Underneath the canopies of concrete and vines of hanging copper cables are the beady eyes of a lesser dragon. It's definitely a C rank, likely a type 5 judging from its proximity to the Equaliser. Avett's not taking chances. It might turn out that it's still in the grips of early infancy—it could be knee-deep into its teen years for all he knows—but it's still a fucking menace and a bitch to exterminate. In the time that he's had to collect his thoughts, it's already slinked off elsewhere.
Out of sight, but certainly not out of mind.
He curses and moves on, keeping his body lowered and pressed against the handrails of the escalators.
Both of his hands are firmly on his blaster. All Avett hears are the ambient noises of the nearby forest, the occasional whistle of the early morning breeze, and the obnoxiously loud crunch of pebbles against the concrete at his feet. Shit. He's never been light on his feet. His mom used to tease him about it for days back in his single-digit years. His dad had bought him these hard-soled house slippers, and they'd slapped against the wooden floorboards all the time, keeping the entire household up in the process.
He peers over the handrails, aims his gun at the sulking mass of inky tendrils, and fires at the growth of white gauze. The dragon is dead before it hits the concrete. He'll have to work on his footsteps later, but it hasn't screwed him over yet. It's not fair that his mom's still right, even after all of these years.
In a wild series of circumstances and events, Avett finds himself at the epicentre of what appears to be an incredibly high-class department store. As he steps out from behind the escalator, he's greeted with an open ceiling and the unrelenting glare of the Earth's sun. The glass dome that rests above him is surprisingly intact. A lot of things are, in fact. The fast-food counters are made out of marble, and they're not cracked or scratched in the slightest. Just dusty. It's more abandoned than evacuated.
This seems like the perfect place to reestablish society. It's nostalgic, familiar, and it's got tons of resources—he's seen what some of the stores have had to offer in the brief glimpses that he's taken on his way in. All of this sounds way better than a clearing in the middle of a forest.
He turns a corner and slings his backpack onto the counter. This is some kind of supermarket, he's aware. There are condoms on sale at the checkout; he leans over and pockets like four of them. It's not shoplifting if no one's around to see it.
Something rustles behind him. He flinches, flicks his blaster into his hands, and points at… nothing. It's not just the wind because the ceiling's sealed up here, and the breeze hadn't even been strong enough to rattle the chunks of asphalt against the concrete. It's not a dragon either—or at the very least, it's not Equaliser spawn.
"Come on," he says. "I saw you. Get out."
The bluff works. She's doing the thing that makes Avett's insides feel funny where she laughs from the deepest parts of her belly. He wonders if he should lower his blaster or point it at himself.
"There's no way you need all of those," Mari says as she comes into the light.
He slips his blaster back into its holster. "I collect them. I like how the boxes look."
"Really?"
Avett swings his backpack over his shoulders again. There's a smile playing on his lips, and for a brief second, he feels like a fucking king. Like he's the first kid in a class full of geniuses to put down his pencil, flip over his test, and lean back in his chair. Stars, how he's missed little interactions like these. Lilith would've seen and ignored him. Auren likely would have done the same. Ysh'vanna would have lost it and pulled the condoms over his head. He's not allowed to have fun aboard the Winnow because they're all stuck-ups with silver utensils shoved deep inside their anal cavities.
"What do you mean, 'really?'" He shrugs and walks into a random aisle. He hopes he's in the preservatives. "That's all they're good for, right?"
A snort. "Best to keep them as family heirlooms. I'd check the expiry date if I were you."
Onset, palpable fear. Avett shoves a hand into his pockets and brings out a box. The black numbering on the side shows that it's at least a year past its best-by date.
He whirls around. "Condoms on Earth have expiry da—?"
There's no one behind him. She's just gone.
He takes a few cautionary steps forward. The supermarket's tiling is so brittle that he cracks one clean in half with his heel. He calls out her name. He calls out her name again, this time slightly louder. When she doesn't answer both times, he starts walking faster. His heart is pounding, ready to leap up and out of his throat at any damn second.
Again he calls her name. Again, she doesn't respond. Avett can only assume the worst.
Then—a flash of brown leather. The tinkle of her zips hitting the supermarket railing. Mari comes out of the aisle next to the one he's in. She's in front of him now, and she's got the biggest shit-eating grin on her face, one that puts the one that'd been on his face not five minutes earlier to shame.
"Cans are this way," she says. There are black spots in his vision when he looks at her, but they're slowly starting to recede back into whatever hell they'd come from. "I just walked into the aisle next to yours, and you just started screaming my name like I'd gone off and died."
Then she sees his expression. He probably looks like shit. He feels like shit. It's like he's just been unwillingly ripped apart and exposed, like soft citruses in the hands of a starving child.
"I'm fine," Avett says. "I didn't hear you move, that's all."
He slides a hand over his stomach and clenches his hands into the familiar warmth of his navy-blue jacket; Mari catches him doing it, so he rounds the corner and enters the aisle of preservatives without giving her a second glance.
"It's magic," she says, a bit after. She's still on the other side of the aisle; Avett can see her painfully still face from over the tops of the cereal boxes. "I'm using a glamour to hide the sound of my footsteps. Obviously, I'm not too good at it. I can't hide anything else."
He tries his best to ignore the piles upon piles of rotting fruit displays and decaying herb pots that haven't seen the blessing of light and water in a while. It seems counter-intuitive for one side to need daily maintenance while the other might as well go half a decade without needing to be replenished.
It's almost retroactively funny, actually. Just like how he'd freaked out over absolutely nothing at all.
The rest of the outing is pretty awkward after that. But when he comes back with a backpack full of jars of pickles and soft chickpeas and corn, the villagers seem elated to know that the Kattish man isn't out to kill them all in their sleep anymore. So he's fine with feeling like someone's just twisted a knife into his stomach, he guesses.
—
Lili doesn't like this place.
She'd woken up in the middle of the night, her back and bed drenched in sweat, and when she'd reaffirmed that the moisture at her back hadn't been piss but sweat instead, she'd gone right back to sleep. Come early morning, and she'd never felt better.
Until she walked out of her room in her weird white sheet-robe thing and nothing else, and found herself eye to eye with William Dresfort, Ava's boyfriend before the fall… and point guard for his all-boys school's basketball team.
There's no way they're on equal footing. Lili had clung to the excuse of being from an all-girls school as to why she never socialised with the opposite gender, but now she's thinking about it, she never really was one for socialisation in the first place. People who interacted and knew people from other schools—at the time—were scary to Lili. The reverse rang true: as a result, she never really got to talk to Will often.
Lili doesn't like to think about him. She didn't have any friends outside of Ava's friend group, and Ava knew it; she'd ended up with the highly-valued role of the third wheel at every outing. And Lili had eaten all up by taking them up on every invitation, either out of fear of disappointing Ava or losing her only—Lili hovers on the word 'friend.' She doesn't know.
Will is making breakfast for himself. The smell of fried eggs and sauteed potatoes wafts through the air. He doesn't see Lili yet. Or maybe he doesn't want to have to acknowledge her existence before he's had his first cup of coffee.
She wonders if it's in poor taste to immediately change back into her caster's uniform.
Then he says, "I left a change of clothes for you in your room. Did you miss them?"
Lili knows they hadn't been there. She plays along anyway by walking back down the corridor. Sure enough, there's a pile of old clothing on the stool in Avett's room, which has been left wide open. They're meant for Avett, obviously, but she puts it on anyway. She finds that they're nothing out of the ordinary—just a pair of washed-out jeans and a hoodie.
When she comes back, he's already sitting down at the hickory dining table and neatly cutting into his gooey-yolked eggs with his knife and fork. There's a plate opposite his. Lili sits down there.
There's a knife and fork on her plate as well.
Ignoring the knife, she takes the fork in her right hand and spears right through the yolk. Will is using the slices of sauteed potato as a scoop to wipe up its molten centre. Some of it smears—and stays smeared like he's just tried to wipe away a bloodstain—on the plate.
"You day drink?" he asks after he's done with his meal. Lili is still trying to figure out how she's going to slice off parts of this egg with the edge of her fork only. She's made a mess of the yolk, and she's caught it dribbling off the sides of the plate at least five times now.
She doesn't answer. He coughs and corrects himself. "Do you drink at all?"
"I don't mind drinking in the day," she says.
"Then," he says, as he pushes away from the chair and leaves the table, "I'll see you at the bar. Building opposite this one. Take your time."
It feels like there's been a weight lifted off her shoulders when he leaves the house. Lili takes pleasure in the absence of him and takes this opportunity to dig through the pantry for chopsticks, or a spoon, or anything she can actually use. All she gets is a spoon. Which is still pretty useless.
She grips the handle tightly. Tight enough, she thinks, to break her bones and cut through her skin if she clenches any harder. Then she puts it back with all the other spoons and closes the drawers.
Lili finishes her meal five minutes later. She's painfully white, considering the fact that she can't speak a lick of Mandarin nor Tagalog, but she'd sell a disproportionate amount of her vital organs just to be able to eat with a knife and fork. It seems like these days, she's always lost in a liminal nowhere, where not even the most fringest of fringe groups can relate to her experience. Stuck in a profound sense of estrangement is how she's going to refer to it. Who's ever heard of a Human caster? A Human caster who's scared of her own ether and can't cast for shit? A Chinese-Filipino who's so whitewashed she can't speak what should've been her own mother tongue, and yet can't even eat with a knife and fork to save her dignity in front of the people who care?
Suddenly, the prospect of day drinking seems a whole lot better. She wishes that it didn't take just a knife and fork and Will's demeaning nature to make her spiral like this. When she leaves the pseudo-mansion, she notices that there is no building in front of the mansion. The bar, in fact, is closer to the left side of the village than anything else.
It's actually a nice place. Lili's not sure why, but she'd expected a garage or some derelict warehouse. The counter is a deep, red shade, so deep that Lili is sure she'll blend right into the surface if she leans her forehead onto it and lets her hair dribble onto the table. The stools are made of the same material. Both are varnished.
"You're here," Will says. He pats the seat next to him. "Fuck, it's been ages. Come. Sit."
It's a command, and Lili knows it.
She makes her way over, her face perfectly still. She's still a mess underneath. She sits one stool away from him; she doesn't like how close each of the stools are to each other.
He leaps over the counter and runs his hands over the necks of the bottles. There are so many. She doesn't really give a fuck what's on the shelf as long as it'll give her the energy to talk to this man. "For the lady, some cha—"
"Whiskey," she says.
Will stops on a glassy, piss-yellow bottle that has a faded sticker on it. "You want water with that?"
"No."
"No?"
Lili doesn't say anything. Will sighs loudly, rattles around in the cupboard that's underneath the counter, and slams down a shot glass. The whiskey sloshes over the side and onto the table. It smells really terrible.
She downs it in one swallow. Taps it against the counter. He pours, and she downs another.
"You're supposed to be sipping, slowly, by the way, on a carefully crafted drink while we catch up on the last six years." He leaves the bottle uncapped and on the counter. Lili just pours herself another shot. It takes a volumetric fuckton for her to get anywhere anyway, so she's doing him a favour by getting buzzed early.
He sits on his stool. Shakes his head. "Back then, when you, I, and Ava used to drink, half a shot was all you needed.
"I've changed," she says quickly.
"Damn straight, you have." He brings the glass of whatever the fuck to his lips and laps at it. She's very sure that it's not his first drink, nor will it be his last. As if he'd read her mind, he adds, "Already went down a glass before you got here—comes with the stress of keeping elders like Johannes alive."
Lili doesn't know who Johannes is, but what she does know is that if they'd set up their village a little closer to the Hive, he'd probably be a whole lot healthier.
Will leans forward in his seat, his eyes darkening over with a varnish of powdered bones and dirt. "Tell me, young lady. What are you doing so far away from home?"
She's already in the middle of her fourth shot, and it's taking all of her energy not to spit it right back into the glass. 'Home' doesn't exist anymore. She thinks that he might say something like, 'home is where the heart is,' or 'home is where you left Ava,' but he keeps his mouth shut instead. The shot glass clacks down onto the counter. She's missing both of those things; how is she supposed to know where her home is?
With her teeth gritted together, she says, "Ava is dead."
Will stills. "Oh."
He moves with a sleazy fluidity towards the bottle of whiskey. Lili grips the neck tightly. No, she hasn't had enough. Yes, she's going to keep drinking. Her eyes don't leave Will's for a second as he slinks back into his seat, defeated.
"Jesus," he says instead. "Must've been quite the shock. And quite the threat. God rest her soul."
She tenses her jaw. For a moment, her eyes squint as if she's preparing herself to cry. Then she tips down her fifth shot. At least that's something she can still rely on.
"Still, it's more of a surprise than anything. I would've expected Ava to survive." It's his turn to grit his teeth. "She's a walking nightmare. You're… nothing much. How'd you get out of it alive?"
"I killed Ava."
Her tone surprises both her and Will. It's cold, sharp, and freakishly tight. She could've cut cold butter with it in a single swing if she tried. She sees Will's fingers close, then open, then close around the glass he's poured for himself.
"...Out of mercy," she finishes. "We didn't… both make it."
Will sucks in a breath through his teeth and eyes the whiskey bottle again. "Oh. Well." He takes a healthy swig of his drink. "How was it?"
Lili is looking at her own reflection in her shot glass when he says this. For the second time that afternoon, she's been caught off guard. And she doesn't want to be off guard because that means being open to Will. She wants to be an impenetrable wall, a house of iron, if she so chooses, instead of bricks and weatherboards. She doesn't want to be a family house, a sanctuary constructed for living—she wants to be an execution chamber. Where inmates enter to die. Where everything enters, and nothing comes out.
"Not very good," she answers.
"How about I tell you about the first time I ever killed something, hm? One of those aliens. An 'off-lander,' if you will. It thought it could get away with maiming two of our elders and—" He chokes. "—Mari. Let me tell you, when you finally get your hands on the thing you despise the most, and you know there's nothing stopping you, it's like popping a zit."
Lili shivers. Disgust snakes through her veins. It's down the hatch for her sixth shot glass. Then another. Then another, until she's sure she's shaking from the alcohol content in her blood and not from the shit he's just thrown at her.
He continues like he doesn't give a damn, "I know what you are, Lili. You're angry. You're violently in love with the idea of being angry, and you're done with only being angry in here." He slaps his chest—holds his hand there, splayed and open. "You yelled at me earlier, spouted all this garbage about how you were going to raid this village and kill us all, because you want your anger to mean something. You want to be bad on your own terms, because you've spent your whole life being good on someone else's. You want to be unexpected."
Lili closes her fingers around the shot glass and throws her ninth shot down.
"You want someone to take notice," he continues, taking a sip of his drink. "And you think, that being tough, being feared and fighting back is going to give you that. It's not. It's all dry satisfaction, Lili. They're bandaids over open wounds that'll scar. It means nothing when you get right down to it. Look at me, Lili. Where'd I end up?"
He's pointing a lazy finger at her now. He's just rambling. He's just rambling. Tenth shot it is, then.
"And you wanna know the reason why you never had the balls to fight back in high school? Why you let us, all of us—shove you into that corner over and over? Because you weren't powerful. You were scared of the consequences of confrontation, and in our circle, that happened to be physical pain and exclusion. But you've got some of that power now. It makes you brave. You have the muscle to back your words, you've got even less to lose, and you're just discovering how great it feels to be unapologetically you."
Lili stops at the eleventh. Will leans in, his breath heavy with the stench of alcohol. She's not sure if that's actually just her own breath. "Something's changed inside of you, Lili. You can take more alcohol, you're a capable magic user, if not far more capable than the rest of us. It's not about whether or not you'll survive the confrontation anymore, it's just a matter of whether or not you're bothered enough to deal with the consequences of being a big, bad, angry bitch."
Lili just swirls the shot glass between her fingers. The word 'bitch’ is an insult, it's meant to be demeaning, but from the way he'd said it, it might as well be the nicest thing he's ever thrown at her. It probably is—Will deals his insults in double entendres and context-reliant statements. Insults, to him, are tacky and unrefined. The amateur's first lamb shank roast to the sous chef's specialty foie gras.
Then she looks down at her glass. Why do people drink alcohol anyway? It kind of tastes like garbage. Whatever. It makes her feel good, unknots the tangles of her worries from her head like a fine-fingered hairstylist. Even if it's only for a brief moment. Even if she has to keep chugging for the rest of the night.
"The gods drifted down and bestowed upon the cornered animal fangs." He snaps his fingers in front of her face before he grasps the neck of her whiskey bottle and puts it under the counter. She tries not to show her disappointment. "Just know that you're not brave. You're just lucky."
Lili stares at Will. He's leaning against the counter with an absolutely despicable grin on his face. "Are you done?" she asks.
He motions to the door. "By all means, if there's anything I've said tonight that offends you, then feel free to leave."
She looks at the shot glass in her hand. Blinks. Realises she's hardly even buzzed, let alone drunk. That was twelve shots. What the fuck is wrong with her?
"Hey. Hey. Look at me when I talk to you." He's snapping his fingers again. She could not give less of a fuck. "You either leave, or you stay, Lili. Very simple. You heard me, right?"
Her hand shakes a little. She hears Will loud and clear—that's the problem. Normally she'd be giddy right now, and his words would be flying over her head like a targeted joke she's not meant to get, but she's… sober.
Something hot and electric snaps at her forehead. It spreads quickly from the site of impact as waves of feverish heat. She flinches back, steadies herself against the counter, and wobbles on her seat.
Will has his finger extended in front of him. Ether wafts off the tip like a recently used cigarette. It's an extraordinary power—she's never seen anything like it, but then again, she's not all that well acquainted with the methods of other casters. Maybe he's just different.
Lili pushes herself from the counter. "I'm leaving," she says. "Thanks."
He lowers his finger and clicks his tongue. "Remember. Just lucky."
Lili is inclined to agree.
—
Avett is just about to start helping council Elder Johannes with his garden when he sees Lilith stroll out of the village tavern. Actually, he smells Lilith first before he sees her. She reeks of cheap whiskey. He's on his way to give her a verbal smacking—who drinks at 11 AM anyway, especially right after waking from a one-day coma?—until he sees just how sober she is.
He must be scrunching up his nose subconsciously because she apologises and confesses immediately. "Sorry, Will made me drink."
"You're ok, right?" Without thinking, he strides up to her and presses a hand to her forehead. Her temperature is average. It takes her a moment to realise what he's doing, and when she does, she wraps her hand around his wrist loosely. He could easily shake her off. She hasn't recovered. Not yet. Avett lets his hand fall to his side.
"How many?" he asks. Now that she's closer, it smells like she's been dunked in a barrel of it.
A pause. "I don't know." Then recognition. Then she schools her features into neutrality, looks at him right in the eyes, and says, "I had around five."
He folds his arms. He'll let it slide. "Elder Johannes wants his garden watered and weeded."
"You know them by name?" Lilith looks at Avett like he's just told her something outrageous.
He shrugs. "You say it like it's outrageous. I'd ask you to help, but you reek of liquor, and I'm not sure if he's fond of…" A slow, methodical rotation of his wrist lets her fill in the blanks.
Lilith nods and looks elsewhere. Her cheeks are flushing, and it's not just from the alcohol.
Avett goes on, "I was out collecting supplies earlier too." Fishing around in his backpack, he pulls out two glassy jars of marinated pickles. "Johannes will want these. Susan's in the next house over, she's not an elder, but you'll probably want to leave these on her porch as well."
"You want me to deliver them?" she asks.
This time, it's his turn to look at her like she's said something stupid. He bobs the jars in his hand up and down in front of her. "Yeah. It's called a nice gesture. Mari suggested it. Come on."
Lilith looks down at the jars. Appraises them with squinted eyes. "Did you call the Winnow yet?"
"Uh." He blinks.
"Have you thought about it, at least?" Even though she's confronting him, she's staring off to the side. Like he'll burn right through her if she dares to look at him directly.
He splutters. Embarrassment bubbles over in his stomach like a kettle that's been left to boil for too long. "I—ok. I'll get on that, just—get these to Elder Johannes and Susan."
She has her hands behind her back. He's just shoving them into her stomach over and over.
"You've thought about what I said last night as well, right?" she asks.
Truthfully, no. But he's not here to be truthful with Lilith of all people. He dodges the topic at hand. "I thought you were delirious."
She glares at him, like she's got way more on her mind than she's willing to let up. She actually does open her mouth, maybe to reprimand him, maybe to give him exactly what she's thinking about, but then she stops.
There's a bell in the distance. It's coming from the building next to their cabin—a long warehouse, likely meant for communal feasts. Or, judging from the way everyone's heading inside, regular lunches and dinners.
Lilith catches on immediately. "Come on. We're not eating with them."
Avett is about to complain when she latches onto him and drags him by the hand between two nameless buildings. They reach the edge, and he's surprised to find that there's no fence separating the perils of the forest from the safety of the village back here.
He's so shocked by this that he's still processing it even when they're pushing past overgrown ferns and unruly tree branches. When they arrive in the thick of the forest, he feels like he's just forced past and through an oppressive membrane.
Alone and together. He inhales—feels the sharp intake of forest musk and the smell of blanketed soil underneath rotting pine needles. And all of a sudden, as if someone's dunked him into a vat of ice shavings, his mind is stark-white clear.
Avett stumbles into a tree and slumps down against it. For the first time in a while, his tongue is failing him, as no words are coming to mind.
"Sorry." Lilith crosses her arms over her chest. "I kind of hated that place."
He nods, both to himself and to Lilith, as if he's still shaking away the mental cobwebs from his brain. He's holding his head not a second later. Everything is so painfully lucid, now that he's away from all of the people and white noise.
"Holy shit," he breathes.
Lilith leans over, her hair hanging in strands. "Are you ok?"
"I think I was trying to get into someone's pants earlier." He fishes into his pockets. The neon coloured boxes patter to the grass a second later. Disdain flashes over his partner's face before Avett waves it off. "Trying. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't think you'd get it."
Another breath rattles through his chest. He'd never expected himself to be the sort of person to easily tire from social interaction, but here he is—thankful for the cool respite of the forest's shade.
"Something just isn't right with that village; it's not just you. It's draining to be in there." Her voice is distant again—the normalcy of it both comforts and bothers Avett to no end. They're frontliners on the clock again, which, speaking of…
"How's your ether?" he asks. She'd managed to keep the Equaliser at bay before passing out a day ago, but he can tell she's not ready for the field yet at all.
She shrugs. Then she says, "I'm making lunch."
He calls out after her, "What, are we married now?" but she's already separated a cluster of plain mushrooms from their families and collected strands of fuzzy-stemmed grass to stick into her pockets by the time he's thought of something witty to say. Then she's off again.
Of course he's going to follow her.
"This plan isn't going to work," he says. "They said the herbs are good for us, Lilith, it'll keep the dragon's influence at bay—"
"Bullshit." She kneels and palms at the dirt.
"Did you just interrupt me?"
Her fingers are knuckle-deep in the ground when she stops. Then she starts digging again, as if she's regained her motivations. "The cilantro thing. Don't listen to it. It's wrong."
For her, a trained caster, maybe. She's not aware of the extent of her power in comparison to the masses. Even though she's dormant right now, Avett is sure that he can feel the raw insanity of a woman pushed to the edge one too many times; it pulsates against the very air that he breathes.
She says it again. "Please, just have lunch with me."
He just rolls his eyes behind her back. He'll just have his dose at dinner, no problem. "We don't have anything to cook out of either. No plates, no cutlery, certainly no water to boil—" He stops as he sees a bundle of bulbous plants in her hand, their bodies still dripping with soil. "Where and how'd you even manage to get those?"
"They've got pots and pans in the house," she answers simply. A sidestep to his A sidestep to his retort. She's gotten better at this.
"They've got food back in the house too."
She stops wading around the grass to look at him.
Avett stops as well, content with keeping his distance. "You've been so opposed to the idea of eating their lunches—they taste terrible and like soap, I know—I just want to know why."
Her features are weighed with dregs of malnourishment. He realises that she hasn't eaten—either that or that she's been physically rejecting the food afterwards, considering that no one's informed him of her curious eating habits yet.
"We're not eating their food." Lilith turns back around.
Avett puts up his hands. What else can he do?