15. Fiona
“C’mon, Stu, hurry your tiny little goat legs up!” Fiona called. They were walking down
the sidewalk downtown, passing small clothing boutiques and bookstores. The town of Basilton
was known for being full of folks with a literary bent; the library where Ezra worked was even
larger than the main library in Everin City, where Stu was from. (Ezra worked in the magic
history section; Marlowe had often commented that she thought she only worked there because
she was such an important part of magical history. Ezra had always shrugged her older sister off
and declined to respond.)
“Fiona, I’m walking as quickly as I can!” Stu actually was walking extremely quickly
(certainly faster than Wesley), but Fiona had all the advantages of being an air witch: all she had
to do to go quickly was step lightly and let the wind carry her along.
“Goddess fuck, can both of you slow down, please?”
Fiona chuckled. “There is no Goddess Fuck in our religion, Wesley, Our Lady’s name is
Endalyn!”
“My aunt’s name is Endalyn,” Stu chimed in. Fiona had slowed down somewhat at
Wesley’s request, and Stu had finally caught up to her. “They’re named after the Goddess, but I
don’t know why.”
Fiona stopped walking altogether. “Why do you refer to your nonbinary guardian as your
aunt? Do they prefer that, or-?”
“Mmm-hmm. I don’t know why that is, either,” Stu replied. “Just is.”
Wesley finally caught up to him. He doubled over, completely out of breath. “I- ha-
hate-,” he panted, before taking a deeper, shuddering breath. “I hate you both.”
Fiona kicked him lightly in the shin. “Noted. You’re such a little bitch, you know that?”
He lifted a hand off of his knee, gesturing, as he declared, “I am not a little bitch, you’re
just mean. And you use the wind to walk, which is bloody cheating, anyway, so-”
“Biiiiiiiitch. Bitch. Whiny little bitch baby.”
Stu tried to intervene. “Fiona-”
“Shut up, Stu. Wesley, you are a whiny little bitch baby.”
He straightened, having finally caught his breath. “If you weren’t so pretty I’d punch you
in the nose,” he said.
Stu decided he really ought to interrupt. “If you two are done abusing each other, can we
go?” He glanced between the two of them, bemused and concerned; both feelings which grew
when the two of them burst out laughing.
“It’s fine, Stu, neither of us means it,” Wesley explained. “If either of us were actually in
the mood to punch the other, we definitely wouldn’t be saying so; and she definitely would not
be calling me a bitch.”
Fiona was laughing too, a softer sound than the cackle Stu had grown to expect. “Mum
always gets so freaked out when we have an argument, she’s like, ‘You guys get so scarily polite
and I’m like what the hell happened? I haven’t had to tell them not to curse indoors in over an
hour!’ and it really freaks out Da, he refuses to leave the greenhouse when we’re in the middle of
an argument, he says he can’t get over the ‘please pass the butter knife, Wesley,’ and the ‘I hope
you have a lovely day, Fiona,’ he says it’s too ominous to bear,” she chuckled. She seemed
lighter, and softer, almost, outside of St. Baz’s; more like an ordinary mortal and less like a
terrifying whirlwind of destructive power.
“You live with both of your parents?” Stu asked, his eyes widening. “And they like each
other?”
“Yep. Well, generally. Mum and Da both live at home, though Da got a job offer back in
Verity and refused to go, which caused quite the row. Said the money wasn’t worth leaving us,
though Mother knows we could’ve used it.”
Wesley shook his head. “Honestly, Fi, Mother’s worse than Goddess fuck. You’d get
beaten in the temple for that one.”
“I think you should both stop cursing,” Stu whispered. Neither of the pair noticed.
“Who cares? Maybe I wasn’t cursing. Maybe I was simply pointing out that the Mother
Goddess is well aware my parents have more kids than means to provide.”
Wesley scoffed. “The fact that you used the Goddess as your excuse instead of trying to
claim you were talking about your mum says enough.”
“Oh, come off it, Wesley. You have no right to be on a high fucking horse and you know
it,” she responded. She started walking again. “C’mon, guys! Don’t be whiny little bitch babies,”
she called, already ten feet ahead. The two boys groaned, but more or less managed to keep up.
After another twenty minutes of walking, they were out on a path just entering the woods
by the fields that surrounded Basilton. Stu had never been around the farms in this direction; the
Veritable Forest was situated at the halfway point between Basilton and Verity, and it lay in the
opposite direction of the farms.
“So, your family lives on a farm?” Stu asked Fiona. He was skipping along in the chilly
country air. Although it was bright and sunny, it was still quite cold, and he found that skipping
warmed him up better than regular walking.
“Not really. It’s more of a fairytale cottage kind of place. There’s a garden, a babbling
Brooke-”
“Oh, you’ll love Brooke, Stewart. She’s the least ill-tempered water nymph I’ve ever
met,” Wesley chuckled.
“-And of course, the house itself. It’s kind of large by normal standards, four big
bedrooms with walk-in closets and actually nearly six bathrooms, but since there are ten of us-”
“There are ten of you?!”
“Including my parents, yes.”
“Are the twins still sleeping in your closet?” Wesley asked. The last time he’d visited the
cottage, the Witch twins, Fair and Starlight (they’d chosen their own names at the age of seven)
had been sleeping in loft beds in Fiona’s closet.
“Yep. Mum made me move my clothes into a wardrobe so they’d have space for all of
their shit.”
“Lovely. Just lovely. I’m sure that sucks balls, Fi.”
“I’m sure you suck balls, Wesley. I’m sure you suck an entire bag of-”
“Fiona Witch! That language is not appropriate, well, ever, but certainly not in front of,”
here Fiona’s mother, a seer who’d come round the bend at that moment, paused and gestured to
Stu, before leaning in and stage-whispering, “children!”
“Ma! It’s his balls Wesley’s sucking, I don’t see the point of-”
“Fiona!”
Wesley, trying not to burst out laughing, glared at her and chimed in with, “Yes, Fiona!”
“Oh shut up, Wesley-”
“-Hello, Wesley, dear, how have you been, I-”
“-Mum, he’s been a twat, is how he’s been-”
“I’ve been fine, actually-”
“No you haven’t, you liar-”
“Fiona, the kid-”
“He’s just a goat, not a child, he-”
“-he isn’t a kid, he’s-”
“Yes, alright, ok. Wesley, you and your friend must be freezing, let’s-”
“Why are you even-”
“Do you know what she-”
“Wesley, don’t you dare-”
“Fiona, be polite-”
“She said-”
“No, I-”
“Can everybody please just SHUT UP?!”
The three who’d been arguing in the woods turned to look at each other, shocked, before
turning their attention to the satyr sitting on the ground. Stu was rocking back and forth, his
hands firmly clamped around his ears, tears streaming down his face as he glared at his
boyfriend, his friend, and her mother.
Something, unfortunately, clicked in Fiona’s tactless and easily confused head. “Oh, wait, Stu, are you neurodivergent?” she asked, with all her usual lack of tact. Wesley elbowed her. “Ow, Wes, why-”
He glared. “That’s not the sort of question you ask when someone’s losing it,” he stage-whispered, “and besides that, it’s not like that actually matters right now.”
“How does that not- ow,” she held her side and grimaced.
Wesley sat across from Stu. “What’s wrong, love?”
Stu shook his head.
Wesley tried again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Stu shook his head again. He was sobbing much harder than he’d been that morning.
Wesley had seen Stu cry plenty (more than plenty), but never quite this much. Goddess, I think
we triggered something, he thought, his invocation less a curse than an observation to an unseen
force.
“Wesley, we’re going to go,” Fiona whispered to him after a while. “Don’t get eaten.”
(There were no monsters in that part of the woods.) She and her mother walked the short distance
away to their home, which was just around the bend from where they’d paused.
The two boys sat across from each other for about half an hour in the cold. Stu had cried
himself out fairly quickly once the argument had ended, but he didn’t move from where he sat
curled up on the ground for quite some time.
“Wesley?” He asked, peeking over his knees at his boyfriend, who’d been watching two
robins fight over a bug.
Wesley turned to him. “Hmm?’
“Sit closer.”
Wesley was more than happy to oblige. He scooted over across the cold dirt, settling next
to Stu. Stu leaned into him, glad for the extra warmth. “My parents used to fight like that,” Stu
whispered. “Layers and layers of words, with the housekeeper butting in every few minutes to
remind them that I was there, but they wouldn’t listen and would keep shouting as if I were
invisible.”
Wesley rubbed Stu’s back with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around his own knees. He
pressed a kiss to his forehead. “That’s awful. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Mmm-hmm. It was not fun.”
“I can imagine.”
They sat in silence for a while. Though it was still fairly early in the evening, the sun was
beginning to go down, and dusk was starting to fall around them.
“Wes?”
“Hmm?”
“Are your parents like that?”
Wesley sighed. “My parents don’t argue much; really, my parents don’t say much of
anything to each other at all. Or to me, for that matter.” He stared off into the distance,
exhaustion seeping from every bit of him. “At least, my dad doesn’t. My mother’s around a bit
more, but she’s not very focused.” He chuckled bitterly. “People always assume she’s the faery,
since she’s so graceful and detached and flighty. No one assumes it’s the balding middle school
teacher with glasses and a vintage bike obsession.”
They both turned at the sound of leaves crunching behind them, and found themselves
looking up at a shivering Fiona. She was wrapped in a cosy-looking pea coat, in a soft pink that
bordered on twee and clashed alarmingly with both her hair and the bright red scarf wrapped
around her neck. She looks like a valentine, Stu noted.
“You two ought to come inside. Mum’s promised to play nice, and Da’s in the
greenhouse, though he might come in in a bit,” she murmured. Her ears were turning red in the
chilly evening breeze. “The kids are working on their homework in the family room, so we’ll
have the big kitchen to ourselves.”
Wesley looked at Stu. “Do you want to go in, love?”
Stu nodded. He stood up, wobbling for a second, before steadying himself against a
suddenly upright Wesley. “Fiona has snacks, right?”
His friends chuckled. “Fiona has so many snacks,” she laughed, taking Stu’s free hand.
The three of them walked round the bend into the clearing where Fiona’s house was located.
Stu’s jaw dropped. While Myrtle’s garage had been full of faery lights, the clearing where
the Fallonson-Witch family lived was full of actual faeries. Pixies and wood sprites hovered
about the clearing, darting from tree to tree and landing on folks’s shoulders. The aforementioned
babbling Brooke was chattering merrily in her stream to a dryad who was hanging laundry from
his branches; in the flower garden, flower fae were tending to their blooms, and in the orchard,
wood nymphs and satyrs danced as they collected fruit that had fallen to the ground.
The entire scene glittered in various shades of pink and blue and gold. It looked homey,
like some strange, family-owned farm, but it also had the dream-like (or perhaps nightmarish,
Stu couldn't help but think) quality that one associated with dissociating. It all seemed too perfect
to be real.
“Where are we?” Stu asked, nearly certain that they’d somehow been transported into the
wild Fae lands at the heart of Everin.
Fiona didn’t bother with much of a reply. She gripped his hand more firmly and dragged
him towards the house, where, if nothing else, she could make sure he didn’t accidentally sell his
soul to one of the vampires who lived in the orchard or get eaten by wood sprites.
“Doesn’t matter. C’mon, Stewart, I can’t let you die in the woods, your aunts would
literally kill me.”
“Fiona-,” Wesley butt in, although her resulting glare shut him up immediately. It was
about a three minute walk at a brisk pace across the edge of the clearing to the house, and Fiona
dragged them along with her wind at the fastest pace she could manage. When they reached the
door, she opened it without even touching the handle and yanked the boys inside, slamming the
door shut behind her with the wind.
“Alright, boys, we’re indoors now. It’s safe enough here to ask whatever questions
you’ve got, Stu, but I would suggest we get to the kitchen first,” Fiona said, chucking off her
coat and shaking her hair. She unwound her scarf from her neck and draped it around Stu, who
was shivering.
“Well damn, Fi, I thought you were going to wrap your scarf around me,” Wesley said.
She whacked him lightly atop his head with her hat. “No, you absolute fucking twat.
Goddess, Wesley, let’s go sit by the fire if you’re cold.”
She grabbed both of the boys’ hands and dragged them away in the direction of the
kitchen, stopping to hurl an insult at Starlight in the hall before finally pausing in front of the
hearth in the family’s big kitchen. Fiona’s house, like Wesley’s, had multiple kitchens; the one
they were in currently was the family kitchen. (There was also the summer kitchen in the
courtyard, and the potion and spell kitchen was in the basement; because the house was
technically set into a hill, the basement was built a lot like Wesley’s front kitchen, with large
windows and a sliding glass door.)
She thrust Stu down in front of the fire, nearly throwing him in. (Just like Ezra, he
thought. Hmph.) “Sit down and get warm, Stu, while I take your stupid boyfriend to grab more
Firewood.”
Wesley poked her in the head. “You said let’s sit in front of the fire if I’m cold! I’m cold,
Fi, go get the wood yourself.”
“Wesley,” Fiona hissed at him, gesturing discreetly in an “I need to talk to you, you
moron” sort of way. “We should gather more firewood.”
Wesley cottoned on, not being as half as thick as he acted, but he shook his head.
“I want Wesley to sit down,” Stu said, not bothering to look up at them; he was staring
into the fire, watching the logs slowly turn to ash.
“Fine! Have it your way, you two, then! I will go get more firewood-,” they really were
running low in the kitchen, “-and you two can sit nice and cosy by the fire, and then when I get
back, we can eat and I can spring my news on the both of you without any proper warning and
you can choke on your food, since apparently that’s what you want! Lovely. Just bloody lovely,
you two,” and she stormed out of the house through the back door.
“She’s going to end up selling her soul to a vampire one of these days,” Wesley muttered.
“On purpose?”
“No.” Wes considered it for a moment. “Well, maybe. If the vampire were really cute,
she’d probably consider it.”
“Why do you think she’ll end up accidentally selling her soul to a vampire?” Stu asked.
He scratched the tip of his nose; it was itchy and warm from the heat of the fire.
Wesley turned to him. He reached over and pushed one of Stu’s long-ish brown curls
behind his gently pointed ears. “She’s too impulsive. She throws herself headlong into stupid
situations without much of a thought for the consequences, simply because she’s so damn
powerful that most of the consequences barely affect her at all. One of these days, though, she’s
going to tangle herself up in something she can’t cut or curse her way out of, and then where will
I be?” He turned back to the fire, his head resting on Stu’s shoulder. “She’s my oldest friend; I’ve
known her nearly since birth. I’m pretty sure her parents love me more than mine do. We fight a
lot, joking mostly, but she’s-”
He sighed. “She’s like a sister to me. More than a sister to me, she’s like my bloody
platonic soulmate or something. I’d be devastated if anything were to happen to her.”
Stu looked down at the head on his shoulder. “Have you told her that?” he asked, running
his hand through Wesley’s hair.
“I tell her every time she does something stupid! I used to just text it to her every
morning- ‘Good morning, Fiona, I love you, so please don’t accidentally kill yourself trying to
fight your English teacher,’ or whatever mess she had going on at the moment. I think she
thought I was joking. Honestly, I think she still thinks I’m joking.”
“Well, at any rate, she clearly cares about you,” Stu said. “I do think she would have
given you her scarf if I wasn’t so much smaller and cuter.”
Wesley pulled back. “Stewart! Are you seriously saying that I am not small and cute?”
Stu giggled. “You’re like, six foot five, Wes.”
He scoffed. “Ok, so I’m maybe not small, but I’m definitely pretty cute! I might not be
tiny little bunny rabbit cute like you,” he poked him in the nose, “but I’ve at least got to be
Flemish Giant rabbit cute, right?”
“Yes, Wesley, you are every bit as cute as a ginormous rabbit that could literally kill
someone. You are murder rabbit cute.”
“Ok, that is not what I meant.”
It was too late, though: the concept had stuck. Stu had stood up and was doing what
would probably be classified as an interpretive dance to the chant of “Murder rabbit, murder
rabbit!”
“Holy fuck. What have I just walked into?” questioned Fiona, standing in the doorway
with snow sitting stark against the red of her hair, holding a bundle of firewood. “I leave for
eight minutes and I come back to- What, exactly? What in the name of all that’s good and holy
and made of cheese is going on here?”
“It is called,” said Stu, standing upside down now. He tumbled to the ground and pointed
at her with one long, slender finger. “-interpretive dance.”
“You have caster’s fingers, Stewart.”
“You know, I’ve told him that, actually,” interrupted Wesley. “I told him so in class once
and he threw a pencil at me. He says it’s from piano.”
“Do you play piano, Stu?” asked Fiona.
Stu nodded. “Mmm-hmm. I’ve been playing since I was four. And that,” he turned to Wesley, “-is why my fingers are so long.”
Wesley scooped him into his lap and nuzzled his neck. “Sure. Definitely not because of a
shocking level of magical ability that you’re keeping from us.
Stu held up a finger, giggling. “I know one spell, Wesley. Would you like to see my one
spell, Wesley?”
`Fiona cackled. “I think we’d all like to see your ‘one spell’, Stu. C’mon, let’s have it.”
Stu pointed a finger at his shoe and stared at it very intently for a few moments. After a
second or two, the bright red rubber of his wellingtons turned green, and then faded back to red.
Fiona’s jaw dropped. “Really, Stewart? Your ‘one spell’ is a colour changing spell tested
in the practical exam of eleventh-year saint candidates, performed without an incantation or a
wand?” she scoffed. “You’ve just damned yourself irrevocably, Stewart, as A, you’ve clearly got
loads of innate magical ability, and B, I will never believe a word you say since your worldview
is clearly skewed if you think that that is going to convince me that you don’t have loads of
magical ability.”
Stu peered up at her in bemusement. Though he’d sat back down after his dance and was
now sitting on Wesley, Fiona had remained standing the entire time. “What’s the big deal?”
Fiona gaped at him. Wesley simply shook his head. “Colour spells alter the way the
human eye perceives light. You’re not actually changing the colour the way you would if you
were, say, dying a coat; depending on the spell, you’re either changing the entire wavelength of
the light, which is the simpler option, or you're modifying the eye itself to be able to perceive
the new colour. You’re forcing your brain to accept a reality that is not, in fact, real.”
“-hence why it’s so bloody difficult,” Fiona said, grateful for the explanation she hadn’t
been wholly sure how to give (she’d always excelled at the practical side of magic; Wesley was
the one who competed and won awards in the theoretics categories in Sport). She flopped down
on the hearth rug next to the boys. “Wesley. Go get snacks.”
“No.”
“Do it for your husband, Wesley. Be a good little housewife and get your husband some
snacks,” she grinned, knowing that Wesley’s want to please Stu would get her some snacks, even
if the precise wording of her supplication might get her hit in the head with hard fruit. “I cannot
believe you just threw an apple at me.”
“You should feel honoured that I didn’t throw a pineapple at your head, Fi. There’s one
right here, it’s not too late,” he pointed out, smirking.
“Guys, no fruit throwing,” Stu commanded, pouting at them from the cosiest spot at the
hearth. Wesley sat back down next to him with a plate of sandwiches from the basket Fiona’s
mum always kept full and a tin of biscuits. Stu turned to him. “Wes, are you going to eat?”
Wesley nodded. “I’ll have a sandwich or two.”
Fiona waggled her finger at him. “Have two, Wesley,” she mumbled through a mouthful
of jam and homemade bread.
“Fiona, that’s disgusting.”
She swallowed. “Whatever. Have two sandwiches. And some of those biscuits- my aunt
made them, and I know you like the lemon ones.”
Stu stared at her. “The mayor made these biscuits?”
Fiona nodded. “It’s the only thing she’s actually good at. She comes over every Sunday to
bake for us; brings Rafe, of course, who’s a fucking prat, but otherwise it’s fine, and we get
biscuits out of it, so-,” she trailed off, searching through the tin for something particularly sweet.
Wesley chuckled. “It gets pretty confusing since both Rafe and Fi’s brother Eric are the
‘son of Fallon’, and Fi’s dad refuses to call Rafe anything other than Fallonson.”
“Why grandma Fallon decided to name both of her children Fallon too, I will never
understand,” Fiona said as she crunched down on a raspberry chocolate walnut biscuit decisively.
“Ok, but anyway, Stu-”
“Fiona, be polite,” Wesley warned.
“I am always polite! Stu, what happened in the woods?”
Wesley shook his head. “That’s not polite.”
Stu laughed. “It’s fine, I’d rather she just ask me then try to manoeuvre around in search
of answers.” He turned to Fiona. “I have PTSD (weeeell the doctor said it might be C-PTSD,
actually), which was triggered by the yelling. As for your earlier question, I do have ADHD, so
yes, I am neurodivergent.” He crunched down on the apple Wesley had thrown thoughtfully.
Wesley chucked a tomato slice at Fiona. “See? I told you it wasn’t relevant.”
Stu poked him. “I mean, it wasn’t really not relevant, Wes.”
“Actually, you said it didn’t matter at the moment, which was true,” she nibbled on her
third biscuit. (She’d decided to make him pay for the tomato later; at the moment, she needed
things from him.)
Wesley hummed. “Why are we here again?”
“To enjoy my delightful company? Because you always eat after long walks? To protect
whatever’s left of your little faerie boyfriend’s innocence?”
“Nothing. Literally, absolutely nothing,” Stu muttered.
“...that’s a very bitter take, Stewart.”
“Well, maybe he’s a bitter little person, Fiona, under the rosy cheeks and giggles. Why
are we really here?”
She sighed and ran a hand through her now-messy red hair. In moments like that, her
similarities to her best friend were unmistakable. “So, I was reading last night,” she began.
“As you tend to do,” Wesley said.
“-Right. I was flipping through a book my aunt gave me on blood rituals (kind of
concerning, actually), cross-referencing certain important bits with a book on historic incidents
of dumb fucks trying to intimidate casters with cadavers, cursed objects, whatever. You know,
dark magic shit that most of us would never touch.”
Stu’s eyes widened. “You think someone was trying to intimidate Aunty Ezra with the
remains of a blood ritual?”
“Pretty much. And not one of the fun ones where you try to summon a demon or
Whatever-”
“Fiona!” Wesley glared at her.
“-or one of the normal ones that even saints use, to tie specific doors to your bloodline or
whatever. One of the proper bad ones, where you cut the Magick out of someone or something
else to make yourself more powerful or ‘balance the universe’ or whatever bigoted crap you
believe in.”
Stu blinked. “Summoning demons isn’t one of the ‘bad ones?!’”
She grinned her feral grin at him. “Depends on who you’re summoning.”
Wesley chucked another tomato at her. “Goddess, Wesley, fucking quit it-”
“Fiona. No. We’re not summoning demons again.”
“Again?!” Stu gaped at them. “When- why- who even- what? What?!”
“You know- It’s- oh, whatever. So, anyway, I need you guys to help me summon a
demon,” she declared, pulling tomato seeds out of her hair.
“Fiona, I literally just said-”
Stu fainted.
Wesley stared at him before turning to his friend. “Oh my Goddess, Fiona, you just killed
my boyfriend.”
She poked Wesley in the head. “Wh- Hey!”
“Good. Go ahead and draw some of his blood,” she grinned.
“No, Fiona!” He glared at her. “You’re not stealing my boyfriend’s blood. How would we
have even done this during lunch?!”
“Eh, you know, we would have- Nevermind. Your blood is too weak, elfling, I need his,”
she explained, in a tone that suggested Wesley was a complete moron.
“Why would his be any stronger?” he questioned, half-ready to throw that pineapple at
her.
“Were you not paying attention just now? Your little Faerie boyfriend has more magic in
his pinkie than you have in both of your pinkies!”
“...that’s not saying much, Fiona. And anyway, he’s not a Faerie.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Right.” She glared at him. “You know precisely what I mean,
Wesley. Yes, you’re strong, but not strong enough, I’m sorry, Wesley, it’s just how it is!”
Wesley opened his mouth, and then shut it again. His face turned as silvery as the bowl
that sat on the counter. Finally, after a few frustrated moments of opening and closing his mouth
like a carp and running his hands through his hair, he spoke. “Alright, we can’t argue like this.
Not because we shouldn’t argue about this, because we definitely should, but because Stu is right
there and he’s been staring at us nervously for the past few minutes,” he murmured, his voice
low and cold.
Fiona rolled her eyes and turned to the satyr, who’d sat up and was now biting his nails as
he watched them. “Stewart, my mother’s a seer. Your aunt isn’t going to come back on her own.
You can believe me or not, but if you intend to ever do so, I would suggest believing me now
that we have something closer to the upper hand, rather than when it’s been several months, and
you’re living with Myrtle, and Edie and Ezra have disappeared entirely.”
Stu stared into the fire, his chin tucked into his knees. After a moment, he turned to her.
“So, summoning demons. How do we do that?”
She grinned. “You know, Stewart, I’m glad you asked."
0 notes