Author: Wildbow

Left in the Dust – 16.3 | Pale

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Avery claimed the cheesecake and was halfway out the door when the woman at the counter shouted after her, “Hey!”

Right.  Payment.  She was an idiot.

How mad would Sheridan be if they got banned from Overloaded?

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she apologized.  She tipped twenty dollars extra from her personal funds.  It was so weird to think about personal funds.

More worrying was Liberty and Nora.  She briefly considered running through traffic.  The boon from Zoomtown was supposed to make her really good at that.  But not perfect at it.  Plus it would weird Nora out.

But would it weird Nora out more than whatever it was Liberty was saying?

She decided not to risk that slim chance of being hit by a car and used the crosswalk.  Brimming with nervous energy, she watched as they talked, Liberty dead serious, Nora glancing nervously back at Avery every few seconds, like making eye contact with either Liberty or Avery was hard.

She crossed, then jogged over, just in time to see Liberty finish talking, putting a heavy hand on Nora’s shoulder, almost a shove, but not really pushing her away.  Nora turned a fraction as a result, then turned the rest of the way, taking a bit of a step away from Liberty.

“Everything okay?”

“Yep,” Liberty replied.  “Did you try to steal that cheesecake?”

“I forgot to pay, I-”

Liberty laughed.

“-I wanted to get back.  You guys looked stressed?” she made it a question.

Nora shrugged, eyes wide, face unreadable.  She pushed her locs back over her head, and one fell down to drape across her face.

“Anyone want to tell me what you were talking about?” Avery asked.

“Nope,” Liberty answered.

Nora hesitated, then looked at Liberty, dropping her eyes to the ground.  “No.”

“Because this is weird,” Avery told them.

“We’re good,” Liberty said.  She turned to Nora.  “We’re still hanging out?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Yeah, of course.”  Avery paused to rock back on her heels and forward onto her tiptoes.  “Let’s head back to my place, deliver the cheesecake first?  It’s not too far.”

“I’ll call my mom,” Nora said.

“Oh, and we can make a quick stop at the grocery store.  I have an idea,” Avery said.

Avery put her s’more together.  Bit of chocolate, marshmallow, smushed carefully between two graham crackers.

The landlord had had a wobbly charcoal stove that looked like it had been welded together from five pieces of sheet metal, given legs and handles.  But the stove was more leg than stove, top heavy with the stove segment at waist height, the four sides and bottom of it thin wobbly metal containing a mesh basket that kept the charcoal itself from contacting the metal directly.  It was something the landlord’s departed husband had made once upon a time and then kept in the garage thereafter.  The construction of the little stove meant a light bump threatened to knock it over and spill contents out onto the paving stones, wood, and foliage of the rooftop.  Or their legs and shoes.

Of course, when Liberty saw it, she’d been more eager to put the thing to use.

It was getting dark, and the three of them had pulled patio chairs up as close as they could to the stove without being at risk of being burned.  They’d brought in armloads of blankets from inside, and sat in varying amounts of wrappings.  Avery had gotten too warm, so she mostly had the blankets around her legs and folded over the arms and back.  She leaned forward awkwardly, hand near the ground.  Nora and Liberty watched as Snowdrop ambled across the porch.

Avery clicked her tongue, and Snowdrop sent amused sensations.  She approached close enough to take the offered bit of vegetable from the stir fry.

Liberty picked Snowdrop up.  “Here we go, up.”

“Easy does it,” Nora protested.  “She’s a tiny animal.”

“I’m being gentle, right?” Liberty asked Snowdrop.

Snowdrop just smacked away at the food.

“Here.  Some decoration…” Liberty said, holding Snowdrop with one arm while unclipping her chain of rubber goblin figurines from her belt loops.  She put them around Snowdrop’s neck in a double-loop like a necklace.  “Keep my friends company?  Show them a good time?”

Nora made a worried sound.  “Don’t choke her, okay?  She’s an animal, still, even if she hangs out close to people like Avery.  Even cats get their collars caught on things in the wild.”

“She’s okay.”

“Stop,” Nora said.  Then, softer, “Please.”

“Liberty,” Avery said.  “I think what Nora’s saying sounds a lot like how I was taught to treat wild animals.”

“Right,” Liberty said.  She undid the necklace.  “You can chew on these little jerks if you want, but they might fart on you or ooze weird juices.  You can play with them.  Throw a party or something.”

She set Snowdrop down and laid the necklace on the ground.

Avery sent an impulse, with a suggestion for a plan of action.

Snowdrop took one end of the chain into her mouth, then hurried off toward the hedge and the usual way she climbed down to the ground, dragging the chain with her.  Nora, already reaching down to graze Snowdrop’s fur with her fingertips, tried to grab for the chain and failed.

Snowdrop disappeared into the foliage.

“And there she goes,” Liberty said.

“You’re probably not getting that chain and those figures back,” Nora told her.

Liberty snickered.

Avery could sense Snowdrop climbing down to ground level.

“Stay close, opossum!” Liberty called out.

“Voice down, just a bit,” Avery said.  “My mom was worried we’d bother the landlord or neighbors.”

“Gotcha,” Liberty said.  She went to where their music setup was.

“Snowdrop is so cute,” Nora told Avery.  “She followed you here?”

“Yep.  Or came with.  Or she was here before I was.  Depending on when you’re talking about.”  I think that covers the bases.

Liberty finished changing over the music.  She unplugged the little speakers that they’d scavenged from inside, handed Avery’s phone back to her, then plugged them into her own phone.  It started out with pretty mellow drums and bass.

“Huh, I was expecting something more extreme,” Avery noted, leaning her head back over the back of the chair, until she was looking at Liberty almost upside-down.

“If I’m not on a call with someone or doing something I’m usually listening to music a lot.  But you can’t go too extreme all the time,” Liberty said.  “I like movies that are like hour-plus long music videos with a story.  This is one of the soundtracks from one of them.”

“Does it kick off some?” Nora asked.  She was shrouded in blankets with her coat over her lap.  “It’s good but it’s a little…”

“It kicks off.  Tracks are in the order they play in the movie.  I like it that way.  This is just the opening crawl.”

Nora nodded.  “Can I make another?  I don’t want to hog, but…”

“Go for it,” Avery said.

Nora picked up her stick, which was resting against the side of the chair she was in, then, trying to preserve her blanket nest, stabbed at the bag of marshmallows.  Avery grinned as she reached over to hold the bag still until Nora could spear one.

Nora held the marshmallow out over the glowing embers.  “My mom gets annoying about buying sugar or having anything snacky.  Even for birthdays and stuff she’s like, ‘are you sure you want a cake?’ and ‘what about a fruit tower instead, you liked that when we did it that one year’?”

Her voice took on a different tone as she mimed her mom, a little deeper.

“Fruit tower?” Avery asked.

“It was my eighth or ninth birthday.  Around then.  She took two watermelons and removed the outside parts, and stuck them together with toothpicks, and made star shapes with pineapples and stuck those on the outside with toothpicks, had a little arrangement of grapes and cherries and things on the top layers.”

“Oh no, no no no,” Liberty whispered, shrouding herself in blankets again.

“Isn’t there a lot of sugar in fruit anyway?” Avery asked.

“I dunno, and it was honestly pretty okay,” Nora said.  “I did like it.  But I thought I was getting that and a birthday cake.  I didn’t get a birthday cake, and I was pretty upset, but I kept quiet about it.”

“So no actual sugar-sugar ever?” Liberty asked, horrified.

“No, sometimes, but it’s a very special treat.  Or I can have it if I’m a guest somewhere.  It’s not the only food thing.  My mom’s weird about using margarine instead of butter and drinking water instead of anything else, no juice, never juice.  No bread-”

The music from the speakers picked up in intensity.  Nora paused to listen, nodding.

“Bread?” Avery asked.

“Not because we’re gluten free but because she thinks most bread is basically a step away from having cake.  Three quarters of our plate have to be greens, and no second helpings.  Except if we’re guests.  She never makes requests or makes a fuss and she thinks we should always ask for seconds if we’re guests somewhere.  We can have cake and sugar and soda and whatever if we’re at someone’s house.”

“That’s a lot of food weirdness,” Avery replied.

“She was pretty heavy as a teen and got bullied pretty bad over it.  I think she was like, two hundred pounds, at five foot five?”

“My first crush wasn’t that heavy but she was heavier,” Avery said.  “Pamela.  I hope she’s doing okay.”

“My dad had this super super minor heart thing and she made all these changes to crack down because of it.  No salt.”

Liberty leaned back a bit, the patio chair creaking slightly.  “My dad’s weirdest food thing was one summer when he was all, ‘you can eat what you forage or kill.  I’ll supervise’.”

“Uh what?” Nora asked.

“Yeah.  With my big sister.  Gotta say, makes me think a lot more before taking a bite out of a hamburger,” Liberty said.  “You okay with me talking about this, Avery?”

Avery nodded.  “It’s cool.  Just… feel the opposite of hungry when there’s a piece of meat oozing blood in front of me.”

“I’ll spare you the details, except to say it’s an experience picking coarse hair and bullet fragments out of your meal.”

Avery thought again about how Anthem Tedd was embroiled in Musser’s business.

Liberty glanced at her.  “Changing the subject!  Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I was glad to get to the Blue Heron with Avery.”

“The summer thing,” Avery explained.

“I feel like I missed out.  That you two have a history, or…”

“Nah,” Liberty told her.  “We barely interacted until right toward the end.  When we had a scuffle, I nearly threw Avery off a bridge, my big sister got really aggressive with her… felt bad.  So we became friends more after than during.”

Avery glanced at Nora, who looked back at her, expression concerned but not nearly as confused or alarmed out as it should have been by the topic.

“What I was going to say was that the food there was so good.  The one summer we were hunting and paging through this little booklet you could fit in a pocket, that had all the plant life.  Our fingers were so dirty from digging up some root vegetables that there were whole pages in that booklet that were caked in it or sticking together.  Then bam, top class meals.”

Inside, the oven beeped.

“It was pretty terrific,” Avery said.  “For a little while, anyway.”

“I’d rather do the survival craziness than your whole food thing with your mom.”

“At least it’s mostly normal, right?  It’s bland sometimes but you’re not going to-”

The door to the patio opened.  Rowan.

“Heya!” Liberty called out.  “Want to sit?”

“Ew, no, that’d be weird,” Avery protested.

“Checking in,” he said.  He walked down the short set of stairs, walked over, looked at the charcoal stove from a few angles.  “Don’t bump that.”

“We’re being pretty careful.”

“Don’t rest sticks on the edge while you’re toasting the marshmallows, or lean them up against it when you’re not using them.”

“We know.”

“Point to the fire extinguisher.”

All three of them pointed.

“Mom called, said she’d be back in twenty.  She can give a ride to your friend around then.  Get her home before ten.”

“My mom’s already coming,” Nora said.

“Alright.”

He walked off, closing the door.

“Bye Rowan!” Liberty called after him, smiling.

Avery was a bit surprised Liberty hadn’t teased more on the Rowan thing.  She knew enough from dealing with annoying siblings that she didn’t open her mouth and give Liberty the excuse to start in on it.

She looked over at Nora, and was a bit surprised to see Nora looking way more anxious than before, eyes on the fire, fingers picking away at the exterior wood of her marshmallow toasting stick.

“You okay?”

“Hm?” Nora asked, startled out of thoughts.

“You looked down.  Is it about going home, all that stuff?”

“No.  Home’s fine.  Just because my mom stresses out about weird things- no.  It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Then what’s up?”

“It’s nothing.  Um.  But I think my mom’s probably coming to check things are alright.  Probably shouldn’t let her see this little camp stove.” Nora said.

“I’m fond of the shitty wobbly camp stove,” Liberty murmured.  “I love it more because it’s so clearly flawed.”

“I gather your mom’s overprotective?” Avery asked.

Nora shrugged, then fixed the blanket that slipped from her shoulder.  “I mentioned the bullying she had, and there was other stuff.  One teacher- he taught her and when she found out he was still teaching at the school I was going to go to, she changed me to a different school.  That was the biggest thing she’s done.”

“Was the teacher bullying her?” Avery asked.  “For being overweight?”

“I figure.”  Nora shrugged.  “I don’t usually kick up a fuss about stuff, but that whole thing meant me losing all my friends, and I haven’t made many more.”

“Me, I hope?  Kinda?” Avery asked.

Nora nodded.  She glanced at Liberty.  “Anyway.  I got pretty upset, asked, I wanted to at least know why, told her there wasn’t any guarantee I’d have him as my teacher, you know?  And she got really depressed about it.  Makes me feel a bit sick now for getting mad, whenever I think back about it?”

“You shouldn’t feel bad about standing up for yourself,” Liberty said.

“Except every time I do I end up regretting it.  Lying awake at night years later thinking about it.”

“At least demand a proper birthday cake.”

Nora shrugged.  “You know what’s screwed up though?  She’s not as hard on my little brothers about the food thing.  They can get snacks on the way home.  And they do, a lot.  They can have toaster cookies, maybe one box a month, but I can’t because it’s a ‘kid’ food.”

“Bet when they’re a bit older they’ll drop the ‘kid food’ rule,” Avery said.

“Ugh,” Nora groaned.  “Please no.  It’s already unfair.  When I was my brothers’ ages I couldn’t.”

“How many sibs?” Liberty asked.

Avery held up two fingers just before Nora replied, “Two.  Henry and Luke.  Twelve and eleven.  Henry’s going to high school next year and he might get to go to the school I wasn’t allowed to.  He argued about it, mom got a bit down again, dad took him aside and told him to quit it, but that he’ll probably be allowed to go.  He gloated to me about it.”

“Shitty,” Avery murmured.

“What’s your dad like?” Liberty asked.

“He got fired and sort of unofficially retired?  I guess?  He’s older than my mom, decided looking for work is more of a hassle than just living off the retirement savings he has.  He kind of putters around the house, gardens sometimes, cleans up, drives us places.  Mostly follows my mom’s lead.”

“Who do you take after?”

“Both?  I dunno, never thought about it.  Sorry.  I was invited to hang out and I’m griping a lot.”

“It’s okay,” Avery said.  “Really.  It’s nice to know stuff.”

“If we can’t gripe about parents and school and stuff when we’re making s’mores with friends, when are we going to?” Liberty asked.

“When the mood isn’t toasty and cozy?” Nora asked.  “What does your dad do?”

“That’s a tough question to answer,” Liberty said.  She counted on her fingers, “Security, bounty hunting, bodyguard, teaching, training, travels to weird places, leads groups into those places.  Bunch of city councils have him on retainer for dealing with stray… I guess wildlife?”

“Like, escaped from zoos?” Nora asked.

“Yeah.  Like that.”

Should I ask?  I shouldn’t ask.  I don’t want to ask.  Shouldn’t.

“What’s he doing now?” Avery asked.

“He doesn’t talk to us about work while he’s doing it.  Part of that is him traveling a lot.  Part of it is contracts.  I think whatever he’s doing now has the equivalent of an NDA.”

Avery nodded.

“Uncle T was dissing my dad,” Liberty said, leaning back, rolling her head toward Avery more than she turned it.  “Sucked so much.”

“I’m sorry.”

Liberty rolled her head to the other side, looking at Nora.  “My mentor, childhood tutor.  Not actually an uncle.”

“The name makes me think of Mr. T, the personality,” Nora replied.

“Uncle T is basically the opposite of Mr. T,” Avery said.

Liberty laughed lightly.  “Oh yeah.”

Avery explained, “He’s short- shorter than what you probably imagined when I said he’s short, lumpy in a non-muscular way, wears a monocle, he’s not very prone to swearing or even shouting… at least, compared to the average.”  Average goblin.

“You know him?”

“Before I knew Liberty.  He lived in my hometown.  Helped me and my friends out some.  He’s pretty wise, he’s travelled, he’s thoughtful… I don’t want to start a fight or anything, but-”

“Don’t diss my daddy,” Liberty told Avery, sitting up straighter.  “If you’re going to start agreeing with Uncle T, then I’m going to get mad at you like I got mad at him.”

Avery glanced at Nora.  Even in this moment, Liberty being more intimidating, or as intimidating as anyone could be while half-swaddled in blankets, Nora only looked uncomfortable, not scared like she had earlier.

“There’s stuff you don’t know,” Avery said.

“There’s stuff you don’t know, okay?” Liberty pressed.  “My family’s pretty well off, had money, has a history and business going back a good while.  My family history is packed with badasses and asskickers, usually both.  My dad had ‘Meri and me, and his dad was all, ‘You’ve got to have a son’.  My dad said no, not if it meant ‘Meri and me would get made secondary or treated as lesser.  So he got cut out of the family money, kicked enough ass at life to make them beg him to come back, and made them apologize and agree to cut us into family funds and resources when we come of age.  How many dads would go that far?”

“Oh wow,” Nora said.

Avery frowned.  “I get that, but-”

“No buts, okay?  If you keep going, I’m going to leave.  Or I’ll do what I said I’d do and nothing more, like I did with Uncle T.”

Liberty was coming dangerously close to talking about gainsaying or keeping to oaths.

“Okay,” Avery said.

“I can deal with my daddy.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sorry,” Liberty said, to Nora.  “Anyway.  That’s who he really is, you know?  Gave up his claim to wealth and fortune for us, and then kicked ass to make sure we’d get our share.”

“And I was talking about having to use margarine instead of butter and not being allowed to use salt.”

“That is pretty horrific, though,” Liberty told her.

Avery fixed her blankets.  She reached out for Snowdrop, who was in the middle of some rowdy fun with the goblins who’d sprung up from the chain.  Good.

She wished she could find a way to handle Liberty’s dad, but she was worried there was no way.  Not if Liberty couldn’t get there on her own.

She looked at Nora, “I’m imagining myself having moments around suppertime when I think about you eating a sad dinner without salt, sugar, or butter, and I’ll feel bad.  You gotta- you’re old enough to not have like, the kid birthday, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like… instead of your mom making a cake and everyone coming over for events and things-”

“A cake with watermelon,” Liberty added.

“I mean, she will make a cake if I’m firm about it,” Nora protested.  “It’s just usually small and sometimes low sugar or no sugar.”

Avery and Liberty shared a look.

Avery was the one to speak up, “Oh my god.  No, you’re old enough that birthdays are more about the people you know outside family, okay?  Right?  I could throw you a party.  Or you ask to go somewhere or do something and I can bring a surprise cake.”

“Your mom won’t say no if it means being rude, right?” Liberty asked.

“No, she wouldn’t, but my birthday is in summer and that’s way off.  Who knows if we’ll still be talking then?” Nora asked.

“I hope we’re still talking by next summer,” Avery replied.

“I mean- I do too, I do.  For sure.  But- I don’t know.”

“I’ll come too if Avery reminds me.  I’ll drive over.”

“You’ll be sixteen next summer?” Nora asked.

“Nope.”

“But you need a license.”

“You need a license or the ability to avoid getting the attention of the cops,” Liberty told Nora, winking.

“Uh huh,” Nora replied, looking concerned.  “You sound confident.”

“Yep.  Listen, I get food restrictions and I’m sure that some of those cake alternatives can be good, but I don’t think you have something like that going on, and being restricted anyway really offends my personal principles of getting the most out of life.  Of being ready to kick ass if people get in the way of that.”

“I’m not an ass-kicking type.”

“Be competitive, be aggressive, at least.”

Nora shrugged.

“I remember getting mad at Lucy,” Avery cut into the back and forth conversation between the two others.  “One of my best friends back home.  Because she told me how she thought I should be.  And maybe some of it was right but it sure didn’t feel good or right being told I shouldn’t be who I was.”

“Not what I’m trying to do,” Liberty replied.

“I know, I think.  Yeah.  But just saying.  I like Nora as she is.”

Liberty straightened up a bit, untangling herself from blankets.  “So do I.  I like your style, Nor, I think you’ve got a good heart.”

“Thanks.  I’m not sure how to reply to that.  I think you’re cool.”

“Are we cool?”

Nora nodded.

“Cool.  Well, Nora here’s got a good heart but I’ve got a bladder that’s getting full.  I’m going to take an aggressive whiz.  Excuse me.  Should I bring anything out from inside?”

“Don’t think so,” Avery said.  She put her legs out and trapped one of the legs of the stove between her feet to stabilize it as Liberty untangled herself and got up, just in case.

“Eat another s’more, while you’ve got the chance to get some sugar and chocolate,” Liberty told Nora.  She went inside.

Avery fixed the blanket and got her feet covered.  Nora looked over at the things for S’mores.

“Absolutely, go for it.  Embers are getting colder though.”

Awkward silence followed.  Nora carefully scooped up the bits of bark she’d picked off her branch and deposited onto the back of her jacket and leaned forward to toss them onto the embers.

“She really is cool,” Nora said, spearing a marshmallow

“She is.  She’s a total sweetheart too, in ways you wouldn’t think she is.”

“My first sense of her was like… you know that kid in everyone’s class in elementary school, who just lies all the time about how badass they are and how badass their dad is?”

“I didn’t go to elementary school.  Homeschooled.”

“Oh, right.”

“But I know that type of person, yeah.  There were some in my homeschool social groups.  Yeah.  Liberty isn’t-”

“I know, I was going to say, I feel like more of it’s true than not.  And it’s not annoying at all.”

“A lot more of it’s true than you’d think, actually.”  All of it and then a bunch more stuff she didn’t include.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Nora chewed on her s’more.  “She has good taste in music.”

“Yeah.  You’-”

“-What-”

They’d interrupted each other.  Conversation stopped.

“Go ahead,” Avery told Nora.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go first?  I think what I have to say might take a while.”

“That’s ok.  It wasn’t important, I just wanted to ask about the time you were talking to Liberty while I got cheesecake.  You looked really bothered.”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Can I say what I was going to say?”

Avery nodded.

The oven inside the house beeped.  Nora turned her head, frowning.

It was only a few seconds later that the door to the patio opened.  Rowan.

“What?”

“Checking on the fire.”

“Did you set the oven to beep?”

“I’d forget if I didn’t.  It’s stable?  You’re not resting or leaning anything on it?”

“Yeah.  We were talking.  Can you let us, while we’ve got time?”

“Are you being good?”

“Are you being an annoying big brother?”

“I can be more annoying.  I could stay until mom’s back.”

“Just go, please Rowan?”

“What do I get?”

“I could tell Laurie you’re a lame and annoying brother, or I could tell her you’re a good supportive brother.”

“Doesn’t have much weight.”

“I think for someone like Laurie, it does.”

Rowan rolled his eyes, then stepped back inside, closing the door.

“Thanks!” Avery called out.

There were a few seconds of silence.  Avery looked at Nora.

“Oof,” Nora whispered to herself.  She met Avery’s eyes, then reached for the branch to pick more bark off of it.  “I’ve never really gotten into this with anyone, but all that stuff I was talking about with my mom.  How she gets, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s a good mom, but it’s like… she gets so anxious.  I can’t really talk to anyone about this stuff, but she’s… I think her time in school when she was around my age was really, really traumatic for her.  Being bullied by the teacher and her fellow students.  And what she does is she works so hard to keep me away from that kind of misery, she just makes other kinds.”

“Can you talk to your dad?”

“Not really.  Anyway, when we talked, I said I didn’t have the guts to come out.  At school or at home.  That’s part of why.  I know she’d worry so much I could get bullied over it, she’d just create a bunch of new misery.”

Avery nodded.

“You said it was valid.  Which was one of a few things that blew my mind when you talked to me that day, the first of which was you talking to me in the first place.”

“It is valid.  I know how shitty it can feel, not getting what you want from family.  In my case it was pretty minor, I think my dad could come around.  But my Grumble probably won’t ever, and my little brother might take his cue.”

“There’s no way my mom would handle it okay.  She’s a good mom, she’s just not…”

“But aren’t you making yourself unhappy right now?  I meant what I said about it being valid, people need to do what they need to do, but are you trading one unhappiness for another like you were just talking about?”

“I don’t know.  I really don’t.  The-”

A car honked lightly two times in a row.

“No,” Nora said.  She gathered up her jacket in her arms until she found the pockets.  She checked her phone.  “She called.  I didn’t feel the buzz.  She’s early.”

Avery was careful around the little charcoal stove as she got up.

Nora began to get her things.  She folded the blankets, got her coat on, and retrieved her phone.

“We can talk about this another time, okay?” Avery asked.

Nora looked really bothered.  She looked down at the sidewalk, where her mom had gotten out of the car and now stood, waving an arm.

“Is it a going home thing?” Avery asked, quiet.

“It’s not.  The-”

The door opened.  Rowan.  “Your mom’s here, friend whose name I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Watch the stove when you go.  Avery, you should watch it until it’s cold or something.”

“No,” Avery said.  She got a stick and used it to steady the stove while she poured the excess water into it.  It barely sizzled.  She looked at Rowan with her best ‘see?’ expression and posture.

“Whatever.  If there’s a problem, it’s on you, not me.”

“You could watch it.”

“Nah,” he said.

They finished sorting things out, then headed to the stairs, hurrying down.

Nora’s mom had a similar skin tone, a light, dusky brown, with dense, thick black hair, but she also had a very straight nose with a defined bridge, and a sharp chin, with thin lips.  Everything else about her fit perfectly to Avery’s mental picture of what she’d be like.

“Hi Mrs…” Avery trailed off.

“Kate, call me Kate.  You’re the famous Avery?”

“Mom,” Nora said, quiet.  “She’s not famous or anything.”

“I’m Avery, yeah.”

“You’re early,” Nora said.  “Avery’s got another friend who just went into the bathroom, is it okay if Avery and I talk until Liberty comes out so I can say bye?”

“She’s from out of town,” Avery said.  “My mom’s back in a few minutes too, you can meet her and say hi.”

“You’re unsupervised?”

“My big brother and sister are around.  He-”

Rowan emerged behind Avery and Nora.

“-there he is.  He graduated already.”

“Can we hang out a bit more?” Nora asked.

“I’d really rather get going,” Nora’s mom said.  “Your brothers are unsupervised.”

“I could walk.”

“In the dark?  No.  Please honey, I’ve been running around all day.  I’m ready to stop.”

Nora hesitated, then nodded.  “Okay, I guess.”

“Thank you for hosting my daughter.”

“It’s no problem,” Rowan said, dead serious, like the goober had done anything more than check on the fire.

“We’ll hang out again soon, okay?” Avery asked.

Nora nodded.

“Avery, I’ve heard only good things.  I’d love to have you over anytime, have a conversation over dinner, meet you properly.”

“Sure,” Avery replied.

“She’s a vegetarian,” Nora told her mom.

“Good for you.  I’ll keep that in mind.  Ready to go?”

“No,” Nora said.  But she relented, walking over toward her mom a step, before glancing back.

Avery thought about the conversation in front of the thrift store.  How it had ended, that moment of awkwardness, deciding how to part ways.

Given the recent conversation, a hug was too much.  Avery went with the safe option of the wave.

Nora gave a little wave back, then got in the car, then drove off shortly after.

What the hell is going on?

“I like her most out of all the friends of yours I’ve met,” Rowan said.

“Hm.  Is Liberty okay?  She went to the bathroom.”

“She was talking to Sheridan.”

Avery went upstairs, and found Liberty sitting on the floor by her bed, talking to Sheridan.

“Oh hey.  Didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Oh.  She wanted to say bye.”

“Give me her number another time, let me text her.  You want to go back outside?”

“Sure.  I think the fire’s dead, but sure.”

“There’s more blankets to go around, at least.”

“Yeah.”

They headed over to the stairs.

“What were you and Sheridan talking about?”

“A TV show.”

“Oh no.  That show?”

“Yes that show.  Have you seen it?”

“Over Sheridan’s shoulder.  Bits and pieces, scenes.”

“You have to watch it from the beginning to grasp the intricacies.”

Avery groaned.  “Sheridan’s already spoiled too much of it, and I really don’t think it’s my kind of show.”

“It grows on you like a rat-dog pup from the Warrens.  At first it’s weirdly charming and weirdly repulsive at the same time, parts of it really make you want to hate it, but then you fall in love with those parts despite yourself.”

“Urg.”

They returned outside.  Avery sorted out the paper containers for their food, stacking empty containers and setting two aside that weren’t yet finished.  She refilled her water bottle, and brought it over to a chair.

She paused before sitting.  “Liberty?”

“Uh huh?”

“What did you say to Nora, while I was getting Sheridan’s dessert?”

“It’s personal.”

“That’s frustrating.  Because it looked like you really bothered her.”

“Yeah.  Well… I bother people sometimes.  You know, non-practicing family units are so weird.  I keep expecting like… spend enough time in some houses and you’ll inevitably meet an Other that lives there too, and the type and whatever of Other really tells you a lot about who’s in that family and what they’re about.  I’m used to waiting for that little dose of weirdness to make reality clear.”

Avery thought for a long few seconds about if she wanted to press harder.

She sat instead.  “I wonder what we’d have around.  Oh, actually, speaking of.”

“Are they back?”

Avery signalled the okay for Snowdrop to come up.

Snowdrop did, opossum head peering out before she emerged from the bushes.  Her emergence coincided with something of a push from behind, lesser goblins crowding out from behind her.  She had blood inside the cup of her ear and was breathing hard.

“Hey, wait, are you hurt?  I know you were roughhousing-”

Snowdrop became human, wrapping arms around Avery’s shoulders from behind the chairs.  She panted for breath like she’d been running, with a slight wheeze.

“You’re hurt.”

“No.  I’m fine.”

Avery twisted around to look.  Snowdrop had a fresh black eye.  “Oh hey, no, that’s not good.”

“I did shit all, but I didn’t get last place.”

“Come on.  Want blankets and bits of Chinese food?”

“That’s a good plan for the rest of the night.  I’m done with these losers.”

Goblins crowded around Liberty.  One handed her the chain.

Avery brought Snowdrop into her lap and tucked her in.  She did her best to will healing at Snowdrop.  They had a path to run tomorrow.

A smaller goblin with huge batlike ears that draped down to drag on the ground pointed skyward.  A bird was circling.

Avery looked, and then waved.

The bird descended.  It looked around.

“Yeah,  Let’s just be careful,” Avery said, switching to another chair.   She motioned to the one she’d vacated, which had its back to the door.  The bird fluttered over.  “My big brother could come barging in and my mom’s due back soon.”

“Okay, guys,” Liberty said.  “That’s your cue.”

She rattled the chain.  One by one, goblins became little rubber figures with keychain loops to hook onto the greater chain.

Snowdrop wheezed beneath Avery’s hand, which lightly brushed through fur.

The bird tore away the paper.  “I’m early.”

“That’s fine.  My other friend left early.  We might get interrupted.”

“I’ll prepare something in case,” he said.

Avery leaned over, offering a blanket, and he shook his head, patting the torn paper with feathers randomly drawn on it.  He pulled out more paper and began drawing on it.

“This is Liberty, by the way.  She’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Hey,” the Tearaway Kid greeted her.

“Hiya.”

“So I talked to Jude. We’re going to head to the Build Up tomorrow morning, coordinating with Jude and dodging my family.  Low-to-moderate difficuly path.  There’s a stepping-off point, and we’ll avoid starting the Path until we’ve had the discussion with Jude’s family.  There’s some stuff for me to negotiate, so no guarantees, but I’ll be making an effort.”

“Mmh,” he grunted.

“We should talk about how we’ll approach this.  My friend Verona suggested having you take a certain disguise to trick them, but that’s not how I want to approach this.  They might be people I’m negotiating with decades from now, I want to keep this honest and fair.”

“You’re negotiating with me too.  If you don’t help me, I don’t help you any further.  I’ll figure out other ways.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “We’ll see how it goes.  Which gets us to strategy.  Liberty, we’ve got some homework, let’s make sure you know the Path.  I’ve also got notes to go over with where I stand with the Garricks, for the negotiation.  You familiar with this one, Tearaway?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, well, it’s a building in constant construction…”

The building was as large as anything Avery had ever seen.  Maybe as large as Kennet, but turned on one side.  And much like a dollhouse, one exterior wall was missing.  There was a section of the building that had a colossal windmill, with the blades sweeping the front face.  As it rotated, it blocked out the sun, then revealed it.  Avery, Snowdrop, Liberty, the Tearaway Kid and the small group of Garricks were cast in shade, then bright light, then shade again.  Red ribbons a mile long trailed in the breeze, bunches tied to the ends of the windmill’s blades.

Avery could see the Lost denizens within the building, with the ones at the very top climbing into bunk beds.  At the very bottom, people who’d climbed into bunk beds presumably a short few minutes ago woke up from their power naps, all wearing varying forms of nightclothes, or just underwear, if they weren’t just naked.  They came in all ages.

They scaled the stairs, dashed into the open bath area.  As cranes managed what looked like a giant rolling pin with spikes on it through the lower floor, the structure tilted and bathwater sloshed out, bringing some people with it.  They braced themselves against the wall, hurrying to soap up, dunking in to rinse off, then swimming or climbing over one another on wet floors to get to the locker room.  There, they grabbed towels, dried off, opened lockers and milled around, pulling out possessions and checking fits.  A man pulled out a young woman’s dress, then threw it in a ball across the room to someone of approximately the right size.  Even with a distance separating them, Avery could see the girl’s distaste.  But she got dressed.

As the first of them reached the dining area, they snatched up trays of food, some sitting, others shoveling that food into their mouths as they hurried.  As the middle of the pack got into the room, the big destructive rolling pin started tearing through the bath area.  Water sprayed as it was caught by the spinning roller.  Someone who had been knocked unconscious when the building had tilted was caught by a spinning spike and flung into the air.

And so it went.  A rushed move out one doorway to the exterior of the building, where they found space on platforms with ropes tied to the corners.  Those platforms lifted them up a floor to the factory area, people running around to find positions.  A man with an upper body that rotated a few degrees every second and faces on both sides of his head watched as people got to work.  Children picked up clipboards, standing at the very edge of the floor where it just ceased to be, a drop to the rolling pin or the ground several hundred feet down just a step backward.  They took notes on what the adults were doing, while adults fabricated construction materials, lockers, clothes, soap… often with no rhyme or reason behind what the factories were producing where.  Raw materials had to be brought over, fed into the right machines, and products had to be pulled out and stacked.  People did what they could, fled their stations, moved to the next area, picking up tasks and products and shipping them.  Crates of things were packed and rolled down tracks to the side window, then carried upward into the clouds.

They made headway, considering the speed of the roller and the amount of work required.  Here and there, some people tried to slip through.  The man with the rotating upper body stopped them.  Grabbing one, flinging them over the edge, where they were struck by the windmill blade.  A skinny man with suds still in his hair and no clothes on started working, only to get seized by the man watching things and fed into churning machinery.  He reviewed a little girl’s clipboard and then swatted her repeatedly over the head with it, before getting distracted by someone else trying to sneak through.

A few minutes of work, rush, move forward.  Through an indoor arboretum, where fruits were grabbed from trees, stragglers having to lose even more time by needing to climb to get more.  Some who had kept their hats from the work area held those hats out for a bipedal cow with human hands gushing milk from udders, catching spraying milk in their hats, chugging it, passing the hat back to others.  The bipedal cow struggled to stay standing, hooves slipping on milk-muddied ground, milk gushing out with enough force to keep her off balance and periodically splash someone, knocking them off their feet and toward the open face of the building.

Then more work, more stations, more things produced.  Which led into another dining hall and a final stretch of relaxation areas.  Some stopped there, others went straight to the bunk area, stripping down or pulling nightclothes out of the footchests by each bunk.  Some slept, or tried to sleep.  A couple climbed into one bunk, the man looking over and giving Avery what she was pretty sure was the finger, then put up a sheet to block the view.

Sleeping for the five minutes it took the top floor to become the bottom floor.  Then repeating.  Slightly different rooms, different work, different Lost.

There was another cycle at work than just that.  Ropes with giant hooks on the end lowered rooms and segments of building into place.  Each came with Lost and teams of Lost humans who worked to lash them into place.  The more unusual Lost quickly sorted themselves out to stations in the new rooms, where they provided services.  Some humans disappeared into the background, while others stuck around, presumably filling in for the people who’d died along the way.

The resulting structure was filled with holes and barely-tacked on rooms.  There were dead ends and areas that required navigating some of the construction and chaos around the building, stepping onto platforms and other things.

Jude sidled up to stand beside Avery and Liberty, watching the process.

“Jude, meet Liberty Tedd.  Liberty Tedd, meet Jude Garrick.  We’ve also got Snowdrop, who Jude knows, and the Tearaway Kid.  Recently freed from the archives.”

“My kid cousins, Luca and Finn Garrick.”

The two boys nodded their greetings.  One was skinny with goggles on, no hat, and ear protection he’d removed from one ear.  The other was shorter, squatter, wearing a vest with external pockets, a fanny pack, and cargo shorts, all stuffed with papers of various types and sorts.

“Windmill blades,” Jude observed, sidling up beside Avery and Liberty.

“With red ribbons.”

“Yep.  You’ve been reading up.”

“Red ribbons?” Liberty asked, in an aside to Avery.

“I think it’s one of the little omens you get as a tiny boon for walking a certain Path.  Can you see them?”

“Yeah.”

“Might be because enough of us here have walked the Forest Ribbon Trail.  But yeah.  It’s too easy to grab onto them anyway,” Avery said.

“It’s common sense,” the Tearaway Kid chimed in, his voice a croak.

“Can you think of other common sense things you see?” Avery asked.

“How am I supposed to do that?” he groused  “It’s common sense.  It’s like me asking what’s common sense in your world.  The sky is blue, grass is green, falling is down.”

“Right, huh.”

“What happens?” Liberty asked.  “With the windmill.”

“Touching those is more likely to end you or screw you up than help you catch a ride to higher floors,” Jude said.

“Probably don’t fly through or past them either.”

“Of course you don’t fly through or past them,” the Tearaway Kid grumped.

“Your friend knows about ropes, right?”

“See those ropes stretching down from the clouds above?” Avery asked Liberty.

“Yep.”

“Never hang onto just a rope like that.  You can stand on the platform or the hook and hold the rope at the same time, but if you grab onto the rope alone and try to climb it it pretty much always just goes slack, like it’s no longer attached to anything at the top.  Then you fall.”

“Unless you have certain boons,” Jude said.

“Like the one you get for riding a hook off into the sunset?” Liberty asked.

“Possibly.  It would fit.  But you know, we don’t usually push our luck with that stuff,” Jude said.  He turned to Avery.  “Looks like it’s pretty slow moving, but dense.  Can’t see any evidence of the puzzles.  Big danger areas are the destruction at the bottom, construction at the top, and the mob pushing through the center.  We can scale the outside, looks like a mix of climbing, and hopping onto rope-borne platforms and equipment.  Can also go inside, but you’ve got to deal with more Others.”

“Some near the outside,” Avery noted.  “Watching windows.  Look.  Big bathroom, by the lunchroom.  There’s a trio of people with dice for heads.”

The trio were wearing janitorial uniforms and hurried between rooms, stumbling and falling every time the building’s orientation shifted in response to the destruction on the ground level.  They had two dice between the three of them, and would regularly lose their heads, pick up the dice, and fix them onto their necks.  One to six eyes peered out of the holes in the front face of the die.

They seemed preoccupied with salvaging discarded belongings, goods, and articles of clothing putting them into bags, then slinging the bags out the window and onto platforms that could carry the bags skyward.

“You think they’re a hazard?”

“Could be.”

“Hey,” Liberty asked.  “Can I fly?”

“Can you fly?” Avery asked.

“I’d be careful,” Jude told Liberty.  “For virtually all Paths, flying is out, unless it’s flying you got from a Path.  That’s not air in the empty space between things, exactly.  And once you’re not grounded, it’s pretty easy to… snap to the nearest landing point.”

“You crash,” skinny Luca with the goggles said.  “Faster and harder if your flying is good.”

“What if my flying is terrible?” Liberty asked.  “Crashing doesn’t bother me.”

“Okay.”

“Avery,” one of the older Garricks called over.

Walt Garrick and Clay Garrick were among the three who’d come with Finn, Luca, and Jude.  Walt was the older guy who’d been there for the big negotiation over the promenade, who had a bit of a loose tongue, and Clay the younger guy and salesman who’d been the intermediary.  The last adult was a woman, either Finn and Luca’s mother or someone with very poor boundaries, who could fix their hair without too much complaint from them.

Avery motioned for the Tearaway Kid to come over.

“Loser’s Jounce,” Walt told Avery.  He pressed an old, fist-sized rubber ball into her hand.  The material was dense.  “It doesn’t work near or in view of innocents.  Works better if you have more Lost practices, Lost Others, whatever else around you.  Even non-Lost Others.  It’s a damn good item, Jude was the one who said you should have it.  Reality is, we don’t do a lot off the Paths, and this is an item that works better in reality than it does on the Paths.”

“What does it do?” Avery asked.

“Bounce it three times between hand and ground to attune it to a Path.  Have to be partway.  Hurl it at something to push that something outside of reality.  Replaces it with something representative of the Path you chose.”

“So if I used it here?”

He motioned at the ropes lifting platforms.

“Dang.”

She reached out for it, and Walt held back, not giving it over.

“Zed agreed this was better than your usual item.  Talked to him about pricing.  This one hurts to give away, every single item we pry away from our people does, but this…”

Avery nodded.

“We want to get square,” Clay said.  “As agreed.”

“Okay.  It’s appreciated.”

“And to get the Cakewalk details,” Walt said.

The woman nudged Walt.

Avery had agreed to give the Cakewalk details at a steep discount, but only after the balance sheet was square.  They’d left a chunk of what the Garricks owed her as a thing to be negotiated and delivered later.  Getting the ball would be part of that.

“Got to prime it by using it while running a Path, for every use.  And if an Innocent comes in and can’t work out how something would be where you put it, it’ll be gone or broken past the point of being recognizable in the next eyeblink.  And you’ve got to catch it on the rebound.  It’ll help you with it, but if you don’t, it has a way of being really hard to find when you go looking to pick it up.”

“Got it.”

She took the ball as he offered it.  He held onto it for a moment before releasing it.

“Napkin Math Napkin,” Walt said, handing Avery a napkin.  There were numbers on it.  “Stow it somewhere you won’t look at it often.  Longer you wait, the better it’ll work.  If you’re stumped on something involving numbers, check it.  Numbers one through nine appear on there.  Ignore whatever it’s saying or whatever screwed up math is on there.  The numbers that aren’t relevant will get crossed or blotted out.”

“We’ve got other stuff that covers similar things, and we agreed if you don’t have things like this, you should.  If you’ve got a big vault door with a number you’ve got to punch in, and the one and eight are crossed out, you know they won’t appear anywhere in the answer.”

Avery nodded.

“Might work on non-Path things, but usually it’s weaker.”

“Got it.”

“And some family practices.  Little diagram you can put down and adjust to rotate the orientation of a room.  Turn the room on its side, walk on the wall or turn it upside down, walk on the ceiling.  Same deal as the ball.  Careful on the dismount.  You borrowed Hundred Years Lost?”

“Yeah.”

“You start it?”

“Yeah.  About a quarter of the way through.”

“Why can’t you be my kid, huh?” Walt asked.  “Actually doing the reading.  Well, we’ve got one of old Hazel’s.  There’s some controversy about using her stuff, given how it ended up.  A good finder family did the right thing, taking her in, but people were so mad they didn’t keep tabs on a resource like Hazel they went and destroyed the family.  Really wasn’t any fault of theirs.  Stole the work and published it themselves.”

“Walt,” Clay murmured.  “The kids have things to do with their day.”

“It’s relevant.  Just know using some of these practices with other Finder families or groups might end up with people spitting in your face.  We strike pretty close to neutral.  We’ll keep it for a rainy day.  Other Finders think using the work is supporting the thief publishers and their power base.  There are others who, well, they published it, or their close colleagues did.”

“Right.  What does it do?”

“Diagram.  Pretty sure it was inspired by the Crash Course.  Scribble that down then stay very still.  Everything in the immediate area will explode, break, go flying, get smashed by something else.  If you’re in a room the room probably won’t be sitting straight or won’t have four walls and a ceiling by the time things are done.”

“But you’ll be okay,” Clay said.  “If you can stay still and not flinch.”

“Lost have a good instinct for avoiding that kind of trouble too,” Walt added.  “Knowing it’s coming, knowing to stay still.”

“Wow.  I think one of my friends- more than one of my friends, would love this.  It’s their style.”

“It’s the kind of thing Hazel brought back to us, left behind,” Walt said.  “Be careful sharing it around.  It’s yours, but like I said, people have issues with the history of it, and it’s information some consider valuable.”

Avery nodded.

The Tearaway Kid cleared his throat.

“And the bound Others?”

“Here,” Walt said.  He handed over an ink bottle bound in many colors of thread, and a folded piece of paper.  “Two more, price like we agreed on.  And we’ve got what we need to let Edeline and the City Bird go, today.”

The Tearaway Kid ventured a few steps closer, one hand going out to Avery’s leg.  “Edeline.”

“Quadruple the value?” Walt asked.  “Counting against what we owe?”

Avery nodded.

“Because we summoned her here and there.  Long excursions.  A way to resupply, a way to get a break from whatever the rules are of a Path.  Doesn’t fix them, but puts them on pause.  Had a guy get stranded before Jude was born, he called and rode the bird until we were able to work our way to him for a rescue.  Three weeks.  Wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”

“It isn’t right, is it?” Avery asked.  “She’s a thinking, living being.”

“She’s just going to get bound again, you know.  The way Paths work, you were talking about flying?  Well, a lot of people who slip from Paths and risk getting Lost will land on things like Edeline, occupying that space.  She’s a crash site, with her own gravity.  And the next Finders to bind her might not be nearly as gentle as we were.  We dealt fairly when we called her, kept her in good shape, made it a summoning with an offering.  We wanted to keep her healthy, didn’t want to drain any power source, if there was one.  Some would use her to fight on their behalf, drain her, squeeze her dry.”

“It’s not right,” Avery told him.

“I’ll fight to protect her,” the Tearaway Kid said.

Walt sighed.

“You’ll want to start with Jude before we let her go,” Clay said.  “When you act to let something this big go, it becomes a big act.  The Path reacts like you’re on it, starts responding to you.  I don’t know how much that matters for the Build Up.”

Avery nodded.  She looked down at the Tearaway Kid.  “Good?”

“It feels too easy.”

“You helped out.  Maybe pay a visit to my hometown, back them up a bit, if you feel grateful?  Or just love the girl you love, make the universe brighter?”

The Tearaway Kid nodded.

“We good to start?” Avery asked Jude.

“Let me run something by my family.  Once we get close, we won’t have the ability to see what’s coming.  I need them to signal what Lost I’ll run into, so I can tailor the complements.”

Jude showed Avery a sheet of paper.  It looked like there were eight Lost who could appear.  Jude and his cousins needed to meet and greet five.  “We’ll be going inside, naturally.”

“We’ll go outside, I think?”

“Remember, to dismount by riding a hook into the sunset, you need to go through a window and grab the hook.  Otherwise it’ll bring you back, sometimes to a place that strands you.  And you need to dismount from the Path before we wrap up.  Walt and Clay will keep track.  Don’t waste too much time.”

Avery nodded.  She looked at Liberty.  “Ready?”

“Air Raid Bomb Princess!”  Liberty hucked a smoke bomb at the ground.  Goblins from her belt of chains and inside her bag came crawling out before the smoke completely cleared her.

When the smoke cleared, Liberty was crouching.  She still wore her bag, but two goblins were very clearly stuck inside it, with large sets of wings extended out from the sides of the backpack.  One, face smushed in between bag and back, looked at Avery and put a finger to its lips.  Bat wings and mismatched leather made up most of the rest of the outfit.  She’d donned goggles.

“Be careful about the crashing thing,” Avery told Liberty.  “I think it can actually kill you.”

“I crash so much with this setup, you’d better believe I have protections,” Liberty told Avery.

“Ear protection?” Avery asked.

“I hang out with goblins.  One of the first rituals Toadswallow taught me was a funky ritual a while ago to keep my hearing!” Liberty was raising her voice to be heard over the goblins.

Jude finished comparing notes on signals.  It looked like Clay was handling the other end of it.

Then Jude walked over.  “Done.  Got your equipment?  Ear protection ready, escape ropes tight?”

Avery patted the rope that was tied around her waist.

“It’s a good look, Jude, the hat, taking charge, knowing what you’re doing,” Liberty said.

He flushed a little, staring out at the Path.  “Luca, Finn, put on your ear protection.  Hand signals from here on out.”

The boys did.

“Can you hear?” Jude asked, watching the various platforms and rope-lifted bits of construction material.

Neither responded.

“Are you two, uh, friends?” Jude asked, quiet.  “Or…”

He floundered for a response.

“Or?” Liberty cooed.

“Business partners?”

Liberty laughed.

“Oh my god, Jude,” Avery groaned.

“I don’t know what to say.  I had assumptions, you have a good dynamic, but then she compliments me.”

“Dude, just because a girl compliments you doesn’t mean she’s interested,” Avery said.

“You’re good looking, seem nice, smart, Avery thinks you’re a good guy, sure, I’m interested in this case,” Liberty told him.  “But if you’re flinching when the goblins get close to you, it might not work out.”

“Ah, yeah.  I’m a chicken.  Family would be a hurdle on my end, too, sorry.”

“Same.  And my daddy, sorry.  He’d want me to marry a guy who can fight.”

“Definitely not me, then.”

“Would be a fun reversal, though.  Teenage rebellion by dating a nice boy like you.”

Avery smiled.

Jude smiled too, but his face was a bit pink.

“Your family doesn’t need to polish or milk you any.  Just keep doing what you’re doing, guy,” Liberty told him, smiling.

“You told her.”

“It came up,” Avery said.  “Sorry.”

“How does that come up?  Shit, here.  I like this lineup.  This is a good start.  Oh man, okay.”

The platforms had come close.  Jude signaled.  They jumped onto a platform that came close to their starting point.

There was literally no ground between the cliff edge and the platform.  Literally nothing beneath the platform.  It wasn’t a hundred foot fall, or a thousand foot fall.  There was literally nothing.  Avery considered herself pretty solid on handling vertigo, but the feeling of it still got her in the gut as she took in the distance.

The goblins in Liberty’s company joined them, which made the platform sway.  Which didn’t help.

“Uhh!” Jude raised his voice.

“Everyone with me!” Liberty ordered.

Avery with an opossum Snowdrop on her shoulder was first onto the metal beam with a rope tying it in the middle.  It began to dip with her weight, and she quickly hurried up the incline to the far end.  Liberty followed, most of her goblins going small.  She held the chain of goblin figurines like a whip.  The goblins inside her bag with the four wings flapped their wings to try to help keep her balanced, and the little bat wings over her costume mimed them, in a cumulative effort that looked pretty ineffectual.

“If you know any cute guys or girls who would date a raider goblin princess with a scary-ass daddy, you let me know!” Liberty called back to Jude.

“Wait, what?” Avery asked.

“Will do!  Putting ear protection on now!”

Liberty winked, whooped, and ran down the length of the beam, swinging around the rope with one hand before leaping.  The goblin wings flapped, her hair stirred in a wild wind, and she veered sharply to one side, before landing on hands and knees on a wooden platform.  She straightened.

Avery would have asked something more, but they were getting closer to the building, and the constant construction and destruction were loud.  The windmill got disproportionately louder as she got closer.  Or it had been disproportionately quiet with the distance they’d been from it, and now she was close it sounded just as loud as a groaning windmill with mile-long blades should be.

Destruction roared below, and impacts slammed high above.  Bits of wood and stone ranging from the size of Avery’s head to grains of sand came pouring down.

She pulled on her noise-canceling headphones.

Liberty double-checked with Avery and then hopped onto a jutting rooftop.  Avery jumped onto Liberty’s platform and then onto the roof by Liberty.

The cliffside that Clay, Walt, and the two little boys’ mom were on was Avery’s best point of reference.  So was the big rolling pin demolisher thing.  But for the rest of it, the building swayed, and it didn’t quite feel like it was gradually lowering down toward destruction.

She climbed, scaling gutters, wood, windowsills.

Liberty used the chain, and had goblins turn to normal size.  It worked like a grappling hook, almost, but with reaching claws and hands gripping the chain and everything near it.  She climbed up the chain, stepping on heads, then grabbed the end.  Goblins went small again.

Jude’s group entered the building through the side.  Avery had a glimpse of them before she had to start climbing.

We’ll have to weave in and out, she thought.

She black roped her way to higher ground, then looked down for Liberty.  Liberty lightly whipped out the chain, and Avery caught the end, using it to help haul her up.  Wing-flaps helped the process.

“Good so far,” Avery told Liberty, who nodded.

As long as we can keep an average pace of about ten feet every five minutes, we’re good, Avery thought.  Which didn’t sound that bad, but the way up wasn’t necessarily easy.  Looking straight up, there was a jutting bit of building that stuck out the side.  To get past it, they’d have to go around to the back of the building, out of sight of the adult Garricks, then climb up, or they’d have to hang from the bottom of the room, navigate over to the wall, climb that, then get on the roof of it.  Then they’d have a moment to rest.

She didn’t like either of those options.  She looked around, then nudged Liberty.  “Platforms!”

Liberty nodded.

Avery led the way.

Liberty was supplementing the physical shape she was in with the wings and chain.  She got the first platform fine, but the second was a miss, flight acting up with what looked like a sudden gust of wind catching her.  She used the chain and goblins to sort of grappling-hook her way onto it, and flashed a smile at a worried Avery.

I didn’t know she was bi.  Why didn’t she tell me?  Or did she tell me?  Did I mishear?

The bipedal cow was at a window above them, cigarette in mouth, trying to use two hands to stop four udders from gushing.  The milk coated slanting rooftops below.  Including the rooftop of the room that jutted out.  Here and there, as the gushing cow adjusted her grip and let go of one udder a blast of spray would gout through the air, about ten or fifteen feet long before it dissipated into mist.

Avery motioned, and Liberty nodded.

Back toward the building.  To another nearby window.

Avery moved from airborne platform to rooftop to window, avoiding the worst of dripping milk.  She looked up to make sure Liberty was okay.

Liberty leaped, and the platform she was leaping for abruptly stopped moving in the direction it had been, swinging slightly before turning a right angle.

She flapped bat wings, trying to keep in one position, eyes wide as she took in everything.  But each flap jerked her, screwed up her orientation.  It was a few moments from either pitching her into Lost oblivion or slamming her into the wall hard enough to break bones.

Avery reached for her charm bracelet, and plucked off the blow dryer charm.  She shook the glamour off, aimed it, and pulled the trigger.  One of her relics from the Garricks, that had belonged to Poppy, the kid who’d never made it to her first Path.  It was meant to hold things in place.  Small things.

The blast of air caught Liberty, but it wasn’t strong enough.  She jerked free of it.

“Kennet needs the allies it can get,” Avery said, elbow hooked over the windowsill, foot on a foothold, quickly nipping the back of her pointer finger with her teeth before wiping blood on the blowdryer.  “Need more power.”

This time, the blast of air caught Liberty and fixed her in place in the air, blowing her slightly away from Avery.

A platform came near, Liberty whipped the chain toward it, goblins reaching out from the chain to grab onto rope and wood, and then Liberty climbed up with their help.  Once she was stable, she showed Avery an uncharacteristically relieved expression.

I think the wings are as much a detriment as a help, Avery thought.

Liberty waited until the platform swung around enough, then jumped over.  Avery used the blow dryer to stop her in place as she got close enough to grab on.

“The wings aren’t helping!” Avery shouted.

She couldn’t hear Liberty’s response.

Liberty pulled the ear protection away from Avery’s ear.  Avery winced at the roar around them.

“But they’re cool!”

Right, well.  Dying or getting Lost wasn’t cool.

Avery climbed inside.  She helped Liberty through the window, keeping the blow dryer ready.

Even this amount of exercise had tired her out.  Or using the blood had.

Was it more costly because Kennet didn’t have the power to spare?

They had to change that.

Avery climbed a flight of stairs and found some random employees waiting to join the rush of people below.  They were mopping up the milk.

Jude, Finn, and Luca were about a minute behind them.  Avery touched Jude’s arm, then directed him off to the side, where the Cow had snuck off to have her secret smoke break.

He came back soaked from belly to ankle in milk.  Liberty laughed, but Avery couldn’t hear the laugh with the ear protection.

The other two boys went over, one by one.  The path past doorway and furniture was too narrow for multiple people.

Avery took the time to prime the Loser’s Jounce, bouncing the ball three times.  As she caught it the third time, the color and pattern changed.  Stair-like zig-zags across the middle in bands.  Gray, tan, and sky blue.

Liberty continued to laugh.  It at least looked like she was having fun.

Avery wasn’t sure she was.  Or at least- guilt over missing this thing with Liberty being bi and the whole Anthem Tedd thing clouded the back of her mind.

She could hear the crowd of denizens of this place approaching.  It wouldn’t quite be a stampede or death in the way the giant spiked rolling pin would be, or a house-sized  piece of construction falling on them would be, but they were getting close.  The way this Build Up worked, they really needed to stay in the margin between the halfway point and the top.

The two other kids didn’t get sprayed as badly as Jude.  Jude held up two fingers.

Two of your five Lost met?

They turned to go upstairs.  Snowdrop leaped from Avery’s shoulder, became human, then pointed from the direction of the cow to her mouth and back again.  Want.

Avery shook her head and guided Snowdrop up the stairs.   Later.

They passed a bath area, then a dressing room.  She put the blow dryer back on the charm bracelet while she ran.  Jude looked this way and that, then tapped Avery’s arm.  He shot Luca and Finn a hand motion, then grabbed an old fashioned box from a whole shelf of similar boxes of what looked like talcum powder.

Avery looked at it with Lost sight, and it sat different from the rest of the room.

Minor magic?

They reached a point to split up, Jude and his cousins waiting for a platform, Avery and Liberty going around to the side of the building, scaling up.  There were footholds and handholds aplenty, but Avery’s gut did a leap as everything seemed to drop an abrupt five feet before jarring to a fierce halt.

And this really was something of a marathon and a sprint at the same time.  Couldn’t dawdle, but it wasn’t going to be over in under a minute, either.

The wind stirred.  Avery looked, and she saw the bird.  It was almost big enough to span the distance between the cliff and the Build Up.  From tail-tip to beak, it was, like the Build Up, almost the same scale as Kennet.  Buildings were erected on its back, partially blocking Avery’s view, as was the occasional rise or fall of a flapping wing.

Edeline the Lost bird rider was on the bird’s head, walking forward down the beak, until she stood right by the cliff face.  She was tall, slender, with a red dress and hair more like gold than it was any color humans could naturally have, with feathers stuck in it for artistic effect.

She kissed the Tearaway Kid on the forehead.

Then she and the bird plummeted.  The Tearaway Kid hurried to get papers in order.

Edeline and the City Bird rose from the oblivion below the Build Up, wings flapping.  She did a lazy circle around the building.

Avery resumed climbing.  She saw Jude hold up three fingers as he passed, riding a platform before re-entering the building.

Did a meet and greet with another Lost?  Good.

Except the fourth group of Lost were the dice-heads.  As a matched set, they would only count as one meeting.  They were at the window above, and this time, as they slung bags of found things toward a platform, the bags split.

Trash, clothes, and debris they’d collected were caught by the wind, a storm around Liberty and Avery.  A wet sock slapped Avery across the eyes, blinding her.  She pulled it away, throwing it aside, and another piece of wet, soapy clothing slapped against her face.

Gotta subdue them, Avery thought.  Liberty had climbed up a little higher, and was fending off some of the worst of the storm of debris.

The dice-headed janitors hurled another bag out.  This one split too, adding to the storm.

Avery could deal with the stuff, and she could climb, but she couldn’t do both at the same time.

Well, they’d brought someone who could fight.

“Liberty!” Avery shouted.

Liberty looked down.

“Going to try and give you a boost!”

Liberty nodded.

Avery pulled the stapler from the charm bracelet.  Another of Poppy’s Finder tools, never used by Poppy.  The stapler was almost the opposite of the blow dryer.

She cracked it open, so the stapler’s base dangled, then aimed it carefully at the base of Liberty’s backpack.

The staple fired out like something from a gun, thrusting Liberty directly up.  Liberty caught the upper edge of the roof where the dice heads were, then was inside a moment later.

Avery’s climb was slow, but it sped up as the storm of flying clothing and bits of debris from the building’s resettling eased up.

She reached the window and climbed through.  Liberty sat with the heads of the dice headed trio, the three headless janitors sitting in the corner with a quarter-ring of goblins in front of them.

Avery paced up and down the length of the narrow hallway, checking the route they’d need to take.  She paused for twenty seconds at the window opposite Liberty’s, looking out.

Edeline flew her bird in lazy circles around the Build Up, still.  But she had company.  It was something between a kite and a hang glider, with a slender, beautiful man at the very tip, almost more of a figurehead on a boat’s brow than anything else- the glider was wide and vast, and had trees and small mountains growing off the back.  Treehouses and other constructions were attached to those firmer fixtures.

He swooped in close to Edeline, and she stood on her toes, reaching her face up, while his face dipped down.  They couldn’t quite navigate to meet before each had to turn.

She glanced back, and saw Jude talking to the dice heads.

He held up a hand.  Four.

Avery nodded.

The set of stairs took them up to a food preparation area.  A vast and steaming kitchen, managed by a too-wide woman with about fifty cleavers dangling from her apron.  She waddled as she walked, because her feet were about four feet apart, and cleavers fell from her clothing.  She glowered, cleavers in each hand, and pointed the weapon at the kitchen area, where dirty dishes were stacked.

Avery pulled her ear protection away some.  They were a bit close to the upper region, and rooms were still slamming down onto the stack of other rooms.

“You’re working so hard,” Jude told the woman.  “Thanks for everything you do.”

“So good, in such tight timeframe!” Finn complimented her.

“That’s work ethic,” Luca added.

The glower slipped away.  “Aw, come here.”

Cleavers still in each hand, she extended her arms for a hug.

Jude looked at Avery, who nodded.

She took Snowdrop and Liberty’s hands, then hurried.

They only had a few minutes before Jude got close enough to the bottom that he’d have to wrap up his part of things.  A hug for the last Other, then holding on to ride things to the bottom.  Which would be a fast ride, because the Build Up would collapse, doing no damage to Jude, Finn, or Luca, only to re-manifest with no harm to the inhabitants.

They had to get out before the collapse.

They scaled a few floors.  There weren’t many good windows.  Some were barred.  Some didn’t look like they gave good leaping points to anything they could grab onto.  What they really needed was a window with enough of a view of what was coming to make the leap count.  To grab onto a hook.  Or anything.

Trusting you, Jude.

Walt, out on the cliff, had fingers to his wrist.

Running out of time.

The man with the rotating upper body barred their path.  Liberty sent a tide of goblins at him.  Avery used the moment of Liberty, goblins, and the man being distracted to black rope behind him.  While he fought the goblins off, she and Snowdrop pulled him down to the ground from behind.  Letting Liberty through.  The goblins followed after, while the man struggled to stand.

The city bird and the giant world-on-a-kite flew past the windows.

“Can you guys help us out!?” Avery shouted, top of her lungs.

Bird and kite veered closer.  It was uneven, wavery.  Avery had to leap onto a wing-tip.  She took a running start, then jumped.

The bird pulled away.

Liberty made the next leap.  Avery kept her hand near her charm bracelet, crouching low so wind wouldn’t tear her from her perch.

Liberty rode the kite.

They flew around the steadily collapsing Build-Up for a short while.  It felt like Liberty hadn’t wanted to leave without making sure Avery was okay, and Avery obviously didn’t want to leave while her guest was still behind.  Just hanging out at the top of the building was dangerous, with pieces of construction being lowered from the sky at a hundred or a couple hundred miles an hour.  So they waited, flying through the sky with hair and clothing rippling violently around them, until the opening they needed.  Bird and Kite swooped in, they both jumped down, landed on the roof.  They climbed down to the room itself.  Just two floors of construction remaining between them and the rolling pin.  They ran, and each grabbed onto dangling hooks, one nudged closer by the kite.  They were carried in opposite directions.

“Can we talk about what you said to Jude?”

“No,” Liberty said.  She checked her watch.  “I’d get gainsaid.”

“Well that’s… annoying.  And awkward.”

“Yep and yep,” Liberty said.  She finished packing up her stuff, then flashed Avery a smile.  “How’s Snowdrop?  You can sense her, right?”

Avery nodded.

“They’re not being as rough as they were last night?”

“No.  Just being gross, I think.”

“Cool.  I really wanted to bring Cherry.  Really wanted to.  Hate that she’s missing her friend.”

Avery nodded, giving Liberty a sad smile.

Things unsaid and unanswered and things she should have damn well realized ate into the silence, and made finding words hard.

“Is my ride out there yet?” Liberty asked.

“It’s going to be a little while, but I guess a bunch of people have been early…” Avery said, as she glanced out the window above her bed.

She paused as she saw Nora out there.

“You do this?”

Liberty went to the window above Sheridan’s bed, peering out.

“Better go, huh?  Don’t worry about me.  If she’s here, it’s for a reason.”

Avery frowned.

But she hurried downstairs, then out the door.

Nora stood there at the very corner of the property the apartments were at, wearing a heavy gray sweater, black jeans, boots, and a black duffle jacket that made her look a good fifty percent wider than she actually was.  It was a nice look.  Like a knight in armor, somehow.

“What’s going on?” Avery asked, frowning.

“Did Liberty leave?”

Avery shook her head.  “Soon.”

“I stopped by earlier but you were out.”

“Sorry.”

“Did she explain?  Or say what we talked about?”

“No.  She’s being annoying about it, actually.  Though I’m sorta starting to guess.”

Nora fidgeted.

“What’s going on?”

The pair of them watched Avery hurry across the street to grab the cheesecake.

“She can be such a blockhead,” Liberty said.

Nora turned her head, immediately defensive.  “What?  No.  That’s not fair to say.”

“I have given that girl so many hints.  So fucking many.”

Nora’s heart, already beating fast from the general anxiety of strangers and everything else, stared to pound like a light punch in the upper center of her chest, a steady, rapid pummeling.

“You like her?  I won’t say.”

Nora drew in a breath, not sure how to respond.

Liberty went on, “I want her to be happy, you know.  I’m not sure I’m the person to do it.  I’d love to be, but I’m kinda fucked up, and it’d be long distance, I don’t know.”

“I want her to be happy too.”

“Cool.  Listen, I don’t think you know what you and her are and I don’t think she knows, because she’s a blockhead when it comes to this stuff.  I know the right thing to do is leave things be, but I’m more selfish than that.  So I’m going to tell her, my bi self loves her heart, I love her head, I love her freckled face, I love that she’s been there for me as a friend…”

Nora wanted to swallow hard but she couldn’t.  She wasn’t sure what her face looked like-

Avery was looking at her.

“…At the end of this visit,” Liberty went on, “if she’s not in a relationship.  I’ll ask her to kiss me.  I give myself a fifteen percent shot she says yes.”

“Should-” Nora’s voice came out too quiet.  She cleared her throat as best as she could.  “Should I wish you luck?”

“Should you?” Liberty asked.  “Hon, I’m the bitch that almost threw her off a bridge, and it wouldn’t have been a soft landing.  She still got hurt.”

“What?”

“Long story.  You, on the other hand, she talks about you a ton, you know.  Like, she tells me about her day and you get a lot of the time.  You’re close enough to be there for her.  So I’m going to give you a shot before I take mine.  If you’ve got anything to figure out, better figure it out fast.”

Nora fell silent.

“Oh man, look.  She forgot to pay.  The hostess is so pissed.  She’s usually so on the ball about stuff, she’s smart, and then lapses into ditz mode when it’s stuff she cares about.”

Nora watched a nervous Avery work at paying.

“I think that might be you, hon,” Liberty said.

Nora shook her head  “It’s not my place to say.  Maybe she’ll tell you.”

“That’s incredibly frustrating,” Avery told her.

Which is understating it.

“Yesterday, last night,” Nora said.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry.  I meant to say things, I was working my way to talking about stuff, and then I didn’t get a chance.

“Okay.”

“I’m not out of the closet to my family, and I don’t want to be at school, I’m pretty sure it’d get back to my family.  And you said that’s valid.”

“Happened to me.  Got back to my dad.  But yeah.  Totally.”

Nora nodded.  “But is it okay?”

“Okay?”

“Is it valid and okay or valid but not okay or-?”

“I don’t get- I’m learning I’m a real idiot about some things today.  I think I screwed up, I might be screwing up now-”

“I’m so bad at getting words out like this,” Nora told Avery.  Fingers stuck out of the sleeve of her big coat, and they were trembling a bit.

Avery fell silent, looking at those fingers.

“I like you,” Nora said.  “I want you to be my girlfriend.  But if it’s not okay that I’m in the closet, if you don’t want to be limited or weighed down by that, or if you don’t like me back…”

Nora trailed off.

Fingers still shaky.

Avery glanced back at the house, and the empty windows on the top floor.

She wasn’t sure what the right answer was.  Or if there was one.

But if she was totally honest with herself, about what she wanted, what sparked feelings…

Avery reached down, found those fingers, a bit cold against Avery’s touch, and she had to reach up into the sleeve to find the hand they were attached to, which was warmer.  She held Nora’s hand.

“People might guess.  If we’re hanging out enough,” Avery said.

“I’ll deal with that if it comes up.”

Avery nodded.

Nora glanced around, then asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Avery nodded with more enthusiasm, “But-”

The word was barely out when Nora’s lips met hers.  Nora squeezed her hand at the same time.

“I’ll deal with that if it comes up too, I guess,” Nora told her.

Avery smiled and she couldn’t quite get off her face.  She squeezed Nora’s hand.

“You should go to Liberty, if she’s leaving soon,” Nora told Avery.

“Are you sure?  Do you want to come-”

“Okay.”

“Call when you’re done?  Or I could call, or we could see each other at school.  Or text.  But I’ll let you go.”

“All of the above?” Avery asked.

Nora flashed her a smile, then hurried off, glancing back every ten feet or so.

Feeling buoyant, giddy, and warm despite the fact she was outside without a coat and her breath faintly fogged in the air, Avery turned toward the house, half expecting to see Liberty in the window.

It felt like she’d done her wrong three times.

She jogged back to the house, running up the stairs.  The smile faltered some but not because the happy feeling was gone.  It was just jumbled up with other worries.

Her own bedroom had never quite felt as odd to walk into.

“Oh, you’re back?” Liberty asked.

“Of course.”

“And how…” Liberty paused, shaking her head.  “How’s your friend? Or business partner?  Or…?”

“Girlfriend.”

Liberty pressed her lips tightly together, ducking her head in a bit of a nod.  “We good?”

“Of course we’re good, or at least I’m good.  You?”

“I got a cool boon and I got to go on an adventure.  I’ll remember this morning for the rest of my life, I bet.  The goblins are going to rave about it.”

“Yeah, for sure.”  That wasn’t what I was talking about.  “Memorable for me too.”

“We’re still going to talk like we did? On the phone, on lonely nights?” Liberty asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Then that’s perfect.”

Liberty, sitting on Sheridan’s bed, leaned over to the window, looking outside.  “There’s my ride.”

She got to her feet, and Avery met her with a tight hug.

After about three seconds, Liberty relaxed the tension, and let out a sigh.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize.”

“You’re a blockhead.  Ditz.”

“Yeah.”

“So long as you’re a blockhead and a ditz who’s there for me as a friend, still.”

“Totally.”

“Might need more of these hugs down the line.”

“You let me know.”

“She’s a really cool girl.  Get her a damn birthday cake.  Even if it’s not her birthday.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Nh,” Liberty grunted a response, before sighing again.  She moved her arms, and Avery ended the hug.

Liberty carried one bag and Avery another, down to the car.  She went down to the side of the house, where there was a narrow, mower-wide band of grass between house and fence, and ducked down.  She came back with the chain, goblin charms hanging on it, and clipped it to her belt loops.  The driver, a burly guy in a suit, placed the bags into the trunk.

“Off to see Daddy,” Liberty said.  “Hopefully ‘Meri too.”

What am I supposed to say to that?  Knowing what I know?  Avery wondered.  “Be safe, be good, good luck.”

“Rarely, not so often, and not so lucky, I guess,” Liberty replied, now sitting in the car with door ajar.  “I’ll be okay.”

The door shut, and the car started up.

Liberty left, off to be at her daddy’s side.  Avery had no idea what that meant, with possible war and conflict on the horizon.

Would it have been better or worse if she’d said something?  She’d told herself last night that Liberty might never listen.  That she’d have to let Liberty find out on her own.

She really, really hoped that was right.

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