Playing a Part – 15.2 | Pale

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“…and I’m getting a bunch of goblins and kids together every few nights.  But I’m running out of stuff to do, you know?  Gotta keep it fresh and make it feel special.  Without, you know, killing the kids.”

“Don’t want that,” Avery said.  “Ummm… talent show?”

“Did that.  That’s when the whole thing about not putting the kids at terminal risk first came up, and Ray gave me a talking to.  I thought I’d get to check off one of my boxes on my bingo chart, getting called a naughty girl.  He didn’t say the words, though.”

“Uh huh.  That’d be weird, coming from Ray.”

“I mean, I want to get it from someone I’m dating, but there aren’t many guys here who are dad-approved and interesting to me.”

“Huh.  I definitely know that feeling,” Avery replied.

“If I want to beat ‘Meri to a completed card, I gotta take what I can get.”

She shifted position, keeping Snowdrop under a blanket in her lap.  She was sitting in a patio chair on the patio, wearing extra layers, blanket wrapped around her legs, another blanket partially around upper body, cider on the table, Snowdrop firmly hidden.  Her laptop was closed and sleeping, battery low, to conserve power, and her hands with her phone were resting on Snowdrop.

Video calls with Liberty ate up a lot of internet, which could make Sheridan and Rowan grouchy, but her mom seemed okay with it, and frankly, Liberty needed it and it was pretty nice to just chat like this.

A dozing Snowdrop sent Avery an impression.  It was like a scene on an old television, through fogged-up glass, muted, distant, and clouded with faint emotions of amusement.  It made Avery think of Cherrypop, voice raised, not screaming, exactly, but-

Oh!  “Oh!” Avery exclaimed.  interrupting Liberty as she started to say something.  “Karaoke?”

“Done karaoke.  Did death metal scream karaoke with the under-thirteens and goblins.  Goblins loved it, kids not so much.  Talia lost her voice.”

“Oh no.”

“Her mom was annoyed.  Um!  But yeah.  It’s a good line of thinking, I really want to bridge a gap.  One thing about goblins is they’re really squishy.”

“Squishy?”

“Yeah.  Like, like clay, or flubby putty.  They take on a shape that depends a lot on what’s pushing up against them.  So if they’re in this bitter, angry, hateful place, they get mean, you know?  And for someone like- you know the Legendres?”

“They’re local here.”

“Oh yeah!  So they don’t get that, right?  And they’re so eager to talk about how goblins are that, or the possibility of goblins becoming that is enough to justify murdering them all.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah, right?  So yeah, anyway, I want to push the goblins with… fun, with light stuff, with cuddles, sometimes.”

“I love that.”

“I love that you love it.”

“Makes me think of Toadswallow.”

“Uncle Toadie,” Liberty said, smiling.  “Yeah.  I think he gets it.  Kind of.  He gets it more than most.  I want to give the kids something good from the goblins, give the goblins something good from the kids.”

“For the karaoke, what about something more kid oriented?  Play music from kids cartoons.  Opening songs and stuff.  Goblins can do slightly rude versions.”

“The one catch with that, I think, is some of these kids haven’t-”

“Haven’t watched cartoons,” Avery said, alongside Liberty.  “But that’s-”

“Yeah yeah yeah, no!  That’s actually great, what am I thinking?  Bit of a culture catch-up, heck yeah!  I know just the goblins to tap for that too.”

“Just don’t play the lickety lick lollipop song, that-”

“That’s perfect, oh my god, yes.  The goblins would love that.”

“A gremlin played that while Verona was fighting a Witch Hunter, Verona mentioned having it stuck in her head, and I had a legitimate flashback to when Kerry was five and played it on repeat…”

“Let me put it on.”

“Please don’t.  I beg you.”

“What’ll you give me?” Liberty asked.  She gave her computer chair a spin, the background spinning around her.  A goblin leaped from her desk to the chair back, didn’t get a grip, and bounced off, clattering.

“I just gave you an idea.  I gave you that.”

“Aw.  It’s a good idea, too.  Okay.  I won’t torment your ears.  You get to cry uncle just this once.”

“Uncle.”

“You look so cozy sitting there, outside, wrapped in big blankets, sitting out there in the dark.  Wish I was there,” Liberty said.  “How crazy would that be?  My dad’s asking me to come home for some stuff, I might be able to twist his arm into passing through.  We could hang out while he sees to business there.  Can you imagine?  Me there with your family?”

“Uhhhhh…”

Liberty laughed.  “The look on your face!”

“How good can you be?” Avery asked.  Snowdrop stirred, pushing out feelings.  “Snow wants the company.  Goblin fun.  We could definitely hang out without you coming here and traumatizing my family, or you could come see my not-totally unpacked room and patio here, stay for dinner, if you agreed to be good…”

“No promises,” Liberty said.  “Oh!  I’ve even got an outfit.  It’s what I was going to wear to class tomorrow.  Wait wait wait.  I’ll change and show you.”

“Do I need to be worried?”

“You’ll see!  Or not, if you don’t want a one-outfit fashion show.”

“Okay, hmm, if my mom or grandmother happened to look over my shoulder, how scandalized would they be?”

“I bet your grandmother would be all ‘kids these days’, and have palpitations.”

“Maybe no fashion show.  I’d feel weird.”

“Making people feel good-weird is the point!  But okay.  Changing into P.J.s instead.  What’s your preference, P.J.-wise?”

“I usually just wear an old shirt, maybe something I had on earlier in the day if I changed after practice and a shower or something, and pyjama shorts or pyjama pants.  I don’t do anything fancy.  Why?”

“Nah, it’s cool.  I’ll do the same.  I want to get bundled up like you’re bundled up.  You’re making me jealous.”

“Okie doke.”

“I can be good enough to not bother your parents, if you want to do that.  I’ll even dress normal enough I don’t get people looking at me funny.  Or we could meet up somewhere, grab something,” Liberty said, from offscreen.

“That’d be nice,” Avery said.  “Either-or.”

“My dad’s been bugging me to come home, check in, do the usual drills and stuff so he can track my progress, but I hate leaving these kids,” Liberty said.  “Ray’s gone, Durocher’s around but she’s not like… do you know what I mean when I say she’s Durocher, right?”

“Yeah.  Scary, intense,” Avery said.

“And not exactly a nurturing presence.  Not that Ray was especially cuddly.”

“You see him with kids sometimes and you get the feeling he was definitely a dad, or a past version of him was, you know?” Avery asked, lightly scratching Snowdrop with one hand.

“That’s true.  Less of those times were happening lately.  Lots of stress,” Liberty said. She stepped back into view, wearing an oversized t-shirt and pink shorts.  “Ta dah.”

“There you go.”

“I thought about scandalizing you.  Technically doing what you said, and you could see some of the tops I wear and you’d be all blushing and saying ‘Liberty, you forgot to wear a top’, and I’d gainsay you and say ‘heck yeah this is a top’.”

“Well, thanks for not gainsaying me.  You look comfortable, and comfortable is good.”

“Good,” Liberty said.  She had awful, awful camera management, and the viewpoint winged this way and that as she tossed a goblin screaming from a resting spot on her bed, getting sorted.

“Bit early for bed though.”

“Mmh,” Liberty replied, flopping backward onto her bed.  “I’ll get up again soon.  But for now, getting cozy.”

“Cozy is good.”

“Speaking of plans, I really don’t like leaving these guys.  Did I say that?”

“You did.”

“Worth saying the second time.  Headmaster Musser’s gone, taking lordships and stirring a lot of people outside the Blue Heron into a real tizzy.  You know?”

“I know.  Is him being gone good or bad?” Avery asked, leaning her head against the edge of the chair.

“For me?  Us?  Both good and bad.  Lots of guest teachers around now, but they’re more guest than teacher, you get me?”

“Pretty sure I get you,” Avery replied.

“Hanging around, it’s like the entire structure of the school is disintegrating while everyone’s dealing with other crap.  Strange adults hanging around, Durocher is coordinating them, but not a lot of other stuff, class schedule is screwed up.  Lots of them are parents, too, which, for a lot of these kids, a lot of the time it’s a lot of added stress.  I want to give the kids stuff to look forward to and distract them.”

“Liberty, I think you might be a really good person,” Avery said.

“Damn it!  I could have put that on my bingo card.  Screw with some normal person’s head enough they lose their grip on reality.”

“I mean it,” Avery said.  “That you care, you don’t want to leave them.”

Liberty rearranged covers and pillows in a flurry of activity that made the image on the screen move around in a lot of ways.  “Might make me misty-eyed here, freckles.”

Avery smiled, ready to joke, but then when Liberty settled, she saw that Liberty really did have moisture collecting in her eyes.

“Oh, were you actually-”

“Shut up.  Pretend you didn’t see anything, protect my dignity as a badass raider princess.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“Thanks for these calls, though, you know?  I know I’m probably eating up your phone minutes-”

“Internet, and we have unlimited.”

“Ooh la la.”

“And of course.  I’m glad if it’s something that helps.”

“Gets lonely out here.  Got my goblins, got kids to corrupt, but not many people around my age.  Raquel, but Raquel’s busy and she’s… Raquel.  Bunch of others went home.  Some of my guy friends.  I’m worried I’ll go home with my dad to help manage stuff while he’s working with the ol’ headmaster on the lordship mess, and then school will get canceled while I’m gone.”

“What happens if it is?” Avery asked.

“Dunno.  Regular high school again?  I’m not good at regular high school.  The school part or the… whatever the ‘high’ part is supposed to mean.  Being more adult?  It’s lonely there too.  But instead of it being lonely with barely anyone my age around, it’s lonely with a few hundred people my age around.”

“I know what that’s like too.  Definitely know what that’s like.”

“I know.  You’ve said.”

“Well…” Avery searched for what to say.  “You can call me after school and we can catch up.  If I’m not at practice or whatever.”

“Talk to me?  Tell me how your high school stuff is going?  Lull me to sleep?”

“Because I’m boring?”

“Because it’s nice,” Liberty said, turning onto her side.  “Room feels empty with my sister gone.  I’ll nap, have my goblins wake me up, shower, get a snack, go visit them with snacks in hand, we can coordinate and practice some of the cartoon song karaoke, then I’ll come back to bed, oh!  And I can call you then, maybe at one or two in the morning, and you can lull me to sleep again.”

“I think my sister might lose her mind if I got on the phone that late.  If it wasn’t for that and if I wasn’t worried I’d sleep through my phone going off and disappoint you, I’d say yes.”

“Aww.”

Avery felt a droplet of something wet on her head and looked up.  She glanced up and around.

“What is it?” Liberty asked.  “You just jumped or reacted.”

More droplets.  One on her arm.

“Rain, I think.  I might go inside.  It-”

The droplets intensified, and as Avery touched her head, shielding her headphones from the water, she realized it wasn’t regular water.  She felt the moisture but she wasn’t getting wet.  Water fell away from her as if she was waterproof.

“What?” Liberty asked.  “You look concerned.”

“It’s not- I’m the only thing this rain is touching and it’s not soaking into me.  I’ve seen this before.  I think my local Lord is trying to get my attention.”

“Fuck her.”

“I agreed to certain things when I came to Thunder Bay, to secure permission to stay here.  I think I’m on the hook.”

Liberty groaned.

“Sorry!  I’ll tell you about how things are going another time,” Avery said as she got up.  She laid her phone on the table as she sorted out blankets and snowdrop.  “Really sorry, I really do hate doing this.”

“I believe you, hon.  Means a lot.”

“Bye.  Talk soon, okay?  We’ll make plans for you visiting?”

“If my dad okays it.  Bye.  Oh!  And I’ll only dress more normal if you dress up.  You still have the pieces from the battle costume we did for you, right?”

During the trial of Finnea, fake Maricica, yeah.

“I’ll think about it.  Bye.”

“Bye,” Liberty said, trying to get in the last word.

“Bye,” Avery said, before hanging up right away.  Liberty’s ‘bye’ was cut off just as it started.

Avery put Snowdrop in the plants, quickly bundled up the blankets and put them on the chair, chugged the last quarter of the glass of cider, and then took the blankets and glass inside.

“There you are,” her mom greeted her.  “I wondered if I’d go and find you sleeping out there, but I saw the glow of the screen.”

“Long convo,” Avery replied, as she put blankets over the back of the couch and started a quick and crummy job of folding them into quarters.

“Do I need to watch for your phone bill?  Not that I mind, I love that you’re staying in touch-”

Avery shook her head.  “Internet.”

“So that‘s why Sheridan was complaining about the streaming.  Oh well, probably healthier for you to talk to friends than for her to binge a show for the third time.  I don’t want to be mean to her.  Maybe a second internet line if things will keep up?  You know, when I was your age, I had to sit in the kitchen to hog the corded telephone, curling up in an uncomfortable chair, worrying your grandmother would listen in over my shoulder.”

“This isn’t a romantic thing.”

“I didn’t say it was.  Verona or Lucy?”

“Liberty.”

“Uh huh.  Not a romantic thing.”

“Stop!  Don’t use that tone.”

“I just happen to notice that it’s the times Liberty and you have been talking that you get more defensive and you hide your phone from me more.”

“That’s because Liberty’s-”

“She’s what?” her mom asked, a smile on her face.

“A troll, kinda?  A troublemaker?  She’d do something or say something, probably.  There’s nothing romantic.  Might’ve been nice if there was but she’s very vocal about liking boys.”

“Maybe she likes a lot of boys and one girl?”

“Stop!  Stop, please, mercy.  I’m pretty sure no and don’t mess with my head and spoil things.  Her sister got expelled and left, and I think she’s super lonely.  I’m pretty sure that’s all it is.”

“My dear, lovely daughter,” her mom said, approaching, cupping Avery’s face in her hands before Avery ducked out of it and retreated with an ‘ugh’.  “You have a knack for finding people in need, huh?”

“I… guess?”

“I love that about you but I worry.  Maybe I’m not the best person to say this, with the mistakes your dad and I have made, but you have to take care of you first.”

“Keeping them company is taking care of me,” Avery said.

She held up an index finger before running upstairs.

A fleeting rain pattered hard against the window.  Rain that didn’t touch a hair on Snowdrop outside.

“I know, I know,” Avery whispered.

Sheridan was on her bed, watching a show that Avery had heard in the background enough she was pretty sure she could recite lines from it.  Girls at a Catholic reform school for delinquents, doing things very against Catholic values.  Murder conspiracy starting in the first episode, hiding boys in the walls and attic of the school to have trysts with, starting a cult, keeping a girl hobbled, blind, and mute in the school basement for four seasons, inventing a serial killer to cover up a lot of their ‘accidental’ murders…

“Please tell me you’re off the internet.”

“Going out,” Avery said, getting her bag.  She collected some cards from her nightstand drawer.  Connection block.  Good.

“Stay out?  Or better yet?  Go missing.  Disappear for twenty-four hours, I’ll just hang out here.”

“Won’t rule out that I might go missing,” Avery said.

“Good.  Oh, here we go, up from medium quality.  Yay.”

“Love you Sheridan,” Avery said.

Sheridan made a gagging noise.

Avery went back downstairs, bag over her shoulder.

Her mom was waiting, leaning against the dining room table.  “I worry.”

“About?”

“You.  All of you-”

Rowan grunted something from the couch on the living room.  With the couch’s back to Avery, she could only see his feet where they dangled over an armrest.

“-but you have to be careful about how thin you’re stretching yourself.  I thought taking care of all of you was energizing me, and I really do think it was, but as much as it gave me purpose, I pretty obviously got distracted.  I let things slide, fell into routines, ignored the obvious.  It energized me but energy isn’t enough.”

Avery grabbed her glass and rinsed it out, before setting it on the drying rack.  “Should I not help them then?”

“No.  But… I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Avery said, flouncing on the spot for a second.  “So…”

“Nice lecture, mom!” Rowan called out.

“Don’t you have to get ready for work?” her mom asked.

“Mothershit!”

“I don’t like that swear!” her mom called after him.  He disappeared into one of the bedrooms at the far corner of the second floor.  “It doesn’t even roll off the tongue!”

“I was going to go out,” Avery said, lifting her bag to her shoulder.

“Where?  It’s late.”

“Out.  I should use my legs or I won’t sleep well, and I’ve got to sleep well because I’ve got practice,” Avery said.

“I don’t love you going out this late.  It’s a nice little neighborhood-”

“Oh!  I know Verona and her mom are coming, but is it a huge issue if maybe Liberty stops by?  Sounds like her dad’s taking her out of school for something and they might pass by.  I was thinking she and I would go out for fast food or something.  She might stop by and wave from a distance.”  It might be dangerous if she doesn’t.

“That would be lovely.  But we can talk about that.  For right now-”

Avery put the cards down on the table and drew the last line for the connection block.

“Mom!” Rowan, shirtless, stepped out of his room.  “Where’s my work shirt?”

“Where is your work shirt?  I told you you had to do your own laundry.”

“Mothershit!”

“Mom!” Sheridan called up.  “Are you sure it’s unlimited internet?”

Avery’s mom sighed.

Avery ducked her head and headed outside.

She collected Snowdrop, who had climbed down from the patio, then ran.

The flickering of lights gave her unnecessary direction to the shore.  The same footpath of fractured reflections of the moon stuck out into the water.  Avery approached them at a run, and they spaced themselves out to find her feet.

She leaped the last distance, and the reflection of the moon expanded to accommodate her, plunging with water sloshing and swirling around her.

“Sorry sorry sorry,” Avery said, as her eyes adjusted.

There was no council.  Just Deb the Storm Chaser and the Lord.

“What’s this about?” Deb asked the Lord.

“You guys are always together, huh?” Avery asked.

“I brought her some objects charged with elemental power and word of things that weren’t covered at the council meetings,” Deb said.  “Why are you here?”

Avery shrugged.

The Lord moved a hand, as if sweeping Deb away.

Deb frowned.

But she obeyed, walking into the wall of water.

Avery let Snowdrop down and Snowdrop took on her human form.  She wore a gray sweater of the sort that looked more hairy than woolly, an ankle-length denim skirt with a trash can inset down the length of the leg, emblazoned with ‘I am what I eat’, and climbing shoes.

Avery felt a bit underdressed, in an lazing-around athletic hoodie and shorts.

Deb’s silhouette, immersed in the wall of water, turned, looking at Avery.

“Guess she doesn’t like me much,” Avery said.  “What can we do for you?”

The elemental Lord shifted position, then reached toward the wall of water.  As she brought a hand around, water followed, swirling and keeping within a loose tornado shape.  Or a whirlpool without the pool of water around it.

The whirlpool moved on, but left a standing body of water where it was.  Literally.  A silhouette of a man clarified.

She created four silhouettes in total.  Each was water, like a 3D-print of the person in slightly wobbly, transparent liquid.

Narrow, well dressed, standing overly straight, chin slightly raised.  The water didn’t capture the nicely styled blond hair or the exact look of the clothes, which was usually ‘yacht club’ style.

Avery recognized Hugh Legendre by his frame.  He was kind of just big in many respects, but even more so than Verona’s dad.  Tall, big around the waist line, firm jaw that extended into a full chin, segueing straight into shoulder and chest without much neck.  He had a smaller face.

“I don’t know these other two,” Avery said.  “They haven’t showed up to meetings.  Are they local?”

“They are,” the Lord said.  “This one is Thea.”

Thea was a young woman, by the looks of it, but something about her seemed intimidating.

“Guys, look what I found.”

The sound echoed through the chamber, a voice, maybe a boy’s voice.

“I’ll show you,” the Lord said.

The spray at the walls intensified, and the air filled with droplets.  Droplets captured the light and refracted it, and refracted light took on color.

“It’s a game?” another boy asked.  A voice from the mist, that had the sound of a whisper, but not the volume of one.

Six kids gathered in someone’s room.  A large board with a psychedelic pattern on it was set down in the middle.  It resembled a chess board, but a central platform lifted up and there were six sides, with an apparent system in dotted lines, black, and white to indicate what could move where.

The boy hit a button on the side.  A playing piece popped out, like a chess piece, but it was a mouse holding a spear, painted in green and gray.

He kept dispensing pieces, setting each down in their respective, color-coded areas.

“The board changes as you stare into the center,” a girl said.

The room shifted.  Avery looked up, and saw Thea’s water-statue body looming over the little girl that was crouched on the floor.

That’s Thea.

“That’s so weird.  It’s an optical illusion,” another girl said.

Thea got up, moving around the board, peering hard into the center.

“Guys,” the boy said.

He’d dispensed enough pieces for each side, including a set at the top.  Seven armies in total.

Plus six more pieces.  Three boys and three girls.

“How did all these pieces fit inside the board?” another boy asked.  “Did they interlock together?  They’re too heavy to be hollow.”

“So analytical, our future engineer,” a girl joked.

The pieces were handed out.  Tiny wooden figurines, with the same dimensions as a chess piece, but painted.  The hair and skin colors matched.

The group set pieces down on the board.  Still standing over the rest, Thea did much the same, but on the top level.

The scene dissolved.

Five children, together, stood in wilderness, a village in the distance.

Another scene.  A tall woman, pale, black hair down to the ankles, helped Thea to her feet, then kissed Thea on the forehead.

“I will treat you as a daughter, until you leave us.”

The scenes came faster.

“You poor dears.  You look so cold and hungry.”

“Thank you, but before anything else, have you seen our friend?  She looks like us, no horns or fur.  Her name is Thea.”

“We can ask, dears.”

Another scene change, Dorothea, kneeling, dressed in armor.

“Lady Dorothea, I proudly declare you a knight of the kingdom,” the King pronounced, laying crossed swords on her armored shoulders.  He leaned in close.  “I’m so very proud.”

Scenes changed from stark elegance to warm woodland village.

“Have you seen my best friend?  Her name is Thea.”

And back to stark elegance again.

“You’re our finest swordswoman, Dorothea.  I want you to lead the squadron.  Retake the vale.  They starve in their anarchy.”

“I will.”

Avery saw the constantly shifting scenes consolidate.

A village, laid to waste.  Soldiers that looked like upright animals lay bleeding.  An otter-man crawled while trying to keep his insides from spilling out.  Until a spear was punched through the base of his skull.

Avery looked away.  She missed the scene change.

“Thea… why?” a boy asked.  “We know how the game is won, we know what we have to do to get out, go home.”

“Why would you ever want to go home?” Thea asked.  “We don’t age here.  We don’t- it’s all easier here.”

“This is easy?” he asked, outraged.

“Surprisingly so.”

They crossed weapons, sword and spear.

“Step down, stop!  You’re making this so much harder than it has to be!”

“They didn’t even teach you how to fight?”

“It’s not a game!  It’s not a game, Thea, stop!”

She sidestepped the spear, he shifted his grip, and he used the shaft to parry her thrust.

But she had a knife in the other hand.

She stabbed him in the gut seven times before he dropped.  Just in time for the others to find them.

The screams resonated through the chamber.

The following four scenes came right after the other.  Four friends working together to raise a revolutionary army.

Dorothea stepping out of the camp while they talked, beheading the boy who’d been called the analyst as he walked and talked strategy with the others.  Then fighting her way free.

Fire everywhere.  One of the girls on her knees, pleading, begging Thea to see reason.  Put to the sword, then kicked free of the blade and into the flames.

Another scene, not long after, the burning village in the background.  A fight in the woods.  Thea slashed him across the thighs, then stepped back.

The boy roared, staggering forward, and she stepped back again.

Avery was glad the Lord accelerated the scene, rushing past the times they’d waited.  But Thea didn’t close the distance or offer a fight.  Instead choosing to let him bleed out, too wounded to close the distance.  Rain put the fire in the village out before he succumbed.

Leaving only one.

“You were my best friend.”  It looked to Avery like the one remaining friend opposite Thea had started her own faction.  Broken wings marked banners, and her army wore white.  Thea’s wore black.

“I don’t understand you,” Thea said.  “You say this is a game and you want out, but then you act emotional about things.”

“You say this is real and you don’t care!” her friend screamed.  “That’s worse!  I just want out!  I want there to be a chance this ends and we’re all sitting there in Nick’s room, alive again!”

Another clash of swords, the two of them fighting as armies fought the other.

One side won, pressing the other back, until Thea and her ex-friend dueled with soldiers in black ringing them, weapons drawn and ready.

“I won’t kill you,” Thea said, as she disarmed her ex-friend. “That might actually bring us to Nick’s room, game over.  Take her to the dungeons.  Feed her just enough to keep her from starving.  Keep her weak.”

Her ex-friend escaped the dungeon.  Started to resurrect the revolutionary forces, for an assassination this time.

Another defeat, another victory for Thea.

Another escape, by sympathetic forces from Thea’s side, now.  Soldiers who’d been absorbed into her army.

And then, inexplicable, a bus, parked at the edge of a battlefield.

Thea and her ex-friend, startled, disoriented, weapons drawn and facing one another, inched their way closer to investigate.

And the world shattered around them.

Odis’s figure, blurry as it was painted in moisture.

“All a ruse.  A game of pretend, conjured up by this glutton of an Other,” he said.  The Other he kicked into the dirt looked very Brownie-like.

“It was real,” Thea’s friend said.  Her voice was different.  She seemed to notice it, and looked down at her hands.

She was in her late twenties.

“Longtongue, Rickets, Grandspear, Tobbs,” the woman said.  “They’re real.”

“All fake.  All part of a self-indulgent game.  Even now, this brute sups on your horror, as you realize how many years you’ve lost.”

Thea remained silent, eyes wide, looking at everything around them- not that Avery could see.  The scene looked down slightly from overhead, and it looked like mostly dirt beneath them.  A bit of road.

“I was setting up a new bus line, the bus cut through this little world of yours.  Come, I’ll have to take responsibility for you.  I’ll sort you out.”

“No,” the friend said.  “No.  I’ve got to go home.”

“Your home may not be waiting for you.  I have reason to believe your family forgot you existed.”

The woman didn’t seem to listen.  She ran off.

“You.  You’ll stay?”

Thea nodded.  “If I must.  Where else could I go?”

“Your name?”

“Lady Dorothea, first knight of the Kingdom.”

“We’ll work on that.”

The entire scene dissolved.

“Is she Aware?” Avery asked.  “Worold?”

“No, but she was similar.  Now she is Awakened.  She was an apprentice to Odis.  She will inherit his power after he passes, but won’t keep the structure of his power.  She takes a new course and she’ll put the power there.”

That was top three for the most the local Lord had spoke in one go, in about a month of Avery being here.

“What is she now?”

“Now she finds and interconnects worlds and kingdoms.  She works to build one herself.”

Scenes arose, half-formed.  Thea sitting cross-legged on the floor, a dollhouse beside her, a book open in front of her, and a globe to her right.  Her hands were out and in front of her as if she was a carnival actor with a crystal ball.

“Worlds like what she was stuck in?”

The Lord nodded once.

“I guess she’s pretty busy, if she hasn’t showed up.  I think I get why you want me to do something about Florin Pesch and Hugh Legendre, but her?”

“Odis keeps to his own.  She does not.  She has ambition.”

“She’s acquaintances with Musser?”

“I believe so.”

“And the fourth guy is as well?”

“Yes.  Tomas Whitt.”

The scene changed around them.  The mist refracting light, droplets taking on colors.  A blurry image of a scene.

“Any relation to Fernanda Whitt?” Avery asked.

“A brother in law.  A minor practitioner.”

Chase’s brother in law, then.

Chase wasn’t a great person, which suggested…

The scene was of some office- or so Avery thought, until she saw a woman in a black robe with a white collar.  Not religious- the collar had two lengths hanging down.  Like the ribbons worn for charity, but with the loop worn around the neck.

The people in suits were lawyers.  And the people not in suits were the clients.  The clients and, Avery could see, Tomas Whitt.  He whispered something in the ear of a pretty woman near him, and she started walking.

Past a woman and her lawyer.  A trail of faintly tinted mist followed behind Whitt’s agent, but nobody seemed able to see it.  It reached the nose of the woman with the lawyer, and Avery could hear a sound, a thudding of heartbeats, getting more rapid.

The scene disintegrated.  Voices overlapped.

“I’ll kill you!” the woman shouted at the man who was presumably her ex-husband.  “I’ll kill you, I’ll tear your dick off and feed it to dogs, you bastard!”

Tomas’s voice was louder, clearer, as she dissolved into frenzied screams and shouts.  His silhouette appeared, in a dark room with a bright window behind him. “We imply to the clients that we break into homes and dose food, then clean up after ourselves.  We’re a little subtler than that.  Perfume, cologne, other alchemical tricks, twining the Whitt emotion manipulation with our work.  Witnesses, defense, prosecution, someone competing for the same job as them.  Little nudges, here and there.  Many of our targets are already on the edge anyway.  All things that can be explained as the stress of court, nervous breakdowns in a corporate environment.”

As the scene clarified slightly, the blinds in the window became clearer, and it seemed like he was talking to a group of kids.  Teaching them.  Whitts, maybe.

Avery exhaled slowly.  She looked at Snowdrop.

“Because of Musser?” Snowdrop asked.

The Lord nodded once.

The spectre of Musser appeared, taller than the four figures.  A shadow conjured of water, backing them.

“They know how to watch out for me.  And they take measures against augury.”

Avery turned.

Gilkey.  The shadowy Other with the glowing eyes.  He’d voted for her to stay, but she hadn’t seen him much since.

“Maybe you can get eyes on them.”

“You want me to spy on them?”

A nod from the Lord.  She pointed at Snowdrop.

“To find out what they’re doing, how much they’re helping Musser?”

Another nod.

“The degree to which they’ve betrayed this council,” Gilkey said.  “Tell us, do your allegiances complicate this task in any way?”

“Honestly, my biggest beef with you, miss Lord of Thunder Bay, is you’ve got an awful lot of crummy people living here.  No allegiances.  If anything, the opposite.”

The Lord didn’t move or react.

Gilkey spoke from behind Avery, “The way things have evolved, the Lord manages Lord business, and the council manages the local politics and council business.  They decide most cases of who stays and who leaves..”

“Cushy deal for those guys on the council, huh?” Avery asked.

“You are among those on the council, as am I,” Gilkey said.  “But yes, it is a cushy deal for those who have contrived to make this the state of affairs.  Our Lord doesn’t often change this state of affairs, but she did when she supported you.  They watch you carefully because of that.”

“Right.”

“You’ll have to tell her you accept the job.  I can point you in the right directions.”

“I accept.  Sure.  If you’re okay with me being possibly biased by them being horrible.”

The Lord moved a hand slightly sideways.

Gilkey told her, “Try not to let the bias influence anything.  Keep to what they do that influences Musser.  If you want to do something to them or about them, talk to the Lord first.”

Avery nodded.  “Okay, I guess.”

“Each is difficult in their own ways,” Gilkey said.  “Florin is wary, he’s avoided any appearance of being directly involved, except for the first Lordship they took, just north of here.  One they had permission to get to.  He was asked to investigate the Franky incident but he said he couldn’t find anything conclusive.”

“That covers a lot of ground.  Few things are for sure in the practice,” Avery said.

“Yes.  I thought so, but he gave his findings when I was away, I didn’t get a chance to press him.  Deb and Ann accepted what he gave.”

“And the Lord?” Avery asked, looking up at the elemental.

“Is asking you, now.”

“Oh, right.”

“Hugh is away a lot, and busy when he comes.  That’s hard to get past.  The timing is narrow and his actions are chaotic when he’s around.  To find wrongdoing or get a complete sense of what he’s doing is a challenge.”

“Right,” Avery said, frowning.  That sounded harder than Florin.

“Thea is strong, and keeps to herself.  She rarely attends these meetings, and her background lends itself to detecting spies.  She spent over a decade as nobility in a cutthroat, wartorn fantasy world.”

“Rrrrright.”

“I don’t envy you the task.  And Whitt is perpetually on the lookout for police.  They’re almost always investigating him, so he’s almost always taking measures to protect himself.  But he’s careless.  He’s an amateur, the sort of criminal who thinks he’s smarter than he is, simply because he hasn’t been caught and convicted.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“Are you up for this?” Gilkey asked.

“I guess we’ll find out, huh?”

As if by answer, the Lord moved a hand.  The water closed in.  A slosh that never failed to make Avery feel a note of panic, because she was fifty feet down and it was a lot of water.

But it carried her, washing her up to the shore.  It left her dry.

Avery stood, sorted herself out, made sure Snowdrop was okay, and then looked around.  Gilkey hadn’t been dropped off near where she’d been placed.  That was a bummer.

“Damn,” she muttered.  “Wanted to talk to Gilkey.”

“He’s not cool,” Snowdrop said.  “Not compared to the rest of them.”

“Yeah, well, exactly.  Ever since I got accepted here, it’s like I’ll get the occasional job and he’ll do his thing but our paths don’t cross.  Now there’s a chance to talk to the guy, see what’s up…”

“Turn him into a horrible enemy who wants us dead.”

“Yeah,” Avery agreed.  “This job isn’t exactly going to find some goblins and telling them to get outta here before the Legendres get ’em, or getting a package to Scobie because connection blockers that keep people from investigating mail can mean mail doesn’t get taken out of the back room and delivered.”

“It’s a big surprise,” Snowdrop said.  “A job this big?”

“Yeah.  It’s what I signed on for, right?”

“You alone, jerk.”

Avery rubbed Snowdrop’s shoulder.  “What we signed on for.”

This was a bigger deal, and it was a lot riskier.  It wasn’t a surprise, really.  She’d figured she’d be asked to watch someone and maybe that someone would be dangerous.  That it was someone local that the Lord didn’t trust was a whole other deal.  A screw-up here could upset her position in town.  Even if she said the Lord of Thunder Bay asked her to do it.

“The Le- the goblin exterminators…” Avery trailed off.

“We should use their names, let them know we’re onto them.”

“Yeah, gotta remind myself sometimes.  Late in the evening.”

“I get you, I’m not a night owl at all.”

Snowdrop pushed some inner quality of hers into Avery.  Avery stretched a bit, getting a feel for it, and found herself a mite more alert.

“Thanks.  The goblin exterminators have been away.  The puppeteer hasn’t.  If he’s involved, it’s not direct.”

“That makes zero sense.  He’s a frontlines dude, just like the guy with the broken glasses, wades into things.”

“Backline manipulator.”

“Opposite of that.”

“The woman who went to the other world is spooky.  That seems powerful.  But also sorta in my- our wheelhouse?  Realms and stuff.”

Snowdrop nodded.

“At least the last guy seems more doable.  Don’t underestimate him, but, just in case… do you know where Gilkey hangs?”

“Nope.”

“Want to get directions to the emotion-manipulating alchemist?  And maybe just see what he does late in the evening and first thing in the morning?  And I’ll pick up on stuff after school.”

“I won’t see you off to school, then, I’ll skip breakfast.”

“I’ll find you, you little goblin-adjacent beast.  C’mon.  Teamwork-”

Avery offered a high-five.  Snowdrop grabbed her wrist and fake-gnawed at her fingers.  So Avery mussed up Snowdrop’s hair.  They tussed for a few seconds, breaking when pushed Snowdrop lightly in the direction of home.

“It’s going to be a lot, on top of everything,” Avery said, an arm around Snowdrop’s shoulders.

“Everything, your school, sports, family, visits, normal council stuff, me eating, me sleeping, me building alliances with the goblins that have managed to survive here… only that.”

Only that.

Yeah, it wasn’t only that.  There was a lot more at play, and Avery wasn’t sure if what she was going to end up doing with this period of surveillance was something that really jibed with the other stuff she needed to do.

In dreams with the other two, they’d hashed out the basics of their plan.  Stuff that they’d need to refine and work out.  Each of them with a task to start.  Two, really, but the first was basic.

Basic first task: get better.  Recover, grieve, heal, sort out life.  That meant for Avery she had to get settled here and find her groove.  Miss’s recommendation that Lucy had passed on to them.

The second task was to look at what went wrong that night.  What had failed them?  What could they do better, to turn the tables and become conspirators, in the removal of the current Carmine?

Or the next Carmine, maybe.  Depending on how things went.  Musser was out there with a plan, and the word was he’d already taken some Lordships, but he’d failed to take others.  He’d, according to Liberty, essentially abandoned the Blue Heron, leaving it to guest teachers, and was handling the lordships himself.  Charles wasn’t acting against Musser like he did against others.

She couldn’t say it out loud, because they didn’t want to tip Charles off, but one thing that had stood out to Avery had been how things had gone with Musser and how things had gone with the Witch Hunters.

Since she was the best at reaching out and forging connections, she’d taken on the job of making sure that if they got to another night like that night, at the end of summer, they wouldn’t need to divide their forces.

Initially, she had been thinking that she needed to find a way to work out a compromise with Musser.  If he treated everything as a transaction… they needed to make a better deal.  And alliances with Blue Heron students like Raquel and Liberty kind of supported that.

To at least get to a point where they could force Musser to hear them out.  To get to a place where they could maybe tell the Witch Hunters to back off or get others to tell them to back off, and have them listen.  Or something.

Because the last ditch effort was bringing down Musser and other threats before they could become problems.  Tying them up in other problems, which, again, Blue Heron, or binding, or-

-or violence.

Either way, they’d keep options open.  While juggling everything else.  Especially when the work she was doing for the council potentially overlapped.  Or when it conflicted.

“I’ll come with you now, I don’t have to do the job,” Snowdrop said.

“Alright.”

“I dislike this, having stuff to do.  I’ve enjoyed being as lazy as I’ve been.”

“I get you Snow.  Go.  Good luck again.”

“Don’t bring snacks tomorrow morning.  I’m trying to slim down for winter.”

Avery winked at Snowdrop.

They split up, and Avery jogged home.

“Hey, Ariana!”

Avery rolled her eyes.

It was Oli, Jeanine’s twin.  He ran up to Avery, stopped, then got his phone.  “That strawberry blonde girl with freckles whose name starts with A is… here.”

“Some of the other players on the team started doing it.”

“Perfect.”

“It’s annoying.”

“Corner… of… Meany and Makatewa.”

“You know, I was actually going to school, so if she waited, she could just see me there.”

“But this way she gets to see you sooner.”

“Hmm.”

“If we’re being annoying and you don’t want our company, you can say so.  You wouldn’t be the first one.  But you know, after everything with the LGBT-straight alliance club at the school, and this thing with this LGBT-positive after school hangout at this church, it all went tits-up.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“You and parents and teachers, and everyone heard.  It sucks.  She gets bullied online.  You know, she’s like a car with a gas pedal and a gas pedal instead of a gas pedal and a brake.  And she’s five foot eight at fourteen, which scares a lot of people off, and paired with how forward she is, she comes across as way tougher than she is.  They think bully and then whatever she does it feeds into that narrative.”

“I feel like this is stuff more for her to tell me than you, no offense.  It sounds pretty personal.”

“We’re twins, the line for ‘personal’ gets fuzzy.”

“Mmmaybe.”

“She likes you, you know.”

“That’s definitely the sort of thing, if the tables were turned, I’d rather handle it myself than have a brother handle for me,” Avery said, before being struck with a momentary vision of either Rowan or Declan being her wingman.  Horror.

“I think she’s trying, but the thing is, this is just my take.  In everything else I can be there with her and back her up but in this stuff, it’s her and whoever she’s dating.  Her brother can’t come along on dates.  And as her brother I can’t do much when things go bad at the clubs and stuff.”

“Can’t you?  It’s LGBT and allies, isn’t it?  You’re an ally, right?”

“Yeah, but if I’m there all the time it’s just weird, and if I’m only really there when I’m trying to get people to lay off her or trying to steer her in better directions… feels like it’s just a brother thing, not a me-helping-keep-things-cool thing.”

“You and her against the world, huh?”

“Unless I can’t be with her, and she’s not really good at a lot of that stuff.”

“Hmm.”

“You’d be good for her.  You’re cool, your head’s clearly on straight.”

“But is she good for me?”

“Isn’t she?”

“She’s- the name thing is annoying, it’s more, it’s- it’s gotta stop, or it’s going to ruin stuff.  I said no, I said stop, she didn’t, you didn’t, other people started doing it, it sucks.”

“Ah, it’s fun, though, you know?”

Avery frowned.

“It is!” he insisted.

“If it’s fun for her and it’s not fun for me, and if I’m good for her but maybe she’s not good for me, like… I don’t want to sound like it’s a transaction, but what am I getting out of it?”

“I know I’m biased, but she’s pretty great once you get to know her,” Oli said.  “Again, fully admit I’m biased.  According to the ultrasound, she hugged my butt and kept it warm for something like three straight months in the womb.  Didn’t want to budge, they even worried that we were conjoined.  I want her to be someone else’s butt warmer.”

Avery smiled, then shook her head.

“I’m not convincing you?”

“I think it’s a no, Oli.  But it’ll definitely be a no and it might even get to the point of her and I not being super great friends if the name thing keeps going.”

“That’s…” Oli started to respond, then he hissed through his teeth.  “I’ll talk to her.  Just give me a chance.”

“Aspergillis!” Jeanine called from the end of the block.

“There she is,” Oli said.  “Look, uhhh-”

Avery gave him a sharp look.

“-Avery.  Shit, fuck me, it’s Avery, isn’t it?  We keep up the joke when you’re not around.”

Avery kept the look on her face.

“Fuck, fuck.  Um, look, if you’re good to my sister and if you give her another shot and everything works out, I will buy you a house.  When we’re old enough.  In this market.  I am not even joking, I will literally do anything for my twin sister to make her happy and I think you might actually be it.  Put up with her, figure her out…”

Avery wanted to reply but Jeanine was close now.

“Figure who out?” Jeanine asked, panting for breath.

“Did you run all the way here?”

Jeanine nodded.  She looked at Avery, then panted out a, “Hey.”

“Hi.  Practice got put off this morning.  There won’t be anyone to open the field or gym.”

“I know.  I decided to go anyway, catch anyone that didn’t get the message.  Hang out,” Jeanine said, between pants for breath.  “But I’d rather hang out with you two than those guys.”

“I was telling her how you hugged my butt.”

“And I’ll do it again on request,” Jeanine told him.  “What’re you up to?”

“I’ll show you what I was up to until Oli stopped me.  Come on,” Avery told them.  “Over here.”

“What’s this?”

She led them away, down a side street, toward a house.  She used her secondary senses to feel out-

“Heyyy,” Avery cooed.  “Snowdrop, heyy, you there?”

She crouched and clicked her tongue a bit.

Snowdrop sent her a mess of amused signals at that, but Snowdrop trundled out of the space beneath a house’s patio stairs.

Ha ha, Avery thought, pushing back a feeling of slight bemusement.

Clicking of the tongue was a thing people did sometimes when calling animals, but clicking was also how males signaled females for mating.

Which probably made Avery’s call to Snowdrop an opossum version of a dirty joke or pun.  Maybe.  Snowdrop was sending signals like she had.  Goblin-influenced little trash beast.

“Ah,” Avery said.

“Oh, ew,” Jeanine exclaimed.  “Freaky.”

“Come on, over here,” Avery called out.

Snowdrop approached, taking her sweet ass time.

“I brought snacks.”

Snowdrop picked up the pace.

Avery opened a thing of plain yogurt and got some sliced green peppers she’d kept separate from her lunch.  Snowdrop proceeded to go to town on the little yogurt container.

“Don’t touch it,” Oli said.

“It’s fine.  She’s gentle,” Avery said.  She gave Snowdrop scratches and pats.  “Come on.  Check it out.”

“Pass,” Jeanine said.

“Aaand that’s enough yogurt,” Avery said.  “You’ll get gassy and spoil your cover.”

Snowdrop sent want signals, along with more amusement.

“Did you do okay last night?” Avery asked, stroking Snowdrop.

The feelings sent were complex enough to warrant a conversation later.

Avery sorted stuff out, left more assorted carrot slices and green peppers slices for Snowdrop.  The little opossum gathered it up as best as she could and retreated.

“I bet you have fleas now,” Oli said.

“They’re pretty good about bugs, I think,” Avery said.  “Anyway, that’s Snowdrop.  If you see her around, be nice to her.  Pretty sure was born a runt of her litter-”

Snowdrop sent a signal at Avery that Avery chose to parse as ‘you’re the runt’.

“-and hasn’t grown much compared to other opossums her age.”

“I’ll keep my respectful distance,” Jeanine said.  “Want to go meet up with the team?  Hui, Denewith and Dang are around.”

“Sure,” Avery said, straightening up and brushing coarse gray fur off her hands, moving the partially eaten yogurt container between hands to get the brushing done.

They walked over to the school.

“Anyway, I thought that was cool,” Avery said.

“How’d you find it?” Oli asked.

“Her, and I have a special sense for that.”

Jeanine threw an arm around Avery’s shoulders, which sparked a flurry of confused feelings, ranging from annoyance to not minding, to a general feeling of boundaries being pushed for not the first, second, third, fourth or fifth time, settling in general discomfort.  Jeanine leaned in.  “You’re like a magic princess with a collection of helper animals, except instead of cute birds and mice you have a scary little trash beast.”

“She’s a lovely scary little trash beast and I’m very fond of her,” Avery said, firm.

“Magic princess Azalea,” Jeanine joked.

Avery ducked away from Jeanine, stepping away.

Oli pushed his hands together in a pleading gesture.

Jeanine pushed his hands down and away.  “Don’t do that, don’t apologize for me.  You know it’s funny.”

“Except I’m not laughing,” Avery said.  “I’ve never laughed at it.  So quit it.”

Jeanine slumped, looking as dejected as all hell.  She gave Avery her saddest look.

“I’m serious.”

Oli spoke up, “She’s serious.  C’mon, let’s change the topic.  Movies?  TV?  Sports?  School?”

“School is going to suck without morning practice,” Jeanine groaned.  “I want to run, I want to play!  Today’s going to be a drag.”

The way Jeanine ran around, the joking, almost constant outgoing nature, the eagerness about running and playing sports, it kinda helped Avery conceptualize Jeanine some.  She was like a big, oversized, goofy dog that didn’t know how big it was.

Okay, Avery had to amend that.  Sometimes she forgot, especially when Jeanine was being obnoxious, which was about a third of the time, but whenever Avery took a step back, Jeanine was actually pretty beautiful.  Leggy, tall, athletic and as uncomfortable as Avery had been in the moment, her shoulders still felt warm from Jeanine’s arm resting on them.

It gave her a bit of a buzz and a major conflicted feeling when it came to digesting that, knowing she could say yes and this big, beautiful, goofy person would waste zero time in letting her know she was liked.

“Angelinaaaaa,” Jeanine reached for and jostled Avery, taking that conflicted feeling and buzz and jarring it up.  “I want to play with youuu…”

Avery gave her a few more feet of space.  Jeanine started to close that gap, and Oli pulled her back.

A big oversized, goofy dog that didn’t know how big it was, yes.  And a bit of a bully.  Whatever Oli said, some or a lot of that label was valid.

“After school?” Jeanine asked.  “I know you said no a bit ago, Oli keeps telling me not to pester you, but I gotta ask.”

Oli groaned.

“I’ve got plans after school,” Avery said.

“Forever?”

“We can maybe do something at some point.  As friends,” Avery said.  “If you quit it with the name thing and get the others to quit it too.”

Jeanine made a plaintive sound, giving Avery the puppy dog eyes again.

But behind that sorta-joking exterior was a bit of a wounded look.

“Oli, be a bro, talk to her.  I’m going to go wash up and toss some of this out,” Avery said, holding the partially consumed yogurt cup.

“Gotcha,” Oli said.

Avery wasn’t entirely, one hundred percent positive that Jeanine’s view of the members of the club she’d been kicked out of wasn’t a sign of things to come.  Would she turn on Avery too?  Did that wounded look turn into Avery being termed a viper in Jeanine’s mind?  Or an idiot?

How, Avery wondered, was she supposed to forge alliances and get Kennet in the best social and political position for going after Charles, if she couldn’t even manage ordinary, non-practitioner people?

She waved at Hui and Dang, who were sitting by the fence for the sports field, found the doors to the school still locked, and settled for using an outdoor can and rinsing her hands with her water bottle before joining them.

“What’s up?  Jeanine went looking for you.” Hui said.

“I saw her, she and Oli are talking,” Avery said.  “I showed them my opossum.”

“Your what?” Dang asked.  “Is that slang?”

Avery laughed.  “What would that be slang for?”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

“I’ve got pictures,” Avery said.  “So many pictures.  Let me just… here…”

She sorted through the gallery on her phone.  There was a bunch of images of her room she’d sent Verona when Verona had asked, and some of the team.  But Snowdrop pictures were easily half the gallery.

“Aww,” Hui cooed.  “It’s a baby!”

“You had it in your lap?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Here, let me see…”

“What else do you have?”

“Stuff, I’ll find more good pictures.”

Jeanine and Ollie caught up about five minutes later.

“Jeanine!” Hui called out.  She waved.

“Why are you calling out!?” Jeanine called back.  A bit surly.  “I know where you are, I left you there fifteen minutes ago.”

“Agatha is showing us pictures of her possum,” Hui said, smiling like she was telling a dirty joke.

Avery glanced at Oli and Jeanine.

“The name joke is dead,” Jeanine said.  “We’re killing it.”

Avery mouthed a silent response to Jeanine.  ‘Thank you’.

It gave her a bit of hope, if she extrapolated it out to practitioner relations.

“…That’s really cool, though,” Nora said.  “I don’t know what would happen if one of my old friends stopped by and wanted to hang out.  Probably they’d ask ‘why are you dressed like that’, and call me weird.”

“Would they?”

Nora shrugged, eyes wide.

“How would you answer?”

Nora’s eyes went wide.  She looked almost like a robot pretending to be a person, side-eyeing Avery, then looking forward, then side eyeing Avery again, expression a forced kid of neutral.

Nora’s outfit was a black t-shirt worn over a long-sleeved shirt with her thumbs sticking out the sleeves, with a hooded jacket worn over that.  She wore a skirt over torn leggings, and shoes that looked like they’d been chewed on by a dog.

Which was a look.  The t-shirt had a graphic of what might’ve been a female singer’s face on it, bleached in, with some of the bleach having worn through the fabric until there were holes in it.  Except Nora also had a necklace of what looked like the tiny bottom-of-the-barrel hard, disc-shaped, chalk-like sugar candies with holes forced through them so they could be strung along a thread, and Preservers candies with wires for earrings.

“You don’t have to answer.”

“How do you answer that?” Nora asked.  They’d reached Nora’s locker and Avery leaned against the nearby lockers, but immediately had to move because some huge guy wanted access to his.  She switched to the other side.  “Why do you wear what you wear?”

“Combination of, hmmm, first, it’s what a hottie in a nightmare I had wore?”

“A nightmare?”

“Based on real events, I think, converted into a kind of nightmare for me.  Someone else’s real events.  A girl bought her love interest a car to try to score a date.”

“Wow.  That’s a weird nightmare.”

“It was the sort of thing where you want to crawl out of your own skin to avoid the secondhand embarassment, but it was my skin.  Kind of.  But my supposed love interest- in real life I think it was a guy but for me it was a girl-”

“Yep.”

“-she wore a hoodie like this, and it left an impression, so I went hunting, found something close, and now it’s my favorite sweatshirt.”

“That’s a way better story than anything I’ve got.  Nightmare sweatshirt.”

“Well, what do you have, what’s your explanation?  Anything works, I think.”

“Uhh, I don’t think I can say without doing that thing where you want to crawl out of your skin.”

“Awww…” Avery groaned.  “Okay, well, maybe someday you’ll say?”

“Maybe.  Probably not.”

“Okay, well, valid.  I like your look, whatever got you to pull it together.”

Nora’s eyes did that going-wide, side-eye thing again.

Avery felt like she’d flush, but she had mechanisms to pull on to keep it at bay.  Tapping into Snowdrop’s chill.  Checkmarks.

“Anyway, I should probably go.  I’ve got commitments,” Avery said.  “Talk later?”

“Yeah.  No, actually-”

“No?  You don’t want to talk later?”

“No, I-”

Avery frowned.

“Stay.  I’ll tell you,” Nora said.

“Shit.  Uhh,” Nora said.  She looked around.  “Here.”

She pointed inside her locker.  Avery had to lean in to see, which made Nora’s eyes go wide again.

It was an old cartoon character, with spiky hair and an all-black outfit, sash for a belt, and a bat on a necklace.

“Please don’t judge me.”

“Why would I judge you?  I don’t really get it though.”

“When I went to my cousin’s as a kid, parents would all hang out in the upstairs and we’d go downstairs.  And it was this really sad basement that was kind of a play area, but the walls weren’t white, because they’d been drawn on, and the carpet wasn’t all white, because paint had been spilled on it and badly cleaned up.  Crummy super old, three-hundred pound television in the corner, and toys everywhere.”

“I can visualize it,” Avery said.  She was very aware that she was leaning in close, shoulder touching Nora’s shoulder.  She’d been invited in to look inside the locker and brought in close, and she felt like she could or should step back but didn’t want to.  So it was this intimate conversation as the school day ended behind and around them.

“And we’d go down and like it was automatic, my cousin would put on these old tapes from super long ago, like tapes.”

“Sure.”

“Nineteen ninety nine, I think.  Just random kids movies and random episodes from old cartoons.  And one was this monster hunting movie and there were these characters that popped up and they were in an wiccan eco goth… pop rock band and… that was just about the best thing I’d ever seen.”

Avery nodded.  The motion got Nora to do the side-eye, not facing Avery but moving eyes alone before looking back to the picture.

“First fifteen minutes were cut off and there were a ton of ads to fast forward through but I watched it all the time and when I wanted to stop dressing like a kid… well, I wanted to be like them, but they don’t actually have outfits.  The cartoon’s so old it’s just like a black bodysuit with red-purple squiggles at the edges.”

“For sure.”

“And they don’t even have a genre, right?  Eco-wiccan pop rock goth stuff isn’t a thing.  I just sorta pick vaguely related bands and copy stuff from their style that covers me up enough my mom doesn’t get mad.  Sorta… awkward inspiration.”

Avery dropped her bag, and she sorta hated to leave that standing-close sort of space, but Nora was nervous and Avery was a bit excited.  She got her practice workbook, and skipped straight to the back pages, which she’d dedicated to non-practice, scrapbook style notes and things.  “Check it.”

Nora did.  They’d turned around, Avery with her back to a locker, Nora standing almost half in her locker as she looked over Avery’s shoulder.  Students milled around them.

Avery showed her the random cut-out pictures, and cartoon characters that had the right energy, and other stuff.

“You’re not alone, see?” Avery said.

“Except you pull all that together and you’re cool.  I’m doing a lame inaccurate cosplay of a single thing nobody’s heard about, because kid me had a crazy crush on cartoon characters who weren’t even that major to the film.”

“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Avery said, closing her book.  She lightly batted Nora on the shoulder.

“I stole that videotape,” Nora said.  “After my cousin got older he started playing video games all the time and expecting me to sit and watch.  So I stole the tape.  I still occasionally lie awake at night, feeling guilty over the fact I stole something.  There’s a slice of a video of my cousin as a kid that got taped over, and I think what if my uncle goes looking and can’t find it and gets really upset?”

Avery laughed a bit.

“I don’t even have a thing that can play tapes.”

“Consider yourself absolved, Nora,” Avery told her.  She held her book in both hands, and bapped Nora lightly on the head, then on either shoulder.  “I think you’re clear.”

“Okay.  I think confessing and you saying that might actually really help.”

“Let me know if there’s anything else, I’m glad to help,” Avery said, putting her book away and picking up her bag.  “You can probably find the video online.”

“The first fifteen minutes are missing.  I don’t know what it’s called.  Not that I’ve really looked.”

“Aw.  Anyway, I hate to go, but-”

“Oh yeah.  You had something.”

“Later?” Avery asked, walking backwards as she asked, waiting for a response.  The boon from Zoomtown helped her to avoid walking into anyone, but she was still glad that Nora nodded.

Leaving school, heading out to where Snowdrop was, she felt a light, buzzy, happy feeling that had started while they’d been peering into that locker and talking and it wasn’t going away.

Even as she caught up with Snowdrop, about fifteen minutes of careful black-roping away from school, knowing she was getting into something dangerous now.  She high-fived Snowdrop on her way into a fast food place, passed Snowdrop some cash, and then went into a bathroom stall.

With two petals from the high summer rose, Avery got enough glamour to do something whole-body.  She stroked hands on skin and pulled off her sweatshirt and worked with the shirt beneath, changing fabric and fabric shape.

The vibe she tried to strike was one that sort of pulled from her mom, sort of from teachers, sort of from parents she’d seen at the Blue Heron.

Longer legs.  Taller.  Older.

Dressed like she’d been to work and she’d maybe pulled off a tie or reduced down to the most comfortable layers.  A simple top, a silk scarf.

She checked the coast was clear, then went to the mirror for the final touches.  Haircut turned boring but efficient, a straight cut across the back of the neck.  Hair faintly washed out, with color changed to black.  Face-

Someone came in.  Avery turned on the tap and buried her face in her hands, making like she was washing it.

The woman entered the stall Avery had vacated.  Avery raised her face, then carefully made adjustments to alter the age of her face, and the shape of features.

Nothing too extreme.  A step away from her usual was going to make her look enough like a relative of herself that someone canny could maybe see through it.

And she was spying on someone canny.

Too many steps away and she risked finding some combination of features and details that lost touch with one another.  Like a computer-rendered face that somehow looked wrong, even if you couldn’t put a finger on it.

So she made each change a two-step one, with one step being a shift in age.  Faint lines at the corner of the eye with corners slightly moved, and a slight shift in the shape of the eye.  Eyebrows colored in slightly, then made thinner.  Nose increased faintly in size, bridge adjusted.

She knew she tended to dress in greens mixed with brighter oranges and yellows, so she chose blue and cooler tones.

She hurried to finish before the woman in the stall was done.  She turned her head to a few different angles, then turned off the faucet and transformed her bag in appearance, from schoolbag to handbag.

Snowdrop was waiting outside as she left, eating a mini-pie.  Snow’s nostrils flared as people passed her.

She sniffed out Avery and headbutted Avery’s arm as she closed the distance.

“I don’t think I need to change my smell,” Avery murmured.  She cleared her throat, and with residual glamour on her hands, rubbed at her Adam’s apple.  She tried on her new voice.  “Voice though.”

“You do need to change your smell,” Snowdrop said.  “That’s something humans are surprisingly good at figuring out.”

“Gotta change you.  But we can do that pretty fast, no need for a mirror.”

“Want?” Snowdrop offered Avery the pie.

Avery took some, eating very gingerly, to avoid disturbing the glamour.  “Remind me where we’re going?  Did Gilkey point you…?”

“Not this way.  I didn’t have the chance to scout it out, so yeah, you’ll have to ask him.”

They got close-ish to their destination.  They stopped in an alley, and Avery gave Snowdrop a makeover.

The irrepressible energy would be hard to mask, so Avery didn’t try to mask it.  She kept Snowdrop looking twelve or so and instead adjusted features, frame, and apparent gender.  Hair shorter, facial features shifted…

Snowdrop’s shirt was an opossum skeleton with emphasis placed on there being 50 teeth, among other details, labeled ‘Anatomy of a can opener’, with a faint stencil of a trash can in the background.  Avery changed it to an airplane.

The moment she looked away, though, she looked back and there was an airplane with an opossum in it, hands raised, the letters ‘aaaaaa’ streaming above it.  Letters she hadn’t put there.

“Hmmm…”

Snowdrop pulled her shirt away from her belly so the graphic would be more horizontal.

Avery changed Snowdrop’s hair.  From blond and straight in a way that stuck up and out to black and curly-

Singular hairs poked their way up and free, sticking up in various directions.

“Are you doing that?” Avery asked.

“Intentionally,” Snowdrop said, somber.

“Hat,” Avery said.  She created a beanie-style hat, closed her eyes for a second, then opened them.

The beanie’s rim had bits that poked out, emulating opossum ears in vague shape.

“Guess we gotta keep the opossum energy alive.  Hair sticks up, bleached white…”

Avery changed Snowdrop’s hair.

“And for a shirt… hmmmm…”

“Don’t ask your friends.  They’d be terrible at this.”

“Hey, yeah.”

Avery dialed her friends, trying to pull them into a group call.

Lucy answered first, and then Verona.

Avery gave them the rundown.

“Got it,” Verona said.  “So some practices, you know, there’s gotta be a tell, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.

“We ran into that with the Choir.  There has to be a solution.  Or it’s not fair,” Lucy said.

“It’s really common with glamour, by the way.  Like, if you seal it up too tight and there’s no obvious way for the truth to get out, it builds up pressure.  But for Snowdrop it’s her opossum self that’s building up pressure, and there’s a lot of that already.”

“Not true.  I’m a bad oposssum representative,” Snowdrop said.

“So what do I do?”

“Well, there’s ways that practices handle this,” Verona told her.

“A cheat,” Lucy cut in.

“I was getting to that!  The good way is a riddle.  So… here, write this.  What family line thrives, when they hang, parent and child alike?”

“An opossum one,” Lucy said.

Avery used a finger to put the letters down.  The glamour helped give the letters a font.

“Add something to the inside of the shirt.  Like it’s a shirt a guy can wear where they flip up the bottom half and the joke answer is on the inside.  It’s a vent valve for the truth, but your target isn’t going to pull up some little boy’s shirt, I hope.”

“Gotcha,” Avery said.  Boy-Snowdrop folded up the shirt, exposing slightly protruding belly.  Avery wrote a speech bubble with the answer inside.  “Okay.  I’m going to add a clown.  So this isn’t something that they’ll get unless they read the joke and think about it, huh?”

“Maybe avoid facing them directly,” Lucy said.

“That’s the plan, anyway,” Avery said.

“Good luck,” Lucy said.

“Miss you guys.  See you this weekend, Ronnie,” Avery said.

“Looking forward to it.”

Avery said her goodbyes and hung up.

She did the final touches on Snowdrop, to make ‘him’ resemble the face she’d given herself then had him do a turn.

“You look like a kid with a bad bleach job of his hair.”

“I’m going to go click my tongue at girls,” Snowdrop said.

“Come on.”

There was a slice of park along the waterside, and the top end of that park ended in a marina.  Part of that marina was a square building where a bunch of people, most of them older, were all hanging out and sitting around on the second floor, on an open patio.  The building wasn’t labeled, but it was a hang-out spot for dues-paying members of the marina, while also occasionally a meeting place for rotary clubs and local charities, and a spot for coordinating things like sailboat races and beach clean-ups.  Families were milling around, enjoying the weather before it was too cold to really sit on the grass or sit on the beach by the lakeside.

Florin Pesch was there.  Avery was careful not to look at him directly.

Pulling a frisbee out of her handbag, she tossed to Boy-Snowdrop.  ‘He’ caught it, then threw it back.  Badly.  It landed about fifteen feet to Avery’s right.

But it was fine.  As much as the athlete in Avery was feeling a degree of pain at that, they weren’t really here to play catch.  They were here to put Snowdrop close to the corner of the patio where Florin was, and while Avery had to walk over to get the frisbee every few throws, Snowdrop was staying put, reasonably close to Florin.  Avery, hanging back, sometimes walking around, avoided looking directly at Florin, but she could look at the man who sat down next to Florin.

Florin had told her that his practice only really had him work once every once in a long while.  He controlled things that controlled or copied people and once in a while he’d take over a business or ruin someone’s life.

So what did a man like that do when he wasn’t busy with a project?

According to Gilkey, he came here a lot, sometimes to eat dinner, sometimes meeting people and going to dinner with them.

And to Avery, it sure seemed like he was holding meetings.  Sitting there, occupying a table, spending ten minutes with two people, possible a couple.  Staying put while they left, a heavyset, fifty-something man sitting down shortly after.

When Snowdrop took a frisbee to the forehead, Avery had to fix the glamour, then decided they’d been throwing for long enough.  They sat on the grass, a distance away, just close enough that Snowdrop’s ears could pick stuff up.

Snowdrop shared her senses while Avery got snacks from her bag.  Vegetables and things left over from lunch.  Some less healthy stuff.

“…my chief of staff.”

“I have other obligations,” Florin said.

“You make things happen.  That’s worth a good salary.”

“I do and it is.  But part of what I do is circumspect.  If I’m too active in one place, people notice, my ability to make things happen gets… harder.  The same forces that empower me might hold me back.  Hold you back with me.  Trust me when I say this is the best way to go about this.  Slow, steady, sure, and severe.”

“Tell me you’re not going to work for my opponent.”

“I’m not.  Everything I told you holds true for anyone else here I’d work for, and I don’t have the relationship with them that I have with you.  I’d be starting nearly from scratch.”

“Relationship.  I pay you.”

“And I make things happen.”

The conversation broke as Florin ordered wine.

“That guy’s not the Mayor,” Snowdrop told Avery, while chewing on a carrot.  “The people from before, they’re not business owners yet.  They have an app, it sounds really cool.”

“They’re… new business owners?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop nodded.

“What’s the app?”

“Super cool.  Spaceships.”

“It’s not spaceships, so it’s… is it a vehicle?” Avery asked.  She pointed at the water, boats.

“Yep.  Boats too.  Definitely boats and spaceships.”

“Planes?”

“That too.  Really expansive, really cool, not your everyday sort of thing.”

“So it’s boring.  Bikes?”

“Less interesting.  Just a bit.”

“Cars.”

Snowdrop nodded.  “It’s a speeding app.”

“Not speeding… parking?”

“Nope.”

“That… really doesn’t sound nefarious,” Avery told Snowdrop.

“With zero data collection and license plate trafficking.  Super ethical.”

“Was our guy interested?” Avery asked.  She avoided looking at Florin, but her bracelet told her that she hadn’t drawn any notice yet.

“Not at all interested in tracking anyone.”

“So he’s… maybe actually being honest about not using any actual practice stuff?” Avery asked.  “He’s being a non-practice manipulator?”

“I think there’s practice involved.”

Avery nodded to herself.

The Lord handles Lord business.  Arbitration of practice, power, enforcement of boundaries, the big inter-city stuff, the big decisions.

And the council handles the rest, according to Gilkey.  We were thinking it was Ann and Deb who were the big manipulators pulling this stuff off.  But Florin’s got a whole thing going, and because the Lord of Thunder Bay is the way she is, he might actually be completely off her radar, so long as practice isn’t involved.

Which raised whole other questions.  Like how involved he was with what Musser was doing, and how this interacted with that.

If Charles had been targeting someone local by sending a new practitioner in with a hard to handle practice, was it one of the four people she’d been asked to surveil?  Or was it even a practitioner at all?

The mayor left, going to talk to other people.  Florin remained where he was, until he was joined by others.

From what Avery heard, it was talk about budget, events, and plans for singers to come.  Business as usual for this little place by the park with a view of the lake.

Snowdrop yawned.

“C’mon,” Avery said.

“I don’t want to go home.”

“Yeah.  Let’s go.  Dinner for me, sleep for you.  Good work.”

Boy-Snowdrop winked at her.

Leaving before they pushed things too far.

Avery had experience when it came to keeping an eye on people, and the tools she had now made how they’d handled things before look laughable.  Skill with glamour, connection blocks, a familiar, and other tools.

But what her experience told her was that this would be an ongoing process.

I wonder if Verona will be down for a bit of spying and practice stuff when she’s here.

The vague impression thought made its way to Snowdrop, even though Avery hadn’t really pushed it out to her, and Snowdrop scoffed.

“Yeah, I get it,” Avery said.  “Silly thought.”

“Which direction are you?” Avery asked.

“Huh?” Nora asked, looking surprised.

“Your house?”

“This way,” Nora said.  “Uhhh, want to come over?  Are you inviting yourself?”

“I wouldn’t want to put you on the spot, I-”

“Because I’m suddenly wishing I’d done a lot more chores and cleaned up, I wouldn’t want to-”

“I want to show you something!” Avery exclaimed.  “Come on.  It’s in this direction.”

Nora wore a jacket that looked an awful lot like what Avery thought a straightjacket might look like if everything was unbuckled, black with straps and metal buckles and everything, heavy in the sleeve, a tank top with a dead tree bleached onto it, and a plaid skirt.  She let Avery lead her.

“Hey, Snowdrop… I bet you’re tired, girl, middle of the afternoon…”

“Snow what?” Nora asked.

“Come on, come here…” Avery pushed.  Snowdrop roused and trundled out of her hiding spot.  She picked various ones near the school, sometimes.

“Oh gosh,” Nora exclaimed.

Avery crouched down, and beckoned Snowdrop to come.  Snowdrop sent her impulses, inquiring about snacks.

“No snacks today,” Avery said, apologetic.  “Another time.”

Snowdrop pushed out a signal that was like ‘tonight’?

“Snacks another time.  Really truly.”

Snowdrop stopped in her tracks, sending the signal again.  Tonight?

“Come on, little glutton.”

Snowdrop made the approach.  She let Avery give her pats and scritches.

“She’s so cute,” Nora said.  Nora sat down on the sidewalk, fixing her skirt, sitting cross-legged, and tentatively reached out.

Snowdrop nuzzled fingers, and accepted scratches, then trundled forward to Nora.

“Uhhhh…”

Snowdrop climbed over Nora’s legs.  Nora held her hands about two feet away from Snowdrop, as if they were repelled by magnets.  Repelled by alarm.  “Aaaa, nails, claws, whatever those are, and bare legs, nails, aaa.”

“Be nice, Snowdrop,” Avery warned.

Snowdrop climbed onto Nora’s lap, in the drooping portion of the skirt, then plunked herself down there, like she was ready to go to sleep.

“Aaaaa,” Nora said.  “What do I do?  I don’t want to hurt her.  She’s small.”

Avery took Nora’s hand and placed it on Snowdrop, and guided it through a gentle pat.

“She used to be smaller.”

“That’s always the case, isn’t it?” Nora asked, relaxing more than Snowdrop relaxed as she got into the groove of patting her.  “We start out as babies.  Biology.  Unless you haven’t taken that class yet.”

“I picked that out at some point,” Avery told her, smiling.  “Snark, wow.”

The two of them gave Snowdrop scratches.  Fingers bumped fingers, and with Avery sitting facing Nora, slightly off to the side, her right knee touched Nora’s and the whole thing was nice.

“You’re going to have a lot of gray hairs on your jacket and shirt, sorry.”

“Enh.  I don’t mind.  How is she so gentle?”

“She’s special,” Avery murmured.  And you’re Snowdrop approved and Snowdrop approving.

“I don’t know how I can get up when she’s sleeping on me like this, and my thighs are getting cold.”

“C’mon, lazy animal,” Avery said.  “Can I rescue you?”

“Please.  Not that this isn’t nice, but-”

Avery carefully scooped up Snowdrop, who chose to be snotty and resist, wriggling free of Avery’s hands until Avery had a better grip of neck and rump.  She cradled Snowdrop to her chest for a bit, then set her on the lawn.

Snacks, tonight, Snowdrop set an impulse.

“Snacks another time,” Avery pledged.  She stood and gave Nora a hand in standing.

Hand contact, firm, compared to the light grazes of finger on finger as they both had simultaneously scratched Snowdrop.  Happy light buzzy feelings followed.

“Want to come over?”

“I, hm- weren’t you worried?”

“Come over,” Nora said.  “We won’t go inside.”

Avery nodded, watching to make sure Snowdrop got back to a good resting spot, then following Nora.  Only a couple blocks from the school, as it happened.

Nora opened her garage.  “Neighbor’s car isn’t in the driveway.  That’s good.”

Because?  Avery wondered.

Then she saw the drum set.

“I did a lot of homemade soundproofing but obviously there’s- can you close the door?” Nora asked.  “Obviously it’s drums.  Nothing’s going to be perfect.”

Avery did.  Nora hit the lights.  Avery could see the homemade soundproofing, which included layers of egg cartons and rugs along the walls of the garage.

Nora took a seat at the drums, shucking off her jacket.  “This is my thing.  It’s what I do when I don’t know what else to do.  Especially when I’m- feeling bad for whatever reason.  I guess it really kinda sucks that I’m not that great, when it’s my thing, but… no judgement?”

“No judgement, but if there is any I’ll try to keep it positive.”

“I guess I’ll take what I can get.”

Nora turned on some accompanying music, turned it up, picked up her sticks, and took a deep breath before going all in.  Hair lifted up by arms, bouncing up, bouncing off of arms again.  Expression shifting.  It was the kind of thing that Avery thought might be an intense solo but it was like that from the start, with the music, and then the solo came.

Avery plunked herself down on the super old couch that was sitting on the one side of the garage.

That light, buzzy feeling that came a lot of the time she was with Nora was a rush, now.

And with that rush, a feeling of bewilderment.

She kind of got what her mom meant, before.  About stretching herself too thin.

There was too much to do.  She knew she should leave to go maintain surveillance, and the fact she wasn’t would be noticed.  She had to handle practice and juggle friendships and stop Charles and- and what?

And here was a girl who- it had been nice.  Safe.  Easy.  Nora was cute and Avery did like the style but it was like Avery liked a type and Nora admittedly wasn’t that type.  Avery liked big and huggable and sometimes that was plus-size and sometimes it was busty and sometimes it was tall and muscular and Nora was none of those things so… easy, right?

The sound was big, and the drum beats kicked Avery’s heart into high gear, thudding in her chest.  The moment was triumphant, it felt like, and the huggable part of it was Avery wanting to celebrate that moment, wrapping her arms around Nora.

She wanted to spend more time with this girl and she didn’t have time.  Literally everything else in Avery’s world demanded it be a bigger priority.

A droplet of sweat was caught by an upswing of the drumstick, obliterated.  Avery saw and she knew a snapshot of that would stick to her brain, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

How?  How how how how how?

How?  She could become someone else but she couldn’t pull this off?

The song ended.  Nora put the drumsticks down, turning the music down a bit, but leaving it playing.

“Don’t, um, leave me hanging,” Nora said.

Avery’s words caught in her throat.

“I might actually implode from embarrassment, bringing you here to watch when-”

Avery shook her head.  “No, definitely don’t implode.”

How could she do everything she needed to do when even something like trying to find grounds for compromise with Musser and preventing another Musser interference in the future conflicted with her surveillance thing?  When the act of spying on locals meant she maybe wasn’t building essential bridges?  When friends were coming and she had to figure out what to do with them, and time with them took up time and maybe Verona wouldn’t want to help with the surveillance thing.  Maybe Lucy’s worries about Verona meant Avery would need to fix something or talk to her friend.  Maybe Liberty being lonely meant there was stuff to wrangle there, and her own practice was faltering because she had other stuff taking up time, and then there was school…

It was all so much and this moment in this room being so big made it clear how little space there was to fit something in.

And Avery wanted to fit this in.

Just- needed to squeeze in a little something.  Who, what?

She connected two pieces.  Liberty would probably love to go on the Path with her and Jude.  She’d probably find Jude hilarious to mess with in the same way she found Avery fun to mess with, and Jude would probably like Liberty because everyone did.

Two pieces merged together, a bit of space made in Avery’s brain.  Enough to get the words out.

“I’m in actual awe, I loved that that’s so cool…!”

She could see the doubt on Nora’s face.  Vaguely pleased, but doubting, like the silence had been too long.

“I can see why you liked that band!”

And that connected.

She’d figure the rest out.

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