttered by her mother spun circles around Eliza’s head until she finally broke the fragile silence with a sigh. “Hey. Can I ask your advice on something?”

Omar didn’t take his nose out of his 5e corebook. “Go for it.”

“So…” Eliza trailed as she set the packet on the stack of notebooks between them, flipping it open to the contract packet. “I was offered a job with the university. Kinda suddenly. And, I dunno, I just need someone to sound off on this because, I dunno–”

“Oh shit. Congrats? I guess–?”

“–thanks yeah–”

“–where? Like what department?”

“Oh I’d be staying in the shop.” Eliza set her now empty coffee mug onto a nearby empty table and scooted her chair closer to Omar’s as she leafed through the paperwork. “Mr. Stamatin offered me a co-super position.”

“...Mr. Stamatin?” It took a moment for the name to register, Omar’s brow furrowing before his eyes widened with a mild shock. “Wait, tall blondie?”

“Tall blondie.” Eliza confirmed, not looking up from the folder, “And yeah I was as surprised as you are.”

Omar pulled a few pages from the stack, skimming through them. “Did he talk to you at least? Or did you just come in and find this waiting for you at the paint station?”

“No. We talked last night. Not about this specifically but–after the sprang, he helped get me some ice and we chatted a bit.”

Omar frowned. “About what?”

You swear to keep what occurred tonight as a secret between us. On your life.

“I don’t know just general stuff.” Eliza shifted in her seat, rolling the new shoulder which clicked out and back into its socket with a satisfying, muted clunk of cartilage sliding home. “He had some nice things to say about my Endgame set, then we kinda just… yeah, I don’t know. Got to know each other a little bit. It wasn’t like a job interview or anything, just shooting the shit. Then before I left he was like, “hey, wait!” and gave me this.”

“That’s… weird.” Omar’s expression didn’t lighten as he read further into the contract. “Did you at least get any good gossip?”

“He has family in town. His first name’s Anatol. Used to work as a RN before going full time into woodcrafting, he didn’t say it out right but he mentioned having similarly… involved parents. So we connected over that.” It felt bad, lying to a friend. But such patter was second nature to her, also she doubted Omar cared about the particulars beyond how they impacted her. And as long as that impact wasn’t visibly fucked… “I haven’t ever seen a co-super in the shop in my time here, which is weird, but also knowing him it could be because he’s picky?”

“You’d be starting immediately, looks like.” Omar didn’t appear to clock the lie, his focus narrowing further and further down the pages in front of him. But he didn’t look particularly thrilled, either. “And the pay is…”

“Oh, I haven't even looked at that yet. I assumed it’d be like, minimum wage underpaid helper monkey shit.”

“Opposite.”

“Opposite?”

Omar nodded. “As in, so high it looks fake as fuck.”

“Gimme that.” Eliza took the packet from him, eyes shooting down to the bottom where the salary breakdown was. Salary? I’d be Salaried? 150k. Flat. She stared down at the number, her brain refusing to process it and her heart was skipping its way up into her throat. “What the fuck this is football coach money.”

“Yeah.” Omar leaned over her shoulder to continue staring at the insane number. Everything else on the sheet looked officially tailored–there was even signatures from the department head. "So he just plopped this into your lap? No other admin present, just him?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus Christ.” He leaned back into his seat, staring up at the ceiling. Deep in thought. “I don’t know. I'm sorry to ask but-did something, like, happen? Between you two? Last night?”

“No! I literally just told you everything I know.” Eliza shoved the papers back into the folder. The way Omar was looking at the folder… the way he was looking at her… the panic spiral once again knocked at the edge of her consciousness. But unlike in the past it wasn’t just background anxiety. She found herself resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder, checking for his presence that she very much felt teasing at the edges of her awareness. He’s not here, and even if he was– I’m fine. It’s fine. I haven’t said shit. “Look, I thought it was weird as hell too. It’s weird. It’s weird! I know that! But no it’s not like an NDA thing. He didn’t like– no, it’s not like that. Nothing, genuinely, really, happened. Maybe he felt kinda guilty for keeping me late, and because of the arm thing. Again, I don’t know. I…”

Omar remained quiet as she squirreled the folder away, when she grabbed her mug off the neighboring table and tried to drink the coffee she had forgotten she had finished. Then, embarrassed as she clutched the empty mug in her lap, he cleared his throat. “Look. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But if I were in your shoes I’d probably wait until the dean or something weighs in.”

“I’m not stupid Omar.”

“I know you’re not.” He caught her gaze and offered her a soft smile. Pulling back from the nerve he just toed. “This is your decision. And you know more than I do. So if you disagree, disagree. And if you change your mind later– or even just need somebody to bitch about your new boss to… I’ll be here.”

Eliza gripped the mug tighter and closed her eyes. Drew in a steadying breath. Willed the vortex of paranoia to calm. “...thank you Omar.”

“Not a problem.” He began packing his own bag, "You’ve helped me a lot this semester– I’m more than happy to return the favor.”

It wasn’t long before they were all gathered and out the cafe door. The group from earlier had cleared from the piano, a light dusting of snow already filling in the space where the previous player had been sitting. Omar drifted over, running a hand across the keys. “You play?”

“Nah.” Eliza chirped, leaning against the side of the instrument. Despite the protection of the awning, the piano’s top panel was weather-worn. Definitely in need of another round of finish. “You?”

“Lessons through middle school but… I’m a bit rusty. Don’t know any carols though.” He set his bag down and slid onto the bench, then patted the empty space next to him. “Wanna play chopsticks with me?”

“Like fuck I do.” Eliza hopped in next to him, flexing her good hand before resting it on one of the sharp keys. “Tell me when.”

Omar gently guided her hand to the correct key before resting his next to hers, atop its companion. “Okay… 3, 2, 1–when.”

They stumbled through the first few measures, only roughly keeping in time with each other. Snickers breaking out as they stumbled further and further out of sync until what they were playing was completely unintelligible. Eventually Omar dramatically collapsed across the keys in a cacophony, laughing, “I told you I’m rusty!!”

“You’re not bad! You’re not bad!” Eliza rolled her shoulder again–it was getting uncomfortable, stuck bent in the sling the way it was. At this point most of the new nerves were alight and communicating the basics–pressure, dim texture, the slight nip of the winter air and the dampness of sweat bolstering it at the bent crook of her elbow. She flexed her new hand experimentally. “Here… I’ll show you rusty.”

“Are you s–” Omar cut himself off as she discarded the sling. He knew better than to retread those waters so soon. 

“It’s feeling a lot better.” She assured him as she stretched her arm, flexed her fingers before resting them on the keys. Outside of the static pinpricks of the waking limb, she could hold her hand comfortably, letting it drift across the keys until settling on a spot that felt right. However this time, it wasn’t chopsticks that she played. Instead, her fingers fluidly drummed out disassociated triplets. No particular time, or anything outside of different sets of complementary notes alighting the keys. A looping, meandering tune that would peter out whenever she attempted to push forward, the next notes evaporating the second she reached for them. 

“...what are you trying to play?” Omar, having pulled back from the keys, watched as Eliza ran through the same handful of measures again and again.

Eventually she stopped with a huff. “I don’t know. Feels familiar but I don’t know.”

“Hang on.” Omar pulled out his phone, flipping through apps before pulling up a generic music finder. “I don’t know if it’ll be enough but– play that again, just once.”

She did as instructed, and after a little bit of buffering…

“La Campanella? That right a bell?”

Eliza snorted. “No.”

“Huh… it might because we’re only getting half of it. Could you try it with both hands?”

“Uh…” Eliza set her good hand on the keys, where it sunk into the ivories like a dead weight. With each delicate call of the left was a clumsy guess at a response from the right. This time around the app wasn’t able to generate any results at all. Gibberish.

“Maybe we don’t have enough of it to get an accurate result.” He poked around the suggestions for a bit before giving up. “Whatever it was, it sounds good! I thought you didn't know how to play piano?”

“I… didn’t know. I don't know. Maybe what little I've played is beginning to catch up with me.” Eliza trailed off, turning the new hand over. It was a dead-ringer of the old one, at least visually. But as Anatol had warned it certainly didn’t feel identical to the old one… or at least as much of the old one she could still remember. It had been less than a day but already everything from the night before felt a lifetime away. 

“Maybe it’s something you can pick up.” Omar suggested as he stood.

Eliza drummed out the measures another couple of times. Try as she might, her mind could not catch up with her hands. Each pass she took at it felt like eating with a cavity–the more she chewed, the worse the pain became until the lack rang through her skull in a persistent ache.

The smell of wet, hot iron and sawdust descended upon her. Like a gust of winter chill, the sense memory went as quickly as it came.

“It’s originator gave it to me freely. No mutiny from this one.”

Giving up, she checked the time on her phone.

4:45.

Time to kill.

“Maybe. I dunno.” Folding the sling into her bag, she offered Omar a tired smile. It wasn’t too convincing. All these knots growing in her gut were starting to feel like tumors. “To be frank, I’ve got enough going on. It’s Christmas. I can save learning Greensleeves for the next go-around.”

Last Chapter - Ao3 - Next Chapter

[whatisbirds]

Limits of an Invitation, Chapter 3 - Immaculate Construction

For many kindred, the Embrace is traumatic. For Ana, it was cathartic.

Been a hot second, but wanted to post Chapter 3! Super excited about this one, because it has art by the incredibly talented @audiovideomeow! Everyone should go check her work out!

If you want to start from the beginning, hop on over here!

Chapter text, as always, lurking under the fold:

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“First thing in the morning, we leave.”

“What?”

Roman was pacing across the room, face red. “We take our carriage back and we go home.”

Ana had just exited the bath, wrapped in a towel and sorting through their packing for nightclothes. “We just got here, Roman–”

“This is a joke. A–A–” He slowed himself down, took a steadying breath. “You don’t actually believe that man was D’Vorak, do you?”

Yes. I do, actually. Ana shrugged, noncommittal. “He clearly is in charge of this house- at least in part. Does it matter if we’re dealing with D’Vorark directly or a relative?”

“Well that’s one sick relative. Toying with us...with me like that…” He muttered, “not that you seem to have noticed.”

“Roman–”

“Are a few compliments, a bit of flattery, really all that it takes?”

“Are you mad?” Ana wanted to close the gap between them and slap him so hard it’d set his teeth crooked. Instead she focused on picking through their luggage. “Roman, please. You think it’s his compliments that hold my tongue? When we do not know where our horses are, our carriage, or even who it is that is doing the toying? We’re sleeping under his roof, in his bed, on what could very well be a whim. He’s already threatened to eject you. His grace is a valuable tool, mocking or not. You’re the one who grew up around the aristocracy, I thought you still knew how to speak to them.”

“I know how to speak with investors, regular folks. I do not know how to speak to eccentric nobility who’ve fucked off to rural estates,” He sat on the bed with a huff, glaring at the closed curtains. “and I did not know that woman who suddenly did.”

“And I, the man in my bed.”

“What is to be done of that?” Roman asked quietly.

They sat in uncomfortable silence, each attempting to read the other. 

Ana relented. She sat in his lap, cleared the hair that still stuck to his forehead. Cupped her hands around the nape of his neck. “I ask for you to trust me. If you go, I go. I have no intention of abandoning you.”

Roman shook his head. “Words.”

“If mine are so insufficient feel free to share your own.” That came out harsher than she intended. She meant it as a tease, but D’Vorak had drained her of most of her patience.

“And more words. And some more words. You really love your words, Anastasia. That I do know.” He pushed her off, unhooked her arms from his shoulder. His hands pressed hard into her wrists. “You talk sweet. You talk and talk and talk, weaving yourself a little tapestry, carving out whatever little scene you feel suits you best… How long were you and your father holding onto that letter? Truthfully? Are you in on this joke?”

“If there’s a joke I’m not telling it.” 

“Why’d he call you тигрёнок? ”

“It’s a common pet name, Roman. He’s trying to get under our skin. Don’t let him.”

“You know each other.”

“He knew my father!” Ana attempted to press up against him again. He withdrew, letting her go and stepping away from the bed. Thinking better, clearer. Maybe. Ana hoped. She sat upright. “If I wanted to humiliate you I wouldn’t have tried to steer you away, I wouldn’t have had to force your stubborn ass to let me accompany you here.”

“ Force? ”

“I meant–” She shifted her weight uncomfortably. Shit. “With my insistence, Roman. What else?”

The accusatory stare he leveled against her was suffocating. For a terrifying moment, she feared that he had discovered the exact mechanics of such force, damn her with the morphine. That this was it and once he stepped out of this room he’d be gone from her life for good and– No.

No.

No, that is not happening. 

While I still have hands, that is not happening.

Ana met his gaze and held it until he was the one to drop it with a sigh. He stared out the window into the pitch-swallowed nothing of the estate grounds. “...a couple of days. We should at least rest before heading back.”

“And perhaps your view will soften when you’re not sitting at the cusp of exhaustion.” Ana moved to the end of the bed, tugging a spare nightshirt free from one of Roman’s open bags and sliding it on, letting the towel drop to the floor. She kicked it over to her own luggage pile before flopping back into the bed. Her own body was sitting on that same depleted edge–the days travel wringing out her muscles now that she’s settled into a lull. It was uncomfortable, but pleasant. Part of her wished she could remain like this for the next week–slowly uncoiling across their shared bed until every knot and lump had been smoothed out. “God. Have you laid in this bed? Roman, come over and feel this. I think these sheets are silk. ”

“Have you ever even seen silk before?” Roman teased as he sidled back over, leaning against one of the bed’s posts.

Ana’s legs kicked idly off the side of the bed as she smiled up at him. Successfully diffusing Roman hitting her with juvenile relief. “I wasn’t buried in the woods, Roman. Of course I’ve come across it before–but only in shops. I’ve never slept in it before, have you?” 

“Baba had a set. Never used it, she kept it locked in a cupboard.”

“What a waste.” Ana hummed, rolling over as she felt the featherbed shift under Roman’s weight, casually curling herself around him. “All the more reason to put the set we have now to good use.”

Roman lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you were exhausted.”

“I am.” Ana paused before rolling back onto her back, reconsidering. “You are too.”

“Perhaps… with some rest.” The way his gaze lingered on her was a comfort–after all that had gone on tonight, they had both landed in relatively the same place. He laid on his side next to her, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her against him before draping the quilt over them both. “We can see what the morning brings.”

***

Ana slept into the afternoon.

She awoke to sunlight cutting across the room like a knife, warming where it pooled at the foot of their bed. When she saw that Roman’s side was empty, Ana’s heart skipped a beat.

He didn’t…

“Afternoon,  mой сладкий .” Roman called her attention to the armoire where he sat, lacing up his boots. 

She could’ve melted with relief. “Afternoon. What time is it?”

“About… half past two?” Boots tied off, he stood. “Valeriy was by not long ago with 'breakfast'– yours is under the tray.”

“...going for a walk?” Ana slid out of bed and began to dress herself, fishing a shirt and trousers from Roman’s open luggage.

“You should eat–and perhaps make a better impression.”

Ana rolled her eyes, “The forest’s thick here. I’m not ruining a good dress.”

“At least eat, Ana.”

After fastening her belt, she set the tray to the side and hurriedly knocked back enough of what was in the soup dish to not be rude. A rich, whitefish soup with an implacable flavor profile. Despite the meat having the flakiness of fish, the broth tasted closer to pork. Unexpected but… deeply savory. In a rare turn of her gut, she was actually tempted to finish a meal.

However Roman was gravitating toward the door, and she wasn’t one to be left behind. Ana snatched up a bread roll and joined Roman. It was criminally soft, the fresh remnants of the oven’s heat warming her hands as she tore off a piece, “Have we heard anything from D’Vorak?”

“...Valeriy hasn’t told me much, no. Just that the ‘Master’ will be out until sunset and we’re free to familiarize ourselves with the estate in his absence.” He took an orange from the platter. “We’ll see him at dinner.”

“So we have time.” There was a bit of… well, she hesitated to call it disappointment. The next meeting with D’Vorak felt like a storm on the horizon–the space between her and it accumulating an electric charge of apprehension. Ana carried it as they departed the room, as her still waking mind turned the previous night over in her head. The delightful relief of having her work appreciated, the uneasy intensity in which D’Vorak fixed on her, the scraps of frustration from her argument with Roman.

She was so wound into her own head she had almost missed the coat tree.

Roman’s coat still hung where he had left it the night before. Dry, if a bit stiff–but that wasn’t what arrested her attention. It was the grooves so delicately carved as to acutely imitate the wrinkles upon a hand… and hand in hand. The rack’s wooden pillar comprised of hand grasping the wrist of another hand, all the way up to a large splayed raptor’s claw, each tip terminated in a talon upon which one her husband’s coat hung. She pushed it aside to better inspect the column of interconnected hands down to the base, she kneeled, captivated by the three large hands that comprised the base, many wrinkled fingers serving as feet. 

Ana began to reach her fingers, to touch these gory yet familiar hands–

“Ana?”

“...nothing. It’s nothing. Only admiring.” She was breathless as she stepped away and turned to Roman. Ana slid her hands into her pockets, fingers curled, nails biting into her palms. 

He glanced over the tree, brow furrowing.“It’s… of a particular taste.”

“Good taste.” Ana corrected as she followed Roman out the doors onto the front drive. The road was still muddy from last evening’s storm, the muck clung and threatened to rob them of their boots. 

Roman trudged along the road deeper into the estate grounds, carriage house only just visible around its bend. Ana lagged behind, drifting off the road and following along the mansion’s perimeter. Doing her best to remain casual as she peered into curtained window after curtained window.

“Appears D’Vorak values his privacy,” Ana thought aloud as they approached the carriage house, breaking into a light jog to catch up with Roman, “as well as a bit of shade.”

“Where do you think he’s gone? In under a day?”

“A nearby town? Another isolated blueblood hiding in the forests? Baba Yaga…” Ana trailed off as she peered into the carriage house, what she saw giving her pause. Or more accurately, what she didn’t see. “Roman…”

“Closest village is near a full day out. Unless he left immediately after our meeting–”

“Roman!” 

“What?”

“Our carriage. ” She stopped short of its entrance, feet sinking into an ankle-deep puddle. While curiosity tempted her, she remained rooted. There was something about the air… the smell. Familiar but for the life of her she could not place it. It was animal, it was fresh mucked stable, it was an iron edge that lived deep in the bile-choked ducts where her fear was brewed. Less reason more an irrational frayed nerve that kept her out where the sun could still reach. Where the reek was less overwhelming.

Roman rushed forward past her, seemingly unaffected. There were a couple of lavishly ornate carriages, but none of them were their own. “...Christ.”

“Looks like there wasn’t room?” It was packed, rakes and shovels left unattended against stall doors, crates overflowing with rust choked tools and forgotten scrap. If their carriage was still on the estate, it wasn’t hiding here. She pulled herself out of the mud and hiked around to the side of the building on the off chance it had been left out nearby. 

“It also looks like nobody has gone out. Not for a long while.” Roman called out from inside, and Ana could hear the clatter as he navigated through the junk piles. “God, I think something died in here.”

“There must be another stable.” Ana trudged deeper into the knee-high thicket of weeds that had engulfed the untended property around the carriage house. She scanned the treeline and the cleared space between it and the manse proper for any sign of another lane or even deer trail that’d prove a good lead. There was nothing, but with how sprawling the property was she wouldn’t be surprised if there was another inlet in some far off corner that they were missing. “I doubt they let the horses roam the countryside…”

She trailed off, not particularly concerned if Roman heard her as she peeled away and waded closer to the tree line. Ana kept an ear out for him as he continued to dig through equipment, hearing the heavy scrape of him prying one of the stall doors open cut through the trees. As she listened, she couldn’t help but notice the peculiar quiet that lay over the land like a quilt. The forest shone with July’s verdency but there was not a single songbird to be heard. The deafening hum of coasting insects, absent. From the top of the canopy to the underbrush, the trees remained silent and still save for the occasional gust of wind that would blow through.

Once noticed it was impossible to ignore. It pressed against her ears as if they were stuffed with cotton, stuck her attention like a fly to oil. At some point even Roman’s rummaging had ceased leaving only her footfalls and heartbeat to underscore her as she wandered deeper into the brush. Anxiety welled up as a scratching, feral thing which gnawed on her sternum. Pressing to fill the absence. Straining for a response, a sign of life. Anything.

…Nothing.

Dead.

This land is dead.

A distant crash shook her out of her trance. Cursing under her breath she gauged her surroundings–she’d wandered deeper than she had intended, forest’s edge far behind her. But the sound–a crunching, metallic cacophony–was enough to orient her.

As she hiked back, the sun cut through the canopy in golden ribbons. Have we really been out that long? Ana stumbled back onto the estate grounds, back into the muddy slog that was the road. She peered into the carriage house–the commotion had died down, and with a growing pit in her stomach she realized she had no idea where her husband was. “Roman?”

No response.

Hesitantly, she edged her way into the carriage house. It had been overturned around the stalls, a few crates spilled around where the door Roman forced open. She scrutinized the mess, making certain he hadn’t gotten himself buried beneath it. However, Ana didn’t make it far before the reek emanating from deep in the open stall stopped her in her tracks.

Rot. Curdled. Death.

A stench so strong it made her eyes water as she scrambled out, her body desperately trying to scrub it out with dry heave after dry heave. She hadn’t the chance to see the source of it and had no interest in pushing forward to do so. Roman wasn’t here, and whatever had crawled in there and died could remain for all that she cared. She was an artisan, not a stablehand. Not even remotely her problem.

Ana’s head spun as she trudged back down the road. 

The curtains were still tightly drawn as sunset painted the window panes. The footprints she and Roman had left a few hours before were still there. New steps overlapping old, she saw no sign that he had backtracked before her. He could’ve cut across the lawn. He could’ve found a side entrance. Breathe. Worry continued to teethe Ana’s breastbone as she returned to the foyer and swapped her boots with clean spares. 

She second guessed not searching the carriage house more thoroughly. 

Was he the thing that died? No. Fresh corpses don’t smell that bad. 

Regretted how much time she had burned in the woods.

Half past eight? Already? 

Wondered that maybe he had found their carriage. 

He had been pretty insistent.  

Maybe he was packing. That’s why he was missing.

He promised he’d stay.

Maybe he had already left. 

He would never. 

Ana hurried back to their room.

Not without me.

He wasn’t there.

She picked through their luggage. It didn’t seem as if anything was missing–Roman’s bags were neatly lined up alongside the door, and her bags were all still stacked by their bed stand. Drawing the curtains back, she could follow the drive they arrived on until it disappeared around a bend. The sun was dipping behind the treeline, affording just enough light to confirm there was no stable on the back half of the estate, no secondary inlet.

A knock.

“Mrs. Ivanov?”

“...yes?”

“Master D’Vorak is awaiting you in the Orchard Hall.” She recognized the voice from the night before. Valeriy, was it? “When you are ready, I will be awaiting you in the foyer.”

“Thank you.” The tray from before had been cleared. However, a single orange sat where it had been. When Ana picked it up, it was warm, like it had been sitting in a pocket for a long while. “Valeriy… have you seen my husband?”

No response.

“Valeriy?”

When she opened the door, the butler was nowhere to be seen.

Ana wanted to scream. It felt like she was gritting her teeth to dust in her efforts to muzzle herself.

She sat in her own silence.

She washed. She changed. And, despite herself, she continued to worry.

Anastasia worried at the mirror, with her braid, enough so she eventually gave up and decided to wear her hair loose today… or however much of the day was left. Could he be with D’Vorak? She had a hard time picturing them in a room together. Not after…whatever last night was. 

A pit formed in her stomach.

Valeriy, as promised, met her in the hall. She followed him down a side corridor, led once again by an absolutely pitiful amount of light. Ana wondered how the estate’s inhabitants hadn’t driven themselves blind with how miserly they were with night oil. She almost lost Valeriy when he took a sharp and sudden right. Half-hidden by the wall paneling was a narrow and plain wood door which opened up to a flight of limestone steps curving downward into the dark.

Ana followed Valeriy into the depths.

The cellar air was cool and smelled mutedly of that pestilent thing in the carriage house. The walls were carved out of the same limestone the steps were, only partially refined, the occasional sharp edge catching and tearing Ana’s sleeves as she wound along. Eventually it opened into a wider chamber carved out of the same pale, larger than the one from the night before with ivory supports arching across the vaulted ceiling. 

Very little occupied the massive space, save for the chandelier which dominated the ceiling in a cacophony of antler-obscured candlelight and a relatively modest oak table that sat below it. D’Vorak sat at the table’s head, attention fixed to the book in his hands. The room, otherwise, was empty. Abstracted by the chamber’s echo was a persistent and frictive noise not dissimilar to how her molars ground together.

Valeriy stopped at the threshold, allowing Ana to pass him. Despite her scrutinizing his posture, the set of his jaw, his glassy black eyes, she gleaned nothing from him.

Her heart was galloping, every joint felt like it was going to snap with how tense she was.

Breathe.

Ana’s steps resonated through the chamber.

“Good Evening, Anastasia.” D’Vorak set his book aside and motioned to a chair close to him. It, like the table, was ornately carved. The same desperate, morphic hand that had forged the coat tree having chiseled a grotesque patterned relief. Rolling eyes nested within gnashing teeth nested within shredding talons--recognition teased at the edge of her memory until her eyes met his, at which it died half-formed and grasping, “If you will.”

She sat, smoothing her hands over the thick knit wool that separated her thighs from her palms. A worry stone, a way to carry Roman while he was absent, “I hope I did not keep you waiting long.” 

“Oh, you did.” He poured himself a glass of wine, a dark red. Ana watched, mind racing and her tongue in a knot. The cellar was lit no better than the hall of the night before, however now she had a complete, unbroken view of his face. He smiled an electric smile, and her breath hitched at the sight of two fangs in place of canines. “But tonight I do not mind. In fact, it gave me plenty of time to… savor. Just one of the many gifts you’ve surprised me with in your short time here. We have much to discuss, Anastasia.”

He’s beautiful. “We do.”

Something deep within her, a long slumbering creature, turned its head. A note of otherness, a trace of the alien. D'Vorak's skin was so pale it was near translucent, a webwork of black lace veins rising to greet the viewer wherever the soft crook of his elbow or hollow of his throat were made visible. Tonight Ana could see that his eyes were, indeed, were those of an owl, not a man. Matching his gaze felt akin to standing at the edge of a canyon. Like a canyon they beckoned his audience forward, to shift their weight ever so slightly until they—

She wanted to touch him.

Out of lust, sure, but a lust deeply entangled with something she did not recognize. Whether it was a mutation or revelation, it didn’t drive her to merely consume the man before her--it was a desperate desire to take and repurpose. 

It needed to emulate.

She wanted to reach out, caress the curve of his jaw. Then, driven by the yawning yearn of a work left incomplete, take his visage as a mask. Devour it, have it as her own. Hold herself in his angle, direct her hands in his form–

I… I want…

What is this? What am I even considering?

Never in the rest of her existence would Ana doubt that the Itch existed before the Blood.

She forced herself to look away. To the book he was reading.

The ribbon which marked his place.

Roman.

“Are you a devil?”

D’Vorak’s laughter rang bright against the stone. “Is that what you want me to be?”

“I don’t know.” Ana’s heart thrilled in her throat. God. She barely knew what she was wanting from herself. Focus. “I suppose I wouldn’t be… opposed to you being a devil. Certainly not surprised, if you were.”

“You are dangerously close. But, no, not a demon.” He drained his glass before setting it aside, resting a hand on her knee. Folding her fingers beneath his own, touch traced to her wrist, frigid. “I’ve been dying to ask–this passion of yours, this craft. Where do you see it carrying you?”

The faint yet constant grind of chain on stone above aberrated, more of on and off stutter than a steady pitch now. “Carry me?”

“In a year. Or ten. Or fifty.” She felt as his nails teased the outside seam of Roman’s dress pants, the steady plick, plick, plick of severed thread. Subtle enough to be flirtation but sharp enough to imply threat. “Where, do you think, will you be once you reach your father’s age? What will you have done? Accomplished?”

“I…” Ana cleared her throat, refocused her attention to how the cool tabletop pressed against her arm. She, quite frankly, was having trouble seeing past the current moment let alone decades ahead. Now that she thought of it, she wasn’t sure if she had ever allowed herself to ponder that far ahead. She knew she didn’t want children, but expected them. She knew that she’d like to keep working, to surpass her father’s skill, but beyond that… it was difficult to construct beyond what she had already known. Every time she tried, she found herself quickly tangled in a network of dependents. Ifs and thens all of which did nothing but induce a heavy fog.

If Roman really did leave, if I really am alone in this estate, then…

“If I may ask. What does it matter to you?”

“As a Patron?”

“As a… well. I hesitate to say ‘man’.” It was hard, looking him in the eye. But she managed. “I’m curious because, well, I have never been taken in by a patron. I have however seen my father be courted by several. This conversation is not that conversation. So I ask– is it me or my portfolio you are seeking this evening?”

“If I answer you?”

“I’ll reply that I have a husband.”

“And when I say that I am aware?”

“That’s when I ask if you know where he is this evening.”

The grin that sprung across his face was nothing if not predatory. “Oh, Ana, I do. I can tell you where you can find your Chisel.”

D’Vorak’s gaze drifted upward.

Ana’s trailed behind, and what she saw hit her like ice water.

Roman– !!

Up, in the bramble of tusk, antler and bone, her husband hung crucified.

Her nails dug into the tabletops varnish, knuckles white and limbs taut. By some unnatural perversion, he appeared not only alive but clean of blood. Where tusk gored wrist, his skin remained unbroken, ivory remained unstained white.  Same went for every point in which elk antlers cut through his ankles and feet. His arms seized and the grinding ripped into a fervent scraping. 

Bones grating. 

Roman straining. 

This was what had been underscoring their evening. 

His body hung naked between these mooring points, the candlelight licking across every curve of muscle and sharp angle of bone. Ana wondered, almost aloud, how he had remained so quiet for so long. Then she saw–under his pained, panicked eyes, no mouth remained.

All at once, the tension that had been winding within her broke.

She collapsed back into her chair as laughter rocked her body.

God forgive me.

“Oh… oh!” Shame shadowed the mess of emotions roiling inside of her. Shock, briefly terror, but most of all relief. Relief flooded her system. It left her feeling high, it left every muscle in her body weak and liquid. She hadn't realized her hands had been shaking until she clutched them to her chest. “There he is! Oh God! There you are Roman!”

“I hope you don’t mind.” D’Vorak hummed, lip curled in a thoughtful smile. Ana's mania was infectious, or maybe was shared, as it reflected back vivid in his own eyes, “I try not to meddle with others possessions, I really do, but he simply would not pipe down. So I took the liberty. Besides, as infuriating as I find him I must admit you have a fine eye. He makes excellent decoration.”

Her eyes were fixed where his flesh split into invading bone. Searching for seams, stitches, a hint of tampering. Finding none. All this and adrenaline left her breathless. “...where did you find him?”

“Out roaming the stables, conspiring to steal a horse, or something equally as petty I assume. I apologize, I assumed you already knew this. But then again... when Valeriy brought him to me I did think it strange, because what you had described to me was a tool. Unless I’m mistaken, tools do not run away from their owners.” D’Voraks hand traveled up Ana’s arm like a spider and curled around her chin, tilting her head back down to meet him at eye level. “Pets do.”

…Oh.

“May I have him back?”

“You ask so nicely, Anastasia.” He ran his thumb across her lip, “You may. However, it was so much work fixing him up there. I really can’t be bothered to take him down so soon… won’t you be a dear and do it for me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m telling you to go fetch, darling.”

She stared, dumbfounded, “...now?”

D’Vorak slid something smooth and cool into her right hand and she gripped it. The familiar and worn curve of her chisel greeted her palm. “Now.”

The word pierced bone, bled through marrow. Crept along her nerves and strung her to his whim. Anastasia was on her feet before the thought even occurred to her. She consciously snuffed the alarm as quickly as it rose in her mind, scrambling to keep in step with her own momentum. Panic would only be kindling to the flame.

-Illustration by @audiovideomeow-

Her eyes traced the chain the chandelier hung from, where it was fastened to the ceiling. It ran across chamber to the far wall, where her gaze finally rested on a crank. She made a beeline to it and almost immediately lost her grip on it when it unlocked. The weight of the load was massive even when dispersed across multiple pulleys, and it dropped several feet with an alarming clatter and piercing through that noise was a snap and a moan. 

Shitshitshitshit.  

She dug her heels into the stone floor, finding a seam of mortar, and using the whole of her weight to slow the chandelier down to a crawl. She inched the fixture down until it was only a few feet above the table. D’Vorak had taken his chair and drifted to the side of the hall for a better view. He reclined back, tossing her a polite clap when she successfully reset the lock. Ana ignored the patronizing gesture. She crawled onto the table and slid into the pale tangle, careful to blow out what candles she could beforehand. As unexpectedly as the night was going, she had no interest in humoring self-immolation. 

Locating her husband and where he was attached wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was figuring out exactly how he was bound. Even up close, there was no wound or dressing that signaled where the chandelier ended and Roman began… except for his right wrist.

It had snapped during the fall, ulna jutting out his skin blood-streaked and pale. But where it had broken, the way it had split… hadn’t made much sense. Sure bone wasn’t wood, but force was force. What she was looking at wasn’t a branch snapped in half, it was a twig off a trunk.

At Roman’s great riot, she used the flat edge of the chisel to peel a portion of his torn skin back. Underneath, she could see the stub of where his ulna had fused with the tusk running through it. Her entire world fixed onto that single point of fracture.

“How? ”

She didn’t look to D’Vorak for an answer he wouldn’t give. She asked to the air, to Roman, to the many teeth that wreathed them. A form of process. How, how, how, how… Ana swung her leg over Roman’s back, straddling, and bent to peer beneath his fractured arm. Same, solid continuation. She tapped the tusk with her chisel, saw him wince.

Nerves were attached. 

I could just amputate. Quicker. 

But it’d make a mess … and he’d likely bleed out.

“Roman…” She shook her head, but a dissociative smirk remained from the laughter before. There was no joy in it. Only barely could she comprehend what her hands would do next, how her own body would react, the comprehension pincushioning her brain with dozens of bristles as it crawled like a tarantula from lizard base to higher foremind. “So, so sorry. So sorry dear.”

Anastasia dug her chisel into the base of the tusk, just above where it met skin. She felt Roman writhe beneath her and she squeezed her thighs around his ribcage, forcing him steady. Still. “Please. Please. I’ll try and be quick.” Ivory, while suited for carving, is of a far denser composition. By this trait, despite her experience, she started rough and slow around the tusk base. Non-dominant arm coiled around the larger body of the chandelier as she chipped away. The chandelier rocked in time with the motion of her arm, the longer she sawed the more she pressed herself against Roman until they were flush against each other.

By the time she freed his first arm and moved to the second, their breathing was in sync. 

Inhale. Chip. Exhale.

Inhale. Chip. Exhale.

Inhale. Chip. Exhale.

She kissed his throat, murmured reassurance in his ear, felt the hot wet press of tears soaking into her shoulder from his cheek. 

“Forgive me”

“Forgive me”

“Forgive me”

By the time she had freed his second wrist, her chisel arm screamed with overexertion. It felt like the meat of her shoulder was melting out of her socket, aflame. Slowly, she repositioned him to rest atop a branch of the chandelier’s main body as she moved to his feet.

Ana straightened her back for the first time in what felt to be hours. She caught her breath staring at the ceiling, watching Roman’s shadow as well as her own play across it. How long has it been? Her gaze drifted until she caught D’Vorak’s. He had moved closer, elbows resting on the chandelier’s outer rung half-in, half-out. How long had he been there watching her work was beyond her, she no longer cared. 

“This is all very heartwarming…” He trailed off dryly, taking Roman’s injured arm as Ana settled at his ankles. She felt her husband shrink away beneath her, withdrawing as much as he could manage, however he could not break D’Vorak’s grip. He examined the stumps embedded in Roman's wrists. “...but there are only so many hours in the evening. Have you considered severing him off at the ankle? Fresh, living bones are softer than dead remains that have had time to petrify. His fibula would split not much differently than common oak, I imagine.”

“If he is to be of any use to me, it will be on his feet.” Her stomach twisted as she watched D’Vorak close his hand around Roman’s broken arm. “So no. I have and will not consider it.”

“So you force my hand?”

“I force nothing, Sir. You confuse me with your own impatience.”

“Cheeky,” the fiend laughed, “good. You will be a joy. ”

Roman’s entire body seized as D’Vorak tightened his grip around his wrist. The snap of bone echoed through the stone chamber a second time and where a scream was not heard, it was felt, resonating up through Ana with a teeth-chattering intensity.

Adrenaline hit her like a ten-ton wave. Flushed out exhaustion and carried her forward as she lunged at D’Vorak. No plan or even coherent thought, just chemical reaction, the soft split and give of flesh when her chisel buried itself into his abdomen. She pushed it to the hilt, until the arch of her thumb pressed hard against his icy gut.

D’Vorak didnt stagger or even break his grin. He did however release Roman’s wrist.

Anastasia felt like the world had slid out from under her.

His bones were no longer broken, his skin was once again unblemished aside from what remained of the stump. Completely mended.

“Don’t you fret your pretty head, I won’t leave you in the darkness for long,” He moved his grip around hers, pulling both her and her chisel closer into him. Dragging it up. He groaned as her chisel met one of his lower ribs, which rippled out into a shiver throughout her own body. “Let me enlighten you, Anastasia.”

“...of what? I do not understand, I do not understand I don’t I… ” To her great shame she felt tears welling up, exhausted frustration finally outbidding her resolve. She felt like a child. Nothing made sense. She kept expecting to wake back home, to have Roman shake her from what had to be a nonsensical nightmare. Perhaps she had gone insane, perhaps in death her father's visions sought to overtake her. But reality clung to her like the viscera staining her front. Blood slicked her fingers and ran steady down the slope of her arm until her shirt blossomed red where their bodies met.

“Of your own potential, Sweet.” He spoke softly and while his grip on her did not relent, he did not push her further. Even with iron tearing inches into his gut, he held not the slightest bit of anguish. His eyes were bright, alive, expectant. “I could send you off with your Chisel, I could. I could let you return to Kliment’s, let you… what would you do now? Start a family? Rear children as they drain you from the ankles? Tend the kitchen? Watch as your tools run roughshod and away? As you wile away the years promising yourself someday only for your hands to age past their grip? No. Nonono. I won’t allow you that mistake.”

She searched for the lie, the lead, “You propose one entrapment for another.”

“You do not know what I propose. In fact you wound me to assume I’d ask for something as banal as ‘wife’ of you.” D’Vorak looked nothing if not thrilled with the additional ‘injury’, “I offer you an exit. A key to a shackle you thought inescapable. I want to share you with the world, my pride, my child .”

He cradled her face in his hands.

“I want you to shed God’s image and forge your own.”

That’s when it clicked.

“Any image?”

“Any and all.”

Ana felt Roman squirm between her legs. She felt as his knees kneaded against the inside of her thighs, meek, mewling pleas. As the blood dried across her knuckles then broke anew as she tested D’Voraks claim regarding the softness of fresh bone on one of his ribs. He, sweetly, allowed this exploration with a look of almost… pride? The intensity of his stare jarred her. So much so she drove the chisel harder, attempting to break it. She could feel it melt her. He tilted her head ever so slightly, grasp sliding down to her shoulder, over her now exposed throat.

“I want yours.”

“Do you?” He asked, amused.

“Yes.” She gnawed the inside of her cheek, pulse crashing in her ears as she watched his gaze stray away from her face. “Promise me your image, D’Vorak.”

He offered her a deceptively serene smile. “Please, call me Mihal.”

Before she could even draw the breath to speak his name, his fangs were sunk into her throat. First shock, the sharp needle-jolt of pain a white-hot flash before it was quickly drowned by an overwhelming euphoria. Mihal took her into his arms, supporting her fully as she felt her strength drain with the blood from her throat. Distantly she felt some flailing thing hitting her leg, but Ana had no will left to care. Her head spun as ice slowly claimed her limbs, her sense of touch dissolving away at her edges. 

Is this death?

As her vision started to fade, she felt a cold press against her lips.

“ Drink. "

Salt and cold iron ran thick across her tongue.

Blood.

No.

Not blood.

Something sweeter. 

Richer.

Mihal was the early morning frost, as expansive as it was fleeting. He melted across Ana’s pallet like too much snow dissolving into too little water, running thin rivulets down her throat and rooting deep in her dying gut. Coated her insides in a persistent patina, a spirit crawling like a cancer–ever mutating, ever reaching outward. There was no singular core, no profile or tell. Much like the ice he emulated he assumed the shape of what he had claimed and smothered. Her heart. Her heart. She felt nothing but his gossamer burial shroud. Had she died? The more she drank the less her heart beat, until eventually she lapped at his wrist in sanguine silence. 

Ana’s nails raked furious red rows down Mihal’s arm as he pulled it away.

More.

Mihal licked the cut shut with a chuckle. “You’re a natural.”

“Thirsty…” Ana gasped– hissed– desperate to keep her grip on his arm. “... more …”

“Oh you’ve had more than enough of me for tonight, dear Ana.” He ran his fingers through her hair before taking hold, pulling her gently but firmly back. Her eyes blinked against the now near blinding light of the chandelier. Eventually, she located Mihal in the glow. She was cradled by his gaze, the beast in her purred. “But lucky enough, you packed yourself dinner.”

He turned her attention back to Roman.

What stared up at her was nothing but raw terror.

Her throat ached. 

Parched. 

She swayed a bit. She felt drunk. 

Mihal released his grip and she found her balance as she crawled back on top of Roman. He burned like a furnace against her skin, pulse thrummed impossibly loud in the folds of his limbs and the base of his throat. His throat. Ana’s ears perked to the subtle sound of splitting flesh as she felt a sliding sensation in her gums, a fire of arousal in her core. She felt him tremble beneath her fingers, flinch from her lips.

It should have made her sick, how she reveled in this.

“Sorry, my love.”

She sank her fangs into his neck.

Roman went stiff and, as she had in Mihal’s arms not long before, went languid beneath her. His blood flowed easily down her throat, full-bodied and hot and frightened and paranoid. It was satisfying but… palatable. Vibrant, alive but…

But…

But.

Mimicking Mihal before her, she licked the wound when she disengaged. It healed and he stopped hemorrhaging blood. Roman’s breath was shallow, his pulse weak, but steady. A pang of relief. She pulled back, sat upright and licked her lips.

“Is he not to your liking?” Mihal asked.

Ana offered him the warmest smile, “I prefer you.”

She felt a blossom of pride when Mihal’s eyebrows shot up. An earned surprise. “Oh. You are going to be fun.”

Last Chapter - Ao3 - Next Chapter

[whatisbirds]

Limits of an Invitation, Chapter 2 - A Fiendish Patronage

Anastasia Ivanov and her husband Roman grapple with the future of their family's carpentry trade after the death of Anastasia's father Kliment. Luckily enough for them an eccentric nobel from Kliment's past has offered to patronize them. Unluckily for them, he's only interested in one carpenter, not two.

Chapter two to my ancillae tzim fic is now up! If you want to start from the beginning, hop over here. Chapter under the fold.

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Anastasia hated working with gloves. 

Doeskin made her fingers feel clumsy, disconnected. Especially considering the figures she adored carving; small, delicate creatures which nestled easily in her palm. She could not bear the intrusion. Ana needed to feel the wood pressed against her fingers, to be able to feel the grain against her skin. Touch illuminated what mere sight could not. To don gloves before working felt no different than donning a blindfold--a pointless hassle. So her gloves often were left abandoned on her workbench as she chipped and sanded the day away.

This often led to various nicks and cuts. Scars like little crescent moons peppered deep into the soft flesh of her palm and stood tall across the shallow bridge of her knuckles.

Roman hated them.

The click of his tongue would snap across the small workshop whenever a hiss of hers announced a new gash, a new welling of blood. “You can’t keep doing this, тигрёнок …” 

Most evenings ended with his hands closing around hers, fir needle eyes so big and clear. Surely she adored him gazing down at her, holding her and–

“I can close the shop tonight. Your father is missing you.”

He was.

And she, him.

But she wasn’t blind to what Roman was doing.

As her father grew sicker, he grew into missing her more. The more he missed her, the more he needed her right there by his side. And by his side, she could not work the shop. Roman, in all his generosity, did.

The resentment she felt was ugly. 

“You always dress so bright.” Her father’s smile was deceptively lively tonight. As he adjusted himself in his bed, the scent of old oak and decay followed.

“Do you not like it?” She teased as she set a new pitcher of water at his side. She had changed out of her work clothes into a faded sarafan–a leftover from late girlhood of which she clung onto for its red and green pattern. It reminded her of strawberries.

“I know you never liked it before I ended up here.”

“I don’t hate it.” She paused, took his vein-choked hands in her bandaged one. “I want this room bright for you.”

Kliment laughed. “I have seen plenty of colors in my life, thank you. I can die in peace without you putting on a show.”

“...promise not tonight?”

“Not tonight, promise.”

“Good.” She kissed his hands. “Good.”

They remained there like that. Until her back hurt, his hand cramped, overheated and sweaty. Could that she would remain there like that with the back of his hand against her forehead, where her cheeks grew salty between the gulfs of rough fabric.

“How’s Roman?”

Ana wiped her tears away and straightened up. Business talk. “Managing.”

“Managing?” Kliment hummed, skeptical. “May I ask what?”

“You know very well what.” Ana muttered, running her thumb across the long scar that yawned from the base of her father’s thumb and up his wrist. “He sold a commission this morning to a family from town. They seemed pleased.”

“A salesman.” Kliment shook his head, “he shouldn’t rush you.”

“I’m not being rushed. Quite the opposite, actually.”

 There was a creak in the floorboards, just outside the door. She kissed Kliment’s hands again. “We will be well, papa.”

A knock. “Anastasia?”

“Come in.”

Roman cracked the door open, the thin line of the lamplight framing only half of his face. “I’m getting wood for the stove.”

“Of course. I’ll have samovar ready.” A faint smile. “Stay safe.”

Roman nodded, his attention already having drifted to Kliment. “Rest well, Sir.”

“Already done.” Kliment squeezed Ana’s hand. “Thank you.”

Roman left.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Ana nodded. She couldn’t find words, they refused to find shape in her throat. 

He squeezed harder. “I have something for you, while he’s out. My only request is that you do not share it with him unless you feel the need to do so. Understand?”

“I do.” 

Ana pulled away as Kliment lifted a finger, gesturing to the quilt chest which sat at the foot of his bed. She propped it open, sorting past sheets that were only slightly moth-eaten. She did not know what she was searching until she came across an envelope pinched between where the chest’s bottom panels met. Its seal, a crimson pool with an articulate pattern of a drake, was chipped but unbroken.

Ana turned it over, her lips pressed quizzically together, before handing it to her father.

“This,” he waved the letter. It was composed of a fine parchment, so thin that she could see the shadow of the words within. It caught the wind as easily as the flame of the bedside lamp. “This is a poison pill.”

“Poison?” Ana snickered, “papa I think you’re feverish, you don’t know your own words.”

“No, no, this is poison. Do not forget. This is poison.” His voice adopted an edge that cut Ana’s joviality short. “But as unfortunate as it is, even poison has its uses.”

“What is it?”

“A patron.”

“A patron?” Ana’s eyes lit up. She ran a list of nearby nobility in her head–she knew that her father worked with several on and off throughout his life, but never committed his work to a singular house, no matter the price was placed on his exclusivity. They took pride in their own name, and his ability to work out of his own pocket for his neighbors and friends. A rare privilege. “Local?”

“In their way, yes. A messenger approached me… well, around when you were born actually. A very generous gentleman, representing another thrice as so.” He cleared his throat, finger worrying the edge of the seal. Itching. “But their generosity was limited to where they hailed from. They required I move west with them and… well. I still had you, your mother hadn’t even had grass to cover her yet. I had no interest in such a change.”

“How is that poison?” Ana gingerly took the letter back from her father, examining it more closely. “This sounds no different than what Gagarin offered. Cumbersome, but…”

She trailed off. She thought of their little shop, the little bit of land they had managed to carve out on the city’s outskirts. The leak in the kitchen, the front door that, due to the pitch of the earth, could never sit completely even no matter how skillfully you set it. Her home of twenty years only grew smaller with each exchange of the calendar. She thought of the Governor, of the steps he commissioned and she played on as her father installed the new banisters. The kitchen full of staff and fires alive and fed across the estate–she had the best bread she’d ever had, there. It was always alive, there. A hundred hands carrying a single home through the seasons. She dreamed that her work would one day find such fine company.

“We don’t take well to being kept.” He considered her closely, watching the gears work behind her eyes. He nudged her leg with his.  “You don’t take well to being kept.”

“Is that what patronage is to you?”

“It’s what patronage is to them. A bird in its cage, ready to make beauty on a whim, on a call.” The heat of an old well-trodden rant energized his words. It warmed Ana’s heart, but he cut himself short with a cough. When he had regained his breath, the energy had gone. “Agree to a patron's terms and watch how quickly you become nothing more than a furniture piece.”

***

“What’s keeping the old man up tonight?”

“Roman…” Ana’s voice was worn thin by the late hour. She had been combing out her braid, the lamp light glinting off the hand mirror she had propped up on their chest of drawers. His reflection didn’t look up from the novel he was reading, but the hard line of his lips betrayed the directness she felt burrow into the nape of her neck. “He has one foot in the grave. Are you so shocked that phantoms are keeping him?”

“Maybe these ‘phantoms’ wouldn’t trouble him so much if he wasn’t left on his own while the sun was still up.” He marked his place with a ribbon and set the book aside, arms crossing as he leaned back against their headboard. It was once Kliment's–he had carved it for himself and Ana's mother for their honeymoon. Either post crafted to mimic the trees they were gored from. The arc of the back panel, branches that tangled and fused at the center. Wildlife roiled behind the broad leaves–she had spent hours while she was young sprawled out on the bed, tracing her fingertips across every twig-clutching talon and leaf-stem coiling mousetail. Pressing her fingers into the two ragged, unvarnished gashes that tore into the falcon roosted in the top right corner. To this day, she does not know what put those there–Kliment would never tell.

Ana shook out her hair and set her brush to the side. “He isn’t on his own.”

“Right–you leave lunch and dinner for him. A stable horse schedule.”

“You can visit with him too, you know.” She sat at the end of the bed and trailed her hand along his calf. The curl of his downy blonde leg hair caressed her palm, coaxing her to soften what she said next. “He doesn’t hate you.”

“Sure he doesn’t. He just hates the halo of modernity I bring to the family.” Roman sighed, arms unfolding as he relaxed into the bed. Ana turned her head away, suppressing an eye-roll. She adored her husband, truly she did. But try as he might he was never able to completely wash the stink of condescension he carried in with him from the city. Her frustration must have read plainly, as she felt Roman nudge her with his foot. Coaxing her to look back to him, “So, which phantom is it tonight?”

Ana shrugged. She slid further back on the bed, taking his leg and draping it over her lap. She could see the fevered urgency in Kliment’s eyes every time she closed her own. This is poison. Take it.  “Nothing new. He’s worried about me, the shop. Had some advice on how to handle commissions from his older clients.”

He perked up. “Gagarin?”

“Gagarin.” She chirped a little too quickly, tracing circles around his ankle. 

They were quiet for a moment as Roman took her in. Eventually he hooked his leg around her waist and she allowed herself to fall atop him, cheek rested on his belly. He smelled of smoke and wool coat sweat; his body warm as a fireside, one of which Ana gladly nestled against. She felt his fingers across her scalp, threading with her hair, “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Am I?” She batted her eyelashes up at him. To punctuate, she snapped a loose thread off his nightshirt with the edge of her nail. They needed to visit a tailor soon–not that they’d have much funds to negotiate with once her father was buried. If they could get him buried. Last they spoke with the parishioner it was still up in the air if he'd be allowed to be buried in the family plot. The rumors of his end of life ravings had flown a little too far, leaving the couple to spar with notions of artisan crossroad pacts just to get their foot in the chapel door.

Phantoms behind them and corpses ahead. Such was the lot of the Ivanov/Stamatin household.

Such a lot that had robbed her husband of that easy smile so soon after their wedding night. As much as it pained her, Ana prayed Kliment's passing would lift this never-ending pall.  “He’s paranoid we’ll undersell ourselves. That is all.”

Roman squeezed her, “Only business? No tall tales?”

“Upset you’ve missed out on your nightly ghost story?”

“Might sleep too well tonight.”

“Then let me disturb your sleep.” Ana kissed his hip, lips trailing down the inside of his thigh. She could feel his pulse this close, femoral artery separated from her cheek by mere millimeters. She let her eyes drift close as if the gentle thrum were a lullaby, willing the closeness to slow her own speeding heart. Where she should have felt skin beneath her fingers she felt fine paper, where she wished to taste sweat she tasted wax. Her thoughts frayed in every direction as her body pressed forward. What should I say? That I need the carriage to visit a family friend? That I need distance to mourn my father, so if I could borrow the carriage for a few evenings? Or should I give him the letter and pray he does something reasonable with it? Perhaps... perhaps I should leave it unopened. Let it fall into the stove as I make dinner one night. No letter, no decision. But if we go under it might be our only--

Roman's grip on her hair tightened, derailing her train of thought. “No need.”

Ana peered up at him and was met by an unexpectedly harsh stare. Annoyed. She pulled back as far as his grip would allow her, “...I’m sorry.”

“...I’ve got an early morning, is all.” He muttered, loosening his grip and rolling over to his side of the bed. “We can talk then, тигрёнок.”

Ana disentangled herself from the quilt and pushed herself back to the side of the bed. She looked down at Roman, stared at his back which remained pointedly turned. With a sigh she slid over to the side table, snuffing out the lamp. Her gaze drifted to the two gashes on the headboard, barely visible in the darkness. She reached out and as a hundred times before, ran her nails along the cuts. If she closed her eyes, she could fantasize that she was tearing through the hardwood herself. She remained that way until she was able to slow her heart, quiet her mind before she curled beneath the covers.

That night Ana dreamed of phantoms. 

She sat on the stump behind her home next to the wood pile. Evening was falling and a light snow drifted through the open air. For the life of her she could not piece together why she was on watch, or what she was watching for as the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon. But the urgency rested deep in her gut, nerves shrieking every time she so much as glanced away from the forest's edge. Clutched in one hand was her favorite whittling knife, the other a chunk of ivory which bled every time she carved into it.

As moonlight filled in the long shadow left by sunset the darkness of the forest assumed a life of its own.

Many-eyed chimeras lurking just beyond the trees. Chicken footed serpents slunk between bushes and owls with human eyes took flight from the treetops. Hollow-boned toddlers with down feather hair and bowed legs eyed her warily from behind the branches. Some of these creatures were flesh and blood, others were puppets–Kliment's carvings which had shed the furniture they were created to adorn. 

Something called to her beyond these beasts. The same thing that had coiled a visceral knot in her, that had been evading her, now mocking her with an answer to her undefined fear. It was a perfect mimic of her father’s dying rasps which tugged her forward so firmly, as if it were a thread tied around her breastbone and pulled taut. A bloom of panic drove her to root herself to this spot. Safe outside the wilds, away from the figments her father so frequently conjured. A creature writhing deep in her marrow hissed that if she took a single step forward, if she crossed the tree line, she would become permanently undone.

However the more Ana dug her heels against the call, the harsher it would pull.

Harder and harder it strained until her sternum snapped free, cracking her ribcage open an oyster pried apart by a knife. From her chest hosts of vermin–rats, crows, reptiles of all walks and writhing nests of insects–spilled out and into that waiting wilderness. Her split ribs formed a knotted hollow. Her hands, now empty of bleeding ivory, clawed uselessly across her calcifying body until her fingers snapped like twigs. The howl that had been building within her shrieked out her throat no differently than the wind ripping through the canopy as she finally buckled into the mercy of the soft earth around her.

When she awoke, she was clutching her chest. Dead skin was packed beneath her fingernails and blood welled up within the red lines freshly raked across her exposed chest.

Ana remained this way, terrified and still, until Roman woke. Despite his promise, he was out the door before a conversation could be had.

The husk of her nightmare weighed on her in his absence. 

***

Kliment passed not long after.

It was sudden but not unexpected. Much of that week matched in stride. Anastasia committed herself to the role of coffin maker. Roman was wise enough to leave her to her own devices; he quietly picked up the administrative role and got in contact with the Parishioner. 

They barely spoke.

They were, for that time, their work.

The body was placed in the box. The parishioner, swayed, allowed burial in the family plot.

Roman held Anastasia as her work disappeared into the ground. For one impossibly quiet evening, the pall was lifted.

But then, the night after the old carpenter was buried, it returned to smother her.

Ana had been out collecting firewood. She hadn’t known that Roman would be home early- in fact she had barely glimpsed him past the logs in her arms and was startled to see him waiting for her by the fireplace.

“Roman!” She dropped the wood in its holder and pulled him into a brief, snowy hug. He stiffly returned it, and being a full head taller than her, Ana neatly folded into his chest.“How long have you been–?”

Roman pressed her father’s letter into her hand. The seal, the drake, had been snapped in two. “I needed a quilt. Forgive me, I assumed he wouldn’t miss them.”

“...Roman.” Her fingernail dug under the wax. An itch. 

He pulled back as she sat on a nearby bench. The firelight exaggerated the dark circles that had formed beneath his eyes–he did not look well. “Did you know about this?”

“Only broadly and very recently.”

“How recent?”

“Deathbed recent.”

Silence. Anastasia sat staring at the broken seal. Roman, at Anastasia as she steadied her breath and opened the letter. He watched, she read and somewhere in a churchyard its original recipient froze as a corpse.

The script met her like a caress:

Our Dearest Kliment,

I was delighted to make your acquaintance at Cherry House, and hope that this further correspondence may blossom into what I hope to be a fruitful relationship. My Master’s estate is in need of a craftsman of your caliber, and after some deliberation we have concluded that we are willing to pay handsomely for your presence here. 

We hope now that it is writ, set to page, that you may know D’Vorak’s full commitment to being your Patron.

However I would not begrudge you, should you take your time with your response. I understand you have previous commitments. I am content to wait.

I have enclosed a humble advance. Spend it on your wife, your children, however you see fit. We expect nothing but notice in return.

My Master’s House is open, should you find us fit,

Valeriy Novikov, L.H.

Tucked within the envelope was a length of fine gold chain, of which rubies hung off of like dew drops. Ana felt the entirety of her home, there, in her palm.

“This…” She looked up to Roman, “What do you think about this?”

“What do I think? What is there to think?” He sat beside Ana, took the letter from her hands, “You’re not suggesting we ignore this, are you?”

“Not necessarily.” She hedged, “but…my father did not have kind words for these people.”

“Your father was unwell, Ana."

"I know." Ana turned to face the fire, "but he wasn't utterly detached. We shouldn't completely disregard his word."

"If this patron is so unkind, then why didn't he keep the necklace and burn the letter?" Roman rested a hand on her knee, kneading, “Is there something I’m missing here?”

“I think we should be cautious. After all, we’re not the ones they’re asking for. It’s my father.” Even as she spoke, she found herself doubting. She raked over her memory, over that conversation. As wary as he was, her father seemed to have faith in this being a path forward... didn't he? Poison. Poison. Poison. The word turned endlessly over in her mind as she felt Roman’s gaze bore into the side of her head. Felt as if he were trying to pry her skull open for a peek, or a push. 

“I’m his son. Not by blood, but his son. I helped bury him, I keep his house, his shop, his daughter… if this is his final gift, we shouldn't squander it.” An arm snaked around her waist, pulling her closer. She allowed it, but could not face him. “Anastasia. I want to honor his memory. Keep a roof over your head.”

She nodded.

She picked at the seal.

“Of course.” She whispered, “Of course you do.”

***

Roman wrote back.

Months went by but eventually they received a response. The same fine parchment, the same ornate seal. He broke it with haste.

A formal invitation.

Master D’Vorak extends his condolences.

Master D’Vorak would be pleased to make your acquaintance.

Master D’Vorak asks that you bring your finest work for his appraisal. 

We request that you travel alone, as our lodgings are limited at present.

Ana shook her head. “I’m coming with you.”

“They specifically requested I go alone.” Roman huffed, bent over a half-finished quilt chest. He was sanding against the grain. “And who will tend to the shop while we are gone?”

“The shop doesn’t need to eat. A lock will do.”

“Their lodgings–”

“We sleep in the same bed!” Ana took some sandpaper and settled on the opposite end of the chest, hoping to lead by example. Nudging him to push along the grain and prevent further damage to the lumber. Roman, as usual, was too fixated on her to notice what she was actually doing. “I’ll bring my own work, I’ll carry my own weight. If they fuss, we’ll say that their one carpenter is now two, and oh what a boon that would be! We won’t even ask for anything extra, save an extension of their invitation. You are not going alone.”

Roman continued to work in silence. Ana dropped the sandpaper, rose to her feet, and returned to her own workbench. The space reeked with pine, its dust hung in the air. She collected a piece of oak from the wood pile. Ripped from the bottom, it had soaked in a little too much moisture, it smelled of rot. Curl off corner, splinter off side, slowly she began to whittle the log down to something softer, articulated.

Her father’s hands formed to meet her own.

***

It was a four day ride by carriage.

Planning the trip itself was laborious. Ana had never been so far from home herself, and Roman had little more experience. Between the two of them, they half-managed to cobble together a map and a plan. None of this was helped by Roman’s continued denial as he staunchly organized for a party of one. Which left Ana in a loop of packing and repacking, loading and reloading as he had a habit of unwinding her progress.

“I just don’t think traveling would be good for you.”

“You’re grieving, you need your rest.”

“You’re always so stressed.”

“You barely eat.”

“Is it really any wonder why we haven’t had any children when you care for yourself so little?”

His distress sharpened his cruelty. She started finding her luggage behind the house, in the mud. Started noticing how closely he was monitoring her, how he’d appear with a question or a request the moment she moved toward preparing in any capacity. 

He left her carving on the carriage, curiously enough.

The day before Roman was set to leave, she went into town. With a ruby broken off of D’Vorak’s gift, she procured morphine from the pharmacy. That night, she watched closely as he sipped his tea and slipped into sleep.

He awoke just before dawn. 

Anastasia was waiting in the carriage for him.

***

The heavens opened the evening they arrived.

Ana hadn’t known what to expect, and without the weight of expectation none of what she saw felt entirely real. When she felt her coat soak through she laughed, a high pitch chopped staccato by the chattering of her teeth. She tossed her hat, brim curved and waterlogged, back into the packed interior of the carriage. Roman clutched the reins harder, shoulders hunched against the storm, his face nothing more than a shadow behind his cloak’s hood.

“Of course!” She kicked the water pooling beneath the driver's seat, “Of course! Of all nights! Of course!”

The gates opened with no keeper in sight. The belabored groan of iron on iron with the static of rust and chipped paint accompanied its staggered open and close. Ana squinted against the darkness, against the rain, attempting to suss out whatever mechanism was responsible for the prompt entry.

The only glimpse she caught was within a flash of lightning.

Threading bundled somewhere between muscle and yarn flexed crimson and dripping in the downpour.

She rubbed her eyes. The travel was really taking its toll on her senses.

The gate closed behind them and up the lane they went.

Then, far ahead winking above the canopy, a light like a guiding star.

A lantern burned steady in a window on the third floor, perhaps the attic. As they approached the home, she saw a shadow pass in front of it.

Was that him? Is he waiting there, like some kind of Count of Old, like some kind of Gargoyle overseeing his domain? Her heart skipped a beat, imagination flirting with both dread and allure as she tried to paint his face in her mind. He knew her father, apparently, before she was even a babe. She conjured an impossibly old Lord, slow and deliberate as the hand that wrote his letters. Was he a patron of many artists? Or was he choosy? They mentioned tight lodgings and yet as she stared at the estate’s unfolding silhouette, she had trouble imagining every single room being consistently occupied. Perhaps he entertained many guests. Perhaps he preferred his space. Perhaps…

She watched as light bloomed across the house once they broke past tree cover.

Fires across the estate. A hundred, busy hands.

It all felt like a dream.

Roman had difficulty settling the horses when they came to a stop at the entrance, Ana slipping past stomping hooves and into the cabin of the carriage. She hauled Roman’s chest and its contents onto the estate steps, pulling her soaked hair back and ringing it out under the relative dryness of the overhang.

When he joined her they stood, half drowned, before entry doors nearly double their height. Heavy, expensive, but plain in construction. Ana pressed her hand against it, her fingers running along the grain. A canvas solid and expertly set for etching, should it fancy its owner.

Shakily, Roman knocked.

Almost immediately a small slat slid open. A pair of brown eyes, sunken into sallow pits, greeted them. 

“Speak.”

Roman dug their invitation from deep in his pocket. Held it up for the doorman to see. “Roman Ivanov. This is my wife, Anastasia Ivanov. We are here with the Master of the House’s invitation.”

The slat snapped shut and the door cracked open revealing the impossibly tall and thin doorman. Even Roman had to crane his neck to meet his gaze. He plucked the invitation from Roman’s hand and, after a brief appraisal, allowed the door to swing fully open.

“Wait in the hall. I will inform my Master of your arrival.” He gestured to a row of cushioned benches that ran along the wall of the foyer, punctuated by standing candelabras which burned low and dim. So dim Ana could barely see the ceiling, let alone whatever existed up past the reception’s staircase. The doorman, having said his piece, ascended the stair without another word, leaving the couple to sit in their own puddles off to the side.

“So far, so smooth.” Roman sighed, peeling off his drenched coat and hooking it on a nearby coat tree. He shook his arms, attempting to dry his clinging white undershirt like a dog.

Ana didn’t respond, instead shed her own coat and folded it into her lap. Something a tip-tapping at the edge of her consciousness made her feel as if they hadn’t been left alone in this hall. As if, just outside of their shallow pool of light, they were being observed from any and every point.

The benches were warm, just as Romans arm as it wrapped around her waist was warm. What she had first assumed as a pale wood turned out to be something closer to ivory. She could find no seams. She wondered what kind of creature could produce bone this thick and heavy as to be able to carve it out so completely in one go.

It was as she was examining it closer, she remembered what she left on the steps.

“Shit!” She hissed and grasped Roman’s arm, “Help me carry the chest in, I left it outside.”

They both rushed to the doors, staggering at their weight as it took them both to get even one of them to budge. Once they finally did, they stared in shock at now empty steps. No chest, no luggage, no carriage, no horse. Just a dark expanse draped in curtains of rain from where they had came.

“How very… prompt.” Ana muttered.

“Master D’Vorak will be seeing you in the second floor reception hall.” The Doorman had manifested at the foot of the hall stair, lantern in hand. “If you will follow me.”

“Our carriage,” Roman sputtered, “my piece–”

“Being delivered to the carriage house and Master D’Vorak respectively.” The Doorman began his ascent, “Please watch your step.”

Ana and Roman exchanged a worried look before falling in step behind the Doorman. 

The lantern was bright enough to confirm a clear path ahead, but not much else. The corridors felt impossibly wide and long, outlined only by the traces of light spilling out from under the doorways. The plush of the runner rug was soft beneath her feet, and she couldn’t quite tell if it was wood or tile that it was lain over. The aroma of dust and the spice of incense mixed in the air.

The Doorman stopped at the end of the corridor.

Roman and Ana shuffled to a stop behind him. The rain her skin had evaporated into the cool air leaving gooseflesh in its wake, her hand seeking his in an unconscious bid for warmth. The lantern’s light illuminated the ornate double doors she assumed lead into the hall, leading to D’Vorak. But he stood motionless, head bowed as if he were listening close to some sort of distant tremor.

When Ana began to ask what they were waiting on, the inquiry was snuffed out when his gaze snapped down to meet hers. Severe. Dilated to the point where, unlike in the entry hall, she could scarcely see anything beyond the pit of his iris. At first she assumed it was irritation with her speaking out of turn. Then she realized–he was giving them, all of them, pause.

Something living between perverse excitement and the casual pity one might carry for a dinner hen stared down at her from those pits.

Poison, Ana.

This is a poison.

The Doorman crossed the threshold.

“Roman and Anastasia Ivanov, of Omsk.” 

Light washed over them with such aggression it left them momentarily blind entering from the dim corridor. The first thing her eyes settled on was the chest–wrapped neatly in a tarpaulin canvas and sat in the center of the room. Did they carry that all the way through the back? This quick? Branching out beneath was a barefaced fingernail tile of which coiled an intricate spider web of onyx, ruby, and emerald green that refused to fall within any one pattern, evolving with every hand length. Hand over foot over hand again in a shifting, clutching and seizing flow beyond their offering all the way to the foot of the fireplace opposite them.

Penned behind a cast iron grate, the firelight was itself fragmented, fluidly etching its shadows on everything it touched. Where it burned brightest, where its lines cut harshest, was a chaise lounge. And sat upon that chaise, back turned away in three-quarters profile–

“You are excused, Valeriy.”

With a shallow bow the Doorman saw himself out. Once he was, the man on the chaise flicked his wrist, gesturing for them to move closer. “Please, you must be chilled to the bone after trudging through this gale. Warm yourselves.”

Ana and Roman did not listen. They remained where they stood, startled and unmoved.

This man was no older than they were.

The light of the flame split his shadow threefold. His frame was that of a centerbeam– long, thin and deceptively sturdy where the brace of his collarbone met sternum and spine. His blonde hair was loosely combed back into a tie at the nape of his neck, its tail draped lazily over his shoulder. He wore a robe, gossamer and burgundy, sleeves which dipped into shallow bells at the elbow.The finer aspects of his appearance were veiled, the halo of the firelight keeping however much of him that did face them concealed.

Ana’s mind raced over what she remembered from the letters. If she could summon the mention or name of a younger brother or son.

No. He can’t be–

“I apologize,” Roman dipped into a shallow bow of his own before taking a hesitant step forward. He cleared his throat. Stalling as he, much like Ana, attempted to tease out the position this man occupied within the House. “Do you speak for D’Vorak?”

The firelight curved with his smile.

“Which of you is Kliments child?”

“We both–”

“By blood, not marriage. Or, don’t tell me…” His voice lowered into a conspiratorial whisper, “Are you both? ”

“I am, and only I.” Ana’s tone, in her discomfort, adopted a cold edge. “Kliment was my father, Roman is my husband. We no longer bear his name, but we both inherited his practice.”

The Speaker pointed at Roman, “But this was the one who wrote back?”

Roman nodded. “Aye Sir.” 

“Fascinating.” He swung his legs over the chaise to face the couple fully. His trousers, a black silk, rode carelessly up his calves as he perched cross-legged. He looked over Roman, bemused. In the play of shadows, his amber eyes were reflective like an owl’s. “You know how to read, and yet somehow failed to notice my invitation was for one. Not two.”

“My wife insisted on accompanying me.” Roman replied, and Ana could feel sweat slick his palm. “With Kliments recent passing, I could not find it in myself to refuse her.”

Ana bit the inside of her cheek. Hard.

The Speaker’s attention snapped back to Ana. “Is this true?”

“I’m here on my own insistence, yes.”

He reached out to her,  “May I have your hand?”

Ana glanced over to Roman. Roman was staring past the Speaker, at the fire, the tell-tale lift of a vein in his temple betraying his mounting frustration.

She approached and gave him her hand. The Speaker’s palms were cool and dry to the touch, and the backs of his hands as smooth as riverworn stone. Hers, in contrast, a cannon-blasted battlefield of scar tissue and dog-eared dips of missing skin.

The Speaker ran his thumb along the stitched-over gash that rode across the ridges of her knuckles. She was taken aback by the gentleness of which he turned over her hand, the delicate attention of his fingers tracing the lines of her palms.

“You have your father’s hands.”

Had she not known better, she would have claimed that her heart stopped right there on the spot. She searched for a tell, a hint toward tongue-and-cheek. None. The sincerity–the intent in his eyes threatened to consume her entirely.

“How did you come to know him?” 

A contemplation, then a shake of the head . “I cannot say I ever got to really know him. I regret having missed my opportunity to do so. He was a rarity on the Steppe. But I will cut my mourning short–so that I may come to know you in his stead. So that I may see that you can sufficiently pick up his mantle. You plan to convince me of this, yes?”

“Of course.” Ana pulled away, folding her hand back under the soaked jacket she still held close to her chest. “I hope that what you see is to your liking.”

 “Wonderful!” D’Vorak clapped, alight. “Now, show me what you have brought me! Win me over!”

Roman hefted the chest to the foot of the chaise, a tension rolling over Ana as the firelight emphasized the uneven stain. D’Vorak ran his hand across its lip, nail slotting into the gap between lid and body. The lock hadn’t been fastened properly, it had a centimeter or two or give. The Lord clicked his tongue. “This is it?”

Roman didn’t answer. He still refused to look at D’Vorak directly. Ana hoped he wouldn’t. Her husband had a hard enough time reining his temper as is. She took his hand again in an attempt to moor him and cleared her throat, “No, Sir. It is one half of a whole. I invite you to open it.”

When he did, he gasped. Ana’s heart resumed beating.

“By Caine…” What he lifted was, in function, nothing more than an umbrella stand. The basin itself sat short at just over half a yard, however it earned an additional couple inches by the lift of its four carved feet. But in shape, in form, it resembled a flurry of hands. Layer by layer, dozens deep, each wrist fell into the caress of the fingers and the carving knife that pressed behind it. Some gnarled, some blemishless, others long and unseemly and some as small as an infant’s fist. Generations carving out generations carving out a chimera of many limbs woven together as to not let any cane or walking stick fall astray.

It was, no question, Anastasia’s finest work. 

“How often, I wonder, had he dreamed of me…” D’Vorak sat back on the chaise, cradling the stand in his lap. A quiet settled as he slowly turned it over, devouring its detail. “...so that your imagination may inherit my image. And what an imagination you have, child.”

“Thank you, Lord D’Vorak.”

His grin was all teeth. “I’d love to get used to hearing that from you. Music to my ears.”

“Do you accept?” Roman rejoined the discussion, voice tense. “Is our work to your liking?”

“Hm. Yes. About that.” The master of the house set the umbrella stand aside and went back to scrutinizing the couple. “I’d love to extend my invitation, absolutely. Absolutely! But I must ask… if only one of you can carve, tell me, why should I double my employ?”

“I will not work without my wife–”

D’Vorak cut him off. “The question was not for you, dear husband.”

Their attention fell to Ana, a smothering lull as she chewed the inside of her cheek. “We do not expect extra pay, or lodgings. We’re married, we’d prefer to share a room.”

“But what will he do dear Ana?” D’Vorak inquired, “What is his function? Beside husband, beside inquirer? A keepsake? A muse?”

“A chisel.”

“A chisel?”

“He’s my chisel.” Ana paused, thinking. Out of the corner of her eye Roman was still. However in his hand she felt his rage, crushing her fingers. “An extension of myself. And I, him. It was he who brought me before you, he who ran our shop while I cared for my father in his final days. My work is considered, yes, but slow. I would not have the time to produce works like the one before you without his assistance.”

Silence. She did not shy away from D’Vorak's gaze as much as every fiber of good sense in her screamed look away, run away, leave this place entirely. This didn’t make any normal kind of sense. How opaque he was being didn’t make sense. He, physically, did not make sense. And yet here they were, sleepwalking through this late night conversation. And for what? Secure income? Lodging? Everything was unwound in her mind, a mess of string knotted together in a pile.

“Agree to a patron's terms and watch how quickly you become nothing more than a furniture piece.”

Ana. 

Do. Not. Bend.

“Will it be arranged?”

D’Vorak, finally, nodded. “I think I see now what can be done. Yes. Yes I will see you through on this as a gift of my own, тигрёнок.”

Tiger, Tiger.

Nobody calls me that but–

“Pardon? What was that?” Roman spat, bewildered.

The master of the house batted his eyes, innocent. “What was what?”

Ana dug her nails into the back of his hand. Anchoring deep into his skin. Composure. Composure. “Nothing. We thank you for your generosity.”

“Excellent.” D’Vorak clapped, and the doors behind them opened. “Ana, Chisel, Valeriy will escort you to your quarters. You’ll find your luggage waiting for you there. It has been a long night for you both. Dry yourselves. Rest. We can sort out housekeeping tomorrow. But until then, Good Evening.”

“Good Evening D–” Ana was cut short as Roman tugged her along after Valeriy.

She could have sworn she heard laughter as the doors shut.

Last Chapter - Ao3 - Next Chapter

[whatisbirds]

Limits of an Invitation

After a near-fatal shop accident, Eliza Danielson is ripped from death's maw by her theater's carpentry head. In exchange for a swift recovery she forges a bond that swiftly entangles her with the precarious politics of her university's unlife scene. Anatol Stamatin, a builder of many mediums, is just happy to have a sympathetic ear. After all, the nights stretch long and lonely when fasting to break a vaulderie spanning centuries.

Heyhowdy! So I've been working on this fic based on a Tzim ancilla PC of mine since about January, and it's finally polished up enough for me to feel comfortable publishing it! First chapter can be read on Ao3 here: Mrs. Danielson and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Lathe Aiming for a bi-weekly publishing schedule (Every Thursday/Friday) and as it stands it should be somewhere between 8 - 10 chapters long. (For folks who prefer to stick to the blog, the chapter is posted below the cutoff)

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It had been a slow night in the shop. It always got dead at the end of the semester, students preoccupied with wrapping up finals and productions going dark for the winter gap between fall and spring terms. Oftentimes Eliza would find herself alone at her paint station, her footfalls reverberating through the whole of the loading dock whenever she had to grab whatever scrap or tool her project called for next. As lonely as it was, the insectile skittering of her brush echoing back to her provided a company that her studio apartment lacked.

But tonight she had not resigned herself to the paint rack. Earlier in the evening, while fetching fresh water to clean out her brushes, she noticed the shop manager’s office was not only unlocked, but empty. In plain view, hanging off an uneven line of nails, were the keys to every piece of equipment currently locked in the machinery cage. 

Better to ask forgiveness than permission, her mother would always say.

Eliza had hoped that, wherever Mr. Stamatin had fucked off to, it’d be for more than five minutes. Upon checking, she spotted his Impala was parked in the same far corner it always was, the mirror opposite of her baby blue Fortwo nestled next to the dock entrance. Her assumption had been he was in the building, but tied up in a faculty meeting or some other administrative business. Whatever it was, she had hoped to seize this window and be done before he returned.

But she had forgotten a key part of the equation–her rotten ass luck.

The second the cage unlocked, she might as well have tripped an alarm because she found herself in his long shadow in no time.

“Ms. Danielson?”

She slipped the keys into her tote as she turned to face him, “Oh, hey Mr. Stamatin! I didn’t know you were still in today.”

“I’m always ‘in’ .” Mr. Stamatin stood a full head taller than Eliza, as well as the vast majority of the students. A fact that left every interaction with him, no matter how mild, with the distinct sense of being lectured by a parent. “I will ask again– what is it that you are doing ‘ in’ the cage, Ms. Danielson?”

 “I, uh, was just gonna fire up the lathe for an end table I’m working on.”

“You are aware you need to check keys through me, are you not?”

“I am aware.” Eliza chewed the inside of her cheek as her gaze drifted past him and to the cage door behind him. Between that and the closed shop doors, she had no idea how he had managed to sneak up on her. Doing her best to bite back a frustrated frown, she looked back up to him. “I was in a rush and you weren’t in the office. I wasn’t sure when you were going to be back so I figured I’d go ahead and set up while I waited.”

There was no telling if he bought this little half-truth–she’d have better luck getting a read off one of the wood planks than Mr. Stamatin. “...I see. Well. I would be happy to assist now that I have returned.”

“Awesome!” She said, feeling the opposite. He propped the cage door open and helped her guide the heavy machine out of storage and to its designated spot.

As vague as it might be, there was a reason hardly anyone in the department fucked with the aloof shop manager. Every conversation with him was a struggle no matter what angle he was approached with. She assumed English wasn’t his first language with how often he’d clip his sentences down to the bare essentials–simple, direct and sharp. Though he clearly had enough of a grasp to understand what was said–she also doubted the university would hire someone who wasn’t at least partially fluent. Regardless, he left many a freshman ego wounded with nothing more than a single word or observation… and his curtness only worsened with the grads.

You could not design a more intimidating Russian.

He held his hand out expectantly. “Keys.”

“Pardon?”

“The switch keys. You have them?”

She sighed as she reached into her bag and tossed them over. I’ll make copies another time. “Oh, right. Here ya go.”

“Thank you.” He turned the switch over and the indicator light blinked to life. A low electric thrum confirming the lathe was powered and ready to go. “Do you need lumber?”

“I got it covered, thanks.” She set her tote down and unloaded the four 2’2 pine boards poking out the corner of the bag. Their edges were beginning to splinter–they’d been knocking around the passenger seat of her car for a little too long–but a perfect fit for the drawer she already had built out. 

Mr. Stamatin’s brow furrowed. “...that is softwood.”

“Yeah. It’s cheap.” Eliza began loading one of the planks into the lathe. “Why?”

“Hardwood is better for turning. Also–forgive me–” He apologized before taking one of the planks, running a finger along the splintering edge, “You see this? This fray? Whatever you carve, will fray the same way. Your table will not last.”

“...it’s what I had around.” Eliza mumbled as she clamped the board down. “And it’s a gift for my mom, I’m not selling it or nothing. I don’t think she’ll mind if it gets a little worn. Actually I think she might prefer it that way.”

“I can cut you some maple.”

“...I mean. I already made the top. It’d look mis-matched.” Eliza’s frustration was beginning to peek through as a tight tenor underscoring her speech. “And I already have it loaded in. So–”

“No. Nonono. Eliza, I expected more from someone of your talent–this is shoddy. Especially for a gift.” Mr. Stamatin ‘tsked as he pulled the key from the power supply, cutting it.

“Uh. Thank you?” This was the first time she’d heard anything resembling praise from him–not just directed at her, but at anyone, period. Backhanded? Yes. Flattering? Also yes.

“You are welcome.” He pocketed the key. “I will fetch the maple. Be right back.”

He disappeared around the corner into the loading dock, and Eliza sat down on a nearby stool with a sigh. Huh. This was… weird. Sure she had only been in the program for about a year and a half, but she felt like she had at least a general sense of who Mr. Stamatin was. She’d met his type time and time again in undergrad– reserved, a harsh perfectionist. Prone to hyperfixation so intense it turns his projects inside out. He had spoken to her maybe once… twice unprompted over the two and a half months she worked with him on that Endgame set? Hell, she didn’t even know his first name. He never shared it and on the university website only listed him as “A. Stamatin”. 

But now suddenly he’s playing at being her mentor? Fuck off.

She checked her phone. 

11:45. December 23rd, 2014.

Two missed calls from “Maw”.

Three new texts from “Maw”.

Eliza’s heart remained firmly sunk into her gut as she pocketed her phone; she was almost relieved when Mr. Stamatin returned. He handed her four 2’2 planks and the lathe key. “There. Hardwood makes for better furniture. Pine is better suited for sets.”

“...Thanks.” Eliza got up and began to load the first leg into the lathe “So… you’re staying in town for Christmas?”

Mr. Stamatin took her spot on the stool, watching over her shoulder as she powered up the lathe. “I am. Yourself?”

“My mom lives in Des Moines. So, at this point, yeah. No point in leaving now.” She shrugged as she finished fastening the plank into the machine. “You got family anywhere?”

“We’re all local.”

Eliza scoffed. The man had an accent thicker than pine tar. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” He did not. 

Eliza sized him up for a beat, frown weighing the corner of her mouth. It was only now that she really got a good look at him, and noticed that… he kind of looked like shit. His skin was sickly pale, dark circles well defined below his eyes. If he told her he had not slept in a week, she’d believe him. However there was nothing in his stature that implied impairment, his posture was straight and his hands steady. Maybe it was just the shop lights? “You’re local?”

“Not local- local. I did not grow up here…” He trailed off, his mind elsewhere. “It’s a long story. What matters is this is where they’ve settled. Now a question in kind: how long have you been working as a carpenter?”

Eliza shrugged as she watched the lathe gain momentum. “Four years professionally, eight years if you count the work I did in undergrad.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Oh boy, do I.”

Mr. Stamatin snorted, “Passionate.”

“It’s almost midnight on christmas eve, I’m tired. I don’t really have the bandwidth for this, I just want to get it over with.” Eliza took a step back as she scrolled through the measurements she sketched out on her notes app. “Sorry. You’re making small talk. I’m being an asshole.”

“You are. But I get it.” Mr. Stamatin paused again, a consideration. “I’m playing teacher while you’re clearly crafting an apology.”

“An apology?”

“It’s christmas eve. You’re hundreds of miles from home. Your phone’s been buzzing in your pocket and you barely bother to check. Trying to not think of your mother, sitting alone in the dark this holiday?” 

Eliza turned to face him, taken aback. “How old are you?”

“Thirty.” The number hit the ground between them with a thud, utterly detached. 

“You talk like my grandpa.”

Mr. Stamatin leaned back in his stool, clearly thinking he struck a vein. “Does he chastise you for ignoring family calls?”

“You’ve barely spoken to me since I started grad school despite us sharing space and equipment six evenings a week for over a year. You have not earned the mileage to be this fucking petty with me, I don’t care if I stepped on your toes or whatever by taking the keys.” She turned away from him and pocketed her phone, stepping back to the lathe. “You don’t get to talk to me like I’m five.”

The stool scraped across the concrete as he stood abruptly, “Eliza–”

“First name basis already? When it’s only been a year and a half? You’re rushing me, Mr. Stamatin–” Eliza didn’t get to complete that thought. She had been reaching over the lathe–first mistake. She had left the spindle gouge on the table and had went to grab it when suddenly her sleeve–and her arm–was yanked down into the headstock spindle. She should have taken off her sweater, but it was frigid in the shop so she hadn’t. That was her second and far more fatal mistake.

She heard her bones snap before she felt it.

Her right hand folded, twisted and tore in a wash of undefined, white-hot pain. Pain that screamed up her arm almost as fast as the limb itself was fed into the machine’s momentum. Instead of the sawdust and cold concrete of the shop she swore she smelled the feet-deep peet of prairie, the putrid-sweet smell of sweat and the salt-licking bees it attracted. Woodrot and moss, earthen morels and creek-dampened locust-tree shade.

Eliza’s short life overwhelmed her–the final buffer before the churning force of multiple tonnes subsumed her.

But it never did.

What felt like a molten rod drove beneath her shoulder blade and with another, definitive CRACK she was no longer being pulled into the lathe but away. She felt something– a hand? Who’s hand? --pressing and pulling where the agony had localized in her shoulder socket as she felt her back press up against another body before she was spun around. 

“Look at me.”

Eliza’s gaze drifted, her vision swimming. A vacant, distant part of her recognized the various landmarks of the shop–the bay door, the prop cubbies, the wall where the unused stage lights hung and the plastic tub of unsorted gobos languishing beneath them–but it was all stained. Tinted. She felt like she was looking through stained glass, into somewhere else, somewhere far off. Pain twinged through her torso as she felt the hands on her shoulders shake her.

“Look at me.”

Her reptile brain snapped to attention, her eyes snapping up to meet Mr. Stamatin’s. It was surreal, seeing any emotion there, especially the mix of terror and panic that kept his gray eyes wide and his cheeks colorless. He held a finger up between them, and her eyes tracked its movement without issue. “Eliza. You should sit.”

The lathe was still whirring in the background. It was only then that she registered what felt like warm rain pattering against the back of her neck. With her remaining hand, she reached back and dipped her fingers into the moisture, looking down to see blood smeared across her fingertips. Her blood. Her blood was still being sprayed out by the lathe.

Eliza opened her mouth to speak, but only bile came out. One violent retch shook her body as the acid stained the fronts of both of their shirts. The last thing she saw before knees gave out was a bit of knitted scrap unspun on the floor between them. 

The remains of her sweater sleeve, drenched in blood.

****

When Eliza came to, she was laid out across a cot.

Bleary-eyed, she squinted against a bright light of a surgical light haloing her. The hospital…? The smell of alcohol and disinfectant hung heavy in the air. A dull headache thrummed in time with her pulse as her gaze drifted to the IV taped to her arm, tube coiling dull crimson from the crook of her elbow to the transfusion bag. Further down her arm, a leather strap cuffed her wrist to the surgical bed–not that she was in any position to move her arm. Stare at it all she liked, she could not will it to move. Anything from twitching her finger to rolling her shoulder. Alarm as dull as the throbbing between her ears rolled over her as her mind reach out to the other–

A wash of blood drowned her senses. 

Whirring machinery.

Snapped bones. 

A scrap of sweater wetly slapped at her feet.

Nausea rolled over her. With an empty stomach she was left to wrestle with dry a heave as she struggled to shove the memory out of view as quickly as possible.

It’s gone.

It’s gone.

I’m never working in a shop again.

“Awake?” 

It took great effort, but Eliza was able to turn her head toward the voice. Flush beside her bed was a stainless steel worktable with what she assumed was a mannequin arm laid across it. Mr. Stamatin was hunched over it as he fiddled with its wrist. She had to clear her throat to find her voice. “...yeah.”

He did not look up. “Good, good.”

“What… happened? Is this the hospital? What…” Eliza trailed off as she felt her heart pick up pace, the pressure in her skull increasing. Fuck. She sucked in a shaky, steadying breath. Grateful for whatever IV cocktail she’d been put on because drug weight seemed to be the only thing grounding her. The space outside of their halo was dim, but not indiscernible. More of what you’d expect from a typical OR– equipment she barely recognized, messes of tubes and bags and lcd monitors. Most of it appeared a couple decades out of date, but not so old as to be unrecognizable. 

But mixed in between the islands of sterile surgical steel were more commercial-looking workbenches and organizers. Stations more befitting of the scene shop they shared than a hospital. Squinting past the darkness, she could swear she saw five… maybe six ornately carved wood panels lined up along a far wall–and if she focused she could smell sawdust underscoring the sterile sharpness of the cramped room.

Mr. Stamatin took a few moments to wrap up his work before pulling away from the arm, directing his attention fully on Eliza. She hadn’t noticed before, but despite the clear cut and peeled back skin around the carpal bones, he held no blade or tool in his hand. He wasn’t even wearing gloves–his bare fingers shone bright red in the lamplight. “You are in my surgery. Your sleeve was pulled into the lathe, along with your arm. Thankfully the rest of you did not follow.”

‘My’ surgery? “...is that my arm?”

“Not the original. That was irrecoverable. However, I happen to have a spare that should substitute just fine, with a bit of tailoring.” He turned back to his work. The tips of his fingers peeled back to reveal bleached bone tips, sharpened to fine points which easily manipulated the fine bands of tissue of the substitute hand. 

Eliza blearily blinked past this, squeezing her eyes shut until she saw stars and looked again. The bare bone was still there, still fraying away loose tendon string. Okay. Cool. Meanwhile, Mr. Stamatin’s words glided across the IV-glossed surface of her brain like a skater on fresh ice. Lost an arm but don’t worry. You’re getting a new one. As you do. “It looks dead.”

He nodded. “It is. For now. Once it’s attached to your circulatory system it should start waking back up– expect pins and needles for at least the first 12 hours, if not a full 24. Should be indistinguishable from the old one within the month.”

“Where did you get it?”

Silence. A small smile.  “You are taking this in stride.”

“I’m so fucked up I can’t even move. Not much of a choice.” Eliza’s attention turned toward her legs. With some effort, she was able to wiggle her feet around but not much else. “What am I on?”

“A cot.”

“Drugs. What drugs am I on?”

“A cocktail of barbiturates, saline solution and blood.” He glanced up at her, “would you have preferred I held off on the painkillers?”

When Eliza tilted her head back, the muscles in her neck seized painfully. Maybe he hadn’t given her enough. “...where did you get the blood?”

“Self-donated.” He gestured toward his arm, where she could see the tell-tale bruising of a heavy blood draw. “Lucky you, I’m a universal donor.”

Eliza lifted an eyebrow. “Was the arm self-donated as well?”

“...well, I had it on hand and am giving it to you. So, technically, yes.”

“Who’s arm is it?”

“No one you know.” He cracked his knuckles and leaned back, admiring it. “And its originator gave it to me freely, so you can let your conscience rest. No mutiny from this one.”

Eliza’s heart was shrieking in her chest, but she felt a part of herself nodding along. Maybe it's a dream? And if it isn’t… that arm looks pretty goddamn real, and fresh. She thought back to an uncle of hers that had his pointer finger lopped off by a butcher knife, how they iced it and stitched it back on. Less dexterous, a bit more pale, but functional. He seems stable. Like he knows what he’s doing… I think. She let her head fall back onto the cot with a sigh. “...are you, like, a med school dropout or something? Is patching people up a hobby of yours?”

Mr. Stamatin stood, looping around to the cot’s open side. His hands reached toward her butchered shoulder, disappearing from her field of view as she felt the pin-prick sensation of something tugging along the outer socket.  “All I ask is for you to trust me. Trust that I will do right by you, as someone under my care. Can I expect that from you?”

Eliza met his gaze. His eyes level with an intensity that honed onto the hairline fractures of her doubt, splitting it apart. Maybe it was something in that cocktail being mainlined into her veins. Maybe it was the shock of the situation. Whatever the cause, it wasn’t as tall of an ask as it should have been. “Again--not much of a choice, is it?”

He sat on this for a moment before turning his attention back to the socket. “How about this– if you aren’t pleased with my work, I will take you straight to the hospital. I brought you here since my home is a stone’s throw from the theater and you weren’t in stable condition. But now that you are stable–”

“--can’t you take me now?” Eliza shifted uncomfortably under the increasing burn of whatever was being done to her shoulder. “Get a professional to stitch up my arm?”

He scoffed. “A surgeon wouldn’t be able to apply this arm.”

“What do you mean a surgeon can’t? Isn’t that what you’re attempting?”

“What I’m doing is something a little more esoteric than surgery.”

“Oh, esoteric. ” Eliza groaned, “just what I want from my doctor–out of pocket procedures from Alister Crowley's big book of limb re-application.”

Mr. Stamatin’s stoic composure cracked slightly, “Oh please my practices predate him by over a millennium.”

“You’ve been doing this for a millennium?”

A wink. “Promise you won’t tell?”

If Eliza had a working arm, she’d have crossed herself. “On my grandpa’s gr–AAAHHFUCK!”

The burn flared out into an agonizing flame, hastily extinguished when Mr. Stamatin pulled back. “Shit. Forgive me, I forgot to sever the nerves.”

“What the fuck?” Eliza gasped.

“Stay with me. Talk. Let’s talk.” He caught her gaze with his own as he went back to work, “Who introduced you to carpentry?”

“Nobody–I watched some youtube videos and improvised from there –fuck! ” The pain flared again then dimmed with a snap–replaced by an unsettling numbness. “This feels like an interrogation. I feel like I’m being tortured.”

“...it does, doesn’t it?” Mr. Stamatin cleared his throat, an uncomfortable beat of silence as he searched for words. “Would you prefer to keep asking the questions? Would that help? I talk, you focus on the mend and listen?”

“Yeah…” Eliza’s attention drifted back to the wood panels. The one closest to the light depicted a tirelessly detailed oak tree, where every branch served roost to a host of different birds. They were difficult to differentiate, fine details bleeding together in the dark. It was a riot of fluid, fluttering plumage and verdant canopy. “Two questions. First: What is your name? Your full one. If I’m going to stay in your SAW basement I should at least know that. Second: If you didn’t go to school… where’d you learn to do… whatever this is? With the arm?”

“To the first–Anatol. My name is Anatol.” He stood, walking back to the arm. He gingerly picked it up, slowly turning it over in his grasp. “To the second–I will tell you on the condition that, should you be happy with your… miraculous recovery, you swear to keep what occurred tonight as a secret between us. On your life. Fair?”

“...fair.” Eliza resigned. “On my life.”

“Thank you.” He sat back down next to her exposed shoulder, aligning the humeral head of her arm with her shoulder’s socket. “This will hurt, but it will be brief. On three?”

A knot formed in her throat as she nodded. “On three.”

He adjusted his grip. “One.”

She clenched her jaw. “Two.”

“Three.”

Ao3 - Next Chapter

[wizardofvamp]

XVI-The Tower Chapter 4: Pride Shots

Life sucks when the hormones fade and you’re no longer DTF.

uh just general notice that I updated this here shameless erikar fic

Have fun you sinners.

[whatisbirds]

Parrotfish Gills and How They Tear Parts 2 & 3

Pesterlog #1: Repaying a Debt & A Note of Madness

As politically incorrect as Kankri would claim it was, the flavor of blood varied from caste to caste. Nothing as drastic as the difference between sugar and blood, candy and meat. More of varying brands of bitter on a range from lowblood citrus and highblood salt. Each bloodtype also came with their own added boosts, though she was never entirely sure if they were actual side effects or placebo echoes from her recent meals. Medigos made her feel as if time had slowed for a short while, Captors left her veins buzzing, Pyropes fueled her focus and that one time with Makara… well she’d rather not dwell on that. She had never, however, tasted violet blood before. As much as Cronus had tempted and taunted her in the past she never wanted to give him the satisfaction. Eridan tasted like… he tasted like licking brine off a scallop shell. Porrim personally had never done such a thing, but that was the closest thing she could imagine to compare the taste. It lacked most of the hearty warmth and richness of fuchsia and left a sour aftertaste.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Ao3

CA: por

CA: por

CA: porrim please youre killin me here

[GA delete 245 messages from CA? Y/N]

CA: wwait wwhat

CA: thats not real is it

CA: wwhy am i seein that i shouldnt be seein that

CA: it cant be real it wwouldnt post that shit ive nevver seen that shit before

[GA delete 249 messages from CA? Y/N]

GA: Y.

CA: rudeass bitch

[Data cleared.]

GA: I am surprised yo+u have never seen that no+tificatio+n before. Yo+u must have very patient friends.

CA: fuck you okay it just goes to showw howw shitty your chat client is compared to ours

CA: unlike you lot wwe havve the decency to not be so clumsily blatant wwith our snubs

CA: spitin people is a delicate process and you cant just throww that negativve shit around like its nothin it looses its impact

CA: but you flush huggers wouldnt knoww that wwould you pitch really is a lost art on you lot

[GA delete 5 messages from CA? Y/N]

GA: Y.

[Data cleared.]

CA: fuck you

GA: Are yo+u wearing the skirt that I gave yo+u?

CA: wwere gettin off point

CA: seriously por

CA: wwhat do you wwant

CA: i wwasnt kiddin wwhen i said id make good on my promise

CA: just fuckin tell me wwhat you need so wwe can be done here

GA: Yo+u never made any promise.

CA: shut up

CA: wwhat do you want

GA: Here is the pro+blem.

GA: While I’d be mo+re than happy to reap the “fruits of my labo+r” so+ to+ speak, I am afraid that there is abso+lutely no+thing yo+u have that I want.

GA: Except, perhaps, fo+r yo+u to+ sto+p pestering me.

CA: …

CA: come on

GA: I tho+ught yo+u didn’t do+ favo+rs.

CA: literally anythin

CA: anythin you could possibly wwant

CA: amporas always repay their debts its a matter of fuckin honor

GA: Ho+no+r?

CA: its a high blood thing

CA: you wwouldnt understand

GA: I’m sure I wo+uldn’t.

CA: just tell me wwhat you wwant and ill get out of your hair for good

GA: Yo+u really are set o+n this, aren’t yo+u?

CA: yes!

GA: …

GA: Fine.

GA: If yo+u must pro+vide me so+mething I co+uld always do+ with a light snack.

CA: …

CA: wwait

CA: you talkin like fried grubs or

CA: the other thing

GA: The o+ther thing, Eridan.

CA: oh

CA: wwell

GA: Yo+u did say anything.

CA: yeah I fuckin knoww wwhat i said

CA: ill do it

CA: just givve me a second to collect myself

GA: Pardo+n?

CA: ill be ovver in an hour

GA: Eridan.

GA: This isn’t so+mething yo+u must do+ immediately.

CA: I wwant to do it noww

GA: Is this what this is all abo+ut? Getting o+ut o+f yo+ur hive?

CA: is kan there?

GA: Eridan.

CA: or ros?

GA: …no.

GA: They are not.

GA: They are o+ut fo+r the day.

CA: thank god

CA: ill talk to you later

CA: see you in an hour

[CA has disconnected.]

GA: Talk to+ yo+u later.

[GA has disconnected.]

If Porrim had nothing kind to say about Eridan, she’d at least be able to say that he was punctual.

According to the pester log, the last message he had sent her had gone out at 2:13 in the afternoon. Sure enough, 3:13, a sharp rap echoed down the entry hall of her hive. So exact it may have frightened Porrim if she wasn’t already used to tediously meticulous schedules such as Kankri’s. That and she had caught a glimpse of him out the window at 2:32. Chances were he arrived early and waited at her front stoop until the hour mark was reached. It’d been funny if the behavior wasn’t so eerily similar to Cronus’s.

The last thing anyone needed was another Cronus.

“Excited?” Porrim hedged when he cut past her and walked into her hive without greeting, without even slipping his boots off.

Eridan shrugged, taking off his sunglasses and tucking them into the collar of his shirt. Unlike their last encounter he was flaunting a 12-going-on-13-sweeps look, a head taller than her sans heels and a facial structure so aristocratic it physically painful to look at. He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “In a hurry.”

Porrim was as inclined to believe that as she was to believe Kankri when he claimed he would wrap up his sermon within an hour. But alas, the Ampora ego is a fragile thing and she didn’t want to hazard breaking it lest she’d have to walk him through another mental breakdown. So instead she followed him into the living room, stepping around him and sitting on the far end of the couch when he stopped three strides from the entryway. She patted the cushion next to her. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

He nodded but didn’t move beyond that.

She arched an eyebrow. “Second thoughts?”

“No.” He snapped.

“Then sit.”

“I will.”

“If you’re waiting for a cue, this is it Eridan.”

“I’m not—“ He cut himself off and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes with a sharp exhale. “Okay yeah. Second thoughts. I’ll get over them.”

Porrim’s brow furrowed. Worried, confused, maybe a bit nauseous. Whatever it was, she had no clear idea what kind of emotion that particular statement roused. “You don’t have to Eridan. It’s perfectly fine to walk out if you want to. I won’t be offended.”

“It’s not fine and also it’s okay I’m over it. I’m over it.” He dropped his hand and opened his eyes, rigidly moving from his spot and settling down next to her on the couch. “I’m over it.”

“…If you say so.” Porrim muttered. The boy looked stiffer than the couch they were sitting on and that was further confirmed when she placed a hand on his shoulder. It was a wonder his muscles hadn’t snapped with how taunt they’re pulled.

She scooted closer and in what she assumed was misguided anticipation, he tilted his head to the side, exposing his throat. Tsk’ing she reached up and took hold of one of his horns and pushed his head back into place. “I’m not using your throat.”

“Why not?” He huffed, straining against her grip.

“I’d tear your gills. One of your major arteries run right through them and I’m not about to take away your remaining pair because I want a light snack.” She knew the moment she’d finished her statement that the mention of his damaged gills pushed the topic a little too far for his comfort, his annoyance visibly melting into a chilly pool of wariness.

“My gills are fine.” His voice was level. So flat it was detached. “There’s nothing wrong with either pair.”

She let go of his horn. “Fine or not, I’m not inflicting any more damage than I have to. Now give me your arm.”

He did. “How do you even know that? You haven’t… been with…”

“Feferi? No. Meenah? Yes. And trust me I’ve gleaned more than I could ever desire from the experience.” Porrim undid the cuff buttons of his shirt and rolled up the sleeve, turning his arm over to expose the thin skin of his inner elbow.

Eridan leaned back against the couch, watching as she searched for a vein with the tip of her thumbnail. “You took from her arm?”

“…At times. Depended on the mood.” She pulled her thumb back, gripping his forearm as she leaned down. “Ready?”

“Obviously.”

“This will pinch a bit.”

“I know.”

She sighed. “Of course you do.”

With that, she sank her teeth into him.

As politically incorrect as Kankri would claim it was, the flavor of blood varied from caste to caste. Nothing as drastic as the difference between sugar and blood, candy and meat. More of varying brands of bitter on a range from lowblood citrus and highblood salt. Each bloodtype also came with their own added boosts, though she was never entirely sure if they were actual side effects or placebo echoes from her recent meals. Medigos made her feel as if time had slowed for a short while, Captors left her veins buzzing, Pyropes fueled her focus and that one time with Makara… well she’d rather not dwell on that. She had never, however, tasted violet blood before. As much as Cronus had tempted and taunted her in the past she never wanted to give him the satisfaction.

Eridan tasted like… he tasted like licking brine off a scallop shell. Porrim personally had never done such a thing, but that was the closest thing she could imagine to compare the taste. It lacked most of the hearty warmth and richness of fuchsia and left a sour aftertaste.

There was, however, a note of an energized something.

Highblood rage or the remnants of yesterday’s shot of sopor Porrim didn’t know. But the more she drank the stronger it was. It coated her tongue and down the back of her throat thick and visceral causing her heart to pick up and pace. Made her shiver even though it was downright balmy out and she had sweated half her water weight over the course of the morning due the humidity. The shaking was tethered by tenseness that had bled from him to her, leaving her charged like a spring and she didn’t know if she wanted to strike out or come undone. She struggled to put a name to it.

It was a note of hope, a note of madness. A note that occupied her attention to the point she almost didn’t notice how labored his breathing had become or the cold sweat that had broken out across his skin in a steady sheen.

It was no small effort to pull back.

She hadn’t taken much, this she was certain. Especially with highbloods being highbloods she knew there was no way that she had drawn more than what a healthy violet could handle. So when she looked up to see how glassy Eridan’s eyes had become a multitude of red flags went up. She pressed the back of her hand against his forehead.

He was warm.

Burning fever for a highblood.

“Why’d you… stop…?” He muttered.

Her stomach turned. Good God, Ampora. Stop being so damn tragic.

“I’m getting you some water.” Porrim gingerly set his arm down onto his lap and stood. “And a bandage.”

She had turned to head into the kitchen when he caught her wrist. “You didn’t take much. You didn’t… you didn’t like it?”

“Eridan you’re ill.” She pried his fingers off of her. Unlike his forehead they were frigid. “You’re in no condition to give blood.”

“I’m fine.”

Porrim took the time to shoot him an exasperated look before ducking into the kitchen. She quickly filled the nearest glass she could get ahold of with water and forced it into his hand when she returned. He spat out the first sip, cursing tap water.

The second sip took a lot more coaxing on her part but eventually he got it down followed by a few more. “Have you eaten today?”

Eridan shrugged. “Wasn’t hungry.”

“You should still eat, dear.”

“Dear?”

“Yes. Dear.”

He stared at her as if she were the insane one. When she asked him if he had a problem with it he shook his head. “Never been called that before.”

That came as a shock. “Never?”

“Never.”

“You’ve had a moiral. You currently have a… matesprit.” The last word gnawed on her. It was such a gross misuse of the label but she had nothing else to call his relationship with his dancestor. “Yet you’ve never been called ‘dear’?”

Eridan shook his head again.

He might as well tore her heart out of her chest, he was being so damn pitiable.

For the next few hours Porrim drifted in and out of the living room while he drifted in and out of sleep. Light naps, quick thirty minute long siestas that didn’t invite daymares even without the aid of a coon. His arm was patched up easily enough and by the time the afternoon came to a close she’d gotten him to swallow down three glasses of water. He’d rejected every offer to food however. Claimed it was due to his discerning pallet though she knew better to buy that crap. The fucker was too damn neurotic for his own good, afraid to ask for help that they both knew he needed but couldn't get because of his twisted sense of honor.

Fuck honor, Porrim just wanted to make sure he wasn’t about to double-die on her.

By the time Kanaya and Rose returned from whatever romantic escapade they’d been pursuing through the day, Eridan was still curled up on the couch draped in a spare quilt. Predictably Kanaya was less than pleased. Thankfully though it was late enough for her to be tired and instead of grilling Porrim right then and there she waved the issue off for the next morning. Rose wasn’t so much bothered than bemused by the situation, flaunting her signature smirk as she watched Eridan sleep as Kanaya wrapped up her conversation with Porrim.

When they retired for the night Porrim followed after them. As concerned as she was, she couldn’t stay by his side the entire night.

Should he want to leave between naps, the front door was unlocked for him. Porrim told herself she wouldn’t care if he did, that she had done her part to make sure he was getting well and that it wasn’t her concern from here on out. However part of her, that traitor bleeding heart part, clung to the hope that he would stay. To give her an excuse to further look after him. To make sure he wasn’t starving himself or getting his gills further ruined by the only troll across the span of bubbles that’d claim to love him.

Angelmaker is a sad creature.

She tucked a second blanket over him before she left. The shiver simply wouldn’t leave him, wracking him so bad that she had to pull out a third for herself thanks to the false connection she felt thanks to sharing his blood. Porrim brushed his hair to the side and attempted to recall the softened edges of a child’s face in place of the harshness of his current mask but failed. Still a child. She stepped back, pulling the blanket more snug around her shoulders before exiting.

It wasn’t until she had slid into her recouprecoon that she realized he’d never taken off his boots.

[whatisbirds]

Parrotfish Gills and How They Tear :: or :: How Porrim Grew Fond Of An Immature Douchebag

She had spotted, out of the corner of her eye, two sets of scratches dragging up from his navel and across the sides of his ribs. Possessive claws. That’s what gave it away. The filaments of his teleosteian gills were still oozing violet, operculum torn almost entirely off. This near-dead skin fluttered and bent loosely as he moved, causing him to wince and flinch. Porrim asked how he was still standing. He responded by saying he’d show her by kicking.

Part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Ao3

It had been girls night.

The group of once-dead damsels—Latula, Meulin, Aradia, Meenah, Feferi, Kanaya and her human matesprit Rose—had been gathered at Porrim’s hive. Meulin had filched some kicking soporific and booze from Kurloz and the group had been enjoying themselves a game of truth or shots. It was nearly one in the morning and Latula was in the middle of her third attempt at tricking Feferi into taking her top off. Things were light. Fun, even.

Then.

Then the knock heard ‘round the hive.

Porrim had assumed it was Nepeta. The girl had promised she’d drop by and she had a tendency to be egregiously late to every venture she was invited to. So with glass in hand and uncharacteristically tipsy the eldest Maryam went to answer, laughing at something quippy Rose had said as she pulled the door open. Something about the curiosity of sea dweller gills and how she’d gladly back Latula albeit for “research” purposes. “Very likely.” Porrim called back before her eyes fell onto the newcomer.

She stopped in her tracks.

Lanky not short. Lightning bolts in place of cat ears. Violet instead of olive.

Ampora.

She slammed the door shut on impulse. It wasn’t until the initial shock wore off, leaning against the door with painted claws digging into the wood, that she processed that it was the younger of the two violetbloods. No scars, no sneer, no “authentic” human cigarette.

Eridan. She was fairly certain that was his name.

Angelmaker.

Despite the brief horror that came with facing the young rendition of the Beforan legend—matesprit killer child culler lunatic beyond even Cronus’s ilk—she was relieved. If it had been Cronus the rest of the night would have been shot. The bastard had a way of clinging to her like a leech to a leg and not going away until everyone in the vicinity had been drained. Eridan, while exhausting, could be easily shooed away.

Taking care of him would be a five minute job, tops.

Assuming.

Porrim opened the door.

Child. For the second time that night she was taken aback. Very few of the dreaming dead who had died young allowed themselves to appear their death age. They usually instead opted to masquerade older. Everyone knew everyone else was older than an eon and a day, nothing made it harder to be taken seriously than looking like a six-sweep-old. So the Alternians, these young ancestors, dressed up. Bent the ever-expansive creative space of the dream bubbles to appear more mature and closer to their Beforan counterparts. Ten, eleven, even twelve sweeps old. Eridan typically favored older as to match heights with Cronus, and that only made seeing him standing on her doorstep as a soft-faced bundle of too-long limbs an even harsher slap in the face.

It had been raining for the past hour and the poor creature was soaked to the bone and on top of that, he was wearing next to nothing. Boxers a size too large hanging off hips two sizes too narrow. A white cotton shirt—one of Cronus’s—was bunched up at his shoulders, translucent, wet and clinging to his ash-pale skin. Despite her having opened and closed the door twice his gaze remained downcast. The top half of his face was curtained from view by seaweed clumps of black and violet as he stared fixedly at his bare feet. His arms were crossed tightly across his chest, combating shivers even though he was an ice blooded sea dweller and it was downright balmy out.

“Is there anything…” Porrim began, her tone measured. Eridan lifted his gaze. When his eyes met hers her jaw snapped shut with an audible click.

There was no need to ask why he was there. The answer was scrawled all over that broken-angle face of his. Looking straight-on it became obvious his nose didn’t bend that way naturally and what appeared to be shadows were actually a smattering of black-purple bruises. These mingled with the bags under his eyes—daymare hand-me-downs—and his pupils were so dilated that she had a tough time making out the violet ring of his iris. Suddenly, his shaking seemed more pronounced. More vulnerable. Porrim had to resist the urge to reach out and take hold of him before he rattled himself to pieces right in front of her.

Oh child.

He cleared his throat. “…Is Fef here?”

His voice was as measured and quiet as her own had been, which was conflicting. Porrim chewed on her lip. Composure was not an Ampora trait. Eridan especially was one to overplay his troubles, not underplay. The fact he was treating aftermath worthy of academy award winning drama like a casual evening visit put her off. In her experience this could only mean two things—either he was currently on the verge of a meltdown or that he was filing all that turmoil away to whip it out when everyone least expected it. The last thing she needed was to accidentally trigger the prior, but she had no idea how to circumvent that.

Thankfully she was saved from answering when a voice chimed in behind her. Latula. “Hey! Is it Nep or no?”

“No. It’s not.” Porrim sighed.

Pyrope snorted. “Then tell whoever it is to piss off. I’m tryna get fish princess here to do the bare naked macarana and I know you don’t wanna miss it.”

“What?” Eridan’s eyebrows shot up, the first real emotion he’d expressed. Soaked in nothing but his underwear and still overprotective as hell. Porrim was hit by another unwanted pang of pity. In the meantime Latula had wandered up behind her to peek over his shoulder at the doorstep She could feel her friend’s mood sour when she saw Eridan.

“Oh fuck. Who invited lil’ Ampora?”

“Let me in.” He scowled. However it was more sad than threatening with the way his hair kept getting stuck in his eyes.

Latula whistled. “Dude. You should go get some help. Looks like somebody fucked you up real bad.”

“Latula.” Porrim snapped but it was already too late. Whatever blood that was left in Eridan’s face evacuated in a hurry, leaving him looking like a proper ghost. There was a hanging moment where Porrim was prepared to swoop in to catch a breakdown, to collect him up in her arms and try her damnedest not to get any of his blood on her dress.

That didn’t happen.

Instead he plowed right by them. As fragile as he looked he was packing a lot of power in that twig body of his. He was stumbling down the hall in no time, the two woman lagged momentarily out of sheer shock before chasing after him.

The next few minutes were a cluster fuck. Eridan started shouting something about royal chastity as he stormed into the living area where Feferi already had her shirt stuck over her head, the loose material having been snagged on one of her horns. Meulin was picking past the frizzy bush of hair intertwined with the frothy fabric, attempting to pick and claw her free before hopping back with a yowl when Eridan drunkenly crashed on scene. Her hands firmly caught in Feferi’s deathtrap hair, Feferi went tumbling backward with her just as Porrim and Latula came skidding in on Eridan’s heels.

Kanaya was the first on her feet, diving between Eridan and Feferi in no time and shoving him back before he could get to her which sent him flailing back into Porrim. She made no hesitation to wrap her arms around him in a vice grip, easily holding him back as he continued to thrash and shout. He wasn’t the only loud one. Everyone was talking at once.

Where the fuck—

Who the fuck—

Why the fuck—

Get.

Him.

Out.

By the time Feferi, the poor confused girl, got her shirt off and wised up to the situation all the rapidly mounted tension in the room had already crested. Kanaya had been shepherded into the kitchen by Rose. Meenah had thrown her hands up and left the hive all together because she wasn’t about to have any more Ampora bullshit. And Eridan. Eridan had gone stock still against Porrim staring wide-eyed down at his ex-moirail.

Porrim, she could feel every taunt wire holding that boy together. How they strained with his every intake of breath, the shift as he reached out to her with one pathetically shaky hand muttering a mantra of “please, Fef, please I need please” under his breath. From the looks of it she had gone equally as rigid, not moving from her spot and clutching her shirt conservatively against her chest.

Eridan reached further, voice cracking. “Please.”

She bolted.

He crumbled.

Latula was the only one who helped Porrim haul him back to his feet, albeit with far too much commentary of how gross his sobbing was to be couth. Aradia and Meulin, the only two others left in the room, watched quietly as he was shepherded up the stairs (Not out the door, Porrim wasn’t so cruel) and to one of the empty respitblocks on the second floor.

Faintly, from up the stairwell, Porrim heard Aradia chirp to Meulin.

“And here I was worried it was getting boring!”

—

Porrim had chewed her lip raw.

Hell, her left fang was dug in so far she might as well put in another piercing. Nerves, while something she could handle, were a real pest in this way. The slow cut of her incisors moored her mind, keeping it from drifting too far as her thoughts flitted between downstairs and the troll that stood before her.

Stood is putting it charitably.

Slumped is far more accurate.

Eridan was pawing through her wardrobe. Well, one of her wardrobes. It was one of the burdens of being one of a pair of seamstresses sharing a hive: there never seemed to be enough closet space. They had just spent the hour arguing, and things had come to a head of sorts. He wanted to leave, embarrassed for having shown weakness so publicly or because of some other strange violations of Alternian custom. Their entire spat, he never once looked her in the eye. Hound with his tail between his legs, speaking as if they were near a shed and she was toting a rifle.

Which is ridiculous, since melee was more her style.

But pointing that out would be digressing.

He wanted to leave. To where, it was clear he didn’t know. Likely back to his own hive where Porrim would rather gnaw her lip off than see him go to in this state. While he never was explicit, never attributed reason to his injuries she knew damn well whose knuckles were imprinted along the curve of his cheekbones.

(She had spotted, out of the corner of her eye while he was changing out of his soaked clothing, two sets of scratches dragging up from his navel and across the sides of his ribs. Possessive claws. That’s what gave it away. The filaments of his teleosteian gills were still oozing violet, operculum torn almost entirely off. This near-dead skin fluttered and bent loosely as he moved, causing him to wince and flinch.

Porrim asked how he was still standing.

He responded by saying he’d show her by kicking.

The subject dropped.)

It had been silent for at least a quarter of an hour, the only sound being the clicking of coat hangers and the steady tap of Porrim’s nails against the wall. The party had disbanded shortly after Eridan’s arrival, Kanaya and Rose down in the kitchen being the only other occupants left in the hive. Porrim knew Kanaya would rather Eridan leave even though she likely wouldn’t voice it. Rose would probably make a passive aggressive stab at it in a weeks time in an attempt to once again psychoanalyze Porrim’s “maternal fixation”.

But none of that mattered at the moment. What mattered was the poor child who needed asylum from both his hive mate and his own idiocy.

“You should rest.” She finally urged.

Eridan scoffed. “You sound like a broken record.”

“I know. If that’s upsetting you I recommend you sleep it off.”

“Why are you still here.”

“Not for my health.” She chuckled flatly, “that’s for sure.”

“Then piss off. I already told ‘ya I don’t do charity.” Metal hooks screeched against the metal closet rod as he pushed several shirts to the side in favor of scrutinizing a collection of skirts. Typical Ampora prude disdain.

“We’ve been over this. It’s not charity. It’s common sense. You’re in no state to—“

“—You pity me—“

“—I worry for you.” The statement tasted wrong leaving her lips. It wasn’t quite true, or at least she didn’t particularly want it to be true. Angelmaker. This is the Angelmaker. He murdered your ancestor in another life. He tried to kill Kanaya. Don’t get close. However it was impossible not to feel something, a quiet care that somehow burrowed deep into her bloodpusher. Similar to what she had felt with Kankri, now that she thought about it. Logic be damned, this boy’s injury demanded that she be gentle.

Yet speaking on this troubling fondness felt wrong. Stilted. And despite Eridan being one of the more oblivious trolls from the Alternian twelve he could sense it too.

“There’s no reason to.” He plucked a skirt from the bunch, running the fabric between his fingers.

The idiot was setting her up to rebut, trying to spark yet another argument. She refused to take the bait a second time. “You like it?”

“Hm?” He didn’t take his gaze off of the skirt. It was nothing special. Knit. Red-and-black checks. Very niche-fashion, something Porrim personally wouldn’t be caught dead in.

“The skirt.” She finally pushed away from the wall, risking to step closer to him and take hold of one of the skirt’s corners. Examining it with him.

He kept his body angled away from her, but at least he didn’t shrink away like he had been doing earlier. Progress. “It’s nice fabric.”

“It’s from Kanaya’s loom.”

“And the pattern—“

“—Atrocious—“

“—Eye-catching.” He muttered, running a thumb across its hem. “It seems like her.”

The fondness of his tone made Porrim uneasy. Any interaction between he and Kanaya did. “You like the style.”

He nodded. “Fef would sometimes borrow Kanaya’s things. Wear them around. Wreck them underwater. She wore them well, though.”

Another landmine topic Porrim would prefer to avoid. Focus on the fabric. “You wanted to borrow some, too?”

“No.” His answer came a beat too early to be believable, eyes flickering between Porrim and the skirt. “I had what I wanted.”

“I’m… sure you did.”

“I did.”

“You did.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “I borrowed one once, from Fef.”

Porrim let go of her portion of the skirt. “Did you wear it well?”

“She laughed at me.” Eridan draped the skirt back over the hanger. “Was a real bitch about it, actually.”

Porrim sighed. “Let’s not talk about her anymore.”

“She was such a fuck’n bitch.” He muttered, snapping the hanger back on the rail with a sharp click. “Lowblood-lovin’ air headed cunt. I fuckin’ hate her.”

“Hypocritical, coming from you.”

For the first time since his episode downstairs, he faced her straight-on. “Fuck you.”

“I’m not interested.

“Fuck you.”

“Maybe if you wore that skirt.” Porrim smirked. “Then I might consider.”

Color splashed across his cheeks, restoring some much-needed life to his face. Success. She plucked the hanger back out of the closet, handing it back to him. “Keep it. It’s not being worn, anyhow.”

“No.”

“You really do not know how to take a favor.” Porrim hooked the hanger on the closet doorknob, leaving it on display so he could take it if he so chose.

He didn’t, or at least, not right then. The way his eyes kept drifting back to it implied it might be gone by morning. “I already said. I don’t do favors. I’m above them.”

She patted him on the shoulder, careful not to accidentally strike an unseen injury.

“I believe you, hun.”

—

Eridan was gone the next morning. Slipped out before the rest of the hive woke up. One night of refuge, nothing more, which was probably all either Maryam could bear to offer. Kanaya was thrilled at his departure, Rose once again was noncommittal with her opinion.

Porrim wasn’t sure what her thoughts were concerning him. Relieved, certainly, consoling him was more exhausting than an argument with Kankri. However as the day progressed she couldn’t help but find herself wondering how he was. Fussing. Worrying.

She filed all this away into the back of her mind. There was no use for concern. Despite the trauma, despite the snapshot of desperation she had the misfortune of witnessing, things would resume their regular pace. He’d fade back to the periphery of her social circle, only coming up in the casual mention or brief glance across a dream-bubble crossroads. Sure she’d see another facet of Cronus’s sneer, speculate over the sincerity in which the Beforan Eridan had killed her own ancestor, wonder if it was possible for such a child to be born with that sort of sociopathy. She had a hard time imagining that scared boy doing anything so wretched.

All this stewed as she tidied up the guest respitblock Eridan had stayed in, combing the room for anything he could have left behind. He came with nothing so naturally there was nothing.

Except.

The skirt.

Porrim plucked the empty hanger from the closet door handle and smiled.

Such a child.

[wizardofvamp]

I wonder how many fics I’m gonna have to write incorporating my Angelmaker headcanon before people notice I have a rigid and ridiculously convoluted idea of who Beforan Eridan was and that I’m not going to let go of it even when I’m in my death throes.

[curiouslyhigh]

[feinseld]

i missed this post