Author: Wildbow

Wild Abandon – 18.a | Pale

Interludes

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Scattered branches, rocks, Lost spirits, and a tattered scrap of curtain were caught in the conflux.  Lost things, unwanted and unseen, on a realm that sat on reality’s furthest borders, that were certain to go unrecognized, unimportant, and untouched even if thousands of people were to traipse through the realm.  They were Lost things even among other Lost things.

Scattered ideas, faint impressions, and half-formed thoughts could be Lost too.  An emotional moment became an echo, which was pulled together from impressions and ideas, and among those ideas was a background memory that had never truly found any footing, nor crossed into the mind’s eye.  It’s one of the first scraps of echo to pull away as the echo later disintegrates.  But much like wisps of smoke can dissipate into the air or happen to hold together to ascend higher, the dissolving echo of a partial and unimportant memory holds together.

The universe filters things like these, with active agents, like the typhlotic entities of the Ruins, who form an ecosystem to clean the Ruins of echoes and echo-scraps, but this scrap is in an area of the Ruins that is thinner than most, with the Electro-Radio Aether slowly overtaking this particular area in the handling of memory, principles, and the dead.  It is an imperfect adaptation thus far, and the scrap escapes both Ruin and ERA.

Once it reaches a place where neither realm has sway, it reaches Nothingness.  The bounds of reality.  To an outside observer keeping a close eye on the scrap, it seems to skip between places, as it grazes different ones, because one cannot travel across Nothing.  It cannot easily disintegrate because there is nothing for it to disintegrate into, no place for fragments to go.

In a sea of jigsaw pieces from different puzzles, with different purposes, for different audiences, pieces from different puzzles can accidentally match, and it becomes a kernel of something Lost.  A few scraps cling to it, and that disintegrated, travel-worn, fleeting echo of a memory that has not yet fleeted, lucky or unlucky enough to not be digested by the universe and repurposed, it attaches to colors and shapes and becomes something Open to Interpretation.  A part of Lostness, of the furthest outreaches, of Path.

It has its own gravity and its own stickiness and in traveling through Paths it eventually sticks to one that is quiet and patient with many hidden things, where a thing that is Open to Interpretation that is mostly white and light and hidden is not out of place.  Much like a cloud could be seen by one person to be a dog and as a lion by another standing on the next rooftop over, it is both these things and neither.

And so it remains for some time.  No force acts on it and it acts on nothing.  It is unimportant, unassuming, unmoving, untouched, unrecognized, unwanted, unseen.  It is surrounded by millions of other such things that have formed in similar and different manners, ranging from the ancient to the new.

Until a Lost woman drops a piece of paper with a diagram on it.  Conflux and connection reach out.  Things as light as fall leaves tremble and stir slightly, moving closer.

And, some time later, a greater diagram is drawn and the woman says final words to a boy keeping her company, and then steps through.  She has a marked destination, creating a clear line for her to travel, and she is surrounded by anchors to that reality.  Those anchors give her a grip and a weight.

Then it is fed with power from a distant battery, and that weight multiplies a thousandfold, producing a gravitational weight that then multiplies a thousandfold again.

The unimportant scrap of memory is pulled through with her, alongside one of those anchors.  She is followed by a flood of things that had insufficient grip on the Path where they had rested, adjoining Paths, and things she had a stronger connection to.

The boy remains behind, but some Lost join her, falling after.  A ballerina with her face turned perpetually away, a soldier, a woman dressed in moonlight.

The Lost woman at the forefront accumulates Lostness around herself as she falls, at the same time she builds up reality, grows steadily in scale.

With so much swirling about, it is easier for the jigsaw to find the pieces that neatly interlock.  With the leading Lost woman’s intent and the focus on the destination, there is intent and focus in how things are being put together.

The branches and rocks, Lost spirits, and tattered scrap of curtain gather around the little lost memory.  The things that were Lost even compared to the Lost things of the Path are drawn together with that kernel that is so Open to Interpretation.

In the chaos, any observer must blink, flinch, turn away, and when they do, or when an object obstructs their vision, that kernel has taken shape.  Still vague, the scrap of curtain wraps around the vague shape within, masking it.

The Lost woman crashes through the moon, escaping from within it.  The sky changes in the wake of it.

Again, as moon-rocks fly by, vision is obstructed.  Some bits become parts of the puzzle where every piece is from somewhere different.  The scrap of lace curtain is now a dress, the moon rock is now form, and the thing that is Open to Interpretation gets a moment of recognition from the Lost woman, and in that moment it is interpreted.  It is now a person, and that person is bound to the Seal of Solomon as her creator was, because her creator was.

The clouds part, the destination becomes clearer.  The diagram stretches upward and outward, funneling them, and in the crash, the destination could be transformed into virtually anything.

But three locations are marked out.  Like mirrors giving a view of the location from different angles, they focus the intent, making the destination clear.

The Lost woman hits ground first.

The three locations make it so the town remains a town, and they act like rocks near shore, breaking up the intensity of the waves that are transforming the destination.  Mundane items act as other rocks, broadly distributed, turning what could have been a tidal wave into an incoming tide.  Power still overflows, but it reaches the perimeter, shrines shored up by the power from the battery from earlier.

Luna approaches from an angle odd enough that the peak of the roof doesn’t meet, curving wildly before striking the bed.  She bounces off, crashes into headboard, lamp, and bedside table, before landing with her back to her little bookshelf, two books falling atop her.

She is quick to stand and get herself in order, hoping nobody saw that little disaster.

Won’t do that again.

The thought finds its way into her being, which is still in the process of being interpretation.  Even as she stands, she can feel her self awareness and memories falling into place, like enough meteors striking from the skies that they form mountains and other shapes.  The thought and self-commitment becomes an important one.

This is her place.  It is hers and hers alone.  It is seen as important that this little realm that was just Founded is fantastical and odd.  So she is a child with no parents and a house to herself, and just down the street is a house with thirty babies within as the primary tenants, with adults who come in every morning, noon, and evening to feed them and sort things out.  Next door is a couple who never work, and next door to them is a family that chases down hare-brained business ideas, often with two or three overlapping, working themselves mad trying to keep it all together, with improvised factories and deliveries always ongoing.

Luna walks over to the window, and she sees the Founder at the horizon, busy at work making the rules.

Then she looks down and sees people on the arching sidewalk below, by a significant drop to the road.  Which makes it more of an above-walk than a sidewalk.  Or a catwalk.

People who are violating the rules.

She hurries, getting papers from the table by the door, in her hurry.  She does not have to work herself mad, but some pocket money would not go amiss.

That is who and what she is, the existence she has Found.

Luna sat up in bed, removing her rabbit-themed sleep mask and putting on her other mask in the same motion.  Then, after a brief stretch, she made her bed, and headed outside, to where a reflection of the moon sat squarely in the middle of the rain barrel that had caught the runoff from the gutters, which themselves caught the runoff from next door.

She moved her mask up and kept it just above the surface of the water as she dunked her head beneath, then straightened, shivering and shaking her head.  Moonlight and water soaked her in equal amounts, and it was cold.  Obviously, since the moon wasn’t known for being especially warm.  She rinsed her arms and washed up, hair catching the light of the moon, clothes brightening a bit as well as that light soaked in, much as the water did.

By the time she was back upstairs, she had her hair partially done up, half left down, still damp, half bound up into two cone-shaped bundles up at the top and front that sat flush with the ears of her mask.  She dressed, aiming to look snappy, brought her messenger bag downstairs, and made a little breakfast, with the television turned to edutainment.  Omelette with carrot.

Part of this place being fantastical was that there was no school.  But being studious and smart was part of who she was, and she was glad there was something like this to compensate.  It was much like how the law was scattered, a bit of responsibility, civic responsibility, and self-governance given to each of them, or how fire was the responsibility of the neighborhood to manage and plan for.

It was open and free and that only made the laws all the more important, to protect the weakest and most vulnerable of them, and the whole of them.

Which got her to remember- she collected some milk bottles and put them in the same container the milkman had delivered them in.

On her way out, she placed the milk she wasn’t going to get around to drinking on the welcome mat of the baby house further down the street.  She saw a little baby’s hand reach out through the doggy door at the front, reaching for a bottle, and nudged the bottles closer, until the hand got a grip on one bottle and pulled it through.

She nudged the little container around to move the other glass bottles closer, and three more hands reached out, working together to drag it through, producing a dull ‘clunk’ as they bumped into the floor on the far side.

Luna skipped off.

The Founder was downtown, looming over the slightly taller buildings.  Which was convenient and exciting.  Luna picked up speed as she ran, waving at some of her neighbors.

“Be careful!  The invaders are still in town!” an old woman shouted.  She had a pretty woman’s face painted on a veil, and in the right light and at the right angle, if Luna squinted a little, it looked like her face.

“Thank you!”

She was pulling a kid out of a vent on the side of the house.  A little boy, with a cloth hood over his head, an angry old man’s face painted over her own.  The moment he saw Luna, he hauled his jeans down to moon her, showing her he’d used some of the mask-paint on his buttocks, painting nipples on the cheeks and a leering face on his lower back.

His grandmother hauled the jeans back up with enough haste that she probably did some inadvertent damage.

“Sorry, dear!” the grandmother called out.

“It’s alright.  Is your daughter alright today?” Luna asked.  She’d walked by so now she walked backwards to keep addressing the woman.  “She’s wearing the baby face?”

“It makes such a fool.  Doesn’t know what she’s doing.  Then tomorrow she’ll be wretched and I’ll be the fool.”

“I hope you find a balance.”

“Do be careful.  Where are you going?”

“Turning in some slips!”

“Be safe!”

Luna was far enough away now it was easier to wave than to shout.  The boy with the old man face had yanked his trousers down, showing how he’d painted his frontside too.  She supposed it was meant to be a wild animal or monster.

On her way to the records building, she saw someone’s head sticking partially out of a barrel.  A moment later, that barrel was rolled toward a set of stairs by a pair of older boys with helmets.  She dashed forward before it could reach the stairs, then leaped atop it.

She walked backwards to match the forward roll of the barrel, staying atop it, as it made its way down, then carried on as it rolled down the sidewalk.

“Thank you!” the boy in the barrel said, in an off-kilter way that suggested he was very dizzy.

“Welcome!” one of the older boys said.

“Can I walk with, Hogsy?” she asked.

“Please do.  Just stop me by… over there.  The drain.”

She carried on walking backwards, helping the barrel to roll.  It was a unique quality of hers that she was very good at balancing, and a unique quality of the barrel that it was very good at being balanced on.  Staying on top of the rolling barrel was easier than walking on the sidewalk.

There was a drain with a decorative cover on the road, disappearing into a space beneath the sidewalk, and she centered the barrel by it before bringing things to a wobbly stop, balancing on top.

Hogsy poked his head out and vomited.

He wasn’t immune to the nausea and dizziness that came from being in a rolling or tumbling container.

“Good to continue?” she asked, when he’d stopped.

He burped, poked his head out to look at her, then wiped his mouth.  He wore a ceramic pig mask that was too small for him, the part at his chin and lower lip attached to the upper part by elastics, so he could open his mouth.  He wiped at his lips.

“Yeah,” he finally said.  “Slow at first?”

She moved them forward, still atop the barrel.

“Going downtown?”

“Shops,” he said.

“I’ll part ways with you a block ahead, then.  The old granny with the maiden’s face was saying it’s still dangerous.  We’re pretty safe here, but…”

“Yeah.  They’re ringing the bells and singing for the dead, later.”

“I’ll try to be there.  You ever think about leaving your barrel, Hogsy?”

“Keeps me safe.  Keeps things simple.”

“Mm hmm.”

They reached the bottom of a flight of stairs.  At the same time they arrived, a pair of burly men arrived, each wearing what looked like excavated teddy bear heads over their own faces.  One had a plank of wood over one shoulder, bowed by the weights on each end- an old man on one end, in front of him, and two kids on the other end, behind him.

“Up?” the other one asked.

“Please,” Hogsy said.

They each took hold of one end of the tipped barrel, then lifted, with Luna standing on the length of it, between them.  She could see the beady black glass eyes of one of the teddy bear heads, and through it, dark and distorted like a view through a fishbowl, she could see the man’s thick bushy eyebrow and an eye with deep wrinkles around it.

She looked away to be polite, hands clasped behind her back, while they carried her and Hogsy up the two flights of stairs that would take them up to the raised downtown area.

As the bear-headed men put him down, he put a hand out and flipped a coin.  One man caught it.  He flipped another out of a hole in the side of the barrel, and the other man caught it.

She opened her messenger bag, got some papers, and shuffled through to find a memo, but one large hairy hand interrupted her, placed over the page while she was mid-sort.

“No need,” one of the men said.

“But it’s money, and it’s good.”

“No need,” he said.

The pair went on their way, leaving her balanced on the barrel.

“Saves us time if you don’t have to issue the memos,” Hogsy said.

“Guess so,” she replied.

It wasn’t talked about a lot, and things were still brand new, in a way, but there had clearly been an effort made to make this a relaxed and easy place.  The writs weren’t a concern for the residents, people were taken care of.  There was incentive to be good, and incentive to work, but it wasn’t made a big deal or a focus.

It cost nothing to issue a memo for a good deed, and the memos could be used as a kind of currency, or turned in for a less kind, more meager currency.  It was better to hold onto them and use them without turning them in, usually.

Not that she had existed like this long enough to see it in action, but that was the design of things.

“I think we part ways here.  Down this street?”

“Uh huh,” Hogsy said.

She hopped off one corner of the barrel, and hip-checked the barrel to keep it from spinning too far.  Then, foot on one side of it, she gave it a firm push.  The sidewalk slanted slightly downhill, so he rolled on, a few people jumping to get out of his way.

She passed shops and places to eat, the little restaurants touting the benefits of eating there, and furniture stores that ranged from the sleepy to the overly active.  One had someone peeking out the door, looking around, and then quickly rearranged the display window to cater to her and some other people that were walking over from the opposite direction.  She paused politely to view the dresses and things that were displayed in her style and size.

Perhaps later.

She hopped onto the uneven top of a chain link fence as she reached it, and used her natural balance to stay on top, hands behind her back, a thirty foot drop to her right.  Balance was easy for her, owing to a little bit of lingering stickiness from whatever she’d been before, and this was effortless.  If she tried, she could stand so she was standing on a wall like she could stand on the ground, but that required a lot of really careful balance and it was easy to fall.

Every time Luna passed under a decorative bridge on her way to the records office, the Founder seemed twenty percent smaller.  Then she passed under one, and the Founder wasn’t in view.  She knew she was close.

Very convenient.  She jogged forward, bag bouncing against her hip, cushioned by the layers of the dress she wore, and pushed her way through the front door.

Various Foundlings were in the building, which had a hollow center, meaning that she could see each floor from the reception area in the middle.  Pages poured down from above, were gathered and sorted in a central area, boxed or bound hurriedly into tomes on counters and benches, placed on carts, and carried off.

“Here to work?”

“No.  Slips to turn in.”

“Good job.  Just up the stairs there.”

She hurried up the stairs, and paused as she saw a practitioner in the line, leaning over the counter.  The receptionist was a woman with a hood over her head, glowing eyes and painted lipstick the only things visible, and she leaned away, clearly uncomfortable with him.

“I just came from there!  I was told to come here!”

“And you got an aggravated writ while you traveled.  Five or more writs, and you need to get a statement of acknowledgement.  And it seems you’re a repeat offender, you received writs, left, came back when you had full knowledge of the writ system, and violated the rules?”

“I didn’t choose to come back!” he raised his voice.

“People are trying to work, sir, and you’re holding up the line.”

“You’re not people!  You’re props!  Soulless, pointless, unimportant!”

“As a repeat offender, you’ll need to go to the Arena to complete a civility course.  They have an expedited three day program and a seven day program where you’ll need to show up every day for a check-in, but you’ll have the rest of the day mostly free to yourself, to enjoy the area.”

Luna Hare nodded to herself.  All very sensible.

“Fuck this area!”

Luna stopped nodding to herself, a bit affronted.

“Is your intention to annoy me to death!?”

“No, sir.  My intention is only to help keep things moving along smoothly.  If you find this business annoying, you can hopefully come to empathize with how we feel when you intrude on our spaces and impose your rules on us.”

“So you’re not just a prop.  Whatever made you forgot to give you a two or three digit IQ, so you’re a moron of a prop.”

“Would you like a stamp on your hand sir?  That’ll give you time to get to the Arena and register for the civility course.  Once you do, all deadlines will be paused except for the thirty day master deadline.  You really do want to-”

He thrust his hand out, almost in her face.

“-be clear of here by then.”

He waggled his hand.  “Fucking stamp me already.”

“Sir, I’ll stamp as soon as you’ve calmed down.”

“I’m not calming down!  I’m pissed!  Virtually anyone would be pissed!  And stop using that tone of voice with me, it makes me want to tear my ears off and stuff the canals with the torn-off bits!”

She held the stamp up and away, head tilted.

“Stamp me!”

“As soon as you’re calm.  May I suggest ten deep breaths?”

He practically snarled as he turned and left, hand unstamped.

Then he turned around again, pushing past Luna, and pushed all the papers and things off the top of the desk.

“Sir, I’m afraid-” the woman said, at the same time Luna called out, “Sir!”

He turned to glare at Luna.

“May I?” Luna asked, looking past him to the woman working the desk.  The woman gestured, seemingly happy to have Luna take over.

“Interference with people at key duties is a writ, as is disturbance of order,” Luna told him, glancing at the paperwork on the ground.  She quickly penned in some details.  He went to take a step to get around her, and she took a step to her left to get in his way.  “And so is fleeing while being issued a writ.”

“I’ve killed and eaten rabbits before, little girl.  Do you want me to swear an oath, right here, right now?  Do you want me to bleed you like I bled those rabbits, then cut you, belly to throat, and pull your skin off?  Try giving me one of those papers.”

“And threats.  That’s a fourth,” she said, penning down the detail, checking a box, and putting an ‘x’ on the recipient’s space.  She tore out the four papers, then pushed them into the practitioner’s chest.  “Gosh, that’s a full afternoon worth of running around.”

He moved his hand, catching the papers before they could fall, staring her down all the while.  He looked like he’d jump her and do the bleeding and cutting thing right here, with dozens of witnesses, if he could.

Then he stormed off.

She watched him go until he was pushing his way out past the front door, then went and helped a few others pick up the paperwork.

“Name?” the woman at the desk asked, as she got paperwork.

“Oh, me?  Luna Hare.”

Luna fished it out of her messenger bag.  It was actually the first time she’d seen it.  Fun.

“ID… AAAA, AAAA, zero-zero-zero-zero, AAAF.  Number six, huh?”

“Is that important?”

“Means you’re technically older than nearly everyone here.  At least, as a person.  There might be one or two around, maybe, and the Founder upstairs, of course.”

“Fun.”

“What can I do for you, Luna?”

“Got some slips in the mail, things to turn in, completed writs.  And I guess I can claim the writs I just issued?”

“You absolutely can.  I can sign.”

They sorted things out, Luna got her wallet, and took the colorful paper bills.  It was more than she’d expected, even if she discounted the bonus that had come from issuing the writs just now.  The smallest denomination had a little goblin on it.  The next highest denomination had an opossum.

Money was nice.

“Would I be bothering the Founder if I took a peek?”

“I think it would be alright.  But only if you were observing.”

Luna smiled behind her mask, then skipped off.

The stairs were convoluted, and the way to the top floor involved a puzzle.  She had to touch a piece of one painting, moving an apple out of frame, where it became part of the wallpaper, rolling over into another frame.  Mouse went for apple, something moved out of the way to get the cat the freedom to go for the mouse-

And the wrought-iron dog worked into the lock of the gate lunged for the cat, pulling on the chain.  The chain cranked, and the guns that were worked into the wall and spaces between books in the little stairwell all receded or pointed skyward.

She turned the handle, and let herself through.

The Founder was there, surrounded by flying papers that were stirred up by the wind from the skylight and the open window, and Luna could look at things from a certain angle and see how the Founder had a presence that was big enough that if there wasn’t a big enough skylight above her, it would be awkward to be indoors.  The papers were blank, and restocked by a few employees of the Records Office, with fresh stacks of white paper and paper with interesting borders and occasionally papers of interesting colors, but they got picked up, whirled around that presence, and picked up words when they were out of sight.

Then they went past the railing and downstairs.

Some got caught on the railing, though, pressed there by the wind, but not quite making it down or through.  Which made her think of an existence before she existed, if that made sense.  Like how people above talked about having past lives, if her edutainment shows and radio were any indication.

Luna ventured forward, picking up some of the ones that hadn’t made it downstairs.  Some were information pages on Foundlings, like a big phone book, some were procedures and offices, others were particulars on rules.

“You can leave those where they are,” the Founder said, without turning around.

“Oh, sorry.”

“It’s fine.  Thank you for being helpful,” the Founder said, even while her assistants turned and shot annoyed looks at Luna- when she could see their faces past their face-coverings.

“They’re ideas I haven’t fully committed to.  I put them up there as a placeholder, and I let them through if I change my mind.”

Luna put them back against the railing, and onto the floor, as best as she could remember, spacing them out so they were all readable.

Some slipped through the railing.

“That was me, not you,” the Founder said.  “Don’t worry.”

“I see.”

“Did you need anything?”

“Oh, uh, I just wanted to watch.  And say you were doing a good job, Founder.”

“Miss.  Call me Miss, please.”

“Miss.”

“I don’t know how good a job I’m doing.  I’ve been holding onto the ability to elaborate and make changes, well past when I should, I suspect.”

“I’ve had no complaints,” Luna said.

“That’s because you’re a good person, Luna,” Miss told her.

Luna took the conversation as permission to take a seat on one of the benches.  Nobody glared at her for that, at least.

But of course, the moment she did that, the conversation died.

She watched the work, and she watched the assistants, and tried to make sense of what they were doing, and the processes.

“I’m coming to the realization, not for the first time, that I may be a control freak,” Miss said.

“Oh?  You’re doing fine so far, it seems.”

“We lost too many.  Foundlings.  And people are the backbone of a place.  I can recycle some of them, but I can’t replace them.”

“She’s feeling sorry for herself, when she did the best she could,” one assistant said.

“She’s injured, limping around with a hole in her chest that hasn’t healed,” another of the assistants added.  “We’re all very cross with her, up here.”

“Ah,” Luna replied.  “I suppose I should join you in being cross, and in feeling sorry?”

“Please do,” the assistant said.

Luna nodded, hands pressed into her lap.

“As I said, I want control.  It’s very hard to do without, when you’ve taken responsibility for creating a pocket world, much less one that’s intrinsically tied to a small town with three thousand, six hundred residents.”

“Are you a goddess, Miss?” Luna asked.

“No.  Not quite that.  Better to call me a higher power.  One with a limited realm.  But all I can do is fill in the gaps and work in the spaces that haven’t been defined yet.  Were I a proper goddess, I could change what I’ve already codified, and swell in power to distribute it elsewhere.”

“I see.”

“You’re one of my first Foundlings.”

“Number six, apparently.  I don’t know if that six counts the Ballerina in Blue, or…”

“It doesn’t.  She’s her own kind of controlling.  Very insistent on staying to protect me, even though I know the Paths are pulling at her.  I should adapt, start preparing for life without her as my right hand.”

“Can I help?”

The Founder turned around.  The effect that kept her face and hands from being seen helped keep the papers in motion, guiding the wind currents.

“I wasn’t asking to be your right hand.  I just thought, uh, happy to help!”

“I do need someone to run errands.  It’d require traveling to dangerous places.  We lost enough Foundlings in the last day.  There are still hostile agents.”

“I, uh, yes.  I can manage.  I think.  I’ve never tried, but I can give it a shot.”

“Part of why you’re going is to negotiate good routes between the layers of Kennet.  Because there’s a lack, you’ll need to go, hm.  It’s up to you.  Matthew’s house is safest, I think he’s healing and recovering from the Demesne claim, though.  It’s a longer walk and there’s a chance he won’t be able to come to the door.  But if he does, you can enter and make your way up.  I don’t think he’ll begrudge you taking the safer route.”

Luna hoped this errand wouldn’t involve disturbing too many sick and hurting people.

“The other alternative is a little riskier, but you’d go to answer Verona Hayward’s claim.”

“To go up to the… Kennet above?”

“Below first.  Then above.  Part of this is so you may introduce yourself, open dialogues, and even if you don’t take this job again, it’ll pave the way for others.”

“Happy to help.”

“Which is a good response, because it leads me to an ongoing anxiety as Founder.  Are you happy?”

“Very.”

“I didn’t make you to be happy by default, or overly helpful by default, but I would understand if you felt obligated, with me as your creator, to do as I ask.”

“She asks this a lot,” one of the assistants said.

“As I said, it’s an ongoing anxiety.”

“I don’t think I’m mind controlled or pressured or obligated or anything,” Luna said.  “Can I get directions?”

“Ask Verona if she needs anything.  These are messages for the Vice Principal, Stew Mullen, and the Bitter Street Witch.  Toadswallow if he’s there.  While you’re there, see if you can find someone trusted to show you the way to Kennet above.  The routes between Kennet below and Kennet above are firmly established at this point.  Hidden paths and specific courses through neighborhoods will take you between them.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“In defining this place, I made it a tranquil, resting place, with the idea that, well, I have to define it by what Kennet above and Kennet below aren’t, and what they aren’t, I find, is calm.  This is a healing place and a place in a kind of controlled stasis.  If anyone needs healing or needs a break, I hope they can come here.  Keep an ear out for any mentions of wounded or ailing.  Louise Bayer, council head of Kennet above, has her health issues.  Matthew Moss is recovering, as I said.  If you can ask without it being too awkward or forced, do ask.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And we should exchange representatives.  It would do to have some flow of individuals between realms.  Knit them together better.”

Luna put her hands out.  Papers drifted by Miss as she went over her thoughts out loud, and they landed in Luna’s hands.  She sorted them by destination.

She took the last of them, then put them in her messenger bag.

“Good.  Thank you, Luna.”

“Welcome!”  She dashed off, running down the railing by the stairs, sliding down the last section, and then got on with her errands.

Verona Hayward’s Demesne was an especially crooked building on stilts, with a mural of images laid out into the hard-packed dirt between house and tree, light dirt packed down over darker dirt, to leave the shapes of human bodies, masks on.

The door banged open.  A boy stepped outside, then looked around.

“Aw fuck no.”

“Can I help you, sir?” Luna called up.

The boy patted himself down, searching his coat.

“Seriously!?”

“Sir?” Luna asked.

“Can I bribe you?” he asked.  “I didn’t expect to arrive here.  I don’t have a mask.  Can I bribe you to leave me alone until I can work something out, or buy a mask off you?”

“No sir.  I’m on official government duty, actually, I’d like to keep to the rules.  Which means, um, one writ for being unmasked.”

“She dumped me here on purpose, after I tried the Demesne challenge.”

“Well, I’m sure that’s a risk that’s not wholly impossible to anticipate,” she told him, while she wrote.  “You’re a repeat visitor.  I do believe that means you need to take a course.  Name?”

“What if I don’t give you my name?”

She put an ‘x’ on the form.  It auto-filled.  “Myles Sutton.  Alchemist?”

“Healing potions.”

“What a nice talent.  Date of birth, I can fill you in, let’s see… For the maskless writ, you’ll need to get yourself to Sootsleeves’ hold, that’s in the southwest corner of town, just look for the castle.  I suggest you get a mask before you arrive, or they’ll put you in a different line to get issued a mask, then put you in the back of the line for the writ.  Or so I hear.  Then once you’ve handled that, records office, that’s downtown, big building, Founder is there now, so look for that.  They can tell you about the civility course you’ll need to take.”

“A course?”

“Three days condensed or seven spaced out, if I remember right.”

“You’re fucking serious?”

She walked up the stairs to where he was, and handed him the papers.  Then, easing around him, she went up the stairs to the door, knocking.  It swung open from the light taps.

“Good luck, Myles.”

“Three days?”

“Or seven.  Plus whatever time you spend getting sorted before and after.”

She closed the door behind her.  She admired the art on the walls, and walked down the front hall to the living room.

Verona was there, wearing a striped sweater and a mask with faintly glowing lines where it had been divided and reconnected, running at diagonals.  The three sections looked like slightly different textures, tones, and material.

“Oh man, scared me for a second there,” Verona said.

“Scared?”

“A certain city spirit once wore a rabbit mask when hanging out with us.”

“I see.  You’re not bigoted against rabbits, are you?”

“Just the one so far.  You’re from Kennet found.  That’s a nice change from angry practitioners.”

“Luna.  Running errands for Miss.  She wants us Foundlings to get to know you guys and vice versa.”

“Great stuff.  In the interest of that… what do you do, Luna?”

“Special powers, talents, abilities?”

“I’m good at balancing, I guess.”

“Hmm.  That’s not too interesting.”

Luna shrugged.  Not all Foundlings or Lost had abilities, and not all abilities were good.  Luna just had the naturally good balance for walking on barrels, fences, walls, maybe a ceiling if she was super careful with how she balanced, and occasionally balancing on non-physical things.  “Got some papers for you.  Nothing big.  Information and a cheat sheet on rules to follow.”

“Cool.  Is this volunteer work, voluntold work, paid work?  Something you do because of how she made you?”

“Paid.  Or at least, I’ll get memos, and those are as good as cash.  Better sometimes.”

“What do you buy?  This isn’t part of my Demesne challenge, just taking the chance to figure you guys out.”

“Clothes.  Food.”

“You don’t need to eat, though.”

“Oh, uh, no.  Food gets supplied, just enough to keep us going, but we won’t hurt too much if we don’t have any.  Water’s free, milk is delivered in the mornings.  More than I need.  There’s a box with free eggs, gardens for vegetables.  My very busy neighbors get these papers, a lot like these memos, for making more food than they need and making it free.  But that’s- it changes up a lot.  They do a lot of projects.  There’s others like that, so there’s usually something every week, if you keep an ear out.”

Luna flicked the ear of her mask.

“But why eat?”

“Don’t have to, but you don’t have to wear more than one outfit, do you?”

“Two at a minimum?  One to wear while you wash the other, right?”

“But like, different styles?  Would you wear something like that sweater and those jeans every day, or would you vary it up?”

“I’d wear this every day.  Pretty much.”

“Oh,” Luna said.  “But uh, most people like change, right?”

“Yes.  I guess so.”

“Food is like that.  Vary it up.  But like, clothes change you in other people’s eyes, food helps you change in other ways.  Eat different to change your shape, make it easier to grow muscle, or get fat, or get thin.  Right?”

“Yyyyes?  I feel like there’s a disconnect here, though.  You don’t die if you don’t eat, right?”

“Right, but have you ever died if you didn’t eat?”

“Obviously not.”

“So we’re not that different.”

“Sure.  Fair argument.”

“If you don’t change how you eat you stay basically the same, and it’s the same for me.  I might like to grow up one day, but-”

“But you don’t have to?” Verona asked, sitting back.

“Not really.  But it’s nice to have the option, and that means I gotta eat right, I gotta have clothes I can wear as I grow, and I gotta meet the prerequisites.”

“Prerequisites.”

“Keep track of birthdays, both mine and other people’s, get qualifications, or distinct non-qualifications, you know, if I want to grow up to do something low responsibility, low-income.  It’s all in the handbook.”

“I’d like to take a look sometime.  Makes growing up sound like getting a driver’s license.”

“Isn’t it?  If you ever want to find me, I’ll show you a copy.”

“Huh.  Gods and spirits, I might like Kennet found a little too much, if it works like you say.”

“I’m meant to ask if you need anything.”

“Right now?  Not especially.  I get the feeling the more antsy practitioners are poking around with sharp sticks to see what they can figure out or do to interfere with us.  And my claim to Kennet found is a big one.  But, upside, if I get any coup or any kind of partial victory, I can channel it into dumping them right back there.”

“I’ve seen a couple.”

“They aren’t causing too much commotion?”

Luna shook her head.

“Good.  Longer term?  I’ll need to get a lower floor built, here.  I think that translates to a basement in Kennet above and Kennet below.  And the eventual, longer-term plan is to have it converted into a bookstore.  Maybe I can lift everything up and wedge it in beneath.  I need books for that.  Lucy said her mom got a free library.”

“There’s sources.  Books that were never written.”

“That’s a start.”

“A lot of them are pretty trash.  Turns out a lot of unfinished books were just unfinished because they’re ass,” Luna said.  “And I’m being polite.”

“Noted.  Okay, that’s super cool.”

“It’s fun.”

“I’ll need magical texts too, ideally, maybe in a back room, and regular texts, and nice notebooks.”

“We can do the nice notebooks.  Weird materials, weird paper, neat designs?”

“Can you?”

“It’s a bit tricky.  I think you’ll find it’s not expensive, it’s just… time expensive.  Finding the right people to do it.”

“So in Kennet above, things cost too much and money’s hard to come by, but it’s pretty convenient.  In Kennet below, it’s cheap, sturdy, but usually pretty rough and you gotta be careful nobody innocent bled to make it.  And in Kennet found, it’s not too expensive, but arranging it’s a pain, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like people could do pretty well just handling arrangements, then.”

“Sounds like.  Miss wants people going back and forth.  Maybe a human could handle that.”

Verona nodded.  “But I’m getting super distracted by cool stuff I haven’t had the chance to tackle yet.  You’ve got errands to run?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And I’ve got this claim to wrap up.  So…”

“Could you put my exit at Kennet below?”

“I can.  And in the meantime… you gotta answer the claim.  It’s your right to challenge me, and you have some claim.  But I think I get to decide the contest.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Just say ‘no contest’.”

“No contest,” Luna told her.

“Thank you.  Good luck with your errands.  Find a bodyguard as soon as you can, okay?  Kennet below is rough.  And there’s no restriction against violence, just the opposite, really.”

Luna nodded.

“You want to borrow some clothes?  The way you’re dressed… might be harder to get along.”

“The way I’m dressed?”

She was wearing a white dress with a bit of lace on the sleeves and at the hem, the white rabbit mask, and tights with a lace pattern, broken up some by a light tan leather belt and the light tan messenger bag.

“And the hair.  They’ll see you as a target, and even if you claim you’re protected… some won’t care.  If you want to raid my clothes upstairs, get something, then bring it back later… oh, and don’t forget to take off the mask before going to Kennet above.  It’ll be seen as weird.”

What an uncomfortable idea.

Still, Luna decided to take the offer.  She went, got a lavender top with a moon on it and a weird fold at the bottom, old jeans that were a bit big for her- she needed her belt she’d worn with her dress, and the heels came within a few hairs of dragging on the ground, and then a slightly lumpy but very comfortable jacket.

She got herself sorted, got the A-ok, went to leave, turned back around, and went to shake Verona’s hand, which looked crumpled-up, so Luna shook the other one instead.  Then she turned around again and leaving by the door.

There were people just outside.  Some Others and a pair of humans.

The people of Kennet below had been described as rough, and this boy looked rough, hair shorn short, big jacket on.  “Hello.  You’re not the person who went inside ten minutes ago.”

“Oh.  He went to Kennet found, after.”

“And you?”

She wasn’t sure if the tone he was taking was because he was dangerous, or if he was from Kennet below, which very often had ‘dangerous’ as a built in quality.

“Answered the claim, running some errands.  I’m in the market for bodyguards.  I have money.”

“Are you now?” he asked.

Something in the tone.  Luna kept her distance, pacing slightly.

“Because I’m probably the sort of person you need a bodyguard from, rabbit kid.”

Luna bolted, and the guy didn’t chase, but his Others did.

She ended up being very glad she’d changed clothes, at least.  Not because it helped her fit in better, but the clothes were more durable than the lace dress and tights, and she needed that durability when the men in armor got clawed gauntlet-tips into her.

Spirits were normally representative of an endpoint.  Matter became other forms of matter, matter mixed, it blended, and it took on a state and quality, whether that was dirt or water or flesh or plastic.  Spirits happily took up residence, representing those qualities.  A spirit of flesh, a spirit of blood, a spirit of plastic, a spirit of pollution, a spirit of soil, a spirit of sand, a spirit of water, a spirit of waves.

Countless, innumerable, and to a practitioner, each could be a signpost of that quality and state, or of action, or meaning, symbol, or concept.  Where some stand, others stand by, ready to replace another spirit or put something into action.  Fire spirits waiting, quiet and hidden around a match.

And there are spirits that track broader patterns and labels.  The teacher, the cook, the terrible child, the madman.  And sometimes those broader patterns and labels can make impressions deep enough that the animus will form, and that leads to the Great Teacher, who contrives to exist despite having no prior existence, arrives on a scene, imparts a great lesson onto those who need a teacher, and then moves on to other locations and venues, sustaining herself as a role.

Up until a location was disturbed.  That which was flat and ordered becomes uneven, with droughts and floods of meaning and concept.  Spiritual flows concentrate, interrupt, feed back on one another, and disrupt.

And that which was hidden becomes obvious, and the obvious is buried, and much of this is subtle, except for places where it is not.  The same spaces that could form an animus if given enough depth are all there, as shallow impressions and greater ones, or even ones that aren’t actually meant to be, that are jarred into existence by the great shuffling and confusion, or pressed in by the flows of certain spirits into certain impressions, digging those impressions deep.

And as a town forms a dark half, the impressions are filled, the universe contrives, power flows and people form, with vague memories of histories that become sharper as they are defined and clarified, with roles as simple as ‘the third smartest child in class’ or ‘the boy who is good at sports’, until a rough balance has been reached.

A dark underside to the town forms.

Once that rough balance has formed, the flooding of spirit and other powers form an equilibrium, though it is imperfect, and spirit and other energies steadily flow out, from the town above to the town below.  The town above steadily loses people, the town below gains some, but only to a degree.  It is uneven, and when the town above dies, the town below will die too.

Among the uneven impressions and varied roles across the town, many of which are now filled, the flows continue to push things out of balance.  A space for a man who is meant to be big and tough creates a man that is drawn out to many times the size he should be, made far tougher.  The space reserved for the child riding on an adult’s back is formed not as a shallow puddle that will dry up in a moment, but as a pond, lasting and stagnant, growing larger, creating tributaries.

A young lady fills the space of the ‘kook’, that odd individual who convinces herself she has special abilities, and falls into various spiritualities and mystical beliefs.  Except in her case, with the flows as they are, the beliefs are brutal and bloody, and they work in a vivid way.  She can see the future, given the right conditions.

She can see the future sketched out before her.  It’s enough for her to know that the other changes, the ruts carved out that make her bent and broken, they’ll continue.  Within a month she already moves like a broken old woman three times her age.  Given a few years, she’ll be unable to move at all, curled around the stick she used to use to walk, able to see and barely able to even speak, with a jaw bent in three places.

It makes her bitter, angry at the world, and driven.  She must find solutions, and she must find them with a fragile body that can break and heal with odd bends in it if it is so much as looked at the wrong way, in an impulsive and violent town where people are happy to break everything and anything they can.

“The thing I find,” Nicolette mused, “is that the Universe really does want to share its secrets.  It’s like a person with a juicy story to tell.  They only need a little prodding to share.”

“They need to get better at sharing.”

“Did my program come through okay?”

The Bitter Street Witch pressed buttons, narrowing her eyes at the screen.  The numbers on the screen took a moment to organize themselves, unfocusing and refocusing as if she was looking through with very tired eyes.  One bold line.  The latest of thirty-nine emails from Nicolette.

“Yes.”

“Open it.”

She did.  Or she tried.  The laptop spat a mysterious link at her, instead, and it throbbed on the screen.

“Fucking-”  She tore the power cord out.  “If you want power, wretched machine, you’ll stop trying to fling that nonsense at me.  I’ll starve you.  Work.”

“Are you sure I can’t get you a better laptop?” Nicolette asked.

“No,” the Witch snarled.  She ripped the grate off the side of the laptop, then dug the blade of a broken fingernail inside until she found flesh, and she scraped and jabbed at the flesh.

“I would see it as an investment in you.  Something workable, durable, easy to use…”

The link disappeared, the screen returning to normal.  “Open the email.”

The email opened.

“And the program whatever,” she said, leaning back, hands away from the keyboard.  The blood on her fingernail tasted sour.

The program opened.  It gave her a rough panel with lots of names and requests.

“…It’d be less capricious than whatever you’re doing.”

“I like this machine because it works better when I hit it and remind it who the boss is.”

“Well, offer stands.”

“Can you open the video call?”

She shifted a knee, jarring the battered old computer.  “Machine.  You heard her.”

The video call booted up.

“That’s not a computer that recognizes voice commands.  And it doesn’t look like you have a microphone.”

“The three girls gave me this.  They used it for their big diagram, they passed it on to me.  Don’t need a microphone if there’s something in there that gets jolted alive when electricity runs through it, and if that something has ears.”

“Okay.  Sure.”

She could see Nicolette, and she could see some trim young men in suits behind her.  And one less trim man in a suit.

“Who’s that?”

“Hm?” Nicolette asked.  “Oh, them?  Who are you asking about?  Please don’t tell me it’s Chase.”

The less trim one looked up, frowning.  He had a broad forehead and a broad chin that made his face look disproportionately small.

“Blondie.”

“Oh, Tanner.  That’s Chase, Tanner, Wye,” Nicolette said, moving her finger to indicate each in turn.  “Chase was technically my mentor, as I’m yours, now.  We’ve gone our separate ways.”

“This is a ploy.  Putting two pretty boys in front of me to try to draw me out.  You want me to come to you.”

“Man, I still get spooked when you say things like ‘this is a ploy’,” Nicolette said.  “I keep thinking I have to be on guard, that you’re a newly Awakened, and you’ll accidentally lie if we aren’t careful.”

“Feels like a ploy.”

“Better.  It isn’t.”

The Bitter Street Witch grunted.

“Which two of us are pretty?” Chase asked, looking over.  He was in the background, so his voice was barely audible.

“Why don’t you do some augury to figure that one out?” Tanner asked.  Nice voice.

Nicolette ignored them.  “Hey, BSW, I’d love for you to come to me, but honestly, I find these guys so utterly against what I find attractive in a man that the idea of using them as eye candy didn’t occur to me,” Nicolette said.  “Really truly.”

“If you two need some privacy for your girl talk, there’s a hundred and six other rooms in or immediately proximate to this building that you could go to,” Tanner said.

“It’s not girl talk.  It’s anti-asshole talk.  There’s a distinction,” Nicolette said.  “Wye?  I’m sorting the list.  Tags for faction.  If you’re on a job, I’ll let you have Belanger blue.  I’ll take purple.  And we’ll red-tag anything that’s safe for my apprentice.”

“Sure.  I’m giving you pretty open access, Nico, so do me a favor, don’t go sneaking any jobs that are five figures or more under the table to yourself, or her?  Not without asking first?”

“Yep.”

Five figures.  The Witch renewed her interest, hunching over the computer.  Blood was oozing and sparking around one of the keys.  She used a tissue to wipe away at it.

“Isn’t Tanner too young for you?” Nicolette asked, quiet.  Talking while she worked.

“How old do you think I am?” the Witch asked.  “And you don’t have to whisper.  It’s fine.”

“Thirty… nine?”

“I’m closer to your age than that.  It’s fine.  He wouldn’t have me.”

“I think you’d be surprised what someone like Tanner would have.  And you deserve better, anyway.  Look.  I had you handle the card thing, did you finish?”

The Witch picked up the cards.  She’d taken playing cards and painted over each card in white, and then scrawled on images that fit what she’d been told to write.  One deck that was like the decks they used, with a set of keywords, one deck of tarot.  The images were very scratchy, and colored in with blood.

“Reason I wanted you on the video call is so I can see what you’re doing.  While I work, you should work with the cards.  See what you pick up.  If your natural talents are as strong as they seem to be, you should get something.”

The Witch sighed.  She watched as Wye came through, bringing cookies and tea to Nicolette.  It was completely absent, unthinking, automatic.

“Thank you,” Nicolette said.

“Oh, sure.  Welcome.”

It reminded her that she hadn’t eaten or had much to drink, and because she was eating less bird heads than she once had, it was a lot easier to feel hungry.  She rang her bell, then lurched to her feet, scooping up the laptop with one arm that had broken in five places and healed at odd angles every time, with fingers much the same, and gripped her walking stick with the other.  Even with two legs and the stick, getting to the counter was a task.

“What?” her brother asked.  Donny was a potato head, if the potato had been left to get a bit soft.

“Food.  You were cooking earlier, right?  And hot water.  I’ll make my own tea.”

He grunted, then left.

She sat on the stool with the raised back that helped keep her from falling out, and then jammed her stick through the hole in the side of the counter where Giblet had put his foot through.  A bit of hot oil had dripped onto his foot and he’d fallen from his stool on the far side of the counter, kicking anything and everything he could, thinking it was a snake or something.  Ruining her things.

Funny, but it was a few minutes of laughing, weeks of a hole in her cabinet.

Donny came back, bringing the bowl, and put it on the counter.  She peered at it, dubious.

“You boiled meat?”

“Uh huh.”

“I told you not to.  That was expensive meat.”

“Faster, same thing in the end, right?”

Boiled meat, and pasta that had been overcooked until it was almost incorporated into the water.  And then hot water…

“Is that the water from the same pot?” she asked.  “Meat and pasta?”

“I strained out the bits.  Mostly.”

“Boil regular water, Donny.  Don’t get it from somewhere else.”

Sullen, he walked away.

But he stopped at the doorway.  “You gotta warlord some, you know.  People say stuff.  You aren’t showing your face.”

Shit.  If even Donny was saying so?

“Right.”

“They know you’re all bent and stuff, so they talk about it a lot.  If you might get so sick you can’t do anything anymore.”

“I’ll handle it.  Good boy,” she said.

“Older than you,” he said.  “Don’t good boy me.”

“Donny?  Do you remember what I asked you to do, before you left the room?”

He turned around, mouth agape.

“Boil clean water for my tea.”

“Right.  I remember that.”

“Good boy,” she said, pointed.

Nicolette, on the far side of the screen, was eating one of the cookies, her attention captivated by whatever it was she was typing.

Warlord things.  The Bitter Street Witch pulled the cards from a pocket, then laid them out.  When she was done, she picked up the bowl, wrapping her hand around it to ensure a better grip, even though it was hot enough to make her skin prickle and redden.

It would be nice to have a cookie.  Proper tea.  And even if the boys wouldn’t ever want someone as broken as her, it would be nice to at least have them to look at, instead of Donny.

But there was a freedom here.  Here, she could be what she was.  If she kept to her base nature, it was accepted.  There, what would she be?

“Tilt the screen forward?” Nicolette asked.

She showed her.

“I’m not saying you did it wrong, but I’m curious about the arrangement.”

“It’s so the two layouts can talk to each other.”

“Sure.  Okay.  Screenshotting that… Oh I forgot you have a technomancy computer, that disturbed the screenshot.  Hm.  I’ll take notes with pen and paper.  Don’t move anything.”

The Witch sighed and drank from the bowl.  The meat, cut into uneven strips, was boiled tough enough she’d probably chew through her tongue with the accidental bites here and there, before she got through the meat.  She tilted her head back and choked it down whole.  Let her body absorb whatever it wanted from that.

“Was that sound your technomancy laptop or you?” Nicolette asked.

“Okay.  Let’s see… What’s your initial read?  How do you approach this?  First instinct?  Don’t move any cards just yet, I’m still trying to take everything down.”

“I look for the things I recognize.  There.  Rat lovers.”

“Rat on right side, reversed lovers on right.  Alright.  What does that mean to you?”

“Usually it’s the opossum and deer.  But I’ve seen it be others.  Sometimes Musser.”

“Familiars?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay.  So what’s your next instinct?”

“Can I move the cards?”

“Uhhh… Sure.”

She put a hand down on the cards, then moved those cards and the ones around them to the center.  Then she set out other cards around them.  The decks mixed a bit in the process.

“Talk me through it.”

“Getting clarification.  What surrounds those things?  Why is it important enough it boils up to the top?”

“Okay.  Sure.  And we have…”

“Lantern.  Tower.  Blood.  You said I should add that one.  It comes up a lot,” the Witch noted.

“It was coming up here, related to Kennet, so I suggested it, yeah.  Okay.”

“And the turned knife,” the Witch said, placing a crooked finger onto the card.

“Usually means betrayal.”

“Yeah.  And the eight of swords,” she said, nudging a card.

“The cage, entrapment, enslavement.”

“All together?  A forced familiar ritual.  A betrayal.  Turned moon, though.  Falsehood, somehow.  An offer of a familiar relationship, maybe?”

“Mm hmm.”

Inside the room, another girl had made an appearance.  If the Bitter Street Witch was only a few years older than Tanner, the girl was only that many years younger.  Blue eyed, blonde, and straight in shape.  Narrow hips, narrow shoulders, slender, upright, small chested, straight hair, even.  Narrow little blue tie that drew a straight line from collar to where her belly button would be, and a pencil skirt.

“That’s Gillian,” Nicolette said, quiet.

“Do I have to be quiet?” Gillian asked Tanner, barely audible, pointing at the screen.

“Nah.  That’s just Nico’s apprentice.”

“Oh really?  Hello!”

The Bitter Street Witch didn’t want that girl looking at the screen and seeing her.  Not that girl.  Not- not in any way.  She wanted it even less than she wanted someone like Tanner looking at her.

“Going to my office,” Nicolette said, as she picked up the laptop, and Tanner, Wye, Chase, and Gillian were swept off the screen as she moved around.

“Something sensitive you need to talk about?  That’s fine.  Just let me know when you have the ticket interface done.  We’re getting swamped.”

“Hey, apprentice?  Keep the cards out,” Nicolette said.

“Mm,” the Bitter Street Witch grunted.

If she were there, in that world, would she feel like she’d felt in the moment before Nicolette had carried the laptop away?  Suffocating?  Like something lesser, when she was a thriving warlord?  Lesser than a fifteen year old girl in a stupid tie who had probably never seen a person die, let alone cause that death?

“Are they related?” the Witch asked.  “Don’t keep secrets from me.  Be upfront.  That’s the only way this works.”

“Tanner and Gillian?” Nicolette asked.

Right on the money, and with her hands full, it wasn’t like Nicolette had read any cards or viewed any devices.

The Bitter Street Witch had never seen the point in being overly subtle.

“Yeah.  Them.”

“No.  Tanner was brought in by Alexander.  Aware, then awakened.  Unrelated to the family.  Gillian is a Belanger by blood.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m trying to decide if I should give you all the facts, or go easy.”

“Why would you go easy on me?  If I’m weak enough I can’t take hearing some words, what use am I?”

“I think Wye is probably going to raise the idea of marrying her to Tanner.”

The Witch shifted position.  No matter how she sat, normally, it felt like a bone was digging into the seat beneath her.  It had never felt quite as pronounced as it did now.  “She’s young.”

“It wouldn’t be right away.  After she graduates university, if I’m reading him right,” Nicolette said, settling into her office.  The Witch could see the room behind her, and the various headpieces on the wall, each set to branch, feather, or arch back from above and behind the ear toward the back of the head.  They were arranged into circles on the wall.

“After university.  Twenty, twenty one,” the Witch said.

“Tanner in his mid to late twenties.  It’s a shift in stance and approaches.  Not expanding the family, but consolidating it.  Which is frankly needed.  Gillian is head over heels for Tanner.  I- you don’t repeat what I say next, please.”

“I won’t.”

“I caught her standing outside his room late at night.  Trying to work up the courage to knock.  When she saw me, she was embarrassed, ran.  I’ve kept an eye out to make sure she won’t try again, but I think she’s too afraid to.  It’s for the best.  Tanner has his gross moments, but he’d say no, and she’d be embarrassed.  But given an education, a chance to grow up, remove her young age from the equation… I think he’d say yes.”

“To her advance or to marriage?”

“Both.  She’d be happy.  He’d be alright.  I’d want to be around, make sure she stands up for herself.  Against her mother, against Tanner.  But they’d both get what they want and need.  The family gets what it needs.”

“Hmm.”

“What do you need, B?” Nicolette asked, voice soft.  “What do you want?”

The Bitter Street Witch sat with her feelings for a moment.  She moved her fingers and they cracked and popped, sometimes in places where there were no knuckles.

“I don’t think you want to know what I need and want.”

“Didn’t you say?  Be upfront?  That’s the best way for this to work?”

The Witch heaved in a breath, and her ribs popped in similar ways to her knuckles.  “You’ll think less of me.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

“Did you know, I have memories of starving?  Of being small, sickly, and neglected, ravenous with hunger?”

One by one, she picked up the cards Nicolette had told her to keep put.  Nicolette didn’t interrupt to stop her.

“I can imagine,” Nicolette said.

“I have memories of being ravenous with hunger, until I ate trash out of bins, and it didn’t matter that it was food or not.  It just mattered that it was soft enough to choke down.  Animal hunger.”

“Yeah.”

“And right now-” She cracked her hand again.  Anxious, restless, wanting to act, to get up, abandon the laptop.  She wanted to go do things by instinct.  “-I feel that same hunger.  But not for food.”

“Yeah.  Yeah.”

“I want a spell.  I want a practice, vicious, mean, raw, dead things as part of the circle, that lets me snatch her body from her.  Push her out of it, take it for myself, my talent, her shape.  I want to be born to what she was born to, to eat that food without- without being the lowest thing in that room.  I want to be her, someone who can stand at someone’s door to offer myself to them, and have it be- be charming, naive, mutually embarrassing, but not…”

She extended a limb, until the sleeve rolled down her arm to the elbow.  She could see bone pressing against skin.  Crooked arm, crooked fingers.

“…Not a moment from a horror film.”

Nicolette was silent.

“I want to take what she has and give her what I have, and make her live it, make her realize what she’s taken for granted, and then- then stomp on her.  Break these limbs while she has them.  Break her pelvis again.  Break her jaw.  Pulp her.”

Nicolette leaned back in her seat, exhaling.

The Witch let her sit with that for a moment.  Then I’d go to university.  I’d marry someone beautiful.  I’d have a family with more than ten brain cells between them.

She didn’t say that, though.  She preferred to leave Nicolette with thoughts of bloody pulp, not dreams.

“You don’t even really know her.  What she lives with.  Who her mom is,” Nicolette said, not looking at the screen.

“I know enough.”

Nicolette nodded to herself.  “You can’t, though.”

“I could.” The Witch shifted position on the stool, putting her face close to the little camera.  “I can eat the head off a bird and see the future.  I could find a way in.  If I can’t figure it out myself, I’ll eat the heads of birds and read cards until I can find what I need to do as a first step.  I’ll make nice with the Oldbodies, for their tricks and insights, and I’ll scrape, scavenge, fight, and work myself raw, until I find out how.  Do you think I can’t?”

“You can’t do it without severe consequence.  You’d probably get caught.”

The Witch looked aside.  “Do you think less of me, now?”

“Nah,” Nicolette said.  She swiveled her seat, then put her feet up on the edge of the desk, hands across her middle.  She looked at the camera.  “No.  I don’t.”

The Bitter Street Witch arched an eyebrow.

“You know my story.  I have, for most intents and purposes, a hole in my head.  A big weak point.  I’ve lost my mind before.  I’ve been broken, defeated.  I’ve been hungry enough I was more animal than human, embarrassing myself and making a mess in my hurry to accept food I was given.”

The Witch sighed.

“I know it’s not exactly the same.  But I also know that ravenous feeling you have, that isn’t hunger.  Of feeling like you’re on the bottom, or being on the bottom, and seeing someone who-”

“Has everything I want.”

“Yeah.  Been there too, B,” Nicolette said.  “You wouldn’t be the lowest of the low here.  I mean, even putting Seth aside, with his situation, the fact he betrayed us in a pinch, these guys are some real dickholes.”

“I’m not interested in morals, or character.  I could be a saint compared to them, it wouldn’t make the kind of difference I want.  And I’m no saint.”

“Yeah.  What do you say we abbreviate your mission statement there?  You want a fix.”

“Sure.  You sure did abbreviate it.”

Nicolette ventured, “It’d be easier if you were here.  Would involve keeping you away from Gillian-”

“Keep her away from me, you mean.”

“Sure.  But if you were here- I know that-”

The Witch was sighing again, interrupting.

“I know you’re not keen.  But when I arrived, I was a mess.  And that’s a lot to get past, especially when they’re judgmental assholes and you can see that old self reflected in their eyes.  I know, believe me.  But it puts you closer to resources, and it’ll make working together easier, growing, getting cash and cachet.”

“I’d need to find a replacement.  I haven’t done that yet.”

“Alright.  I’m just saying, if you want better, you need to take the steps.”

“You done?”

“I’m done,” Nicolette said.  “You picked up the cards.”

The Bitter Street Witch smiled.

“I would’ve liked to refine that more.”

“Don’t need to.  This is where you and I are different.  I know enough to know what to look out for.  So the time you’d spend refining?  That’s time I can spend learning what else to watch out for.”

“Okay.  Well, let’s see what that looks like.  A false familiar ritual betrayal, and…?  I’ll be coding while you work, by the way.”

The Witch laid out more cards onto the counter.

“Burning books,” she said.

The cards had come down in a rough two-to-one proportion.  The ‘two’ was destructive cards, fire, swords, spades, fang… and the one was passive ones.  Book, wands.

Except there was one card in each location that was meant for the other side.

“Let me copy that down.”

“You have a minute.  Use shorthand.  Because this is something I act on soon.”

“Is it?  I’m reading that as a very brutal, lost fight on the part of the more calculating members of the invading force.”

The Witch nodded, straightening some cards here and there.

“There’s probably a lot to be read into that,” Nicolette said.

“Probably.  I don’t care.  I’ve picked up enough.  I’m doing another reading.  Then I need to go.  You can finish your program, I have to be a local warlord.  I’ll be back later, and you can give me jobs to do.”

“Uhh… thirty more seconds?  If I can identify who those cards are, it’ll help.”

The Witch gave her those thirty seconds.

As she picked up the cards, dividing them between the two decks, Nicolette said, “Your instincts are strong.  It’s very raw.  There’s a lot of practices you could do to refine the end results, clarify the picture, but there’s something to be said for getting raw, meaningful results.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s up to you still, if you want to awaken.”

The Witch laid out the other cards.  Child, blood and moon.  The knife, turned the other way, stabbing forward, not back.  Then fire, broken fist.  She drew a card, holding it face-down, and moved it over the arranged cards, seeing if it wanted to go anywhere.  She laid it down over the broken fist.  Treasure.

She peeked under some cards she’d placed face down.  A door.  A turned moon, from the tarot deck.  The hermit.  Those were possible outcomes.  She could follow the lines and placements of the cards…

“I really want to study your approach.  A lot of practices have gained something by studying the Aware and the Others and how they engage with the same ideas,” Nicolette said.  “It’s why I’m taking these notes.”

The Witch moved the most important cards into a circle, then placed another in the center.  Where?

“Not so fast,” Nicolette said.  “You didn’t let me copy.”

She got up from her seat, nearly falling.

“B?” Nicolette asked.

The Bitter Street Witch hated the nickname but was willing to admit that ‘Bitter Street Witch’ was a mouthful and ‘Witch’ was far too nonspecific when practitioner talked to practitioner.

“You do your read of that.  While you do that, sitting in your safe little school hours away from the problems you’re solving, I’m going to go act on it.  I’ll be checking your answers later, keep you on your toes, right?  If you’re going to be my mentor?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Nicolette said.

“No time for deals.”

“I’ll do that, but on your end of things… don’t eat another bird head.  You’ll pick up other types of practice if you don’t fall back on crutches.”

“My life is crutches, mentor,” the Witch replied.  “And it’s a child’s life at stake.  So tell me, do you want me to eat the bird’s head or not?”

Without waiting for an answer, she banged on the door, pushing it open.  Her brother Donny was sitting by the fire, staring off into space.

He startled, looking at the kettle he’d forgotten to set on to boil.

There was a reason she kept him close to home.  He was just not the best one to send on any errand that was more than a word in length.

“With me,” she told him.

He went to her side, supporting her as she walked.  She could lean into him, using her stick to help distribute weight, picking it up to point it when she needed to indicate a direction.

Matthew Moss, Louise, and Toadswallow were by some market stalls that were being set up.

“You look perturbed, dear Witch,” Toadswallow said.

“I am.”

“Did you not get the message we were setting up for the market?” Louise asked.

“I did.  You’re fine.  I’ll put extra security on things later, so your intruders can visit the market and see what it has to offer.  If they turn around and try to rob it, we’ll make it hurt.”

“Okay,” Louise said.  “This feels like a disaster waiting to happen.”

She could see how Moss was sitting next to Louise.  They’d become friends.

She kind of resented that.  “Moss, with me.”

“What?  Hm?” he asked.

“With me.  There are things that need our mutual attention.”

“Matthew’s tired,” Louise said.  “He just had what I’ve heard described as a marathon Demesne claim.”

“Don’t care.  With me.  Toadswallow, you stay, focus on the market.  And when I get back, you need to tell me if you’re going to be one of our council members, representing Kennet below, or if you’ll stay above, and just have your market here.”

“An ultimatum?” Toadswallow asked.

“I’m impatient, and I need to figure things out, and there are things I can’t work out until you get off your saggy behind.”

Toadswallow smiled.  “Alright.  You’re sure I can’t go instead of Matthew?”

“Yeah.  Oh, and one more thing?  The two factions of the invaders are approaching a breaking point.  Your goblins know the opossum, and the opossum knows the second witch?”

“Yeah.”

“Get a message to the witches then.  They should talk to me.”

Toadswallow whistled.  But she was already hobbling away, motioning to Moss.

He grunted as he got up.

“Donny, go get your brothers.  Have one of them drive.  And if they fight over who gets to drive, tell them I said I’ll break this walking stick off in their asses.  Come over by the Arena.”

Donny stared at her.

He went.  She had to catch herself with the walking stick as he let go of her arm.

“Moss?  Prop me up or I’ll fall and break something.”

He replaced Donny as her support.

“I might need someone to prop me up,” he said.

But he did what he was supposed to.  They managed a decent enough speed.

He smelled good.  Like cedar.

“Congratulations, Moss,” she said, when they were alone.

“Congratulations?”

“Mm hmm.  These are congratulations you owe me for.  And this is a debt owed that you should pay back promptly.  I’ll be cashing in the goodwill I’ve been picking up shortly, just in case I find a good replacement and need to go.”

“Alright.  Except, what are the congratulations for?”

“You, Moss, are going to have an offer of a familiar, except not really.  Or you’ll be offered a false familiar.  And you will accept, or you’ll be made to accept.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

His expression visibly darkened.

“They can’t force it.  That’s not how that works.”

She shrugged, as much as she could with her arm firmly in his grip.  “They’ll fake force it then.  And then you’ll accept.”

“Aren’t there degrees of prophecy?  Ranging from like, vague notions to something capital-T True?”

“No idea.  I’m not that kind of Augur, with me, you get what you get.  There’s no negotiating, no nuance.  You know what’s coming, so prepare accordingly.”

His expression darkened more.

“The appropriate response is ‘thank you’.”

“Thanks,” Moss said.

“You owe me.”

“I do.  I’ll figure it out.  Is that why you wanted me to come with?”

No.  “Yes.  In part.”

He nodded.  “What’s the other part?”

“I guess we’ll find out.  I just know it’s here.”

The woods by the Arena, not that far from Hayward’s Demesne claim.

She heard voices.  Her ears, at least, hadn’t gone crooked.

They ventured through the trees until they could see the figures.

A girl with a rabbit mask was standing in a chalk circle.  Two figures in armor with blurry features beneath their helmets were standing on either side of her, weapons out.  It was probably completely unnecessary, but they kept her in position, one blade held behind her neck, the other in front, in a way that forced her to keep her chin stretched upward.

A group of other practitioners stood by.

“Are you going to make me ask three times for every answer you give?”

“Maybe try asking that two more times to see?” the girl replied.

“Squeezing her for information,” Moss murmured.

The Witch nodded.

“How do you want to handle this?  You seemed to have an idea.”

“Wait.”

“Tell me, are there any ways to circumvent the writs or get emergency access out?”

“No comment.”

“Tell me, I ask a second time, and on a third, by the Seal, you must answer.  You don’t have the status, freedom, or clout to say no.  Are there any ways to circumvent the writs or get emergency access out?”

“No comment.”

She heard the squeal of tires.  By the looks of it, at least two of the people by the boy doing the interrogation had heard too.

“Make noise.  Big practice.  Let that darkness out, if you want.”

“I’m pretty wobbly.”

“If you don’t do anything, they’ll get what they want out of her.”

“If she knows.”

The Witch stared at the girl, studying her.

“She knows.”

“Fuck.”

Matthew stepped forward, and he let the darkness out. It was smaller.  Barely bigger than he was, and ghostly, with images of Edith James’ face emerging from the midst of it, crashing out past one another, in a succession.  It crashed into the side of the damaged, broken down building, and the impact was enough to produce a faint rumble as parts of the roof, already mostly caved in, fell.

Ramming into three of the other practitioners at the edge.

“The rescue party?” the boy with the short hair asked.

“The distraction,” the Witch said, her back to a tree, quiet.

“The distraction,” Moss said, louder.

“I see your friend there.”

The boy adjusted something on the gauntlet he wore, and then pointed.  Moss’s darkness moved, and it caught the brunt of a series of skewers.  They slowed as they hit the darkness, then hit the tree with enough impact that they penetrated.  The Witch pulled her head away just in time, as two metal skewers hit the foot-and-a-half-thick tree and punched through, with one or two inches of protrusion.

And the darkness was smaller than Matthew.

“But you’re distracting me from something else.  Which is-”

Her brothers.

They’d heard the sound and swerved around the parking lot, looking for what it might be.  They were dumb.  They were extraordinarily, bend-reality kinds of dumb.  They were several stripes of dumb in each of them, from the shortsighted to the reckless to the dimwitted to the scattered.  And that was fine.  She did love them.

But they were trustworthy for one thing, and that one thing was getting into stupid fights.  So even if they missed the target sometimes, they could land places that would soon see them taking out her enemies, which was just what she wanted them to do.

They’d found this fight.  And they’d brought lackeys.  Rather than fight over who got to drive, they’d had each of them drive, maybe racing each other.  Cars packed with violent idiots.

She stepped out of the trees, stick in hand, and pointed it, directing them.  “Oh, Moss?  Keep me alive.”

“That’s easier-”

He moved the shadow into the way of the backhanded attack magic the boy with the gauntlet sent at her.

“-said than done.”

That was all she needed.  Her brothers went after the ones she’d pointed at.

“Call them off!  Do you want me to kill the hostage?” the boy shouted.

“Can’t.  They’re idiots, they don’t really listen.  I can send them to get into fights, but I’m not so dumb I’ll try to pull them away from one.”

“Figure it out!”

The practitioner lackeys had practice, the brothers had numbers and awful self preservation.

Matthew used the shadow to confront the knights, who’d moved their weapons away from the throat and neck of the bunny girl, and then pulled spell cards out of his pocket.  Just like the ones Verona, Lucy, and Avery used.

There were ways this could go, where she ended up utterly alone, no brothers.  It was in the cards.

If it came to that, she’d leave.

And there was an end result where she let him go to a door, and the closest thing she could think of to a door was Hayward’s ritual.  Beat his ass, chuck him through, let her deal with him, then catch him on the other side.  Whatever that involved.

Leaving another possibility.  The utilized secret.

“Hey, you know anything about this guy?” she asked Moss.

“Nah.  Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said.  “Figured.”

Meaning he was either going to murder her brothers, or…

He ran, while there was still a gap, attacking people on his way through.  He had his soldiers help secure his retreat, moving back from the fight and forming a loose, two-individual barricade.

He was the one with the secret.

The others ran too, and she let her brothers keep chasing, because it was useless to call them off.  Matthew, meanwhile, hurried over to the girl, foot scuffing the chalk circle.

“Mr. Matthew Moss, I presume?” the girl asked.

“Are you okay?”

“I have paperwork for you.  Notices, information.  If you’re drained and tired, you’re to go downstairs.”

“Let’s focus on getting you okay.”

“And miss Bitter Street Witch?”

“Yeah.”

“For you as well.”

“You’re very focused on the job,” Moss said.

“I’d rather-” the girl paused.  The paper she was holding out trembled.  “I’d like to please focus on it for now.  Being a representative, running errands for Miss.  Earning a bit of pay.  Please.”

The Witch hobbled forward, and took the paper.  Matthew supported her before she could sway where she stood.  Information packets.  Notes on exchanging members between areas.  Above, below, found.

She folded it and put it into a pocket.

“Can I give you an errand?” the Bitter Street Witch asked.

The girl’s neck, red where the blade had brushed skin but not broken it, moved as she swallowed hard.  “Of course.  After I’ve run any more important errands, of course.”

“It’s an easy one.”

They would have screamed if they had mouths, but they had none.  Distilled, bifurcated personhood, they lunged forward madly, unthinking, on pure instinct.  And because they had no mouths, they could not eat.  And because they could not eat, they had limited reserves.  They had but one try, survival of the fittest.  One goal, held in brainless minds.

The corridor was flesh, glistening and lightless, but the motes of personhood had no eyes, so it did not matter.  No noses.  Mad and frantic, they tore past one another, lost their way, there were malformed ones among them, barely able to move.

If they’d had eyes and if their goal had meaning, their goal might have glowed like a sun.  But it didn’t.  They were dark, the corridor was dark, and the destination was dark, and in a mad chase along damp flesh, they fumbled, if such brainless motes could be said to ‘fumble’, exactly.

And one mote, by chance, by being more frantic, was victorious.  It reached the destination, a barrier that resisted, absorbed.  And bifurcated personhood became personhood, entire engines of growth, life, nature, time, death, and dying off kicking into motion.

It was all very weird to Dom.  It felt like everything conflicted.

He loved his sister, but it was also a pain in the ass that she was back and okay and so very worried about him being here.

Musser apparently had taken a shine to him, with nice words to say, and that was apparently enough for the entire family to do better, he guessed?  His dad and mom were happy and talking more about possibilities.  But then at the same time, Musser had left and they hadn’t been any of the important picks.

And it was cool, after school had been so empty, to be around so many other practitioners, and even some older kids who didn’t act like they hated having him around.  Maybe that was because Musser had liked him, but…

It was cool.

He still wished he could be at school, though.  With Talia, Jorja, and Effy.  That had been the best time while it had lasted.  Learning what he could in big classes with older kids, good food, then going off to swim with his friends, or play in the field.

This kind of open space with fresh air felt a lot like that.  The cabin had felt confined, and the bathroom had been full, so he’d come out to pee in the bushes and then kinda just stayed outside.  He dragged a stick through the dirt, drawing out vague diagram ideas, ready to stomp on them if they did anything.

Bushes rustled.

He drew out his wand and held out the stick.

“Huh,” the girl said.  She stepped out of the woods.  She had a rabbit mask on, and some rumpled clothes.  She kept her hands in her pockets.  “If you use the big stick, is that like having a super fat wand for big fat spells?”

“I wish.”

“Would be cool,” she said.  “I’m not a threat.”

“Okay,” he said.  He looked around.  “Is there a threat I don’t know about?  A friend of yours that is a threat?”

She shook her head.  “Not to you.”

She approached, and he remained where he was, stick and wand held out.

“Oh, supposed to remove this,” she said.

She pulled off the mask.

Her eyes were very dark, but her face was otherwise normal.

“I feel naked without the mask on,” she said, putting a hand over her face.

“Are you Other?”

“I guess.  Foundling.”

He nodded.  There had been a big talk about the new town and classifying Others, earlier today.

He thought for a second.  “What do you want?  Why is it me you’re coming to talk to?”

“Because you’re not one of the violent ones, and what I really wanted to do is find someone who can pass on a message.”

“Okay.  What message?”

“I’m just supposed to find you, bring you further away so someone else can talk to you, lay it all out.  The person giving the message is one of the local practitioners.  They’re keeping an eye out for her.”

“Sounds like a trap, kind of.”

She nodded.  “But I know it isn’t.”

He studied her.  Maybe she thought it wasn’t, but she was being tricked so someone else could spring the trap.

“Who am I talking to?”

“Avery Kelly.  With the deer mask.”

“Oh.  She was really good at sports.  It was cool.”

“Was she?  Neat.”

He kept studying her, looking for a hint.

The way she stood reminded him a lot of Talia.  Very straight.  Trying very hard.

The aura around her, it felt different, though.  Like she knew exactly who she was and was strong in that.  Like Jorja, kind of.  Talia didn’t have that.

He admired his friends in different ways.

“I could get Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth, I’m quoting someone, has been a huge pain in the butt,” the girl said, hand still over her face, fingers parted so she could see through them.

“Yeah.  For me too.  All smothering and stuff.  I had to yell at her.”

“I think they wanted to yell at her too.  Will you come?”

He nodded.  “But you lead the way.  I go behind.  And I’ll use a practice so I can escape.”

She nodded back.  Then she reached out, toward the big stick.

He let her take it, and let her lead him by holding the stick.

He used his free hand and, lacking paper, drew on the back of his hand.  A bit of an emergency way of escaping.

And, after they’d walked for ten minutes, into the valley by the ski hill, east of town, Avery Kelly stepped out, and immediately sat herself down on the grass, hands held out.  “No weapons, nothing on me.”

He nodded.

“Hi Dom.  We never really talked.”

“No, not really.”

“Dom was a good pick,” Avery told the girl who’d had the bunny mask.

The girl peered through her fingers, and nodded.

“What’s the message?”

“An offer for a deal.  But it’s really up to you guys.”

“Should I write it down?”

“I can,” the girl who’d had the rabbit mask said.

“Basically… I’ve had a good rest, head’s clear, and I’ve been thinking.  I can get you guys where you want to be.  But it’s really up to you.  Because it’s either going to be all of you… or just the group who are sitting back, wondering what to do.  Like your family.  And the Graubards, and the Conrads.”

The girl was scribbling on the paper.  As Dom turned to look at her, she held the paper up to shield her face.

“You know, you could put the mask back on,” Avery said.

“When in Rome…” the girl said.  “Learned that line on TV.”

Dom turned to Avery.  “The Graubards aren’t part of this anymore.  They got stuck in the new version of this town.  By some of the other group.”

“So you think it’s going to be the second option, then?”

Leaving the other side behind?  The militant practitioners?  Even knowing the consequences, that it might cause problems down the road?

He wasn’t sure he understood all this, and it was all full of contradictions, but… if it meant getting out.

“I think so,” he replied.

Next Chapter