Author: Wildbow

Loose Ends – E.2 | Pale

3 Days Later, Lucy

“Hit the shrines for Enginehead, Borrador, and Lotte first thing.  Weird to get back to the routine.”

“For sure.  So I have tonight, then.  I’ll bring Snowdrop for goblin sage stuff.”

“Are you coming to the council meeting?”

“I have practice after school, family time, then the Thunder Bay council meet.  Fewer of us means more responsibilities.  I’ll come after I’m done.”

“Want us to delay ours?  Short council meeting tonight?  Or we could put stuff pertinent to you at end?  Or… I dunno, Ronnie and I give you a recap?”

“Can you put the Avery-relevant stuff at end for me?”

“Got it.  Just getting close enough to school I’ll be overheard talking on the phone.  So I’ll leave you to it.”

“For sure.”

“Have fun at practice.”

“If they let me run.  If not I might dip your way.”

“I’ll be talking to people about the sword moot, so maybe hang with Verona?”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll let Verona know so she can plan… she’s sleeping in right now, at least until her daily breakfast with her mom,” Lucy said, talking into the phone even as she typed a text to Verona.  “See you later?”

“See you later.”

The ‘the call has ended’ notification coming down crowded out the text she was typing, making it hard to see more than one line at a time.  She finished, sent, then dismissed the ‘call ended’ message.

Lucy checked the coast was clear, which it wasn’t very, and paused, putting her bag down and pretending to check something while some kids on their way to school walked by.

She double-checked, then she pulled her bag back on, and walked between a post and a fence, where a coil of telephone wire hung.  She stepped through the loop and into Kennet found, retrieving and pulling on her mask for a bit.

Another detour a half-block away, and she was in Kennet below.  She put the mask aside.

School started late in Kennet below, and the only people up were the controlling interests of the school.  Pseudo-warlords wanting to hold their spots, which meant keeping things running and keeping people entertained.  A truck had pulled in by the school, and food was being unloaded by Lunch Kid’s team.

Lucy didn’t go in the entrance she usually did to get into the school, instead walking with the field to her right and the wall of the school to her left.  The mural was mostly intact, but the area closest to the ground had its own new graffiti, scrawled on in jagged red and black letters.

Hands in the pockets of her Dog Tag coat, keys, weapon ring, Yalda’s ring, and Dog Tag jangling at her chest at the end of the chain, Lucy passed by the kindergarten playground, fenced in separate from the rest of the playground.  A five year old had been left overnight in a modified part of the play structure, wrapped in chicken wire and other loose materials.  He snarled at her as she passed by.

More kindergartners had slept on the floor of the kindergarten just inside the front doors, and stirred as she passed.

They recognized her, though, and parted ways.  Most.  The ones who didn’t were pulled back by shirt collars by their peers.

The row of bulletin boards was covered in messages, ranging from some kid looking for a lost ball their dad gave them to bounties on heads.

Past the display case with made up trophies and accomplishments stuffed in there, there was the door to the staff room.  Lucy pushed it open.

With the Vice Principal gone, there were no giant faculty members from the past generation, anymore.  No steeds, no mounts.  They’d deflated, disappeared, or run away.  Lucy didn’t know the particulars.  She only really recognized half the staff who’d remained.

The ex-school nurse was now Principal, among the oldest here at sixteen or so.  She’d worn an adult men’s white button-up shirt over her usual clothing like a lab coat before, and hadn’t changed that much, but wore a tie now too, loose at the neck.  Her narrow, rectangular glasses had a scratch on one lens and a bead of blood dried on the corner of the other.  Two others were her peers, brought in and elevated to lieutenant and department heads.  The Lunch Kid was absent, and scattered others represented various departments and grade levels.

The new principal, Lucy knew, had sided with Charles to survive.  She wasn’t integrated enough into the world beyond Kennet below to have survived otherwise.  The good thing was that she was an opportunist and survivor, not a danger.  Charles had had the upper hand, so she’d sided with him.  Then Kennet had won, so she’d sided with them.  If someone came along and looked poised to take over, she’d side with that someone.

Predictable, at least.

“Kid out in a cage in the little kid playground,” Lucy commented.  “Cold out.”

“Feckless?  He bit a teacher so bad we don’t have a kindergarten teacher all day,” the kindergarten representative said.  “That’s why he’s in timeout.”

“He’ll be okay,” the Principal said, adding a ridiculous amount of sugar and cream to her coffee.  It was more white than brown.

“We can’t afford to lose any more people in Kennet below,” Lucy said.

“Relative of Shirtless,” the Principal told Lucy.  “You know Shirtless?  Gone, now, but he had a thing-”

“I’ve heard, yeah.  Wasn’t immune to cold though.”

“Could’ve toughed it out.  Kid cousin can, probably.”

“Okay then.  You have the census?”

The Principal held out a sheaf of papers.  Lucy briefly skimmed over it, her eye going to the columns for white and lost sheep.  Not many she didn’t already know about.  “Any white or lost sheep coming through that aren’t on this paper?  Like, this morning, anything like that?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.  Keep an eye out?  There might be more of a pull until you guys have equilibrium.”

“You heard her,” the Principal said.  When Lucy looked up, she saw the Principal was talking to her ‘staff’.  “Keep an eye out.”

“Any updates, news, concerns?” Lucy asked.

“Lunch Kid sent another kid over to say food truck didn’t have much in it, seems to be a trend,” the Principal commented, sounding a bit bored.  The moment of eye contact after she said it though… to Lucy, that was a moment of actual worry communicated in eye contact.

The way supplies tended to work here, there was a lot of fuzzing, as Lucy, Verona, and Avery had termed it.  There was probably a better technical term in the books, but they hadn’t gotten that far.  One truck, once in a while, would be diverted from highway to here, leave its load behind, or things stolen off the back of a truck would be moved to a warehouse in the factories or downtown.  Then, somewhere in the process of being repackaged and rebranded, there’d be more, but it’d be Kennet-below-ified.  Other sources of supplies like what the factories output in questionable canned food products, meat from hunting at the fringes pressed into containers with ambiguous quasi-meat products, there would be more of that more.

From there, it got distributed, bartered for and paid for in cash at the various key points of delivery.  Just like Jessica Casabien’s raincoat with an uncertainly endless supply of chocolate and protein bars in it, or glamour, things could thrive off that fuzziness.  Normally.  That process wasn’t working like it had a few weeks ago.

“Hungry kids are out of control kids,” Slicer, the biology head, commented.

“That’ll be the hollowing effect.  Things aren’t balanced.  We have the council meeting tonight, we’ll talk solutions.  You guys should come.  I know Verona’s looking into it.”

“Okay,” the Principal replied, laconic.

“You need reinforcement in the meantime?  Emergency supplies?  Manpower or goblinpower?”

“Nah.  Fast way to get taken out.  Showing we’re too weak on our own?”

“Okay.  Offer stands.  If we do end up getting a line on some resources or get a fix, people will be happy enough with the food and things they’ll probably overlook the presence from the rest of the town.”

“M’kay.”

“Okay.  Is that it?” Lucy asked.  “My school day’s starting soon.”

“Rebel,” Dodgeball Boy told her.  “Overthrow that system, set up a new school that starts at a better time.”

“Nah, let’s let things settle down before we tip over another table, okay?”

“Speaking of settled… bunch of kids went off to Sin Victor, being copycats of us,” the Principal said.  “We’re going to get some kids together, kick ’em out.  Burn down the building.”

“Hmmm.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“Council meeting first?”

The Principal gave Lucy a disgusted look.

“Council meeting first,” Lucy repeated, more firmly.  “Push on this, we’re liable to defend them.  Enough stuff’s burned down lately.  If it’s a reputation thing?  Territory thing?  When there’s more than enough space?”

“You won’t like them,” Hardball Girl said, sing-song.  The other P.E. head.  She put boys through their paces in the gym class, while Dodgeball Boy did the girls.  “They’re scuzzballs.  The second in command of that group?  I had to take a baseball bat to his gonards ten times.”

Dodgeball Boy added, “Him and his gang, before they joined up with that bigger group, stole all the girl’s pants, shorts, and skirts from the laundry factory.  They thought if they could do that enough, all the girls would have to walk around in underwear.”

“Right.  You’re right, I don’t like them,” Lucy admitted, sighing a bit as she said it.  She then reiterated, “Council meeting first, though.”

“Okay,” the Principal replied, yawning as she said it.

“Might be an idea to have the other school be a… dunno.  Opposition party?  Formalizing any rivals to your rule?”

The Principal shot Lucy a dark look, then flipped up her middle finger.  When that didn’t achieve the intended effect, she extended her tongue, mouth open, and slowly slid the finger into her mouth.

“Not them, ideally,” Lucy said.  “Make it so you see who’s coming.  Have to step up your game, prove you can rule.  They have to prove it too.  That they can run a school, even one a third the size.  Ideally, after we fix the supply issue.”

“Ugh,” the Principal grunted the sound, withdrawing her finger.

“There’s going to be a lot of talk in the next little while, about what Kennet below should look like.  If Verona figures out how to work with Lis on this, put out a call for people to shore up the population here, we’ll need to know who we’re looking for.  Both in people and Others.  You guys think about it too?  Be prepared to make your pitch?”

“Yeah,” the Principal said, leaning back in her seat, teacup in hand.  She rolled her head to one side, and her spine snapped left, pressing against the flesh at the side of her neck, vertebrae clicking and popping in sequence.  She rolled the other way and repeated the process.  For a moment, her eyes were bloodshot, but that swiftly faded.  “You done?”

Getting restless, impatient.

“One more thing?  The mural out front.  Kids are painting over it.  Verona won’t love that.  She liked the mural girl.”

“So I’d like to think I’m hard but fair.  Verona’s lenient… until you get on her bad side.  Then she’s unfair,” Lucy replied.  She shrugged one shoulder.  “Keeping the mural nice would be a way to stay on her good side.”

“Noted.”

“That’s it,” Lucy said.  She held up the papers with the population information.  “Good work.  See you tonight?  Kennet above.”

“Yep.”

Lucy left.

Kennet below was a… a Charles thing.  Even more so now, after the people most sympathetic to Kennet had been wiped out.  It was going to be a process, now, to make it a Kennet thing.  She wasn’t even sure what that looked like, but that was why they had the meetings.

She had to go through the end of the school where all the first through fifth grader classrooms were to get to the roof.  It was only up there that she had the space and privacy to do a quick diagram beneath the overhanging portion that kept the door from being blocked by snowfall.

Yesterday, she’d tried putting out detection sensors in the bathroom across the hall from her class, waiting until the room was clear on the Kennet above side before stepping through, but it had cleared out late, and she’d been five minutes late to class.

Hated that.

Like this, she could at least handle it herself.  Portal, step through, back through the door, head downstairs, and then fast-walk across the school, ignoring the eyes that tracked her because she was too old to be at this end of the school.

She needed a better method for the future, but this worked for now.

She made it to class with a few minutes to spare.

George and Mia immediately gravitated her way, while Jeremy and Wallace seemed to notice she had arrived.

“Hey, so what’s going on?” George asked, almost fake-casual.

“Stuff.  Routines.”

“Healing up okay?” Mia asked, plunking herself down in a seat.  “Less bandages today.”

“Verona cobbled up something to help, healing elixer, thicker than the usual potion.  Helps with the deepest cuts, minimizes the appearance of scars.”

“That’s so cool,” George said.  “So, uh, when can we talk about stuff like that?”

“I get you guys want to be part of this, but be patient?” Lucy asked.  “We’re still putting things together.  There’s a council meeting tonight, a few faces who moved away or were forced out are coming back in, at least temporarily-”  Mainly Matthew and Louise.  “-and we could use a few of you guys.  It’ll be a chance for you guys to see what’s going on behind the scenes.”

“Hell yeah,” George exclaimed, with enough enthusiasm that it turned a few heads.

“Boring and procedural stuff.  I was thinking we could assign Others to you guys, so you have people to quiz or ask if you’re confused what someone at the meeting is talking about.”  Lucy saw Oakham come in, and raised a hand in a mini-wave.  “Or ask Oakham.  She knows a good bit.”

“Oakham is moving,” Oakham said, as she walked up to their seats.  She had the cane still, but wasn’t using it much.  Bracken was in the hallway, talking to Noah.

“You’re moving?”

“Not right away, but yeah.  I can break them in, I guess.  But our house got trashed, it’s awkward, and I don’t think my parents would take well to all the rest of this stuff, so we can’t exactly move to Kennet below.”

Lucy nodded slowly.  “Is it weird if I say I’ll miss you?”

“Weird, yeah.”

“Verona’ll miss you.  She know?”

“As of last night, yeah.”

“And Bracken?”

“He, Daddy Doyle, and Bag are going where we’re going.  They… I think you can drop those three anywhere and they’ll find a place to hole up.”

“Romantic, gosh!” Mia exclaimed.  “He’s following you wherever you go?”

“I wouldn’t say Bracken’s ‘romantic’.  If he was, I don’t think I’d like him so much.  So much artificial bullshit,” Oakham said.

“It’s bullshit but it’s great bullshit.  You play along with it and buy into it until it becomes real,” Mia countered.

“Ick,” Lucy replied.  “Not sure I agree.  It should be genuine.”

Oakham glanced through the doorway.  “It means a lot.  That he’d come.  Had to beat him bloody with a clue by four until he got my signals, but now that he’s got ’em, he’s… good.”

“So romantic,” Mia gushed.  She was playing it up some, Lucy guessed.

“You’re so annoying,” Oakham told her.

“Council meeting tonight,” George said, bringing the conversation back.  “Lucy, can we talk something like the arcade?  Or the Christmas event?”

“We’re still rebuilding, setting stuff up, fixing what’s broken.  The arcade and Christmas stuff is like throwing a pizza party in the hospital when we’re still struggling to triage and patch some emergency bleeding.”

“Okay, but we could do something like the arcade and use it to fundraise for the emergency stuff?”

“Ease up,” Mia told George.

Lucy opened her mouth to reply, let out a one-note grunt, then replied, “Maybe.  Metaphysical fundraising.  Maybe.  Just- council meeting, later.  Bring it up then.”

George looked overjoyed to have possibly been useful or had a practical idea.

Bracken, Brayden, and Noah came over.

“Hey,” Lucy greeted them.

“They have questions,” Bracken said.

Lucy tried not to look as exhausted by all that as she felt.  “Bring them up at the council meeting tonight, and patience, please.  There was just a war.  We’re rebuilding.”

“What if they’re emergency questions?” Noah asked.

“Are they emergency questions?”

“I don’t know.  How am I supposed to know?” he asked.  “I don’t want to be a pain.  I appreciate the invite, learning about all this, I know I wasn’t there for a good chunk of it, maybe that’s why I don’t know more.”

“We don’t know a lot either,” Mia said.  “But Lucy says patience, so… patience.”

“I appreciate you sticking it out as far as you did,” Lucy told Noah.  “I’m sort of glad you didn’t go into the Crucible or the sketchier fighting.  Even if I’m also glad that you guys did, as friends and allies.  But like Mia says, be patient.  Ask Bracken, ask Oakham.”

“Don’t volunteer me,” Oakham protested.  Then, a moment later, conceded, “Volunteer me a little.”

“At least until tonight.  Council meeting tonight, fuck me, it’s going to go for three or four hours, isn’t it?  Maybe you guys talk among yourselves, think of three priority topics max that you want to bring up.”

“I don’t know if I can dodge my parents for a late night thing,” Mia said.

Lucy sighed.  “I can… stop in, do a little thing to help your parents not notice you’re gone, or we set up a video thing and you hole up in your room with headphones and get what you can there.”

“For a four hour meeting?”

Lucy shrugged.  “Or something.  Just… seriously guys.  We’ll see about maybe a  buddy system with the local Others, foundlings, denizens, so you each have one person to go to?”

“And I’m volunteering myself until then, okay,” Oakham said.

“What are we talking about?” Sharon asked, as she walked over.  Kennet Sharon, not Sargeant Hall Sharon.  “Volunteering?”

Her arrival chilled all conversation, in an awkward way.

“Stuff,” George said, unhelpfully.

“Arcade stuff?”

“Kinda.  Sorta,” he said, looking evasive.

“Talking about if it’s maybe even going to be a thing, still,” Lucy said.  “We’re short on resources.”

“Cool, can I help?  Mia and I did the bake sale stuff for the dance studio.”

“It’s not really a bake sale type of thing,” Mia told Sharon.

“Oh, huh.”

There was an awkward pause.

“I see how it is,” Sharon said.  “You guys are in, I’m out?”

“It’s complicated,” Mia said.

“Uncomplicate it.  Invite me in.”

“Maybe that’s one of the points we raise at the meeting?” Mia suggested to Lucy, sounding unsure.

“Fuck that, invite me to the meeting,” Sharon said.

There was another pause.  Sharon interrupted it with a full-throttle, three-note scoff.

“We’ll bring it up and invite you in as soon as we can,” Mia pledged.

“It’s bullshit.  Fuck you, Mia.  I have backed you, I’ve been a friend.  And fuck you, Lucy.”

“Fuck you, I know you’ve been a part of this from early on, I have never been shitty to you, even when you haven’t been great yourself.”

“What did I do?”

“What’s this?”

Other girls were gravitating over.  Pulled over by the drama.  Alayna, Hailey, Savannah.

Oh my god, Lucy thought.  How are you guys a bigger pain in my asshole than the Kennet below student council?

“They’re doing the Arcade thing and now they’re screening us out.”

“What the fuck?”

“Hey,” Mia said.  She looked scared.  Lucy kind of got why, when it was most of Mia’s friend group.  “It’s not that, it’s not us.  It’s complicated.  Give us a few days to work this out, and if we can make this happen, introduce you, you’ll take one look and realize why we’re acting like we are.”

“Doing this isn’t helping,” Oakham commented.

That kind of response isn’t helping, Lucy thought.  “Easy does it, Oakham.”

“Okay, clarifying,” Oakham said.  “I was crummy at first and made things harder and I kick myself a bit for it.  A bit.  Be more like Noah.”

Noah looked a bit spooked to have attention drawn to him when people were this testy.

“Noah’s in on this?” Alayna asked.  “And we’re out?  That’s stupid.”

“What’s wrong with Noah?” Brayden asked.

The lights flickered.

It was Mr. Sitton, turning the lights on and off repeatedly.  “Break it up.  Whatever it is, it can wait until lunch time.  In your seats.  Let’s get the day started.”

Sharon, Alayna, Savannah, and Hailey went to their seats, looking very unhappy.

“Damn it, Sharon,” Mia muttered.

There’s a reason we didn’t invite Sharon to be in the loop.  She’s rarely the instigator, but she’s always close to any class drama.  And Alayna’s soured a lot since Pam left.

Just bad vibes.

Mia looked miserable.

Verona doesn’t go to school anymore.  Avery isn’t based in Kennet anymore.  Leaving me to wrangle this.

Mr. Sitton approached, and put a folder full of paper and printouts on Lucy’s desk.

She looked up at him, eyebrows raised.

“The work you missed after the car accident.  Get it done by the weekend.”

The ‘car accident’ had been Lucy’s slate of blackguards and Lis helping to paint a picture that explained the bandages and absences from school.

“Can I do it over the weekend?”

“No,” he said, tapping the folder hard with four fingers, before turning his back.  “Quiet, everyone.  If you’re talking it should be to talk about Cartesian coordinates.  Save the rest for your lunch hour.”

It felt like the sort of line that would have the class audibly groaning in a TV show, but it didn’t happen.  Chairs squeaked and scraped on the floor, bags were opened, and class began.  The mood across almost half the class now was unhappy.  The world beyond the windows was dark, moisture on the window and snow out over Kennet sparkling under artificial lights.  The sun hadn’t even risen yet, and wouldn’t until the first class of the day was half over.

Lunch was talking a bit to Jeremy, Caroline, and Wallace, because they were being patient, and she didn’t want them to suffer or go wanting because they were giving her the space to get other stuff done.

Then a visit to Sin Victor, as graffiti on the other school had rebranded it.

Hardball Girl had been right.  They were scuzzballs.

“Heyyy!” Avery called over.

She ran up to Lucy and Verona.  Lucy put arms out for a hug, and Avery kind of crashed into her.

Lucy closed her eyes, glad for just a moment or two where she wasn’t, like, using her own power and internal mechanisms to stay upright.

“Oh, hey, that’s a tight hug,” Avery said.

“Sorry.”

Snowdrop climbed down Avery, became human, and ran off, shouting, “Aaaaa!”

A tiny “aaaa!” responded.  Cherrypop.

“You said you had the sword moot?” Avery asked Lucy, as they broke the hug.

Verona half-hugged Lucy as Lucy stepped back, cheek resting on Lucy’s shoulder.

“Technically, just touching base, talking before the next proper meeting.  Figuring out what might come up, where resources and attention need to go, any imminent emergencies,” Lucy explained.

“Right.  And…?  Not that I’m not glad to see you, but I don’t want to delay you either, if it’s going to be a problem.”

“I’ll go soon.  Let’s talk first?  So we don’t have to later, and so we’re all more on the same page.”

“Not complaining.”

Lucy gave the rundown- Kennet below, her classmates, the Sin Victor group of horny teens and preteens, ideas she was floating, stuff that was coming up.

“I crammed school earlier, went over some of it with my mom, then did some research stuff,” Verona said.

“How’s your Demesne?” Avery asked.

“Has some rooms accessible.  Work in progress.  I’m sleeping over at my mom’s for now.  McCauleigh and Raquel have rooms in the same apartment building, Kennet below.  McCauleigh vibes with it more than Raquel.”

“Cool.”

“I’d rather not have to be rebuilding at all, but whatever.  That’s secondary focus, it’s easy so long as I’m reasonably close to my Demesne.  I’ve been focused on markets, talked to Toadswallow, coordinated some with Kennet below and Kennet found markets.  Need to talk to Brayden,” Verona said.

“I think he’s coming to the meeting tonight.  It won’t take much nudging to get his dad to let him go, I think,” Lucy said.

“Cool.  Um, did some research on what we’d need to fix the balance, pull in some population.  How are we with Clementine?”

“Clementine?” Lucy asked.

“Touchy but okay,” Avery said.  “That’s a whole thing I need to get on, like, next few days.  We kind of said Kennet could be a better place for Aware to go.”

“Why?  Just curious,” Lucy asked.  “One of the last times you were asking about her, you poked a sore spot by bringing up the white immortality mask with the side effect of extended torture.”

“Remember the earring?  That Tashlit wanted?  It was part of why she and so many other Others came crashing in when Sharon and the Aware tore down our perimeter.”

“You want to use it?” Lucy asked.

“Or study it, see if any of it can apply.  If we can do what Nicolette does with item identification, see if there’s an abstracted diagram we can sketch out, I could try applying that.  Anyway, crossed my mind, thought I’d ask.”

“Good excuse to get me moving on that front,” Avery said.  “Follow through on our promise to her before we ask, I’m thinking.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy said.  “Putting the quid into the quid pro quo?”

Verona nodded.  “I’ve been studying up, seeing what we could do.  It’s pretty dry, a lot of it is… half right?”

“Half right?” Avery asked.

“Like, a whole text on drawing people into a setup, but it’s a how-to for Demiurges making their own pocket dimensions.  Or Founders like Miss- from one of your books, Ave.”

“Cool.”

“Or it’s the opposite, a broad warding effect, and I look at it as something we flip around the other way, in intent.”

“Could ask Snowdrop about that,” Ave said.

“Could.  Interesting idea.  Anyway, I kinda have to read it and go hey, this is core, it’s a staple in most of these, piece it together that way, then I figure out how to elaborate, signifiers we want to use.  Hard not to get distracted with, like, a whole text on peddling and drawing the right customers into your shop, realllly want to read the next chapters.”

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” Lucy said.  “Doable, though?”

“Yeah.  But I want to get as many eyes on this as possible, after.  We’re not under the same time pressures as we were with the Founding.”

“Decide what we want to do with it,” Lucy said.  “The culture we want to encourage and all that.”

“If we’re turning on the faucet, do we want to turn it on full blast, get up to a new equilibrium, shut off?  Do we want a trickle?  I want, like, dark, free, and artsy.  Human mingling with Other.  The kind of place Tashlit or people like her could come to and be comfortable.”

“It’s always been a bit much for her, right?  The violence?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been trying to get our warlords to be a little less war and a little more lord,” Lucy said.  She saw a look from Avery, then added, “As a first step.  Aiming for something better in the future.  Lord to something else.”

“We don’t want to be represented by the violence or dead bodies lying in the streets any more than Tashlit wants it, I don’t figure,” Avery said.

“Yeah.  When it gets to the market stuff for Kennet below, I think ‘black market, but not too black,” Verona said.

“Isn’t that just gray?  You can’t have shades of black, can you?” Avery asked.

“There’s ways to get to black, and like, things you might say are black when it’s night and there’s no light, but when you get close it’s not all that dark after all.”

“This is your brain, and this is your brain on art,” Lucy muttered.

Verona laughed, leaning briefly into Lucy’s arm and shoulder for a moment.  Lucy smiled a bit.

Avery began to break down the market stuff that was going on outside of Kennet, the Fae markets, goblin markets, the ghost market, tapping the spirit world, jurisdictions with the various Aurum replacements that had swept in when he’d withdrawn his territory.  From there, it was Aware, Clementine, what they were doing there, and…

Lucy’s heart sank.

A part of her had hoped that she could come here and see a gap.  That she could get a bit mad, even, because she was shouldering a lot.  Verona had left school and Avery had left Kennet, and Lucy was left with a lot on her shoulders.

But the more they talked about, in the big picture and small, the more it became clear.  No gap.  No reason to be mad.  All three of them were dealing with things both local and regional.  Super-regional, even, in the sense that the wrong moves could break agreements and leak beyond the old Carmine’s borders.

Avery and Verona weren’t dealing with kids at school, but Lucy couldn’t fault them, either.  Avery had her family and the family relationships with practitioner groups, and Verona was focusing on bigger projects.

“I should go,” Lucy said.  “Moot talk.”

“Good luck,” Avery said.  “Catch you tonight?”

“Catch you tonight.  Give me the bullet points on this talk after?”

“For sure,” Verona said.

Lucy left them talking shop.  Literally talking shop, in the sense they were discussing stores, market, and supplies.

It was a short walk home.  The sky was overcast, snowfall light, the snow wet by a brief rain that had frozen it into a hollow shell that boots easily punched through.  Some areas had been thoroughly trampled, crushed ice squeaking under boots.  Others closer to home had more shell that her boots periodically punched through or inadvertently kicked, flying off to where it shattered or skittered another five to ten feet.

She went home, letting herself in, and then went to the kitchen.

Message from mom on the fridge.  She paused, texting her mom.  She was safe and sound.

Then she prepared a snack.  Cheese stick, preservative-laden pepperoni stick, some salty cashews, and, as much as she wanted a homemade hot chocolate, she made peppermint tea instead.

In her room, she got set up, booted up her laptop, found the email, and set up the video call.  Camera on, microphone set up.  Set to start at 4:30.  She was a few minutes early.

It would be nice to talk to Dr. Mona, too, sometime.  Next week, maybe?

She opened up the email to type out a message and ask, and then left the text field blank.  The little ‘Draft (1)’ was a bit of a reminder to figure out how to ask and get around to that, right?

The video call booped, briefly muting the music she’d put on as the boops continued, alerting her.  She’d been able to get a page and a half done out of the mountain of homework and unfinished reading she’d accumulated while off fighting Charles and recovering.  She confirmed the call.

“I’m a few minutes late,” Sebastian said.  As a contract lawyer, he was handling a lot of the clarifications and write-ups for the Sword Moot.  Lucy trusted him to handle the wording- one of the only reasons she’d been willing to not immediately go from defeating Charles to the Sword Moot and stay at the Sword Moot.  Sebastian moved papers, while Lucy did the same, putting homework aside.  “By the way, Lucy, Ms. Poole is in the office, she may overhear my end of the call.  Is that alright?”

“That’s great.”  America and Liberty Tedd’s lawyer.  Lucy badly wanted to comment on the fact that Sebastian had a lady colleague over, but she knew how Mia could get over that stuff, how awful it was when it was unwelcome, and she didn’t want to sabotage it.

Seeing Avery and Verona after school had been a relief.  This was the first spark of happy today, just entertaining the idea that Sebastian and Ms. Poole might have found each other in all this.

“Okay,” he said.  He was looking down at papers.  “You know, one thing I like about contract law is a lot of the time, I can pull things together, make sense of the madness, present a preliminary draft.  But right now it’s mostly madness, I need your input.  I feel better when I can present something polished than when I’ve got… this.”

“Let me know if you want help,” Ms. Poole said, in the background.

“You’ve got experience in madness, right, Ms. Poole?” Lucy asked.

Sebastian had to repeat her question.

Poole passed behind Sebastian, ducking her head down to give Lucy a look of pain.

“Sorry,” Lucy said, even as she noticed the hand that settled very naturally on the back of Sebastian’s chair.  Another little spark of happy.

“Trying to figure out where to start.  If you have any requests or directions you want to take, please feel free.”

“I’m a bit wiped, tired of making requests and picking directions.  Gotta conserve energy for council tonight.”

“Right.  Well, let’s start with news.  Mussers are moving back in.”

“No.  Fuck that.”

“They have properties here with claim, the area’s stable, there’s resources to be had.  They’re not who they once were, but they do have massive resources at their disposal, still.  Money, contacts.  That’s going to be a big topic at the moot, is my guess.”

“Can we make something out of the fact they weren’t here for the big stuff?”

“We can.  Or you can.  They’ll push back.  I’m not very equipped to handle that pushback.”

“But there’s reasons of Law?”

“I know some minor principles off the top of my head.  I can look into more.  You know they have good Law practitioners and lawyers, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Which I only remind you of because I don’t want to guarantee or promise results.”

“Okay.”

“We talked about democratizing the Carmine role,” Sebastian said.

“Or jury-ifying it.”

“When the spirits deciding isn’t enough, or with certain issues highlighted by the Sword Moot, we’d have the Seal pick residents of the region, mixing Innocent, Aware, Other, and practitioner to form a deciding group, making the decision.  Bigger expected impact, bigger group.  Council audits.  It’s a decent idea.  I’ve looked into what it would take, Law-wise.  Before I get into that, any thoughts since two days ago?”

“I’m worried we get a situation like we had with Charles, literally creating thousands of living beings that might get cannibalized later.  Load the slate with pre-programmed personal interests?  But then if we bring that up, are they going to turn around and accuse the Tedds of having undue influence over goblins across the region?  And fairies through them?”

Lucy punctuated her thoughts and questions with a bite of pepperoni, making it clear Sebastian had the floor.

“Okay, definitely a thought.  You did mention you wanted to only select for people who are over a certain age and have lived here for a certain amount of time.”

Lucy took a drink to help clear her mouth.  “My worry is about the long game.  Solomon created the Seal, and the impression I get is he had good ideas and good intentions, but he created this thing and others altered it after the fact, warping it.  What happens if Verona, Avery, and I get sidelined or distracted for another crisis, and someone else has set up agents to intentionally fuck with any juries?  Or they sneak something in under the radar and it grows into a serious problem over years?”

“You can’t anticipate every problem.”

“But we can try to set up systems that give incentives to do the right thing and follow the spirit of why they were put into place, and make it harder to fuck with.  Excuse my language.”

Ms. Poole said something, a distance away from the microphone, and Lucy could not hear it at all -her earring didn’t help across an internet connection- but she was ninety percent sure she could guess what Mrs. Poole was remarking on.  On the one hand, Lucy was apologizing for her language.  On the other, there were the two Tedd sisters with little goblin friends who delighted in having obscene names.

“Well, we can try,” Sebastian said.  “My concerns were about power use.  Having that system searching and sorting for juries, it costs.  With potentially a hundred or more jury-worthy cases a day, that adds up.”

“Right.”

“I have ideas, but it depends what systems you want to tap into.  Each system has its own costs and drawbacks, though.”

“Of course,” Lucy said.  “Run me through some?”

All to set up the Sword Moot and people across the region as a force that took care of anything and everything before it could be put in the Carmine’s hands.  Charles and the Carmine seat would have no responsibility, no power or reward, no recognition.  Things would move on.  Hopefully to a better place.

Costs and drawbacks.  Responsibilities.

Anticipating every problem.

Or as many as possible.

This was what they’d asked for.  This was what they’d signed on for.

The house was dark.  She’d wrapped up the call with Sebastian, she’d written some emails to people about the Musser situation, and in that time, the sun had set.  It was winter, so the sun set some time after five.  It approached six now.  Still.

There wasn’t enough moonlight to bounce off of snow and illuminate things that way, so it really was dark in the kitchen.  Rather than flick on the lights and have her eyes seared by the brightness, when her eyes were very tired, she pulled on the fox mask.  Runework inside the mask helped her see in the gloom, like it helped see through smoke.

Her stomach was hollow.  She needed to eat.

At the fridge, she faced that note.

At work tonight.  Leftovers in the fridge.
Neighbor should be next door if you need anything minor.  Call if you need anything big.
Love you with all my heart,
Mom

Lucy walked in the door, scuffing her boots on the brush that was built into the mat, then doing it a few more times than necessary.

A shadow moving made her head snap around, looking.

Her mom had been working at the hospital, in anticipation of one or all of them being carted in, or something.  When Lucy had showed up, she’d said to go home, she’d end her shift early.  She’d detoured over to visit John’s statue.

“Are you okay?  You’re sure you don’t need medical care?”

“Yes, I think.  No, or I don’t know, no.  Don’t need anything big.”

That would be a constant refrain from now on, ever since Avery had been shot.  The worry, the parental anxiety.

Her mom approached, strides long.  Like Lucy, her mom was very thin and taller than average.  The hug was fierce, and the only padding was in Lucy’s Dog Tag coat and her mom’s sweater.

Lucy was sore enough she grunted in pain.

“Is that it?” her mom whispered.  “Please tell me that’s it.”

“He’s done, pretty sure.”

“Charles is?”

“Yeah.”

There wasn’t a follow-up question.  Her mom broke the hug and stepped back.

It felt a lot like her mom was saying something, and Lucy, unzipping her coat, taking her boots off, wincing at various points of soreness, was listening, eyes downcast.

Except it was only silence.

“You know my parents weren’t great to me, right?” her mom asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never described a lot of it to you and Booker.  It was a darkness I didn’t want to put on you.  I worried that describing it to you in a way that- that conveys it, it would mean you carry some of it.”

“Seen some darkness,” Lucy replied.

“Oh, I know,” her mom said, voice quiet, nodding.  “But I knew you would.  That’s life.  I hoped it would be later.”

Lucy got her second boot off.  She had to sit on the stairs that led from the front hall to upstairs to do it.  Then she remained sitting.

With a slight change of tone, her mom said, “That’s something we can talk about it later.  Or we can find a way for you to talk to Dr. Mona about it, if you aren’t comfortable talking to me.”

Lucy looked up at her mom.

“Right now I need to say this, though,” her mom said, voice dropping in volume.  Fingers bowed backward as she pressed them into her upper arms, arms folded.  “A big part of me not wanting to pass on that darkness is that I don’t want to follow in their footsteps.  Right now, more than ever in my life, even more than just after your dad died, and you kids would act up, and I had- I had no defenses, no patience?  My side of the family was useless and your dad’s side abandoned us?  I thought I would literally lose my mind.  I’m upset.  I’m more upset now than I was then.”

Lucy swallowed.

“I am so fucking mad at you right now.  I don’t know how to handle it.  I just wanted to-”

Her mom had to pause, to draw in a breath that shuddered on the way in and shuddered on the way out.

“-I wanted to communicate.  Check you’re okay, that you don’t need the hospital.  That everything’s safe.”

“I don’t,” Lucy answered.  Her voice was as whisper-quiet as her mom’s.  “I’ll manage.  I’ll let you know if that changes.  I think things are safer than they’ve been for a long time.”

“I told myself that if I hugged you and you broke down, or if you came in and said Verona or Avery needed my help as a nurse, I’d put all my feelings aside, do what’s needed.  I wish it had been that, in a way.  Not because I want you crying or them hurt, but…”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know how to do this.  Nothing up until now has prepared me for handling this.  You’d think Booker tried, some of the stunts he pulled…”

Lucy smiled, despite everything, eyes on the ground, vision wet with unshed tears.

“Grief?  I can grieve.  Fear?  I’ve been scared for my life.  I’ve been scared for Booker’s.  Yours.”

Lucy nodded.

“I’ve experienced those things just about as far as a human can take them, I’d say.  Anger, though?  Miss gave me a taste of it, pulling what she did with you three.  I don’t know what it looks like when I let it all out.  I’ve never let myself.  I don’t think I can.  I don’t think I would act like my dad did when I was growing up, you don’t need to worry about that, but the idea of it scares me enough I can’t let myself be angry.”

“Yeah,” Lucy whispered.

“That’s where I’m at.  Stuck on what to do, how to be.  The bare-bones, absolutely necessary stuff is easier.  Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.  I think so?”

“You find me and let me know if you worry you’re not.  Or talk to Dr. Mona, Aunt Heather, or Connor or Kelsey.”

Lucy nodded.

“I don’t want you to ever think I’m not going to be here for you when you need me.  If you’re mad, grieving, scared, if I’m any of those things.  You’re the kid.  I can put it all aside if there’s a need.  I’m saying all this… I was hoping I’d find the answers midway through talking about it, and I wanted you to know where I’m at.  Everything I want to say and do feels wrong.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, quiet, eyes on the floor.

“I’m not sure it will be until you’re a mom and it’s your kid swearing an oath like you did.  To keep fighting.  Your kid in mortal peril against something like that.”

Lucy thought about telling her mom about the child she had in the Crucible, watching him die.

She thought about arguing how necessary the oath had been.  That people had been divided.

She remained silent.

“As soon as I can figure out how to have the necessary conversation with you, we’ll talk.  I don’t want to assign punishment while I don’t trust myself, but consider yourself lightly grounded, with full warning that something more significant is probably imminent.”

“Okay.”

“So don’t make commitments, don’t disappear to go handle outside business.”

“I have shrine visits I should be doing.  For the health of Kennet.  That’s me walking, getting exercise, quiet time of morning, I’m pretty sure there won’t be trouble.”

There was a pause.

“Okay,” her mom conceded.

“And council meetings.  Sword moot talks.  Talks with people.  All to get stuff smoothed down, I don’t think it’s stuff you’d hate.  You could come or listen in if you wanted.”

“Maybe sometime.”

“Just letting you know, I don’t like you being in danger, so I wouldn’t invite you if it wasn’t that safe.”

“Do what you have to.  Just… get to bed?  Get sorted?”

“Okay.  Could sleep a long time.”

“When can you go back to school?”

“Not… tomorrow, I’m going to be a wreck.  But soon.”

“Okay.  Soon as possible.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you more than life itself, and I’m so mad at you.”

Lucy’s finger traced the words on the post-it.

Love you with all my heart,
Mom.

She pulled off her mask.  She pressed fingers to her eyes, trapping moisture beneath the lids.

Dark when she’d started the day, dark when it ended.  She was tired.

There was more to do.

Council meeting.

Not in the mood to eat, she filled up her containers of water, grabbed an apple, and went out.

Council meeting.  Bringing up the Mussers.  Hearing out the Principal.  Hearing out the group at Sin Victor’s.  George tried a mini-presentation to pitch a revival of something like the Arcade.  Verona outlined possible strategies for pulling people into Kennet below from afar, to bolster it.  Then a lot of market talk after Avery came around.

After that, it was talk about the Aware, a buddy system with Others assigned to each Aware.  Mia was assigned Tatty and Chloe.  George was assigned Nibble and Reggie.  So it went.  Jeremy got Alpeana and Tashlit, for as long as Tashlit was around.  Caroline got Alpeana and Angel.  Some Dog Tags were out patrolling and making sure the random Others Charles had made were manageable and weren’t encroaching on Kennet.  Doubly important when the Aware were vulnerable.

Mia brought up bringing more Aware on board.  Feeling guilty, Lucy figured.

Lucy focused on taking notes until things petered out.

She went with Avery around to the shrines, more to spend time with Avery while still doing duties she could explain away to her mom, while she was grounded, stopped in to talk to the Dog Tags who were still around, then headed home.

Homework for two hours, only to fall asleep at the desk.  Lucy woke up when her mom got in, imprint of the edge of a notebook binder on her cheek as she said hi.  Then she showered, brushed her teeth, and went to bed.

She woke up at the same hour she’d woken up to go to the shrines, yesterday, and couldn’t get back to sleep.  Her mom was up too.

They barely exchanged ten words as they made breakfast together.  Well, more like thirty, but a lot of it was Lucy talking about the pile of homework, while her mom patiently listened.  Lucy got coat and boots on, sorted out her things, and headed out.

Trading the weight of things yet unsaid at home for the weight of everything out here.

The group of scuzzballs at Sin Victor’s had apparently felt like they were legitimized by the invitation to the council, which meant they’d spent the night very active and pushing people around, trying to pull in new members.  The Principal’s group was not impressed.  Lucy wasn’t either, but it was hard to say that.  There were other focuses.

Lucy had hoped that repeated urgings for patience and the new buddies to ask questions to would ease things up at school, but it really didn’t.  People still came straight to her, before, between, and after classes.  It was almost an escape to go out and get the census on downtown from the Bitter Street Witch, along with her thoughts on the scuzzballs, over her lunch hour.

Immediately after class, she paired with Verona to put on a mild show of force and attempt to tell the scuzzballs to calm down.  With her earring, she could hear the crude comments and jeering starting the moment the boys thought she and Verona were out of earshot.

Nothing so blatant it warranted a violent elimination or ousting of the group, but pretty fucking far from great.

Lucy stopped in at the factories, to pass on word that the food trucks shouldn’t pay a visit to the scuzzballs anymore.  If they wouldn’t play ball with the rest of Kennet, the rest of Kennet wouldn’t cater -almost literally- to them.

She popped in to say hi to the Dog Tags again, and made a request that they guard the food trucks and keep an eye out.  A-ok.  Grandfather asked if she wanted company, and she badly did, but she was semi-grounded, and she wasn’t doing much that would interest him.  No problem, he said.

Home again.  She did homework until her eyes couldn’t focus anymore.  It was her most free afternoon before the weekend.  She’d gotten maybe one sixth of the way through the pile, and hadn’t even started some of the reading.

Dark out when she’d gotten up and left for school.  Dark out again well before dinner, when she wrapped up.

Verona stopped in to apply some fresh healing poultice on scars, and Lucy, sitting on the bathtub’s edge, spent a while looking down at her arm.  Many of the scars were so fine it looked like a broken spiderweb had been painted pink and laid over her skin.  Verona asked for a reality check on some methods of annoying or breaking up the scuzzballs, and Lucy did her best, even though a very tired part of her wanted to be really harsh and to have one less headache to deal with.  Verona was grumpier than usual because she’d woken up uncharacteristically early to tend to the shrines.

Sharp words were briefly exchanged, then they made up almost as abruptly.

Her mom said she would’ve invited Verona and Sylvia over, but she had a funeral to go to.  One of her patients from when she’d been going between homes to teach how to give that specialized pharmaceutical.  A man who had nobody.  She asked three times if Lucy was okay with her going.  Lucy said yes.

“We need to talk sometime soon, okay?” her mom asked.

Heavy words.

Lucy ended up reheating dinner, napping to try to refresh her eyes, then did more homework before almost falling asleep again.  She went out into the cold to force herself to stay awake, to tend to shrines.

She would’ve liked to blame it on the fact her period was coming back, because the stress of everything had been working its way out of her body, being replaced with a new, entirely different system of stress.  Or she could have blamed it on the fact the cold stung her eyes.  Or the situation with her mom.

Partway to the shrines, alone in the dark and the cold, she swayed, then dropped down, butt to ankles, knees to chest, and spent a little while with tears escaping her eyes.

Dish and Legs loomed nearby, the spirits of the two closest shrines.  They were there, bright in the gloom, silent, both too ephemeral to put any physical hand on her shoulder or lend her any real support.

She was doing good.  She’d beaten the bad guy.  She was fixing Kennet.  The way was clear.  She was working and making steady progress on the repair of Kennet, the revival of the market, and a system of Awareness that was more fair and open.  Kennet could become a refuge, something really cool.

She was working at the Sword Moot, and no disasters had happened yet.  The Carmine and Aurum were disarmed, the Aurum’s replacements seemed like workable neighbors and supervisors, going by Avery’s first contact with them, and she was able and poised to propose policy changes that would improve and reform the region.

This was good.

This was what she’d asked for.

They’d won.

She took another minute, then straightened.  She dried her hands, fixed her earmuffs, put some music on, and carried on.

Shrine visits.  Then home, where she put hot chocolate on the stove and promptly zoned out, giving it a faint bitter, burnt taste.  She forced herself to drink it as she worked at the homework backlog until her mom came back from the service.

They talked, but by mutual agreement, both were too wiped for any kind of intense conversation.

“Tomorrow?” Lucy asked.  “Before the Sword Moot?  I can’t take this anymore.”

“It’s not meant to be silent treatment.  I… I’ve been thinking.  Talking to people.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  Humans, Others.  Trying to figure it all out.  Not sure I’ve succeeded.  Okay.  Let’s make the time.”

Avery went from the early morning Kennet shrine visit to following up on stuff goblins were telling Snowdrop.  Scuzzball issues- they hadn’t gotten their morning delivery, then ran into Dog Tags when they went to take someone else’s.  Lucy joined in to help, mostly letting Avery and the Dog Tags take the lead, giving some light firepower.

She was ten minutes late to class.

She wasn’t sure if someone had said something or if it was the look on her face, but the Aware in class didn’t approach her as the lunch hour started.

Lucy slipped into Kennet below, where she could sit on the edge of the rooftop and eat, dreading the conversation with her mom, where it felt like she knew exactly what her mom was going to say, and what her response was going to be, and what would happen as a result.

Horseman, doing a patrol of the school to keep the peace, spotted her, and raised a hand in a wave.  She waved back.

He ended up coming up to where she was.  When he did, he had Grandfather with him.

They didn’t say much.  She asked a bit about the scuzzball situation.  The answers were pretty basic.  All good.  Handled.

When school got out in the afternoon, Grandfather was there, a bit away from school, on her route.  He walked with her.  She didn’t ask why, and let herself half believe it was in anticipation of scuzzball retaliation.

She stopped at the store where they usually bought school supplies and stocked up on notecards –the clerks probably wonder about how many we go through-, fresh markers, and pens.

It might’ve been procrastination.  Because after that was home.

To talk to her mom.

Topics and outcome very guessable.  Very not good.

When she reached the front door, she turned to Grandfather.  “Come in?”

“You sure?”

“Could do with backup.”

“Okay.”

Grandfather followed her in.

“Welcome back.  Everything good?” her mom asked, from the other room.

“No major incidents.  You?”

“No major incidents.  An elderly man punched me in the boob.”

“Oh no.  Ow.”

“Supervisor offered to let me go home for the day.  I don’t know if that’s policy or manners…” Lucy’s mom said, coming through the door.  She was still wearing her nurse scrubs over a turtleneck, ID card still clipped to the front pocket.  “You brought company?”

“I’m sorry for the intrusion, ma’am,” Grandfather said.

“I’m not really a ma’am.”

“It’s the uniform.  Puts me in that mindset.  Sorry.”

“Can I get you anything?” she asked.  She looked less easygoing than before, and that was on top of the underlying tension that had sat over the last few days.

“No need to go to any trouble,” he said.

Lucy, free of outdoor clothing, walked into the living room, sitting with her bag close by.  She remembered lessons by Guilherme, about defensiveness, posture, how one framed an ‘engagement’.  Arms folded, legs crossed, barriers set down between herself and her mom, all could be bad.

Did Grandfather sitting on the couch to her left count as a barrier?

Had she screwed up already?

Her mom had made chamomile tea.  Because it was calming.  She brought the kettle through, putting it down with spare mugs.  She went, got water, glasses, and brought the bag of chocolate covered cashews, which she emptied into a shallow bowl.  They rattled loudly as they settled into the bowl.

Lucy wondered if her mom was procrastinating too.

“Grandfather?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“Ma’am.  Jasmine?”

“I know I’m being unkind, but could I ask you to leave?”

“Don’t leave,” Lucy said.  “Please.”

Lucy could hear the light smack that came with lips parting, tongue pulling away from teeth.

Lucy cleared her throat slightly.  “Before you say anything, I would like Grandfather to be my familiar one day.  We talked about it.  He’d be a part of our lives.  I don’t want to send him away, knowing that.  Feels bad.”

“This doesn’t feel good,” her mom said, both hands wrapped around the mug of calming tea.  She didn’t make eye contact with Lucy.  “Outside of here, there’s a full council of Others.  A full city.  Then even in our home, it’s now a two against one?”

“It’d be a two against one if Booker was still here.”

“First thing I want to say in response to that line?” her mom said, voice a bit sharp.  “He isn’t here.”

“I don’t think that changes the substance of things,” Lucy said.

“Second thing?  Do you really think he’d be on your side?”

“On some parts of it.”

“You swore an oath, putting a gun to your own head, basically, and said let me go fight in this war, or pull the trigger.  Do you think Booker is sitting on your side of the room, Lucy?” her mom asked.

“I think he’d agree there’s a war that had to be fought, with stakes too high.”

“Not by you.”

“By me.  By Avery, by Verona.  We were a weak point to him.  The margins were that close.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.  No, I don’t believe that you were the only option.  There’s a desperation, an inventiveness, a strength that comes out of doing what has to be done, and it costs,” her mom said.  “I see doctors and emergency workers do it.  I see nurses do it.  Knowing you were there and could make the sacrifice meant they weren’t tapping into that.  If you’d walked away, if you’d said you were done, it was too much-”

“Did you guys make an ultimatum to the Others?” Lucy asked, staring at her mother.  She glanced at Grandfather.  “To Grandfather?  To Miss?  To say they had to call us off?  Or they’d have the Awakening oaths evoked against them?”

“Yep.  I’d do it again.  I’m the first person to tell people like Aunt Heather, you figure things out fast.  You are aware of what’s going on.  I’d do it again knowing you’d find out.”

“You’d keep it a secret from me.”

“Miss wanted to,” Grandfather commented, his voice soft, a lazy rumble that contrasted the retorts, and accusatory questions.  “We all wanted to.  We knew we’d put your parents in a position where they were the bad guy no matter what they did.”

Lucy frowned.  “You don’t do that, still.  Keeping a secret, putting us and them in a compromising position in the middle of a really dangerous war?”

“Was there a moment, since we learned what was going on, that we wouldn’t have been?” her mom asked.  “No, the timing wasn’t great, but Avery was in a hospital bed.  You have scars.  Some you try to hide from me.  You were hospitalized, yourself.  The pressure mounted, the stakes were high.  Someone had to advocate for you.”

“That wasn’t the way to do it.”

“No, probably not, but I was talking just now about the power of desperation.  The costs of it.  We were scared, desperate, and we went from you girls being gone from our lives with no assurances about when you’d be back to Avery with a bullet hole in her.  We were desperate, and the cost of what we did was the risk, the awfulness of twisting people’s arms.  Stranger’s arms- if it was just Miss, it would be one thing.”

“It feels like every time we talk about things, now, you’re ignoring how important what we’ve been doing is.  That there are lives in the balance, that there’s the freedom and security of whole populations on the line.  When we went up against Musser, he was enslaving people, binding Others to his will, arranging a marriage for Raquel, and so many other things.”

“I know.”

“And Charles had every Other in the region, from a spirit of brownness for a random tree to Dog Tags and goblins and Tashlit, bound into books.  He would’ve left them like that, dimly aware the world was moving on without them, a resource to be tapped.”

“I didn’t know that, but that doesn’t change what I’m saying.”

“That’s fucked!” Lucy raised her voice.  There was a tremor in her voice as she said, “That’s so fucked, that you’re glossing over the fact that’s what we were fighting, that that’s the stakes!”

“Let’s control our language, and volumes?” her mom asked.

“Can we not freaking tone police to dodge the subject for the Xth time!?” Lucy asked, lowering her volume a bit.

“I hear you.  I do.  But what I was saying before- something we kind of dodged too, is it didn’t have to be you.”

“We were the only ones with access to the crucible.”

“And they are dozens or hundreds or thousands of people with working brains and talents and skills.  I believe, I have to believe, that if you girls had backed off, said you couldn’t do it anymore, you’d given it your shot?  That all those people, practitioners, Others, Aware, I don’t know, I have to believe they could have found a way that wasn’t you.”

Lucy shook her head.  “It feels like I’m being invalidated.  It’s like you have this vision or role for me stuck in your head, and you can’t reconcile that with reality, so to get around it you diminish what I did and why I did it.  That’s what Charles was fucking doing.”

“I think you’re invalidating them.  Miss had the talent to find the three of you in the mess that is Kennet, put you together.  You showed that was right, she has a good eye.  She couldn’t have used that eye again?”

“Charles said that too.”

“In everyone fighting with all the stakes being what they are, she couldn’t have found someone else?  Toadswallow couldn’t have arranged something, rallying the goblins?  Why does it have to be you that makes the sacrifices?  Why can’t it be Matthew, who studied sacrifice, carving out pieces of himself?  In desperate times, they couldn’t have put their heads together and found a way?”

“It couldn’t be because we represented something to Charles.  We were in his head, he didn’t even see the Others.”

“It sounds like you aren’t seeing them.”

“That’s stupid,” Lucy said.

“Excuse me?”

There was something in her mom’s tone, hurt, that spoke to all of Lucy’s dread leading up to this talk.  Like this couldn’t be reconciled and the inevitable fight to try would-

She looked her mom in the eyes, not wavering.  She felt like she could start crying again.  Only the fact Grandfather was right there really stopped her.

Like the fight to try could ruin my relationship with my mom forever.

Fuck.  She’d invited Grandfather in to be emotional support, but it felt like she could handle this so badly it ruined that, too.

Lucy balled her hand into a fist, and wrapped the other hand around it, to keep it from shaking.  “Sorry.”

“I hope you’re sorry,” her mom said.  Tone softening, she added, “You know, I’ve been waiting for you to say those words, these past few days?”

“I’m sorry I said that was stupid, that wasn’t- the fight against Charles.  Going into the Crucible, I don’t know if I explained all that?”

“I talked to Connor and Miss.  They gave me the loose outline.”

“Oh.  ‘Kay.  We only succeeded because we recognized them, we found them, we freed them.  They were integral.”

“The girls did recognize, find, and free us,” Grandfather said.  “They did see us.”

“Thank you,” Lucy murmured.

But it felt like as much as that had won the argument, defended her point, it had pushed her mom further away.

Her mom’s response was measured, but now it was her wavering, eyes wet.  “I don’t want to believe that the only road to victory was taking three young teenagers and having them be the vanguard in a prolonged, bloody, bitter fight with stakes that high.  I don’t want that to be the world you were fighting to defend.  The world you’re going to grow up and go into.  That’s terrifying.”

“Maybe it’s a terrifying world.  What then?” Lucy asked.

Her mom paused, gripping the teacup she hadn’t had a drink from.

“You don’t want to believe it, but what if it’s the reality?” Lucy asked.  “What if Charles is a little bit right and we were Karma’s arrows, aimed against him, the one shot at stopping Charles, stopping the region from being bound?  I’m not saying invalidate everything we did, we did make choices, but what if?”

“I take a dimmer view of some of this than I think Connor and Kelsey do.  But I don’t- can’t believe that.”

Was this that point they couldn’t connect or get past?  Like they were two ships in this vast ocean and try as they might they couldn’t steer away from a collision course at this one point?

Lucy felt sick.  “Belief feels like an increasingly toxic word, here.”

“It’s in your notes, that you showed me.  Belief in spirits, belief in gods, belief in causes and courses of action.  There’s power in it.  It shapes reality.”

“But it doesn’t guarantee it,” Lucy said.

There was silence between them.

It scared Lucy.  That her mom could be so scared of her going out and fighting and pushing for better and losing Lucy along the way, that she could fight this and push Lucy away in the process.

Verona had started out with her dad as her only parent and he’d- he’d been such shit.  Unbudging.  So up his own ass.  She’d found her way through all of this and found something workable with her mom.  It felt weird to Lucy but it worked for Verona, and that was a common refrain when in Verona’s orbit.

Avery had her parents and she’d been distant, pulling away from them, and she’d found a way to reconnect, reel in closer.

And, what?  Lucy had her mom, maybe the best parent, but when the biggest crisis came, they couldn’t figure this out?  Her mom insisted she’d always be here for Lucy and maybe she would, but that didn’t mean things would be okay.  Lucy had seen enough of that, in other family members like Barbie and Ran, and with other dynamics, that you could be stuck with someone like her mom would be stuck with her, but that things wouldn’t be okay ever again.

Grandfather put a hand at Lucy’s shoulder, rubbing her there in a way that made her wobble.

Her mom ventured, “I didn’t mean to give you the silent treatment, or the- not silent, but not talking about this, for as long as we weren’t talking about it.”  The tone of her voice had changed.  Softer, gentler, less fight.  But way more tension.  Lucy’s earring gave her all the juicy details on tone and those little differences.

“I get it, I think,” Lucy said.  “Wasn’t fun.”

“Sorry.  I was trying to figure this out.  If there was an answer.  A compromise,” her mom murmured, fingers gripping the cup.  She took in a breath so deep it looked for a moment like she was rising up out of her seat.  She didn’t deflate a corresponding amount as she exhaled.  “Lucille Desiree Ellingson, first witch of Kennet.”

“Hm?” Lucy grunted.

“Bearer of fang and smoke, is that right?”

Lucy was silent.

“That’s right,” Grandfather said.  “Duelist and bearer of fang and smoke.”

“Crucible breaker.”

“Got that from Verona, did you?” Lucy asked, very quiet.

“Sylvia.  I’ve been talking to people.  I really have been trying to figure this out.”

“Different connotations,” Lucy said.  “Breaking the Crucible.  Verona breaks systems.”

Grandfather moved the hand that was on her shoulder, and elbowed her.  “Take the title.”

“What is this?” Lucy asked.

Her mom replied, “I’m asking you to swear an oath.  I’m scared, as I’m asking it.”

“I’m a bit spooked myself too,” Lucy admitted.

“The compromise,” her mom said.  “What’s done is done.  I don’t want to hold grudges.  Desperate times, things were tense.  I do believe you were doing the right thing, even if I hate that it was you that had to be doing it.  But let’s put that aside.  Look to the future.”

Lucy swallowed.

“You swore you’d fight.  Put us in the position of having to forswear you or let you go to war.  I still believe that in doing that, as fast as you did, you took opportunity and choice out of others’ hands.  Or whatever they have.  Miss made a point of saying she didn’t have hands, in my talk with her.”

“Timing was tight.  People were fighting.  We’d have torn each other up or been too divided, when we were all hurting.  Someone had to do something decisive.”

“Okay,” her mom said, eyes closing, taking a deep breath.  “Let’s say I concede that.  Put that aside, it’s in the past.”

“Why raise it as an issue if you’re going to put it aside a second later, unless it’s just to hold that grudge?” Lucy asked.

Grandfather put a hand at her shoulder and squeezed.

She shut up.

“Just… trying to frame what I’m saying.  I floated this idea, talking to the others.  They agree. I’ll make my peace.  I’ll- I’ll accept it’s a darker world and maybe you had to fight.  I won’t hold grudges.  I will be as involved in all of this as you want me to be, whether it’s learning practice or ignoring everything.”

“I want you to be as involved as you want to be involved,” Lucy said.

Her mom put a hand up, at the same time Grandfather squeezed again.

“Let her get the words out,” he murmured.

Lucy’s mom continued, “Whatever it takes.  I want to not be angry, or helpless, or scared.  So I’m asking for a similar Oath to the one you swore, but from another direction.  Swear to me that you’re done.  Until you’re eighteen, if there’s a crisis, if there’s anything major… you’re a Sebastian Harless in that situation.  The contract lawyer who doesn’t know how to fight.  You are, at maximum, Matthew Moss, defending a place like he defended his Demesne claim.  Or getting involved for one piece of one crisis, to open the way for the people who’d handle it.  That aren’t Verona and Avery.”

Lucy shifted her sitting position.  Stress flowed out of her.  She shut her eyes.

This was the solution.  The middle ground with her mom.  A way for things to be okay.

She could have her mom back, no hard feelings?

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy.  But when the pressure is on, everything else going on, an oath to force your own hand?  I think you can find a way that isn’t you being front and center in the next moment of crisis.  Then, once you’re eighteen, you go to a halfway point.  Between where you are now and what I just described.  Until you graduate University.  Four years, please.  A real degree.  Don’t rush it to get back out there sooner.”

Lucy nodded.

“Makes sense?” her mom asked.

“I hear you,” Lucy murmured, eyes still closed.

“Might have to tweak certain terms,” Grandfather said.  “University’s nice, but there’s a lot of ways it could go wrong, so maybe leave a back door, other options.  Say, four years of university or until she’s twenty-five and making her own way.”

“Okay,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I do want my daughter to get an education.”

“Let’s not hold that metaphorical gun to her head with that expectation, though.”

“Okay,” Lucy’s mom said.

“The Matthew Moss line?  Have to be careful with phrasing.  I get the idea.  She steps it back, they -we- step it up.  Okay.  But the way I understand it, and I am far from being an expert, put it the wrong way and the moment she goes over the line, her life is ruined forever.  Don’t want that.”

“No.  Don’t want it so fuzzy there’s room to wiggle out of the oath, right?”

“Right,” Grandfather said.

“Thank you, Grandfather.”

“‘Course.”

I knew if you talked to him, you’d realize he’s not your enemy, Lucy thought.  Inroads, maybe, to her mom accepting him as Lucy’s familiar.  To her mom making him a part of this sort of discussion automatically.

“Lucy?” her mom asked.  “It’s not just the violence and the crises.  Give yourself room to grow up, without so much of this hanging over your head.  You’ve been wearing yourself down.  I see it in doctors and other nurses.  I’ve experienced it myself.  Go easy on yourself.”

Lucy shifted position.  Forearms on knees, hands clutching one another, leaning forward.  She raised her head to look her mom in the eyes.

Grandfather’s hand pulled away from her back.

“No,” Lucy repeated.  She hated saying it.  “No to the oath.  If there’s a crisis, I fully intend to step forward and do my best to handle it.  I have responsibilities and it sucks sometimes, but I fought for them.  I fought to be here, I fought for this win, I fought for this.  I knew what I was doing and buying into, more or less.”

“That ‘more or less’ at the end sounded a whole lot less confident than the rest of what you were saying,” Grandfather told her.

Two ships that couldn’t change course.  Damage.  She looked away from her mom’s expression.  Compromise offered, compromise rejected.

“I don’t intend to stop fighting for what’s right.”

“I’m not asking you to stop.”

“You kind of are, though.  What am I supposed to do?  I see something bad happening, I’m meant to turn away, say- what, am I sending Awakened beginner practitioners Wallace, George, and Mia in, in my place?  No, no we brought them into this, we can’t put that shit on them.”

“Why pile this ‘shit’ on yourself, then?” her mom asked, voice harsh.  She spilled the calming tea she hadn’t had a sip of, as she put it down.  She started to blot it out of white carpet and her hands shook as she made herself stop, because other things were more important.  “What are you doing, Lucy?”

“I am doing what I have to.  I am recognizing that there could be a crisis around the corner and maybe- maybe there was another way to beat Charles but maybe next time it’s only me who can handle it.  We don’t know who the enemy would be, we don’t know what will happen, I don’t- I can’t take cards off the table like that, when I know how bad things can go,” Lucy said.  “The grind hurts, but if I stepped back, because of an oath I took?  And I had to watch things end badly, and see the consequences?”

“You’ve said this before.”

“Because it’s still true!” Lucy raised her voice, almost standing.  “It’s true, it’s the world, it’s where I stand, it’s everything.”

Her voice broke a bit on that ‘everything’.

“The grind sucks.  I know this oath is like… you and me being okay.  Right?” Lucy asked.

Her mom didn’t say anything.  Didn’t confirm or deny.

“Even knowing I’m maybe giving up having a mom?”

“No,” her mom replied.  “No, I told you.  I will always be here for you.”

“Giving up a good relationship with my mom, then?” Lucy asked.  “Maybe?”

Her mom didn’t reply.

Lucy’s face scrunched up briefly.  She smudged the corner of her eye with the heel of one hand.  “Knowing I could have done something and doing nothing would destroy me.  It hurts enough knowing I could have done more to save Ramjam, Butty, the Vice Principal, Verona’s friends… John.”

She met Grandfather’s eyes briefly.

The darkness in them was dark enough she had to look away.

“I’d spend every moment of every day feeling like that could happen at any moment,” Lucy muttered.

“Even knowing that by saying this, I’m spending-”  Her mom stopped, mid sentence.

Lucy set her jaw, eyes on the floor.

“I need to step away before I say something I’ll regret,” her mom said, words barely restrained.  “If I’m not saying much over the next while, it’s not me intentionally giving you the silent treatment.  It’s me having no idea what the fuck to say.”

Lucy nodded, lips pressed together.

Her mom moved the kettle, and stacked the empty mugs with the full one on top.

Cups and kettle lid rattled, because her hands shook.

It only got worse when she started walking from her chair to the kitchen.  Rattling, shaking, threatening to spill-

It looked like it started to tip, falling over, and in that moment, Lucy’s mom hurled kettle and cups into the corner of the room that was furthest away from Lucy.  Cups broke.

Lucy flinched, whole-body.

The house was as quiet as death.  In the lighting, the orange-red of the chamomile looked more red as it bled down the walls and into the corner of the white carpet.

“Is there a practice, that lets you feel what I’m feeling right now?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“Yep.”

“Maybe that’s too cruel, to ask you to do that.  Or is it more cruel that you’d have to wait twenty five or so years to be a mom and feel the fear for your own child’s well being?”

“Had a kid,” Lucy said.  “A son.  Similar to Booker.  Watched him get murdered.”

She met her mom’s eyes.  Saw bewilderment.

“Time shenanigans, in the Crucible.  I also saw my own corpse.  Definitely sticks with you.  It’s not changing my mind, though.”

Her mom shook her head.

“If the situation was changed?  If we brought Booker in like the Kellys brought Sheridan in?  Rowan, a little less involved, but still… involved?”

“If it was him, saying he wanted to fling himself out there, into the worst a dark and scary world has to offer, where he looked miserable every step of the way?”

“He’s a different person.”

“I think you’re a different person, Lulu.  You’ve been through a lot, it’s shaped you, it’s scared me.  But it’s not you.  Can you just- work with me?  Understand where I’m coming from?  Imagine it was your brother, saying he’d be on the front lines of the next war.  Of every war.”

“He’s a different person,” Lucy repeated.  “He’s kinder.  He doesn’t like to bare his fangs.  There’s a light inside him.”

“And there isn’t one inside you?” her mom asked.  “Fuck that.  That’s a horrible sentiment.”

“I’ve got fire.  Smoke.  Glints of steel,” Lucy said.

“You have so much more.”

“Foxes,” Lucy amended.

“Not what I meant.  Fuck me, I can’t-”  Her mom didn’t seem to know which way to turn.  “I need to step away from this and think, I don’t trust myself to drive.  This fucking mess.”

It looked like she was a few seconds from breaking into tears.

“I can clean that up,” Grandfather said.

“I couldn’t ask you to.  I’m a bit mad at you too.”

“Why?” Lucy asked.

“I can’t.”

Lucy’s mom stalked her way to the oven, with enough nervous and loose energy in her movements that Lucy had a vivid mental picture of her mom picking up a frying pan and losing it, swinging it around.  But it was to pick up a washcloth hanging off the oven handle.  She threw it down to be a barrier between the shattered kettle and spilled cup and the white carpet that didn’t extend fully to that wall, in the transition between living room and kitchen.

“Sorry,” Lucy told Grandfather.

“You’d damn well better be.”

The response startled her.

“You’re asking me to be your familiar?  Then you turn around, you’re signing up to every war that might happen in the future?  No peace at home?  This instead?  Not the best deal, is it?”

Stung, Lucy shifted position, moving away from him.  “You can say no.”

“I’m saying no, kid.”

From the other side of the house, Lucy’s mom said, “Don’t let this argument, this dynamic, me- that was half me spilling it, half me being on edge.”

“Jasmine?  If it wasn’t your house, I’d have thrown something a whole lot sooner than you did.”

Lucy clenched her teeth, hands gripping each other.  Tears stung her eyes.

“I agree with you, Jasmine,” he said.  He kept the same easygoing, slightly growly tone, posture still relaxed.  “I don’t like this.  Oath sure sounded nice to me.”

“Thank you,” Lucy’s mom said.

“Ultimatum, parents to us?  I have my quibbles about my hand being forced.  It’s kind of a binding, and I’ve been bound.  A shitty practitioner not much older than Rowan or your Booker, he got me.  It’s like being in a coma, I’d say.  Floating in darkness, dreaming a bit, as the pieces of you that need to keep moving move, dimly aware of the outside world.  Then you’re pulled out, put to war.  Made to shoot women.  Kids.  Monsters.  Back to the coma.  Spent eight years like that.  Only reason it wasn’t twelve is the kid who was using me most went and got killed.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy’s mom said.

“So… touchy.  For me, for others.  Being forced to act one way.  But even with that, I was on your side.  I was for it.”

“Okay.  I’m glad.”

He stood, straightening out the green-blue military-issue sweater he wore.  “I might go.  A lot of the others have gone out on patrols, tried finding a life worth living out there, being the weird veterans at the edge of town, alone at the bar some nights, or… contract mercenaries, or something else entirely.  They say we’re animus.  People walking certain paths so much the spirits start to go the same way, gather together.  The path that was walked becomes a partial person.  Sometimes a scholar, sometimes a victim, sometimes a fool.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“Get enough life experience, one way or another, we get big enough the rut doesn’t fit.  Still a huge part of us, but… personalities.  Faces.  Hopes, dreams, particulars.  Until you pretty much can’t distinguish them from human.”

Lucy nodded.

“Lucy, honey,” he said, voice rough.  “I don’t see why some humans with a lot of spirit can’t find their way into ruts, traveling the other direction.  I’m worried about you.”

“I’ve got Verona and Avery.  I’ve got other stuff going on.  Got a bit of a hump to get over.  Homework, cleanup and setup.”

“Yeah?  How much of a life do you have, when the homework’s done, you’ve set up the Sword Moot, got Kennet on the right track.  How much of the day is yours, to spend with a boy, or with your guitar?  When’s the last damn time you played?”

Lucy was silent.

“How much time are you spending with friends?  Not- not on work, listen to me, I see you opening your mouth.  How much time are you spending with Avery and Verona that isn’t about responsibilities you’ve taken onto your shoulders?  Give me your best guess.”

Lucy didn’t.

“Ten percent of the waking day?” he asked.  “Hour or two in the middle of the grind?  Tell me it’ll be more than that.”

She didn’t.

“I’ve been watching, trying to figure out what the hell I’d be in for, if I took that familiar deal.  Hour or two a day to live?  That’s not going to make your Self atrophy?  It’s not going to leave you weak for a future crisis?”

Lucy looked at him, then glanced away.  Her mom was still here, in the kitchen, looking over her way, silent.  Listening.

“I don’t see how I’m supposed to walk away from people in trouble.”

“Hm.  Yeah,” he grunted.  “Do you still have John’s tag?  Yalda’s ring?”

She reached up to her neck, heart in her throat.  She pulled them out from under her shirt.

“John fucking Stiles,” Grandfather said, a scary gaze fixed on the tag and ring.  “And Yalda too, for that matter.”

“Are you taking them back?” Lucy asked.

“Hell no,” Grandfather said, looking a bit surprised.  His expression softened.  “No, kid.  We gave them to you.  Gave you his guitar.  Gave you that coat.  They’re yours to keep.  You did a lot for us.  We’re not abandoning you.  Hell, you’re not the first soldier to come back from war with no idea how to stop.”

“That’s not-” she started, and interrupted herself.  She shook her head.

“John Stiles.  Fucking idiot.  Loved him.  He was a brother, he was a good guy, good heart.  Yalda saw that in him.  He liked you, he connected to you some.  Somewhere along the line, seems like he taught you the wrong lessons.  Sacrifice.  Then there’s Yalda.  Songbird.  You didn’t-”

“Talked to her, briefly.”

“Her too.  Got too dangerous, needed to be put down, apparently.  Sacrifice again.  And here you are, and I’m wondering if- and don’t take this the wrong way.  Wondering if we did the wrong thing, giving you those to keep.”

How was she supposed to take that the right way?  Lucy turned her face away, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I’m wondering if they’re a bit cursed.  Or cursed in- in the mundane way.  Carrying them, you carry the spirits of the people with them.  Stupid self-sacrificing idiots.”

Lucy closed her hand around dog tag, weapon ring, and Yalda’s ring.

Things were as quiet as death, again.  Quiet enough she didn’t need the eavesdropper’s earring to hear the faint clink as two pieces of broken cup resettled, clinking faintly.

“So.  I’m gone, extended leave of absence, can’t sit around to see you do this to yourself, so I’ll go see if there’s a life to be had somewhere else, or…”

He put emphasis on that ‘or’.

Lucy turned and looked at him.

“…I’ll agree to be your familiar, if you agree to try to learn to delegate, to start with.”

“Delegate,” she said.

“There’s a few other requirements.  I’m not asking you to sign onto that oath.  I know your mom would love it for you, I would too, but okay.  I’d need your mom’s okay, before I signed onto anything in the way of a familiar deal.  And I’d need to see you taking steps.  It’s not just you three anymore.  There’s Others.  There are practitioners.”

“You’re talking about McCauleigh?  Raquel?”

“Among others.  Why the fuck should you be liaison with Kennet below?  McCauleigh can do that fine.  You think that kid’s going anywhere?  She might not be part of the trio, but Kennet’s her home.  Matthew’s a practitioner now.  He’s got some people learning to be hosts.  Let them take on some of the focus with shrines.  Why is it a thing you’re having to do in a rotation of three?  Make it a rotation of seven.  That’s a fine number too, let’s get some other people mixed up in it, invested in what we’re doing.”

“No, I-”

“What the fuck are you saying no for?” he asked.  “Seriously now?”

“It’s more than that, though.”

“It’s a town that’s becoming something else- becoming a lot of something else’s, with three sides to it, market, events, and other bullcrap, with relationships to maintain to neighbors and other markets, and what, you three kids are going to handle it all when you’ve got a bunch of others who can pick up some slack?”

“I don’t trust people,” Lucy answered.

Noise startled her.

It was her mom, coming back from the kitchen.  Settling into that chair.

Leaving Lucy flailing to try to explain thoughts that she’d never really processed or voiced before.

“I like individuals fine.  But people.  Even if it’s a group of kids in class at school it’s… it’s grating.  I feel like I have to work twice as hard to be included.  It’s hostile.  It’s when people are stupid, when mistakes are made, when… I don’t know.  The bad ruts get dug, the establishments set, that take so much effort to fix and rebuild.”

“So it’s gotta be you, huh?” Grandfather asked.  “That’s why you’ve got to be involved?”

“I mean…”  She dropped her voice.  “I’m okay with Verona and Avery being involved too.  I trust them.  Blood, sweat, tears shed enough times.”

“Seems pretty shitty of you, you’re not just sacrificing yourself, to hold up your own standards.  They’re doing the same thing.  You going to be okay when Verona includes other people?”

“She doesn’t, kind of?  That’s not who she is.  She’s independent, with people who orbit around her.”

“And Avery?  Her family?”

“Feels like it’ll cause more hassles than it fixes and I don’t know… I don’t see Sheridan being the biggest asset.”

“That’s a little unfair,” her mom said.

“Maybe.  Probably.”

“Pretty damn unfair, that you fought alongside us, had our help, some of us bleeding, being bound, or dying beside you, behind you, to clear a way for you, because we had the same causes as you.  You don’t trust people.  Will you never trust us?”

“That’s not- I trust you.”

“Or is it that we’re not people?  I’m confused here, kid.”

“That’s not- that’s not how I think or talk.”

“Kid.  Lucy,” he said.  He leaned forward, reached out, and took her hands, holding them in his.  “They shed sweat, blood, and tears too.  All the rest of us.  McCauleigh.  Raquel, maybe.  Don’t know her as well.  Matthew’s contingent.  Others from Peckersnot to- even Bluntmunch was fighting alongside, keeping the perimeter clear.  Some don’t bleed, some don’t sweat, some don’t cry, but they made up for it in other departments.  They’re invested.  Share out that responsibility.”

Lucy sighed.

“Sorry, Jasmine,” Grandfather said.  “I’m not going to twist her arm, make her agree to that Oath, much as I like the idea.”

“It’s okay.  I wouldn’t want her to swear it if she had to be forced.”

“Kid?  I’ll be your familiar if your mom’s okay with it.  But you gotta learn to delegate and let go.  You’ve built something, but it’s gotten too big for the shoulders of three fourteen year olds.”

“I’m going to miss the start of the Sword Moot,” Lucy murmured, looking at the time.  She sat for a second, aware her mom and Grandfather were staring at her.  “…I should call, let Sebastian and Ms. Poole know I’m not coming.”

“Okay,” her mom said.

“I do still want to be involved.  I do still want to be part of the rebuild, redefinition.”

“So long as you’re not killing yourself doing it,” Grandfather said.

“If there’s a crisis, I don’t see myself not being involved.”

“Let’s get to where you’re sending people and if push comes to shove, you’re the last resort.”

“We can move in that direction, maybe,” Lucy conceded, uneasy.

“Maybe?” Grandfather asked Lucy’s mom.

She nodded.  Her head turned.  “I should clean up.”

“Let me,” he said.  “Cuts on my fingers heal in seconds.”

“Okay,” she said.  “I haven’t even given a first thought to dinner.  Order in?”

“Sure,” Lucy replied, still feeling a whole lot of emotions from the talk.  Still processing.

“Grandfather?  Would you like to stay for dinner?” her mom asked.

“I don’t need to eat,” he said.

“But you can, right?”

He nodded, bending down, picking out pieces of broken cup to put into one cupped hand.

“Offer stands,” Lucy’s mom said.

“Okay.  Sure.”

Her mom stood, pulling out her phone.

She bent down, kissing the top of Lucy’s head.  “I love you.  More than you can imagine.”

No feeling like there was something latent, behind it.  Anger.  Hurt.

“I love you too.”

“I’m considering this a work in progress.”

“Just about everything is, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.  Except now she felt a bit more like she was okay with that fact.