12: Will

He's still reeling from the abruptness of it all. Four days. Four fucking days, and he'd spent it eating mash, filling his veins with that poison, losing himself and seeing hallucinations of another lifetime—and that woman. He'd experienced a class A brainwashing, somehow. The way he'd moved during those thoughtless, aimless days reminds him of moving through an ocean of heavy smoke. His body was hardly in his control; it ran on someone else's whims like he was a gear being turned by other gears in a clockwork world.

It reminds him of that other day; he shuts away the memory, letting his realisation strike him instead.

The globe warms in his hands. "This Equaliser feeds off the villagers," he breathes. "It protects them—uses its aura to keep them complacent. Which… means they were lying about the herbs."

Neither of them says anything for a while. Avett's stomach churns. He shakes his head.

"Why lie about the herbs?" he asks himself. "They could've used any excuse, but why herbs?"

"The herbs do the exact opposite of what they're supposed to do—they accelerated the process, making us more susceptible to its aura. I get feverish in the presence of the dragon; it's the same feeling when I eat anything here, or when the villagers… use their power on me." She shrinks back, her shoulders hunching over her chest. With a shuddering breath, she starts talking again. "The artifact was protecting me this whole time, like an auto-immune system burning up a virus. One dragon's aura for another, but I guess this one doesn't want to enslave us or something."

The globe heats at her snide remark, beating hotly at Avett's chest.

“It’ll go tits-up if we don’t stop it,” he adds. “B ranks have aura, B5s especially, but not to this extent. Put two and two together, and I don't think it's feeding just for sustenance.”

Gears turn deep within Lilith’s mousy eyes. “B ranks can’t become A ranks… can they?”

Avett shrugs.

She releases a breath, holding her knees to her chest as she drags a finger through the dirt. “Oh, god.”

"This is good and all, but dragons are not fucking smart enough to do this," he says plainly. "The Equaliser doesn't hunt in packs. It's biologically engineered to be lonely. Gathering an entire community of endemic species, brainwashing them into submission—not possible. Pigs can't overthrow a farmer. It can't happen."

"But it did."

"It doesn't happen."

"It just did."

Avett throws his head back in defeat. "We're missing something here."

Lilith looks off to the side. "But you believe me, right?"

"Believe what?"

She toys with the folds of her gloves, pulling them taut, rubbing the material between the flats of her fingers until she's ready to talk again. "It's just—it's a pretty far fetched claim."

He looks at her. "It's a pretty apt claim. Everything fits together nicely… except for that."

Lilith shakes her head. "I was worrying about bringing it up with you, because you looked fine, so mundanely unaffected—" She stops herself, takes another breath, then looks to him. "I didn't think too much of my judgement at first, because I assumed I was wrong."

"So you've stayed quiet for this long because of your cripplingly low self esteem."

She slinks backward until her back is pressed against the wall. "I guess. Maybe. I just wasn't sure. I thought you had a better idea than me, and it definitely looked like it—you were integrating into Human society so well, even though you're Kattish and I'm… you just looked like you had a plan. A better plan. I was willing to take anything—my ether’s back, Avett, but its performance is spotty at best, unresponsive at worst.”

Avett tries not to show it, but his disappointment comes leaking through anyway. It must've been in the way he'd exhaled, because Lilith is saying quickly, "Whatever you're about to say to me, I've already said it to myself a hundred times over the course of this conversation."

He sits up, placing the globe on the ground. Soothes down his boiling frustration, because he's starting to learn exactly when Lilith needs some nice fluff and when she just needs a good scolding. And right now, she needs a little bit of both.

So he focuses his eyes on hers. Places both of his hands on her shoulders again. Lilith tenses underneath his grip.

"Lilith," he starts, his tone gravely serious.

She trembles. "What?"

"You put too much faith in me instead of where it actually matters. And that's not a good thing."

Her mouth is slightly ajar, as if she wants to say something back. Avett doesn't let her, pulling himself away from her body before she can vocalise her thoughts. "I know that's a fucking weird thing to hear from me, the self-righteous hot-headed asshole, considering I just exploded at you earlier today, but you're a frontline caster." He mulls over his sentence for a bit, then adds, "Our frontline caster. There's no one else I'd rather trust other than you, even if I… hate it."

Avett stumbles over his final two words like a kid on their first date. So then he decides that that's enough of that. Lilith's flush is all that it takes for him to stop digging his grave any deeper than it already is, but he could've used a thank you, at least.

"So." He scratches the outer shell of his distinctively Kattish ears, thankful for their presence once more.

"So?"

"About that GlassLink."

His partner picks herself from the ground. She smooths down her tunic with the flats of her palms, drags a raked hand through her hair. "It'll be in Will's weaponry shed, probably. The plan is to call the Winnow, get reinforcements from Auren… then go after the mark again."

"It won't be that hard if we go now," says Avett. "They're eating dinner, we could just walk in. Walk out. Leave."

And yet when they make their way across the village and towards the shed, making sure to crouch below the glow of the dining hall's windows, they find that the door is padded firmly shut. The lock is bulky—but old from the village's lack of modern resources. Since Avett is a firm believer of giving traditional obstacles an innovative treatment, he readies the barrel of his blaster, holding it flat side down against the lock, flexing the muscles in his arm as he prepares to strike against it.

This plan is going to shit already.

Lilith winces as he poises to make the hit. The moment his blaster connects with the metal, a loud clang grates through the air. He raises the blaster up again, intimately aware of the noise he's about to make if he carries through with this plan.

"Wait," Lilith hisses. "I'm not confident in my ability to use ether entirely just yet, but—let me."

His grip loosens. She's already moved in front of the lock and gripped her hand over it.

Fine then, he'll step back, just this once. She shuts her eyes until they wrinkle at the sides, until the tips of her fingers are dangerously red.

Avett folds his arms across his chest. A second passes. Five seconds. The lock is still intact, and Lilith's lips have pressed into a wobbly grimace. They're wasting time—the strength she'd used to push him to the ground early had been a fluke, something akin to an outburst.

She looks to him, eyes swimming with puppy-like innocence.

Of all of the—he bites back the urge to smack her. "...What."

"It's a lot of ether to call up on such a short notice…"

"Fuck, just let go. I'll deal with it."

Lilith shakes her head. "I think you're missing something, Avett."

"Oh yeah?" he hisses back. "Missing what? Your lack of utility? I wouldn't miss you for shit, Lilith."

A raised eyebrow, and the faintest wisp of ether on the wind. "You can do better than that."

Her voice is lined with a stingy coating of arrogance, but it's there all the same. Avett tenses a bit at the challenge in her tone, unused to the confidence, but welcoming it entirely when he makes a face and indulges her and her unusual methods of manipulating ether. "You're a fucking freak. Get over yourself—better than that?" He towers over her, or at the very least, he tries to. "I could do so much worse. I could make you fucking break down in tears and get you to come crawling back for more right after."

"Oh yeah?" She grins, her hand shaking from exertion. Mousy brown eyes flare into a deeper umber, and her grin turns disastrous. "Can I get a demonstration?"

It's hard to keep his voice lowered in the throes of his passionate tirade. "You're a shit field partner. You know, at one point in the forest, I decided that I'd actually prefer Auren over you. Yeah, that's right." He's pacing around now, arms gesturing madly. "Auren—you know, the guy who's got the personality of a dried up cum sock—"

Lilith winces.

"—and I chose Auren anyway," he finishes. "Over you. At least the man can cook without having an existential crisis every ten seconds about how he's a useless sack of shit. By the way, your mushrooms tasted like ass. Never cook again. Fuck you."

The lock shatters in her hand, shrapnel splintering through the air and stabbing their pointed ends into the earth. Her gloves have protected her from the brunt of the damage, but she hisses and shakes out her hand anyway. The door swings open easily and without sound; a mercy, considering their prior ordeal.

Then she catches herself. She offers a worried glance to Avett.

He throws up his hands. "You told me to do it."

Speechless and properly humbled, she enters the shed. Avett follows along, pacing forward until he's next to her. He's sure that she can't see jack in the darkness of the unlit shed anyway, and any form of light would give way to their location all too soon.

Lilith skims the nearest rack with her hand, and his suspicions are confirmed. She might as well be blind, especially when she's running her fingers over a display of sharp blades—rubbing them the wrong way too, like she's ruffling against the way fur grows.

Turning away from his partner's inevitable despair, he scours around, noting down the contents of each rack, each stand. They've been sorted by date and arranged by type. The blades—the ones of higher quality, at least—are displayed on the walls alongside the blasters. Not sorted by coincidence, but by…

It takes a great amount of effort for Avett to squint, but to look away would've taken an equal toll on his conscience. On every hilt, every grip, every frame, there's a golden-edged insignia that blinks through the black and blue darkness.

"Avett, what does it look like?"

Lilith is on the other side of the warehouse already, and she's leaning over a table—Will's table, he realises. She runs her hands over the assortment of tools, wincing when one of the blades manages to snag on the seam of her glove.

"You mean, what does it feel like." He sidles through the rows upon rows of tables, making sure not to bump anything on his way there. "I can't stand to watch you fumble around. Play the casual racism card and let the cat man do the searching for you."

She steps back, her features scrunched up in disgust. To her, the tools—and he uses the term tools lightly, because he manages to catch the glint of a glossy magazine and the curve of someone's very pouty lips—are fuzzy shapes resting on a vaguely flat surface.

A quick scan of the tabletop tells him that his GlassLink isn't here. He pulls open the drawers, making sure to lift them upwards by the handle to avoid the clatter of the runners. Porn, porn, and porn—more stupid fucking ‘Playboy' booklets; a plastic cover with a Human chick on the front, her bare legs crossed up and over the other, revealing enough to tease but not enough to please; a smorgasbord of horny postcards, each model showing more skin than the last.

"Not here." He slams that drawer shut, moving onto the next, his other hand slipping into his pocket like it's second nature.

Lilith narrows her eyes in annoyance. "What did you see?"

"A whole lotta' useless shit."

He's scanning the second drawer for anything, anything at all, but it's the same shit again. His movements become desperate, more inane. Lifting a magazine gives way to more women, another sensual curve, another arched back, another, another—

Avett's ears swivel on the spot. He lowers into a crouch and pulls down Lilith with him.

The first footsteps are bold and heavy. They set Avett's heart ablaze, and he doesn't need his enhanced hearing to know that Lilith's heart is pounding equally as fast.

Will's flashlight circles around like a search beacon on an iron fortress. Lilith is literally hissing through her teeth like a snake ready to bite, but her doubt keeps her circling at bay. Which is a good thing—better for her to stay sober, than to go heady from the rage and malice.

"I know you're there." Like a hunter readying his rifle, Will goes absolutely still. "Didn't have to break my lock like that. Why don't you come out from under that table, and we'll talk this out like civilised Humans?"

Several seconds of silence drip past like a jar of spilled molasses.

"Should we answer?" Lilith whispers.

Avett's answer is blunt. "I dunno, it's your friendship you'll be ruining. Just know that he's reloaded a clean battery into his blaster in the time that he's taken to give you his 'we come in peace' talk."

He'd heard it—a subtle snap of iron against plastic, nestled between the words' civilised' and 'Humans', a sound he'd recognise three sheets to the wind. She slumps back against the leg of the table, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

"He's not leaving without a fight," Avett offers.

"He's got no reason to fight us when he doesn't know that we know about the dragon." She balls her hand into a fist.

"He's holding a loaded firearm, Lilith."

His partner pounds her fist into the ground, silence and violence concentrated into one swift movement so that she makes nary a sound at all when her hit connects. If only she'd channel that passion elsewhere.

Then she shakes her head. You first.

Projecting his voice out and upwards, he pushes aside his usual air of arrogance and wears a mask of pure brown-nosery on top. "Alright, you got us. You've won."

At least Will isn't moving forward anymore, but that's because he's entirely aware of where they're hiding right now. Avett hears the sound of cloth shifting against cloth and assumes the worst: his blaster, pointed right at the edge of the desk, just slightly above the surface so that when Avett pops his unassuming 'alien' head over, Will won't have to adjust too much when he shoots him between the eyes.

A rich chortle. "Why am I not surprised that it's you?"

Though he can't see Will from here, Avett is willing to bet that he's rolling his eyes into his skull. He decides to return that sentiment. "I'm just a little unforgettable like that."

He takes a few steps towards the table. "That's my desk, Ironsturm."

"And?"

Will halts, his leather shoes just visible from underneath the overhang of the table. "You like what you see?"

"I'm seeing a whole lot of vanilla and nothing else."

Behind the leg of the table, Avett gestures towards Lilith with a raised hand. Gears turn behind her once dulled eyes, fast and hard enough to fling sparks into the air.

The rattle of metal against metal as Will raises his weapon. A snort—then, an exhale. "Of course. Of course. I saw you eyeing up Mari earlier—emphasis on the 'up.' I suppose the men of your kind simply have to make do, hm?"

Lilith waves at Avett to scuffle back. When he does, she plants her feet firmly into the ground and squats low. Then she curls her fingers underneath the overhang.

Ether ripples through the shed, its scent hot and tangy like freshly pounded iron. Something changes in her posture. Maybe it's because she's finally hitting back, maybe it's because she's trying to lift a desk into the air, but she looks a little stauncher, a little more unhinged.

As the desk goes flying, flying, Avett replies with, "Don't worry about us. We've got it where it counts."

—

Four days.

Auren pushes past another cluster of ground-hugging bushes, wincing occasionally at the way their brambles stick into his slacks. It has been four days since he’d received Avett’s last call, and his GlassLink contact hadn’t lit up since.

Naturally, his captain assumed the worst.

So she’d sent him out despite his points about her safety—shooed out of her ship is a more apt description, now that he’s thinking about it—into the wilderness on a wild goose chase. Auren doesn’t even know how to track people ethereally. He’s heard of Palerians who can track by the scent of one’s ether, of Kattish hunters who’ll chase their marks to the edges of the world with nothing but a strand of hair.

He doesn’t know how to do any of that. His Gallian teachers chose his life for him a long time ago. They taught him how to maintain the portals between realities, how to check for barrier deficiencies and perform various maintenance procedures. Warding became second nature—it’s not his affinity, not at all, but it’s better masquerading around as a talentless backline caster.

Auren stops to snap off a dry chunk of ration. The moisture on his tongue is absorbed the moment he puts it into his mouth.

Field work is a break from the mundanity he’d subjected himself to for the past thirty or so years. Look at him now—babysitting for two frontliners, both ready to beat the other into a nasty stain. Portal deficits are easy to categorise, but he’s lost count of the various topics Avett and Lili have butted heads on, lost count on the ways he’s had to bail Avett from various encounters over the past year.

Auren’s getting a little sick of playing caretaker for Avett, but what can he do? That’s the role a backline caster has to play—caretaking, babysitting, standing just far enough from the action to feel the heat, but not close enough to get hurt. When he thumbs his caster’s pouch and sees that he’s running dangerously low on those company-mandated rations that taste like wood chunks and marinated cardboard, he promises to himself to give Avett some form of stern talking-to. Ysh’vanna already has enough to worry about.

He cranes his neck and stares at the slits of light through the canopy, drinking deeply from his canister, letting the cool water slide down the back of his throat. Each drop is ravished rather than savoured.

The lid clicks back into place. In the distance, he catches crushed grass, iron bolts; a scuffle. He heads towards it, batting away a stray branch. Sees dried black blood on blades of trampled undergrowth. On a stump, there is a lantern in the distance.

Four days.

11: the cough

One trip to the cabin and back and they've got themselves an entire environmentally-based kitchen in the middle of the woods. Lilith has fashioned a hearth out of various bundles of snapped branches. Their stolen culinary cookware hangs at the apex of her contraption, and occasionally it wobbles haphazardly. Avett has one hand on the edge of a sizable bucket of water for this very reason. He'd taken it from the estate, 'just in case.' That case now seems very plausible and very likely to occur.

Thankfully, Lilith seems to know what she's doing because not once does the pot topple over; neither does the makeshift hearth snap underneath its weight, sending a spark of fire careening throughout the entire forest and burning them alive. The idea of Lilith being a decent cook both surprises him and feels obvious, because of course she's decent; she's made her own meals every day for six years. It just strikes him as strange that he has to accept she's actually competent for once.

It's not long before the mushrooms are starting to brown and sizzle at the sides. The meal smells earthy and sweet—courtesy of the wild onions she'd dug up earlier, he realises. With a pinch of stolen salt and a handful of fennel, the meal is ready.

Avett stares at what she's made; it's small, it's bite-sized and looks more like a side dish than a main, but it's better than the soapy aftertaste of mashed root vegetables, so he'll take it.

It's only halfway through Avett's twentieth bite of Lilith's foraged mushrooms when he realises that the comforting protrusion in his left pocket is strangely absent. When he finishes his meal and idly strokes a palm over his pants, he's immediately aware of why; his GlassLink is gone.

With his bowl now nestled between a clump of grass and his shoe, he thrusts a hand into his pockets. When he comes up empty again, he searches his breast pocket, then the two on his ass—not like he'd ever put anything in there because he's not comfortable with sitting on his wallet or GlassLink at all. Those pockets are strictly nonfunctional.

Lilith just watches, her eyes unblinking as he stares at his lint-covered fingers. She scoops up another spoonful and chews thoughtfully.

"Look," he starts, his cheeks beginning to redden. "It was with me before. I-I don't know—they probably took it off me when they were tying me up, I could get it back if I asked."

Lilith isn't saying anything, but the ambient tinkle of her spoon against the sides of her bowl is enough to turn him into an uncomfortable mess. "Fuck, I'll call them, ok? First thing I'll do when I get my shit back is call them. Stars, you're annoying. I didn't forget. Not at all."

"You’re compromising a mission over your dick."

There's the line he's been dreading. Lilith's been a lot more adventurous with her verbal lashings as of recent, that's for sure.

He sends out his own counterattack, his precision sharper than a freshly forged pin. "Excuse me? Don't bring up compromising in front of me," he spits. “You think we’re stuck here because I want to get my dick wet? I’m fucking waiting for you to recover so we can get the fuck out of here, because if you’d told anyone about it—anyone at all—we wouldn’t be in this mess. The least you could do is be thankful that I’m even putting up with your shit, Lilith. You won't even tell me why you're out here, instead of in there." He points vaguely in the direction of the dining hall.

She exhales through her nose, her eyes fixed to the ground. Avett grits his teeth—he hates it, absolutely loathes that self-depreciated look on her face whenever he brings up something valid. It makes her look like a kid who's just endured a proper scolding, except she's like eighteen or in her early twenties or so, and she's not a kid; she's a frontliner who's been through more encounters than most. 

Avett waits for her to bring up the GlassLink again. He's not sure why he hasn't called anyone yet, but he sure as hell isn't about to give Lilith any leverages by shrinking back and apologising.

Something deep flickers in her irises. "Thank you," she says.

Hesitation seizes his body in a vice. His fiery rage has dissipated into a gentle surprise, and that's no good.

Lilith continues, "You did a good job, saving me. I'm sorry I kept secrets from you. I promise to do better."

All of this, and she's still looking towards the ground. Lilith is the only person who'll stand there after an insult and thank her enemies for it.

Avett trembles. His fist clenches at his side. The air around Lilith is fundamentally wrong, kind of like an empty doctor's office: beige and liminal. She looks like she could shrink in on herself at any moment.  

With an exasperated sigh, he sits back against the tree. Lilith is hopelessly good at making him feel bad for her. If not for her lack of self-defensive capabilities, he'd have punched her out of it already. But right now, she's meeker than an ewe. And Avett doesn't hit animals.

Her lips press together again, like she's trying to keep down a rise of bile in her throat. Then she says, "I still think we should leave soon."

"Did you not hear a word of what I just said? Not with you," he says, picking up the bowl again, "like this. I'm sure some of the villagers could help you regain control over your—"

Lilith shoots up. "They can't."

He damn nearly chokes on his words. "You can't be serious. They've trained, Lilith. They know what they're capable of."

She shakes her head. "It's not ether. Not like mine. I just know."

Another exasperated sigh. They can't do anything, can't go anywhere without bumping heads. How the fuck are they supposed to be working together when Lilith can't even admit that she's useless right now and needs help? She's about as open as a closed casket funeral. Avett's had better luck with their resident Gallian, he swears. Maybe that's because he's hardly around Auren for most of the time.

"Fine." Shrugging off the urge to roll his eyes, he scrapes around his bowl and finishes up. "But you better be trying on your own time."

Lilith only awkwardly adjusts herself in her seat. Man, he misses the woman who gave him shit for everything he’d said back in the old ship. He thinks about bringing up what she’d said earlier about the village last night, but he finds himself tossing the bowl in front of Lilith’s feet and leaving her for herself out of spite. It's not like she’s in any real danger from the dragon anyway.

—

When he gets back to the village, the low thrum of civilisation hits him like someone’s just thrown a warm blanket at his face. It’s totally out of left field, but it’s not exactly unwelcome. He places a jar of filched pickles in front of Johanne’s doorstep and is about to head for Susan’s shack on the other side of the square when he catches the flutter of a certain Human’s leathery jacket.

Before he can trace it down, it disappears behind a cabin that’s been mounted on a hill. She must’ve headed upwards.

Avett knows that it's not any of his business, but he finds himself following her anyway. The path behind the house is accented by worn-down stepping stones, and it hugs the sides of the building like a precarious child. When he gets closer, he finds that there are no hand rails to hold onto as he ascends the steps.

By the time he's gotten to the top, he's already huffing in exertion, and his legs are feeling pleasantly numb. In front of him is a gnarled tree, unlike any of the ones back in the forest. This one has long, glossy leaves that catch the sun at certain angles, giving the flora an ethereal glow.

Mari stands in front of two headstones, both fashioned out of grey waves of tin. A thin coating of rust has started to creep over the surfaces. Looped between the two stones is a garland of similarly glossy leaves, with the odd sprig of cilantro and thyme weaved in. A circlet of dead twigs lies on the dirt next to her feet.

Avett immediately starts down the hill again, his curiosity sated, but he guesses fate has other things in store for him when he steps on a poorly-positioned stepping slab and feels it slide from underneath his feet.

He lands on his ass not a second later. Mari whips around—then laughs.

"Thought you guys were meant to be good at landing on your own two feet," she teases, her hand outstretched; Avett accepts her hand graciously.

He pats himself down. "That's for shit like walking on fences. Contrary to popular belief, my tail does nothing for uneven ground."

"Any other fun facts about your tail you'd like to impart?" A subtle tug at the edges of her lips sends Avett's heart into a giddy gallop. He scratches the back of his head.

"Mine's longer than most," he brags. This isn't really something to flaunt at all, because he's been targeted by his cousins on multiple occasions about it. It's kind of like glasses—they're not necessarily a negative trait, not until you're in an argument. But when you do find yourself in one, you'll be enduring insults like 'four-eyes' until your ears pop.

Mari grins. She looks like she might have something else to say, but instead she folds her arms and nods at the space next to Avett. "And a warm hello to you too, Lilith."

Fucking hell, he's been so enamoured with this woman that he's totally tuned out of his surroundings. Lilith is panting hard, gulping down fresh bites of cool air. She still manages to glare at Avett even in her current weakened state.

"It's Lili," she says, once she's managed to catch her breath.

Mari waves a hand. “Oh, sorry. Will just kept referring to you as Lili, and Avett here seems adamant on calling you Lilith—and, well, you’re already well acquainted with Will.”

Avett watches Lilith’s chest heave a bit, like she might start talking again. But then she turns her head to the ground, resigning herself to complacency. “It’s ok. Just call me whatever.”

It’s amazing how quickly Lili can shut down conversations. Avett might consider it a skill, if not for the fact that it has probably never worked in her favour. Weaponised awkwardness lies in the palm of her hand, and all she’s doing with it is somehow managing to catch herself in the explosion radius. It reminds him of aspiring arms specialists during their first practical course.

Lili’s attention moves to the graves. “Your mum and dad,” she says. Her tone is flat.

Avett expects Mari to recoil from the bluntness of it all, but she lets out a single laugh and turns back to the tree. “Mhm. Miss ‘em terribly.”

Lili doesn’t say anything about that. She’s looking at the wreath that’s been draped over both headstones. At the odd blade of thyme.

Something seems to be churning in that weird, elusive mind of hers, but Avett isn’t sure what it is.

Mari continues, her voice dropping low, “You remember that day too, don’t you? That fateful Saturday.” She takes a few steps forward and reaches upwards to pluck a leaf from the tree; its branches shiver in response. “When the dragons descended and destroyed our world, leaving us in shambles—yet totally new, empowered and fight-ready.”

Her other hand lights up, engulfed in a spread of inky flame. She runs her fingertips over the leaf, leaving a trail of gold on its skin around the edges.

“A little.” His frontline partner sounds uncomfortable; not because of the topic at hand, but because she’s testing the waters. For what, Avett still doesn’t know.

“We lived around the northern part of Auckland, near Matakana. There wasn’t a lot of cover—we were wide open.” Mari stills, then takes out a utility knife and flicks it open. “I’m the youngest of five. My parents were too old, so they didn’t make it. They’re not even buried here—probably under some rubble back at home. Least they’re resting now.”

Lilith’s fists are clenching hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Mari is working down a branch from high up with her knife, sawing at it until it drops off. She holds it—leafy side forward—towards Lilith.

“It looks like we’ve both lost something in the apocalypse,” Mari says as she clips her utility knife back into its sheath. “Wanna help make wreaths for my mum and dad? We could talk about it. It helps.”

There’s a brief breath of hesitation before Lilith responds, her eyes looking elsewhere. Her arms remain at her sides. “It was a school day. I went to class and I never saw them again.”

A flicker of emotion ripples through Mari’s features.

Then Lilith turns and pushes gently past Avett. “Excuse me. Sorry. Enjoy yourselves. I’ve got… um, dishes to clean, and grime doesn’t come off easily if you leave it for too long.”

And then she stumbles down the hill.

What an amazing excuse. And an even more impressive exit. Avett’s a little displeased at her insistence of refusing to connect with other people, other Humans—but it’s not like she's not leaving destructively. He doesn’t really have anything to complain about here.

“Is Saturday school normal on Earth?” Avett asks.

Mari shrugs. “In this country? Not really.” She offers the branch to Avett instead. “She might’ve taken supplementary classes on the side. She looks like the type of person to take extracurricular courses.”

“If she did, they didn’t work. She’s kinda dumb. But she’ll be alright.” He presses a glossy-skinned leaf between his fingers. “So how does this work?”

“Sit down. You’ll be here for a while.”

Mari shows him how to thread the stems through the gaps in the wreath. She does it slowly, methodically, as she has for the past six years. Avett messes up a few times—sometimes he’ll snap the twigs right in half as he’s weaving them in; other times he’ll end up accidentally scraping the leaves between the gaps in the wreath, causing them to bleed chlorophyll from their fragile skins. He learns that the tree they’re using is called a magnolia, that the flowers it bears are beautiful, but it’s the wrong season for them right now. There are no magnolias on Therius, let alone on any other known realms. He wonders if there are other unique, unfound endemic species on Earth.

He’s kind of looking at someone like that right now.

With a twist of his fingers, Avett manages to pull the last thread of stubborn thyme through the gaps in the wreath. By the time they've finished, the sun's already sunk its core into the horizon, and the bell above the church has started to chime.

His ears perk up; Mari raises an eyebrow in interest.

"Wasn't aware that you liked the idea of dinner that much," she teases.

"Yeah, well, growing boys need nutrition." He shrugs and blows his hair out of his face as he starts down the hill again, this time with a hand splayed against the sides of the cabin like it's a handrail. "Lilith held me at gunpoint for lunch and forced me to eat nothing but sauteed mushrooms; I've been feeling the bite of hunger ever since."

"Ooh, so it's one of those types of relationships." She offers a hand once Avett is on the final few steps. "You scared of her?"

He folds his arms and pins down Mari's boyish gaze with his own stern stare. It then occurs to him where she's looking; her eyes are fixed downwards of course, courtesy of her height, but they're hovering a touch too low. Somewhere between his Adam's apple and his nose, tracing the gentle outlines of his cupid's bow. Fuck, he'd let this woman beat him silly any day. Kiss him silly any day.

He feels himself soften once the situation dawns on him; it's like he's just had the pleasure of watching the sun rise to the harmonial greetings of the new day, only to realise that he's stayed up the entire night. Mari looks like she might feel the same.

But then she leans back and crosses her arms behind her head, instantly heralding the end of whatever spell she'd put him under. "Dinner or what?" she asks.

"Don't just act like you weren't just thinking about kissing me." Avett could have had a bucket of ice cubes dumped over his head and it still wouldn't compare to the total mood whiplash she's just subjected him to.

“Thinking?” A smirk. “You think I’m only thinking about it?”

“Clearly.” He folds his arms.

She turns. The back of her head is silhouetted against the sun's farewell rays that stream through the curved awnings of the communal dining hall. “I don’t kiss on an empty stomach, Avett. Get some food in you, maybe I’ll reconsider it.”

“Like beef and mash is something to get hot under the collar over, but alright.”

Mari doesn’t respond.

—

The length of the dining hall yawns before him. There’s a long, wooden table in the middle of it all, and it stretches on for figurative eons. Placed strategically along the surface are metallic oil lamps, similar to the ones Avett had followed into the village… what, three or two days ago? Maybe even four.

As he stands in line for food, he finds that he can’t quite recall the exact measure of time since he’d first arrived in the village. Not that it matters too much to him right now.

He watches Susan, the woman he’d helped earlier, ladle a healthy helping of creamy mashed roots into his tray. She offers him a warm smile—a far cry from the glares he’d endured on their first day here. In fact, all of it seems so far away now.

The next villager piles layers upon layers of sliced meat into a separate compartment on his tray. He generously drizzles a greenish sauce over it—Avett assumes it’s mint, but he could be wrong.

Then he catches himself; him, wrong about a scent?

When he goes to take a testing sniff, he’s expecting the sharp tang of certain chilly herb, but instead he gets the soapy aftertaste of cilantro. There’s a note of thyme in there too, but it’s so overpowered by the initial scent that Avett nearly misses it.

“Cilantro and thyme as always,” his server says. “Mint doesn’t grow around here. Not anymore.”

"How come?" Avett asks.

His server eyes the tightly packed line behind Avett and the widening gap in front of him. Instead of answering, he responds with a low shake of his head. Time to move on.

When he's done receiving each and every server's blessings, he finds his seat next to Mari on the elder's table. Will offers him a tight smile—the other elders vary from outright distaste to warm welcomes.

A familiar touch at his shoulder keeps his back straightened, his eyes fixed on his meal and towards the warmer welcomes. Mari sits ever so tightly, her speech crafted like machine carved wood. She's stilted, but not as stilted as Will, whose expression looks as if he's stretched what should've been a gentle smile over his feral scowl.

Avett turns to his meal. The elders' table is incredibly silent, save for the occasional pratter about Susan's scarecrow attracting more crows than scaring them away. It's not until he's scraped off the remains of his mash that Mari taps him on the shoulder again. Twice—both uneasily sympathetic.

"Is that her?" Mari asks. Her head's tilted towards the entrance, the double entry doors still swinging on their brass hinges.

Lilith. Avett blinks hard enough to see stars. She's lining up for food. She's wearing the caster's tunic and pants.

Avett clenches his jaw and stiffens his shoulders. Lilith in caster's gear, wearing the corporate monotony of the IRC. She should be ashamed of herself, he thinks—but for what? The thoughts pass through him like ghosts, and he shakes his head. The taste of their previous disagreement still lingers at his taste buds like a scalding soup. It's hard to see Lilith without seeing red as well. That's all it is.

When she takes her seat next to Avett, there is not a single person that meets her eyes, no one to offer her a passing glance as she smoothes down her skirt and sticks her fork into a slab of meat.

He leans over. "What the fuck and why?" he asks.

She spends a while rubbing the sides of her beef onto the tray, making sure that not a drop of sauce remains on the slab. "Why what?" she retorts.

Avett starts her off with an easy question. "Why wear that uniform?" He’s not sure why it matters so much.

Lilith regards him for a second, her shoulders hunched like a watchful hawk. She bites into the meat later, tearing it from her fork grain by grain, sinew by sinew. Her knife remains flat against the table.

One of the elders darts his eyes elsewhere; another coughs into his sleeve.

"Please tell me you know how to use those." Avett jerks his chin towards the unused knife, his voice lowered.

"I came in my caster's gear because it's comfy," she answers around a mouthful of beef.

He tears his focus from Lilith and onto Mari again. Her cheeks are red, not from embarrassment, but in reaction to Will's temperamental, snarky smile. Avett can almost imagine his features turning dark in an instance of clarity, at the flourish of a curtain—he'd rage and burn at Lilith for her lack of manners while making it reflect on Mari's shortcomings somehow.

His partner stares him down as she takes another bite, chews on it methodically, then helps herself to another slab of meat. A challenge; this is premium bait in its purest form. Will eats it right up and stays silent—a bomb deactivated from lengthening the fuse.

This is stupid, Avett realises, because they are literally having a battle of wits over table manners and a tray of food. He turns back to Lilith, eager to blot out Will's narrowing simper. It doesn’t work.

Behind him, Will returns to his food. "I’m surprised that you’ve decided to eat with us at all."

Lilith doesn’t answer, choosing to prod at the surface of her mashed potatoes instead. She slides a prong underneath a leaflet of thyme and wipes it onto the side of her tray.

She definitely doesn’t need the opinion of two jackasses tonight. Avett bites back a snide insult with another mouthful of hot food. This is certainly not the first awkward dinner she’s had—he can tell in the way she holds herself. Her chin is aimed down at her feet, her head tilted away from Will like she can’t stand to breathe even the same air as him.

Lilith looks like she’s a small animal stuck between fighting and fleeing. She picks out another grain of herb and leaves it half-stuck in a wad of creamy mash beside the other one.

“Think you’re a little too old to be picky about eating your greens, Lili.”

A ball of muscle ticks in Lilith’s cheek. She grips her fork—

—and stabs it into the mound of pulpy mash, herbs and all. It goes into her mouth a second later. Will raises his eyebrows, but says nothing in response.

This is stupid, so fucking stupid. This is what years and years of unresolved tension does to a motherfucker. Avett is glad he’s done and dusted all of his previous less-than-stellar relationships before leaving for Earth, instead of allowing them to fester as dirty wounds do. A testament to this shitshow that they’re treating him to right now.

He’s about to lean over and tell her just how petty she looks when she stiffens, her face reddening as she covers her mouth with the palm of her hand. Her fingers dig so deeply into her cheeks that when she slowly lets go of herself there are white half-moon embedded in her skin.

Then she runs for the doors. They slam shut behind her.

Mari fixes Will with an unsteady glance, but the larger man merely scratches the scruff of his blond hair. “None of our business, Mari,” he says, cutting away at a slice of beef. “Don’t let your food go cold.”

Don’t let your food go cold.

His words are nothing to Avett—a discarded note of garbage in the afternoon wind, but it’s everything to Mari, to Lilith even. He rattles his chair against the flooring and storms after her, not stopping to give a single shit about the mess he’s left behind.

The night air nips at his skin, but all Avett can think about is finding Lilith. He can't see where he's going; it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sudden absence of light. There's no rush though: her coughs are loud enough to shake the birds from their trees. Avett follows her heaving splutters, feeling alongside the walls of the dining hall and finally crouching down next to a bush.

His hands grip onto her shoulders. She's turned away from him, her head buried in twigs and leaves. "Lilith." He shakes her, but she doesn't budge. "Lilith, what's wrong with you?"

"I'm fine—" She coughs again and takes in a wheezing breath. "Please don't worry—"

"Don't worry?" Avett feels his cheeks flush with hot anger. "Lilith, you've been sick all week, you launch into coughing fits whenever you eat, and you've been throwing up your food behind the nurse's back."

Lilith opens her mouth to fire back a retort, but Avett strikes first. "Don't deny it. You look like shit. You haven't even given this village a chance—even I have, and I'm—come on, please. You're clearly not fine."

Something flashes in those dim-witted eyes of hers, like they're finally seeing things in crystal-sharp clarity for the first time in days. Then she's back to her old, stiff self. "Where's your GlassLink?" she asks.

He squeezes her shoulders, his knuckles straining against his gloves. "What? Lilith, fuck the GlassLink—"

Lilith grits her molars and turns away briefly before fixing him with another clear-eyed stare. "Hold still, Avett."

It's then that she slips a hand into her pocket and pulls out a round, glassy object. When she fully reveals it to the night sky, he finds that it glows. The snow catches the starlight, and for a moment it looks like it's raining meteors inside the wintery diorama, their shine illuminating the plastic cabin that sits in the midst of the storm. The artifact, he realises, before another surge of apathy takes his head and drags it under.

"Look at yourself in the reflection, Avett." Her voice is slight, yet solid.

He's about to ask where the fuck she got her globe from when he sees himself staring right back in the glassy material, his rounded irises swimming in a pool of tawny brown. His ears—hidden behind his hair. The skin around his eyes is unblemished and clear.

There's a Human staring back at him. And somehow, Avett realises with muted horror, it feels right.

Until Lilith shoves the globe right into his ribcage, winding him and—surprisingly—knocking him to the ground. He catches the tang of ether on the wind when he hits the ground.

Her ether—angry, bright, and furious. When had she gotten it back?

It's like he hasn't been breathing at all for the past four—or five—days, and like he's only just rediscovered proper respiration after a brutal brain injury. He lies on the ground, his chest rising and falling as he wraps his fingers around the smooth finish of the globe for dear life. The image had shaken him to his foundations. His eyes scan the night sky, then the innards of the globe, but the snow has long since lost its star-ridden shine. He savours the touch anyway. 

The sure-fire memory loss examination comes to mind immediately. Avett sits up and says, "I'm Avett Ironsturm, and I'm a twenty year-old Kattish male."

…Factually true. Lilith blinks in confusion as he releases a sigh and slumps back to the ground. He’d experienced all stages of the onset of dragon-induced madness in the span of four days. He breathes. Four fucking days. It’d taken a week for the workers to even notice, but—only four days for him. 

"The Equaliser," she begins. Her tone is steady, but her heart is pounding loudly enough for Avett to hear, even from here. "I figured it out. I think you might've as well."

"Thank the fucking gods." Avett lets his head roll to the side, eager to let the image of his Human self wash over and away from him. Fuck that noise.