#sigh/reuven

[elfy-art]

i want the parts of your hand-grenade heart that beat slowly with anger and fear

[satcnus]

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ       𝐒𝐘𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐘

𝐒𝐘𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐘   - n.  balanced proportions. also: beauty of form arising from balanced proportions.

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆. ex-military widower ✖ runaway stray

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐒. older protective male x vulnerable teen fem. widower x runaway. paternal elements within romance. male saviorism. size differences. opposites attract. ride or die. hurt, comfort, healing. v-rginity loss. dead dove do not eat.

𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍��𝐍𝐆! The following original fiction contains potentially triggering content, including: extreme age gap, homicide, child and spousal death, kidnapping, s-xual as-sault (background only), r-pe recovery, child abuse (background only), post-traumatic stress disorder and disabling mental illness, and mild ddlg themes (clothing, nicknames). Read at your own discretion.

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓. 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐎𝟑 — EARLY RELEASE. 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑.

Gravity.

What goes up, must come down.

Freefall.

Mayday, mayday, mayday.

An eleven year old, grumbling, grinding her knuckles into her tired eyes. A toddler, grumbling, forcefully throwing her toys around. A newborn, wailing, kicking and writhing against a full, warmed bottle of sustenance. 

“Avi?” a groaning, gravelly voice. A father, worn out and exhausted, reaching for his wife across an ocean of resentment and detachment and disagreement. “Avi, can you take him so I can get ready for work, please?” It was rhetorical. 

The woman rolled over in their shared bed, only after pressing the sanctuary cushion of their pillow into her ears to drown out the sound of her newest child’s crying. Then, as though taking care of that child was a chore, she sat up, sighed in malice, and took her crying baby boy from his father. 

“Cheddar’s about to leave, you wanna say goodbye to her?” he murmured from the opened door to their shared bedroom. A rush of water cascaded down from a shower head one second later. Encouragement fallen on deaf ears.

His wife didn’t answer him. She stared, miserly, down at her newborn, patting his butt out of obligation, readjusting his bottle’s nipple back into his mouth with a forcefulness that spoke of her disdain for the third, completely unplanned and unwanted, child she’d produced.

Reuven stepped into the shower and scrubbed at his skin roughly; quickly. Avigal muttered at their fussing baby to j ust drink already. The front door of their measly three bedroom apartment slammed. From the living room, their toddler threw a tantrum. Over her toys. Over the chaos. Over her dad being too busy and her mom being too removed to pay attention to her. 

Soapy water gathered in the drain at his feet. Spit up milk soaked into the fabric of her pajamas. 

Both of their minds raced, with opposite concerns. 

Avigal’s ruminated over what her life had become. 

Reuven’s concentrated on dividing up the day’s tasks. Get Kuna to preschool. Get to work. Focus on his lecturing and grading. Come back to pick up the baby for lunch—Avigal never wanted to be alone with him for more than a few hours anymore. She couldn’t articulate why. Her husband urged her to speak to their doctor about postpartum depression. She snapped and gnashed at him for even suggesting it. 

They existed on either side of a coastal island, staring off into the same sea, in opposite directions.

He gave his wife a kiss that she barely wanted to accept before he left with his remaining daughter. 

His wife glared at his retreating form from their bedroom, ruminating over something new: how handsome he looked. How he was stepping into an entire campus-full of ogling students and faculty. How he had not touched her since the baby was born. She would not let him, but some chaotic emotional violence in her still wanted him to try. She couldn’t dissect it. She couldn’t make any sense of it, or herself, or her family anymore. 

Her eyes coasted to a half-finished bottle of wine on the countertop as she meandered into the kitchen. Wine or coffee? Her baby boy sniffled in her arms. 

Coffee. It had to be coffee. 

She craved the tartness of that wine, sitting so close and yet so far out of her reach, while she sipped at a mug of coffee. Some blue-stained thing. It wasn’t cleaned of her husband’s saliva before she filled it. 

Perhaps that was her way of connecting with him again. 

Sometimes gravity was not so clear cut. 

Sometimes gravity was a metaphor. A hill before its valley. A crest before its trough. 

When a marriage mended, its kingdom’s fall was only inevitable again. 

Ebbs and flows. 

She seethed over him as the hours passed, staring numbly at the television as it hummed cartoons her toddler had been watching before they left. Ezra was placed in his baby swing, and left to soothe himself to sleep. She curled up on the sofa, staring into the abyss of colorful, flashing cartoons, and gripped her coffee tight. 

Then, she was crying without understanding why. 

Everything fucking hurt. Everything fucking hurt all the time, and she couldn’t understand why.

She blamed the move. She blamed the downsizing, from a full, vivacious home to a shitty apartment in Brooklyn. She blamed her husband for uprooting their lives so he could go and study fucking fish. She thought he was stupid. She thought he was brilliant. She hated him for all of it. She hated herself for all of it. 

She tried to cry quietly, so as to not upset the baby, or re-wake him when he’d just finally begun to settle. 

The hours passed without her awareness.

By the time her husband was walking back in through their front door, she’d hardly noticed that lunch time had come and gone. 

“Avi?” he called. That edge in his tone. She knew it wasn’t intentional—she knew he didn’t even realize he was speaking so… so… harshly half the time. It still infuriated her. It still soured her mood immediately, or at least, more than it was already soured. 

“Yes?” she answered, jaw tight. The rim of his coffee cup was brought back to her lips for a generous sip—something to distract herself with. 

“Hey,” he greeted. His true, friendly intentions rounded out and softened that hard edge to his tone, but not enough. “Hey, get your things. Your bathing suit. We’re gonna go on a date.”

She stopped mid-sip and swirled the coffee over her tongue. Would it kill him to ask her?

“Don’t you have to work?” she answered, protesting. Giving him an out. She knew he didn’t want to spend time with her anyway. She knew it. After all of the chaos with Raphael Wolcox… Avigal knew he’d never forgiven her. How could he ever, truly, love her again? She was certain Reuven just tolerated her because of their children. That he didn’t love her. And she didn’t love him. At least… that’s what she would tell herself. 

His voice—so familiar to her, like it was part of her own larynx—sighed out his words behind her. “Yeah, but… I think we should have some time together. I already called your mom. She said she’ll take Ezra for the day. Give us a break.” He paused, almost as though he were unsure. “Canceled my lectures. Your mom’ll get Ched and Kuna after school, too.”

Avigal’s jaw tightened again. So he just made all the decisions for them, she guessed. What if she didn’t want to do anything today? What if she wanted to stay at home and use her free time to finally have a glass of wine and relax?

Of course, it didn’t matter what she wanted. Only what her husband wanted. He got the final say on leaving the Navy, on them moving, on having more fucking kids when he knew she didn’t want more. And then he’d had the audacity to suggest an abortion when he knew how incredibly wrong it was. Even if he wouldn’t do anything to make sure he made it to Heaven, she was still going to. 

And now this. Telling her to get her things. Telling her what they would be doing. 

She pursed her lips and didn’t move, just glared into the television as its images flashed into a commercial. In that brief flash of darkness, she saw her reflection. She witnessed her own aging, and her own dwindling looks, and she thought to herself: no wonder he won’t touch me. He gets to look at twenty-year-old girls all day and this is what he comes home to. No wonder. No wonder. No wonder.

Her eyes glossed over as she huffed out a shaky breath and gulped at more of her coffee. 

“Sweetheart—you okay?” he asked behind her. So forcefully. God, she fucking hated him.

“Yes.” 

“Alright…” Armistice. “Come on? Wanted make sure we got on the road before the lunch rush.”

“Where are we going?” Her tone was stiffened. She still did as he said. Got up and put her now empty mug in the sink. 

“The beach…” he offered. His palm came reaching out to knead at her shoulder. She shrugged it off. Behind her mouth: don’t touch me . A form of punishment for staring at younger women’s asses all day. Don’t touch me because I know you don’t want to. 

Half an hour later, they were dropping off their son with her mother, and driving through Brooklyn to hit the highway and get down to the New Jersey shore, where it would be less crowded. At least, that’s what Reuven had cited. 

The majority of the ride was accomplished in silence, save for the brief spats of miscommunication they fell into. The first was not half an hour into the trip, when they rolled up to the toll and Reuven realized he’d forgotten to fill up the EZ Pass, which left him to use the small amount of cash he kept on hand. Something he was nonplussed about and found objectively mild in terms of being a nuisance. Avigal, on the other hand, had taken it as an opportunity to strike.

A pointless, twenty minute argument ensued over obligation, responsibility, and the lack thereof. 

Sometime farther into the drive, as they were passing through Jersey, a second argument emerged. This one held a different tone to it. Something more… emotional. Telling. Vulnerable. 

Of course, it took a few steps to get there. 

“Should have just left the baby with the sitter.”

“What? Why would we do that?” Reuven retorted, already preparing himself for the next outlandish thing his wife asserted. 

“Since you love looking at her so much.”

There it was. 

“Avi—what the hell are you even talking about?”

“I see the way you look at her.”

He laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was unbelievable. He’d hardly exchanged longer than a passing hello and goodbye with their babysitter, who they only called upon when her parents or one of their friends couldn’t watch the kids. Which was very, very rare.

“I don’t look at the Ae-cha in any way other than normal, Av.”

She fell silent for a moment. 

“Besides, weren’t you the one who left them with the sitter after her time last week?”

More silence. 

Of course. She could start the fire but couldn’t stand its heat. 

“I wouldn’t have to but…  well I’m sure you love being around all your coeds.”

Reuven snorted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying,” she shrugged, gazing out the window at the passing landscape. “You have it made. Get to look at twenty year old girls all day. Since I’m—” she grimaced, “—old and fat now.”

A heavy sigh lifted and dropped her husband’s chest. 

“If you’re old and fat, then I’m old and fat, Avi.”

A quick, spiteful retort to his attempt at consoling her. “Yeah I’m sure the students you’re fucking love that about you.”

“I’m not— fucking any of my students, Avi,” he responded firmly. That edge was sharpening up the boundaries of his tone again. Irritation bubbling up to the surface.

“Yeah, well… You think I’m a terrible mother, so I guess it’s understandable.”

“I don’t think that. What? What are you talking about?”

“Why are we even doing this? Hm?” she sniffled. “How many times have you brought it up? In the last five years? If you wanna divorce me, just do it already.”

He sighed again.

“I know you want someone who’s a better mother. Looks better.”

He shook his head, both in rejection and disbelief, though it was only half-lived. 

“We should have left the baby with the sitter,” she muttered again, if only to get a rise out of him.

Words strung together poorly and quickly, no time for studying them before they were delivered.

“You left her with the kids past her time and now you want us to leave the baby with her again, for what? To not bother your mother? They need time with family, not to be carted off to whoever will take them off our hands.” A resurrection of an argument long passed and never resolved.  “If you don’t care about me—if you don’t love me anymore, Avi, that’s fine. But don’t… fucking neglect my children.”

There was a long beat of silence, before Avigal’s voice broke through it, acidic. 

“Or, what? You gonna kill me?”

‘Excuse me?”

“Killing people’s a sin. You’ve done plenty of that.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”

“It doesn’t matter if you were paid to do it, Reuven. You killed people. Innocent people.”

He laughed again, all bitter and no sweet. “Oh, that’s fuckin’ low .”

“Why? Because you’re a hypocrite? Because you have no problem defying god’s wishes but you can’t handle it when—”

“I told you how I felt about the shit I had to do in confidence! I told you because you’re my fucking wife and I expected you to fucking care.”

It was her turn to laugh incredulously. Taunt him with it. Gain the upper hand. That’s what the entirety of their marriage had been about anymore: having the last laugh. One-upping and sabotaging and winning and losing. 

“Well, it was all for nothing, wasn’t it? All those kids you blew up. Because in the end… you just wanted to go and be prissy little fuck and study fish .”

Silence. Silence. Silence.

So much silence it pressed uncomfortably into his eardrums. 

He remembered that promise he’d made to Chedva, before her birthday. That he and her mother were just going through a rough patch. They would figure it out soon. They’d stop arguing. They’d stop yelling. They’d still love each other.

Reuven sighed again, but this time, approached her more gently.

“Avi… I… We don’t have to get divorced. We can work this out—”

“Why are we even bothering with this?” she spit back, so viciously.

“Because… we love each other,” he insisted, trying to keep his temper about him. When she said nothing in response he glanced over at her harshly. “Right?”

“Do you? Love me?”

“Of course I fucking love you, Avi. You were the first person I ever loved.”

“Then… when did we stop acting like it? Was it back in Coronado?”

A pin drop. There it was: vulnerability. The storm after a rising humidity.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

She scoffed. “Sure. You’re the one always telling me what we’re doing. I don’t ever get a say—”

“You’ve had plenty of say in our lives, Avi—”

“No. You just tell me what we’re doing. Even with this date. You just told me we were going. I didn’t get a say.”

“Well, I’m—I’m trying to keep us afloat , Avi.”

His words hung densely in the air between them.

Then: downpour.

“You were never home.”

“What?”

“In California. You were never home.”

“I tried my best to be. I tried my hardest—”

“It doesn’t matter!” she suddenly bit back, her frustration spitting out into the small space between them. “Did you ever think about that? How you being gone for… six months here, a year there… how that would affect me? How that would affect our marriage , Reuven?” She didn’t let him defend himself. She continued on despite his hard pressing interjection, overpowering his voice with her own. “No! You didn’t! You didn’t fucking think about that because all you ever think about is your-fucking-self!”

“What was I supposed to do, Avi? You wanted me to stay in the service, that’s what working in the service is. I mean, it-it feels like pulling teeth with you. You said you didn’t care. You wouldn’t talk to me—”

“Because all you cared about was Chedva!”

A pin pull. A grenade drop.

He shot her a glare that could have killed. His words left him ice-cold and calm.

“And you didn’t?”

Avigal’s jaw flexed. Backed into a corner. She barked like her life depended on it.

“Of course I did!” she backtracked.  “But I cared about you , too.”

“Yeah?” he prompted, all remnants of his willingness to try to mend things gone now. “ Is that why you cheated on me?”

She huffed, angrily. In her eyes sparked tears. Her arms folded defensively over her chest. Her eyes avoided him, staring back out the window. “We’re still on that?”

He laughed. Jovially. Bitter without the sweet. “It doesn’t exactly stop hurting , Avi.”

Silence.

“I know you’re cheating on me.”

“I’m not cheating on you. I’m not you .”

She scoffed.

“Why don’t you go get some hot, young co-ed to go take care of your kids?”

“Fuck you, Avi,” he seethed suddenly. 

From her side of their island, she caught a whimper in her throat. Suddenly, her voice was more guttural; rounded out with emotion.

Vulnerability.

“I don’t even know why you love me,” she croaked, and then she was crying. 

His kryptonite, and she knew it. 

He reached over to hold her shoulder. “Avi—don’t… come on—” he sighed. She lifted her hand to hold onto his. A very, very rare point of contact. Gentle touch had all but disappeared from their relationship.

“I’ve never been good enough for you,” she whispered. 

Reuven swallowed. His gaze flickered over to her from the road, trying to assess whether she was being authentic. Whether she was speaking from her heart, or her anger-flooded veins.

What he found waiting for him was authenticity. 

He sighed. He drew his palm over his stubbly face, and rubbed at his mouth, trying to choose his words carefully. “You’ve always been good enough for me, Avi,” he answers emotionally. “Always. I just want you to fucking… let me. Let me love you.”

She sniffed and turned away. 

“I’ve been fucking Mark.”

Reuven went quiet for a while, before sighing again, and quietly resigning to it.

“I know.”

She stopped, suddenly looking over at him. “You know?”

“Yeah."

“A-And you…? You don’t want a divorce?”

A long, pointed silence.

 “I love you, Avi. I just…” he shook his head. “I wish you would stop… All this sabotaging shit. Aren’t you tired? I’m tired. I just wish you would just talk to me.”

She looked down, teary, choking on her now settling cries.

“You don’t make it easy.”

“We should go back to counseling.”

Pin pull. Grenade drop.

“I don’t wanna go back to fucking counseling. I don’t wanna fucking breastfeed. I don’t—” she gulped, suddenly sobbing. “I don’t want to have a baby. I didn’t—I didn’t want—” she stopped, clapping her hand over her mouth. 

He sighed, reaching over to rub her shoulder again. “I know it’s not what we wanted. But… you didn’t want the abortion, so what else were we supposed to do? And now… now we have Ezra. He’s beautiful, sweetheart.”

“Just—go fuck one of your stupid co-eds!” she suddenly snapped, viciously, shrugging him off. “If you can even get one. You’re getting old and fat ,” she remarked, suddenly insulting him.

His jaw tightened. His knuckles around the steering wheel did too.

Calm down. Count to a hundred. Take deep breaths.

“You get so fuckin’ spiteful,” he murmured. “You ever realize that?”

She said nothing for a while. 

“Then divorce me over it.”

Finally, he reached his tipping point. Exasperated, he groaned, emphasizing his words with his gestures. “If you want a divorce, Avi, then we’ll get a fucking divorce—”

“Do you want a divorce?”

The gear was ripped into park. The driver’s side door slammed. 

“I don’t fucking know.”

Adrenaline charged hands reached shakily for a cigarette from his pocket, and then ripped back open the door to reach for the lighter below the radio. 

As he inhaled a deep drag off the nicotine and turned around, his heart sunk. 

“Oh—are you fuckin’ kidding me? Shit ,” he groaned through a plume of smoke rushing from both his nostrils and mouth. 

“What?” Avigal asked, pointedly, still sitting arms-crossed in the passenger seat. 

Reuven rested his arm atop the driver side door, sucking in another deep drag. “I… I knew I should’ve checked before we came down,” he huffed, eyebrows drawn inward. With how spontaneously he’d decided the date, checking the water safety completely slipped his mind.  “The water’s too choppy.”

From the cover of the SUV, Avigal scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Bullshit,” she muttered.

“What?”

“What, you wanna turn around?” she mocked, glaring at him.

“No,” he tried to explain, sincerely, still frustrated.“No—the flag, Avi. It’s a red flag. The water’s too dangerous.”

She scoffed again, laughing in disbelief as she finally got out of the car. “A retired Navy SEAL thinks the water is ‘too dangerous’? Okay.”

“I’m being serious.” A plume of white smoke was exhaled into the wind. 

Avigal thought he was trying to get out of spending the date with her now. She quickly retrieved that nice, new iPhone of hers and Googled it. 

“It says we can still go in. We just have to be careful.”

There it was: his temper, rearing its ugly head again. He groaned, drawing his palm over his eyes for just a moment before dragging his callouses down his profile.

“Avi. Seriously . Just this once, can you trust me on something that, oh I don’t know, I’m a literal expert on?”

Of course not. She rolled her eyes. She lugged one of the folded up beach chairs out of the trunk. 

He grabbed his cigarette between his teeth, mumbling against it as he went over to help. “Here, let me—”

“I can do it, thank you ,” she spat. 

At that he walked away. Sand pushed in through his toes as he stumbled down the sandy hill towards the secluded beach front, that book on vampiric indigenous mythology he’d picked up from the library gripped tight in his hand.

If she was determined to make this date hell, then he wasn’t going to play along. As she set up one beach chair, for herself, Reuven sat up against a large boulder and propped his forearm atop his bent knee, flipping open to the first page in his book. Only a few pages were traversed before he called out to his wife, in frustration. “Just don’t go into the water, Avi. Please.”

“Yep.” 

Of course he was telling her what she could and could not do, yet again.

Of course.

---

The waves came so powerfully, and so quick in concession that there was no time to even gasp a decent breath of air between each new resurfacing of their heads above the water. Bewildered and trying to make sense of where they were, the reprieve lasted quite literally two seconds before slamming back down into them. 

Unconquerable.

Their bodies rolled and dragged through the waves like rag dolls. 

The only thing that had saved Reuven was his training.

Two decades of conditioning his lungs to go without air for ten minutes underwater. 

Two decades of conditioning his eyes to see against the sting of raw, unfiltered, unmedicated liquid pressing into them.

Avigal had gasped against the influx of saltwater pulling,  hopelessly, into her sinuses. Then, into her lungs.

She’d never listened to him. She’d never understood him. All the times he had tried to show her how to do it—how to breathe and keep her calm while the water overtook her—she shrugged them off. Even if she had paid attention during his lessons with her and the kids, she may have never been able to conjure up that knowledge here. Not in the face of imminent death. The weight of moments suddenly heavier than the densest black hole. Their expiration ripping by with no time to hang on.

The water took ownership of her body.

The water took ownership of his, too.

He knew only of instinct and self preservation.

He’d tried so hard to bring her with him.

He had pawed for her blindly underwater, desperately, panicked. Screaming against the pressure.

And only when he narrowly found a slipping grip around her ankle did he try to swim up, and bring them back to safety.

But she kicked.

She kicked at him.

It wasn’t her fault.

It was instinct.

It was horrible, damning, sabotaging instinct.

They learned about it in BUD/S, when he and his fellow recruits were forced to lay, arms interlocked, side by side, and let the ocean’s tide ascend and descend over them. The sputtered against the sea. Squinting eyes shut. Coughing. 

A commander behind them, bellowing in his baritone to get their fucking heads down. 

Don’t you pick your goddamn head up, sailor! You want your men to die?! Do you want your men to fucking die?! Get your goddamn head back down now!

The wash of foamy tide over their sputtering faces. Thirty interlocked arms. Thirty pounding hearts, fighting intentionally against their worst instincts for survival. 

The sea was never forgiving.

It was never exonerating.

It took her with it.

And her husband… her husband had no choice but to let it claim her. 

He swam to the surface not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

He was not superhuman. Just like she had suffocated against the saltwater, and was actively dying , so was he.

So was he.

He saved himself.

He let her drown.

She sunk to the sea floor, eyes wide open and deadened, body limp. In peace. 

Reuven’s head broke the ocean apart, and his throat gasped for a wild breath, choking in droplets of saltwater. 

One second later, an unseen arm was forcefully hoisting him up, out of the sea. Onto a smooth, solid surface. 

Exonerating him. 

A fish mongerer. 

A pile of dead and dying trout sat in a large red bucket on the deck. Reuven could hear a voice screaming. It took him a moment of desperately trying to swipe at the waves in some hopeless attempt at catching Avigal to realize that all of those guttural, violent calls of my wife were coming from his own mouth.

Before he could capsize again, that fish mongerer pulled him back. Trying to reason with him. Trying to find his eyes. 

“She’s gone! She’s gone, man. You gotta leave it! She’s gone…”

A grown man, sobbing in a stranger’s arms. A grown man, sobbing into his hands, in an interrogation room a state away from his home. 

Three hours of intense, grueling conversation. Two cops who didn’t buy it. One witness—his only saving grace. 

Night had moved in upon him through his daze. Every mile he passed in their black SUV had already left his recollection by the time its next mile-marker approached. 

He rolled up to that toll booth. 

He passed over a water logged twenty dollar bill. 

The weight of his wife’s absence was buzzing beside him. 

In some dream-state, he stood outside, upon his in-laws’ front porch, numb from the skin to the soul. 

A conglomerate of three children, two running his way. 

How does a father tell his children their mother is dead?

How does a husband tell his mother-in-law her daughter is dead?

“Get your brother in the car, Ched. I have to talk to Bubbie and Zayde.”

Nauseous. He felt so goddamn nauseous. 

How? How do you say it? How do you deliver a proverbial death sentence?

One moment, the waters of their lives were stilled. The next—violent, unconquerable waves, crashing down, down, down.

A sudden, gasping wail. Crumbling to knees. 

“No! No! My baby!”

Sometimes you don’t need air or mass to fall victim to gravity.

Sometimes gravity is a metaphor.

Sometimes gravity is a choking confession.

Sometimes gravity is telling a mother and father their child is dead.

Sometimes gravity is telling a teenager and toddler their mother is dead.

Sometimes gravity is laying down in a bed so intensely devoid of a presence that was there just last night.  

Sometimes gravity is realizing that the last thing you said to your spouse before they disappeared forever was fuck you. 

Sometimes gravity is a metaphor.

Sometimes gravity lays down upon a man’s chest and crushes inward until his heart pulls through his spine and down into the earth’s core.

“Where’s mom?

“We’ll talk about it when we get home.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Silence.

“Dad?”

“We’ll talk about it when we get home.”

Trembling fingers scrolling through parenting forums.

Bouncing knee.

How do you tell them? How do you say it?

Searching, searching, searching.

“Ched? Kuna, baby? Come sit down. We have to talk about something.”

Increasing panic. 

“Where’s mom?”

“Sit down, sweetheart. Please—”

Inhale.

“No! I want to know where mom is!”

“Chedva Aronov. Please.”

Pleading. Begging.

“Something really… really bad has happened.”

Exhale.

“What?” 

Panic, from a child’s mouth.

“Your mother… she-she was in a really bad accident and—”

Gasp. Choke. Suffocate.

“I’m so sorry—I-I—”

Violin screech. Pin pull. Grenade drop.

“What?! W-What does that mean, dad?! What does that mean?!”

Increasing vibrato.

“Ched—”

“Is she dead?!”

Bellowing. 

Sobbing.

Screaming. 

“B-But that doesn’t make sense!”

Anger. Bargaining. 

“I know, Ched. I know—”

“You’re a good swimmer, dad! That doesn’t make sense!”

Accusing. Anger. 

“It’s more complicated—”

Violence. Screeching.

“D-Did you—?!”

Trembling. Gasping.

Flushed faces. Wailing newborn. Sobbing daughters.

“What?! No! No! Cheddar, what the fuck! No, of course not!” 

Stomping away.

Slammed door. 

Deadened gaze.

Climbing toddler. 

The softest knuckles on a bedroom door.

Howling pain, sputtered into a pillow.

“Ched?”

Voice breaking around syllables.

Children finally asleep.

Cold ceramic basin.

Retching.

Retching because no tears were coming.

Three bloodied lines carved into a girl’s arm. 

Suicide plans researched in secret.

A trip to a psychiatrist.

Failure. Failure. Failure.

A closed casket funeral.

A coffin with no body.

An Ashkenazi hymn. 

A song of mourning.

Gravity.

Gravity.

[syncrgistic]

Closed for @ofherbalisms

There's a soft glow from the moon as Anu sits outside, listening to the buzz of the cicadas. She hated that noise the first night she spent at the sanctuary, it felt too quiet, too unnerving like she was anticipating something bad to happen. The quiet before the storm, except the storm never came. Now, it served as a reminder that they were safe, she didn't have to sleep in intervals, jolting up every time she heard a noise. If it was under a different circumstance, she'd probably laugh thinking about how far she had come from being a city girl who slept soundly to the sound of sirens and cars honking on the road and didn't even know where to start to make a simple campfire to trekking across the country, using a map, compass and sheer willpower. Sometimes she wished her ma was here so she could show her the person she had become.

There was so much that she wished for and though it seemed stupid and childish, sometimes she'd sit under that starry skies, eyes searching for a shooting star to wish upon. Anu knows that it will never come true, that a shooting star is just meteor, a bit of debris burning up as it passes through the atmosphere but she can just pretend for a little while, feed into her fantasy before she falls back to reality. Her hands are clasped, eyes squeezed shut as she quietly recites a prayer in Hindi. It's been a while since she's prayed, and in all honest truth, it was hard to hold onto her faith when the world was going to shit.

She opens her eyes at the sound of rustling, her body tense, hands falling to grab a rock but she breathes a sigh of relief when she remembers that she's safer than she has been in the last few years. Her body's still frozen though, even if she had been mentally preparing herself for the inevitable, for when they could no longer dance around each other. One half of her wants to just get up and leave without a word. The silent treatment had been working well enough till now. But the other half of her knew that they had to rip off the band aid at some point and maybe she just had to be the bigger person and say something, anything. "Sorry. I ⎯" The words dissipate on her tongue. Coward. There had been so many speeches in her head and she couldn't even bring herself to begin a single one. "You can stay, I'm leaving anyways." She hovers for a moment, not quite ready to go, hoping Reuven would say something. Tell me to stay.

[be-good-be-safe-be-kind]

[ fare thee well | | 1100 words | ao3 ]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 🌙 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

anger is no stranger to jake. they used to be thick as thieves, the pair of them, scraping their knuckles and bruising their knees against anyone who tried to harm them. their relationship hadn't lasted long, but it was never meant to; anger was marc's first, and jake only hoped that sharing it would help everyone.

it worked, briefly, until marc caught on and his fury caught up with them. steven sat by, idle but not entirely uninvolved — someone had to keep a handle on their hygiene and finances while their self-sabotaging behaviors became almost competitive — and waited for the dust to settle. as the voice of reason, he patiently explained that containing things up in exclusive boxes, things that were public knowledge, so to speak, wouldn't do them any favors.

marc reluctantly, petulantly agreed. jake knew better than to voice his opinion.

and now the answering machine blurs before his eyes. his heart nearly stops before his brain forces him to press the button again to replay the message, and he lets out a sigh laden with guilty relief that the name of the dead is of a great-uncle and not his father or brother.

he wants to throw the phone out the window and scream his lungs out. he wants to get into his cab, surround himself with the familiar smells of leather and cigarettes and crawley's tea, and drive until he runs out of gas. he wants to submerge himself in a lake, enter a boxing match he has no shot at winning, drink at a random bar and go home with the first person to make the suggestion. he wants to call jean-paul and hear the operator tell him the number is out of service, feel the loss of his partner all over again. he wants to call marlene, ask her to come home, and feel the justified vitriol in her voice when she turns him down.

jake wants —

and that right there is the problem. want is a foreigner to jake. like anger, they'd been joined at the hip, but somewhere along the road it only served him pain and disappointment, so he packed it up and left it alone in the trunk.

only now it turns out it was simmering, along with the rage, and they're teaming up against him tonight.

jake settles for balling his fists and slamming them through the bathroom mirror until his splintered, bloody reflection lines up with his self-image.

growing up, he'd heard tales of yosef's greatness. of his escape from lithuania, his ability to build a community in a little town only a couple hours away from ellis island. his determination to travel and assist others to transition them between their lives in shtetls to eretz yisroel, successfully obtaining travel documents for dozens of them.

his father had inherited yosef's father's second name, eliyahu, a declaration of faith given to a child when he's too young to know what it means. marc's brother had inherited the first name, reuven, an acknowledgement of god seeing the parents' desires and blessing them with a son.

jake's name wasn't given to him in the traditional way.

he considers, for a brief moment of hysteria, to curse god for allowing the death to happen. despite what a lot of people think about him, jake's not a fool. he's got enough seichel to know that a man who recently celebrated his 91st birthday was unlikely to make it to his 92nd, to know that he was fortunate enough to survive his first, and that he'd been blessed with dozens of relatives who filled his life with light and love.

but none of those things explain why he's angry, not tonight.

motzei shabbat.

he'd said havdalah, enjoyed the way the rainbow candle wax dripped down his hand and the way the smell of the cloves sharply tickled his nostrils. he'd left the phones and computers disconnected until he cleared up the last of the shabbat dishes.

jake methodically checked each device, sorting every message and responding to the ones he was qualified for and leaving notes for the others to answer when they returned. he was ready to retire to the living room and try drifting off to sleep with the familiar sounds of star trek reruns when he decided to double check that he hadn't missed any messages from friday.

and there it was, the message from the shul letting him know that yosef ben reuven eliyahu had died, sent three hours before shkia.

someone had known what happened and left him in the dark for thirty hours.

not someone. marc. for all intents and purposes, the house and most things in it are marc's.

jake can't blame him for being quiet, for keeping the news to himself. he knows his brother well enough by now to know that whether or not marc intended to keep him in the dark, to let him have a good shabbos all to himself, that's what happened. steven's silence is likely more of a choice than an involuntary response — it's been decades since they left and he still can't face his father — and it wasn't like jake had such a connection to the great-uncle.

he vaguely recalls sitting by his side for lessons before marc's bar mitzvah, a mix of disdain and awe in his stomach as he learned about their religion and culture and family history. resilience, it turns out, was hardwired into his system, and they didn't know what to do with it other than lash out and wind up in trouble for skipping classes. it still hurts to know that he's far from the only one whose family splintered, to know that it was almost inevitable that his mind would splinter as well and that no one would want to talk about it.

jake rinses his knuckles under the cold water then plugs the sink and picks up the ever-present bathroom schmata. he wipes down the mirror, letting the shards of glass fall into the basin and around the taps, containing them until he's a bit more settled and confident enough to pick up the pieces without wanting to drive them into his palms.

and there they are again, the pesky want and the not entirely unwelcome anger, neither of them strong enough to allow jake to actually act on them. he's left in a limbo, bein kodesh l'chol, not that he's ever been particularly holy.

jake wraps his hands and leaves his tear-stained cheeks beneath the remaining glass. he settles into a chair, picks up a siddur, and turns to find the tehillim.

[yiddenheroes]

TAKEN

By the time Lavi left her dorm room, it was already too late. 

Skirt swishing around her ankles, she hurried across the Mount Scopus campus from the Student Village to where her first class of the day was. Dressed in a short sleeved light blue shirt and a long midnight blue skirt and sandals, she hefted her satchel and climbed the steps leading to the building housing the folklore department. 

That was what her degree was going to be in. Jewish and Comparative Folklore.

It all started with her first semester, when she took a folklore class with Professor Reuven Tzan’ani. She had had no idea at the time that it was going to become her major, or that her professor’s presence in her life would change it completely. 

Since that first semester, she had been made aware of a world behind the curtain of normal, a glimpse beyond the veil of the usual. She learned that there was more to the world than most people knew - and more to herself than she ever could have imagined. 

“Are you sure you’re not a para?” Professor Tzan’ani had asked. 

“A para?”

“Paranormal. Supernatural. A Creature. The fact that you can see these things are…strange, to say the least.”

He himself was a Changeling, a fairy child swapped at birth. He hadn’t learned until he was a teenager, when the fairy courts had ordered for the return of all Changelings to the fairy realm, and he was given a choice: live as a human with slight quirks, or come back to the fairy realm. He chose to remain in the human realm and focus on teaching folklore, which most students didn’t realize weren’t so much just stories but were actual, real life occurrences. 

As she walked, she felt a buzz in her pocket; it was Levy, trying to talk to her. But she didn’t want to talk to him. Not after their last encounter and what had happened. 

Namely, him trying to drink her blood. 

How was she to know that her boyfriend was also a vampire? 

As she tucked her phone back into her pocket, she felt a cold wind blowing. The hair on the back of her neck stood up - she froze. Something felt very wrong. 

The bracelet around her wrist began to hum, the purple crystal vibrating. That meant that somewhere near, something supernatural was going on. 

Lavi bound up the stairs, running all the way to the classroom. 

When she got there, she noticed a ring of students around the door, a security guard desperately trying to hold them and their cell phones off. 

“That’s her,” a redheaded student named Shlomit Elbaz said. “That’s the TA.”

Everyone turned towards her, and Lavi started. “What’s going on?” She asked.

“We ask all students to return to their dorms,” said the security guard in a gruff voice. She recognized him as Milton, an older security guard on the grounds of Hebrew U. They had chatted a little once - he was the son of Holocaust survivors, former paratrooper. Usually he had a bright smile on his face. Now, though, he just looked mad. 

“Now!” He barked. 

The students scattered, and Lavi moved to the side to let them pass. When they were all gone, Milton turned to her and said, “You too, Kehimkar.”

“Is Professor Tzan’ani alright?” She asked, alarmed. 

Milton sighed, and his face lost the deep scowl, replaced by a certain bewilderment and desperation. Lavi had a feeling he was out of his depth, at least in terms of more recent years. 

“Listen, Kehimkar. I’ll tell you this - it looks bad in there. I can’t let you in to see. You better return to your dorms.”

Lavi hesitated. “But Professor Tzan’ani-”

“Kehimkar. Don’t make me say it again.” 

She nodded and turned around reluctantly. 

As she walked back, she took a detour - to Tzan’ani’s office. 

She strode in with a purpose - as his TA, it wasn’t crazy for her to be in here, though a little less usual for her to be there without Professor Tzan’ani - as striding somewhere with purpose meant less people stopped you. As soon as she was inside, she closed the door, and rushed around to the front of his desk.

She made her way through the drawers, forgetting where what she was looking for was, until she found it in the second right drawer: a Magic 8 Ball. 

She heard a noise, and looked up - but it was just a pigeon outside landing on the windowsill. 

She crouched down and looked the Magic 8 Ball square in the circle. 

“Is Professor Tzan’ani in danger?”

She shook it.

Without a doubt

She sucked a breath in. Okay, Lavi, relax. The 8 Ball got agitated sometimes if you got too upset. She had to remain calm. 

“Do I know the place where he is?”

Reply hazy

Which could mean anything, from him being on the move to it being a place she knew of but had never been before.

She wasn’t sure how many questions she had left. The Magic 8 Ball got a little…moody, if you asked it too many questions at a time. Lavi also had a feeling it liked Professor Tzan’ani more than her, but she had no way of proving it. 

Lavi desperately thought of another question. Suddenly, something struck her.

“Is this a terror attack?”

She shook the ball almost frantically, hands shaking.

My reply is no

A definitive answer. That was good. 

And, though she knew already, she had to confirm.

“Is the person - or thing - who… is hurting Tzan’ani supernatural related?”

It is certain

Okay. One last question. 

“If he’s in danger, that means he’s alive, right?”

The blue triangle hovered in the murky water. 

Concentrate and ask again

She growled in frustration. She remembered the test questions Tzan’ani told her to use in case the 8 Ball started acting out.

“Is the sky blue today? Do pink unicorns exist? Is my major Jewish and Comparative Folklore?”

Concentrate and ask again

Concentrate and ask again

Concentrate and ask again

Lavi sighed, and sat back on her haunches. 

The pigeon behind her pecked the glass, and she jumped. She turned around - wait a second, that wasn’t a pigeon…

She opened the window - it got stuck, and she had to tug - and the hooded crow flew in. 

No matter how many times she watched it happen, she was always amazed by transformation magic. She watched as the body of the crow expanded, claws changed into sneakered feet, wings into sleeved arms and gloved hands, and beak retracted into a humanoid face. Suddenly, she was looking at an olive skinned young man with raven black hair shot through with gray wearing jeans and a Goo Goo Dolls concert shirt. 

“Ori,” she said in relief, though it was quickly replaced by urgency. “Something’s happened to the professor.”

“I know,” Ori said. “He was taken by a portal hopper named Ren.”

“Right, he was - wait, what?” Lavi stared at Ori. 

“No time, I’ll explain on the way.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small stoppered bottle that said ‘Drink Me’ in large pink letters. 

“No way,” she said. 

“It’s either that or a giant crow flies over Jerusalem.”

She sighed and took the bottle. “Fine.”

“Grab something of the professor’s - we’re going to need it.”

The professor had a small saddle to be tied to Ori, complete with a seatbelt. It was for rare occasions, as Ori didn’t like to be ridden as an animal, so the fact that he was urging Lavi to set it up showed the urgency of the situation. 

“So what happened?” She shouted against the wind as they flew over the campus. 

“A few years ago, Tzan’ani was a visiting professor in Japan. He had this one student, Ren Kawamura, who was infatuated with him. I remember him very clearly, because he continuously stalked the professor and I had to knock him out once.

“Ren was obsessed with the occult and the supernatural. He somehow found out about the professor’s history, and threatened to expose him - though I’m not sure how he planned to do so - but we thwarted him and got him expelled.”

“So how’d he get to the professor now?” Lavi asked. 

“He made a deal with Crossroads.”

“Fuck.” Lavi didn’t curse much, but this seemed an appropriate time. 

Crossroads was a demon with a bone to pick with Professor Tzan’ani. Last semester, Professor Tzan’ani, Lavi, and Ori had stood together against him after he made a deal with a student, and had not only destroyed the contract, but had banished Crossroads and landed a major hit to his power. If Crossroads was back, that was bad news.

“Careful, Gulab. We need your head in the game.” Ori’s feathers ruffled in the wind. “He gave Ren access to portals.”

“Since he can’t come after the professor himself, he’s sending someone else,” she realized. 

“Exactly. I don’t know who sought whom out, but somehow Ren and Crossroads have teamed up against the professor.”

“So where is he now?” 

“That’s the problem. Ren used the Crossroads to travel all over the world - it’s hard to track him.” So any crossroads where someone had summoned a demon for a deal would be fair game.

“Then where are we going?” She shouted. 

“To a witch who owes us a favor.”

With dawning horror, she realized who he was talking about. “No way, Ori. She’s way too dangerous.”

“She also owes him, and is incredibly powerful. We need her.”

“So that means-”

“Yup. Hold on.” 

Ori tucked his wings in and settled into a dive. Lavi tried not to scream as he plummeted towards the earth. At the last second, just before impact, there was a crack like thunder, and Ori and Lavi were swallowed up by a portal of their own.

Warsaw, Poland

The witch ushered them in with a cup of coffee in her hand. She was in a red bathrobe and her feet were slippered - it was, after all, around eight-thirty on a Wednesday morning, and she had nowhere to be. 

“So,” Pani Agnieszka Dvorkina said with a wide grin. “You’ve come to me for help. How far you’ve fallen.” 

“Enough, Dvorkina,” Ori said gruffly. “This is serious.” 

“A former student made a deal with a crossroads demon with a grudge against Professor Tzan’ani,” Lavi explained. “And he was taken.”

“You’re one of the most portal savvy witches there is,” Ori said. Agnieszka waved her hand with a pleased expression. “And one of the most powerful ones out there. And,” he added. “Reuven saved your life.” 

Agnieszka’s expression soured. “Ugh, why must you bring that up?” She sighed. “I assume you’ve brought me something of his?”

“So you’ll help us?” Lavi said, surprised.

“Don’t look so surprised, Gulableh. I never forget a debt. Now, what did you bring me?” 

Lavi brought out what she had brought - the professor’s blue pen, which he used to grade (and occasionally doodle) on tests and papers. 

“A pen? You couldn’t have grabbed a brush with hair, or a vial of blood?” 

“Sorry, I totally forgot about all the spare vials of professor blood lying around,” Lavi said sarcastically.

“We were in a hurry,” Ori muttered. 

“Follow me,” Agnieszka said. She led them further into her house, where a giant map hung on the wall. She muttered something - Lavi was about to ask her to repeat herself, until she realized that she was chanting a spell.

A wind blew the witch’s blonde hair around, and her eyes, when they opened, glowed a light blue. She continued chanting, and opened her hand, which held the pen. The pen lifted from her hand, and began to float towards the map. It spun around lazily a few times, laying horizontally in the air, until it suddenly stood up straight and moved across the map. It landed on Havana, Cuba - then flew over to Cardiff, Wales. It moved around a bit - Thessaloniki to Cairo to Harbin - before finally settling in Liberdade, Sao Paulo. Ori cursed.

“Ren has relatives in Brazil. I should have thought of that.”

Agnieszka’s eyes lost their glow, and she focused her gaze on Lavi. “Well, there you go. You found him. Good luck.”

“Dvorkina!” Ori said.

“That’s Pani Dvorkina to you, sheyd.” Agnieszka sneered.

“He saved your life, witch,” Ori sneered right back. 

Agnieszka sighed. “Fine.” She grabbed the pen and muttered something else. Her eyes glowed briefly. “Take this. Bring it to the city - it’ll be your compass. The tip of the pen will lead you - click it closed when you find him.”

“Why?” Lavi asked.

“So that you don’t dry the ink,” Agniezska said. “No, it will let me know where you are.”

“Why not just come with us?” Lavi asked. 

Agnieszka shook her head. “If your demon’s there, he’ll sense me coming.”

“We banished him, though,” Lavi explained. “He can’t return to Earth - at least, not until the seal fades.”

“You sealed the crossroads demon?” Agnieszka said. “Like, Crossroads himself?”

“Uh, yeah.”

She digested that for a bit. “No wonder he’s so mad. But the seal couldn't have been so strong in the first place, if he was able to extend his influence and find this student.”

“It happened so fast,” Lavi explained. “I didn’t even see what the professor did.”

“I did,” said Ori. “He used a blood seal.”

“Fairy blood,” the witch said. “Powerful stuff. But not powerful enough.” She sighed. “I can help strengthen the seal. But…”

“But what?”

“Well, I’d be a fool to put myself against such a powerful demon. I’d need something in return.”

“Name it,” said Lavi. 

Agnieszka put a finger to her lips. “So eager. I could ask for anything, and you’d probably give it to save your poor professor.” She sighed. “I’m feeling unimaginative right now, so let’s just say you owe me, hmm?” 

“Gulab…” Ori said in a warning voice. “Let me make the deal.”

“You’ve made enough deals, Ori,” Lavi said. She turned to the witch. “Fine, I agree to your terms.”

She felt a tingle, and her bracelet shuddered, like even it knew how bad of an ideal this was. 

“Perfect. Now, I expect you want a portal to Liberdade?” Agnieszka asked. 

“Yeah,” said Ori. 

She went to an old computer and typed in a picture of it - witches needed to be able to see where they were going in order to create a portal, or else you could end up anywhere - and brought up a map of Sao Paulo. 

Agnieszka waved her arms, and slowly, a blue portal expanded in the room. 

“Remember to click,” she warned. 

“Thank you, Pani Dvorkina,” Lavi said. 

And with that, Lavi and Ori dove through the portal. 

Liberdade, São Paulo, Brazil

A giant torii gate welcomed visitors and residents into the city. Signs in Portuguese and Japanese, and occasionally Chinese as well, boasted sales of food and clothing and gift shops. The streets were paved with red brick, and red streetlamps, mimicking the torii gate, lit the early morning way. It was around five A.M. in Brazil, and the early birds of the district of Liberdade were just waking up. 

So the streets were mostly clear as Ori and Lavi made their way around, following an conspicuously floating pen that pointed them to their due north, where they’d find the professor. 

They followed it through the streets, the sun rising with every step, until it led them to an apartment building. 

Ori craned his neck up. “I can fly up to one of the windows, see which apartment it is.”

Lavi waited while he transformed and flew up with the pen in his beak. He came back down soon after.

“Door is locked, the curtains are drawn. I can bust in, but I don’t know how much attention we want to draw.” 

“I have another idea,” Lavi said, and placed her finger on the first ringer, then drew it down until it hit all of them, letting out a droning buzz all the while.

“You’re going to wake the whole building,” Ori said. 

“Yeah, but…” She waited. Some of the intercoms buzzed with questions, tired and grouchy voices probably asking who was waking them up at such an hour, until finally someone buzzed to let them in without asking and Lavi opened the now-unlocked door.

Over the intercom, one man’s voice came back on and shouted something at them. Ori cringed. 

“Well that wasn’t very nice,” he said. 

“You know Portuguese?” Lavi asked.

“You’re around as long as I’ve been, you pick up some things. Especially curses.” 

Ori, short for Orev, was a sheyd who had been around since the times of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, maybe longer. Lavi wasn’t exactly sure about who he was, only that he had become indebted to the professor and had decided to work with him in exploring the occult. Lavi wondered, sometimes, but she never asked. He seemed touchy about his past. 

As they walked, a thought occurred to her. 

“Hey, Ori. Have you ever interacted with a vampire?”

He scrutinized her. “A vampire? You haven’t been hanging around any, have you?”

“Well, see, here’s the thing. I was almost…bitten by one?”

Ori stopped and grabbed her arm. “When?” He asked, alarmed. “On campus?”

“Yeah. But don’t worry, I’m not a vampire.”

He sighed. “Being bitten doesn’t turn you into a vampire. That’s a myth - vampires are a race. They procreate like everyone else. But some vampires have special powers that can be activated when they drink your blood - reading your memories, control over you, etc..” 

“Oh.” Lavi said quietly. 

“Listen, not to put this vampire thing away forever, because I can see it’s important to you, but we have to focus on the professor right now.”

“Right, of course.”

They continued on through the winding halls of the building, following the pen, until they eventually arrived at a door marked 3D. 

“You ready?” She asked. 

“Click the pen,” Ori confirmed. 

Lavi clicked the pen. For a second, nothing happened. Then, a swirling blue portal appeared and expanded next to them, until Agnieszka appeared. 

“You haven't unlocked the door yet? He probably sensed me coming! Hurry!”

Ori rolled his shoulders, and positioned himself to kick the door in. 

With a fierce yet precise strike of super strength, the door cracked open, ripped off its hinges. Ori swiftly moved in, followed by Lavi and Agnieszka. 

“What the hell?” Came a sleepy voice from one of the rooms, and then a young man with stubble on his chin in a grey t-shirt and blue pajamas pants emerged. When he saw them, especially Ori, his eyes narrowed. 

“You,” he hissed in accented English. “I won’t let you take him away from me! Not again!”

“It’s over, Ren,” Ori responded in English. Lavi was thankful that she had spent the first few years of her life in Mumbai, raised in a dual language school, so that she was able to understand the, honestly, movie-like dialogue. 

“No! No way!” He shouted, and dashed back into the room he had come from. 

When Lavi and the others followed, they came across a terrifying sight - the professor lying unconscious on the bed in the arms of Ren, who held a glowing knife to his throat. 

“Ren, put that down. You don’t want to do this.” Ori said. 

“You took him from me once. So I found someone who hated you as much as I did, and we worked together to bring my professor home. He’s safe, with me, once you leave!”

“Ren,” Lavi tried. She noticed Agnieszka had moved behind her, and heard her muttering something under her breath. 

“Oh, I know you. Gulab Kehimkar, my professor’s new TA. I know everything about you - where you come from, what type of coffee you drink. You’re just another one who tried to steal him away from me.” 

Lavi didn’t know what to say. Nothing could have prepared her for this moment, for a knife held to the throat of Professor Tzan’ani, for a madman to be holding someone she held dear captive right in front of her. 

“Ren,” Ori began. 

“You shut up. If I can’t have him in life, I’ll have him in death!” 

He moved his arm, and a line of red appeared on the professor’s neck. 

“Wait!” Ori said. “You made a deal with a demon. That means, before you can be together, you’ll have to go through Gehenom - Crossroads won’t let you be together for a long, long time.”

Ren paused. “How do I know you’re not just lying to me?”

“Oh, I’m not. Dvorkina, now!”

Suddenly, the air around Ren began to fizzle and pop. Suddenly, Lavi was looking at Agnieszka holding the professor. Ori moved, faster than she could see, and tackled something behind her. Lavi spun around - there, wrestling on the floor, was Ren and Ori. 

The knife had swiveled across the floor. 

“Grab it!” Ori said, pinning Ren down. Ren hissed at him, but Ori wouldn’t budge. 

Lavi grabbed the knife - and hissed, as a tingle ran through her.

“Kill him,” she heard. “Kill Tzan’ani.”

“Here,” suddenly Agnieszka was there with a sheet. She plucked the knife from Lavi’s hands and wrapped it up. “That’s some dark magic. You don’t want to be touching it.” 

Lavi looked around - at the professor, still unconscious on the bed; at Ori, who held Ren down; at Agnieszka, who had moved again to the professor to check his vitals.

“What now?” She asked. 

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you-”

Ori placed his hand over Ren’s eyes, and Ren immediately fell asleep. 

“Now, we bring the professor back.”

“What about Ren?” She asked. Agnieszka and Ori exchanged a look. Lavi knew what that meant. “We can’t kill him.”

“Well, we can’t just leave him here,” Ori said. 

“The professor will never forgive us if we do something to him,” she said. 

Ori sighed. “We’ll give him to the Council for judgement.” He’d probably get a demonic lawyer who would try to work out his contract with Crossroads, and then have his memories of the whole thing wiped. 

“How’s the professor doing?” Lavi asked. 

“His vitals are stable,” Agnieszka answered. “He just has a head wound. I’m not exactly a healer, though.”

“So what do we do?” Lavi asked.

“It’s Brazil - there’s a feiticeira or a bruxa somewhere,” Agnieszka said. “But magic on head wounds is tricky. Or, we can take him to a hospital. Or wait till he wakes up.” 

“I’m up,” came a weak voice. 

Lavi squealed. “Professor!”

“Ow,” he said. “Too loud.”

“Oh, sorry.” She sat down next to him. “Do you remember what happened?”

“I was…” his gaze hardened. “Ren Kawamura. He’s an old student of mine. He showed up in class with a glowing knife…threatened the other students if I didn’t come with him.” 

Of course the professor had given himself up to protect his students. “We got him, professor. And we got you.” 

Reuven Tzan’ani looked around. “Pani Dvorkina?” He asked, surprised. “And Ori. Thank you.” He focused on Lavi, and frowned. “Aren’t you missing class?”

Lavi laughed, though there were some tears too. “I’ll be running a little late today, professor.”

He nodded. “So will I.” 

The four of them, plus an unconscious Ren, were together. And that, to Lavi, was all that mattered. 

[cafegraces]

@starlcved said : i didn't come here to make friends. from reuven // 19.89 vault starters.

the lady of peranth studied their fae visitor with pursed lips for a heartbeat before shaking her head. " clearly, " she intones with a sigh. " tell me, is it a requisite of all shadow wielders that they be so surly? " it seemed a valid question considering that this appeared to be the disposition of both that she had met. regardless, the question is delivered with her usual kind smile to make it clear she's only joking. " and, if you did not come to make friends, then what, exactly, did you come here for? " her tone is warm, if not slightly cautious, but she'd be a fool not to approach this with a healthy understanding of the dangers he could pose.

[elfy-art]

sigh and reuven sketch

(he/him for both)

[themousefromfantasyland]

The Finger

As told by Howard Schwartz

I'm officially in Halloween mode, so what about a Jewish folk tale where the supernatural creature is defeated by a rabbi solving a civil dispute?

And try to guess which film this Jewish folk tale served as inspiration for.

One night long ago, in the ancient city of Safed, three young men went out for a walk. Reuven, the eldest, was to be married the next day to a beautiful and wealthy maiden, and his companions laughed and joked and teased their friend. The moon was full that night, and the young men decided to leave the beaten path and walk in the thick forest that surrounded the city.

The moonlight illuminated even the darkest parts of the forest, and they passed through it fearlessly. At last, they reached the riverbank and rested on large rocks near the shore, while they watched the river below. Here they continued to make merry for they were very light intoxicated.

It was during this time that one of them noticed something strange nearby. It was an object the size of a finger that stuck out of the earth. They got up to examine it, assuming it was a root. But when they came closer, they saw to their amazement that it was indeed a finger that emerged there.

Now on a different night, the young men might have felt pity for one buried so near the surface. But filled with high spirits, they joked about it instead. One of them said: “Who among us will put a wedding ring on this finger?”

And Reuven, the groom-to-be, quickly replied that it must be he because he was to be the first one to marry. Then, as his friends looked on in amusement, Reuven took off his ring and slipped it on that finger, pronouncing as he did the words Harai at m’kudeshes li-“You are betrothed to me”-three times, as the law requires. But no sooner did he finish speaking than the finger began to twitch, much to the horror of the young men, who jumped back at the sight.

Suddenly the whole hand reached out from the earth, twitching, and grasping. And as they stared at it in horror, frozen in place, the ground began to rumble, as if the earth were about to open. Suddenly the body of a woman, wearing a tattered shroud, rose out of the earth, her dead eyes staring directly into those of Reuven, her arms open as she cried out, “My husband!” in a terrible and terrifying voice.

Hearing this, the three friends screamed in horror and took to their heels, running through the forest as fast as they could go. But this time the way was dark, for the moon had slipped behind a cloud, and as they ran they tore their clothes on thorns and branches, but never did they stop running or even dare to look back until they had reached their homes in the city. For all the time they ran, they heard the unearthly wail of the dead woman close behind. Only when they were safely in their own homes, with the doors locked and the windows shuttered, did they dare breathe a sigh of relief and tend to the many cuts they had acquired in their wild dash through the forest.

The next morning the three friends met together, still pale and shaken. And they agreed to keep the horrible events of the night a secret, for they were deeply ashamed of their jest and its terrible consequences. Then Reuven went to the ritual bath to prepare for the wedding and left his friends alone with their confused thoughts.

Now a great many people had gathered, for Reuven and his bride belonged to two of the most distinguished families in Safed. But just as the ceremony was about to begin, a bloodcurdling shriek came from the back of the crowd, followed by the screams of many others, provoking a panic. For there stood the corpse of a woman wearing only a worm-eaten shroud. Most of the crowd-including the bride and the families of the bride and groom-ran away when they saw her until none were left there except for Reuven and the rabbi, who had been about to pronounce the wedding vows.

The rabbi, alone among all of those present, retained his composure. He addressed himself to the corpse and said, “Why is it, woman, that you have left your final resting place and returned to the living?” And the corpse replied, in her unearthly voice:

“What blemish does the bridegroom find in me, that he should want to wed another? For cannot all the world see that he is wed to me?”

And she held up her hand, on which the ring of the bridegroom could be seen, with his initials engraved on it. Then the rabbi turned to the bridegroom, who was crouched in terror behind him, and asked if what the woman said was true. In a trembling voice, the young man told of his walk through the forest with his friends and of the jest they had played when they had found the finger sticking out of the earth. And the rabbi asked, “Did you pronounce the sacred vow three times?” The young man meekly nodded. And the rabbi asked, “Was it done in the presence of two witnesses?” Again Reuven nodded. Then the rabbi looked very grave and said that the rabbinic court would have to be convened to discuss the matter, for in the eyes of the law it appeared that the young man had indeed bound himself to that corpse in matrimony. When the bridegroom heard these terrible words, he fainted dead away and had to be carried off to his home.

In the days that followed, the city of Safed was in an uproar, for who had ever heard of a living man marrying a corpse? And the parents of Reuven begged the rabbi to find a way to free their son from the terrible curse. As for the rabbi, he immersed himself in meditation and the study of response, searching for a precedent. But there was none; instead one would have to be set. On the day the court was convened, the rabbi called upon the corpse to appear, and she did so, still wearing the worm-eaten shroud in which she had been buried. Under oath, she told what young Reuven had done in the forest. Then the rabbi called upon the two friends, who reluctantly confirmed what she said. At last, the rabbi called upon the bridegroom, who also confessed that the vow had been made, but pleaded with the court to annul the marriage, for he had never intended for it to happen.

Then the court addressed the dead woman and asked her if she would relinquish her claim, but the corpse was adamant that the marriage must be consummated. For while she had lived she had never married and had thus been denied her hour of joy. And she was determined to receive after death what she had been denied in life.

Then the rabbi called upon the parents of the bridegroom, who testified that the betrothal of their son to the daughter of the wealthy man had been made even before the birth of the children. The two couples had vowed that if one had a boy child and one a girl, then they were to be wed. And the parents of the bride confirmed this vow.

Finally, when all the testimony had been taken, the court gathered together to discuss the case, while young Reuven trembled, his eyes avoiding the terrible corpse that also stood waiting among them. At last, the court reached a decision, which the rabbi announced. He said, “It is true that in the presence of two witnesses, Reuven unwittingly made a vow of marriage that appears to be valid.” Here the rabbi paused, and the young man and his parents were filled with terror. Then the rabbi continued, “There are, however, other factors that must be considered. First, the wedding vow would deny the betrothal, and it is widely known that one vow may not be permitted to negate an earlier one. Second, the vow of the bridegroom was not made with intention. Finally, there is no precedent for a claim on the living by the dead. Therefore the vows cannot be accepted as valid, because the bride is not from among the living. The marriage is thus declared null and void!”

Now when the rabbi uttered these words, young Reuven fainted again, this time from relief. But the corpse, having lost her chance to wed either in life or in death let forth an ear-shattering shriek that pierced the souls of all those assembled there and filled their hearts with horror. Then she collapsed upon the ground and became again one of the dead.

When those assembled had, at last, calmed down, the rabbi gave orders to have the corpse reburied, with proper ritual and at a greater depth, so that such a tragedy would never happen again. And after her burial, the rabbi called upon the parents of the true bride to fulfill the vow they had made before their daughter had been born and to complete the wedding ceremony, which had been so terribly interrupted. This was done and at last, the wedding of Reuven and his true bride took place.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day 10 (but late) - philippa pov of dijkstra/isengrim ft. merihart

When someone important to him ends up in hot water, Dijkstra desperately calls in a favor from Philippa.

Takes place ambiguously post-canon, at least 5 years after Philippa unsuccessfully attempts to have Dijkstra assassinated. Contains vague descriptions of burns, near death experiences, and medical treatment. Also Canon typical Philippa eilhart.

Philippa's emergency alert trilled, the one very few people on the Continent had the ability to trigger. She sighed, pausing in the midst of applying her eyeshadow to rummage through her belongings for the damn xenovox.

"I could still kill you, you know," she said as the little box crackled with sound. "I may no longer have leagues of assassins at my immediate disposal, but I could kill you personally."

"Phil," spoke a familiar voice over the xenovox. There was a strange quality to it that had little do with the tinny sound of the device. "I'm not all that in the mood for jokes right now." 

"I don't ever joke. I'm very serious."

Philippa finished dabbing gold shadow along her lids and switched to a silver liner. She had been expected at Sabrina Glevissig's Enchanted Chef party an hour ago and hoped to swan in forty minutes before the end of the event simply to place a very large order of discounted Chaos Cutlery and then leave.

"You know I wouldn't contact you unless it wasn't absolutely necessary. Phil, I need your help. I'd like to call in that favor. You said you owed me one."

She had said no such thing in so many words, but she had contacted the man who now publicly went by Sigi Reuven when she had learned of his return to Redania to tell to him that she regretted the way they had parted. He was more useful to her alive than dead these days, as her true allies dwindled to almost nothing.

"Dijkstra," said Philippa. "I had hoped you wouldn't be brave or stupid enough to take me at my word. I don't owe anybody a single thing. Besides, I have an appointment."

"Damn it, Phil." 

The desperation in the man's voice alarmed her. Ordinarily, he knew better than to take any sort of tone with her. She did not tolerate men who dared to raise their voice in her presence.

But she had never heard that sharpness in his voice. It was curious. Whatever weakness could inspire that tremble of fear in the voice of a man like Dijkstra could prove to be very curious indeed. 

"Say please," said Philippa, rubbing her lips together to smooth her freshly-applied blood-red lipstick. "And know that if you've wasted my time, I will not hesitate to finish the job I started years ago."

Not ten minutes later, Philippa sailed on silent wings through a dark forest, unsure what she would find when she reached the Temerian army encampment up ahead.

Dijkstra had all but begged for her assistance and yet been tight-lipped about the details. It was all very complicated and politically dull as usual. An accomplice of his had failed to appear at a rendezvous. News of a covert impending execution of said accomplice spread. Dijkstra could not intervene himself without compromising fragile alliances, and ordinary foot soldiers would be unlikely to succeed anyhow. Not without significant casualties, and not before the execution could be completed.

The most interesting detail she had managed to uncover was that the doomed man was no man at all but a Scoia'tael fighter. An elf. One who, by the regard with which Dijkstra spoke of him, sounded like quite the interesting character, one the spy did not just respect but considered a trusted friend, perhaps more.

It would be a pity if the elf was killed before Philippa could figure out just how interesting.

The rescue itself proved to be incredibly anticlimactic. 

The soldiers in the encampment were prepared for bowman or calvary, not a lone bird of prey and a swiftly-opened portal. 

The pyre had already been lit when she soared into the clearing. That the elf was not screaming as the fire lapped up the legs of his trousers, she took to mean he was an idiotically brave and stubborn creature or that he had already perished of smoke inhalation.

Her talons dug into his stiff shoulders.

As she shaped the portal around them and tugged him away from death, she saw that he was somehow conscious, his green eyes wild with pain in a horrifically scared face. 

The portal snuffed the flames, a billow of smoke following them as Philippa dropped the body of the elf to the stone floor and rose with a flap of her great wings to stand as a woman before Dijkstra in his study.

But Dijkstra had already fallen to his knees beside the prone body of the elf, tugging at his smoldering cloak to hold him crooked up in his arms. His hands trembled as he touched the frayed edges of charred fabric, hovering above the angry red of burned flesh.

"Get a healer," demanded Dijkstra, as though Philippa had not already paid her debt. 

"I'm fine," croaked the elf, in a voice choked with smoke, but his teeth chattered in the throes of shock and agony.

Dijkstra swept away his sweat-damp hair, and the elf turned his furrowed brow against his big palm. A breath later, he finally slumped into unconsciousness, and Dijkstra's bulk bowed over his body, gripping him in despair.

"Isengrim," he mumbled against the elf's hair. "Don't you croak on me, you old bastard. Not like this."

Philippa grimaced and triggered her xenovox. She was not, after all, as cold and heartless as she would prefer to be.

"Triss," she spoke into the face of the device. "I'm afraid I won't be making it to the party after all. Would you make sure Sabrina places my cutlery order? And then, I would like you to hurry to the location of this device. Bring medical supplies. A burn kit. It's urgent."

Triss Merigold arrived as swiftly as she always did when Philippa called.

After an hour spent tending to the wounds of the prone figure laid out on a futon in Dijkstra's office, Triss sat back and declared that he would live.

"Though he will–" She paused and swallowed, looking at the elf's sleeping face, perhaps realizing that what she had been about to say was rather foolish. "He'll scar."

Dijkstra laughed, his thumb tracing the groove of rippled scar tissue along Isengrim's cheekbone. He had knelt on the floor by the elf's head through the whole procedure, though now when he stood, it was achingly slow, favoring his knees.

From her perch on his disorderly desk, Philippa had watched him carefully as Triss worked. There was something about his distress that felt almost embarrassing to watch. Too earnest and raw. He had to know that this was a vulnerability easily exploited, and that someone like Philippa would not shy away from exploiting it if the need arose. And yet, Dijkstra did nothing to withhold his fretting, as though he could not. 

From time to time, he had leaned to brush his lips against the elf's clammy forehead, to rub soothingly at his arms when he whimpered in pain, to mumble soft words against his hair.

Philippa wondered what would happen if the elf were to succumb to his wounds, if Isengrim Faoiltiarna breathed his last here and Dijsktra had to rise and go on without him.

It would be unpleasant to witness, she decided. Some part of him would remain kneeling on the floor beside the dusty futon for the rest of his days. She had not thought a man like him capable of such lasting sentiment, but she saw its ugly truth now. 

When she had tired of watching Dijkstra, she watched Triss. The girl's soft hands worked deftly, flickering with warm light. Those gentle hands passed with the same care over Philippa's body most nights, as they had for far too many years now, as they likely would until one of them inevitably snuffed out of the world.

Philippa hoped it would be her who perished first, only so that she would not have to know what stranger she became when she left Triss Merigold's body behind.

"Come on, Triss," she said. "You said he'll live, well, that's that then. Debt paid. A life for an attempt on your life."

"Thank you," grunted Dijkstra, the spent adrenaline of the night leaving him pale and wrong-footed. His attention soon returned to the figure on the futon, lifting him swaddled in a woolen blanket to carry to bed. "Good night," he said, distracted, and disappeared through the dark doorway.

In the silence of the study, Philippa allowed her hand to rest for a long moment on the crown of Triss' head.

[ofherbalisms]

     𝑪𝑳𝑶𝑻𝑯 𝑴𝑬𝑻 𝑷𝑶𝑳𝑰𝑺𝑯, polish met metal, and Reuven listened quietly to Vanity's vent. The man stood at a small work bench a few feet away, finally smoothing some affection into his carbine after tinkering with it for an hour. Having been in the Navy, and then growing a lifeline attachment to this hunk of metal after the end of the world, Reuven was highly particular about who he allowed to even touch his gun. He, of course, thought the woman was capable and well-studied and deserved the opportunity, but perhaps he was not the best person to ask for this very reason. Too quickly did his internal debate return to his own love affair with his M4A1. Would he have allowed her to tinker with it as he had just done? There was a moment of silence between her question and Reuven's answer, as he ruminated over that silent question posed to himself.

     The answer was no. But why? "Vanity," he sighed, as if about to go on some fatherly spiel about being disappointed by life and how sometimes missing an opportunity was important to opening up another. But he saved her the belittling. Palm met coarse, dark beard and smoothed it down in thought, before he spoke very carefully, so not to hurt her feelings. "I think you would be perfect for the position. I just think that... maybe you should get a little more experience beforehand. There's a lot of troubleshooting to be done with obscure firearms, that you might not learn about until you get some more dirt on your hands." Did that come out gentle? His dark gaze searched her face, lips pursing slightly, as he awaited her reaction. Then, he quickly followed: "But—that's just my opinion. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong and you're ready now." A pause. "Why do you want to be gunsmith? What about it speaks to you more than the armory?" he questioned; perhaps a skillful deflection, as he dragged fingers through his hair in self-soothing, and then dabbed cloth into polish again.

"I feel like everyone is being too dramatic about it. Like, it's not like I don't know that it's an important job." Vanity wasn't sure why she cared so much about it, either. So what if she wasn't in charge of the armory? She had never been the hard-working type. Perhaps having turnt thirty only a couple weeks ago made her reflect on 'having a purpose', and all that philosophical bullshit. "And the missing ammo incident, no one was ever able to trace that back to me, so I don't get why people keep blaming me for that one."

She turnt towards the other person, trying to figure out if what she was on the wrong. "I'm asking you honestly: Don't you think I would be capable enough to do it?"

[seventfics]

Blind Owl

Written for @witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo​

Prompt: Temporary or permanent blindness Relationships: Triss Merigold/Philippa Eilhart Rating: M Content Warnings: None (Mild Gore, Blood and Injury) Summary: It's hard, but Triss finds a way to help Philippa.

Read on AO3

* * *

“Philippa.”

At the mention of her name the sorceress turns, her head held high. Too high, Triss notes, to be facing her directly.

The edges of the blindfold over Philippa’s eyes are stained red.

“Triss. I must say, of all the things that have happened today? I didn’t expect to meet you.”

Triss quirks a smile at her. “Disappointed?”

“No, never,” she says with a graceful wave of her dirtied hand. “Surprised. I overheard that all the mages had dipped from Novigrad. I should have known you would stay behind.”

“I wasn’t going to, to be honest. Geralt convinced me.”

“Yes, he’s good at that, isn’t he?”

Triss’ portal had taken them from Sigi Reuven’s bathhouse to her small room at the Rosemary and Thyme. It’s not her room, really, but a kindness of Geralt’s friends, and one she immediately took up. Better than the Bits, where she lived in tight quarters on a lopsided building. Now she has actual furniture she picked herself, a full bed that can support her weight without sinking, and a lock on her door. It is much more to her liking.

Philippa would hate her decor, if she could see it. They’ve always had different taste in furniture.

“Circumstances aside…I’m glad you’re with us, Phil.”

Philippa hums. She walks the room carefully, a hand tense with magic held forward to sense for objects. “And what are the circumstances, exactly?”

From her pocket, Triss brings out an agate.

“Geralt stumbled upon this, some time ago.” The stone glimmers from old traces of Philippa’s magic. “You want the Lodge back together. Well, so do we.”

“Ah. Our interests align.”

Though she is blind, Philippa props herself neatly on the lone bed’s edge as Triss explains the looming threat of the Wild Hunt. In all things she is flawless artistry. Her hands cross over a hip, as she lifts her legs to lounge over Triss’ bed—and oh, how familiar, the sight of her like that. It distracts her mid-speech more than once.

“In my state,” she drawls, gesturing to her blindfold, “I am not much help.”

Triss is less artful, but just as coquette with her lilting voice. “You are, Philippa,” and more seriously, she adds, “You were the best of us.”

“Quite. You understand that this is a matter most crucial for the survival of magic.”

After a moment’s pause, Philippa sits upright against the half a dozen pillows Triss hoards at the back. She presses a hand to her temples, sighing as if displeased by something.

It is the closest sign she’s going to give to her exhaustion. Her pain.

Triss’ heart aches to help. But Philippa is proud. She is strong on her own, and protective of that right. She would not accept an ounce of pity nor mercy, no matter how well-intended.

Years of her acquaintance have taught Triss how to work around that.

“We need you at your best. Phil,” she says, sitting by the weary sorceress to take one of her hands between her own.

Philippa tilts her head up then. Again, too high, and slightly left of Triss’ ear.

“Tell me what I can do.”

* * *

The wet stones under her fingertips harbor the cells of Philippa’s experiment. It’s grotesque, she knows. Some sections have grown beyond control, eye-masses with mutated pupils, multiple irises, some even larger than a megascope’s crystal. But as Philippa does her best rebuilding the Lodge, reforming allyships, and planning the Wild Hunt’s defeat, Triss must do this unpleasant work. For Philippa.

She nearly slips and falls down to her doom twice. The stones are at such a precarious altitude, at a precise distance from the cavern waterfall to promote cell growth without washing off the results. What was Philippa thinking? Growing eyes in such a dangerous place?  

But here she is, carefully extracting the cells from the stone with her magic. She suspends them in a sterile magic seal, to store in her purse. For some reason, that makes her laugh, a sound that echoes back to her ears three times. She has Philippa’s eyes in her bag. Philippa’s beautiful eyes that had been gouged out by an angry and paranoid king. The amber of them is now indistinguishable from moss.

There is no time to rest between quests, and yet, once she is finished gathering the most that she can, Triss climbs to safer ground on shaky hands and knees, needing a second to breathe. Just a second. She cannot spare more than that to mourn, or cry, or remember how Phil used to tease her with just a stare and a raised brow.

It will be fine.

She will have new eyes. They won’t be the same, but Philippa won’t care. It’s just Triss who needs a second.

Back when they were a powerful Lodge of Sorceresses, and not the tattered survivors of imprisonment and war, Triss had mooned over the proud advisor to the crown of Redania. She didn’t make her attention obvious, but nothing goes under Philippa’s notice. The woman had made herself friends among spies and, like in all things, absorbed some of their skills.

They spent many nights in each other’s company. Sometimes, it was just to forget the cruelty of war, the greedy men who broke what they could not claim. Triss was lucky to be considered important. A sorceress has more worth as a power to be wielded than a woman to be abused.

And after the Battle on Sodden Hill, Triss had little trust in men.

Maybe that’s why she started this...liaison. And maybe it had been a shallow, poor excuse at first, but. Somewhere between disillusionment and distraction, her heart stole away in the owl’s nest of Philippa’s making.

“Do you think one day we could be happy?”

With a single candle to illuminate the room, Triss braves the words. This world is not made for them to find happiness, but they are powerful. They could make it so.

Philippa doesn’t move from her limp, careless spread over silk red sheets. The dim firelight paints her skin bronze. Nothing covers her, and it is beautiful.

“Happiness has never been my dream,” she says, her back to Triss. “My vision remains on the future of the Northern Kingdoms and the conservation of magic. A sorceress’ dream.”

That is Philippa. Sturdy. Focused. Her hedonist streak is a sparse creature, easily ignored.

Still, Triss hopes. That is who she is.

A long pause ebbs the nervousness buried in Triss’ chest. No one disturbs them, which is rare. No megascope call. No xenovox. No letter from either of the kings they serve.

Triss nearly dozes off, warm and content with things, when she hears a quiet, “Do you see me, in your dream of peace and leisure?”

“I do.”

She opens her eyes to the jostle of movement. Philippa has finally turned around to stare at her, her dark hair a wild fan over her shoulders and breast.

“Perhaps,” she says as she brings up fingers to play with the loose fire-red strands over Triss’ ear, “perhaps one of us should keep that possibility in our mind.”

* * *

“Ah, you’ve returned.”

The surprise lilt in Philippa’s voice tells her that she did not expect Triss so soon. She understood the hard undertaking of retrieving her growing eye cells from the deepest caves of her most secret hideout.

But where Philippa is clever, Triss is eager. Of course she would go as quickly as possible. The Wild Hunt does not wait. The witch hunters of Novigrad will not cease their chase. There is no time to be dallying.

“Well darling, hand them here," Philippa starts, her palms opened to receive Triss' hard-earned work, "so I can get to the matter of fusing them in.”

“Let me.”

She pauses at the plea. If she had eyes, Triss imagines she would have blinked.

But it’s only a short lapse in time, her mind running through a million scenarios.

Eventually, she nods, deeming the offer acceptable. “If you insist. But do not take too long, I hear our brave witcher is to return soon with our esteemed Cirilla, and I have much to talk with her about the future of our Lodge.”

Slowly, Philippa undoes her blindfold, unknowingly as Triss goes to kneel in front of her.

She does flinch at the sight. It is a nasty healing wound, dark and sunken where eyes should be. The skin around the sockets is black. But her own chest, glamored to hide snarled skin, bares worse scars from battle.

The cells take time to transfer from her purse, and they are not yet fully nurtured. They will have to grow into place. With Philippa’s magic to amplify sight, it would be enough to maneuver buildings and streets on her own. It is not by any means a perfect resolve.

Triss puts great care in choosing the healthiest cells. She tries not to cause too much discomfort—any sort of magical procedure that modifies the body would be painful, at the very least uncomfortable—but if it is unbearable, Philippa bears it.

When the last sliver of magic dissipates, Philippa voices a tense but honest, “Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me.”

There, still knelt between pale thighs and gazing up at the newly-healed flesh around mossy eyes, Philippa kisses her.

A wound Triss did not know she still had in her heart opens. Fresh blood pounds through her body like a blaze set free on a forest. It burns, the kiss like a match against her lips, and the world narrows down to them, now, together after everything. Her arms cannot hold onto Phil any harder as she kisses back with all her being. All her fire and pain and love that never waned.

When they separate, Phil whispers, “Do you still see me in your dream of the future?” like a secret that should not be named in fear of shattering it.

“I do.” They don’t have time to second-guess their dreams or the choices that got them closer to achieving them. Just a second is all they can spare, to doubt.

One day, Triss hopes they can finally stop running, stop fighting, scheming, surviving, and simply be.

It will be fine.

They stay in each other’s arms, breathing each other’s air. Philippa’s fingertip lingers above Triss’ lip, almost playful in its upwards tug. This time, when Triss stands up and Phil raises her head, it feels like she is looking at her.

“Well, then we better stop this world-ending business first.”

Triss gives her a smile through her eyes.

One day.

[ren-c-leyn]

Last Line tag game

Tagged by @letswritestories101, thank you ^^

 This is from Forgotten Gods, as it somehow evolved into my current writing obsession. Here’s the last paragraph I wrote. @writingonesdreams, here’s your tag. Enjoy the excerpt. ^^

 They raced into the village like servants of death gods were on their heels, and many of the villagers whom saw checked to make sure there weren’t. Reuven didn’t see this, even if he had he wouldn’t have cared. His mind was made up, the path forward clear. He pulled his companion to a sharp stop at the last house on the end of the road. Though, Sylvar hadn’t even gotten the chance to fully stop before he felt his riders light foot bounce off his shoulders. A shadow fell over the great wolf as he felt the reins suddenly change direction. Just as the momentum from the sliding stop had finally died away, the last bit of the knot was tied onto the thick log that held up the wood roof over the porch.

 “Stay, and for Tear’s sake, please behave.”

 Sylvar grumbled at Reuven’s back as the elf walked away before sitting with an exaggerated sigh.

[laudsimogen]

Turn Away and Return Ch. 6

Summary: A stray daemon has been wandering around the Salvatore School campus ever since the portal to Malivore closed, and Josie intends to find out why. When she finally pieces together his story, she finds much more than she bargained for, including a girl she could swear she’s already falling in love with. AU: Daemons Pairing: Hope/Josie Length: 1,763

Read it on AO3

Previous chapter:  I Felt You With Me Chapter 2: You Don’t Have to be Alone Next chapter: Coming soon

“I have to tell you something.”

 “Is everything okay?” Hope said. She sat on her bed watching Josie stand awkwardly in front of her. “You left so fast yesterday, I was afraid I said something wrong.”

 “You didn’t,” Josie said. “But, uh, we talked to Ásfriðr and he wants you to go to the school and find him. He told me to tell you…” She hesitated. “He said that you can go there and face what you’re avoiding or you can keep pretending you’re okay playing hero all by yourself.”

 Hope scowled. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I have good reason to avoid the school.”

 “I know.” Josie looked down. “But the thing is, I think you don’t want to get close to anybody because you know they’re just going to forget you again.”

 “What?”

 “Your journal.” Josie gestured to the book still lying underneath the nightstand. “I swear, I didn’t look through it on purpose. I picked it up thinking it was a library book I dropped and when one of the sticky notes fell out I was trying to figure out where it went and—” She took a deep breath. “I know you’re planning on turning yourself and going back to Malivore if you can’t find another answer.”

 Hope sighed. “Josie…”

 “No, I know,” Josie said. “You want to protect everyone. I get it. But you can’t just keep sacrificing yourself.”

 “You think I want to?” Hope sat up straighter and a fire lit in her eyes. “I don’t want to go back there. It’s horrible. But what I did was the only solution at the time, and right now, it looks like it still is. It doesn’t even matter. Nobody remembers me; I just…I can’t go without him this time. I can’t leave him again.”

 “This time?” Josie shook her head. “Please, just come back to the school and help us find another solution.”

 “If I do that, then it’ll be that much harder to go if I have to make this decision again.”

 “Then don’t make it,” Josie begged. “Look, I know you remember all kinds of things that nobody else does, but I don’t want to forget anything else. I still feel like I know you, and I want you to be here. I want to be able to get close to you again.” She sighed. “I’m sure your other friends will all feel the same way if you give them the chance.”

 Hope looked down and shook her head. “It won’t ever be the same.”

 Josie sat beside her, so closely that their knees touched. “Maybe not,” she said. “Or maybe we’ll find a way to restore everyone’s memory. But either way, you don’t have to be alone.”

 Reuven climbed out of Josie’s hands as she spoke and inched closer to Hope. She could tell what he was doing, and part of her was scared, terrified of what it might feel like, but a bigger part of her trusted what Ásfriðr had said. It trusted her gut feeling toward Hope.

 Hope froze when Reuven crawled onto her lap as she prepared to reply. At first, Josie was afraid it was a huge mistake, but if anyone were to feel uncomfortable with it, it should be her. All she felt instead was warmth in her chest. Love. She loved Hope. She always had, even if she didn’t remember.

 Tears welled up in Hope’s eyes as she stared down at Reuven, her hands hovering above him as if she were afraid to touch him any more than he was already touching her.

 “It’s okay,” Josie said. She could feel tears brimming in her own eyes as well. She didn’t know this kind of intimacy existed. “You can touch him.”

 Hope lowered her hands and ran one thumb as gently as she could over Reuven’s back, and the tears fell. She stroked him once, twice, and then shook her head and wiped her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go back.”

 Josie sighed with relief, and a weight she didn’t know she’d been carrying lifted from her shoulders. Her own tears spilled over her cheeks as Hope leaned forward to wrap her in a warm embrace. “Thank you,” she said.

 Hope nodded and pulled away. “Well,” she said. “Let’s go get my daemon back.”

***

It was dark by the time they made it to the school’s entrance. Hope looked so apprehensive about it that Josie was sure she’d change her mind, but she took a deep breath and opened the gate herself.

 “He still spends all his time in the woods,” Josie said. “If you want to go find him by yourself, I’ll just go and wait for you upstairs.”

 Hope shook her head. “Can you come?” she said. “You’re the only thing that’s been connecting us since I came back.”

 Josie hesitated. Wouldn’t this reunion be a little too personal for spectators? But if it was what Hope wanted, she wouldn’t say no. “Of course I will,” she said. “If you’re sure.”

 “I am.”

 Hope took Josie’s hand as they started toward the trees as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then promptly let go. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to – I mean, I know things aren’t the same. I’m just still getting used to it.”

 “It’s all right.” Josie steeled herself and reached for Hope’s hand again, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You’ve touched my daemon,” she said. “Hand-holding is more than okay.”

 “It’s just—” Hope shook her head. “I understand why he’s angry. I don’t blame him. But what if he can’t forgive me?”

 “He asked you to come here,” Josie said. “He wouldn’t do that if he wasn’t ready to forgive you.”

 “You’re probably right,” Hope said. “I guess I’m the one who’s not ready to face him.”

 Josie’s eyes slid past Hope and toward the tree line as a familiar figure padded out from under the shadows. “Too late,” she said. “But it’ll be okay.”

 Hope let go of her hand and took a few tentative steps toward him. “Ásfriðr?” she called. “I am so, so sorry. I know I messed up, but—”

 She cut herself off and kneeled down as Ásfriðr suddenly streaked toward her. He bounded into her arms as though he’d never been upset at all, purring and butting his head against hers. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his fur, and for the first time, Josie saw them as they were supposed to be, both of them lit up with joy and relief. They were whole again, and her heart ached with love she couldn’t even begin to understand.

 “If you ever pull something like that again, I’m going to kill you,” Ásfriðr murmured, but he stayed still and content against Hope’s chest. “Tell me you’ll let us go home now.”

 Hope held him against her as she stood up and turned back to Josie. Her eyes were wet with tears, but she didn’t try to hide them this time. “Is my room still empty?”

 Josie nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s get you settled in.” 

***

“Where did all of your things go?”

 Hope shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t let go of Ásfriðr since they’d reunited. “I told your dad to get rid of everything,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be back and I didn’t want anyone trying to find me.”

 Josie hummed. “I guess it probably still doesn’t feel much like home, huh?”

 “It doesn’t matter,” Hope said. “I didn’t really realize how good it would feel to be back, even considering everything.”

She patted the bed beside her, and Josie sat where she indicated. Reuven climbed across her lap toward Hope like he had before, this time to touch noses with Ásfriðr and roost against him. He couldn’t do it without brushing up against Hope again, and Josie could feel Ásfriðr’s fur tickling her knee. She didn’t know whether she should mention it. Had this been normal for them before? It must have been to feel this right.

 Hope’s gaze softened down at the daemons and the corners of her mouth turned up. Josie didn’t think she’d ever seen a smile so beautiful.

 “This is what they always did when we’d hang out,” Hope said. “It’s almost like he hasn’t really forgotten.”

 “I’m not sure I have, either.”

 Hope looked up at her, her eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

 “I don’t know,” Josie said, her face growing warm. “Everything feels so natural with you. It’s like even if I don’t remember you, I know how to be with you. How to sit with you and how to hold your hand and how to talk to your daemon, even. It doesn’t feel like a new friendship to me.”

 “Well, it doesn’t feel like that to me, either,” Hope chuckled. She sobered a moment later. “I know this is strange territory. I don’t really know how to act with you, whether there’s a line and where it is. I never want to make you uncomfortable.”

 “Don’t worry about it,” Josie said. “I’m sure you have enough to deal with without second-guessing whether you’re making me uncomfortable.” She paused. “Judging by what I’ve been feeling these past few days, I don’t think you could.”

 Hope nodded and stroked between Ásfriðr’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she said. “For bringing me back here.”

 “Of course.”

 The air between them suddenly felt so heavy and full that Josie couldn’t breathe for a moment. All she could see was the light in Hope’s eyes, the curve of her lips. All she could feel was that pulsing, glowing love in her chest.

 She’d leaned forward kissed Hope once, chaste, before she even realized what she was doing. She didn’t have time to move away and apologize before Hope caught her lips again, kissing her slowly and gently. Lovingly. When they parted, they leaned their foreheads against one another and Josie closed her eyes, Hope’s dewy perfume floating around her and Ásfriðr’s purring filling her eyes. If she could stay like this forever, she would.

 “I’m going to get my memories back,” Josie murmured. “Everyone’s memories. I promise.”

 “You can’t promise that,” Hope said, but Josie could tell she didn’t fully believe it anymore. Maybe together they really had a chance.

 “Well,” Josie said, “I’ll try. And if I can’t do it, you’ll still have me. I can promise that.”

 Hope grinned and tucked a lock of hair behind Josie’s ear. “All right,” she said. “I think I’m okay with that.”

[elfy-art]

a pair of ocs i will not shut up about

[laudsimogen]

Turn Away and Return Ch. 1

Summary: A stray daemon has been wandering around the Salvatore School campus ever since the portal to Malivore closed, and Josie intends to find out why. When she finally pieces together his story, she finds much more than she bargained for, including a girl she could swear she's already falling in love with. AU: Daemons Pairing: Hope/Josie Length: 1,614 

Read it on AO3

Chapter 1:  Ásfriðr Next chapter: Hope

“It’s here again. Don’t move too fast.”

Josie glanced up at her daemon, a small brown and black bat, who sat against her bedroom window and looked out over the school grounds. She put down the book she’d been reading and gently moved the curtain out of the way.

It looked like an ordinary house cat, except that it wasn’t. It lurked through the shadows of the woods, its tabby pattern almost completely camouflaged in the mottled afternoon light. Its gaze roamed over the grounds with purpose.

“I don’t like it,” Josie said. “He looks like he knows what he’s doing, and his person can’t be far behind. I just don’t know what they want.”

“I don’t think it has a person,” Reuven whispered. “It’s been scouting out here all summer and we’ve never seen a person with it. That’s weird, Josie.”

“Come on. We both know that’s impossible.”

Josie swore as the cat caught her eye for a split second and disappeared into the trees.

“It could be possible,” Reuven insisted. He flew to Josie’s shoulder. “It’s obviously a daemon, but do you see anywhere down there a person could be hiding? Because I don’t.”

Josie looked back down at where the cat had been walking. Reuven was right; there was plenty of undergrowth among the trees, but no bushes or tree trunks large enough for a person to hide behind. Her stomach churned a little.

“You’re not thinking of going after it, are you?”

“Don’t you think it’s time we did?” Josie scoffed. “I want to know what’s up with him. And anyway, it’s just a daemon. He can’t do anything to me.”

“Okay,” Reuven said, “but I don’t think you’ll be able to get anywhere near it.”

***

The woods were empty and silent by the time Josie reached them, but she called out as she wandered through the trees, anyway.

“Hello?” She ducked under a branch and gazed around the area where the cat had disappeared. “I know you’re probably still out here. I just want to talk.”

Nothing.

“Please? Maybe I can help you.”

“Josie?”

Josie jumped and Reuven flew from her shoulder, startled. Landon stood a few feet behind her; she’d been so caught up in searching for the stray daemon that she hadn’t heard him follow her.

“You saw him, too, didn’t you?” he said. “The cat.”

“Yeah,” Josie said. “I thought I was the only one who ever noticed him.”

“It’s weird, right?” Landon held his daemon, Pernilla, against his chest. She had only recently settled as a mole. “I mean, it kind of freaks me out, seeing him around here without a human.”

“It’s definitely weird.” Josie looked one last time into the trees before turning around. “And he obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

“What about all those stories about witches being far from their daemons?” Landon said. “I mean, I know they’re not true, obviously. But maybe one is? You know, like one that’s been to Malivore and back?”

Josie shook her head. “I don’t know. He showed up after you destroyed Malivore, and even if something got out at the last minute, it shouldn’t be staking out the school like this.”

“You’re probably right.” Landon helped Pernilla onto his shoulder and she watched behind them as they left the woods. “I’m glad you’ve seen him too, though. I thought I was going nuts.”

“I was beginning to think we were, too,” Reuven whispered to Josie. He said it, she knew, because he still thought so. He knew something that Landon didn’t know and that Josie had been afraid to admit since the cat had first shown up: that she knew this daemon somehow. She couldn’t conjure an image of its person’s face, and she didn’t have any real memory of seeing it before, but it felt all too familiar.

Both of them knew she wouldn’t stop until she found it.

***

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Reuven said that night as Josie prepared a locator spell. “I mean, what are you going to do? Grab it and make it talk?”

“I can hold him still with magic,” Josie said. She smoothed a map of the campus over the floor. “It doesn’t have to be that invasive. Why are you so afraid to find out what his deal is?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like how I feel when I look at it.”

Josie ignored him and focused on conjuring an image of the cat: long, rich brown fur, dark mackerel stripes, a long face with large green eyes. She held the image in her mind as she spoke the incantation. “Ahsorum, dolusantum, infidictus.”

The back corner of the map began to glow, and a bright, pulsating pinprick of light settled directly on top of a tree.

Reuven inched onto the map to look closer. “Is that…?”

“Yeah.” Josie snatched the map off the ground and hurried out of the room so quickly that Reuven was barely able to slip through before the door closed.

Josie kept an eye on the map as she ducked through the trees and headed toward the edge of the property. Hardly anyone ever went that far through the woods, but Josie and Lizzie had explored every inch of them as children. The tree, when she reached it, was exactly how they’d left it years ago: large and hollow, but not nearly as grand as when she’d been four feet tall. The cat lay curled asleep within the trunk.

Josie stopped several yards back, and this time it was Reuven who couldn’t help his curiosity. He fluttered toward the tree as silently as his wings would allow and landed at the edge of the hollow. He slowly crept closer to the cat, but its eyes flew open and it reacted with the fastest reflexes Josie had ever seen. It had already torn away to the point it was almost out of sight before Josie managed to get the spell out of her mouth.

The cat froze in its tracks and Josie jogged to catch up with it. It hissed and spat, and when she entered its field of view, its glare sent a chill down her spine. She’d never seen a daemon look at a person with so much spite.

The hissing fell to a deep growl, and the cat spoke, low and steady: “Let me go.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Josie said, but her voice was taut. “I just want to know who you are. And how did you find that tree? My sister and I cloaked it years ago.���

The cat only silently continued to glare at her, but there was something else in his eyes. Longing or pain or something of that nature. She should have led with a different question.

“Where’s your person?”

The cat stared at her. “Let go of me,” he said. “I’m not going to talk to you like this.”

Josie hesitated, then dropped the spell. The cat stretched and sat down, his body tense. He wrapped his tail tightly around his paws before speaking again.

“My person is gone.”

Josie exchanged a glance with Reuven, and he instinctively moved closer to her. “What do you mean, they’re ‘gone?’” she said. “They’re…dead?”

“No,” the cat said. “She’s alive, obviously. But she’s not here. She’s not anywhere anymore.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Josie murmured.

The cat sighed, and it almost looked as if he were about to say something else, but he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You won’t be seeing me again.” He unfurled his tail and stood up.

“Wait,” Reuven said. He lit upon the ground in front of the cat and reached one clawed wing out to touch the cat’s paw. “What’s your name?”

The cat narrowed his eyes and glanced between Reuven and Josie. He searched her face for a long moment, and eventually, he said, “Ásfriðr.” Then, he disappeared into the depths of the forest.

***

Reuven lay against Josie’s neck as she stared up at the ceiling in her room. It wasn’t cold, but she could feel him shivering. She still felt sick to her stomach herself.

“How could his person just be gone?” Reuven whispered eventually. “I can’t imagine it. I don’t understand how that can happen.”

“It won’t happen to us,” Josie said, answering his unspoken question. “Whatever they did, it had to be intentional. There’s no way something like that could be an accident.”

Reuven looked up at her. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

Josie sighed and rolled onto her side to face him. “The timing. I mean, there’s coincidence, and then there’s this.”

“Malivore.”

Josie nodded. “Malivore. I think Landon was right, just…not the way he thought. I don’t think some witch with a flying broom and a daemon who could leave her came out of the pit. I think his person went in without him. We know other people were there when Landon closed it.”

“But who would go in without their daemon? The pain…”

“I know,” Josie said. “Maybe Malivore won’t let daemons in. I don’t know, but I feel so bad for him.” She frowned. “I feel even worse for whoever’s down there without him. She’d be all alone. More alone than we’ve ever felt in our life.”

“We knew her, didn’t we?”

Josie tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “He knew where our tree was, Reu. It’s still cloaked; his person had to be part of the spell. I just—I want to know who she is. I want to help her.”

Reuven looked away.

Malivore was gone. There was nothing she could do to help now.

[laudsimogen]

Turn Away and Return Ch. 3

Summary: A stray daemon has been wandering around the Salvatore School campus ever since the portal to Malivore closed, and Josie intends to find out why. When she finally pieces together his story, she finds much more than she bargained for, including a girl she could swear she’s already falling in love with. AU: Daemons Pairing: Hope/Josie Length: 1,436

Read it on AO3

Previous chapter:  Hope Chapter 2: You’re Lying to Yourself Next chapter: She Belongs with Us

“Are we really doing this?” Reuven whispered into Josie’s ear as she walked through town toward the motel indicated on the locator spell she’d done in the library. “It’s not really our business.”

“He wants her back,” Josie said. “He just doesn’t know how. And she must be so lonely without him.”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

“I’m not,” Josie said, then shook her head. Of course she was lying to herself. This was about more than reuniting Hope with her daemon. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe a little. But she deserves to know where he is.”

Josie knocked on the motel door, and when Hope answered, she was obviously shocked to see her there.

“Hi,” she said. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, okay,” Hope said as Josie stepped through the door. “Is everything all right?”

Josie wrung her hands out. She’d forgotten to rehearse what she’d say when she actually got here. “Everything’s fine,” she said. “Um, this is kind of weird for me because I don’t remember who you are, but I’m just here as a friend to tell you that your daemon is in my room back at school if you want to go get him.”

Hope gaped for a moment before regaining her composure. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Ásfriðr,” Josie said. “He explained everything.”

A thousand emotions crossed Hope’s face so quickly that Josie couldn’t even begin to decipher them, but then her expression grew hard and she shook her head. “I can’t.”

Josie frowned. “What do you mean you can’t?” she said. “You know he’s avoiding you, right? If you wait until he leaves, it’ll be a lot harder to find him.”

“Yeah, I know he’s avoiding me,” Hope said. “He probably hates me. And trust me, I would love to go make up with him and force everything go back to normal, but it’s not that simple. And anyway, I can’t just show up at the school. I don’t go there.” The “anymore” was implied.

“It’s okay,” Josie said. “Other supernaturals visit all the time. No one will think anything of it if I’m with you.” She paused. “But you know that. Why haven’t you told anyone what happened?”

“You don’t get it!” Hope sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re trying to help. It’s just…none of them know who I am. You and your dad are the only ones who have any idea, but even you don’t know me. I don’t want any attention from people I love who look at me like I’m a stranger.”

“I’m so sorry,” Josie said. She paused. “You really don’t want to go?”

“No.” Hope shook her head. “He probably needs more time, anyway. I’ll just stay here until he changes his mind.”

“Okay,” Josie said. She sat down on the edge of one of the motel beds. “Well, I know it’s not the same as knowing you, but if you want to talk about how things used to be, I want to listen.”

Hope raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

Josie twisted her fingers in her lap. “Ásfriðr’s been wandering around in the woods outside the school since June. I got curious enough to track him and I found him in this big hollow tree my sister and I—Lizzie and I—used as a fort when we were younger. It’s been cloaked since we were seven or eight, at least.”

Hope sat down next to her. “We weren’t very close until recently,” she said. “I mostly spent time by myself. But I was having a really bad day once, and you heard me crying in my room, so you let me into the cloaking spell to make me feel better. Obviously, all three of us couldn’t fit, and it was just a stupid old tree, but it really did help. I guess he remembers that.”

“But we were close when you went into the pit?”

“Well…” Hope shrugged. “We had a lot on our plates. But I like to think we were friends.” She took a deep breath. “I kind of wish we’d been friends longer than we were.”

Josie tilted her head. “Why weren’t we? You seem like someone I’d want to be friends with.” She paused. “I mean—well, maybe you didn’t want to be friends with me. Is it wrong for me to be here?”

Hope let out a laugh seemingly despite herself. “No, not at all,” she said. “It’s kind of a long story, though, and it’s probably not one you really want to hear.”

Josie smiled; this was the closest she’d seen Hope to relaxing since they’d met. “Now I’m curious,” she said.

“I don’t know if it’s really my story to tell,” Hope said. “But, I mean, you don’t remember, so if you want to know…”

“Well, you have to tell me now.”

“All right, you asked for it,” Hope said with another small laugh. Josie suddenly found herself hoping she’d be able to keep making her smile, even if just a little. Hope settled deeper into the bed, and Josie let herself relax, too. She tried not to stare at Hope’s pretty blue eyes or the way her hair curled, but Reuven couldn’t help himself. She only hoped Hope wouldn’t notice.

“So, we weren’t close when we were kids, but we really didn’t like each other the past few years,” Hope began. “There was this fire in my room, and then you and Lizzie suddenly hated me. I had no idea why; Lizzie blamed me for the fire and accused me of ruining your vacation, and you seemed to back her up, but I couldn’t figure out why either of you would believe that.”

“I remember that fire,” Josie said. “The empty bedroom at the end of the hall. I…” She furrowed her brow. “I remember setting it, but I can’t remember why.”

“Malivore didn’t change anything that’s already happened,” Hope said. “It just took me out of the picture.”

“But I don’t understand,” Josie said. “Why would I set your room on fire?”

Hope hesitated. “It was an accident,” she said. “You were trying to get rid of something you’d left under my door and you missed. And then, you lied to Lizzie and told her I’d been making fun of her, so she assumed I did it myself. You didn’t come clean until last fall.”

Josie shook her head. “That’s terrible,” she said. “And you forgave me for that?”

“It was a long time ago,” Hope said. “I could tell you were sorry. And I’d really rather just be with you than against you.”

Josie hummed and stroked Reuven with her thumb. She could feel anxiety bubbling up in her chest, but she couldn’t place why. Hope was clearly over any anger she might have felt, so why did she feel like her insides were twisting themselves into knots?

“I feel really bad now,” Josie said. “I mean, I know I can’t remember it, but I’m still sorry. What did I want to destroy so badly that I’d do all of that?”

Hope opened her mouth, then closed it again as if trying to decide how to say it, or maybe whether she should say it at all. “It was a note,” she said eventually. “It was a note you’d written telling me you had a crush on me.”

Josie blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Um…”

“Sorry,” Hope said. “I figured that would be weird to hear from me, but I couldn’t come up with a good lie.” And there it was again, that nervous little laugh.

“No, it’s fine,” Josie said quickly. Was that why she was already so drawn to Hope?  It sounded like she thought this crush was a thing of the past, but Josie wasn’t so sure. It would explain the buzzing she felt in her chest whenever she looked at the other girl. “I just wish there was some way I could remember.”

Hope nodded and looked down. “Yeah, me too.” She cleared her throat. “It’s getting late. You should probably get back to the school.”

Josie didn’t want to leave, but she got the picture. “Okay,” she said. “If you’re really sure you don’t want to come back with me, can I come visit you? Maybe I can do some damage control next time I see Ásfriðr.”

She expected Hope to refuse, and wouldn’t blame her—it really wasn’t Josie’s place to attempt to force Hope’s literal soul to go back to her—but she nodded. “Yeah,” she said, “That’s fine. I’d like that, actually.”

Josie brightened a bit. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“See you, Jo.”