Pale: 8.8 - All
Author: Wildbow

Vanishing Points – 8.8 | Pale

Lucy’s sneakers hit the sidewalk.  She’d put her bag in the back of the station wagon first so she’d had to climb over the others’ stuff to grab her bag.  Its weight added to hers made for a hefty landing, and accompanying rustling made her look down.  She saw that some unseasonal Bright Fall leaves were tangled up in her laces.  Before she could fix that, something bumped her from behind.

Lucy straightened, turning, and saw Verona, leaning over the back seat, the very picture of insincerity.  She’d tossed Lucy’s backpack across the back section of the station wagon.

“You know full well you hit me.”

“Snacks.”  Avery winced as she twisted around to hand the plastic bag over the back seat.  Lucy hurried to lean into the trunk area and take it so Avery wouldn’t hurt herself.

She kept her hand over Avery’s for a second.  “Good luck.”

“Hey Zed!” Lucy raised her voice.  Beside her, Cherrypop clambered over the back and leaped from trunk to road, scampering off on all fours into the neighbor’s overgrown lawn.  “Before you drive off!”

“What’s up?” Zed leaned out the window as she walked around.

“Wanted to say thanks.  You’ve been cool.”

“I mean it.  This hasn’t been an easy few weeks.  You’ve been consistently decent.”

“I wouldn’t have met the woman I’m in love with if it wasn’t for you three, so that’s worth something.”

“Give Nicolette our best?  We keep ending up at odds with her, or interacting with her when there’s a lot of crap going on… I want to send her an email or something but I don’t know what I’d say.”

“She’s a friend, so yeah.  I’ll pass on the goodwill.  She’s been embattled from pretty early on, either surrounded by problems or being worked like a dog.”

“And now she’s got Seth?”

“I was thinking more… now she’s got Raymond.  He’s taken her under his wing some, but she’ll want to prove herself.”

“I wonder if we can pull her away from it all or… I don’t even know.”

“Take her to an amusement park?” Avery asked.

Avery shrugged, then winced.

“What the hell?  Go get your shoulder fixed up, Ave.  Sorry to keep you for longer, Zed, after the trip back to pick up Cherry.”

“S’alright.  Your family just stepped outside.”

Lucy bounced on the spot, perking up and turning to look.  Booker, mom, and whatshername were at the front stairs.  Booker was wearing a slate blue t-shirt and black jeans.  Alyssa was not much taller than Lucy was, to guess, had her bleached white-blonde hair in a ponytail so short it bristled at the back, and wore a heathered gray top with the University logo on it.  Her sporty shorts had the same logo at the corner.

“Can I say I love his hair?” Zed asked.  Booker’s hair was long enough that even with the curls it draped over his shoulders.

“You can say that, thanks Zed, bye Zed!” Lucy called back, as she hurried around the car, snatched up her backpack and bag from the sidewalk, put them down, closed the back hatch of the station wagon, picked them up again, and then halfway down the path to the front steps, dropped them on the grass because they were slowing her down too much.

She threw her arms around Booker, hugging him.  He hugged her back, picking her up off the ground.

“Woah,” he said.  “That’s a hug.”

“Missed you lots,” she told him, mumbling into his shirt.

“Saw your room,” he said.

Huh?  What?  Did he see magic stuff?

She pulled back to look up at him.

Ohhh.  The ‘music box’ was the subscription he’d been part of that she’d taken up when he’d left.  She’d put the album art and artwork on half the walls of her room and on some of the ceiling.

“Didn’t realize you were so into it.”

“Yeah.  It’s something to look forward to,” she said, flashing her mom a smile as her mom’s hand ran over her head.

“So, welcome home,” he said.

“You welcome home,” she said, hands at his midsection, giving him a bit of a shake.  “How are you?  What are you up to?  How long are you staying?”

“I’m good, school’s tough.  Not up to much.  A couple weeks.  This is Alyssa, you’ve seen her on webcam.”

“Hi,” Lucy said, pulling away from Booker.  She didn’t want to hug her, so she put out her hand, shaking Alyssa’s.

“Nice to finally meet you in person.  And to get a look at, uh, Kennet, I guess.”

“Dull?” Booker asked.

To agree would be a lie, with everything going on, so Lucy shrugged.

Alyssa interjected, “It’s nice seeing where Booker comes from.  Even if it’s quiet.”

Booker prodded Lucy’s earring.  “This is new.”

“Verona and Avery made it.  It was a whole special thing.”

“It suits you, I would have thought you’d bought it,” he said.  She had to twist her head around for her mom to see it.  “Did you get any more holes in your ear to keep it in place?”

“You didn’t, did you?” mom asked.

“I didn’t.  Same hole as before, and it just pinches over the rim up top.”

“Okay.  Have you eaten?” Lucy’s mom asked.  She hugged Lucy, one arm, and Lucy bonked her head against her mom’s side, resting it there.

“Had junk and we stopped halfway for a small bite.  Had fried zucchini.”

“Fantastic,” mom said.  “I’m really glad they fed you right.”

“The food was actually super healthy, for most of it.”

“It was Zed.  Kind of a mentor and a friend.”

“A single guy?” mom asked, wincing.  “Was there anyone else, or…?”

“Zed’s in the top three coolest people I know,” Lucy assured her mom.

“That doesn’t mean-”

“And he’s stupid in love with a girl, and it’s cool, really.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” her mom said, not sounding entirely satisfied.  “Want to get your bags?  Come in.  I want to hear everything.”

You really don’t.  Lucy hopped down the stairs, and Booker followed, and for a bit they were matching stride.  Lucy smiled, swiping the heavier bag before Booker could.  He grabbed her backpack.

“It was a rough semester at the end there, mom said,” Booker noted.

“Yeah, a bit.  But we’ve talked about that.  What about you?  You said university wasn’t great, or…?”

“It’s different and it’s also learning to be on my own in the dorms, instead of having mom helping out, and some of my first year classes fail a third or a half of the students.  I don’t want to be in that group.”

“I did alright.  Passed everything, even if I wish I was getting more Bs than Cs.”

“Hey,” she said, and she had to let go of one of the two straps of the bag she was holding at her side to give him a punch in the arm.  “If it’s that hard and you passed then isn’t that pretty good?”

“I guess,” he said.  He hung her backpack up on the post at the bottom of the railing by the stairs.  Lucy put her bag down in the corner.  He added, “Alyssa was good for me.”

“She wasn’t a distraction?” Lucy asked.  Alyssa was in the kitchen now, talking to mom.

“No.  She kept me focused on the schoolwork.  A new friend of mine, Jackson, he got a girlfriend and it was… not good.  I get what you’re asking and for him, you know, it’s the honeymoon period, you don’t want to spoil those initial good vibes.  Takes courage to risk upsetting that good mood or chance screwing up the other person’s early impression of you.  But she nagged me when I needed nagging.”

“Did you trade mom for someone else to boss you around?” Lucy asked.

“Wow.  Don’t hold back there, baby sis.  I still have a bit of ego left intact.”

“If you could see how I see you, your ego would be in danger in the opposite way,” Lucy said.

“Aw, kid,” he told her.  He paused, then said, “You know, I want to talk seriously about some of the stuff from last semester.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Lucy replied.  “Now?”

“Lucy!” her mom called out.  “Are leftovers okay?”

“Homecooked chicken larb, it’s a bit overcooked.”

“I think we have some lettuce leaves we can put it on.”

“That’s great.  Home cooking sounds perfect.”

Alyssa emerged from the kitchen as Lucy entered to see about food.  Lucy glanced back as Alyssa intercepted Booker with a hug, one leg bent, foot in the air.  She seemed to be in good spirits and she was clearly comfortable here already, which… sure.

“I like her,” mom said, quiet, as she emptied a tupperware container into a bowl and popped it in the microwave.  “She brings out the best in him, from what I’ve seen.”

“That’s good,” Lucy said, sitting on the stool by the counter and flopping down there, hands pushing her cheeks up.  When that made her face hurt, she flopped over, watching Booker and Alyssa sideways.

“There are moments I see him with her and I’m left breathless because he reminds me so much of your father.”

Lucy looked from them to her mom, saw the look on her mom’s face, and still lying sideways, reached out to rub her mom’s arm, holding her hand for a second.  She looked back and she couldn’t really see it, not based on memories that were foggy and distant.  But she was willing to take her mom’s word for it.

“When Booker was little there was a pretty wide consensus that Booker took after me, and I think that holds mostly true, but it’s… wonderful and heartbreaking to see your dad’s… fierce caring, I suppose.”

“You weren’t like Booker when you were a teenager, were you?”

“I might’ve been, but your grandparents were ready to paint grids on my rear end with a switch if I so much as slouched while sitting at the dinner table.”

“Yeah.  I left home for nursing school as soon as I could and I suppose I did what Booker is doing now and I hit the ground running.  Matured fast because I had no other choice but to figure things out right away.”

Lucy digested that.  “Huh.”

“I’m so glad you got this summer thing to change things up.  Unless…”

Lucy, still with head, arms, and upper chest draped over the counter, looked up at her mom.

Her mom read her expression.  A sad look passed over her face and Lucy had to look away.

“Oh honey,” her mom said, reaching for a loose lock of hair and tucking it behind Lucy’s ear.  “I do want to talk about it.  If you’re okay, we could break it down tonight.  Make a night of it, I could go pick up ice cream or something, we’d get in pyjamas, go easy on ourselves.”

“Uhh.”  A whole night?  “I’d… need time to figure out what to say and how to say it.”

“I did chat with Dr. Mona a bit.  I really like her.  I don’t know if the chat was like, overtime payments or anything-”

“It wasn’t, it’s fine.  Don’t worry about that.  I just thought we could go over things and catch up tonight because Booker’s going out.”

“Booker’s going out?” Lucy asked, sitting up.  She glanced back at him, kissing Alyssa in the hallway, then at her mom.  “Where?”

“Booker?” her mom called out.

He and Alyssa entered the kitchen, and he was hugging Alyssa from behind, so he had to rock from side to side to walk, placing his feet to the left and right of her feet.  “What’s up?”

“You were going out?”

“Yeah, uh, yeah.  I was saying, Lucy, going to visit some old haunts, meet some high school buddies.  We made the arrangements before we had a firm time on you coming home.”

“I hope you have a good time,” she told him.

“Thanks.  I think we’re going to head out now, actually.  Alyssa, you wanted to grab a shirt.”

“Where’s the laundry room?” Alyssa asked.

And there was that flurry of activity, the two of them making sure they had stuff, disappearing into the basement, emerging, then running upstairs to get more stuff.  Lucy got her larb from the microwave, sprinkled lime juice over it, and spooned it out over crisp, cold lettuce leaves.

“Do you have laundry?” mom asked.

“We had the staff do it last night, uh, just these clothes I’m wearing, I guess.”

“That makes life easier.”

“Guess so,” Lucy said.  She glanced through the kitchen door as Booker and Alyssa came down the stairs, grabbing stuff, Alyssa with a jacket slung over one shoulder.  They kissed, and Lucy glanced away again, chewing on her larb.  It was one of those things where being leftovers made it better, probably.

“Hey,” Booker said, coming through.  He gave Lucy a hug from behind.  “Glad you’re back.  We’ll catch up.”

“Is it cliche to say you’re more grown up than I left you, somehow?”  He gave her an up-down look.

He bent down, and when he straightened, he was holding the sprig of leaves in autumn colors that had been tangled up in her laces.  “In summer?”

“Where the heck were you?”

“Haha.”  She made what should have been two notes of laughter a single-syllable word that came out like a sigh.

“See ya.”  He kissed the top of her head, and then jogged over to Alyssa, wrapping an arm around her.

Then the front door banged shut.

The house felt very quiet and open in the aftermath of their departure.

“If you’re okay with me leaving you for a minute, I’ll use the time they’re gone to do laundry.  The house was so empty when you were gone, and then he arrived the other night and I had to adapt to having three people around again.  Can’t take a shower or use the washing machine without bumping into one another.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lucy said.

“You okay?  Really?”

Lucy shrugged.  “It was a long drive over.  I wanted to ask, how’s Verona’s dad?”

“He’s… mostly better, I think.  He might bounce back faster if he was more careful with himself.  We’re lucky he didn’t need the surgery.  It self corrected.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Lucy replied.  “Thanks for checking.”

“Yeah.  The offer for dessert is still open if you want it, you know.  I’m not demanding a recounting of events in exchange for it.  We can call it a celebration of you getting home.”

Her mom ran a hand over Lucy’s head, then she headed downstairs.

Lucy finished her larb and the accompanying fried vegetables, fork clinking against bowl, bowl clattering against the counter as she put it down, after lifting it close to her mouth to shorten the distance for those last, fork-evading scraps.

She picked up the sprig of Bright Fall leaves, and crushed a leaf in her hand.  It wasn’t especially dry, but it crushed well, and she pinched the crumbled bit between finger and thumb.  She reached down into the sink to rub the end of the fork with the stuff.  It tinted the metal red.  A wash of water from the faucet erased it.

Downstairs, the washing machine began knocking audibly.

Lucy took her bags upstairs, and she sorted out the contents.  Magic stuff in a drawer she could lock and seal with a connection breaker.  Phone plugged in to charge.  The invitation to have a proper meet with the Kennet Others, old and new, was the latest message.  Backpack emptied out of everything except what she needed if she had to sling her bag over her shoulder and run to go face down trouble.  Knife, mask, spell cards.  She put the Bright Fall leaves on the far end of her desk, resting against the wall.

Clothes put away in drawers.  Reinforced hair and makeup kit unpacked, bottles put in the appropriate rooms.

She saw her brother’s room, Alyssa and his stuff mingled.  She did hope they were having a terrific time, but this did also suck, somehow.

Her red raincoat needed to go downstairs, so she took that down.  Then, not really knowing where else to go, she walked into the backyard and leaned over the railing.  Looking at the ski hills.

She blinked, closing her eyes firmly.  When she opened them, she Saw Kennet.  Kennet beneath a red sky, wounded and pierced with blades, embedded so deep in sky that they remained there, some rusted, some broken, all massive.  She Saw her hometown in red and black watercolor with streaks of white.  Ragged and torn ribbons caught on branches and on fences.

Fighting had happened here.  In her neighborhood.  In the next neighborhood over.  In those hills in the distance, in the woods, across town.  The Carmine influence was so much worse than it had been.

And things would get worse still before the end of summer, when it all came together.

She sighed, heavy in a way that made her lean harder into the railing, sagging until it dug into her underarms and armpits, her chin resting on her arms.

Her mom found her there, and walked up beside her, rubbing her back.

“Want to go out and pick up the ice cream and pastries?”

“Heck yeah,” Lucy said, doing her best to inject the appropriate enthusiasm into the words.

“And then I sat there, and as that crazy, unreasonable mad-lady stared me down, I drank it,” Snowdrop explained.

“You’re getting it all wrong!” Cherrypop cried out, aghast.

“I knew for sure it was poisoned but I stayed there like a crazy person,” Snowdrop explained.  Half of the Kennet goblins followed her, listening avidly.  “And I told her, ‘I burned down this library, and I’ll do it again‘ instead of running away.”

“Aaaa!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  “You didn’t do that and you didn’t fight the hundreds of brownies and you didn’t respect that dick-nose’s privacy either!  I was there!  Why are you so bad at this?”

“This is a good story,” Toadswallow said.  “And perhaps the most important detail of this sordid little adventure, you stuck by our practitioner trio.”

“I didn’t faint even once,” Snowdrop said.

“Alas,” Toadswallow said.  “But they’re still here and so are you.  You’ve done your duty.”

They walked uphill, and Toadswallow huffed. Others weaved through trees or pushed at one another to be closer or be the one in front.

“What elth?” Nat asked, her ungainly walk punctuated by punches of her oversized, piercing-ridden hand punching the ground as a kind of third leg.  Her chewed-up tongue lolled out of her mouth, apparently twice as long as it should be because it had been torn near the base and all down the middle, so the part that dangled furthest down was a ragged bit of tongue-root.

“There was the time I fought a video game monster and I didn’t get my butt kicked.  You weren’t there around then.”

“During a fight with a big group of goblins I jumped off into dead rat water-”

They slipped into a Warrens tunnel because it was faster than navigating the rocky outcropping on the hillside.  Snowdrop paused where the mud-and-newspaper wall had slumped a bit, fixing where a picture had been finger-painted there.  She talked while she addressed it.

“-and I wasn’t scared at all while I was surrounded.  Cherrypop had a chance to reveal she was a fork and she couldn’t.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!  What’s wrong with you!?  Auuuuugh!  Aaauagh!”

The picture on the wall was of herself, her head a triangle with jagged teeth and round ears, and Cherrypop, drawn overly large, her head round with a triangle for a nose.

The other goblins were patient, making no complaint.  Cherrypop was too upset to even notice.

“…And at the end, I fought a bunch of nasty goblins in the Warrens tunnel to protect Avery and I failed.”

Gashwad clapped a hand against the small of Snowdrop’s back, hard.  He nodded approvingly, then got distracted trying to swat Cherrypop while she had an aneurysm.

They reached the upper edge of the hillside, and the goblins slowed, then fell back.

Snowdrop made a dismissive ‘get-lost’ wave at the goblins.

It was so nice to hang with them again.  The new ones had quickly accepted her as an honorary goblin, too.

She crossed the gravel driveway, and walked over to the porch.

Melissa sat there, sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette.  She called out, “She’s out!”

“I know!” Snowdrop called back, even though she was already at the point where raising her voice wasn’t super necessary.

“Who are you?” Melissa asked.  “I’ve seen you around.”

“Pretty sure I have.  You a family member of Louise’s?”  Melissa twisted around to look back at the house.

“Huh.  You look nothing alike.  I’m just some loser kid.  Supposed to walk for physiotherapy.  I way overdid it, hiking up here, but I felt like I needed to walk with a destination in mind, you know?”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t.  I’ve been walking to the grocery store and getting snacks at the bakery, or going to the convenience store, but that’s definitely not helping me lose the pounds that being a cripple have put on.”

“It isn’t, really, I’ve seen the bathroom scale, believe me. I thought I’d be good for a change and leg it up here.  Work up a sweat.  Louise has- she’s your mom or something?”

Snowdrop stared blankly at the thirteen year old girl with the hair that had once been crimped into waist-length zig-zags, that had lost that texture for something more natural.

“Yeah, sure,” Snowdrop replied.

“Yeah.  Huh.  She said I could phone and ask her if I had questions or come by if I wanted to sound her out about any of the weird stuff around town.  But she doesn’t know jack.  So instead it became about me complaining and she’ll listen even though she has way worse issues, apparently.  Want one?  Or are you going to rat me out to your Auntie Louise?”

“I’m nothing like a rat.”

“Cool.  Want one, then?”

Snowdrop took the offered cigarette.  Melissa reached over with the lighter.  Snowdrop let her light it, then held it away from her mouth, burning and making smoke that made her want to sneeze.

“Stole them from her.  She had a bunch stowed away.”

“Huh.  I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah.  I don’t suppose you know anything about the weirdness?  Any idea what I’m talking about?”

“I don’t know much, no.  No idea, really.”

“Too bad,” Melissa said, bitter.  She exhaled smoke and looked skyward.  “I’m figuring out bits and pieces.  Got a spell sort of working, based on a picture I took with my phone.  Magic, can you believe that?”

“Figuring it out.  Tell you what, if you don’t rat me out about the stolen cigarettes or the magic, I’ll show you some of it.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Snowdrop told her.

“If you’d given me more notice-”

“I don’t mind, it’s fine,” she said, into the phone, waving goodbye to Avery and Zed.  I told you we were coming home a few days ago.

“There’s leftovers in the freezer.  It’s either curry or chicken a la king.  And there’s butter chicken frozen dinners.”

The leftovers were a coin flip: either sorta-decent curry, a slimy heap of sadness on a plate.  Except it was a weighted coin flip, because every time she’d been able to definitively identify leftovers as curry, she’d eat that, while she avoided the chicken a la king.  The other option was butter chicken, which was one of the only decent frozen dinners but for that same reason she’d eaten it so often she couldn’t really taste it anymore.  Maybe now that she’d been away for a couple weeks…

“I’ll probably figure it out,” she told him.

“I’m really not pleased you didn’t check in more, Verona.  I’m going to need you to pick up some slack now that you’re home, especially now that you’re finally available.  Things have fallen behind around the house.”

She let herself in through the front door, then dumped her bags off in the hallway.

“I need a promise from you that you’ll get on top of the mowing and the laundry.  I would have done more but I’m still far from one hundred percent.”

The house smelled so stale.  She wrinkled her nose.  She hit the hallway light and only one of the two lightbulbs in the little fogged-up dome came on.

“Can I get a promise?  It would help me feel better about the direction we’re going here, Verona.  At least communicate with me.”

She was so tempted to hang up on him.

“I hereby communicate.  I hear you.”

“While I’m on the topic of things that need to be done, the house needs a good sweep.  There are dust bunnies on the stairs.  I’ve been mostly on top of the dishes, I’m really not eating much, but that damn glass stove has crusted-on bits, I’d like you to give those a scrub with the stovetop cleaner that’s under the sink.  Don’t use steel wool on the glass.”

“I know that much.  You’ve only told me at least a dozen times.”

“Don’t snark, Verona.  I’m serious.  The past few weeks have been really, really hard for me, I would get into it more but one of my coworkers is in the building and I don’t need him to overhear that stuff.  I’m staying late to get caught up on work and I’ll be staying late every day for the next week.”

If he expected sympathy he was going the absolute wrong way.  It was the best thing she’d heard since leaving Zed and Avery.

“Speaking of, I should catch them before they leave.  I’ll talk to you tonight to go over everything in detail.”

“Bye Verona, love yo-”

Love you too, she thought.  She wasn’t brave enough to put it to actual spoken word.

Every second she spent standing in this hallway, bags by her feet, she felt less at ease.  An invader in a dark, stale space.  The only reasons to stay were the questions of basic need.  She probably had to eat at some point, but she was full enough on snacks that it wouldn’t be now or in the next couple hours.  Sleep, clothing, all that crap.

Restlessness consumed her, she shifted her weight, started forward, hoping that that initial burst of momentum would carry her to what she needed or wanted to do, and found it died.  She snatched her bag, pulled out some clothes and moved them to her bigger bag, until it was some general magic stuff, reversed direction, went through the front door, and locked it behind herself.

And only after that was she left to figure out where she was going with such energy and vigor.

They had agreed to wait to face the local Others.  Lucy would get upset if she went and found Alpeana or one of the new Others.

She walked to the corner store by the bridge, in the end, and sort of imagined she’d just wanted to be sure she was armed with practice in case of another crisis.  She kept her Sight on throughout, and the Kennet that had been dark and sunless, every solid object wrapped in veils of white cocoon, gossamer web, clear cheesecloth and-or pale, scuffed up plastic, with meaty things squirming in their depths had changed.

Now, in maybe a third of the places she saw on her way to the corner store, the coverings were stained in patches, and in another third the things within squirmed, thumped, and twitched on the spot to a faster beat.  Doubletime, almost.

At the corner store, she bought a turkey mini-sub, a drink, then stopped at the coffee station for napkins and to load it with salt and pepper because she knew it would be tasteless.

All around her, the gossamer was soaking through with red, and the meat-things were thumping against the glass of the built-in refrigerators and ice cream makers, or squirming within and through boxes.  Where other places on her wall had been one or the other this place was both.  She wasn’t sure if it was because of an event or because it happened to fall inside a narrow part of that… diagram type thing with the overlapping circles.

The person at the counter looked tired, but they roused to say, “Have a nice night.”

“Gotta figure out how, but thanks.  You too.”

“Yep.  Gotta figure out how,” the older teen at the counter said, smiling a bit.

Verona stepped out onto the stairs and leaned against the railing, eating the sandwich.  It was pretty tasteless, and the addition of salt made it tasteless with added salt, and the pepper made her cough once or twice.

She finished, wiped her hands with the napkin, and then started wandering the neighborhood.  Not engaging with the Others, exactly, or looking for trouble, but seeing what was up.

She found a ghost in a dark space between two houses, and it was a person on their knees, knife in hands overhead, stabbing it down repeatedly.  It was pretty thin and ragged at the edges, and the repeated stabs lingered, multiple arms and hands sticking up in the arm as a dissolving cloud, joined by blood sprays.

It made it look less like a human and more like a human’s lower body and then a general conical shape of plunging arms and knives knit together by blood spray above.

“You being good?” she called out.

It flinched at her voice, then the fraying at the edges got worse.

A stirring in the distance made Verona turn her head.  At the edges of Kennet was a loose loop, as though giant gossamer-cocoon-plastic were tracing a circle around Kennet, close to the ground with bits reaching skyward.  It picked up, and as it picked up, the fraying of the echo got worse.

It staggered to its feet, muttering obscenities.

Verona took a swig of her water, then coughed a bit at the pepper.

“No,” she told it, firm.

That, like her initial call-out, was damaging in a way.  The damage found weak points, and it fell apart.  It collapsed a few steps away.

She was a bit tickled that worked, even if…

“Sorry, stabby-head.  Wish we could’ve hung out.”

“Who are you talking to?”

She raised a hand in a little wave.  “You’re breathing hard.”

“I saw you from a distance and jogged over.  Sorry, not a runner.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“That’d be neat.  Maybe,” he said, smiling.  That smile faltered slightly as he saw her expression.

She forced a smile, to put him at ease.  He smiled back, shuffling his feet.

“Thought you were away for the summer.”

“I don’t think I gave any specific timing, but yeah.  Came home sooner than I thought we would.  There was a whole thing with leadership and our… I don’t even know what to call it.  Scholarship?”

“I’m not sure if I am,” she said.

“Are you up to anything?” he asked her.

“I am the opposite of up to anything.  I’m bored and wandering.”

If he wanted to show her a rock that might be more interesting than the non-ghost parts of what she’d been doing.

He led her to a house, then opened the garage door.

“Kitty!” she exclaimed.

The kitten was in a cardboard box, lined with old towels, with a flap that could fold up and down, right next to a litter box.  The kitten roused and stood up on its legs, front paws on the edge of the box.

Verona cooed, extending a finger, which the kitten batted at.

“I’m not allowed to keep him in the house, and we have to either find a home or let him go be a stray, but for my birthday I asked my mom if instead of a present we could take him for a checkup.  Vet said he was probably too young to fend for himself.  We got him neutered and he’s allowed to stay until he’s bigger and healed.”

“I’m calling him Sir.  I like the way stuff works like that.  Here’s your dinner, sir.  You’re looking handsome today, sir.”

“You’re looking so healthy, Sir,” Verona told the kitten.  “Does he have a full name?  You could add your last name.  Sir Clifford?”

“I thought that if we went with Sir Whatever, there would be a risk people would call him Whatever, and that ruins the effect.  So instead of Sir Pancake people would call him Pancake.”

“That’s not allowed, that’d ruin the effect!” she cooed, to Sir.

“I can’t tell if you’re making fun or if you think it’s lame.”

“It’s great,” she said, looking up and smiling at Jeremy.  “You’re great, looking after him like this.”  She turned back and gently scratched beneath Sir’s chin.

He laughed, even though she hadn’t been funny.  “Thanks.  I’m worried I’m not doing the best job.  He’s not eating much.  It’s kind of why I took him to the vet.”

“He’s not very big, so maybe he doesn’t need to eat much?”

“Even for his size he’s not eating much.  Vet said to buy this and that and we did but he’s not in love with it.”

“Are you cheating, Sir?” she asked.  “Not eating so you stay small so you can stay?”

“That would be a relief, if there was a good reason for it.  I’d take him to the vet again so they can check up, but I’m not sure, and the neutering was kind of an extra expense that I thought was responsible-”

“-But that’s money that was taken out of my Christmas present, too.  If it’s all in my head and I spend the rest of the money for next Christmas that’ll suck.”

“Hmmmmmmmmm,” Verona hummed, which got Sir’s attention, so she hummed more.  “I have books.”

“I could get them.  I like cats so I bought some cat books a while back.”

“I… any help would be great.”

“Okay,” she breathed the word, suddenly conflicted, because Sir here was a balm for the soul and her soul needed some balm and she didn’t want to leave the handsome Sir.  “But I don’t want to leave him.  This is so nice.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Made my night.  I needed this.  Thanks Jer,” she said.  “And thank you, Sir.”

Jeremy laughed a bit, again.

“But I’ll go get those books.”

“You could bring them by another time.”

“I could but we need to see if there’s anything about Sir to be concerned about.”

“I could bring him.  Maximize your time with him, wait outside while you go inside.”

That was ridiculously awkward and she nodded with enthusiasm.

Jeremy fixed up the side that could fold down, arranging it so it couldn’t fall over, then picked up the whole box.

They walked over a couple blocks to her house.  Jeremy recounted the Canada Day stuff, and she told him stuff about the school that had nothing to do with magic, like jumping off the bridge, and the food.

They reached her house, Jeremy went to wait outside, and on impulse, she tugged him inside.

“My dad’s been sick, and I haven’t been home, so sorry if it’s dusty or gross,” she told him, while bending down to pick up her bags.

“That’s alright,” Jeremy said.  “My parents accumulate a lot of clutter, especially when they bring their work home, so I’m not about to even notice.”

“Do me a favor, just wait here, let me sort out my room?”

She let herself into her room, closing the door behind herself, dropped off her bags again, then stopped and took stock.

Magic stuff, had to put that away.  They’d been warned Jeremy would probably cotton on pretty easily, so she cleared her desk of experimental drawings, magic circles, unfinished and experimental spell cards, illustrations of Kennet Others, and stacked them, putting ink bottles on top of them.  There were some investigation notes on her bedside table, and she closed those books and put them with her other notebooks.  And…

A giant painted connection breaker on her floor.

She dragged the red, fuzzy, threadbare rug from the foot of her bed to the middle of the room.  It would get in the way of the wheels of her computer chair, but it covered the paint.  She scuffed it with her foot to make sure it wouldn’t slide aside.

Then she kicked some stray clothes to the space where they would be between her open door and her bookshelf, which served as her dirty clothes hamper.

“Sorry for the wait.”

“So this is your room,” he said, looking around.  “I like the art.  And the color.”

She took Sir from him and set the cardboard box on the bed, sitting near the head of the bed, while leaving room for him to sit on the foot of the bed, box between them.  Jeremy seated himself in the computer chair instead, looking at her art desk.

“You do art, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.  More markers and stuff.  You’ve got lots of paint.  And ink bottles?  Lots of ink bottles.”

“Yyyyyep,” she agreed.

“And… are these jars of hair?”

“Empty ink bottle of… stray cat hairs, I think.  Picked off my clothes after the last meeting with Sir, and collected from one of the neighbor cats.”

“Why separate bottles?”

“Oh!  That one was cat hair, then that one is opossum hair.”

“In the other jar are some crow feathers, and songbird feathers.  I collected them after a certain, very pretty, very cool little cat pounced on the birds.”

“We’re glossing over opossum and what?  Do you have an attack cat?”

“I’m closely associated with one, yeah.  And on the topic of cats…” she went to her bookshelf.

“Do you make your own brushes or something?”

“Huh.  That’s really neat.”

She pulled books from the shelf.

“And that book is way bigger than I thought.  I figured it would be like the books my aunt and uncle gave me every Christmas, edutainment stuff with five hundred high-quality images of birds, or insects.”

“Old vet’s guide to cats,” she said, hefting the tome.  “I got it halfway because it was about cats and halfway because I like having old books on my shelf.”

“Works,” Jeremy said.

She moved Sir’s box and put the books down, then opened the smaller one, flipping through to the back, then the table of contents, to get a sense of the chapter topics and ranges, then flipped to the page in question.  “You’re lucky I’ve been working on my research skills.  Key points of care… temperature, if they’re young enough, nutrition and diet, cleanliness, socialization…”

She kept the book in her lap and reached over to scratch Sir.  He nuzzled her hand with his head and her heart melted some.

“What does it say for diet?” he asked.

“Come, see,” she told him.

He hesitated, then came and sat on the bed.  She scooted as close as she could with the box between then and balanced the book on her knee, tilted toward him, so they could both read it.

“Huh.  We did get special kitten food, vet specified.”

“Might be infection, then.”

She made a face, reached over to pet Sir, and her fingers bumped Jeremy’s.  He pulled back, and turned, looking at everything except her.

It reminded her of sitting on the cabin porch with him.

But she wasn’t doing anything embarrassing for him to spare her pride, and there was nothing really to make him pull away like this.  His attention kept going to the window and what lay beyond it.

“Do you want to go?” she asked.  “Hopefully the books help.  You can borrow them.”

“I think they might, and uh, do you want me to go?”

“No, I mean, if you’re uncomfortable or bored or if my room is too messy or if I stink because I’ve been in the car for hours and hours-”

“You’re fine, this is fine.  It’s- it’s- it’s good to see you.”

“You’re just sorta focused on other stuff.  Bashful?”

“I- yeah.  Except more I don’t know what to do.  I do want to say… sorry?”

“For, um, how I handled stuff, at the end of the year party.  Before we got interrupted looking for your bag.”

“You’re fine.  It’s cool.”

“I’ve been kicking myself over and over again and replaying the conversation in my head constantly wondering if I hurt your feelings or if I was insensitive when you talked about your parents or…”

She was already shaking her head with vigor.  “No.”

She didn’t get why he was there, and she was here, and there was a gap, and she felt like it was her job to bridge that gap.  “You were super cool, and it was super nice, and it was really super nice that you stepped it up like you did to help with my bag.  I think with… I guess regular human males-”

“It was manly.  Stepping up-”

Jeremy made a sound, almost like scoffing, but it was a half-laugh, followed by a chuckling fit, that was more than a bit dorky.  A ‘huh huh haw haw’ kind of sound.  He put his hands to his face like he could stifle it.

“What was that?” she asked.

“That…” he kept his hands there.  “Can you look after Sir for me?  I’m going to go run home and set myself on fire.”

“Don’t!” she said, leaning forward and over Sir to catch his arm.  She hauled him back down to a sitting position on the bed.  “Just talk to me.”

He was flushed, and he pushed his hair back.  “Brain misfire.”

“Because I really like you, and I’ve liked you for a while, and I think I said something like that at the party.”

“And you called me manly and that overloaded my brain.”

“Would it happen again if I kept saying it?  That you were manly then?”

“I don’t think so.  I hope not.”

“Darn.  That’d be funny.  One time, I tried to hack my brain.  Um, I’m embarrassing myself here, telling you, it’s not a boy thing or a girl thing but I remember a few years back when my parents divorced, I’d get these really dark, intrusive, self-hating thoughts.”

“I won’t pry, you don’t have to say.”

‘It’s just- nah.  I’m mostly past all that.  But it’s like, my grades were awful, and my dad kept saying my mom didn’t want me and she wasn’t exactly acting like she wanted me, and my dad couldn’t afford me and it’d be like… any time of day that I started thinking about any of it I’d think about all of it.”

“And so the brain hack, every time I started to think in that direction I’d try to break it up with a really vivid mental image.  I thought if I could visualize something big and clear and detailed enough, with sight and sound and fill up my brain it wouldn’t have room for the other stuff.  I chose a cat.  Of course.”

She gave Sir another pet.

“Nope.  All I ended up doing was adding a meowing cat to the jumble of stuff that was overwhelming me.  And that, Jeremy, is the very long story for how I ended up meowing to myself randomly at school a couple of times.  I think Amadeus heard me once.”

“Sorry all that happened.”

“Like I said, I got past that.”

Jeremy smiled, and he pet Sir as well.

“Thanks, for telling me that.  I’m not exactly sure how it fits in with the goofiest laugh in the history of man, though.”

“I get how brain misfires happen.”

“I guess that does make me feel better,” he said.  “Uh.  About trust.  And about what I was saying before.  I feel like a jerk, a bit, because I’m not sure I deserve your trust.  I keep thinking back to our conversation that night, and I don’t get it, and I’m worried I’ll say the wrong thing because I don’t get it.”

“I think you’re a good guy, Jeremy.  I’ve met some awful, awful people.  A lot in the last few weeks.  And you’re not a bad person.  So even if you did somehow hurt me by saying the wrong thing I… trust you.  I don’t think it’d be on purpose.”

He nodded, even though he looked uncertain.

“I don’t want to make you feel bad and I have no idea how to word this… but I really don’t get it.  And it’s frustrating, and… I’m worried I’m being one of those jerk guys on TV if I want to date and I’m pressuring you in that direction by asking but that’s not…”

“Sorry,” she told him.  He looked really upset.

“It’s not you, it’s probably me being dumb and it’s really stupid.  I don’t get where the lines are drawn or what the rules are.  I kind of want to ask for rules or figure you out but I feel like that’s demanding or I’m prying.  But it’s also nagging at me and that part of it sucks.”

“Really, it’s not you, it’s…”

He trailed off.  She didn’t know what to say.

They sat there, the cat between them, both of their hands running through one side of Sir’s fur.

“Do you like boobs, Jer?” she asked.  “Or the idea of them?”

“What?”  His eyes went wide.  He looked startled.

“Play along?  Just go with it and I’ll try to convey where I’m at and where those lines are?” she asked.  “On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate the boob?”

“That’s way lower than I’d have figured.”

“I mean, I’m risking my man cred saying it but it’s honest.”

“I was at a friend’s house and I’m not going to name the friend because you don’t diss a friend’s family- I stayed the night.  And I woke up at five something in the morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep and I decided to go downstairs and get some time in with his Slaycast.”

“And I walked by their bathroom and his mom was in there, door cracked open and I saw what I didn’t want to see.”

“Brought down the average.”

“On the- upper body.”

“So yeah.  Not really sure where this is going,” Jeremy said, frowning at her, looking antsy.

“And you like girls romantically…”

“Yeah… if we’re using scales, nine out of ten.  I like you, ten out of ten if that wasn’t clear.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” she said, feeling more awkward than she had during the boob talk.  “Swimsuits, underclothes…”

“Sure.  Seven out of ten-”

“Makes some sense, same logic.”

“And nine point five out of ten?” he said.

He looked startled, like he was ready to bolt or he was spooked at her reaction.

“That’s interesting,” she said.  “Why nine point five?”

“I… intimidating?  I dunno, I wouldn’t know how to-”

Verona leaped to her feet.  Again, Jeremy looked out of sorts, like he was ready to apologize or bolt.

He was practically frozen as she opened a drawer and pulled out some bras, placing it in his lap, hand moving to stop it from falling to the floor.

She dug through the drawer some more, skipping some that were especially juvenile, or that had gotten grody in the wash.  She pulled out one last one and added it to the pile.

She moved the box with Sir in it, and sat next to Jeremy, her left leg against his left leg, her right leg hooked around his butt, her chin on his shoulder, looking over it at the pile.  He still wasn’t moving.

“I can back off if you want me to,” she said.  “You can dismiss this as my mental misfire and we can reset, or…”

“No.  I just don’t know what this is.”

She reached around him and showed him how the clasps worked with a few of the different types.  As he got some, she tossed them into the dirty laundry pile by her door.

“Practice,” she said, leaning back to let him do a few on his own, and to pet Sir.  “I… I like guys, but I don’t like the idea of a boyfriend.  Or a husband, or kids, or all that.”

“Sorry, thought I was clear,” she told him.

“You probably were but I’m a butthead about things.”

She leaned forward again, chin going to his shoulder, and watched as he finished.  “A year ago I read through some old books aimed at boys in hopes of finding out the secret world of boys, watched old movies and I kept on being disappointed.  It’s half the population and I just don’t know how… boys work.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “After this I’m about a thousand percent less sure I know how girls work.”

“We could work on that.  Hey, you’re done.  One mystery hopefully solved?  You’ve learned something about girls.  A little less intimidated?  Less likely to fumble when it counts?”

“That’s what I want.  I’m just… curious, and into boys bodies, and boy brains.  And I think of you as a friend and figuring that out with a friend would be cool.  Especially a handsome, manly friend…”

She trailed off, hopeful, and he didn’t have a response.

“I hoped that’d get another dorky laugh out of you.”

“Sorry,” he said.  “Thinking about what you’re saying.  Paralyzed.”

“I might joke about the laugh but I liked it and there’s… no reason to be paralyzed.

“I think I get it now.  Sorry I’m dumb.”

“Want to try it on a live model?” she asked.

Verona pulled her top back on as she opened the door and crossed the hallway to the bathroom, remembered her stuff was packed up and went looking for her toothbrush in her bag.  She put a jar of her own hair clippings in with the cat and opossum hair, grabbed her other toiletries, and clamped her heavy electric toothbrush between her teeth so her hands would be free to carry stuff over.

She dance-walked from her room to hallway to bathroom, happy.

“This big vet book looks great,” Jeremy said.  “It gets into diet.”

“And talks about calcium and stuff.  And changing wet foods if they don’t take to one.  Maybe I can call the vet’s office and ask if there’s something else that works?”

She brushed her teeth and talked around the sound of the electric toothbrush and the foam, “And if it’s not that then maybe assume infection and take him in?”

“Yeah.  That’s good.  It’s good to have a plan,” Jeremy said.

She spat, wiped her mouth with the side of the hand that held the toothbrush, sos he could flash him a non-foamy smile.

“You good?” he asked.

She’d resumed brushing her teeth, but she nodded, and danced a bit on the spot.  She pointed at him.

“I’m good,” he said.  “Not really sure how to… what to do, now.”

“You do what you wanna do,” she told him.

“Go home?  Is that rude?  I went to ask the guy down the street if I could borrow the lawnmower and then disappeared, I’m actually surprised my phone isn’t blowing up.”

“Then go, that’s cool,” she said.  “And fill me in about everything about Sir?”

“Of course.  You can come by, if you want.”

“So can you,” she said. “Give me a bit of notice so I can clean up some.”

“I can’t imagine myself making that call.  But sure.  This was nice.”

She nodded, feeling awkward.

He picked up Sir and tried to find a way to hold the books and stuff while also holding the box, and settled for holding them underneath while supporting the base.  “Can I kiss you?”

“I don’t care much.”

She stood on her toes to kiss him, and it was… a kiss.  Nice but not especially interesting beyond that.  She put the toothbrush aside and followed him down the stairs, opening the door for him.

As he headed down the stairs, the street was illuminated some with headlights.  Her heart sank just hearing the car, as if her body had learned to recognize the sound of her dad’s car.

Her dad got out, more slowly than he would have before she’d left for summer.  He stood tall and ominous by the car, staring Jeremy down.

Jeremy, halfway across the lawn, looked at Verona.

“A friend from camp?”

“Classmate.  I loaned him books for the cat he’s taking care of.”

There was a look from her dad, like he knew exactly what had transpired, and Jeremy’s stricken look didn’t exactly help sell the casual vibe Verona was going for.

“Go home, Jer!” she called out.  “Take care of Sir!”

“I’ll let you know how it goes!”

“Thanks!” she called out, not breaking eye contact with her dad, as she stood at the top of the stairs and he stood by the car.

Her dad grunted as he walked the little path that cut from driveway to front steps.  Verona remained where she was.  She remained where she was as her dad made heavy use of the railing by the stairs, his expression periodically pained as he ascended.

It didn’t really matter that she and Jeremy hadn’t really done much.  The way her dad held himself and looked at her and the way she could face him down… it felt like the paradigm had changed.

As if the house had been strictly his and she’d just lived in it.  And now he knew it was hers too and he had to deal with the knowledge he couldn’t control everything she did there.

“Did you manage to do one chore this evening?” he asked her, as he opened the front door.

“Nope,” she answered.  She licked her lips in case there was any toothpaste there, then smiled as she followed him in.  “Was busy.”

“Here,” Bluntmunch grunted the word.  “Down this path.”

“Thanks Blunt,” Avery told him.

“Mm.  It’s good you’re getting that looked at.  Goblin weapons can poison.”

“I think it would have hit me already if it was that bad.”

“Goblin weapons can be tricky.”

“Yeah,” she replied.  “Alright, thank you.”

“I’ll stay.  Watch for trouble.”

Avery nodded, putting a hand on the big goblin’s shoulder.  Partially to convey thanks, partially to steady herself as she stepped down onto the sloping path.

The cabin was small, barely larger than her room at home, and had colorful clothes hanging from a clothesline, which had camo-printed tarps on either side, shielding them from the eyes of bystanders.  The river cut through the woods without much shore.  In some places, roots extended out further than the rocky shoreline did, like they were drinking directly from the river.  In other places, the line between algae, plant life, and moss were hard to distinguish.

“Tashlit!” she called out.

Tashlit emerged from the water, pushing hair out of her face.  Her scalp sat askew, so the hair did too.  Behind that loose skin cover, the skinny human silhouette that was painted with a  kaleidoscope of yellow eyes peered out at Avery.

“Hey, how are you doing?” Avery asked.

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

Tashlit emerged from the water and squeezed out her hair.  She pointed at the ring of stones with logs in it.

“You want a fire?” Avery asked.  “Is it supposed to get cold tonight?”

Tashlit nodded, paused, then nodded again.

“Can try,” Avery replied.  She walked over, sat on the cut log that served as a bench, and found the lighter, inside a plastic case.  Kindling, some cotton fluff, some extra Kennet Kaller newspapers…

She arranged the logs so there was space beneath for the air to flow, put the kindling and fluff there with crumpled paper and lit it.

“Are you okay here?” she asked.  “Is this comfortable?”

Tashlit shrugged.  She’d gone swimming in clothes and they were soaked through.  She held up one finger as she headed into her cabin.  It looked nice, if small, but one window had broken and had plywood nailed up over it.

“Are you going to be warm enough in winter!?” Avery called out.

She wasn’t sure what reply she expected.  A minute passed.

The fire seemed to be catching.  Cotton burned, which let the kindling catch, and now the bark on the bigger logs was starting to ignite.

Tashlit emerged, wearing fresh, dry clothes, and it looked like she’d toweled as much as was possible.  She shrugged dramatically.

Tashlit shook her head.  She pointed at the fire and gave Avery a thumbs up.

“Thanks,” Avery replied.  “You know, if heat is a concern, we could look at doing a kind of heating and insulation diagram around the campsite.  Keep you comfortable enough.”

Tashlit nodded, then pointed at the fire, then her own… eye sockets, in the face of the loose skin that hung at the side of her head.

“Fire… eyes?  Edith.  Edith said something like that?”

“Cool.  Great, so that’s probably an option.  It’d be nice if you guys were all happy and comfortable.”

Tashlit circled the fire and benches, and walked around to Avery, making a hand gesture, a small shrug, before waving her hand around Avery in general.

Avery hunkered forward and pulled up her shirt, wincing at the intense stabbing pain at her shoulder.  It had been dull to start, very real in a way most other bruises and scrapes hadn’t felt, but the pain had rolled in slow and mounted over the course of the drive.  She’d had to twist to avoid letting the backrest of the car seat press against the injury, but doing so made her stomach hurt, and staying in a weird posture had given her a twinge in her back.

Tashlit’s hand was cool and damp.  She could feel the thrum of it, as Tashlit pressed in some power.

The older teenage Other gave Avery a pat on the shoulder where it had been injured, and she tugged her shirt back down her back.  “Thank you.  That really helps a ton.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.  She gestured again, finger waving without aim, tracing figure eights and such, indicating Avery in general.

“I’ve got this cut on my arm, and scrapes at my stomach.”

Tashlit paused, eyes narrowing.

“Is that a problem?” Avery asked, caught off-guard.

Tashlit nodded, which put her more off-guard, but then Tashlit reached out to give Avery a pat on the shoulder.

Reassuring, being gentle.

Oh, it was a problem, but only because it was sad, or whatever.

“It hasn’t been easy for you guys either, has it?”

“Are you… are you doing okay?  I know I asked a similar question before, but how are you managing?  I hope you’re not regretting coming here.”

Tashlit rocked her head from side to side, looking ambivalent, then gestured, holding up three fingers.

Tashlit pressed her hands together, loose skin smushing up, then turned her face skyward.

“Faith?  Religion?  Are you religious?  Wait, that’s a dumb question.”

Tashlit emphasized the hands.

Tashlit nodded, gave Avery a thumbs up, and then pointed at the thumbs up.

Tashlit nodded.  Then she touched the back of her wrist, where a watch would be.

Tashlit pointed at Avery, then motioned over in the distance.

Head shake.  Tashlit paused, then did the time gesture, followed by jerking a thumb over her back.

Tashlit made the time gesture, followed by pointing at the ground.

“Here?  Time back, time here, time…” Avery raised her head, then dropped it in a single nod as Tashlit pointed in the distance again.  “Past, present, future?”

Tashlit nodded, then pointed in the distance again.

“Praying for a good future?”

Tashlit made a so-so gesture.

“Hoping for a better tomorrow.”

Tashlit gave her a solid thumbs up, before leaning down to touch Avery’s injured arm.  Light glowed between hand and skin, and a deep pressure drove into the injury, white froth bubbling up with looked like grains of sand or iron filings.

Tashlit gestured, mouth to ground.

“Sick?  Yeah.  Bluntmunch just said.”

Tashlit nodded, keeping her hand there for a bit longer.  When she pulled her hand back, there was no scratch.

She reached for Avery’s stomach, and Avery leaned back, hiking up her shirt to her ribs to show the scrape from the bridge fall.

There was a glow, and she felt a stirring, but then Tashlit whipped her hand back.

“Okay.  That one’s minor but annoying.”

Tashlit circled around the campfire, and sat on the log opposite Avery.

“If you’re hoping for a better tomorrow, does that mean today’s not great?”

That question got her a shrug.

“I can’t remember, because Verona would’ve handled it.  Do you eat?” Avery asked.

Tashlit shook her head.  She crossed two fingers over where her mouth would be.

“Oh.  Listen, I’m really thankful, this… makes a lot of things easier.  I don’t want to take it for granted, so is there anything I can get you?  Things you like?  That would make today better?”

Tashlit plucked at her shirt, which was sky blue with a pink scribble design at the center of the chest.

Tashlit put her hands together in a pretty clear reading of ‘book’.

“Stuff to read.  Books?”

“Audiobooks, to break up the silence?”

That got her a more enthusiastic nod.

“Magazines?  Comics?”

“I think I have a few graphic novels.  I can steal a few of my brother’s.  Yeah, for sure.  I want to get along, so if there’s anything, let us know.”

The teenager gave Avery a thumbs up.

“How is this?  The cabin?  It’s not too small?”

Gestures.  Past… thumbs down.  Now… so-so.

“Okay,” Avery said.  “I’ve got a teacher- I had a teacher who was super into self sufficiency, building his own cabin and stuff.  I don’t know if that’s your style…”

Tashlit shrugged and nodded.

“Cool.  Yeah, I just thought it might give you ideas if you wanted to improve things.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

Tashlit got out her old-school music player, and fiddled with it for a bit.

“Is it not working?” Avery asked.

Tashlit held up one hand, flat and turned sideways, then pressed a fingertip against it.  The loose skin smushed and went sideways.

“Tough to press buttons?”

“This might be a weird question, but does it serve any function?  The skin?  Could you just… lose it?”

Tashlit gestured, the watch gesture followed by a point to the distance.

“In the future?  Do you mean you could, later?”

“Sorry I’m not great at this.  Verona’s practically psychic, she’s so good at it.”

“So you’ll keep changing?  Is that okay to ask?”

Music started playing.  Electronic, rock, and pop sounds with some latin chanting mixed in.  Lucy would probably have a better sense of what it was.

Still, it was atmospheric.

“I’m not in the way, am I?  Am I interrupting your evening?”

“Good.  I’m kind of… procrastinating on going home.  Isn’t that lame?”

“I think it is.  Maybe with context,” Avery said, dropping her eyes to the fire.  “I’ve been so proud of myself for moments of bravery and this… I’m not very brave.  I’ve told friends, I’ve told strangers.  My parents pretty much know and I’m pretty sure I know what the reactions will be.  My sister prepped me with what she thinks and it makes sense to me.  I think Mom’s going to be cool.  I think Dad’s going to be okay, but just okay, not like, excited.  And I think Grumble, my grandfather, he’s going to be not great.  I think my little siblings will be sorta dumb about it.”

The music picked up in intensity, out of sync with how she felt.

“And I’m scared,” Avery confessed.

She looked up from the fire to see Tashlit waiting, hands over her heart.  She ‘blew’ that out in Avery’s direction.

“Thanks,” Avery replied.  “You um, you used to be human?  Stop me if I’m crossing a line.”

Head shake, pause, then head shake.

“You didn’t?  Oh, right, you were always an Other, it just didn’t show?”

“What happened?  How did your family react?”

Tashlit held up one finger, then grabbed two fistfuls of loose skin and pulled them to her lower face, startling Avery.

Then Tashlit brought up fingers and thumb and twisted skin around her lower ‘face’, making a…

Avery laughed.  “Your dad?  Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing.  I just didn’t get that at all until the mustache.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up, nodding a bit.

Tashlit put a hand to the forehead of the loose skin, moving the face to where her face would normally be, giving Avery a glimpse of the girl she’d been once, kind of.  Tashlit mimed a line, from the corner of the eye to the chin.

Shrug.  Followed by that ‘blowing a heart’ gesture again.

“I can see why Verona likes you.  I’d really like to- it’s our duty, you know, to look after Kennet.  To help you guys.  So I want to help get you to where you’re not so-so here.  Where you’re as happy as can be with where you’re at, who you’re with.”

Tashlit nodded slowly, every single one of her eyes looking into the fire.

Head shake, shrug, then a point, off toward Kennet.

Head shake, shrug, point.

“But… I should go?”

“Yeah.  Before it’s too late.  I guess if I show up super late in the evening, it’s adding that stress of ‘where have you been’ with everything else.”

“Thanks for the chat, Tashlit, cool music.”

Avery stood, feeling a bit better than she had, with the healing.  Her stomach still hurt.

That got her a wave and a glance, before Tashlit’s eyes went to the fire again.

Bluntmunch caught up with her as she entered the woods.

“Yeh.  Safe as any of us.”

“Okay.  How are you, Blunt?  How are you doing?”

“I’m good,” Bluntmunch answered, and the deep, grating nature of his voice almost made that ‘good’ a rumbling purr.  “This is the life.”

“Stuff to fight, goblins to order around?”

“Yeh,” Bluntmunch answered.

“That’s cool, I guess.  Listen, uh, as much as I appreciate the bodyguard, I think I’m going to run.”

“Make sure the new goblins don’t boss around Snowdrop?”

“Cool,” Avery replied, nodding.  She reached into her pocket for the black rope, set her damaged mask into place.

The world cast in mist, traced with blood.  Crimson handprints throughout the woods, wetter and dribbling.  Trees had chunks out of them where there weren’t enough handprints to hold them together, and some were so lacking that the upper parts had nothing between them and the stump to support them.  Just… hovering treetops, maybe held up by the intertwining foliage above.

He handed her her bags.  She’d packed lighter than Lucy or Verona, but it was still a weight.

Avery ran.  Through the woods, weaving through trees.  The black rope let her skip past just about anything that was too inconvenient to go around or over, including jumbles of gathered tree branches- possibly dens for an animal of some sort.  Rocks, rises.  Painted in handprints or so dissolved they were solid objects suspended in air.

Her antler on her mask had broken when America had come at her, but by her Sight, she could see it.  Suspended there.  Belonging there.  A gap between the base and the upper part she could swipe a finger through.

Her Sight let her spot the incoming trees, let her check her flanks for anything coming at her.

Altogether, it let her run without slowing.  Burning off nervous energy.

Running because if she did anything but, then she’d possibly slow down or procrastinate more, and it wasn’t entirely about not getting in trouble.  If she hesitated or delayed then a part of her would feel like she was doing it out of shame or something and screw that.  She’d kicked herself and blamed or gotten down on herself for a lot of things, but never who she loved.

The bag was heavy but she didn’t mind, and her shoulder was fixed and that felt vaguely euphoric, just as a contrast to how miserable it had been making her.

She wove between buildings, ducked behind cars to emerge from others.  A dog at a window barked at her and she held off on using the black rope until she was sure it wasn’t looking anymore.  It kept barking at where it thought she was.  Whoops.

She slowed as she got home, bending over with hands on her knees, breathing hard.  She pulled her mask off, then hooked it on the side of her bag.  It wasn’t like her family members hadn’t seen it.  Declan had messed with it early on.

She closed her eyes, putting the Sight away, and kept them closed, trying to find her center.  She thought of checkmarks, of the little lessons.

I go out there, to strange and weird places, and then I come back.  Home.

Arrival time.  She walked down the street to her home.  She did dawdle, pausing to look at the neighbor’s repainted house, stopping when she thought a goblin or Snowdrop might be close, then finding out it was birds.

She did make her way home.  And on hearing the commotion in the backyard, she walked down the driveway.  Her house’s driveway and the neighbor’s were side by side, garages next to one another with a gap Snowdrop sometimes lurked in, where Avery stowed her bike.  Her bike had been shoved further in, two strange bikes in their place.

The Declans were all present, running around in the backyard with a plastic toy.  The adults- mom, dad, and Grumble, were all up on the porch.  Sheridan too.

“Avery!  Hey!” her dad greeted her.

They came to her, rather than the other way around, coming through the garage because the gate didn’t close right.  Avery shuffled her feet a bit.”

“Hey honey, you look so tired,” her mom greeted her, laying fingers on Avery’s cheeks for a second before wrapping her in a hug.  “Everything okay?”

“Did you walk back?” her dad asked, joking.

“No.  Got a ride from a friend.”

The hug with her mom ended, her dad went in for a hug, and Avery hesitated.

“Hug from your dorky old dad too much?”

“No,” Avery said, hugging him.

He gave her a firm pat on the back as he broke the hug.

“So how was it?  What exactly were you doing?”

“It was just stuff.  It kind of fell apart near the end-”

“With Lucy and Verona?” her mom asked.

“No.  No.  The whole… other stuff.  Lucy and Verona are cool.”

“That’s good.  That’s important.  The most important thing, isn’t it?”

“You’re more subdued than usual.  Is everything okay?” her dad asked.

“I’m- can we talk?  Away from them?” she asked, looking over at the rest of the family.

Sheridan waved at her, expression about as sympathetic or whatever as Avery had pretty much ever seen it.

Damn it.  She did not want to cry.  She managed to hold back.

They walked to the end of the driveway, which felt weirdly exposed but there was probably no way they could be inside and not have Declan and his friends tearing through the middle of the conversation or whatever.

“I heard, um, you talked with a coworker, dad.”

No ums, no hesitation.  Be solid, Ave, she told herself.

“Yeah.  I realized when Sheridan started poking around the topic that she’d heard, and I thought back to how fast you’d disappeared when you left for camp… yeah.”

“Yeah,” Avery said, nodding.  Remember that shitload of golden check marks, no tears, no ums, no hesitation, no wavering.

“What’s your take on that?” her dad asked.

“Your coworker sounds like an asshole,” Avery said.

“Yyyyes.  Yes, no, you’re absolutely right.  He is.”

“Why were you mad, dad?” she asked.

“Because I love you.  Because I want a good life for you, and I want you to be happy and whole and I worry you haven’t been either.”

“This… the fact I’m a lesbian doesn’t take away from either.”

Her mom pulled her into a hug from behind, which surprised her a bit.  But… it was a gentle hug and she leaned into it.  Her mom at her back, her dad in front of her with his forehead wrinkled with worry.

“No, but it does make life harder sometimes,” her dad said.  “And I don’t want your life to be harder.”

The hug at Avery’s shoulders tightened, her mom tensing maybe unconsciously.

“That starts with you, dad,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “I realized that.  I love you and I want good things for you and I want you to love yourself and want good things for yourself.  I want…”

He reached for more words.

“…I hope I’m not one of the reasons you’ve been struggling, or stressing out, or been unhappy.”

He had been, but she couldn’t say that.

“I was caught off guard, that’s all.  But I suppose with Sheridan not dating and you going this way, I don’t need to worry about any teenage daughters getting pregnant until Kerry gets older?  That’s a huge load off my mind,” he joked.

“Connor, come on,” Avery’s mom said.

Avery spoke up, “Sheridan’s been cool.  I wouldn’t rule out some guy seeing that coolness in her, if he got the chance.”

Her dad sobered up some.  “Yeah.  I really do want nothing else than for all my sons and daughters to love and be loved, Avery.  I really do believe you deserve that.  I’m proud you’ve found yourself.”

“That’s me, I’m a finder.”

“I don’t think this has to be a big dramatic thing,” her mother said.  “Don’t wait too long to bring your first girlfriend home, and I’ll do my best to keep your dad from making too many dumb jokes.”

Avery put her hand over her mom’s.  Her mom kissed the crown of her head.

“Did you take one bath while you were gone?” her mom asked.  I got grit in my mouth kissing your hair.

“Oh.  Mud fight,” Avery told her.  “I hosed off but I guess I didn’t get all of it.”

“I see.  Why don’t you unpack, take a proper shower?  I did a big grocery shop today, so there’s tons of ice cream bars, popsicles and things.”

“I missed dinner actually.  Had some fried stuff on the road.”

Her mom nodded.  “There’s plenty of food too.  Help yourself, you know how to use the microwave.  You can ask if you want anything particular.”

“Thanks,” Avery said, and it was a multi-layered thanks to her mom.

The boys in the backyard were shrieking, a sound that increased in pitch as they topped one another.

“I’m going to go make sure the Declan trio aren’t killing each other,” her dad said.  He tapped the underside of her chin, “Proud of you.  Love you.”

Her mom squeezed her shoulders in a tight finish to the hug, dusted off the top of Avery’s head, then let her go.

Mixed feelings swirled through Avery.  She was uneasy and vaguely unsatisfied and had trouble putting her finger on why.

She carried her bags in, taking them upstairs.

“Kerry had a friend over and her friend slept in and peed on your bed,” Sheridan said.

Avery made a face, looking up in the direction of the bedroom.

“Dad cleaned it but I thought you should know.”

Avery gave Sheridan her most unimpressed look.

“How did it go?” Sheridan asked.

“Mom was cool.  Dad… was okay.  Hard to say why I feel like it was just okay.”

“Okay is pretty good, isn’t it, Avery?”

“I wish he’d… I think he kept saying I, I, I, him, his viewpoint.  I don’t know.  He joked.”

“I ran into that when I ran it by them.”

“I was a little forced, like if I was better at noticing details I might’ve noticed how he was standing further away than usual or something.”

“Couldn’t tell you.  I can tell you, you know, it’s better than it was?  He came around.”

“I wish he hadn’t had to.”

“Yeah well, maybe he came around ’cause he loves you, you dingus.  That’s not worth nothing.”

“Guess not.  Maybe I’m being greedy, wanting more.  I didn’t get kicked out of the house or anything.”

“Nah.  Kids starve in third world countries, doesn’t mean you can’t feel like crap because you’re hungry.”

Avery nodded.  “Those are some good words you just strung together.”

“Stole ’em.  I don’t have an original thought in my head.  I’m a sad sack of regurgitated memes and references.”

“You’re also a pretty cool sister, you know?”

“Ew.  I don’t want that.  Means I’m related to a chihuahua in the body of a six year old girl, a little misogynist-”

“I’ve pledged to do some yelling at him for that one friend he was shitty to.”

“-Damn right, there’s Rowan who doesn’t have an original or unoriginal thought in his head.  Why would I want to be a sister to any of that?”

“You…” Sheridan hesitated, shaking her head.  “You’re the weird-ass, weirdly dusty-”

“-girl who’s going to sleep on a mattress with probable traces of kid pee on it, tonight.”

“Get bent, Sheridan.”

“Loop me in when it’s time to yell at Declan about being shitty to his female friends.  We should get him when the other members of his group aren’t around.”

“Can do.  I love you, you know.”

“Fuck off with that so I can get back to fantasizing that I’m an only child.”

Sheridan headed back in the direction of the back yard.

Her absence had let the clutter of her other sisters take over the room, including her upper bunk, which was freshly made but had some of Kerry’s toys on it.  She chucked them into a plastic bin by the dresser.  Spaces in the dresser had been claimed with Kerry and Sheridan’s clothes, like they’d been put aside in an empty space so they could dig through things, and then had never been put back.

Nobody had brought up Grumble, but that wasn’t a surprise.

She spent a while clearing out her share of the room again.  And when it was clear enough, she used the black rope to put herself through the window and onto the roof.

She lay there, back against gritty shingles, taking five minutes to herself.  Thinking.

Off in the distance, a silhouette of a woman stood atop a streetlight, faintly illuminated from below.  She was rigid and narrow enough with draping clothing that could be mistaken for an extension at the top of the streetlight’s pole.  Facing Avery.

If her eyes were any worse, she might not have seen.

She used the Sight and watched as Alpeana crawled up the nearby tree to the parts of the streetlight that its own light didn’t touch.  A morass of hair and darkness weaving their way up like a snake until the body emerged, crouching on the part the woman wasn’t standing on.

To Avery’s Sight, as she checked, she could see disturbances in fog, and movements here and there across Kennet.  Faint light glowed within the fog, faint, and she could only guess at what was beneath.

Her phone buzzed, and she turned, lying sideways on the roof, one leg extended to rest against the mounting for the gutter.  A message from Lucy and Verona.

Asking how she was.  Had she had a chance to ask?  How was her shoulder.

It had felt weirdly lonely, being home.  She was probably unique in that.  But the phone call mattered, it helped.

They’d been apart for a handful of hours and now they reconnected, as sure as anything.  She took her time telling them, sharing thoughts, hearing theirs, each with a faintly audible ‘bloop’ as the messages were sent, a ‘bing’ as they came in.

Alpeana and the new other, the Crooked Rook, they moved on.  Avery remained where she was.

They could handle that, presumably.

Avery knew that she and her team would have things to tackle, things to do.  To be outlined at that meeting with the local Others.

The conversation petered out, the sky turned from dark blue to starry black, and even without the Sight, the stars seemed to have a faint red tint at their bottommost edges.  Like the were filling up or dripping.

She remained where she was, phone resting on her upper chest, for another ten minutes.  Just sitting, watching the sky, missing Snowdrop a bit, though Snow was catching up with Louise and the goblins, and that was important.

Family started calling for her.  She put the phone away, rose, and stretched.

She black roped her way inside, where family was, talking over one another, chaotic and distracted and emotional and normal.  She’d met it head on, talking to her parents.  Departures and arrivals… she kept coming back a bit stronger.

She badly wanted to walk another Path.  To get ready and get stronger than she’d been for the Blue Heron stuff.  She wanted to meet this, all of this Kennet and practice stuff, head on, too.  As she’d done here.  Head on- no.  Prongs-on.