Chapter Text
Wednesday Morning
I was enveloped in darkness, but not silence. Something like a roar passed around me in a slow circle. The night rendered the massive fir trees around me into towers of obsidian, the long needles all swaying in the same direction as the wind cut through them. Not east or west, but clockwise around me, the pitch of the needles and the volume of the roar steadily increasing as the gust picked up speed. I stood still in the center of the growing tempest, my hair floating loose over my bare shoulders and down my body nearly to the ankle. There was no moon, only stars that cut the darkness like crystal. In the distance, beneath the roar of the wind through the trees, I could hear singing. I knew that song. I knew it like I knew the beat of my own heart. My lips fell open, as if on their own, and as the first notes left my mouth fire caught in the needles, casting a yellow glow, and I felt my bare feet leave the snowy forest floor.
I jerked awake and sat up with a small gasp, my fingers curling around my throat as if to cut the song off at the source. I sat there clutching my throat for a long moment, eyes squeezed shut as I forced myself to breathe in time with the beeping of the heart monitor. As the nightmare faded away into half-remembered wisps I forced my eyes open. Between the open curtains and the fluorescent lights the hospital room was agonizingly bright. I looked to the monitor first, though I barely knew what to make of all the numbers and the sloping lines it displayed, and rubbed at the waffle pattern that the top blanket had imprinted on my cheek. Nothing looked particularly different than it had last night.
It hurt to look down at Darren. He had been so vibrant when I met him. His skin warm and glowing, his eyes deep pools of near-blackness that sparkled with life. His broad, strong brow was now a strange ashy hue, and there was a hollowness to his cheeks. His eyes were shut. They were almost always shut. His chest moved shallowly, but steadily. I sniffled, looking away again, to the monitor that told me nothing and then to the open doorway. It was Regina’s voice that had woken me, I knew now. She sounded a lot like her cousin. The timber of her voice was different, but it was big and loud like his had been, filling and overflowing any room that tried to contain it.
I got up and went into the little bathroom attached to the room, where I grimaced at the sight of my own face once I finished up and went to wash my hands. Wisps of hair were escaping across the entire length of my braid on either side now, and the makeup I’d put on earlier that week was mostly embedded in the waffled texture of the blanket, revealing the large splatter of depigmented skin that tumbled its way down my left cheek and across my chin. A stark icy white against skin that barely had any peach to begin with. The small amount of eyeliner and mascara that were left were little more than broad smears that served to make my face look absolutely ghostly. I scrubbed it away with the horrible-smelling soap and cold water, and when I looked up again at least the false bags under my eyes were gone. Despite the circumstances, I’d managed to get a full night’s sleep.
I pulled my compact out of my purse and carefully patted in concealer across my entire face and down the length of my neck, hiding the mark and bringing a more healthy tone to the rest of my face. Pink lipgloss made a world of difference. There was nothing I could do about my hair though. Not here. I left the bathroom and peeked around the corner, already smelling the acrid stench of burned hospital coffee. Regina was, as always, perfectly put together. Aside from a few small stains on her scrubs that hadn’t been there last night, she did not look like she had just gotten back from all-night clinicals. Her skin was several shades darker than Darren’s, near ebony, but warm and shiny with health. Her bright blue eyeliner and matching lipstick was electric against her skin, and sharp as a knife. Her hair was pulled back into a perfectly careless bun and her nails, while trimmed short and blunt, were an immaculate powder blue. It made me hate her a little bit, but the sight of a second cup of coffee sitting on the side table immediately made me forgive her.
I edged past her, careful not to get in her light or nudge her as she studied Darren’s medical chart, and mumbled a small thanks as I retrieved the untouched cup of coffee. I took the lid off the gulped down the horrible liquid as quickly as I could, trying not to taste it. Regina raised her head, face twisting with horror as she looked between my cup and her own, which was sitting with the lid off, waves of steam coming off the surface. From the faint blue crescent on the rim, it looked like she’d chanced one sip and then immediately put it down. I shrugged, tossing my empty cup into the trash can.
Ragina shook her head and turned her attention back to the chart, “You fucking metas don’t even have to try.” she said, her tone more amused than the words and swearing suggested as she extended her hand out above her own cup, fingers twirling clockwise in the air above it.
Her lips mouthed silent words and some of the glass beads strung on the thin locs of her hair lit up, the microscopic runes on each one blazing to life. A faint tingle took up along the bones of my forearms and one of the machines behind Darren flashed a yellow strobe of warning. I took a step back in fear despite myself and then froze in place, grimacing with embarrassment. Fortunately the witch was far too focused on her spell to notice my rude reaction.
The steam rising from the black liquid stirred with the motion of her fingers and then caught, twisting around the digits like a silver thread. She pulled upwards, drawing out a good meter of gossamer, and then threw it into the air where it dispersed instantly, raising the temperature of the room by half a degree. The strange sensation in my bones fizzled out and Regina lowered the tip of a finger to test the surface of the coffee. When she took a sip, I couldn’t tell if her satisfied expression was from a spell well executed or if she was actually capable of savoring the hospital’s terrible coffee after this much exposure to it.
A nurse poked her head in, called by the alarm Regina’s witchcraft had tripped. Regina smiled at the other woman and tossed an empty apology as she closed in. Since the nurse was already there, could she give an update? They’d done half a dozen new tests. Blood draws, scans, scrys, and the like. The nurse threw out dozens upon dozens of words I couldn’t even guess at the significance of. I didn’t have to understand what she was saying, I could read the synopsis in the ever-thinning line of Regina’s lips.
The nurse departed and there was a moment of awkward silence while I stood there petting the residual dampness on my hands into my braid in a vain attempt to tame the flyaways before Regina’s dark eyes landed on me.
“I thought you was going to go home last night, kid.”
The last of the dampness clinging to my hands evaporated. “I, ah, I miss the last bus.” I said, fumbling for the little case of pills in my purse and mentally counting to ten. It was fine. I was fine. I wasn’t angry. It was stupid to be angry. I dry swallowed the pill.
“Mmhm.”
“Ta… you are… finding something?” I asked, hopefully, turning back to find her frowning with contemplation at the notebook.
“Not a damn thing.” She scribbled a few indecipherable notes into her notebook and slammed it shut. She drained her cup, her eyes hard on Darren as if he might be doing this specifically to piss her off, and then turned towards the door. “Fuck it. I’m too tired for this shit. Come on, kid, I’ll give you a lift back to the dorm.”
I was going to protest that I didn’t want to leave when Darren shifted a little, his eyes fluttering open, “Reggie?” he asked, his voice cracked and barely above a whisper. I sprang immediately to his side and clutched his hand to my chest, hoping against hope that he would grip me back.
“Dare!” She immediately reached for the little plastic cup that had once been filled with ice chips and now was little more than a few sips of tepid water, “Can you sit up a little, I’ve got some…”
Our shoulders slumped as one when Darren’s eyes shut again and he went still, his hand limp in mine.
“Fuck.”
“He is worse than yesterday.”
“Yeah.” She agreed, setting down the cup of water.
Her fingers strayed to the little potted plant she’d brought, a frown developing. When I’d run my fingers over the delicate little leaves last night they’d been soft and supple and green, but now the faint pressure from the side of her dark finger running across them made each miniscule fleck of brown crinkle and break from the stem. I grimaced. I shouldn’t have tried to water it. She shook her head and pushed the little plastic pot into the trash with her coffee cup.
“Let’s go. You got class and I got to pass the fuck out.”
I did not want to leave him, but there was nothing I could do and I had already missed several classes this week. I gathered up my backpack, filled with untouched homework, and quietly followed Regina out to her car, a sense of placid calm washing over me as the tranquilizer kicked in. The radio mumbled low over the silence between us. The roads here were smooth and graceful, arcing alongside the chilly, pebbled shores of the strand. Strond? I was pretty sure this dimension had been named after all these thin, steep beaches that lined the innumerable narrow seas that crept continuously inland.
There were many ways that Strondheim was similar to my own home dimension of Wend. It was cold here, with thick blankets of snow in the winter, and there were vast swaths of undisturbed forest beyond the tiny pockets of civilization. I had applied to Strondheim’s university specifically because I thought it would be a lot like home and because I had been told that the nordic languages were not too different from slavic ones. This only made the ways in which Strondheim was different from Wend all the more painful.
For one thing, people here liked the forest. Darren had repeatedly tried to get me to go hiking with him, reassuring me that it was perfectly safe as long as we stayed on the marked paths. There were no monsters here. Not even large predators. The only danger was getting lost or falling off a cliff. I’d refused, of course. The mere idea of willingly stepping into the shade of the tall pines made me shudder. I knew Strondheim was a stable dimension, without any need for the glowing stones of the Hem that were just barely holding the frayed edges of my homeland together. Still, my mind refused to accept that there were no monsters in the woods. No dark magic that could corrupt even the most pious into something wicked and twisted.
That was really more of an embarrassing personal hangup, though, not an actual problem. No, the problem was language. While the people of Strondheim had primarily descended from the Icelandic humans of Earth, the language of the land was, for some incomprehensible reason, English. I had been struggling since the day I’d arrived. I wasn’t the only one, but it certainly seemed like I had been the least prepared. Strondheim University accepted human students from all across the scattered worlds of Liminea, and during my time on campus I’d heard snatches of more languages than I’d even known existed.
Many of my classmates spoke with the same long pauses and awkward phrasing that I did, but none of them seemed to be doing quite so badly in the confusingly-named ‘English’ class, which did not teach English as I had hoped, but involved reading a great deal of literature and writing essays. My stomach dropped just thinking about walking into the lecture hall and watching Professor Svensson stride back and forth across the front of the class, extolling the virtues of some long-dead playwright all while dropping so many consonants and vowels that I could barely make out what he was saying, let alone process it.
I was so deep into my thoughts that I very nearly tumbled backwards down the stairs at the sudden yowl that came from around my ankles. I managed to catch myself on the handrail as the three-legged monstrosity bounced from concrete step to narrow metal rail to Regina’s shoulders with perfect feline grace. At last in her favorite spot again, Nessa yowled her torment directly into Regina’s ear.
“Uh huh.” Regina replied as she stuck her key into the door and jiggled it until it finally came unstuck, “I know, babe, I know.”
The long-furred calico continued to scream at the top of her tiny little lungs as Regina strode into the kitchen and bustled about rinsing out the cat’s dish and opening a fresh can of wet food. It was not until she removed the Nessa from her shoulder and plunked the little terror down directly in front of the full bowl that the sound finally stopped. Regina ran her fingers through Nessa’s long, fluffy coat, dislodging some crumpled leaves, and smiled as if the demonic little thing hadn’t just spent several minutes screaming at her.
I did not remind her that the dorms had a strict no pets policy, even though I very much wanted to. Nessa was, according to Regina, not a pet. She was a cat, yes, and Regina fed her and gave her free reign of the dorm and had bought her a special silk pillow, but she was not a pet. Every day since Regina had moved in to help me take care of Darren, I had come back in the evenings hoping the damn thing had been hit by a car, or eaten by one of the foxes that lived in the nearby forest and often ventured into campus and the neighborhood nearby to knock over trashcans. Unfortunately it seemed like not even the boldest and mangiest of the creatures was brave enough to take Nessa on, and she as intelligent as she was unpleasant. I was pretty sure I’d seen the little terror waiting at a crosswalk once.
I had tried being nice to her. I spoke softly to her and was careful not to walk too close to the tiny creature or her lashing tail when I passed her. I had even offered the feline her favorite treats of fresh, raw fish before cooking up a portion for dinner. She had refused them, and every time I tried to pet her she’d taken a swipe and hissed at me. The only time she ever willingly got close to me at all was when she positioned herself between me and Regina on the couch when we watched TV. At least with Darren at the hospital I didn’t come home to find her sitting at the foot of our bed, the end of her tail flicking. One orange ear straight up and the black one plastered down to her skull.
“I am taking a shower?”
“Yeah, go for it.” Regina said, turning to open the fridge and stare grimly at the lack of contents, “I think I’m gonna eat something before I crash. You feeling anything?”
“Ta. I am not hungry. Thank you.”
“Seriously? You didn’t eat last night, either.”
“I am fine.” I reassured her, removing the elastic from the end of the braid and using my fingers to detangle as I went.
I hovered over the dining table as I unbraided my hair, eyes skipping across the papers. It had started out as Darren’s research. Muddled, overflowing piles of paper almost entirely covered in highlighter and his tiny scrawling handwriting squeezed into the margins. Regina had commandeered the project, turning it into precise, gridded stacks of neatly ordered papers and reference manuals. Notes written in blocky lines on color-coded sticky notes, and surgical highlighting over only the most important details.
The notes might have been organized now, but I still didn’t understand them. The little legal pad in the bottom-right corner was the only thing that more or less made sense. ‘Multiple Sclerosis’ had been written in blue ink and then crossed out with red and ‘No lesions’ written beside it. ‘Lupus’ had similarly been crossed out with the note ‘no rashes’. ‘Vampire’ was written in purple ink about half way down and had also been crossed out due to ‘normal red and white blood cell count, lack of punctures’. ‘Curse’ had been written, crossed out, and then rewritten and crossed out again six times down the length of the page, each with a different reason.
“Don’t know how you do it. Every time I try to skip a meal I go fucking mental. I been fighting tooth and nail to drop thirty pounds and you sitting your skinny ass there not even fucking trying.” Regina grumbled to herself, ducking down to pick up a takeout container and peer inside, her lip curling in response to whatever she saw, “Ugh.” She tossed it in the trash and turned to dig in the cabinets above Nessa’s head. Once she had assembled a small pile of dry ingredients and dumped them on the counter she paused, staring at me, “Holy fucking shit, what are you, fucking Rapunzel?”
I smiled, though the blasphemy and swearing was starting to grate on me even through the pleasant haze of the tranquillizer. Darren had said something similar the first time he’d seen me with my hair down, “My hair is very long.” I offered, trying to be diplomatic.
Regina let out a long whistle, “Damn, I thought you just had thick hair for a white girl! I didn’t realize you had an extra meter of the stuff all tucked up in there like some sort of fucking magic trick!”
“It is not magic!” I protested, a little too quickly and harshly. Regina’s jovial demeanor dropped away like a stone, and I looked away, cheeks burning. “I did not mean–”
“Yeah. You did.” Regina turned back towards the stove, “Listen, I don’t really give a damn if my witchy shit makes some random bitch uncomfortable, but you’re a fucking meta.” She clattered about, setting a pan on the burners and dumping whatever she’d found inside, “Clutching your pearls and crossing yourself every time someone mentions magic is just hypocritical.”
“I am not meaning to be rude to you, and I am not thinking you are bad because you are witch!” I said, nodding to the melted part of the linoleum countertop where I’d last lost my temper, “Ta, for me magic is… hurts things.” I carded my fingers though my hair, watching her body language as it remained stiff, “You understand? Is not you.” I added, begged, unable to find the words I needed in a language she would understand.
Magic was something that she had sought out. Something she had to reach for. It wasn’t something that lived inside of her. That made her bones itch. That burned until it escaped and destroyed everything she touched. Regina considered the ruined spot for a long moment, spatula tapping against her chin, and when she looked up there was a squint of consideration now paired with the hard line of her jaw.
“Yeah, alright. I get it. It’s just a flinch.” She pointed at the melted spot with the spatula, “You know, if you learned how to use your abilities instead of pushing them down, you might be able to figure out how to… not do that. I’m sure my coven could figure out a safe way for you to practice, if you’re feeling brave. I promise we won’t do that whole dancing around the bonfire naked thing. At least not the first time.”
I could tell she was trying to tease in a friendly way, but a queasiness rose up in my stomach anyways. I wasn’t sure if it was some remnant of my catholic upbringing screaming against devilry, or just the idea of voluntarily unleashing the destructive force inside of me. Probably both. Despite my best efforts to push past it, a part of me was still convinced that any form of magic was destructive, not just my own.
Fortunately, I had a deflection in pocket for just such occasions, “There is metahuman support group on campus. I was going to go before Darren…”
“I think that would be a really good idea, kid!”
I hovered a moment, unsure. It was just a stupid little thing. It didn’t matter. But… she really was trying to be nice, and clearly she wasn’t going to be moving back out any time soon.
“It, uh. My name is not ‘kid’.” I said, wringing my hair, “It’s Dris-ee-ah.”
“Drysia.” She repeated with a tired smile, “Got it. Sorry.”