RD Walpurgis Nights 8, Part 12
Then…
The further they got into Freehaven, the happier Kriemhild was that this was to be their new home.
It was…nice. Oh, it was beautiful. It was strange in a mystical sort of way. It was lovely and peaceful-looking and fascinating and just seemed like a wonderful place to live.
But overall, it was nice. It was pretty weird, but it wasn’t over-the-top with it. It was beautiful, but not intimidatingly so. It felt kind and welcoming, if a city could be said to be kind and welcoming. And as strange and wonderful as it seemed, it also felt like a place where people actually lived.
Most of the building were tall and pretty close together, but the place that they were led was wide and open. There was a large, three-story building that sat in a white-stone plaza. It had the same white walls and red roof that the rest of the place did, though it had a high tower in the front, and two more towers on either side. The area surrounding it reminded Kriemhild of a school, with sports courts, a swimming pool, a grassy field, a garden, and a concrete quad with tables and umbrellas.
“That’s it,” said the woman leading them. “The Freehaven Integration Bureau. That’s where you all will be staying for now.”
“For now?” said one of the girls. “Like, for how long? And doing what?”
“A little of everything. It’s there to help girls like you learn about your new life and get used to things. And it doubles as a school so you won’t lose out on your education.”
“What! Seriously? We’re supposed to be dead! We still have to go to school even though we’re dead? Like, how is that fair?”
“We’re not dead, don’t you believe it,” muttered another girl.
The woman smiled patiently. “This way, please.”
“Come on,” Kriemhild said, tugging on Homulilly’s hand.
After the bad encounter on that plane…helicopter…thingy, Homulilly had managed to get her hands on a pair of full-arm gloves, ones that covered her all the way from her shoulders to her hands. Personally, Kriemhild felt that she shouldn’t need them. After all, they had already seen several people just as weird as she was walking openly. Heck, Kriemhild herself was just as weird, and no one gave her any problem with her legs.
Still, that was Homulilly’s choice to make, so Kriemhild just held her hand and kept her near. She had a feeling that her friend was finding everything to be a lot scarier than she was.
One of the other girls, a white girl with long, blonde hair, kept glancing at them. As they entered the building, she sidled up to the pair.
“Hey,” she said. “You guys are witches too, right?”
Kriemhild brightened at that. “We sure are!”
“Cool! I was afraid I was going to be the only one. I like your…legs, by the way. Bet you can get some distance with those.”
“Oh, well, yes.” Gretchen bobbled up and down a bit. “It’s pretty exhilarating. What’s your thing?”
The girl smirked. She tilted her head to one side and tapped her neck. “You know, I think I’ll save that for later. But trust me, it’s a riot.” She stuck out her hand. “The name’s Lucy, by the way.”
Kriemhild had already started to bow in greeting, but then stopped. Oh yeah, that was how people from other parts of the world greeted each other. “Er, Kriemhild Gretchen!” she said as she shook Lucy’s hand.
Lucy stared back. “Krimpled Gretchen?”
Homulilly, who had been hanging back, suddenly looked up.
“No!” Kriemhild said with a laugh. “Kriemhild!”
“Uh, okay. Hey, is it okay if I just call you ‘Gretchen’? Because your first name’s kind of a mouthful.”
“You can’t learn her name?” Homulilly said. “Why is that so-”
“Homulilly, it’s okay!” Kriemhild said. She turned to Lucy, who looked a little taken back by the sudden antagonism. “Sure! I was actually thinking of just going by that anyway.”
“Er, okay!” Lucy coughed into her hand. “Nice to meet you!”
As she hurried away, Homulilly turned to Gretchen with a frown. “Why not just have her use your full name?”
Gretchen made a face. “Er, I was actually going to talk to you about that.”
“Huh?”
“I was thinking of just going by ‘Gretchen.’”
“What? Why?”
Gretchen shrugged. “Well, because I think it sounds kind of nicer. Besides, I already had like three people mess up ‘Kriemhild,’ so it’ll just make it easier.”
Homulilly didn’t respond. She just stared.
“But you can call me whatever you want!” Gretchen said hastily. “I don’t mind!”
“Huh,” Homulilly said. “You really rather be called by your second name?”
“Kind of. Yeah.”
“Oh. Um, okay. I guess I can get used to it then.”
Gretchen smiled and gave her hand a squeeze. “Come on,” she said. The ground was starting to get pretty far ahead. “Let’s go see what this new world has for us.”
…
Now…
All in all, Ophelia did not consider herself to be missing out on whatever biological functions she had lost when she ceased to be, well, biological.
Periods? That was one of the first things they learned to get their bodies to stop doing. Aging? Forever young, hell yeah! Boys? Girls were so much prettier and they had boobs. Injuries that didn’t just fix themselves in a few minutes? The constant risk of death itself? Surely, it need not be explained why neither of them were missed.
Still, if she were to be truly honest, the one thing that she couldn’t fault those she knew for feeling cheated out of was the opportunity to become a mother, even if it wasn’t something she herself felt strongly about. Sure, it was probably a lot of hassle and heartbreak and way too much responsibility with no real guarantee that things would even work out, but there really was something attractive about creating a tiny person, helping them grow and mature, watching them develop an actual personality and interests of their own, seeing them make the same mistakes that you once made and deal with problems that you once thought world-ending but now feel trite in hindsight. And as someone who knew enough about her past to realize that her own upbringing had been…spotted, she did at times wish that she had the opportunity to correct that karma wheel, to do the good by her own child that wasn’t done for her.
However, being a parent had several significant drawbacks that she also had to acknowledge, and one of them was having to deal with the fallout when your kid had gone and done something really stupid and gotten themselves into an incredible amount of trouble. And as she approached the Militia headquarters to collect a certain Kriemhild Gretchen and Homulilly, she realized that she had never felt more like a parent than she did in that moment.
A very angry parent.
On the bright side, at least they weren’t locked up. Instead, they were sitting together along the wall in the front lobby, with a slightly bored marshal standing watch over them. The two had their heads bowed, and Gretchen’s legs had twisted themselves into so many knots that it would be a wonder if she was even still able to walk.
As Ophelia entered the lobby, Homulilly reflexively glanced up. As soon as she saw who it was, her face reddened and she quickly looked down again. Gretchen just gave her the quickest of glances and winced.
Ophelia, however, did not immediately look away. She stared right at them, eyes narrowed, until the weight of her gaze literally started to bend their shoulders. Oh yeah, they knew that they were in trouble.
Then she turned her attention to the receptionist, who looked just as bored as her coworker.
“Hello,” Ophelia said, her tone cool and professional. “I am Ophelia, and I am here to collect the two smog vapors in the corner there.”
“Hmmm. Hoe-kay.” Not even bothering to correct her slouch, the receptionist tapped a couple keys on her terminal. A pair of marshal reports suddenly materialized in the air in front of Ophelia, one of them containing a very unhappy looking Homulilly and the other an equally morose Gretchen. Next to each of their pictures was a rundown of the charges, which amounted to misdemeanors for breaking and entering of the Freehaven Integration Bureau and participating in the sabotage of their security system, and another for absconding with a special case new arrival, reduced from a felony charge due to the new arrival’s quick return.
“Bail for the pair comes out to seven thousand talents,” the receptionist said. Ophelia winced. It was certainly affordable, but also far beyond the amount she was used to dropping all at one time. Another readout appeared next to the girls’ records, this one providing details of their bail requirements. “As the poster you will then be responsible for the defendants’ behavior until their court date, which you will be notified of within twenty-four hours. I assume that they will be in your care until then?”
“Oh, most definitely yes.” Ophelia pulled out her bank card and slid it into the glowing receptacle on the desk.
“Mmmm-hmmm. Mark here.” A flashing octagon appear at bottom of the holographic display. Ophelia pulled off one glove and stuck her thumb into it. The octagon turned green.
The receptionist swiped her hand through the hologram, and it all immediately collected into a tiny glowing ball hovering over her thumb. She picked up a data crystal and stuck the ball into it. The crystal started glowing orange.
“The defendants have been fitted with tracking implants, and will neither be allowed to leave the city nor enter the FIB protected zone until told otherwise,” the receptionist said as she handed the data crystal to Ophelia. “Any further misdemeanors in that time will result in immediate incarceration with a new bail of nine thousand credits, and another two thousand for each additional misdemeanor. Felonies will result in the complete removal of bail entirely until their court date, and will be judged alongside the current charges.”
“Okay, but what if they behave themselves and show up when they’re supposed to? Can I get my bail back?”
The receptionist shrugged. “If found innocent, then yes. But considering they were kind of caught red-handed, then that’s up to the courts.”
“Ah.” Ophelia cast a sidelong look at the two defendants in question. Both of whom, it must be noted, were finding the patterns of the floor tiles to be extremely fascinating. “I see.”
Moments later Ophelia was seven thousand talents poorer and a great deal angrier. She pocketed the data crystal and made her way over to the pair. The marshal standing watch over them simply tilted her head toward them and shrugged before departing.
However, Ophelia didn’t leave with them immediately. She had just paid a hefty amount of money for her moral high ground, and by whatever nameless prehistorical magical girl that had wished her world into existence, she was going to get her money’s worth.
So she stood there, looming over them with her arms crossed, the fingers of her right hand tapping out a rhythm against her bicep.
As cheery and flamboyant as Ophelia normally was, she prided herself on having a fantastic glower, which she was now turning the full force toward the two criminals now under her care. And they felt it too. Their heads remained bowed, but their shoulders seemed to drop a few centimeters, Gretchen’s legs untangled themselves to lay flat like soggy noodles, and the petals of Homulilly’s flower actually started to wilt.
Ophelia kept the heat on until their discomfort was as palpable as her anger. Then she kept it going for another thirty seconds.
“Okay,” she said at last, making Gretchen visibly flinch. “Let’s go.”
She turned and headed for the door. She didn’t need to check to see if they were following. She could hear Homulilly’s heavy footsteps and the patter of Gretchen’s legs.
The Militia headquarters was nestled in the heart of the city, sitting on the boundary of the FIB protected zone, so it was a pretty long walk back to Ladoga. Sure, they could have taken the roofways, or even called for a zipper. But Ophelia needed time to stew, so they walked.
And walked.
And walked.
Partway there, Gretchen suddenly cleared her throat. “Um, O-Ophelia. I-”
Ophelia whirled perfectly on her heel and stamped her other foot down, bringing herself to a sudden stop after a hundred and eighty degrees.
“What?” she barked.
Gretchen winced. “N-Never mind. Sorry.”
Snorting, Ophelia turned back around again and plodded forward without another a word.
Finally they left the tall buildings and narrows streets and entered the winding cobblestone paths and thick foliage of Ladoga. Ophelia remained silent as she led the pair all the way to the fence, down the front path, up the patio stairs, and opened the door.
Oktavia was in her mechanized chair next to the stairs, and Candeloro was sitting in her easy chair. The two of them immediately straightened up as the trio entered, their faces full of questions.
There would be plenty of time for that later. Her hand still on the knob, Ophelia stood to one side and motioned with her hand for Homulilly and Gretchen to enter. They did so as slowly and heavily like the soon-to-be condemned that they undoubtedly felt like. Once they were fully inside, Ophelia shut the door and locked it.
“All right,” she said to the pair. “Sit.”
Homulilly and Gretchen hesitated for half a second, and then hurried over to the couch. They sat down with their heads bowed and hands in their laps, exactly the same way as they had done on the Militia bench.
“So,” Ophelia said as she removed her hat and placed it on the waiting hatstand. She walked over to stand across from the pair with the tea table between them. “This is an unexpected turn. You’d think I’d be used to them by now, considering how our week has been going, but honestly the two of you getting yourselves arrested is a new one. I sure as hell did not see this coming.” She glanced over to her girlfriend, who was parked right next to her. “How about you, Oktavia? You see this coming?”
“Nope,” the mermaid said. “Absolutely blindsided here.”
“Completely out of the blue,” Ophelia agreed.
“No warning whatsoever.”
“We just-” Gretchen started to say.
“You just wanted to find Charlotte because you were worried that she would leave us and be gone forever,” Ophelia coldly finished for her. “You felt that if you could get to her, you might be able to talk some sense into her. But since you had no idea where she was, you decided to start using your friend Hitomi Shizuki’s powers for good and get taken straight to her. Do I have the right of it?”
Gretchen’s head dropped again. “Yes,” she mumbled.
Ophelia sighed. “Well, congratulations. It worked. Charlotte called about an hour ago, and she and Candeloro are meeting face-to-face tomorrow.”
“But…then it worked!” Homulilly said, perking up. “We saved the family!”
“Yes. It worked,” Ophelia agreed. “You know what else worked?”
“Uh…” Homulilly and Gretchen said in unison.
“You successfully getting that intern that you shanghaied into helping you fired! There goes her chosen career. And probably someone else as well once they’ve finished their investigation! You two now have a record, so that’ll make any future job prospects kind of difficult. You made Hitomi take you to Charlotte without even knowing where Charlotte even was! What if she was someplace incredibly dangerous? What if you had gotten attacked? And…” Ophelia pulled out the data crystal and summoned up the list above her palm. “Oh yeah, the FIB was really pissed about this one. You roped one of the newly arrived, someone who has already proven herself to be extremely fragile emotionally and possibly even mentally, into your scheme!” She closed her fist, banishing the floating readout. “Do I even need to list all the different ways this could have fucked her up in the long term? Say what you want about all the things she’s done, but I thought we all agreed that the best place for her was at the FIB, getting help! But as soon as she was actually doing that, you go and yank her right out! Do you have any idea how fragile the trust is between them and her is right now?”
Homulilly opened her mouth. “But-”
“Take the whole last week out of the equation,” Ophelia said. “Take yourselves and your history with her and put it aside. Now, think back to your own time in the FIB. Think about all the times you’ve seen the newly arrived and how messed up they were over losing their family, losing their homes, and oh yeah, having fucking violently died pretty recently. Now, imagine that you heard that a couple of jackasses from the town decided to sneak into where one of the worst cases was being kept and twisted her arm into using her powers to help solve one of their personal problems. What would you think of those people.”
Gretchen winced. “Well…”
“YOU’D THINK THAT WAS A REALLY FUCKED UP THING TO DO!” Ophelia all but roared.
“But we just asked!” Homulilly wailed. “We didn’t force her or anything.”
Ophelia fixated her glower upon her. “Oh yeah? So you didn’t use her history against her at all? I know you have your own issues with the kid. You’re going to tell me that you didn’t use any of that to help, ahem, convince her.”
To this she got no answer, which was enough of an answer for her.
Ophelia continued. “And here’s another thing: I know we’re all upset over Charlotte having come down with a bad case of the stupid, but it’s CHARLOTTE! Yeah, she can get really stubborn and pigheaded, but odds are that after she had some time to herself to cool down and think about things, she would have come back on her own!”
At this, Homulilly scowled. “Do you know that for a fact?”
“No, I do not!” Ophelia snapped. “Just like you didn’t know that your scheme wouldn’t have gotten all three of you hurt! Or that you wouldn’t have made things worse and driven her off completely!”
Okay, now Ophelia’s smoldering anger was starting to erupt into white-hot fury. So she plopped down into her big red chair and slumped forward, fingertips pressed into her temples as she slowly breathed in and out, gradually getting her emotions back under control.
Once she felt that she had cooled off enough, Ophelia said, “Look. I know you two had the best of intentions. I know you got good hearts and were only doing what you thought you had to for our sake. But good intentions and good results don’t necessarily excuse bad actions. And I’m betting you knew that going in. You probably told a lot of people that if you did get caught, you two would take all the blame. Am I right?”
Gretchen swallowed. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “We’re prepared to accept whatever consequences you might have for us.”
“Me?” Ophelia sighed. “Aw fuck. What am I gonna do, ground you?”
Then Oktavia cleared her throat. “You know, you technically can.”
“Huh? They’re adults now! Besides, they’re not my kids, I don’t own them.”
“How much did you pay to bail them out?”
Ophelia hadn’t thought of that. “Huh. Well, that’s a good point. I guess I do own you now.”
Gretchen let out one of her frightened squeaks. Homulilly said nothing at all, though her face was now almost the same shade of white as Charlotte’s.
Ophelia mulled on that possibility for a bit, but then shook her head. No, grounding was for kids. This was an adult situation, which called for an adult response.
Besides, as pissed off as she was, she couldn’t deny the results.
“All right, I want you to understand that I am still very angry and very disappointed,” she said at last. “And I don’t like being either of those things, so that makes me frustrated on top of everything else. But I would be lying if I said that I’m also not…” she sighed, “incredibly grateful that you pulled it off. Despite anything I might have said out of anger these last few days, I wanted Charlotte back as much as anyone else, and it looks like that’ll happen.
Both of the girls started to relax a little, but they froze when they saw the look that Ophelia was shooting them.
“But that still doesn’t let you two off the hook,” Ophelia said. “So, here’s how it’s going to go: when we finally get your court date, you two are going to show up, apologize profusely, and accept whatever consequences they give you. Maybe they’ll just let you off with a warning and probation, though considering that the FIB is involved and they take this sort of thing very seriously, I really doubt that. So maybe you’ll have to pay a fine. Maybe you’ll be given community service. Hell, maybe you’ll have to do a little time.
Homulilly gulped. “We might go to jail?”
“Yah,” Ophelia said, staring at her. “That’s what happens when you fuck with the single most protected class in town. They’re probably going to completely revamp security in that whole zone, so future generations will have you girls to thank for the sudden lack of freedom.”
“We didn’t think of that,” Homulilly said, her petals wilting.
“Yeah. Hey. No shit.” Ophelia looked from Homulilly’s face to Gretchen’s. “So, we in agreement here?”
“Yes,” Gretchen said without hesitation.
Ophelia nodded. “That’s one of you. Homulilly?”
“Agreed.”
“Thank you. Now, after the dust have finally settled-”
“But,” Homulilly said, interrupting her. “I’d still do it again. If it meant getting any of you back, I’d do it again.”
Ophelia straightened up in her chair. Her fingers dug into the armrests. She said nothing.
Neither did Homulilly. She returned Ophelia’s stare without blinking.
While that was most definitely not what Ophelia had wanted to hear, she had to admit to being a little impressed. Homulilly had come a long way from the quivering little girl who hated to even go outside by herself. She had some real tough vapors in her gut, Ophelia had to give her that.
Ophelia considered making an issue of that little comment, but then decided against it. She had said her piece. Arguing further wouldn’t help.
“As I was saying,” Ophelia said at last. “Once the dust has finally settled, let’s also agree to put this whole dumb dumbness behind us. In the meantime, I have a lawyer to talk to.” She stood up and headed for the door, grabbing her hat on the way. “Jesus, I need leashes for all y’all, just to keep everything from devolving into pure anarchy! I’m supposed to be the rebel! When the hell did I stop being the rebel?”
With that, she was out the door, slamming it hard behind her.
…
Back inside, Homulilly and Gretchen finally let themselves relax a little. Holy crap, they knew that Ophelia was tough, but they hadn’t known her to be that scary.
“That…I guess it could have gone worse,” Gretchen said.
“Not by a lot,” Homulilly muttered.
“Still. At least she didn’t kick us out.”
Homulilly didn’t respond to that. The now very real possibility of going to jail was still looming all too fresh in her mind.
She glanced up at Oktavia, who was still reclining in her chair, watching the pair with a mixture of pity and disappointment.
“Well, don’t look at me,” Oktavia said. “I’m on her side.”
“I’m sorry,” Gretchen said. “We didn’t-”
“Ugh,” Oktavia said, making a face. “Let’s wait until we know what’s going to happen before we get to that. Though, uh, Homulilly?”
“What?”
“Now that you also did something really rash because you didn’t want to lose someone you loved, how about you give Hitomi a break if she ends up becoming a part of our lives in the future?”
Homulilly slowly breathed out. “I already talked to her about that. We’re fine. No more grudges.”
“Okay, good,” Oktavia nodded. She touched the control panel on her armrest, moving her chair in motion toward the door Ophelia had just stormed out of. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed to the studio. Ophelia did all the yelling despite promising that I’d get in a lick or two, so now I got all this angry aggression to burn off. I’m thinking…thrash metal.”
For the second time in half-an-hour, the door slammed. Homulilly and Gretchen were left alone.
Alone…with Candeloro.
Candeloro, it should be noted, had been sitting in silence the entire time. She had stayed silent during Ophelia’s entire lecture, she had stayed silent when things had gotten heated, she had stayed silent when Homulilly had started to talk back, she had stayed silent when Ophelia had left, and she had stayed silent when Oktavia had chimed in with her own piece.
But now that the two of them were gone, she finally raised her head and turned toward Homulilly and Gretchen.
Unlike Ophelia and Oktavia, she didn’t look the slightest bit angry. Quite the contrary, she was positively beaming. It was the first time Homulilly had seen her happy since…their graduation day, actually.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m not mad at you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “Thank you. Thank you so��”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to. They understood. Homulilly and Gretchen exchanged a quick look. Then, as one, they got up and went over to where Candeloro was crying and embraced her.
“Do you want us to come with you?” Gretchen whispered.
Candeloro shook her head. “No. She said she just wanted to talk to me. But, um, when you talked to her, did she say why she…”
Homulilly shook her head. “She doesn’t really believe that you’re Candeloro. She thinks that you’re just Mami Tomoe.”
“I thought as much,” Candeloro sighed. “How did you get her to change her mind? About talking to me, I mean.”
Gretchen winced. “Um, guilt trip, basically.”
That made Candeloro laugh. “I guess I can’t argue with the results.” She wiped the tears away from her eyes. “I just hope that I’m as effective.”
Gretchen sat up on Candeloro’s armrests. “You know her better than anyone alive,” she said, squeezing Candeloro’s shoulder. “Well, I mean, better than anyone living…existing…you know what I mean! Just make her see you as you.”
Candeloro swallowed back the lump in her throat. “What if I can’t though? I do know Charlotte, and you know how stubborn she is!”
Homulilly sighed. She straightened up on the other armrest. “Then…I don’t know. I guess if she won’t listen now, then just say something that’ll get stuck in her head, something that’ll make her change her mind later. I mean, Ophelia did say that she might just need some time to think about things.”
“I hope so,” Candeloro said softly. “I don’t know how I’m going to face all this without her.”
…
The next day…
The first time Candeloro and Charlotte had gone on a date, Candeloro hadn’t even realized that it was a date until about a third of the way in.
It had been a few months since her friends had bound together to intervene in her cycle of depression and drunkenness. Getting her to get off the drink had taken a lot of coaxing and support, but they had succeeded. Unfortunately, it hadn’t done much for her feelings of shame and self-loathing, and since she no longer had anything to drown them with, they had filled her every waking moment, until it had started to become too much of a chore to even get out of bed.
That had been when Charlotte had stepped in. One day, she had told Candeloro that they were going for a walk, and that was that. Candeloro had been fully prepared to ignore her, but Charlotte had insisted, coaxing her out of bed, to get cleaned up, to get changed, to eat a full breakfast, and then to go with her out the door. And Candeloro had gone along with it mostly because she couldn’t summon up enough willpower to resist. What did it matter?
The walk had ended up being a lot longer than Candeloro had thought it would be. Instead of around the facility grounds Charlotte had led her all the way out of the protected zone and down to the town square. Charlotte had talked nonstop, going on and on about their classes, about some new book she had read, about something funny that Oktavia had said, about some weird alien fact she had just learned about.
Candeloro hadn’t been very responsive at first. She was mostly just humoring Charlotte, after all. But after a while Charlotte ended up saying a few things that she found interesting. Then she began to respond. Then she began to engage. And before too long, they were having an actual conversation, like they used to have before Candeloro had made her big mistake.
By then Candeloro had started to feel much better. And by the time they gone out for lunch she almost felt like her normal self again. But it wasn’t until they had stopped by an ice cream stand and walked along the boardwalk while the sun set over the beach that Candeloro became aware that this walk was becoming a lot more intimate than hangouts they had had in the past. Furthermore, Charlotte was holding her hand.
Right about then was when she started to put things together.
It was one of her happiest memories, in part because for the simple fact of being their first date, but also because it was a time of pure happiness following the darkest point in her life. The town square always had a special place in her heart after that.
It was darkly fitting then that after being the place that her relationship had begun it would end up possibly being the place that it shattered to pieces.
The town square was a large, open plaza that lay nestled in the stretch of flat land between the foot of the hill and the beach, ringed with a short brick wall with a wide fountain in the middle. It was a popular place for town events, concerts, holiday celebrations, and pretty much anything that would require a large outdoor crowd. During the summer, the fountain would essentially become a small water park, with people splashing in the shallow water and playing among the shooting water jets. In the winter, magic would be used to make it snow in the plaza, the fountain would be frozen over into an ice skating rink, and a massive Christmas tree would be placed in its center.
Despite being in the dead of tourist season, the place was actually much less populated than usual. The storm had chased off most of the visitors that had been unlucky enough to be caught when it had hit, and had discouraged new ones from arriving. There was still a fair amount of people wandering about, but only about a third of what there normally would be. Candeloro was perfectly okay with that.
Candeloro got there at about 11:50, a full ten minutes before Charlotte said to meet her.
She stood at the entrance to the square and looked around. Per usual, people were going about their pleasant day: strolling, talking, laughing, flirting, playing, and overall just enjoying the sun, all of them completely unaware that an extreme anomaly in this world of freaks was among them. Had they known what she was, what had happened to her, she would no doubt would be swarmed by throngs of the curious, and that was if she was lucky.
On the one hand, she was thankful that nobody knew. That kind of attention was the last thing that she needed. And yet, on the other hand, she couldn’t help but be a little resentful. Her entire world had been upturned, both without and within, and here everyone was just having a nice time while being completely oblivious to the turmoil she was having to deal with. She knew it was unfair to be upset about that, but there wasn’t a whole of fair happening to her at the moment.
There was no sign of Charlotte, so she walked around until she found an empty bench and sat down. And then she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
It was only ten minutes, but the perception of time was a subjective thing, and every second seemed to crawl at a snail’s pace. She could feel her hair growing. She was aware of every itch on her skin, most of them concentrated on her new arms. She tried to lay her hands on the bench’s boards on either side of her, but that felt awkward and unnatural. She then placed one on the twisting metal armrest and the other across her lap, but they wouldn’t stop twitching.
She checked the time. To her dismay, it had only been two minutes. She had worked entire full time shifts that hadn’t felt this long!
Speaking of which, she still hadn’t figured out what she was going to do about her job. She hadn’t officially quit yet, and she certainly didn’t want to, but she kind of had to, didn’t she? There was no way she could hide her new condition from her coworkers, but she also couldn’t let them in on the secret. They had already called the house twice inquiring about when she was going to come back, the first time genuinely concerned and the second a little more on the impatient side. Ophelia had taken the call both times, letting them know that Candeloro was feeling out of sorts.
She needed to let them know that she wasn’t coming back, but she really didn’t want to. They needed to know so they could find a replacement. It wasn’t fair to keep them short-handed for so long. But she felt that if she cut that part off from her life, then she would lose her last bit of her old life. Her sense of self was gone, her wife was gone, and now she was going to lose her job and all her friends there as well, one that she genuinely enjoyed. It wasn’t fair at all.
She checked the time again. 11:46. Bleh.
Wasn’t time supposed to go faster here than it was in the world of the living? Apparently, her entire life as Candeloro had been squeezed into only a few weeks over there. She wasn’t really clear on what the exchange rate was, but that meant that this infuriatingly long ten minutes was contained within the tiniest fraction of a millisecond over there.
And that meant that her new existence as Mami Tomoe had lasted only a handful of seconds probably, if that. Someone alive somewhere on Earth had probably felt a sneeze coming on when she had made the change that still hadn’t come out yet. Or maybe it had. She didn’t know.
11:48
What if Charlotte didn’t come? What if she changed her mind at the last minute? Somehow, that would be far worse than if Charlotte had shown up just to tell her that she didn’t love her anymore and didn’t want to ever see her again. At least that meant that she cared enough to do it in person. But to have Charlotte simply disappear out of her life without so much as a goodbye? That almost made Candeloro regret not just simply letting her get eaten by the karnuk. At least then she could have been recovered and not turn her back on everything once she was hauled out of the beast’s stomach.
Almost.
Candeloro’s legs started bouncing. She was wringing her fingers together and couldn’t stop. Charlotte wasn’t coming. Candeloro was going to lose her without even being given the chance to fight.
Then a tingle went down her back.
It was sort of strange how it felt to be joined to someone on a spiritual level. She and Charlotte spent so much time together that they didn’t even notice the feelings of peace and contentment that the other’s presence brought them, but the longer they spent apart, the more that the other’s absence gnawed at their minds. Spending a few hours on their own to go to work or run errands or anything like that wasn’t a problem. But after a day or two feelings of unease would start to grow, like a persistent itch that they were unable to scratch. The last few days weren’t the longest period of time they had spent apart, but they had been by far the worst. At least with the other instances Candeloro knew exactly when she would be back with Charlotte and still talked to her daily. But the constant yearning for her while not knowing if her wife was ever coming back and knowing how much she was repulsed by her had been absolutely unbearable.
But by the same token, it did mean that they both instinctively knew when the other was near. Candeloro remembered stepping off the elysian from her trip to Ordo’s Furnace and entering the Freehaven skyport. Even though she hadn’t been told where the others would be waiting for her, her head had turned automatically in their direction as she had passed by a junction. And sure enough, there they had been, with Charlotte standing in their midst like a pink-haired angel.
Candeloro did not hear Charlotte’s footsteps over the sound of the fountain. She did not see her coming. But she still knew.
Sure enough, a moment later the space next to her was filled. Candeloro glanced over. There she was, wearing tight white pants that ended right over her calves, a pink-and-black striped shirt, and pink sneakers. She had on a pair of large-lensed sunglasses and was wearing a backpack.
Save for the backpack, all of that was part of Charlotte’s usual fashion sense, and none of it had come from their closet or dresser. Charlotte had bought new clothes. She was truly prepared to leave.
Candeloro swallowed back the lump she felt forming in her throat. Charlotte was there, but she wasn’t saying anything. She wasn’t even looking at her. She was just sitting there with her hands on her knees, gaze directed out toward the horizon.
Finally Candeloro couldn’t take it anymore. Someone had to be the first to break the silence. “You came,” she said softly.
Charlotte winced visibly behind her sunglasses. “Yeah.”
“I was starting to think you weren’t going to show up at all.”
“I…” Charlotte sighed. “I almost didn’t.”
Candeloro swallowed. “Why? Because…I’m not worth it? Because you still think that I’m just Mami Tomoe, that I replaced Candeloro?”
“That’s…I don’t know. Maybe.”
Candeloro looked down at the ground. “I’m not, you know. I’m not just some…”
Her voice trailed off. This wasn’t working. She had worked on what she had wanted to say, had rehearsed it in her head dozens of times, but now that she was actually there, now that Charlotte was finally here, she couldn’t seem to get the words out. Her throat felt thick, and her chest seemed to tighten every time she tried to talk.
The two sat in silence, watching everyone around them as they had fun. For once the place wasn’t oppressively crowded, likely due to the aftermath of the hurricane, but there still was a lot of people milling around, the sound of their voices talking and laughing mixing with the crashing of the surf and the calls of the gulls.
It all seemed so…normal, as if nobody was at all aware of the changes that had happened in Candeloro’s life. And how could they? To them it was just another pleasant day out in the sun. How could they know that the ninth official de-witching was among them? How could they not that only a few days prior, the two of them had done battle with the alien sea-monster that had caused the beaches to be closed? How could they know that one of their most tight-knit families was on the verge of falling apart?
Change. Change and fear. It really came down to that. Their life had been one where change had been gradual and only came when expected, and fear had been practically non-existent. But throw one major curve-ball at them, and things just collapsed. It really made her question how strong those bonds had been to begin with.
“So,” she said. “Do you, uh, want to go first, or…”
Charlotte sighed.
Then she suddenly stood up, making Candeloro jerk away a bit.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Charlotte said.
…
Spying on someone in Freehaven wasn’t exactly smiled upon. Stalking was, of course, illegal, but keeping an eye on someone wasn’t, not really, though where the line between one and the other wasn’t all that well defined. Still, following someone that really would rather not be followed could get you into big trouble with the marshals, assuming that you didn’t get found out and beaten senseless first. With death a non-factor and most injuries barely worth remarking on, bodily violence actually ranked far below harassment on the felony scale, so that was always something to keep in mind.
That having been said, while stalking was a bad idea, there was nothing stopping the gang from keeping an eye on things. And since Homulilly, Gretchen, and Oktavia weren’t in any position to go anywhere at the moment, Ophelia had become the designated scout.
She stood on a rooftop in the shade of a potted palm tree, chewing on a stick of taffy as she watched the town square. She had on a pair of contacts that functioned as adjustable binoculars. All she had to do was think it, and they would zoom in and out on anything she wanted.
“Okay, Candy’s still just sitting there,” she said into her phone, which was sitting on the pot and was on speaker. “No sign of our little runaway.”
“What’s she doing?” Oktavia’s voice asked.
“I just told you, she’s just sitting there, looking all nervous! And…”
Suddenly she caught sight of a very shapely brunette with a pair of equally lovely redheads, all of them wearing the absolute minimum of clothing walking by, and judging by the way the brunette was hugging the pair of redheads close to her it was pretty evident that their shared relationship was a few degrees beyond being simply friends.
“-oh, hello!”
“What? Is it her?” Gretchen said.
“No, I know that tone,” Oktavia growled. “Ophelia! Stop checking out girls and do your damned job!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Ophelia refocused on Candeloro. “Okay, still no sign of…hang on.” She turned her attention to one of the side entrances to the square. “Oh, wait, wait, wait, there she is. The jackass is in the house.”
“Is she with anyone?” Gretchen said.
“Nope. Just her, and a really stupid pair of sunglasses.”
“I don’t think anyone that wears your kind of hat is in any position to make fun of anyone’s taste in fashion,” Oktavia said.
“Shut up. My hat may be stupid, but I rock it.” Not today though. Her big, red slouch hat was too much of a giveaway, so she had on that baseball cap she had gotten from the Aurora Borealis. “Okay, she’s seen Candy. And…yup, she’s heading right for her. This is happening.”
Ophelia watched as Charlotte walked over to where Candeloro was sitting and took the seat next to her. Unfortunately their backs were to her so she couldn’t make out much beyond that.
After a few seconds went by Oktavia said impatiently, “Well? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Ophelia said. “They’re just…sitting there. I don’t even think they’re talking.”
“What? Why not?”
“I don’t know. Awkwardness, I guess. And…okay, no, now they’re talking.”
“About what? What are they saying?”
“How should I know? I’m like half a kilometer away!”
“Just move and download the lip-reading app! It’s not that expensive!”
“No! I told you, I’m just keeping an eye on them, not…okay, wait. They’re getting up together. And now they’re leaving the square.”
“Where?” Homulilly’s voice demanded. “Where are they going?”
“Hush. Let me…let me see…”
She tracked their movements as they moved from the square and started heading up the hill. It was one of the center streets, so it was wide enough for her to keep them in sight.
Then she saw where they were heading and sighed. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Oktavia said. “Why uh-oh? What’s going on?”
“I’m about to lose them.”
“You know that already? Why?”
“‘Cause they’re heading straight for the Rising Gardens.”
…
The Rising Gardens was located a little bit up the hill. It functioned as a nature walk, but also had kind of a twist, in that it was sort of a three-dimensional hedge maze. The whole place was a tiered structure made of wooden mesh and had went up about four stories, and those four stories were crammed with vines, flowers, fungus, shrugs, ferns, grasses, and even tree trunks that extended down through all four stories to rise up and spread their branches over the gardens. The paths were winding, rising up and down via random staircases, and no matter where you went you were surrounded by exotic plant life. Special hidden devices filled the maze halls with sunlight, and enough separation had been enforced between the roots, trunks, and vines to keep the interior from feeling claustrophobic. Non-pest insects such as butterflies, moths, and bees flitted everywhere. It was a wonderful place to just go and let yourself get lost in.
“Homulilly and Gretchen said that they found you in Old Town,” Candeloro said as they walked along.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Figured it was the best place to lay low while I figured things out. Still not sure how they managed to find me.”
“Well, uh…” Candeloro wondered how much she ought to reveal. Her younger friends’ legal troubles weren’t exactly appropriate conversation material.
Then she sighed. Oh, to hell with it. Charlotte ought to know what they did on her behalf. “Well, basically they broke into the FIB and convinced Hitomi to take them to you.”
Charlotte came to a sudden stop next to a vibrant patch of pink-and-violet orchids. “What.”
“Yes. And they apparently botched their return and were arrested.” Candeloro made sure that she had a good view of Charlotte’s face. “Ophelia was on her way to go bail them out when you called last night.”
Sure enough, Charlotte looked positively horrified. “Homulilly and Gretchen broke into the FIB, absconded with Hitomi Shizuki, and got themselves arrested? Them?!”
Candeloro shrugged. “Yes.”
Charlotte’s face seemed to go to war with itself. Her mouth kept forming itself around words that seemed unable to emerge while her cheeks, brow, and eyes tightened and loosened in response to the many conflicting emotions she was probably feeling. “But that’s…they couldn’t have…don’t they get how-”
Candeloro laid a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “I don’t think you’re in any position to judge them,” she said. “They did it for you.”
Her face falling in defeat, Charlotte sighed. She gestured helplessly and shrugged.
Then she glanced at the hand on her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but her face did clench up.
Wincing, Candeloro moved her hand away.
“Sorry, it’s just…” Charlotte motioned toward Candeloro’s arm. “I’m not really, um…”
“It’s okay, I get it.”
Shaking her head, Charlotte started walking again.
“They said you had a flight out of here,” Candeloro said after a bit.
“I did,” Charlotte said with a nod. “Still do. Just…rescheduled. For later today.”
Candeloro winced. “Why? I mean, I understand if you needed some time to yourself. But why were you leaving town?” Well, it was time to broach the question that had been hanging between them from the start. “Does me being…this really repulse you that much?”
“I…” Charlotte pressed the fingertips of her right hand against her forehead. “Ah, damn it. I guess there’s no gentle way to put this. Mami, you scare me.”
Candeloro wasn’t sure what hurt her more: the idea that her own wife was scared of her or that she was still thinking of her exclusively as “Mami.”
“I mean, a witch turning all the way back into a Puella Magi? That’s…you have a better chance of going full witch than you have of that! It’s such a remote possibility that it’s not even worth thinking about, it should have never had happened! But it did. And now you’re here.”
Candeloro shot her a look. “Me being…?”
“Oh, don’t start that. You know exactly what I mean. You being Mami Tomoe!” Charlotte threw her hands up in the air in dramatic fashion, scaring away a few pigeons that had been nesting atop a nearby vine-covered statue. “Mami Tomoe, Puella Magi! The one who got caught up in the Incubators’ stupid system and turned into a witch! The one that’s supposed to be dead! The one that Candeloro was made from!”
Candeloro winced. Thankfully no one had really taken notice of Charlotte’s outburst, or if they had, they were making sure not to pay attention.
To her credit, Charlotte also seemed to notice that she had made a poor decision, if the grimace she was wearing as she looked around was any indication. She lowered her arms and stuck her hands into her pockets.
“So, is that what you think?” Candeloro said after they had walked a ways. “That I’ve…replaced Candeloro? That I’m really not her?”
Charlotte huffed. “I can…accept that you think that you’re Candeloro. I can accept that you might have your memories.”
“I do. And I can prove it.”
“You don’t need to-”
Candeloro took a deep breath. Then she said, “Your name is Charlotte, but your fans call you Charlotte Walpurgis, a name that Ophelia dared you to take because you refused to believe your publishers would take it seriously, and you ended up owing her ten talents when they didn’t even bat an eye. We all went to school at the Cloudbreak Public University, and you used to get into fights with Oktavia because she wouldn’t stop playing her keyboard when you were trying to sleep. You got a Masters in Classic Literature and figured that was enough to get yourself a job at the library.
“You like listening to vaskergoros folk and vekoo jazz, but can’t stand heavy metal no matter what species it comes from, despite going through a very loud punk phase when you were in your second-to-last year. You go into weird fits whenever you come within spitting distance of cheese, something we found out when you literally dove over the lunchline back during our first year and had to be dragged out by your ankles. When we got our parrot, we all threw dice to decide who got to name him, and you won and named him ‘Cheese’ as a joke. You’re allergic to green beans for some strange reason. You and Ophelia once spent an entire month waging war on one another for no logical reason whatsoever, and it only stopped when Ophelia accidentally hit me in the face with a snowball she had been keeping in the freezer. You once tried to prank Oktavia and I into going on a terrifying ride at Sardi’s Land of Miracles, only for it to backfire and you passed out on the ride. We had to replace the kitchen window once when you started showing off throwing darts during a barbeque. You’ve been arrested twice, once during our FIB days for getting drunk and breaking into the pool after hours to go skinny dipping with your friends, and again two years after we all graduated when you, once again, got drunk with your friends and broke into the FIB pool to go skinny dipping. Oktavia was with you both times. And they say I have a drinking problem. You flunked Physics our Senior year and begged Ophelia to tutor you so you could get through the makeup course. She waited four years to call in that favor, and to this day I cannot get any of you to tell me what she made you do, I just know it was kind of illegal and Oktavia was involved somehow. Also, you enjoy having me tie your arms to the bedframe whenever we make love, and having me leave a trail of kisses all the way from your forehead all the way down to your-”
“Stop it,” Charlotte growled. “I get it.”
“I just wanted to prove to you that I’m still me.”
“So I’ve heard. Homulilly even told me that you’re still using her name.”
The constant attacks to her identity were making Candeloro’s stomach sour. “But?”
“I can’t accept that she is the one in the driver’s seat. That you’re really her, instead of someone who just slipped back into your skin and took over.”
“Why?” Candeloro demanded. “Why are you so sure?”
Then Charlotte was taken over by a rage and fury so pure and so hot that it made Candeloro recoil. She had seen Charlotte angry before, but never like that, not with her face twisted up in hate and grief.
“Because she felt you coming back,” Charlotte snarled. “She was terrified of you, terrified that you would wake up and take away everything from her! Remember? Do you remember the day I went to talk to Hitomi Shizuki and learned everyone’s old names? Do you remember what happened that night?”
…
Then…
“Candeloro? Are you all right?”
It was late evening. Most of the household had gone to bed, though Charlotte doubted that any of them would be doing much sleeping. There was just too much weighing on their minds. Hell, Charlotte had learned exactly nothing of her own past, and she was expecting to be kept up for several hours through empathetic insomnia alone.
As if only to prove her point, instead of going to bed after undressing, Candeloro was standing at the window, staring out at the neighborhood. Ladoga was pretty quiet as far as streets went, and most of their neighbors had turned in for the night as well, so most of the lights were out. They had always liked how the neighborhood looked at night, with the heavy foresting and curving cobblestone streets and the graceful, elfin streetlamps. At night, when the lights went down, the streetlamps went on, and the night insects came out, it looked like something out of a fairytale. When they had first moved in, the two of them would often just spread a blanket on the roof and lay there in each other’s arms, listening to the sounds of the night. They still did that on occasion, when they mood took them.
But that look of peaceful allure wasn’t what she saw in Candeloro. Instead, her wife looked pensive, almost haunted. It was pretty troubling.
“Candeloro?”
Instead of turning to her, Candeloro continued to stare out the window while saying, “Do you know what the strangest thing about all this is?”
Charlotte pursed her lips. “Uh, the fact that one of Gretchen and Homulilly’s old buddies just so happen to show up right on their graduation day and not only knows most of our old names, but major details about our pasts as well? Because that’s pretty damn strange.”
“I mean besides the obvious.”
After mentally sifting through just about every possible answer to that question, Charlotte shrugged. There was so much strangeness going on that she didn’t even know which one to pick first. “Okay. Shoot.”
“It’s that…it’s despite the fact that I am still technically dead, I’m the one that feels haunted. I mean, that’s strange, right? According to every objective scale, I am a ghost.” Candeloro laid the end of a ribbon against the glass. “But I can’t shake this feeling that the dead are watching me. Calling out to me. Isn’t that weird?”
Charlotte pursed her lips as she thought on that. “Nah,” she said after a bit. She shook her head. “It’s not weird at all. I mean, if you think about it, you’re not the dead one.”
Candeloro glanced at her from over her shoulder, her face troubled. “How do you figure?”
“It’s just something I read in a book once. You can’t be dead in your own world. Every world has its own version of alive, and when you stop being alive in that world, you go to wherever you’re supposed to be next, right? So if this world was made specifically for people like us, then according to the law of the land, we’re the alive ones. But our past selves?” Charlotte shrugged. “Well, they up and died in that other world. So they’re dead and we’re not. What you’re feeling is perfectly logical.”
She actually got a small laugh from her wife for that. “Oh, good Lord,” Candeloro said with a roll of her eyes. She left the window to finally head over to the bed. “Leave it to you to try to take apart an existential crisis with literal terminology.”
“Yeah, that’s me. ‘Charlotte Walpurgis destroys identity angst with facts and logic!’”
Candeloro made a face. “Is that from something? Because it sounds insufferable!”
“Ah, I got it from this anti-witch idiot’s channel on GalacWork. Most of her holos have stupid titles like that. On the one hand, they really are as stupid as they sound. On the other…comedy. Gold.”
Candeloro shot her a very familiar look.
“Yeah, I guess now’s not the time,” Charlotte sighed. She held the bedcovers open, letting Candeloro slide in. “Sorry.”
Candeloro laid her head back into the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. “Do you remember back at the FIB, how we’d sit around talking about what kind of people we might have used to be, making up lives for our past selves, that sort of thing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Remember how I told you that I would have given anything to know my story? To know what happened to me, what that car and all those tea pots were all about?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, now I do know! About the car at least. And I can find out almost everything I ever wanted to know! I can ask you her name right now and I’ll find out.”
Charlotte pressed herself close to Candeloro, nestling her chin on Candeloro’s shoulder and wrapping her arms around her torso. “But…you don’t want it anymore?”
“No,” Candeloro said after a pause. “No, I do not. In fact, I kind of wish that I didn’t learn what I do know. It feels like everything I learn wakes her up a little bit more, and if I keep going she’ll…” Candeloro shivered.
Charlotte’s brow furrowed. “She’s dead, Candy.”
“I know. But…”
“She’s dead. Her story’s over. And everything that’s left of her is living a perfectly happy life in you. And if you ask me, she probably prefers it that way.” Charlotte slipped an arm behind Candeloro’s head and gently turned her face toward her. “So stop worrying about something that’s not going to happen. Worst that could happen is that maybe we’ll have to go into therapy for a bit if spiritual dissonance starts to happen. And that happens all the time. Trust me, you have nothing to worry about.”
…
Now…
“So what am I then?” Candeloro demanded. “Some kind of parasite?”
“No, you’re the host,” Charlotte said flatly. “I fell in love with the parasite. You know, seeing how I’m one myself. Then you exterminated her. Took your body back, took your name back, took back everything. Well, fine. It was yours to begin with. And if the others are so willing to just let you slip in and replace her, then that’s on them. But I don’t have to be a part of it.”
Candeloro slowly breathed in and out. “Charlotte, that might the single ugliest thing I have ever heard you say.”
“I tell it like it is. And you’ll notice that I’ve done most of the talking here. Weren’t you supposed to try to convince that I’m wrong, that you really are still Candeloro, just with some kind of expansion pack or something? Some kind of upgrade? Candeloro+ or something? Candeloro MK II? Candelmami? Mamiloro?”
“Stop it!” Candeloro cried. “Stop it right now! This is tearing me up enough as it is, and you’re making jokes?”
“Then get on with it already!” Charlotte said with an impatient roll of her wrist. “Convince me!”
At that moment, a trio of girls appeared around the corner, oohing and aweing over the flowers. Candeloro and Charlotte froze in place and then tried to look inconspicuous. If the trio had noticed the argument taking place, they made no sign as they walked right past them and headed up a nearby stairway to the upper level.
Once they were out of sight, Charlotte sighed and said, “Well? Go ahead.”
Candeloro opened her mouth…and then closed it again. She looked down at the ground, tears prickling her eyes.
Charlotte tilted her head to one side. “Well?”
“That…That’s just it,” Candeloro said, her voice shaking. “As terrible as it is, I’m not sure you’re wrong.”
…
“Well?” Oktavia demanded. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, because I can’t see them!” Ophelia snapped back. “They’re way deep in the maze!”
“Then follow them!”
“No, you pushy voyeur!” Ophelia said down with her legs crossed Indian-style and her arms folded. “I’m going to sit here and wait until one of them comes out! That’s it! Go read a book or compose a diss-track if you’re so bored!”
…
“Okay,” Charlotte said after the silence between them had gone on long enough. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
Candeloro tried to wipe her eyes with her fingers but found them too stiff and too shaky to really do the job without potentially jabbing herself in the eye, so she used her wrist instead. “Right after…right after the change, the whole, um, Candeloro and Mami dichotomy was…pretty stable, I guess. I still had my sense of self, I still had my old impulses and reflexes and tics, I just had this part of me opened up. A-And while all those memories were…painful, I figured I would get used to them in time. And while we were on the Aurora Borealis I had too much on my mind to really give much thought to sorting that out-”
“You mean me,” Charlotte said.
Candeloro sighed. “Yes, you. Being rejected by my wife was a little distracting, yes.”
“Fair enough.”
“Besides, the memories were all fresh then and hitting me all at once. I thought that once I was home, once I was someplace familiar, things might…settle into place.”
Charlotte frowned. “I’m guessing that they didn’t?”
Candeloro shook her head. “That, or they decided to settle in the worst way possible.”
…
Then…
“Only thing is, he won’t tell us the last part! How do you make it? I have to know!”
Despite having spent most of the day walking around in a silent, robotic trance, that actually managed to pull Candeloro out of her funk, at least enough to feel a small trickle of amusement. The recipe that the marshal was referring to actually was not one of her own, or Charlotte’s. Rather, it had been a fairly standard recipe that Ophelia had read out loud to Cheese from a cookbook in a vain attempt to break him of his swearing habit. The marshals could probably just search up the name of the cookbook and get the rest without trouble.
Then Cheese, who had been happily walking back and forth across Ophelia’s shoulders as she talked to the marshal, suddenly took notice of Candeloro.
Candeloro was admittedly not all that close to the family bird, at least not as much as the others. Oh sure, they liked each other well enough, and she did her part to help take care of him, but he always seemed to prefer the company of the two other couples than to her and Charlotte, which had been fine with her. He was great fun to have around, but he tended to be pretty needy when it came to attention, and he had almost developed a bad habit of chewing on her ribbons until they managed to break him of it.
Still, they did get along just fine, and she was honestly glad that he was okay. However, as soon as he saw her, he suddenly straightened up, all of his feather flaring up. Then he started flapping his wings in agitation, squawking loudly.
“Cheese! Hey! Knock it off, you asshole!” Ophelia shielded the back of her neck with one hand while shoving the other arm against Cheese’s legs to get him to step on so she could get him away from the back of her head. “Jesus, what has gotten into you?”
Candeloro said nothing. She was wearing a pretty bulky hooded jacket and had her hands nestled in the front pocket, so if anyone who knew her saw her they wouldn’t notice that something was amiss without taking a really good look.
But still, Cheese somehow knew that something was off.
“Wonder what got into him?” said one of the marshals, who had been in the process of leaving when the bird’s fit had brought her to a stop.
“He’s…moody,” Homulilly told her. “Sometimes he just throws temper tantrums for no reason. I’m surprised he didn’t act out when he was staying with you girls.”
“Well, he was kind of a handful, but I thought he’d calm down once you all got back.” The marshal shrugged. “Animals. Who can tell, eh?”
Candeloro glanced at her and shrugged.
Then she did a double-take.
The marshal was a witch. Physically, she looked to be a short, petite girl with dark skin and straight black hair. A jagged blue line divided her face in half, starting on her forehead over her right eyebrow to zigzag down between her eyes, over about two-thirds of her nose, past her mouth, and down her chin to disappear into the collar of her uniform. Everything on the left side looked perfectly normal, but the entire right looked like it had been carved from an opal. The color seemed to change as she moved, sometimes being marble-white, then sea blue, then pale green, then blood red. The part of her lips on the shimmering side also changed color, but to whatever the opposite her skin happened to be at the time. One dark eye looked perfectly normal, while the other was jet black with a bright golden iris.
Although she knew what she would find and dreaded it, Candeloro’s eyes went down toward the marshal’s arms. Most of them were covered with the thick brown sleeves of her uniform, but she could still see her hands.
They were blocky and made of yellow-painted steel, with gleaming pistons running down her arms into her wrist and across each finger and cables stretching from jutting poles, like a construction crane arm.
All in all, the girl’s witch remnants were striking, but hardly noteworthy. Candeloro encountered people just as strange every day, and not too long ago would have been thought of as just as odd. But seeing the girl had jogged something inside her, something from a long time…
…the massive crane-arm slammed into the steel girders that Mami had been standing upon. Had she not leapt off when she had, she would have been crushed into a pasty smear.
Still, she had dodged just in time. Unfortunately, she had been rather high up at the time, and didn’t have destination in mind when she had jumped; she had just been trying to get away from the witch’s attack.
And once she was in the air, there was nowhere to go but down.
Mami had been nine stories up the skeletal network of catwalks and girders, a little more than halfway to the witch’s head. And with the structure lacking walls, ceilings, or more importantly floors she found her trajectory headed somewhere hard, painful, and quite possibly lethal.
Arms and legs flailing at nothing, she started to fall.
“KYYYYUUUUUUBEEEEYYYYYY!” she screamed as the girder and pipes whooshed past her and the concrete floor rushed up to meet her.
“Your ribbons!” Kyubey called to her, speaking in her head like he always did. “Use them to break your fall! Hurry!”
Her ribbons?
Oh, right. She had those now.
Mami thrust a hand out. In response, a yellow ribbons materialized, one end clutched in her hand and the other wrapped around a girder. With a painful jerk her trajectory was suddenly redirected as she stopped falling and started to swing out.
Too late she realized that swinging outward when surrounded by so many steel beams was just as potentially lethal as falling straight down.
Her ribbon hit one such beam and she was sent hurtling. In desperation she created another and managed to pull herself out of the way before smacking headlong into a girder.
Then one of the witch’s crane-arms came down, hitting where the ribbon was connected and severing it.
Mami was again tumbling through the air, but this time had half-a-second more to react. She thrust her hands right in front of her, created a spiral of ribbons between her and the beam she was about to fly into. They absorbed her momentum, slowing her down. Then, before she could be hit again, she thrust another ribbon at a nearby girder and launched herself through an opening in the beams, sending her safely outside of the witch’s body.
Her landing was still rough, but not nearly as painful as it would have been otherwise. She tried to stand, but her legs buckled under her, and she fell fully onto her back as the world spun around her.
Adrenaline was still coursing through her veins, and her heartbeat was pounding away in her ears. This was only the third witch she had fought, and it was easily the craziest. The other two hadn’t come nearly as close to getting her as this one had, nor had she had any kind of escape quite so…thrilling.
“Uh, hey!” the marshal said, suddenly breaking Mami from her trance.
Mami stared back at her. “Huh?”
“I asked you what was wrong. You just…started staring at me. Are you all right?”
Mami didn’t answer. She just stared.
“I said, are you all right?”
A fluffy white blur was bounding toward her. “Mami! Are you all right?”
Mami shook her head to get everything to stop spinning. Then she looked up.
Things were still…weird. The “sky,” if it could be called that, was in actuality a canopy made up of blue balloons painted with white clouds that clustered tightly together. The “sun” was a massive yellow spotlight that was pressed through the balloon, which sent a single glaring beam straight down at the witch, which was a bit on the…large side.
Most of the witch looked like the steel gridwork of a skyscraper still under construction: fourteen stories of girders, beams, and catwalks. Twelve construction cranes protruded from its edges, four on each edge, which were surprisingly fast, considering their size. And suspended on a crisscross of cables top and center was a huge dome-shaped magnet, such as the kind used in junkyards.
Stuck onto the magnet was a metal ring, which in turn suspended a glass bowl the size of a house, full of some kind of clear liquid. And floating in that liquid was the witch’s head.
Half of it looked like a child’s doll, with dark plastic skin, dark straight hair, and a dark plastic eye that swiveled crazily in its socket. But the other, divided from the plastic side with a jagged line, gleamed like mother-of-pearl, its colors constantly changing. Its mouth was open, and it seemed to be reciting an endless deluge of mathematical equations in a disconcerting monotone voice, which were broadcasted throughout its labyrinth courtesy of the megaphones stuck through its body’s framework.
Mami leapt to her feet. “I’m fine,” she said as she started running toward the witch again. Climbing its body so as to get a clear shot at the head hadn’t worked, but she was already formulating another plan. “Kyubey, you said that the weapons conjured up by my ribbons are limited only by my own understanding of those weapons internal workings, right?”
“Correct,” Kyubey said as he bounded after her. “That is why you have had so much success with muskets. Their mechanisms are simple and therefore easy to replicate.”
Mami nodded. She deftly dodged two strikes from the cranes as they tried to impale her and darted into the gridwork. “Okay. But is there anything that says I can’t make something similar to the muskets, only…larger?”
“Nothing at all. Why?”
This time, instead of heading upward, Mami went inward, heading to the center of the structure until she was directly beneath the suspended bowl that held the witch’s head. There were still plenty of beams crisscrossing between her and it, hence her previous attempt to get closer.
But even if she had gotten close enough to get a clear shot, she doubted that she would be able to do much damage. She didn’t know how much in common with real steel its body had, but it was probably close enough to blunt her bullets, magic though they were.
“Because sometimes, you don’t need to get closer,” Mami said as she backed up until she found a point of trajectory that was relatively clear of steel beams. Then she held out a hand. “Sometimes you need to get bigger.”
As was the case whenever she summoned up her muskets, her ribbons twisted around each other, only this time there were many, many times more of them, and they took on a much, much larger shape. When the thing solidified, she was holding into the grips of a cannon that any battleship would be proud to display on its prow.
Mami took aim. Then she fired.
Her gleaming, golden cannonball shot straight and true. What steel beams and cables that did get in the way were shredded in its wake without stopping its momentum. It struck the side of the glass bowl, covering it with cracks and sending the magnet swinging.
The cables holding the magnet snapped, and the whole thing fell: magnet, bowl, head, and all. It struck several of the beams along the way, each one shattering or denting it a little more. Mami rushed out of the way to avoid getting hit by the glass shards.
The witch’s head wasn’t nearly so lucky. By the time it hit the ground, it was already a cracked and broken mess, one that fell to pieces upon impact.
Then, just as the other two witch labyrinths had, this one shimmered and fell apart, and Mami found herself standing next to the steel factory in the city’s industrial zone where she had tracked the witch.
And sure enough, at her feet was a jet-black grief seed.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Mami knelt down and picked it up. Using that giant cannon took considerably more magic than her muskets, so this would be of great help. Still, the cannon made for a great finishing move. She should probably keep using it. Though she probably ought to come up with a cool name for it though. Something like that was too good to go unnamed.
“Uh, hello? What’s up? You’re kind of freaking me out.”
Ursula the Construction Witch’s patchwork brow furrowed in concern. She waved her mechanical crane hands in front of Mami’s face. “Hellllloooooo?”
Mami jerked abruptly out of her stupor. “I, uh, s-s-sorry…”
Then Homura took her by the arm. “I’m sorry, she’s been feeling a little out of sorts. She got real seasick on the way back and spent the whole trip throwing up, so she’s still a little woozy.”
Ursula took a reflexive step back. “Ah. Say no more. Hope you feel better.”
“Right!” Homura started to move Mami toward the front door. “So let’s just get her inside so she can get her inside and-”
“Wait, hold on.” Ursula suddenly moved herself in front of Mami. She leaned for a closer look. “Have we…met? Because I am getting the weirdest sense of déjà vu right about now.”
Before either Mami or Homura could respond, the marshal that had met them at the door called out, “Sully, seriously? Of course she does! Their photos are all over the house!”
“Nah, that’s not it. I swear we’ve met…”
Mami’s tongue felt like it was glued to the top of her mouth.
Then Ursula shrugged. “Oh well, probably just ran into you…somewhere. Sorry about being weird.”
“No problem!” Homura said with a nervous laugh. She started leading Mami away again. “Um, thank you for looking after the house! Owe you one!”
The others quickly fell into place around them and moved Mami fully inside the house. Once she was inside, the spell broke, and she start trembling.
No, not Mami, she thought. That’s not my name anymore. I am Candeloro. She is Homulilly, that is Ophelia, and Oktavia, and Gretchen. Get a grip. Just because you killed that witch years ago is no reason to…”
“Okay, what just happened?” Ophelia said. “You all right?”
Swallowing, Mami managed a shaky nod. “I am. Sorry.”
“You sure?” Ophelia said, not looking in the slightest bit convinced. “Because-”
“Just a weird. I’m fine. Really.”
But she wasn’t. She was very far from being fine.
…
Now…
“Okay,” Charlotte said. “You’re telling me that seeing this girl not only triggered flashbacks to when you killed her, but it also triggered a full-on identity crisis?”
Candeloro sighed. “Yes, Charlotte. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Ah.” Charlotte’s hand fidgeted, the fingers tapping out an anxious rhythm against her thigh. “That…Wait, just seeing her face kicked this off, but hanging out with the others didn’t? I mean, you knew them when you were all alive.”
Candeloro fell silent.
“What?”
Candeloro slowly breathed in the humid, earthy air. “That’s just it. Once that one happened, the others did so as well.”
…
Then…
“I’ll…I’m just going to go take a nap,” Candeloro said as she wearily made for the stairs.
“Anything I can get you?” Ophelia called after her.
Though she was grateful for the offer, Candeloro just shook her head. After her little episode, all she wanted was sleep. She started up the stairs, one hand laid flat on the bannister. She reflexively tried to wrap her whole hand around it before remembering that she didn’t have that level of flexibility anymore, so she settled for just stiffly curling her fingers around it.
As she walked upward, she heard Ophelia say to Homulilly and Gretchen, “Um, let me know if anything in your room is out of place, I guess. I’m going to go check on the garage.”
Candeloro paused halfway up. She glanced down to watch Ophelia walk into the kitchen.
Ophelia, Witch of Flames. Ophelia, whose lifestyle was as eccentric as her choice of dress. Ophelia, diligent engineer and accomplished dancer, who paradoxically balanced a juvenile sense of humor with a strong sense of personal responsibility, whose attitude was so childish in some ways while being the most grown-up of them in others. Ophelia, to whom Candeloro had lost her virginity during a very poor string of bad decisions but still remained one of her closest friends years later.
But that wasn’t all she was.
Candeloro started up the stairs again. She tried not to look at the framed pictures that hung on the wall to her left, but one did give her pause.
It was all of them back during their time in the FIB, long before any of them had really figured out who they were. That had been a very chaotic time for all of them. Everything had been so new and fascinating, but also kind of scary, full of new surprises and strange oddities.
Everyone looked pretty much the same as they did now, thanks to the benefits of never aging. And yet they all looked so different, mainly due to their evolving tastes in fashion. Candeloro herself had on a pair of black shorts and a midriff-revealing top that she was kind of embarrassed about now. She was of course comfortable with her own sexuality, but it had been a long time since she had felt any need to flaunt it. Her final two years there had been kind of a wild time.
Of all of them, Charlotte had probably changed the most. She had really been into some…very interesting kind of music back then, and was wearing a leather jacket with several band patches sewn on that was probably still at the back of their closet, a pair of faded jeans with a studded belt, and a shirt bearing the main character of a cartoon famed for its racy humor. Her hair was also much different, in that it had been gelled up into some kind of hawk. Also, she had on way more makeup back then, especially around the eyes, and had a lip ring. Candeloro had actually liked that lip ring, though Charlotte had stopped wearing it when it had accidentally gotten caught on Candeloro’s lip when they had made out just a little too enthusiastically.
As for Oktavia, well, she hadn’t gotten her cap then, but she looked more-or-less the same. For some reason she had never deviated from the short, boyish haircut she had shown up with. Candeloro supposed that having short hair made all her time in the ocean easier. At any rate, here she was just a pair of aviator sunglasses and shirt decorated with colorful seahorses.
As for Ophelia, this had been long before she had settled into what would become her trademark style of dress. Instead, she was wearing a simple black tee-shirt, a pair of cut-off shorts, a dark blue denim jacket, a pair of calf-high boots, and black baseball cap bearing the logo of a wrestler she had been a fan of. She was standing with one foot resting on the edge of a low wall, one hand on her hip, and the other touching the brim of her hat as she half-grinned at the camera, her fang showing prominently.
Candeloro stared at her in particular. In her mind, the denim jacket morphed into a green hoodie, and the cap was replaced by a long, flowing scarlet ponytail tied back with a black ribbon.
I’m Kyoko Sakura. Thanks. If hadn’t come by I would have bit it.
Mami reached up and gently pressed her fingertips to the image of the hat, so that Kyoko’s face stood in stark relief.
You saved me. Wow. I never knew there was such an amazing magical girl here in Mitakihara.
Her eye twitched, and she hastily moved the rest of the way up the stairs.
Unfortunately it was too late. Now that her mind had focused on that particular set of memories, they wouldn’t shut up.
So long as we’re talking about selfishness, I wanted to ask you: may I please become Mami-san’s student?
Mami quickened her gait, as if moving faster would allow her to outrun the downpour of memories that were threatening to bury her.
If that’s the case, I’ll be fine then. Ever since I was small, I watched my father and thought about how I wanted to bring happiness to everyone. I guess my wish to make my father happy was the first step towards making that a reality. To protect the happiness of everyone, that’s my wish.
Her hand didn’t tremble in the slightest as she tore the door to her (and Charlotte’s) room open and bolted inside. She slammed it shut and collapsed with her back to the door.
They’re gone. It was my wish. I just wanted them to have happiness, but it broke him. He found out what I did and it broke him!
Her legs buckled out from under her, and she slid down to the floor, her fingertips digging into her temple and forehead.
Huh? What the hell do you know? There’s a difference between losing your family in an accident and losing your family because it’s your own damn fault! It all happened because of my magic! So you know what? I’m never going to use my magic for anyone else’s sake again! I’ve decided that all this power is only for me to use, for my sake.
Mami half-crawled, half-staggered her way over to her bed. She didn’t bother to undress before she hauled herself onto her side.
I’ve had it with you! Our partnership is now officially done!
Her hand instinctively reached out for Charlotte’s, but she then remembered that Charlotte was gone.
Being lonely is a hell of a lot better than putting up with you all the time!
Instead, she seized up Charlotte’s pillow and pressed it down over her head, but nothing would drown out the angry shouting echoing in her head, or the sound of fists connecting with flesh.
Now take that!
And that!
And that!
…
Now…
“Ah,” Charlotte said. “Well. Um, I don’t really know what to say to that.”
“Her father had just murdered her mother and sister before hanging himself because he found out about her contract,” Candeloro said flatly. “She was not exactly in a good place at the time.”
“No kidding. Was she the only one?”
Candeloro sighed. “No. Not by a long shot. It just kept happening.”
…
Then…
“Well, hey,” Oktavia said. “Look who’s up. How you feeling?”
Candeloro walked out into the backyard. There, Oktavia was lounging in one of the lawnchairs, reading a book. “Better,” she said. “A lot better.” She plopped down in the chair next to Oktavia.
“Well, sometimes all you need is a really good night’s sleep,” Oktavia said. “God knows, none of us were sleeping well on the boat.”
That much was for certain. “Can’t argue with that,” Candeloro said. “Um, hey, Oktavia. I don’t suppose you guys have heard anything about…?”
Her question trailed off, but Oktavia obviously knew what she was talking about. Grimacing, she shook her head. “No, sorry. Still no word from her.”
“Oh.”
“But don’t sweat it! You know Charlotte, sometimes she gets all moody and stubborn! Once she’s come to her senses she’ll come right back, probably on hands and knees just begging you to take her back!”
“There’s an interesting image,” Candeloro said dryly.
“Eh, it’s what I do,” Oktavia said with a shrug. “Besides, you know how love is. It-”
“-sucks!”
“Huh?” Candeloro said.
“I said love’s complicated, you know?”
“Really? I thought you just said it sucks.”
Oktavia shot her an odd look. “Nooooo. It’s messy sometimes, but-”
“-I can’t believe she would do this to me! Now! I thought we were friends!”
“Well, sometimes even the best of friends don’t always see the whole picture,” Mami said. “She probably thinks that she’s doing you a favor.”
Sayaka’s face twisted up in confusion. “Candy, what the hell are you talking about? Why would Charlotte be thinking that she’s doing me a favor?”
“But you know what the worst if it is? Maybe she’s right. Because there was a moment where…where I regretted saving her from that witch! Isn’t that awful? How could he love someone who thinks like that!”
“Don’t think like that!” Mami cried. “It’s not your fault. It’s not-”
Then she blinked.
Wait.
What?
Sayaka (no, no, no, no, no! Not Sayaka! Her name was…was…was Oktavia now!) was staring at her in bewilderment. “Er, Candy? Uh, sorry, I know you’re going through a hard time right now, but you are making exactly zero sense. The hell?”
Mami shook her head. “I…I’m sorry. I just had a really weird episode.”
“I can tell,” Saya…Oktavia said. “Um, do you want me to get Ophelia or something?”
“No,” Mami said as she hastily stood up. “No, I just…need to clear my…”
Then she quickly moved back into the house, all the while echoes continued to bounce around in her head.
Some hero! How could I think to be worth anything if I have that in me! How could I ever think I could be like you!
…
Now…
“And happening.”
…
Then…
Candeloro reached for the bathroom door. Before she could touch it, the door opened, and Gretchen stepped out.
The younger girl was obviously just freshly showered and changed, if her still-damp hair was any indication. “Oh!” she said, seeing Candeloro. “Sorry, let me get out of your way.”
“Not at all,” Candeloro said, moving aside so Gretchen could scuttle past. She was about to enter the bathroom herself when she heard Gretchen clear her throat.
“Um, Candeloro?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Are you…are you doing okay?”
Candeloro swallowed. “Well, as well as can be expected, given the circumstances. But I am fine, thank you.”
“Okay. It’s just that Oktavia said you, uh, had kind of a weird…”
“Yes. I had a strange flashback. Just…still need to sort these new memories out, I guess.”
“Okay, because if you ever-”
“I’m fine,” Candeloro said, and then she winced. That had come out a lot more harshly than she had wanted.
“Oh,” Gretchen said. “Sorry.”
“It’s-”
But Gretchen had already scurried off to her and Homulilly’s room.
Sighing, Candeloro went inside and closed and locked the door. She looked at herself in the mirror.
The face of Candeloro stared back at her.
She looked like a horror. Her eyes were sunken, her golden hair a frightful mess. And after snapping at Gretchen, she felt pretty horrible too.
Oh, Gretchen, Gretchen, Gretchen. The sweetest girl Candeloro had ever met. Even as she had grown older she had never lost her kind heart.
Of course, it had come with the territory. She had always been kind to a fault, selfless and caring and…
No!
No, she couldn’t go down that path again! She couldn’t let those memories creep up, memories like-
I’m sorry for crying.
No! Not again!
Don’t be. It’s a scary thing, the first time you get hurt. Now hold still. Magic might speed up the healing process, but we still need to disinfect the wound. This’ll sting.
Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!
I just wish I could be as brave and strong as you. Or Kyoko-chan! Or even Sayaka-chan! I just feel like I drag you all down sometimes.
Candeloro pounded her fists against her head. It did no good.
Madoka, don’t think like that. You have by far one of the kindest hearts I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. And I want you to stay like that. That is your strength.
Please, make it stop!
We’re in a fight against monsters, against curses born from the worst kinds of hearts. We need someone like you. So don’t ever change who you are.
Who you are.
Change.
Change…into a…
Mami looked back up at the mirror. Her face was no longer a mess, her hair no longer disheveled. Rather, she was properly made up, and her hair neatly tied up in a pair of drill-tails on either side of her head.
She jerked back in surprise and looked down.
When she had entered the bathroom, she had been wearing a pair of jeans and blue blouse. But now she was wearing her Puella Magi uniform.
Mami pinched the hem of her skirt with shaking fingers. Then she lifted her gloved hands and squeezed them. When had that change happened? She didn’t recall wanting to change into her uniform, and yet here it was.
She closed her eyes and gripped her hands into fists at her side.
Go away, go away, go away, go away!
When she opened her eyes again, her old clothes were back, and her face was a proper disaster again.
But so was the rest of her.
She sat heavily down on the toilet lid, her face buried in her unwanted hands.
“I’m Candeloro,” she whispered. “I’m Candeloro! The Ribbon Witch! I don’t want to be Mami, I don’t want to be Mami, I don’t want to be Mami…”
…
Now…
“And happening!”
…
Then…
To her complete lack of surprise and no small amount of irritation, Candeloro couldn’t sleep.
She tossed. She turned. She opened the window and counted backwards from a hundred. Nothing worked.
Tomorrow she was going to meet face-to-face with Charlotte. Tomorrow she might end up losing her wife forever. How the hell could her mind not obsess over that?
Finally she got up with a growl and left her room.
It was a little past two in the morning and the house was dark. She didn’t know if anyone else was asleep though. Ophelia and Oktavia were probably still up, playing some video game or watching a movie.
Even so, Candeloro kept her steps light as she tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen.
To her surprise, there was a light coming from the kitchen. Specifically, the refrigerator light. Someone had it open and was rummaging around inside.
The door closed with a click, and a dark-haired silhouette straightened up and turned around.
“Oh!” Homulilly said, jerking up. The cup of water she had in her hands slipped from her grasp.
She tried to grab it, but Candeloro already had it covered. A ribbon shot out from her hand to lasso the cup and jerk it back toward her into her palm with barely any spilt.
“Here,” Candeloro said, handing her the cup. “Sorry for scaring you.”
“It’s…okay,” Homulilly said. She tilted her head to one side. Though the lights were out, Candeloro knew the curious look she was wearing. “So, uh, the ribbon-whip thing. That’s…”
“My Puella Magi power, yes,” Candeloro said.
“I thought you had guns.”
“It’s…a little hard to explain,” Candeloro said wearily. She quickly changed the subject. “You can’t sleep either?”
“Not really,” Homulilly admitted. “I’m not surprised that you can’t.”
“Well, it’s not something you can face without having some kind of nervous breakdown,” Candeloro said as she went over to the fridge to remove a pitcher of cranberry juice.
“I bet. Mind if I turn on the light?”
“Sure.”
The kitchen light stung Candeloro’s eyes a bit. She blinked a bit and shook her head.
Homulilly was already sitting at the table, her cup nestled in her hands. “Just juice, huh?”
“Just juice,” Candeloro confirmed as she poured herself a cup. “After what happened last time, I’m staying well away from alcohol.”
“Hmmm. But, uh, you still kind of…”
“More than you can believe,” Candeloro sighed. She sat down across from Homulilly. “Thank you again, by the way. For what you did.”
“Of course. I just hope it was worth it.”
Candeloro nodded. “Me too. Um, hey, Homulilly. I hope I’m not prying, but may I ask you a question?”
Homulilly frowned. “Um, sure?”
“Say you were in Charlotte’s position, and Gretchen had turned back into Madoka Kaname. What would…how would you react?”
Homulilly sighed. “Oh, I’ve been asking myself that question longer than Hitomi Shizuki’s been around.”
“Oh. Um, and?”
Homulilly’s skeletal finger tapped against the side of her glass. “Gretchen is the most important person in the world to me,” she said softly. “If she…became her old self, and didn’t remember me anymore, or at least only remembered Homura Akemi, it would…it would hurt a lot.”
“Would you leave?”
“No,” Homulilly said after a pause. “Because…it would still be her, right? How could I leave her? And if she still…still wanted me around, even if it was just as a friend, then that would…” She swallowed. “That would be enough.”
Candeloro sighed and took a small sip. “Yes, you always were very-”
She blinked.
“Very…what?”
We need to talk.
Candeloro shook her head. “Uh, sorry, I just-”
What about, Akemi-san?
Oh no.
You put Madoka in danger. Your plan failed, and she was hurt.
“Candeloro?” Homura said in puzzlement. “Are you all right?
This is unacceptable. You are our leader. Therefore, Madoka’s safety is your responsibility as much as it is mine.
Mami grabbed her head. Not again. Not again!
Akemi-san, it was an accident! I did everything I could to look after her, but fighting witches is inherently dangerous! You can’t prepare for all-
Enough.
“Should I call for help?” Homura asked, rising. “Let me get Ophelia-”
“No!” Mami said hastily. “I’m-”
No life matters more to me than Madoka’s. I helped you convince Sayaka Miki to make a contract for Madoka’s protection. I brought back Kyoko Sakura for Madoka’s protection. If you cannot ensure her safety despite having all that at your disposal, then perhaps a change of leadership is needed.
“Uh,” Mami stood up, and did so too quickly. Her elbow knocked over her glass of juice, spilling it across the table.
“Oh, damn! Shit!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Homura quickly grabbed a handful of paper towels and began mopping up the spilled juice.
“I should-”
“No, I got it,” Homura said. “Look, you’re in a bad place. Let me help, okay?”
Mami nodded numbly. “Okay. I’d…better go to bed, before I knock over something else.”
“Okay. And, uh, Candeloro?”
“What?”
Homura smiled at her. “It’ll be okay. You got-”
-no right to be acting so reckless. So, keep that in mind.
But-
Keep it in mind, Mami Tomoe. Speak to no one of our conversation, do your job and keep Madoka Kaname safe, and we shall have no problems.
“-this, okay?”
Mami numbly nodded. Then she turned and practically fled back up the stairs.
Remember my warning, Mami Tomoe.
Remember my warning.
…
Now…
“Holy shit,” Charlotte said, staring.
“I know,” Candeloro groaned. “It just…I never know when it’ll happen next, it just happens! And the more time I spend around them, the more it happens!”
“Yeah, I bet. Jesus.” Then Charlotte’s brow furrowed. “Still, this just proves my point! We were better off without any of that! We didn’t need to learn our names or our histories or any of that! We should have just said ‘no’ and left Hitomi alone!”
“I know that, Charlotte! But we didn’t! We took that risk, we opened that box, and now we have to deal with the consequences.” Candeloro looked down at her shaking hands. “And they scare me. I don’t want these memories. I don’t want this name. I don’t want to feel like who I am is just…I feel like my entire sense of self is like water in a shallow glass bowl sitting on the tip of a pin, and the slightest push can cause it to tip over and pour me out! I thought I could just g-get used to having this part of me opened up, but it’s more than just remembering everything I used to be. Because whenever these memories hit, then…I don’t know, but my sense of self starts…flowing. I feel less like Candeloro and more like Mami, and it takes longer and longer to get it under control!”
Now Charlotte’s hands started to shake as well. “So you’re telling me that the Mami half is slowly taking over, and when it does there’ll be nothing of Candeloro left?”
“I don’t know! That’s the point, I don’t know how this works, I don’t know what’s happening to me, I don’t know how it’s happening, I don’t know where Mami ends and Candeloro begins or if there even is a divide, I don’t know anything!” Now the tears were flowing freely. “I don’t know, and it scares me, Charlotte! You talk about how much it scares you?” Mami slapped her new hands against her own chest. “What about me? It’s happening to me! And right when I need you the most, you’re just going to run off on me? How could you?”
“I…”
“We were supposed to be together forever! Together, keeping each other strong through the centuries. I love you. I love you so much that the thought of you leaving me hurts more than the storm inside my head. And I thought you loved me too! So why, Charlotte?”
“Because…” Charlotte was starting to shake with agitation. “Because…uh…”
Candeloro reached for her, but Charlotte flinched away.
“I can’t,” Charlotte said as she backed away. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I just can’t.”
“But why? I need you!”
Shaking her head, Charlotte kept back further and further away.
“Charlotte,” Candeloro pleaded. “Please. Don’t.”
“I just…” Then Charlotte turned and fled, running to disappear into the mists. Candeloro was left standing alone, arms that she had never wanted still reaching out, with her eyes wet, her throat clenched up, and her heart heavy.
…
The Rising Gardens were intended to be lost in. There were maps you could pick up that would always keep you informed of your location and marked out the quickest way out, but Charlotte had neglected to grab one. And now that she really, really wanted to leave, she found that she couldn’t.
Every turn just led to more turns, every staircase seemed to just plunge her deeper into the woman-made jungle. It was like being lost in a real jungle, one just as thick and dark.
Come on, come on, she thought as she ran. Where’s the way out?
“Come on, come on!” she said out loud. “It has to be around here-”
Then she turned a corner and came to a sudden stop.
She was staring at Candeloro’s (no! Mami Tomoe’s!) back. Somehow, she had ended up just coming back around again.
Sensing her, Mami Tomoe turned around. Her golden eyes were wet and bloodshot from crying, and her face was scrunched up with pure misery.
Mami Tomoe saw her, and her eyes widened. With hope.
Before she could speak, Charlotte spun on her heel and headed back the way she came.
There had to be a way out! The Rising Gardens had exits on every level! So where were they? Where was the damned-
The next thing she knew, Charlotte was bursting into sunlight.
She was standing on the second level, staring out at Freehaven. Though the sun overhead was nice and warm, she was still shivering.
Charlotte started running again. She hopped off the gardens entirely and ran for the facility exit. As she did so, she had her new phone out, fingers hastily calling for a zipper.
…
“Hey, wait a second!” Ophelia yelped as she leapt to her feet.
“Finally!” Oktavia said. “What’s going on?”
“Charlotte just ran out of the garden!”
“Alone?!”
“Yes, alone! And she looks kind of terrified!”
“Huh? What, did Candeloro summon up those silver guns of hers and try to take her head off?”
“Uh, probably not? Can’t blame her if she tried though!”
Then Charlotte leapt to the street and kept running. Ophelia’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, hell no,” she growled.
“You’re going after her!” Gretchen’s voice cheered.
“Damn straight. Candy shot her shot, now it’s my turn!”
Ophelia dove right off the roof she was standing on. She hit the street in a parkour roll and came up running.
Charlotte was fast. Her slender body and long legs were well-suited for speed. But she didn’t do a tenth of the cardiovascular exercises that Ophelia did daily. Ophelia’s toned legs became a blur as she took off like a rocket, weaving between what people she could and leaping fully over those that she couldn’t.
Unfortunately, Charlotte still had a considerable lead on her. And overhead, Ophelia could see the distinctive silver glint of a descending zipper.
Hell no!
“Hey!” she called as she shot toward the fleeing Charlotte like a bolt of lightning. “Stop!”
If Charlotte could hear her she didn’t make any indication. The zipper landed in a circular designated pick-up point and opened up.
Zippers were essentially egg-shaped shells that surrounded a ring of four padded seats, with a large luggage space on the bottom. But only Charlotte was in need of one, so only one side opened up. Charlotte zeroed in on it and increased her speed.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Ophelia snarled. She increased her speed…
…only to be brought to screeching halt when an entire bike team came riding right across her path. And wouldn’t you know it, there was a bridge overhead that prevented her from leaping over them.
“Shit!” Ophelia bounded upward, hoping to clear the buildings entirely before Charlotte got in.
She managed to reach the roof in a manner of seconds, but by the time she reached a vantage point, Charlotte had already reached the zipper and was climbing inside.
“No!” Ophelia leapt onto the road again, well past the bike team, and took off sprinting. “Charlotte! Stop!”
The side of the zipper closed up.
“Wait!”
Then it shot into the sky. Ophelia reached the pick-up spot mere seconds later, just in time to see it vanish over the rooftops.
…
Charlotte collapsed into her seat a panting, shaking, and sweating mess. “Go!” she shouted. The door closed shut, and the zipper launched into the air.
Oh God, she had not expected that. Having Mami Tomoe try to argue with her that she was still Candeloro? Yes. Yes, that had very much been expected and prepared for. But for her to say that she was still Candeloro, but the Mami Tomoe part was slowly taking over and for her to beg for Charlotte to stay and help her fight it off? That possibility hadn’t exactly occurred to her.
Still trembling, Charlotte leaned back…only to scowl. She quickly slipped her backpack off her shoulders and tossed it into the seat next to her before finally slumping back with a sigh. Why had she done that? Why had she run? That hadn’t been the thing that had stolen her love away from her and was wearing her face. That had been her love begging her not to let the thing take her away in the first place! That had been Candeloro all right. If Candeloro and Mami Tomoe were supposed to be the same soul, then Candeloro would be able to tell if it was Mami Tomoe lying. And she hadn’t been. That had been the truth.
Of course it was, said the irritated voice in her head, the one that had been yelling at her all week, the one she had been arguing with or trying to ignore. But you ran away anyway. You coward. You idiot.
“Shut up,” she muttered.
No! You know I’m right! You’re a coward and an idiot who ran out on her family and-
“I said shut up!”
“I’m sorry,” said the digitized voice of the zipper’s AI. “I didn’t quite get that. Where would you like to go?”
Charlotte sighed. She ought to have had this thing waiting with preprogrammed coordinates. “Freehaven Skyport,” she said wearily. “Terminal seven.”
“Acknowledged.” The monitor lit up with the flight route and estimated time of arrival, which was about seven minutes.
Charlotte slumped back into her seat. She blinked. And then she blinked again, slower this time. She hadn’t slept well at all the previous night for obvious reasons. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been sleeping much all week. And though she had expected to pass out on the elysian, she had thought that her nerves would have kept her awake until then. But her lack of sleep was catching up to her in a bad way. This was bad timing too. With such a short trip, nodding off now wouldn’t give her any sort of rest.
But surely it would be all right if she just closed her eyes for a bit…
…
The storyteller was confronted by the griever…
Charlotte finds herself in the inoffensive yet chillingly sterile waiting room of a hospital emergency room. She is sitting in one of the chairs, waiting for her name to be called. There are other people waiting in there with her; she can see them in her peripheral vision, can hear their muted conversations. But every time she looks up to focus on any of them in particular, she sees nothing but empty chairs.
She sits anxiously, hands clutching the sides of her seat. She can’t remember exactly why she was there, but she knows that it’s important. She is visiting someone, someone who is very ill, someone who isn’t expected to make it. She hadn’t been visiting them like she had promised, and that made her feel terrible.
“Charlotte? You can go in now.”
Charlotte sighs and stands up. She heads for the entrance to the hospital halls only to remember that she wasn’t sure of the way. Stopping by the receptionist’s desk, she turns toward the older lady that had called her name to ask her for directions.
“Excuse me, but which was to-”
Then she stops. The chair behind the desk is empty. Furthermore, all the hospital staff that she thought were working behind the counter are all gone.
Charlotte turns back toward the waiting room. As she does so, the muted babble of whispered conversations coming from the other people waiting dies off, as does the sound of the television. There is no one else there, and the television is off.
Blinking, Charlotte shakes her head and walks into the halls. As she does so, the conversations resume behind her, as does the patter of the hospital staff diligently working and the sound of the newscasters’ voices coming from the television.
As Charlotte walks through the halls, she passes many people. Doctors, nurses, security guards, midwives, patients, and other visitors, all of whom simply vanish the moment she gives them her full attention. She nods at the aging man at the security booth and stops to see if he knows the way, only to find the booth empty. She sidesteps a male nurse pushing a young woman in a wheelchair, only to see a solitary wheelchair sitting by itself by the wall. She approaches a nurse’s station with three middle-aged women chatting as they work, only to find the station unmanned. It is like she is trying to find her way through a world of ghosts. But who is the ghost? Is it the people that disappear all around her, or is she the one haunting the halls?
Finally she turns a corner and sees a recovery room down the hall with its door open. A bright line is shining out. That has to be the place.
Charlotte hurries toward the light. As she does so, the shadow people around her start to recede entirely, as does the rest of the hospital. She can feel the halls start to come apart around her while deep, loud rushing builds in her ears, like a consuming flood burst from a dam.
She hurries into the recovery room and slams the door. The rushing stops.
There are three curtain-shrouded beds in the room, two of which are open and empty. The curtain is drawn over the third bed, the one at the far end of the room. Behind it, she can see the silhouette of a young woman sitting in a chair.
Swallowing, Charlotte cautiously makes her way toward the curtain. She lays a hand on the curtain, hesitates, and then slowly pulls it open, half-expecting the woman to disappear like everyone else did.
She doesn’t.
The young woman is sitting in a blue chair next to the hospital bed, her legs crossed and hands clasped over her knee. She is wearing tight green pants and a frilly white blouse decorated with pink and blue mice. Her pink hair is done up in a pair of messy twintails, and her eyes are of the same color. Freckles dust her face, and she has a slight overbite.
It’s her. It’s clearly Charlotte. Granted, the woman’s skin is of a normal human hue rather than alabaster white, the freckles are new, their eyes are of different colors, and the other woman doesn’t have a tail, but other than that they are the same.
“So,” the other Charlotte says. “There you are. You kept me waiting.”
The spell of vague uncertainty that hung over all dreams broke then. In a rush Charlotte remembers everything. She understands what it is that is going on.
“No way,” she says. “Really?”
“Yup. Really really.”
Charlotte fumbles around until she grabs a nearby empty chair and sits down before her legs gives way beneath her. “But…I-I heard that the others, um, that the others-”
The other Charlotte crosses her legs and folds her arms over her chest. “Talked to their past selves in a dream or somesuch. Yeah, I know.”
“But…they all spiritual dissonance, right? Something that woke all that up? I never did though! So how-”
“Well, you know what they say,” the other Charlotte says with a shrug. “Sometimes you get woken up by the sound of your name, but sometimes you get dragged away by the irresistible need to slap a stupid bitch.”
“What?”
The other Charlotte stands up. She walks over to where the dumbfounded Charlotte was sitting and sticks out her hand. “Hi there. My name is Nozomi Momoe. You’re my witch, and you are also the idiot in the driver’s seat, because your stupidity was literally powerful enough to drag me back to life. Pleased to fucking meet you.”
Then before Charlotte has time to process that little revelation, Nozomi’s hand flies, striking Charlotte across the face.
Normally something like that would be enough to jolt Charlotte awake, likely with heavy panting and her illusionary heart racing. However, this was not that kind of dream.
“Got your attention?” Nozomi says.
Charlotte lifts a hand to her cheek. For a dream, the stinging sensation is impressively realistic. “The hell was that for?”
“You know,” Nozomi says with a derisive snort. She walks back to her seat and sits down. “All right, let me clear things up for you and answer everything you’re about to ask. Yes, I am your past self. Duh. Yes, this is really happening. Yes, we are the same person. Same soul, continuation of consciousness or whatever you guys call it. So when I say ‘I’ or ‘you’ or ‘we,’ don’t take it too literally. Yes, this is happening due to supernatural circumstances. No, I’m not telling you how. No, I’m not really real as a separate entity. This is all one big metaphor for how Nozomi would actually feel about what your dumb ass is doing right now. But yes, what I am saying to you comes from a very fucking real place. Are we clear?”
That…really did cover most of what Charlotte wants to ask, though not being able to ask them was kind of frustrating. Hell, she was still in need of a moment to really think on the whole “Nozomi Momoe” thing. “Wow, okay,” she says. “You’re…throwing a lot at me right now. And frankly, I don’t even know where to begin-”
“Great! Because I do.” Nozomi leans forward so as to glower at her more efficiently. “Why exactly are you listening to that big wad of dumb you got lodged in your head and throwing away literally the best thing to happen to you, to happen to us, to happen to me?”
Charlotte scowls. Oh, so that was what this was all about. “This is about Mami Tomoe, isn’t it?”
“Eh.” Nozomi waggles one of her palms. “Half right. This is about Mami Tomoe and Candeloro. Which, incidentally enough, do qualify as the same thing, if you want to get technical about it.”
Charlotte scowls. “I don’t have to explain that to you. I don’t have to explain it to anyone.”
“I am you, of course you don’t have to explain it! And you already had that whole deal torn down! What I want to know is why that even after realizing that you’re wrong, you’re still running away!”
“What, you expect me to be able to deal with…whatever that is? You expect me to be able to deal with any of this insanity?”
“No shit, I do! Because that’s what wives are supposed to do! Love and support in sickness and in health! She wants us to help her, she needs us by her side, and you’re just gonna go run away.
“Well, whatever. I owe you anything, and you don’t know-”
“Yeah, I’m just going to cut you off right there, Cheese-Brain.” Nozomi says, holding up a palm. “I do, actually. Been living through you for sixteen years now, so I know you pretty damned well.”
“Do you? Fine.” Charlotte leaned back in her chair, one arm draped over the back, legs crossed, while she gestured with the other. “Then by all means: explain it to me.”
“Fine. You’re running away not because you really believe that Mami’s gonna completely replace Candeloro, but because you’re scared of what she represents. Because all this time, things were set in a certain way, and you liked it that way! Sure, maybe all your friends had some kind of group dynamic back in the day, but who cares? Right now, everyone’s a witch, you’ve got a new group dynamic to which you are essential, and life is good!
“But then Hitomi Shizuki showed up and changed all that. Suddenly there’s new names being thrown around, reveals about past relationships. And things started to crack. They started to crumble. In just a few short days, people you thought you knew start making bad decisions, start drifting apart, started behaving out of character.
“And that scared you, didn’t it? Not just because it meant that this perfect life you’ve built was falling to pieces, but the thing you were dreading was coming back. Their past. Their group, the group that you were not a part of. And despite all evidence to the contrary, you couldn’t help but wonder, ‘Well, if they all do go back to being who they were, would there still be a place for me? Would they even want me?’” She snorts. “Talk about paranoid.”
“It’s not paranoid!” Charlotte shouts. “It did happen! One of them did come back, and she’s taking the place of my wife!”
“Yeah, Mami Tomoe did come back. She came back to save you, because you were in danger, and now that you wife is in the most trouble she’s ever been, when she needs you the most, you just selfishly abandon her? Because you were afraid that Mami would reject you?”
“No! I don’t care if Mami wants me or not! I care that the person I loved is gone!”
“She’s not gone, you idiot! But she is in the most pain that she’s ever in! She made a choice for your sake, and now she’s struggling with something big and terrifying, and instead of staying by her side like you should, you’re just going to abandon her and the rest of your family! You’re so afraid of change taking away everything you had that you’d rather throw it all away first, just because of a possibility! And you’ll run out on the woman you love more than anything in her time of need! She begged you to stay, she was weeping for you to stay, and you turned your back on her!”
Nozomi then thrusts a finger at the hospital bed next to her. And for the first time, Charlotte notices that it’s not empty. There is a body in it, that of woman. She is not that old, just a little out of middle-age, but she is so frail and withered that she could have been mistaken for being past eighty.
“I had a chance to save the only thing that mattered to me, but I refused to see the situation for what it was and lost our mother. Because of an assumption! So I will be damned before I let your fear hurt the ones that matter the most to us now! I’m not letting you run away!”
“I…” Charlotte struggles to find her voice. “But I…”
However, Nozomi is not letting her have the chance to speak. She thrusts her hand into the air, and suddenly the small space is filled with a burst of dark pink light. When it clears, Nozomi is wearing a sleeveless, double-breasted black tunic with gold buttons in the shaped of wrapped candy and a high collar; a tight black-and-white striped shirt under with frilly wrists; brown fingerless gloves; a knee-length pink skirt; black-and-white striped tights; and dainty ballet shoes. In her hand is a long black pole studded with pink polka-dots, topped with that wrapped candy shape.
Nozomi charges. Charlotte tries to dodge, but Nozomi thrusts her pole out, and golden wires erupt from the tip to ensnare Charlotte’s legs and yank them out from under her.
The next thing Charlotte knows, she’s lying flat on her back with legs straddling her chest, staring up at a face that looks so much like the one she sees every day in the mirror, only it is glaring down at her in pure hatred.
“No, you don’t get to run!” Nozomi screams. She strikes Charlotte across the face, causing her head to snap to one side. “You bitch!” She hits her again from the other side. “You coward!” She hits her again.
Then Nozomi is just raining blows down on Charlotte, from the left to the right to the left to the right again. “You! Won’t! Run! Away! If you do, I swear I will haunt you every time you go to sleep! I will make every second a waking nightmare! You can’t escape me, and you won’t-”
…
Charlotte jerked awake with a gasp. Her hands were in the air to ward off another attack, the screams still echoing in her ears.
There was nobody there. She was back in the zipper.
Charlotte slowly lowered her hands. Then she checked the time. To her shock, she saw that she had only been asleep for less than thirty seconds. The zipper was still moving above Freehaven toward the skyport.
Stupefied, Charlotte struggled to collect her thoughts. Though the details of the dream were swiftly fading away, the terror of it was not, nor was the sense of immense shame, guilt, and self-loathing.
She knew what had happened. She had heard of the others and their dream-meetings with their past selves, and how they had all made peace. And she had finally had her own. Only hers had been anything but peaceful.
And she knew exactly why.
Charlotte felt horrified. Oh God, what was she doing? How had things gotten this far?
“Wait!” Charlotte hoarsely called out. “Stop!”
The zipper paused.
“Cancel the trip! Take me back!”
“Trip cancellations incur a fee of-”
“I don’t care, charge me whatever, and just do it!”
The blue digital face shimmered, and the zipper turned around.
…
“Damn it,” Ophelia groused as she slouched her way across the rooftop. She kicked a pinecone that had somehow gotten up there. “Damn it, damn it, damn it. We were so close. So close. So-”
Then something zoomed past her head, something silver and shiny.
Ophelia froze. No, it couldn’t be. It had to be some other zipper. There were plenty of those coming and going all the time. There was no way it was…
She ran to the edge of the roof. The zipper had dove down to the same pick-up spot that Charlotte’s had departed from. Her illusionary heartbeat pounding away, Ophelia watched as its side opened up.
And then Charlotte stumbled out.
“No way,” Ophelia said. As she watched, Charlotte took off running, heading back toward the Rising Gardens.
Things still sucked a whole lot, but Ophelia couldn’t stop grinning. She pulled out her phone and reentered the group. “Hey guys,” she said. “Cancel the funeral. Guess what just happened!”
…
Sniffing, Candeloro slowly exited the Rising Gardens. She felt more miserable than she had ever felt in her entire life.
What was she going to do? What was she going to tell the others? Oh, they would feel bad for her, try to comfort her, say many bad things about Charlotte, but that wouldn’t change anything. She had gone to bring her back, to heal their family, but she had failed. In the end, Charlotte had rejected her.
Maybe she should just let the Mami Tomoe part take over completely. Mami Tomoe had never been married. Mami Tomoe hadn’t been abandoned by her wife. Maybe that would make things easier to-
“Candy! Wait! Stop!”
Candeloro made a sound not unlike air escaping a bike tire. She spun around, almost not daring to hope.
Charlotte was there, running toward her.
“What?” was all Candeloro could think of to say.
Charlotte looked like she was reaching out to grab her, but then stopped herself at the last minute. She looked at her outstretched hands, swallowed, and let them drop.
“So, uh,” she said as she stared down at the ground and shuffled her feet. “I…kind of just had a change of heart.”
Candeloro’s jaw dropped. “How? It’s been…like five minutes!”
“I know. But you know how your perception of time gets really weird in a dream and you could feel like it’s been hours when it’s only been like a couple minutes? Like how you wake up ten minutes before your alarm goes off and drift back to sleep and then have like this whole adventure that seems like it takes…” Charlotte seemed to realize that she was babbling and cut herself off. “Um, well, I kind of fell asleep in the zipper, and got yelled at by my past self, and she beat me up. Like, a lot.”
“Huh?”
“I finally met my past self,” Charlotte said. “You know, like the others did. And she was pissed.”
Candeloro had no idea what to think of that. “Really?”
“Yes. And…” Charlotte sighed. “Candy, I am so sorry. I’ve been an idiot, and a coward, and kind of a cruel one at that.” She ran her fingers through her sweat-soaked hair. “I don’t know what got into my head, I don’t have any kind of real excuse. I just got scared and freaked out and made a really, really bad choice.”
Candeloro was finding it very hard to put her thoughts to words. She was finding it very hard to have articulate thoughts at all. “Wait, are you saying…”
“I’m not leaving you. I should have never left in the first place. And…okay, this whole thing that’s going on with you still scares the crap out of me, but I don’t have the right to abandon you, and-”
The rest of her apology was choked off: not by tears, but by Candeloro’s arms. Specifically, the ones she had thrown around Charlotte’s neck.
“Thank you,” Candeloro wept into Charlotte’s neck. “I don’t know what I would have done if you had gone.”
“God, way to make me feel worse,” Charlotte muttered, but she wrapped her arms around Candeloro’s back as well.
It felt so good to be held by her again. Candeloro was still a little angry about almost being abandoned, but the relief she felt was so much more powerful.
But then she drew back with a sigh. “But you know I’m still messed up,” she said. “I don’t know even where to begin to fix this.”
Charlotte grimaced. “Yeah. I…I can see that.”
“I mean, there’s no one in Freehaven with any experience with this kind of thing.”
“Yeah, this is kind of way above their pay grade,” Charlotte agreed. “I mean, sure, they can help an angry teenager who lost her family or someone who’s not adjusting well, but this is kind of…”
Suddenly her eyes went wide. “Wait, hold on!” she gasped. “Maybe there is someone!”
…
“Okay, confirmed!” Ophelia said into her phone. “Huggies have stopped, and C1 and C2 are on the move!”
“On the move back home, right?” Homulilly said testily.
“Uh…can’t tell yet. They’re…oh shit.”
“What?”
Ophelia dove behind a planter. “They’re headed for the roofs. Almost got spotted just now.”
“But that means they’re headed back, right?” Gretchen asked. “You go to the roofs when you want to get somewhere in a hurry, right?”
Ophelia peeked out. Then she frowned. “No, wait, they’re going the wrong way for that.”
There was a heavy pause, and then Oktavia said crankily, “Well, then, where the hell are they headed?”
“I dunno. North…eastish? Hey, I’m gonna just tail them for a bit. I’ll call you when I have some idea of what’s going on.”
“Wait, what about-”
Ophelia hung up. And then she got up to follow.
Keeping up was a lot harder than it sounded. Sure, she could probably run either one of them down, but she didn’t want to catch up, she just wanted to keep them in sight, while making sure that she stayed out of theirs. So she had to stop periodically to dart into some kind of shade and hang back until she was sure that they weren’t going to look in her direction.
Fortunately, they didn’t think that they were being followed, so they weren’t glancing over their shoulders or anything. And before too long they came to a stop and dropped down to the streets.
Ophelia came to a stop too. She had figured out where they were headed, and now that she did it made perfect sense.
“So hey,” she said, reentering the group. “I figured out where they’re heading.”
“Well?” Oktavia said. “Where?”
“Probably the one place in town with anyone that understands what Candeloro’s going through.”
…
Despite living in Freehaven her entire life, Candeloro had only been to the museum a handful of times. There had been the obligatory trip back during her integration days of course, and the odd daytrip just for the heck of it scattered over the years. She had always enjoyed the visits and had learned much, but that sort of thing had always been more of Charlotte’s thing than hers, so she had never just gone on her own, and she certainly had never had a one-on-one conversation with the museum’s curator, Astrid.
Astrid, it should be noted, was not her usual calm, unflappable self. Granted, Candeloro hadn’t even seen her during every trip, so she supposed that she didn’t have much experience to really get a read on the older woman, but she had not expected to see Astrid as shaken as she was when Candeloro and Charlotte had shown up during what had no doubt been an otherwise uneventful day looking over the exhibits and answering menial questions about the artifacts and anxiously requested a private conversation on account that she was the only other person that had gone through the same thing Candeloro had that they had any sort of access to.
Still, she had agreed, and had asked her girlfriend to keep an eye on things while she took the pair to her apartment at the back of the complex. Candeloro hadn’t known what to expect of that. Maybe a place filled with as many strange relics of the past as the museum itself was? Or maybe the exact opposite, a place with minimal comforts and Spartan trappings.
As it turned out, it was neither. Instead, the furniture was old, yet comfortable and well-used. There were a great many colorful plants sitting on shelves, on windowsills, and in corners. Several paintings were hung on the walls: some of them landscape, some of them abstract, some of them humorous caricatures, even a couple of nudes. There were several open windows, letting in plenty of sunlight.
There were a number of cats wandering around. They immediately headed for the door as Astrid entered, but upon seeing Candeloro and Charlotte behind her they froze and then bolted, all of them leaping out of one of the windows, somehow managing to avoid upsetting the two potted plants sitting on the sill.
“Are those yours?” Candeloro asked.
Astrid started a little at the question. “What, the cats? No, they’re all strays.”
“Strays?”
Astrid shrugged. “We, uh, learned a long time ago that permanent pets…get kind of depressing after a while, so we just keep the place open to local cats and sometimes birds. That way, there’s always someone fuzzy and warm about, but they don’t, uh, you don’t come home to find their, er, bodies every few years.”
Candeloro had no idea how to respond to something like that, so she said nothing.
“Uh, sit down!” Astrid said, indicating the wooden dinner table. It was covered with a white table cloth and had a vase of yellow flowers in the middle, and its wooden legs were covered with years and years of animal scratches. “Can I get you guys something? Tea, maybe?”
“Thank you,” Candeloro said as she and Charlotte took their seats. “Ginger, please. If you have it.”
“Got it. Be right back.”
Astrid hurried into the kitchen. Candeloro tried to sit still as Astrid put the kettle on and moved around the cabinets. She must have used magic to heat the water, because the kettle started singing in less than a minute.
The Norse woman returned, carrying a tray with an old but quite charming blue tea set. She set it down, handed a cup in a saucer to each of her guests, and poured them each a cup.
“Sugar?” she said.
“No, thank you.”
Astrid nodded. “So,” she said, sitting down. “Let me see if I have this right: you…are a witch,” she said, gesturing to Charlotte.
Charlotte looked down at the pearl-white skin of her hands. She glanced over her shoulder to where her tail hung down through the bars of the chair’s back. “Looks like.”
“And…you are…not,” Astrid said with a look toward Candeloro.
Candeloro took a deep breath. “No. Not anymore.”
“But you were.”
“Until about a week ago. That’s right.”
Astrid slowly breathed out. “Right. When, where, and how?”
“During the storm,” Candeloro said. “That big one that hit recently?”
“Right. We lost some trees and had some minor roof damage. None of the exhibits were damaged, fortunately. But, um, was it the storm itself, or something that happened during the storm, or…?” Astrid rolled her wrist, indicating for someone to fill in the blank.
Candeloro sighed. “It was…a very strange combination of different things coming together all at once.”
Keeping her descriptions as short as possible, Candeloro told her of the events that had led to her transformation, from the sudden arrival of Hitomi Shizuki to the subsequent problems with spiritual dissonance that they all started to feel to the battle with the karnuk and finally her own change.
“I don’t know exactly what happened or who I talked to,” Candeloro said. “I just…know I talked to someone, and they gave me a choice. And I said ‘yes.’”
“Ah. I see.” Astrid slowly stirred her tea with a small silver spoon. “Mine was…rather similar, actually.”
“I know. Th-That’s why we’re here, actually.”
“I figured.” Astrid steepled her fingers and tapped the tips against her nose. “Okay. Well, this is…a lot to take in. Does anyone else know?”
“Well, there’s us two, of course,” Charlotte said. “And the rest of our Walpurgisnacht.”
Astrid’s brow rose at that. “You’re a Walpurgisnacht?”
“Yes. Us two, and two others.”
“Ah. Well, that’s four. Who else?”
“Two close friends who also live with us,” Candeloro said. “And, uh, Hitomi Shizuki apparently figured it out.”
“I see.”
Candeloro looked down into the murky liquid in her cup. “And…everyone on board the Aurora Borealis, I guess.”
Astrid’s fingers froze in mid-tap. “The aquatic research facility?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. Well.” Astrid slowly laid her hands flat onto the tabletop. “That is a lot of names.”
“I know,” Candeloro said.
“I assume you’re trying to keep this quiet?”
Candeloro felt her right eyelid start to twitch. “Trying to.”
“Understandable. I…imagine it must be…very stressful.”
“You imagine?” Charlotte said, her tone incredulous. “You went through the same thing! That’s why we’re here! She needs help! Advice! Anything!”
“Advice?”
“Yes,” Candeloro said. “Y-You see, I was friends with everyone in our Walpurgisnacht. And with our two other friends as well. I mean, back when we were alive, I knew all of them and they knew me. And…these flashbacks keep happening. They don’t remember any of it of course, but I’ll just be talking to them or even just look at them, and suddenly I’m back, reliving something significant about our past relationship, usually something tragic, and I feel…” One hand went to her temple, the fingers digging into her skin. “I feel like the other half of me is trying…trying to be all of me. I lose sense of myself, my name starts…” She slowly breathed out. “I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know when the next flash will come or how hard it’ll hit. I just know it gets harder and harder each time to reestablish who I am.” She looked pleadingly into Astrid’s pale silver eyes. “But you had to have gone through the same thing, right? There has to be something you can do to help me!”
“I understand,” Astrid said. “But you have to understand…my change was literally centuries ago! And…I was a little preoccupied with escaping the Withering Lands at the time.”
Candeloro and Charlotte both stared at her in dismay. “So, you…didn’t have those flashes? You didn’t struggle with your sense of identity?”
Astrid let out a long, belabored sigh. “I…didn’t encounter anyone I had known in life. There was no one to trigger any of those flashbacks. Occasionally someone would say something or I would see something that would bring an old memory into stark relief, but those were rare. Besides, after Zoya and I had stolen that boat and headed off to sea, there was a very, very long and uncomfortable trip before we wound up in Freehaven. Let’s just say I had plenty of time and space to really sift through my memories and come to terms with myself.”
Candeloro felt a lump start to form in her throat. She stared back down at her reflection in the murky liquid. “And you decided to go b-by Astrid.”
Astrid shrugged. “My time as Sif was pretty miserable. Granted, my life as Astrid wasn’t exactly fantastic either, but it was at least better. It was an easy change to make.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t want to make that change,” Charlotte said. “She wants to stay being Candeloro, at least in her head. So is there anything you can suggest? Any…tricks or some kind of meditation or something? I mean, part of your job is to help people like you!”
“Yes. Other runaway Void Walkers,” Astrid said. “There aren’t very many of the un-witched coming by Freehaven. In fact, you would make number two.”
“What about the others?” Candeloro said, perking up.
“The others?”
“Yes! The other…the other un-witched. You know them, don’t you? Can’t they help us?”
Astrid made a face. “Shared experience doesn’t necessarily mean we’re friends. Actually, you and I are the only humans that have done so.”
“So? I have alien friends.”
“So do I. But when they’re from species that don’t exactly get along with Freehaven, it makes establishing any kind of rapport a bit of a problem.” Astrid scooped up a spoonful of tea and slowly let it spill back into her cup. “Also, just because someone is on the record of having un-witched sometime in the distant past doesn’t mean that they’re still around. Two of them ended up becoming Void Walkers and have since been released.”
“Oh,” Candeloro said.
“Or at least that’s the official story anyway. And of the others…Filsa the nask ended up getting kidnapped and was never heard from again. Nitrogen and Blitzkrieg the calliopes…well, Nitrogen served as dance leader of her territory for a number of years before retiring. I suppose I could look her up, but she’s something of an attention whore, so if you want to keep your condition under wraps, she’s probably the last person you want to talk to. And last I heard of Blitzkrieg, she’s currently running a cult somewhere out in some remote territory where she’s worshipped as a god.”
“Oh,” Charlotte said. “Huh.”
“As for the others, well, Ostilk Misanti Viskero the andalite is apparently something of a recluse. She didn’t care much for the fame her condition brought her, and her current location is a closely guarded secret. And you know andalites and their secrets.” Astrid sighed. “Honestly, your best bet would be to contact Silvet the dockengaut.”
Candeloro nearly leapt out of her chair. Charlotte actually did so. “Wait, the last of the un-witched is a dockengaut?” Charlotte said, her voice cracking.
“Yes, believe it or not. And she’s actually on our side, as such things are judged.”
“What,” Candeloro said flatly.
Astrid spread her hands. “There are a small number of dockengauts that do not subscribe to their species’ predatory values. A few even defected after those videos went out. You know the ones, right?”
Candeloro shuddered. Apparently, once the dockengauts’ cannibalistic nature had been made known, several species had banded together in an attempt to intimidate them. The dockengauts’ response had been to send each and every one of them a video showing them devouring a member of each of the species that had allied against them, in graphic detail. Candeloro had never seen any of the infamous recordings, but apparently Charlotte had. And she had stalwartly refused to ever divulge what she had seen.
She glanced over to Charlotte. Sure enough, her wife looked like she was going to be sick.
“I see that you do,” Astrid said with a grim smile. “Anyway, believe it or not, there were a few dockengauts that didn’t care for that attitude, and ended up running away. One of them was a dockengaut witch. And she ended up, well, un-witching during her escape. I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she seemed…pretty decent. A bit shy, actually.”
“Excuse me?” Charlotte said. “A decent dockengaut? And she’s shy?”
“They do exist. Though the rest of their species tend to regard them the same way regard sociopaths. You know, as someone who is critically mentally ill. Anyway, last I heard she was working in Budbrekka. It’s a Norse encampment in the foothills far to the north, one of the last ones. I still try to keep in contact with them, as there aren’t many of us left. I can probably arrange-”
“No, thank you,” Candeloro said hastily. “I’m sorry, I’m sure…she is a very lovely…swarm of cannibalistic spiders, but I’d rather not talk to a dockengaut right now.”
“I thought not.”
Charlotte slumped back into her chair. “Well, I guess that’s that. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Hold on,” Astrid said, holding up a hand. “Now, my experiences may not line up with yours, but I do pride myself as a practical woman. You have to be to last as long as I have.”
“Your point?” Charlotte said.
“It seems to me that part of the problem is that you’re too close to things that are closely connected to your past. You’re constantly exposing yourself to memory triggers, at a time when the wounds are still raw.”
Candeloro swallowed. “So, uh, what are you suggesting?”
…
When Candeloro and Charlotte got back to the house, they found everyone already gathered in the living room, waiting for them.
Candeloro entered first, with Charlotte nervously hanging behind. “I’m back,” she said as she stepped inside. “Well, we’re back, and-”
Then she saw all four pairs of eyes staring expectantly at her.
Candeloro paused, her hand still on the doorknob. She looked at each face in turn before sighing and saying, “Were you spying on us?”
“Yes,” Ophelia said without hesitation.
“So you heard everything?”
“No. Your talk was your talk, so visual only.”
“Well. Thank you for granting us that measure of privacy at least,” Candeloro said in a clipped tone. “Then I guess this part doesn’t need explaining.”
She stood to one side and motioned for Charlotte to enter. Wincing, Charlotte stepped inside the house.
“Um, hi guys,” she said.
“Hi,” Gretchen said. No one else returned the greeting. Ophelia and Oktavia both leaned back in their seats, Ophelia with her legs crossed and arms behind her head and Oktavia with her hands folded in her lap. Homulilly just sat with her arms crossed, waiting.
Her head bowed, Charlotte shuffled her feet. “I guess…I owe you some kind-”
“Motherfucking, bitch-ass traitor!” Cheese suddenly screeched from the kitchen.
Charlotte paused. “Okay. Harsh. But…fair, I guess.”
“Who taught him the word ‘traitor’?” Candeloro asked.
“I did,” Ophelia said. “Or rather, the last wrestling PPV I watched did. Major heel turn. I was pissed.”
“Right,” Charlotte said. “Um, so, like I said, I owe all of you a huge apology.”
“You mean for straight-up running out on us without so much as a text message?” Oktavia said.
“Yes. For that.”
“For abandoning your wife when she needed you the most,” Homulilly said.
“Also that. Yeah.”
“For completely shutting us out so that Gretchen and Homulilly had to go commit actual crimes and get arrested just to have some sense talked into you?” Ophelia said.
“W-Well, that wasn’t exactly-”
“Ahem!”
Charlotte sighed. “Okay. Yes. For that too. And everything else.”
“Okay,” Ophelia said. “Well, say your piece.”
Charlotte swallowed. “Look. I don’t…have some kind of well-reasoned, logical reason for doing what I did. I got scared. Like, really scared. I guess I really do have a lot of issues about, you know, our past selves, about how I wasn’t actually part of your group, and about any part of that coming back. Yeah, I know you told me that it doesn’t matter, but…I don’t know. I got a bad case of the stupid.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” Ophelia said.
“Yeah.” Charlotte sighed. “And…when Candy changed, I thought that, you know, the Candeloro part was gone for good. That it was just Mami Tomoe that was left. I thought my wife was gone, and I couldn’t…”
“Okay, okay, question,” Oktavia interrupted. “Look, we know that already. We figured that part out right away. But why the hell wouldn’t you talk to anyone of us? Why wouldn’t you try to find out if you were right or not? Why just assume that it’s true and split? Wouldn’t you, um, want to at least verify before you lock all your friends out and throw your life away?”
“Ugh. I know, I know! It was stupid! I guess..” Charlotte shook her head. “I guess that…once I had calmed down and started to think about it, I guess I got scared that I was wrong. And if I was wrong, that meant that I turned my back on my family for nothing.”
Ophelia coughed into her fist. “Whichyoudid.”
“Ophelia,” Candeloro said, warning in her voice.
“No, she’s right,” Charlotte said. “But I just kept telling myself that I was right, that I really had lost Candeloro and that meant I was justified in leaving. You know, the universe had conspired to take away the person that I loved the most, so what did I owe it?”
“We’re not the universe,” Homulilly said. “We’re…us.”
“I know! I know! But…imagine if Gretchen had been replaced with someone else. Like, the girl you loved was gone and never coming back, but there was someone that still looked like her, that talked like her, that acted like her, but it wasn’t her, and everyone was openly accepting this new Gretchen in the place of the old one, and they wanted you to just take the new Gretchen when you knew that the one you loved was gone for good.”
“But…that’s not what happened!” Oktavia protested. Her tail started bouncing in its support apparatus, a tic that kicked in whenever she was agitated. “She wasn’t gone! She was just…you know, sort of expanded upon in a kind of disturbing way.”
“I know that now! And I guess I knew that then! But…oh, I don’t know, I was really scared that it was the way I thought it was, so I just kept telling myself that it was that way until I half-believed it!”
“So I guess Homulilly and Gretchen showing up at your hidey-hole wasn’t enough to make you think otherwise,” Ophelia said.
“No,” Charlotte admitted. She glanced over to where Candeloro was standing. “I mean, yeah, they convinced me to at least talk with her before I left, but I still went in thinking I was right.”
“And seeing how you kind of ran away after all that, Candeloro didn’t have much luck either.”
Charlotte’s mouth set in a straight line. “I mean, sort of? She told me some things that I wasn’t expecting, and it scared me, so that’s why I ran.”
“Huh? What’s that mean?”
“I mean she kind of showed me that I was being an idiot. Kind of hard to lie to yourself after that.” Charlotte ran her fingers through her hair while her tail roped itself around her upper thigh. “Also, it’s kind of hard to lie to yourself when yourself is straight up calling you out on your bullshit while she punches your face in.”
As expected, this pronouncement was met with mostly confusion from her housemates, mainly in the form of more blank stares and the scratching of heads.
“Huh?” Gretchen said, tilting her head to one side.
“You’ve lost me,” Oktavia added.
Charlotte swallowed. “Um, you know those dreams you guys apparently had back on the Aurora Borealis where you all met your past selves and made peace or whatever?”
“How’d you know about those?” Ophelia demanded.
“Word got back to me. Anyway, after I got into that zipper, I kind of fell asleep and, well, had one of my own. And it turns out my past self didn’t really approve of recent life decisions and decided to tell me. And she beat me up. Like, a lot.”
“Okay,” Ophelia said after a very long bout of silence. “Where exactly does the metaphor end and stuff that actually happened begin here?”
“I don’t know, it was weird!” Charlotte groused. “But that…that was kind of the wake-up call I needed. So that’s why I turned that thing around.”
“And that’s when you decided to go to the museum, to get advice from Astrid!” Oktavia said, her tail excitedly bouncing.
“Yeah.”
Gretchen looked up, her face hopeful. “But you’re back now, right? I mean, what you just said was extremely weird, but you two made up, so we can…start fixing things now? Go back…well, get used to how things are and be a whole family again, right?”
The younger girl’s voice was so full of hope that Candeloro hated herself for what came next. “Not yet.”
“Excuse me?” Homulilly said. In sharp contrast to Gretchen’s, her voice was full of steel and poison, the sort of tone that not lightly offended.
“Listen,” Candeloro said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate how helpful and accepting you all have been. You’ve all been wonderful. But-”
“You’re leaving,” Homulilly finished for her. When everyone stared at her, she looked around at everyone and rolled her eyes. “What? That’s what she’s saying, isn’t it? We went from losing one member of the family to losing two! That’s the opposite of what was supposed to happen!”
Candeloro said, “Homulilly-”
“No!” Homulilly leapt to her feet and thrust an angry, bony finger at her. “Listen to me! Gretchen and I went and got ourselves into a lot of trouble for you, for both of you! We might go to jail! But okay, that would have been worth it if it got you and Charlotte to make up and everyone was home. But instead, you’re both going away! How is that fair?”
“Hey, I agree with the floral skeleton,” Oktavia broke in. In contrast to Homulilly’s cold steel, she sounded like she couldn’t decide whether to start yelling or burst into tears, but it was no less angry. “What the hell? We’re family! We’re a Walpurgisnacht! Our souls are literally connected! Now you’re just gonna, what, go away? After everything? Charlotte was the one that walked out on you! Why are you choosing her over us?”
Charlotte openly winced at that. “It’s not like that!” Candeloro said quickly. “I-It’s true, we do need to leave for a while, but we’re not going away forever! Probably not even a full year.”
While all this was going on, Ophelia was merely sitting still, upper body leaning forward with her skinny arms crossed over her knees, scarlet eyes boring holes into the two of them. “Explain,” her voice having all the steel of Homulilly’s and all the fire of Oktavia’s.
Though it was hard to keep her voice steady and not to trip over her words, Candeloro did her best to explain the slips of memory she had been experiencing, starting with the one with the marshal and then detailing the ones she had been having with all of her friends. She told them about how her sense of self was far more fluid than she would have liked, and how it was happening more and more often.
“…and the more it happens, the harder it is to regain my sense of self,” she finished. “And yes, you have all been wonderful, but staying here only makes it worse. These memories just keep getting triggered, and I don’t know when the next one will hit.”
“You know there are quite a few qualified people here in Freehaven to help with that,” Ophelia pointed out. Her anger seemed to have cooled, though the firmness had not.
“And none of them can help me with this!” Candeloro said, her voice cracking. “I’m sorry, but they can’t! Not even Astrid could! Besides, I can’t talk to any of them without risking blowing my secret!”
Homulilly inhaled sharply through her teeth. “Well, I mean, between us, Astrid, Hitomi, and like at least fifty people over in that science boat, I’d say that’s a ticking time bomb already.”
“Exactly! That’s another reason why I need to just…go somewhere else for a while. Wait for things to blow over.”
Ophelia tilted her head to one side. “And Charlotte?”
“Look,” Charlotte said with a sigh. “I got scared and did a bad thing. And this whole deal still kind of scares me. So, we both have a lot of things we need to come to terms with.”
Gretchen had mostly remained silent during the whole exchange. She had watched with a thoughtful look, privately musing over everything that was being said. And now she spoke, doing so carefully and with great deliberation. “So…you’re not really leaving us. You’re just getting some space to help you deal with these new problems so that when you do come back you’ll both be healthy.”
“Yes,” Candeloro said with a grateful sigh. Leave it to Gretchen to give things the best spin possible. And it wasn’t like she was wrong. “Thank you. That’s it exactly.”
However, Oktavia was less than mollified. “But what if you don’t?” she said, her voice nearly rising to a shout. “What if you don’t come back? What if you get scared like Charlotte did and you don’t ever come back?”
“It won’t! I promise-”
“No! No promises right now. You don’t know what’s going to happen, none of us know what’s going to happen, so don’t promise something you can’t keep! Like, half a week ago we were all set to have our family get bigger! Then all this shit happened, and now you have to leave! What if something new happens?”
“Tavi, babe,” Ophelia said, rising to go over to her. “It’s okay. You don’t-”
Oktavia swatter her hand away. “No! Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay when you don’t know it’s going to be okay. You don’t know that, no one knows that!”
“Oktavia,” Candeloro said. “I-”
Now openly crying, Oktavia roughly grabbed the controls to her chair and wretched it around. “No. I can’t deal with this right now. I’m…I just can’t. Not now.”
Everyone watched as she stomped off toward her and Ophelia’s room. A moment later the door slammed.
“Well,” Ophelia said after a long while. “Look. I’ll talk to her after she’s had some time to cool down. But tell me honestly: do you really have to go?”
“For a little while,” Candeloro said. “Yeah.”
Ophelia’s jaw clenched up. “But you are coming back? Once you two got all your issues worked out, you’re coming back to us. Right?”
Everything in Ophelia’s voice made it clear that they damned well better.
“Yes,” Candeloro said. “I swear.”
“I see.” Ophelia looked down at the ground, and then up at them. “You’ll keep in touch, at least. Right?”
“Of course we will! It’s not like we’re falling right off the map.”
“Heh. There’s probably places where you can literally do that.” Then Ophelia let out a long sigh. She walked over to the pair and laid a hand on Candeloro’s shoulder.
“Okay,” she said. “But you get better. I don’t care what you’re calling yourself when you come back, I know it’ll still be you. Just get yourself better, okay?”
Candeloro swallowed. She wanted to reassure her that she most definitely would, but she suddenly found herself unable to speak.
So she settled for grabbing Ophelia in a tight embrace instead.
There came a low patter of incredibly thin legs, followed by the steps of two perfectly normal ones, and soon two more pairs joined them. Candeloro, Ophelia, Gretchen, and Homulilly all stood there, wrapped up in each other’s love.
Then without releasing her grip or raising her head, Ophelia said, “Charlotte, you waiting for a written invitation. Get in on this!”
“Oh!” Charlotte said in genuine surprise. “Uh, right away!” Soon her arms were holding the whole group from behind Candeloro.
Then they heard a door open in another place of the house, followed by the whine-hiss of Oktavia’s chair. The mermaid herself appeared a moment later.
Everyone paused, and then turned to look at her. Oktavia’s eyes were red and wet, and her nose looked raw, as if it had been blown very hard recently.
She moved her chair closer. “Okay, look,” she said. “I’m still mad at you, and I’m still going to yell at you later. But I really need a hug too, and you guys don’t get to have one without me!”
“Well, come on then,” Homulilly said. Oktavia came in closer, and Homulilly and Ophelia both lifted her up by the arms and brought her in to join them, completing the set.
Candeloro sighed. Genuinely happy moments seemed to be hard to come by as of late, but this most certainly was one.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank-”
“-you.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it!” Sayaka said with a happy slap onto Mami’s back. “I mean, we’re a team, aren’t we? You woulda done the same for any of us.”
That much was true, but Mami still was grateful. She had gotten a little cocky during that last witch fight, and had nearly lost her head as a result. Had she been alone, she would have surely died.
But she wasn’t alone. Not anymore.
Madoka rushed up to her and clutched her hand with both of her own. “But please be more careful, Mami-san!” she said. “You scared me back there!”
“I will,” Mami promised. “I guess that just goes to show that even when you have a lot of experience, you can still get careless.”
“A hard lesson to learn,” Homura Akemi agreed. The dark and mysterious new member to their group held out her hand. There was a flash of violet light, and she was suddenly clad in her normal clothes again, her soul gem reduced to a small, silver ring. “Still, I am glad that you’re unhurt.”
Then she smiled. It was a rare thing for Homura Akemi to smile, but here one was. Mami just wished that she hadn’t needed to endanger her own life in order to see one.
“Come on, I’ll race you guys back!” Madoka took off running, heading up the road toward Mami’s apartment.
“Hey, Madoka! Wait up!” Sayaka ran after her. A moment later Homura followed.
Mami didn’t run after them. Let them have their fun. She would catch up soon enough.
Besides, it wasn’t like she was alone.
“That was a kinda dumb move,” Kyoko remarked as she started to walk beside Mami. “Seriously, what were you thinking, showing off like that? The kids are already impressed with you. No need to drop your guard like that.”
“I know. You’re right. I’ll…set a better example in the future.”
“Hmmm.” Kyoko pulled out one of those boxes of pocky she always seemed to have on hand. “Still, don’t tell the others I said this, but I’m glad you’re okay.”
She opened the box, and held it out toward her.
Mami blinked. She looked down at the pocky, and then up at Kyoko.
“Well,” Kyoko said, giving the box a jiggle.
Smiling, Mami took one of the candy sticks and bit into it. It was good.
“I’m glad you came back,” she said as the two started up the hill together.
“Hey, don’t go getting all sappy on me,” Kyoko said as she stuck a stick into her mouth. “I just didn’t like the thought of you going crazy all by yourself. You kinda go to pieces when you don’t have anyone around to watch you. It kinda sucks to be alone, you know?”
“I know,” Mami said. She looked up the hill at their juniors. “But I’m not alone. Not anymore.”
Her arms still entwined with those of her loved ones, Mami’s eyes welled up. Again her sense of self had shifted, but this time she didn’t try to fight it. Because there were happy memories mixed with the bad, and if Mami Tomoe and Candeloro were to be the same person from now on, then at least she was getting those as well.
…
So, um.
Writing this…was a journey, and if I do end up doing a look-back on the Hitomi/Mami arc, this chapter will get a very long section all to itself.
Jesus Christ.
Anyway, this is it. Epilogue goes up next week, hopefully.
Until next time, everyone.
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