#wr chatzy
Text
Ireland || Morgan & Deirdre
TIME: A hundred years or so from now.
LOCATION: A cottage, a museum
PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems @deathduty
WARNINGS: none
SUMMARY: A century isn’t enough time to make Morgan less anxious. Chaperoning her daughter’s school trip with Deirdre gives her more than enough to worry about.
“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough.” -Nikka Ursula
There was no perfect home between Dublin and the wild woods; Morgan and Deirdre looked. Every village, every suburb, every dilapidated farm. Too far from public transit, too many people, not enough distance from the other Dolans. So they built their own, two floors high and hugged gently by oaks. They painted the gables black and the sidings blue, the shade of Morgan’s eyes. They built a stable for a couple of cows that would do nothing but laze and let themselves be spoiled. They planted everything from potatoes and mint to geraniums and roses. When a storm drowned and trampled most of it their third year in the house, Morgan said they really would get around to building a greenhouse this time. So far, however, that remains a dream. But they did get a shed for crafting and a shed for death. They made a rooftop deck for stargazing. They papered the walls with shelved books and furnished the rooms with their most important treasures from the last hundred years or so. They kept the brick hearth clean and warm, first with blazing fires, then, as the earth warmed and dried a little more each Samhain with family art and pictures. Especially once the baby was born.
On this day, the baby was twelve and went by Steph instead of Persephone because last year Aoife Murphy said Persephone sounds gross and made her cry, not that she would say so if asked. She started secondary school away from her old classmates, the same one Morgan taught at, and things were almost better for her there. If she could just get through this field trip to the natural history museum without everyone finding out how bizarre her moms were, maybe Kelly (gorgeous, terrifying, and most popular Kelly) would want to invite her to her birthday party.
On this day, Morgan didn’t even try to feign sleep as she lay in bed with her wife. She and Deirdre had never tackled chaperone duty together before and she didn’t know what to expect. She taught all day, so Deirdre was the field trip expert through Steph’s primary years. But now. Now Steph was in the same building as her all day, and they didn’t have to be spread out until nightfall. They could be a family, happy and out in the world and together and everyone would see and no one would mind and if she could just stop being terrified of screwing it up, she might actually get to enjoy it.
Steph called from below. “Mammy! You said we’d start early!”
Morgan stiffened in bed, hand digging into Deirdre’s arms. “I also said early would be seven-thirty, not seven,” she sighed.
“Mammy!”
“I heard you, baby!” She called. With another sigh, she rolled over to see her wife in all her bed head glory. “Morning,” she said sheepishly.
Deirdre, on this day, responded as she did every morning when faced with the sight of her wife: she smiled, sat up slowly, and in defiance of their screaming child, kissed Morgan with great lingering. “Good morning, my love.” The morning was a magical place, filled with dewy morning air and the light their old blinds couldn’t stop from cutting across their messy bedroom claimed by books and a busy schedule. At least it wasn’t as bad as it had been when Persphone was first born. But the morning could not be claimed by annoyance at the dust collected over their furniture, and the too-full bookcase that begged for an ally, perhaps in the little space they had across the room. A hundred years ago the morning could have been taken by such thoughts, but after a decade of thinking something terribly wrong was going to rob them of their happiness and the following decade of confusion, Deirdre realized anxiety wrought mornings were a waste of time. She could worry about her mother coming to claim Pershephone under proper Dolan tutelage, she could worry about whether or not Pershephone might scream on this trip just as she worried the same countless number of trips ago, she could even worry about their aging dog, whose life could only hold on for so long. The cows, which no longer produced milk and now lived simply to be themselves--creatures that didn’t need utility to have value--could even be a center of fear. But none of it for the morning.
Rather, the morning was just the place to wonder how it was, with about one hundred years of marriage, Morgan managed the art of looking more beautiful each day. And each year, not an ounce of love waned. In the morning, there was no space for fear, not where there was so much love.
“You’d think it was Yule with the mood she’s in. Remember when she used to stand by the door, whining until one of us got up? Now she just yells from the kitchen.” Deirdre laughed, stealing another kiss as she remembered that Pershephone--Steph, as she now liked to be referred to--stopped barging into their room specifically because they, as she once put it, kissed too much. That made Deirdre laugh again, but it wasn’t until Steph called for them that she rolled out of bed with her own whining. “Did you eat breakfast?” She called out, searching for her robe among the clutter.
“Yes!” Steph screeched back, already with the lungs of a banshee.
However, Steph wasn’t in the sort of mood to let there be a morning. And Deirdre chuckled as she put on her robe and turned to look at her wife. “It’s serious,” she teased, “you better get down before she drives herself to school.” And the morning, the worry-free morning of lazing and affection, crumbled as healthy concern filled Deirdre’s gaze. She reached for her wife before she was out the bedroom door, pressing a kiss to her hand as she held it. “How are you feeling?”
There was no such thing as bringing a zombie back to life, but Deirdre’s morning kisses came bewilderingly close to it. Morgan relaxed and melted back into the world where she belonged. How could she do anything else when Deirdre had such a preternatural capacity for loving her? Since their marriage, she had never waxed and waned like Morgan did. She never took her for granted, never withdrew out of misplaced fear, never sampled a different life for the novelty of it. In Deirdre’s eyes (finally showing a little wrinkle, especially when she smiled), the morning always made Morgan new and wonderful and right.
“Good morning, my love,” she whispered back, automatic though more awed than usual.
After a moment of staring dopey eyed at her (her honey-brown eyes, the shine of her hair, her still perfect freckles, the absurd mix of mischief and kindness in her smile), Morgan got up and began climbing into the casual suit she’d laid out for herself the night before. She flinched when Steph screamed up again, louder than before.
“You know, for some reason I feel like it was a lot cuter at Yule. Or maybe that’s just because she was five and we were in the pre heavy eye-roll years.”
But she wasn’t really irritated, not in a way that didn’t dissolve five seconds later. In her dark months of the year, sure, the little things felt worse. But it was early autumn, and the day was bright. Life was short and long at once and time dissolved so strangely, it just wasn’t worth dwelling on tiny irritations that she would look on fondly anyways twenty years down the line. And if she came downstairs looking composed, she might be able to soothe the anxiety-temper out of her daughter before they squeezed into the car together.
She clipped a frilly bow tie onto her blouse to soften her look and grinned over at her wife. “I’ve got it, don’t worry.”
And she really did, maybe, until Deirdre stopped and grounded her again. “I’m…” Fine was the word that came to mind, but of course that wasn’t true and she didn’t really want to bother with that game anyway. She shrugged instead, mouthing nothing as she searched for the truth. “…I just want this to be good. For all of us. That’s all. I really, really want this to be good.” She squeezed Deirdre’s hand and tugged her close. “How are you?” Her eyes flickered to the half open door, then back. “Will it make anything better if I promise you not to be embarrassing?” She was teasing, but there was a little knot in her heart that was ready to do it.
“No promises.” Deirdre replied quickly with a gentle laugh, and a finger tapping Morgan’s nose as she so often did to hers. She knew Morgan didn’t mean it, not truly, but even so, a century together told her that a piece of Morgan thought it might fix something. And they both knew what a bad idea vague promises were. They had a rule with Steph, and an unspoken one between each other. “No promises,” Deirdre repeated more softly, “you don’t need them, my love. Whatever happens, your daughter loves you. She’s just a little--”
On cue, Steph yelled again, “Mammy!”
If she had been activated, a sound like that would crack their pretty stained glass, and ruin the more delicate furnishings. Even though she wasn’t, there was also a rule about being loud in the house. Not the sort of rule that meant harsh punishment that Deirdre and Morgan knew, just the sort that ought to be heeded in everyone’s best interest. It was true that Persephone didn’t know a moment of pain like either of them had, even after how much the two had worried one scolding went too far, or that they couldn’t manage to raise anything at all, perhaps they shouldn’t. But they did. And down a small wooden set of stairs was a young girl, barely a teen, who despite her yelling, really was the best little girl Deirdre knew.
“No yelling, dear,” Deirdre called down and after a pause, smiled as a meek apology rose from down below. “She’s just excited. I bet she also wants this to be good, really good. In her case, so she can hang out with Kelly, but…” Deirdre trailed off in the sort of way she knew Morgan understood as, you know what I mean. She kissed her wife again, slow in just the way their daughter would have a fuss with, and lingered just shy of the corner of her mouth. “I’ve never known you to make anything less than really good,” she murmured, “and if our daughter calmed down for a moment, she’d agree. But I don’t think she’s going to be calm unless she knows you’re coming down so...well, as much as I enjoy keeping you to myself, I should learn to share by now.” Deirdre kissed Morgan again, reluctantly moving out of the way. “And I’m okay,” she responded after a moment, not much better after a century at handling that question. “I wish I was still in bed, but I’m okay. I’m going to wear my big jacket so I can take a bone or two, I think.” Deirdre smiled, wide and lopsided and twinkling with mischief. Steph called out again, quieter this time. “Let’s greet the day, my love.”
Morgan had to bite her lip to keep from whining as Deirdre parted from the kiss. Here in the world of their room, everything was safe and no one could be disappointed and nothing-problems could be seen for what they really were. Over their threshold, out in the real world, anything might happen.
“This is probably why the PTA moms already think you’re older than me, huh,” she said. Then, because the silence between Steph’s calls was starting to tear at her nerves, “I love you. So much. Please be kidding about the bone, because we will not be forgiven if you get banned from the museum again.” One last squeeze and then she was racing down the stairs toward the burning glare of sunrise and the wide, worried face of their little girl. Deirdre was right. The day was for greeting, like a new guest, and the three Dolans could do it just fine together.
#
“Do we have to stand together all the time?” Steph hissed. They had just finished another headcount after the last one revealed that Connor McCarthy had slipped away to see what the ticket counter looked like from behind. Now, mostly thanks to Deirdre, they were finally heading into the Egyptian exhibit visiting the city.
“Bug—Steph,” Morgan corrected herself quickly. No home names for Steph at school. And definitely not when there were other students around. “We’re all standing together. That’s how these things work.”
Steph gave her a look so much like Deirdre’s when she was irritated that it took some of the sting out of not being wanted. You know what I mean.
Morgan nodded, conceding. This was fine. This was what Steph wanted and forcing her to conform to some idealized fantasy wasn’t going to make anything better. And so she was fine. Absolutely fine. “I’ve got the front, your Ma’s got the back, so if you want to make time with Kelly, you should get her somewhere in the middle.”
Steph hesitated a moment, sensing that her win wasn’t as right as she wanted it to be, then faded back into the little crowd of her classmates.
The unfortunate part of chaperoning a trip with Morgan was that they had to be separated by a group of squirming children. Deirdre shot several looks of encouragement and longing over the crowd, but she was about as happy being stuck apart from Morgan as Steph was at being stuck sandwiched between her two mothers. At the back, Deirdre had accrued her own gaggle of kids, who remembered her as their chaperone in primary school and mysteriously enjoyed her company. The kids were too old to be bribed into happiness with snacks, but just the right age to indulge strange thought journeys. Deirdre liked children, they were far more like fae than she ever cared to notice before, but at this age, the preoccupation with social acceptance hindered any fun she had before with them. It was like corralling sheep that didn’t want to listen; that thought they didn’t have to. She disliked wielding authority, and wasn’t sure how much longer she could accept playing chaperone. Maybe it was time to retire. But until then, her gang of kids at the back were happy enough to play along with her game, aptly titled: how do we steal this? A simple thinking exercise in how to commit crime, and secure a few more bones for her collection (the last part was her own secret). The kids at the back, mostly boys, seemed to enjoy the game. And when they entered the Egyptian wing, they shared her excitement.
Over the crowd, Deirdre gave Morgan a thumbs up, and blew a kiss quickly before Steph could notice and glare. In the center of their small group, she could see Kelly with her bouncy blonde hair, flanked by her friends and their bright clothing. And poor Steph, trying to inch herself into their circle. “Now, what are we stealing?” She whispered to her accomplices, hoping Steph couldn’t hear and wouldn’t feel embarrassed that she hadn’t learned how to stop talking about crime, which was an issue three years ago on a zoo trip. The boys ran up to the first display, shoving each other to read the inscription.
“I’d steal a sarcophagus,” one of them said. “No way, I want that shriveled foot thing!” Another added. “Look at the mummy!”
The kids were leaning into the display excitedly, so much so that Deirdre didn’t have the heart to tell them not to touch the glass. Those who couldn’t see in were ducking around trying to look or elbowing themselves into a space. Kelly was holding her nose. Her friends looked at her, then around them, then followed suit. Deirdre turned back to the children and noticed for the first time that not all seemed as excited as the boys. Some had their faces scrunched together, some gazed just to turn their faces away and gag. Even the boys had misplaced delight; not in how beautiful death was, but how gross. Through the crowd, she couldn’t read Steph’s face. Deirdre looked to Morgan, hoping there was just some great anecdote or story a part of her lesson that would change their minds. The children started to reel from the display. Deirdre’s brow wrinkled; she moved closer to her wife, despite the rule that she was to stay at the back. That too, was just the sort that could be broken without harsh punishment.
Morgan, finally reaching a point in her life where she found preparing for disappointment useful, wasn’t surprised by the mixed reaction. A few years in lower level secondary school could do that to a woman. She sidled up to some of the louder skeptics. “Is a big first year like you really scared of one little mummy, Miles?”
Of course he wasn’t scared, Miles insisted. It was just so old and falling apart, not like in the movies, and in the photos the mummy’s skin looked disgusting, that was just facts, even Mrs. Dolan had to admit that.
“Would you be more scared or less scared if you knew you were insulting a cursed mummy?” Morgan asked.
The word curse caught the attention of a few and Morgan stalled by running though what little she knew about the curse of the pharaohs and Tutankhamen until the real guide showed up. She promised a secret prize to the first student who could prove whether or not there were any ‘cursed’ objects by looking closely and paying attention; that guaranteed about a third of the raucous ones would stay in line.
When the guide did show up, Morgan finally gave in to the proximity between her and Deirdre and took her hand. She spoke softly, just for her wife’s ears, but kept her eye on the students. “I think they look rather nice, personally,” she said. “But then, I’m probably biased in favor of a society that mummifies departed pets so they can all be together in the great beyond.” She leaned her head on her shoulder, basking in being unnoticed for the first time all day. “Also, is it cute or lame if I pilfer you a plastic mummy finger from the gift shop? Hypothetically.”
Steph knew where each of her mothers were in a room even when she didn’t want to. Their signals, as she thought of them, faded or grew stronger with proximity in a way she couldn’t ignore with so many normal people around. So she didn’t need to see them pair up behind the group to know that was happening, she was just relieved they were far enough away that nobody would notice if they started kissing. But she didn’t know how long she could count on them to stay like that. She had to take her chance with Kelly now.
“The curse thing is just a myth,” She scoffed, side-eyeing the other girl. Kelly didn’t believe in ‘baby stuff’ and liked being skeptical at everything. “One of the men they say the curse killed was murdered, actually. Smothered in his sleep at his club. They never caught the killer either. Can you believe? Looking at a blue asphyxiated body and thinking it must have been magic?” She laughed, waiting for some of the girls to laugh too, or at least nod.
Deirdre relaxed into a small smile as Morgan tried to notice the children. It was one of those things Morgan was good at, one of those things Deirdre could only watch with adoration. It didn’t work perfectly, but nothing ever did with humans. After more than a century, some things never changed. The music might have been new and strange, and the technology more advanced and confusing, but death was still untouchable. History was still foreign. They didn’t pause to think the body there had been taken from its home, that their own funeral practices might seem as odd thousands of years later. How long did it take until graveyards were exhumed for the sake of history? Would it be their bodies sitting there? Gawked at? Too much had humans come to know death behind glass, at safe distances, too little did they ever think about the mummy without a name.
But now was not the time to worry, human nature wasn’t her concern. Being a parent had shifted the focus; it didn’t matter to her what these children were thinking, but what Steph was. The girl who brought bones and dead animals into the house. Who pinned butterflies sitting on Deirdre’s lap. Who used her dolls to reenact a murder scene. The very same little girl who knew there was nothing gross here. Trusting her daughter to know better, Deirdre relaxed again, leaning into Morgan. “All these years later and people still find the Ancient Egyptians to be weird. That poor nameless mummy is practically dust.” She shook her head, laughing quietly along with Morgan. She thought it was nice too, but Morgan had heard enough of her death ramblings to know that she did. “Funny,” she laughed into a kiss against Morgan’s cheek. “I was going to get you a gift shop mummy. Maybe I’ll have to steal a vase then.” She hummed; surrounded by death, holding the woman she loved and watching their child, she knew peace.
“I think you’re more qualified to be teaching them about curses than…” Deirdre‘s voice fell away. Steph’s words rose above the din and all seemed to quiet as she spoke. Steph was expectant for agreement, but behind the crowd, Deirdre tensed. The very same little girl that sat between them as they explained why grandma Siobhan would not be coming over, and why she would never meet grandma Ruth. The exact girl who once delighted in watching her Mammy’s fingers regrow, who asked why she couldn’t be blue all the time because it was prettier. The girl who learned. The girl who knew better. The very girl who knew that if anyone had thought a blue body was magic, it was her and her mother, who was still standing rigidly behind them. Because she had thought it was magic until she knew the words. And Deirdre still thought it was magic, even though she knew them, because it was Morgan.
Morgan felt something was wrong before she understood it. There was a sickly prickle in the air, a swelling sense that something was about to happen. Can you believe? Looking at a blue asphyxiated body and thinking it must have been magic? A little pool of silence formed around Steph. One drop, then another, another.
Morgan was limp and frozen at once. If she had remembered her last violent days of being human better, she might’ve recalled that liquid, helpless feeling of being struck by a hard blow and falling to the ground without any hope or plan of fighting back. Because this was it. Children had to distance themselves from their parents, it was a sign of developing a strong sense of self. They had to feel safe trying out different looks and personas. They had to make their own choices and their own mistakes. And so what could Morgan do but watch Steph laugh like she was an absurd joke? Like she didn’t exist at all? Children acted out. Children tested boundaries, both their own and others. What could Morgan do besides watch her daughter’s betrayal come to nothing?
She squeezed Deirdre’s hand. “Stay here,” she said. “Stay with me.” She meant to sound firm, to draw a line between what they both wanted and what they could do. But her words came out as nothing more than a thinly veiled plea in a frail voice.
Deirdre’s lips twitched as she held Morgan tightly. A reprimand burned on the edge of her tongue. But Kelly dolled a punishment far worse than Deirdre ever could. She was looking at Steph like the others, but her lips were the first to thin and then pull down. Her eyes were the first to narrow and her brows the first to pull together. One word escaped her mouth, “ew.” And as she laughed, shrill and sharp through the thick of silence, laughter inspired in spurts around the crowd. Steph slouched, shrinking into herself, her eyes were focused on the tiling below. Kelly spoke the same way she laughed, “I think I just found something worse than the mummies.” As if she remembered suddenly who Steph was, she looked at Morgan, “I’m sorry for laughing Mrs. Dolan, but Steph’s making me uncomfortable with her talk of murder.” She couldn’t help the way her lips twitched, fighting back a smile. Kelly took her a moment to remember how to look wounded, and so she did, big eyes and batting eyelashes. There was another quick apology to Steph, just to cover her bases. Then, confident that there was nothing Morgan could say to scold her, she turned back, blonde ponytail grazing Steph’s nose.
Kelly was calculated, quick. Where interest shifted from her, she was fast to reel it back. As her friend managed meekly to ask why the man had died, Kelly just as quickly issued another sharp retort, killing the question where it started; in the girl’s throat as a gargle. She stood at the center again, more confident. In many ways, Kelly reminded Deirdre of herself; what little she did remember of herself at that age. But so did Steph, tall and thin with hair much darker than her classmates, trying her best to become invisible in the back. She didn’t look at her mothers, but if she had she’d find that where disappointment once tugged Deirdre’s features, worry now did. The rest of the children shuffled toward the guide awkwardly, trying to pretend nothing had happened. The few that turned to look at Steph were met with Kelly’s friendly gaze, and in desperate situations, a quick compliment or question to get them looking where she wanted. There was them, and then there was Steph.
Morgan’s frozen expression warded off any protracted speeches from Kelly, thank the stars and it held in place until the worst was over. The tension she’d been holding released itself in one terrible squeeze of her wife’s hand, and in the letting go. She couldn’t be herself right now and the three of them would never be the three of them in a setting like this. She had been delusional to think that would happen.
The guide uncomfortably moved them along, and every child went, edging further and further away from Steph as they did. It was just the three of them in the back now. Reluctantly, Morgan slipped away from her wife and followed too.
She kept stride with Steph at the back for a few paces but did not look at her and did not speak. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, or what she should do. She only knew she wasn’t allowed any of it, per Steph’s pre teen boundaries. “I’d like to speak with you about this at home,” she said. Her voice was flat, emotionless, which was how Steph knew the extent of the damage she’d done. Morgan drew herself up, fixed her face into her bright, unflappable teacher self, then moved ahead to mind the other children.
Steph didn’t make a move to acknowledge her Mammy, she was too busy fighting back tears. Everyone was leaving her behind, no one liked her, no one understood her, and all she wanted was a sandwich and a nap and for today to have never happened. She tried to look through her hair and find her Ma without showing it, but the moment she registered her shape, she looked away again. As long as she didn’t see her face, she could hold out hope that her Ma wasn’t mad at her like everyone else.
It was Deirdre now who pleaded softly for Morgan to stay, her fingers recoiling at the empty air between them. The only thing she could manage was quiet whining, completely obscured by the museum heater and the guide’s monotone explanations ahead. Stay, her eyes told Morgan’s back, stay and let’s talk to her. But Steph wasn’t just Morgan’s daughter, she was her student, and she wanted to be treated as such. She made a big deal out of it; she wanted to be Steph not Persephone. But all Deirdre could see was their daughter, and the little girl that she was. With more resolve, she might have been able to give Steph what she wanted, but the last century had turned Deirdre into the sort of woman incapable of looking away. So moved next to her daughter and placed a hand on her shoulder. When that was slowly shrugged off, she pressed a kiss to the top of her head and didn’t mind the garbled complaint that never managed to be formed into any words. “I’m sorry it didn’t work, sweetie,” Deirdre said softly, burning to hold her daughter’s hand as she shoved them into her pockets. Steph sniffled, mumbling something Deirdre couldn’t hear and didn’t think she was meant to anyway. There was a lesson here to give, but Deirdre thought it would be cruel to make Steph listen to it now. “I love you,” she opted for instead. When her hand met Steph’s shoulder this time, she didn’t shrug it away.
“You’re embarrassing me,” Steph bit the inside of her cheek and mumbled in that sort of petulant way she did when she couldn’t admit what she actually wanted to say. In this case, four words. Deirdre didn’t mind it.
Softly, Deirdre asked, “Do you want me to leave you alone?” Steph nodded. “Are you going to be okay?” Steph didn’t respond. “Do you want to go home?” Steph nodded, then shook her head. “Do you want me to push Kelly down the stairs?” Steph let out a small, watery laugh, swiping at her eyes. She shook her head. “Do you want to talk to Mammy?” Steph looked up at Morgan, then quickly back at the ground. Heat rose to her cheeks, and Deirdre let her hand fall away from her daughter’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to her first, how does that sound?” Steph nodded and Deirdre reluctantly left her to catch up to the group on her own.
Beside her wife now, Deirdre wrapped her arm around her waist and leaned in slowly for a simple kiss against her temple. She tried her best to pull them back into their own little bubble again, out of earshot of the students. The guide seemed more enthusiastic as Kelly made it a point to ask questions, in a show of her best, irrefutable behaviour now.
“I remember when I was like that,” she started softly, “you’re only so powerful as long as you’re paid attention to; as long as you’re important. And it’s easy to make sure you’re the only person people are looking at.” She paused. The guide was leading them into the ‘Queens of Egypt’ section of the exhibit now, through a thin dark tube-shaped corridor illuminated by fluorescent recreations of hieroglyphics. They stopped inside to marvel at the art, Deirdre turned around to watch Steph’s lanky frame be coloured by blues and purples. “You know she wants to talk to you, right?”
Morgan shivered under Deirdre’s touch. It took most of her nerve not to melt into her completely. She watched Kelly hold court among the other students, the confidence in her shoulders and the swish of her hair. “I never had that,” she said.”Did it ever feel as great as it looked?”
But Deirdre hadn’t found her smooth out her hurt with dry repartee. Deirdre, and her absurd, unimaginable, wise love, was trying to fix their family. Morgan shook her head. “She wants to be something she’s not. Like that.” She nodded toward Kelly. “She wants everything we did. Because that’s just life, apparently.” But she slid her gaze back to her daughter, unable to help herself, and she remembered not being able to be small enough, good enough, enough enough, and she wanted Deidre to be right.
“What could we even say? I’m—not even me right now. It’s not like how we are at home. I shouldn’t have built up any idea that it would be in my head.”
Kelly was swishing through the crowd to get a better look at the jewels, trying to superimpose her reflection on them and decree them ugly at the same time.
Morgan turned her face into her wife’s shoulder, the better to hide the frustration on her face. “My gods, but I wish I could do something to Kelly besides write her up to the fucking office. That never does anything.”
“The unfortunate part is that it did, most of the time, feel just as great as it looked.” Deirdre sighed, pressing her lips to Morgan’s head again, hoping her wife would let her hold her closer, as if they weren’t meant to be responsible, respectable adults right then. “My love, who are you if you’re not you? Who are you meant to be right now?” Deirdre’s voice became soft, and her eyes softer. In time, her hand found Morgan’s and she squeezed. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting something to be good, you know that. There’s nothing wrong with having some hopes or expectations. I’m sorry the day wasn’t all that you wanted, but the day isn’t over just yet.” She smiled, wishing she could transfer some of her energy to Morgan. It was the death around her that buzzed like a beehive in her chest, and her love for Morgan that gave it all a home. But she was also not meant to be anyone’s teacher right now. She was wife and she was mother, and those were two things she could always be, and two things she always was. “I love you,” she said, “and I do think you are magic.”
Her eyes followed Morgan’s to Kelly who, in an agonizing play-by-play of Deirdre’s own school persona, held her head high and her smiles wide. “We could do something,” she mused. If Kelly really was anything like she had once been, all they needed to do was pull the rug out from under her feet. They could be vicious about it, even. But Kelly was still a child, and Deirdre didn’t know what felt fair. For her daughter, she would’ve done anything, for Morgan, she thought it was wise not to completely terrorize her student. Maybe they could get that attention back onto Steph, she knew a lot more about the ancient Egyptians than any of the other children. And she had things to say about death, and mummies and curses. But what if they only made things worse for their daughter, who sometimes seemed as though nothing was ever right for her? “I could make my eyes go black and pretend I’ve been cursed and then touch her. Maybe she’ll think she’s caught something and throw a fit. Or maybe you can throw your hand at her or…” Deirdre trailed off, “what do you think, my love?”
Morgan hid her face in Deirdre again as the last of her dry, stiff shell fell away. “I love you too,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry about everything until this point. I’m not helping, I know I’m not. I don’t know how you take such good care of us when I get all—” She sniffled and gestured vaguely, trusting her wife to fill in the missing words.
She thought Deirdre had some good ideas, actually. Most of hers involved fae allies they didn’t actually have at their disposal. A little staircase critter to bite the wedge heel off her shoes, some pixies to glamour her face into some really bad acne… before she knew it, Morgan was laughing as the images piled on. “It’s funny you mention my hand because I was actually kind of thinking of putting a finger or two in her bag and pretending to discover it. Or outsourcing some help to make her look foolish, but I haven’t spotted any ghosts and you would’ve noticed any fae by now.” She plucked her knife out of her purse and looked up at her wife, all herself again. “Is it too mean if you crack some glass in front of her so she thinks there really is a curse?”
“Don’t be sorry,” Deirdre said with a smile. “You’re not doing anything wrong.” Comfort was as easy to give as it always had been; love, understanding and patience had never been particularly hard. Not for her family. And it was even easier to say that Morgan was always worthy of her best care, just as Steph was. It was, of course, similarly easy to plan mischief. And Deirdre did so with a grin, and another kiss before silently securing the plan with Morgan and going off to get it all done. In her expression, sentiments that a century had made obsolete in the spoken word moved between them. Be careful was in her eyes, don’t hurt yourself was the way her lips curled up, and I love you was everywhere, but most of all the way her fingers lingered in the air after they parted. She caught Steph’s confused gaze back in the corridor, and winked.
Kelly had become bored, with no challenge to her position and the realization that now she did actually have to listen to the guide, there was nothing to do. She had begun tapping at the display glass, sighing and moping around as her friends tried desperately to find something interesting to cheer her up. When she reached a bust of Hatshepsut encased in glass, she traced the outline of her face with her fingers; the nose, the jaw, the eyes, over and over again as the guide struggled to keep the attention of the children.
“Hatshepsut had her own curse, you know,” Deirdre smiled at Kelly who, to her credit, did not care. And, to Deirdre’s convenience, wanted to be vocal about it.
“This exhibit sucks. The pharaoh’s are boring and no one cares about the queens.” Kelly sighed, forlorn in her disposition.
At once, Deirdre screamed, earning herself the gaze of every child and guide in attendance. Easily, she laughed the sound off, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought something touched my shoulder! Must have been the heating.” As attention shifted away from Deirdre, it fell on to the display of Hatshepsut, now sporting web-like cracks under Kelly’s frozen fingers. The murmurs started quiet before they were an uproar of stating the obvious.
Kelly drew her hand back, “t-that wasn’t me! I didn’t do that!”
Morgan could only spare a moment to admire her wife as they parted. (Her achingly soft, beautiful wife with her forgiveness and her wisdom and her chaos. You would never guess who she’d been, would never imagine how much good she was capable of.) Slicing her own finger off was a trick she’d become very good at, but that didn’t make hiding it any easier. But Deirdre screamed and the eyes in the room turned and her knife went through her pinky, just above the knuckle. She cradled it in her palm, careful to keep as much of the black-green liquid that drooled off the skin as possible.
“Okay, everyone!” She called, bright and commanding as a teacher should be. She waded through the students and herded them along into the last room. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Kelly, come on honey, get away from there before anything else happens.”
Kelly nodded, whimpering, and didn’t think twice about nice Mrs. Dolan putting a hand on her back, or hovering by her open bag. Morgan dropped the finger in, smiling warmly at the girl as she did it. “Be careful,” she said, teasing gently. “The stories say broken glass foretold each death of the curse.” The stories said no such thing, but Kelly would never know that.
The little girl nodded, flushed with embarrassment, and hurried off to join her friends. Morgan patted her bag as if sending her off and pop. Out came one dead little pinky.
One of the students lagging behind screamed.
“Uh, Kelly?” Morgan called.
The other students at the back of the line were pointing, gaping at the finger with disgusted wonder.
“I wasn’t running, Mrs. Dolan, I was just catching up so I wouldn’t get lost.”
Morgan picked the finger off the floor and held it up high to make sure everyone else in the group saw it. “You dropped something, honey. Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Ew! I don’t know what that is, it’s not mine!” Kelly protested.
“I saw it fall out of her bag,” Connor McCarthy said.
“I saw it too! I thought I smelled something weird!” Soon students who were in front of Kelly had somehow sensed all along that she had a weird dead finger in her bag, and the more Kelly protested, the more everyone was convinced of the lie.
“We can settle this at school,” Morgan chided. “Come on, there are much more impressive dead bodies in the exhibit than whatever weird props your classmates are hiding.”
The guide, bless their heart, distractedly sped through their prepared speech of the last room, and after Morgan dragged Connor McCarthy away from the broken glass (he wanted to have just a piece as a souvenir), she was able to drift over to where Steph was: in the back, too bewildered to risk getting close to the others just yet.
“Hey, bugaboo,” she whispered, warm where she had once been cool. “Are you hanging in there okay?”
Steph couldn’t look at her Mam, her cheeks hurt from where she bit their insides to stop from laughing. And they burned where guilt and embarrassment scorched them red. She turned to look at her Ma, who was engrossed in conversation with the employees about the nature of the glass used, and if it was on the fossil exhibits too. Kelly was ahead, screeching about her innocence. And here was her Mammy, talking to her after everything. Steph wanted to say she was sorry, but ended up kicking invisible rocks away on the ground.
“Um,” she kicked at more rocks. “I know it doesn’t hurt but you don’t have to chop off your finger, it’s weird.” Steph’s face burned hotter, her gaze stronger on the tiles below. She didn’t want to say it was weird; it wasn’t weird. It was cool, even if it made her scared sometimes that it wouldn’t grow back one day. She wanted to say thank you, even if her heart was hammering in her chest and her eyes kept darting up to her Mam’s hand, trying to see if the finger had come back by now. Her mind raced and her tongue struggled to catch up. “I’m–Um–You’re…”
Slowly, in trembles and hiccups, Steph cracked. A flood of tears met her dark eyes and she turned to bury herself into her Mammy’s shoulder. She didn’t care who saw, it didn’t matter so much anymore. She cried like she was eight and had tripped over one of the garden rocks and wondered why it hurt so much, and why her insides were so red. She cried like it was movie night, and one scene of harsh flashing lights and loud banging scared her so much she had to hide behind her Mammy. She cried like Persephone might, and called for her Mammy without a care for how childish it sounded. She didn’t even mind being called bugaboo. She was happy her Mam was talking to her at all, and she had so much to say. But first there was, “I’m sorry.”
Morgan wrapped her arms around her daughter. What hurt she harbored was washed away by those little tears on her shoulder. “Oh, little bug,” she sighed. “I love you always. No matter what happens, no matter what you do, I love you always.” She kissed her head. “I forgive you, and we are okay, and you will be okay. Just as you are. Because that girl, the one you are when you aren’t pretending, she’s the best kid I know.”
She gave her another kiss and another squeeze, then looked up in search of her wife, and smiled bigger than she had all day when she found her. “I was thinking,” she said, “Why don’t we do something tonight, after we finish up with school. We’re all in town together for a change, and it’s October tomorrow, maybe we can make the most of it. See a show, go to that burger place you like so much, at least get an early start on Samhain season, huh?” She pulled back and brushed her hand over her daughter’s face to wipe her tears. “Think about it, at least. Let me know what you decide when we get back to school?”
Steph nodded quickly, laughing and sniffling through being fussed with. The back of her hand was good enough to wipe tears away with, but her Mammy’s hands were better and they buzzed and tickled wherever they went. Steph shivered from the cold and laughed again, meeting her Mammy’s eyes finally. “Yeah, I’d like that,” she said with a few more sniffles and laughs. “I love you too,” she mumbled through her hands.
When Deirdre met up with her daughter and wife, her arms went around both for as long as she could manage until Steph squirmed free. Ahead, one of the girls was waving and calling Steph over, and with her a few joined in, eager to get their classement to join them in whatever they were looking at. And when they noticed their teacher lagging behind too, they called out again. Excitedly, Steph looked between her mothers before taking her Mammy’s hand and trying to drag her forward. “We still have to go through the fossils! And I wanna see the mummy again before we go. Come on! Come on, Mammy! Ugh, you two move so slow.” Moving behind them, Steph tried to push her mothers from the back, finding that they were both much heavier and that the floor was much more slippery than she thought.
Deirdre laughed and urged Steph to go ahead without them for a moment, if only to steal time to kiss Morgan before she had to work again. “That seemed like it was pretty good to me,” she smiled.
Morgan took Deirdre’s hand and ambled slowly. She would catch up eventually, and maybe slip a tip to the guide for taking up some of her duties without being warned. But for now, her hope was brushing against her fingertips, better than any caress from the living. “It really was. Thanks to you.” She leaned against her wife as they walked, not caring how intimate they seemed to anyone.
Steph was already bouncing back and chattering with one of her real friends, holding her head just a little higher as she pointed out something in a photograph of the Book of the Dead. In the spring, she would be thirteen and even more like the vision Morgan had seen in a magic mirror more than an age ago. Morgan would hold her breath each day in fear that some horrible accident would force a pair of moth wings to cut through her daughter’s little back. A few more years beyond that, they would have to start seriously discussing what choices they would make for activating her if fate hadn’t made that choice for them already. And in the time after that, they would all have to learn how to be happy again, as everyone did at least once while they lived.
But for now, the little girl that made the seasons turn for Morgan was smiling and looking at her mothers with so much love it seemed impossible to imagine they could be parted. For now, home was more than an address in Ireland and a blue cottage never quite done. It was in the pressure of her wife’s hand, the glimmer in her daughter’s eye, the rush of affection in her own chest, better than any human heartbeat.
“Come on, my love,” Morgan said, rising on her toes. She kissed Deirdre’s cheek and pulled her ahead, quickening their pace. “Let’s not miss the best parts.”
#ireland#wr deirdre#wr chatzy#wr deirdre chatzy#wr epilogue#i will treasure morgan beck and every writer that helped make her into who she became#always and always
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A Ghost is a Wish || Constance, Blanche, and Agnes Bachman
TIMING: Current/the Winter Solstice
LOCATION: The Common
PARTIES: @harlowhaunted, @constancecunningham, Agnes Bachman (written by @chloeinbetween)
SUMMARY: Constance and Blanche visit the seasonal lights in town to make their yuletide wishes and find themselves haunted. Constance makes a choice.
CONTAINS: mild gore, violence
Beneath the copse of glowing evergreens in the Common, Constance could almost believe in Christmas. The lights, steadier than flame and enchanted with colors she hadn’t realized could burn, spilled over the ground and painted the faces of spellbound children. Here, icy violet, th see ere pale green and rosy pink; there was no sense to it that she could discern beyond the thrill of beauty itself. “Your world has brought such wondrous magic to the mundane,” she said to Blanche, so close to her ear she could almost imagine the tickle of her hair. “Is it always like this? Such wonderful displays in the open for even the most wretched to see up close?” It was so magnificent with the light so bright in the evening it puddled on the floor in a magic carpet. Constance twirled in it and imagined the ground truly had transformed into the richest, softest fibres, the kind that would send you to sleep in an instant with their comfort. “It seems to me this should be the site of a great commemoration, a pageant or a gift. What would you ask for, Blanche Harlow?”
The colors shown through Constance’s transparent form, illuminating her in a strangely beautiful way that made Blanche happy only she could witness her. She was far happier than she had been in a long time. It was strange how such a simple outing could release the tension and stress built up for weeks and weeks on end. “I didn't believe in magic for the longest time,” she told Constance, jogging a little to catch up with her. “But I always thought the lights in the trees here this time of year was the closest thing to it.” Christmas with the Harlow’s wasn't an extravagant affair unless there was some holiday themed dinner party her parents hosted for work. After Blanche turned eleven, they rarely even bothered to get a tree unless they had to. More than once, Adrien and Blanche had woken up to a cold, empty house with money on the counter to order dinner and two wrapped presents - one for each of them. The Common was the only place where she could really appreciate the spirit - no pun intended. Blanche considered Constance’s question, her face flushing a deeper pink as it had taken to doing whenever she said her full name. “I’ve never been good at remembering what I want when I'm asked,” Blanche smiled ruefully at Constance, and she had the urge to reach out and grab her hand. A pang of sadness hit her when she remembered her hand would just pass through. Blanche looked down at the ground, thinking quietly.
“I also tend to wish for things I can't have.” She kept the bitterness out of her voice with surprising ease, and she seemed to recover almost immediately, looking up at Constance with a warm smile. “And you? Wha - What would you ask for?” Blanche asked.
“Sometimes a dream is the best thing to want,” Constance said. “So long as you know it. A gift you never receive can never disappoint and never betray.” Not for the first time, Constance felt that it would have been a mercy if Agnes’ false kindness had never touched her at all. At least when she was starving for food and kindness at once, her happiness could never grow more dangerous than a fairy tale. What good was learning what love could be if it only lasted for three years before growing teeth? What use had she for hope when it was doomed to be dashed? And yet for the first time, Constance hesitated when Blanche asked her what she would ask for. Naturally, there would be more peace in the world if Morgan Beck was stamped out for good. The distress she caused her friends, the harm she passed with her duplicitous, hypocritical Bachman nature would end, and Constance’s suffering would have been worth something. But if she could have two wishes, if the gifts could be guaranteed, or remain a dream forever… “It would have to be something wonderfully impossible, wouldn’t it?” She said, smiling back at Blanche. “Perhaps…I would like to climb into one of those pictures on your computer, like that lake in Prague, with the flowers falling onto the shimmering water? Perhaps simply to be alive again for a day before it all ends, in a body that touches and feels things like the living do…” There was at least one thing Constance knew she would enjoy touching. Oh, how sweet to dream such safe, impossible dreams…
Constance drifted closer to Blanche, another question on her lips, but she froze, aghast, when she saw a face drifting through the evening crowd. Agnes was much changed, more of a woman than Constance ever had a chance to be, the cruel wretch. But the broad features remained, haunting in their preserved beauty. “What are you doing here?” Constance growled.
Cold fear dropped over her as she watched Constance’s expression change from wondrously thoughtful to the twisted fury Blanche had come to associate with the Bachman family. It took her a moment to understand why, but she soon saw the familiar form of Agnes gliding through the crowd. “No,” Blanche said, her horrified voice barely a whisper. “Go away,” she pleaded, louder this time. It took a moment to shake herself of the ice that gripped her, before she planted herself in front of Constance, looking between them with a mixture of fear and a steely determination that she was unwilling to let go of. The only moment of hesitation was deciding who she was going to speak with first. She turned to Constance. “Please,” Blanche said softly, only for Constance to hear. “We don't have to do this. Not here. Let's go back to the lights.”
She had weighed her options over and over since that first night with Morgan by the poolside. Twice, Agnes had begun the trek back to Texas by herself, before turning back. Her heart tore in two opposing directions. Lights did not flicker and objects did not rattle when she felt things, the tempest of her emotions locked under her corset even in death, but they still twisted inside her until she felt like nothing but her indecision. It threatened to swallow her whole. The more she thought, the more only one solution seemed available to her. An end to her line’s suffering, the protection she hadn’t afforded her children in life, an end to her regret… and some kind of peace for Constance, if she would have it. She had moved through town for days, searching and at once hoping she would not find Constance at all, until she finally spotted her at the Christmas market. Agnes had been surprised to see how young she was, frozen in time decades before Agnes had been. The carefully prepared words fled her mind. All plans fled her mind. She didn’t respond to the living girl beside her, didn’t even consider her as relevant.
“Constance,” Agnes said softly, her face the picture of regret.
Agnes was always going to get more life than Constance had ever had. By design, she had granted her at least three more years before the floodgates opened on her suffering. But she had not imagined this. Agnes had wrinkles around her translucent eyes. She had a manner of dress Constance had never even seen. As far as she knew it was something out of a fashion plate, a grotesque extravagance she didn’t deserve. How worthless had her sacrifice been, that Agnes could gain this in the time between her undoings?
The tree lights flickered and flared, humming faintly.
Agnes’ face was as sad as Constance had ever seen, heavy and bent. How many times had Constance seen her present herself like that? So sorry and sad and wanting Constance’s comfort, her forgiveness. Constance drifted through Blanche to face her. “You have no right,” she declared, her voice rigid with fury. A section of lights sparked behind her and went dim. Control. Concentrate. This would not be her undoing. “Whatever reason you have come for, you have no right! Not like this! Like you’re sorry!”
“Constance please!” the desperation in Blanche’s voice caused her to raise her voice, flinching as Constance phased through her. It was hard not to feel the hot fear as her skin turned to ice, whirling on her heels as she watched Constance’s fury. “Please stop!” Blanche rushed to her side, looking at her. Lights were flickering, and Blanche's shouting caused several families to look over at her in concern. Blanche didn't care, the negative energy in the air sinking into her, resting like broken glass under her skin. She knew this feeling. The last time she had felt it was during the first failed exorcism when Cordelia’s spirit shifted into a poltergeist. Constance was already so close…Panic bubbled in her. “Don’t do this. We can go back - let’s enjoy the lights! Let’s enjoy the stars! Please! Please!” Before she realized what was happening, her voice broke and a large knot was tied in her throat. She couldn't properly breathe and her eyes were wide with unshed tears, and she looked to Agnes. “Go away,” she pleaded with her now too because she could feel the change in Constance’s anger, teetering so close to the point of no return. “Please. You don't know what you’re doing to her. You don't know what you’ll do. Please go away so we can go back. Please.”
Agnes did not shift in response to the flickering lights, nor Constance’s rage. She had always been the summer breeze to Constance’s fiery light, in joy and in grief. “I am sorry,” she said softly, knowing they would still hear. She looked to Blanche, still unsure after their last meeting, but Blanche had been right. She had been cowardly to avoid this before now. “I need to set this right. There must be an end to this suffering, for Constance too,” Agnes said desperately to Blanche, before turning back to the ghost of her ex-lover. She was no stranger to all of Constance’s tempers, some earned and some not in the life they had almost built together. Constance looked like a magnificent storm, too young by half for what she had suffered. “I am sorry, Constance. I want to do better by you in death than I ever did in life. You deserved better.”
“Better?” Constance spat. “Better is if I had used you for the curse! Better that you had never brought me to your home with your worthless—” Constance choked on the word. How pathetic, how cruel that she still could not speak of anything so impossible as love when there was no end to how loud or long she could scream and no point in holding back anything. Still, the word was burned out of her mouth. She felt its ghost in her, a hateful feeling that would fall into Agnes and her soft, quiet tears if she let it.
Constance clenched herself. Behind her, lights cracked and a tree fell to darkness. The decorations of ribbon, plastic, and glass quivered, rattling the branches. A child cried.
“What could you know about better?” Constance hissed. “What do you understand about right? Nothing about you is right, you, your cursed life—-” A horrifying thought struck Constance. It was hiding in the shape of Agnes’ cheeks, the way she frowned. Constance remembered those faces from long nights whispering her room, dreaming their way out of that house. But she also knew it from a crowded classroom, a bedroom window, a picture in the newspaper of Morgan Beck. They weren’t just any Bachman features. They were Agnes’. “Morgan is one of yours, isn’t she?” Not a great niece or a cousin or some other distant branch from the same guilty family, but her direct spawn. “Is that the real reason you’ve come? To stand by your blasted family again?” Of course, of course it couldn’t be for her.
The magic of the night was broken the second lights started exploding. No one was paying her any mind, and Blanche felt like she was going to be sick. Things were spiraling out of control too quickly, and she didn't know what to do. The only thought in her mind that it wasn't supposed to end like this, not this time. Constance would choose right, and her soul would be able to truly be at peace. She would be close to the edge, but never fall. “You don't understand,” Blanche pleaded with Agnes as the weight of Constance’s rage hit her. “You don't understand what you're doing to her. Go away, this won't help. None of this will help!” Blanche once again stepped between the two, trying to create a living barrier that would knock Constance back to how she was before. “Stop! This isn't the place for this. This isn't the - this isn't the - you can’t!” her voice cracked on the last word, and Blanche knew at that moment what she would ask for. There was a scream as glass ornaments started exploding, and the child’s cries grew louder. How could Blanche understand and articulate it in a way to defuse the fury that was raging through the Common? The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees, and she clutched the fabric of her jacket around her, looking between the two helplessly. The betrayal and anger and love wasn't completely foreign to Blanche, but she has never been hurt the way Agnes hurt Constance. People were starting to panic, confused and afraid. “Constance, look at me, please. You don't have to do this. You can't. Let’s leave. Let’s go. Go with me, please.”
In life, every time they argued, it had been a one sided affair. Constance would be angry, Agnes would make herself smaller and offer no resistance, and with no where for her anger bounce against, Constance would be even more annoyed. Those had been minor arguments, forgetting when they had arranged to meet, disagreements about local gossip, the meals which they had packed for their summer picnics. Nothing as grand or as terrible as this. Constance was owed so much more than another spineless moment. “You are right. I cannot change the past, no matter how might I might wish to.” She glanced at Blanche. “I understand better than I have for decades. You helped me understand,” Agnes said truthfully, talking past her to Constance again as the world rattled with Constance’s rage. “No! No, Constance, I came here for the both of you. To do what I didn’t before, to protect you from my family.” And her family from Constance, too.
Control. Concentrate. Control. Behind Constance, glass shattered and children cried. Snow boots pattered on the ground as people backed away or shuffled back to their business. Such cruel noise, such destruction. Blanche was calling, screaming, and pleading at her side.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do!” Constance snapped. She turned her attention for an instant. Blanche’s face was pink and wet with tears. Her eyes, so large and uncomprehending, were that of a wounded animal. Perhaps she didn’t understand, perhaps she couldn’t. If she did, she wouldn’t be trying to stop her. “We shouldn’t have to be the ones who leave,” she snarled. “You know. You know what she did to me! What all of them did! Why would you ask that of me?” Of everyone Constance had met, Blanche had been the one she thought would let her free, would stand with her. Not help her, she was too gentle for that, but to stand, to make it so she did not feel so alone… Constance’s face twisted with hurt. Perhaps she should never have wished for anything at all, impossible or not.
“Protect me,” Constance said bitterly, her voice warbling. She would be crying herself if she had any tears left to give the world. “How would you even know what that word means, when I bent myself broken protecting you!”
The streetlamps around them flashed with panic.
“What is there left to protect me from? What is there left to do to me?” She screamed. She flew to Agnes until their forms nearly blended into one. “What is it? I should be glad to know the truth from you for once! What is it? How do you protect me? How do you do anything for me? You stole my life and even my curse wasn’t enough to keep you from tormenting me! I gave everything to make what you did to me stop hurting! And look at this! What is this! How are you still--” Looking at me, pitying me, haunting me. Constance stared hard into Agnes, pleading for answers she knew would never come. But worse than the ignorance was the helpless pull inside her, still wanting someone, maybe anyone, to love her. But oh, that was never to be in this or any other world. Constance screamed and at last let go.
You helped me understand. The irony wasn’t lost on Blanche as the sting of Constance’s rejection settled like a heavy stone in her chest. She had questioned Constance and her motives time and time again, and Blanche wanted nothing more than to reach out and grab her by the shoulders. She would feel her warm skin and hold her as they cried under the ruined lights and they could move on and heal and all would be well. “You don’t know what you’ve done. What you’ve chosen,” Blanche whispered. Her words to Cordelia echoed in her mind. The only tragedy is a woman who ruined other people’s lives to the point where she ruined herself. Blanche wanted more for Constance, she deserved more than to perish in the ruins of her past. She wouldn't see that though, she would only see what she thought she wanted. With one final scream, Constance was lost, and Blanche’s hope was gone.
She couldn’t focus on the lights exploding or the horrible wind that had picked up around them, scattering residents and tourists alike with ear splitting screams. Blanche could only feel the raw power radiating off Constance. Focus. A small voice hissed through the static that raged in Blanche’s mind. What do you do now? Blanche realized she was crying and she was more than angry. She didn’t quite know what she was. Grief stricken, maybe? Her skin felt like it had been set on fire and her insides had melted and she was so - Focus! The voice snarled, louder this time. It was loud enough to make her stagger backwards, reorienting herself.
She could see and feel the electricity in the air as she finally moved, fumbling from her purse. “Agnes go. I’ll find you later! You need to get out of here, now. Find Morgan.” Blanche blinked tears out of her eyes as her hand gripped the iron rod. She rushed forward, much like she had in Morgan’s classroom, ready to fight. She didn’t want to - god, she didn’t want to. Constance needed more. Deserved more. Why didn’t she just listen? She did everything right, and Constance still -- Focus. There would be time, Blanche realized, for grief later. There would be time to scream and cry and figure out why it felt like someone knocked the wind out of her. She could figure out where to go from here later. Now she had to dissipate Constance before she killed someone. Again. Unable to choke anything out other than something between a battle cry and scream, Blanche swung her iron.
“Your soul. Constance, I know I’m much too late for everything else, I can’t change that, it would have been worse not to-” Agnes shied away from Constance’s rage, even now it could no longer touch her. There was a tiny pulse in the air, no more notable than the click of a necklace chain giving way. She didn’t understand what happened, other than the tears on Blanche’s cheeks and her insistence that she needed to go, but she fell back, still pleading with the face of fury beating down on her. “Constance, we can be better than this. Both of us. We can end this now. I forgive you.” Her eyes widened as Blanche jerked forward, and only now did Agnes actually move away, avoiding the iron so she wouldn’t be forced away.
Constance unspooled on the wind, the threads of her soul, her sad, desperate softness fluttering away like her hair from its ribbon. She heard Agnes speaking, her high little voice like some trained bird. But for once nothing in her reached out to harmonize and rescue her voice from being swallowed by the world. Constance reached out to the world now and the wind roared, drowning out every sound in the common, ripping ribbon off the branches and blowing broken glass.
“Forgive me?” She screamed. “I never betrayed anyone! I never hurt anyone until you! You did this to me, you wretch! I wish I’d done half the things you said I did! I wish I’d murdered all of you and had done with it!” She couldn’t stop Agnes’ heart or dash her to the ground, but she could rip the glass from the streetlights and tear the shards through her form. She saw Blanche coming with the iron and shoved her back. “I would curse you too if I still could!” Blanche’s body flew and crashed into the Christmas trees. “You think I didn’t know you could betray me too? That I hadn’t learned my lesson yet? That I was your precious fool?”
The wind was too loud for Constance to hear anything at all, but around her, humans scuttled for cover like ants. Some fell, silly parcels spilling on the ground. Mouths opened in fright, but they didn’t understand what was unfolding before them, and they did not understand her hurt. But she could make them. She toppled the lamp posts, snapping them in half like they were only twigs and sparked the Christmas lights into flame, torching the branches with flames greater than all the candles in the world. Constance only had to bid them to rise and they flared, engulfing the trees all the way to the top. With a twist of her hand, Constance snapped a web of rainbow lights free and sent them flailing, thrashing, into puddles of melting snow. Power rippled white into the ground. The wind fell and in the quiet, the common drummed with the sound of falling bodies. Constance raised one of the burning trees and hurled it into a gazebo where a thick crowd had thought to take shelter. “I am going to do what I should have months ago, and I will take the blood of anyone who tries to stop me as well, since she doesn’t have any left for me to take!” Constance roared. She pointed an angry finger at Agnes. “This is your fault,” she hissed. “All of this is you! Forgive yourself for it, I dare you!”
Blanche should have known that it wasn’t going to be as easy as it had been in the classroom. She was knocked backward before she was thrown off her feet completely by an invisible force. Her body crashed into the tree. Branches and lights tore into her as her torso slammed into the trunk of the tree before she bounced down to the ground, hitting the frozen earth with a hard thump. In an instant, all the air in her body was gone, and Blanche could only gasp for breath. With no air to respond to Constance’s screams, she could only let out a wheezing objection - Blanche didn’t betray Constance. She was upfront from the beginning since Maxine had died, since Constance had almost killed Nell. Blanche wasn’t about to let her hurt all of these people, no matter the devastation she felt in her heart. If Blanche was truly going to do what she had to, it didn’t matter if it was bad people like Lydia Griffin or August Thompson. And it didn’t matter that Constance Cunningham had been twirling under the Christmas lights, beautiful and good, because she had lost herself.
There was that voice again, as Blanche lay there, barking orders at her as the initial shock from the collision. Focus! Move! Blanche hurled herself out from under the tree as it went up into flames just she realized just how much pain she was actually in. Pain was practically a pastime for Blanche at this point, so she staggered to her feet, eyes blurred from hot tears. Stumbling forward, she saw the flamed tree uprooted from the ground, soaring - soaring - soaring towards the cowering people in a gazebo.
“No!” Her hand flew out. It was too late, she only managed to knock it off course a little, hitting the side of the gazebo instead of head on. There was an eruption of flame. Screams pierced Blanche’s ears and she staggered back. The crowd was scattering, running far away from the electricity crackling off the lamp posts, far away from whatever horror had been thrust upon the common. The energy was going to make her sick and the pain was getting worse.
Focus. Make the next choice. Focus, dear.
With a start, Blanche realized she recognized the voice, and she knew what she needed to do right then. Lunging for her fallen bag, Blanche hissed for Agnes to follow her, before she forced her aching body to sprint as she fumbled for her phone.
She needed help. Now.
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The Sweets We Wish For || Morgan & Deirdre
TIMING: This morning
LOCATION: Morgan & Deirdre’s house
PARTIES: @deathduty @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Morgan Beck, dead girl walking for fourteen months and counting, feels a world of difference.
CONTAINS: N/A
Morgan opened her eyes feeling like there were spiders crawling on her back. She jolted upright, kicking the sheets away and--- “What the fuck.” Morgan Beck, dead girl walking for fourteen months and counting, felt. She brought her fingers to the sheets and rubbed her fingers over the surface. There was that feeling again. This soft-but-prickly all over tingle, this swarm of something. Had silk sheets always been like this? Was something happening to her brain? Her nerves? Morgan retracted her hand and turned to Deirdre, who was already waking up beside her.
She opened her mouth, trying to do something other than gape in confusion at her. This couldn’t be a spell, right? Her energy didn’t react to magic that way. But then that weird preternatural dream thing had gotten her once. Was everyone’s senses dialed up to eleven? This didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. “...Babe, uh...something’s…” Wrong? Maybe? Or not? “This is gonna sound really weird, but can you touch me real quick? But just a little bit?”
Thunk, thunk, thunk—Kaden’s body tumbled gracelessly down a spiraling, never-ending set of stairs as Deirdre stood above, holding a squirming Morgan in her arms. Her mind told her that Morgan was simply dancing to praise the death of Kaden (as all ought to) but her body told another story. Warmth filled her senses one moment only to be lost in another. In bright spots, the vision of Kaden’s rolling body was replaced with the interior of their bedroom, and the Morgan in her arms was the Morgan sat up beside her. A strange expression played on her love’s face, and Deirdre groaned as her mind struggled to put pieces together. “Now…?” She mumbled, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her palms. “At this hour?” Not that she was objecting, she wanted to explain, just that she was a little too tired. “If that’s what you want, my love.” With another groan, she rolled half on top of Morgan, pointing at their nightstand. “I think the bite guard and the handcuffs are back in there.” And with a yawn, she smacked her lips together and rested her head against Morgan’s shoulder, pressing a tired, gentle kiss to her cheek. “If you just give me a moment to wake up I can…” Deirdre trailed off, yawning again, this time expelling her hot breath across Morgan’s skin.
Morgan looked bewildered at her love, then at their window, where morning light was just barely coming through. Oh. It was still early. “I’m--no, not exactly--oh, my love--” Morgan tried to find words to explain what was happening to her, but she still wasn’t sure. As Deirdre came closer, her insides clenched. She didn’t know whether to dread her touch or ache for it. “W-wait--” Something’s wrong with my body. Or different. And do the sheets feel weird to you? Morgan could have said any of those, but she said nothing, because as soon as Deirdre’s head touched her, Morgan gasped and forgot how to make air flow. Then Deirdre was kissing her, and cold wasn’t enough of a word for it.
“Mother fucking Earth!” She cried, shrinking away. “That’s--you’re--” Morgan hovered her fingers over the spot where Deirdre had kissed her. She flinched, squeaking out a cry over her skin... “Cold! You’re freezing cold! And I’m cold! Or maybe it’s just our room that’s cold? And the sheets are--I don’t even know! I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening, but I--” She held out her hands between them as if the answer might be written somewhere on them. Of course they weren’t, so she looked up at Deirdre, more bewildered than ever. “I-I...feel things. Like...feel-feel. Like before or maybe…even more.”
The early morning had its way of clouding the processes of the mind; Deirdre’s eyes grew wide as Morgan pulled away. Then they flickered shut as she pulled her hands back. It had been so long since someone shrieked at her coldness; for a moment, it spurred only bitter memories, a fog which threatened to color even Morgan’s old delight at her cold fingers, a delight she hadn’t seen in over a year. Deirdre’s eyes opened, finding thin streaks of rising sun spilling across their dark silk sheets. There was something about the morning. Deirdre snapped her attention to Morgan, her eyes grew wide again. This time, she was grinning.
“I’m cold!” Deirdre pointed at herself, tumbling off the bed, “I’m cold! That’s me!” It was too good to believe that Morgan was feeling her suddenly--this must’ve been some new sort of dream, the kind that felt too real--but as she nodded along to Morgan’s jumbled thoughts, she felt like it was the most clear assumption. She crouched down at the edge of the bed, looking up at her girlfriend. Slowly, she reached her hand out and trailed her fingers across Morgan’s. Deirdre paused there, watching her reaction before she continued and wrapped their hands together. Once upon a time, Morgan had tingled; she felt like fire against her skin. Their first night together Deirdre thought she might melt into Morgan. “Y-You’re still cold,” she said, brows furrowed together. It made sense for a zombie, of course, but not for this dream. Not for any drug she knew. Frantic, she pressed the back of her hand to Morgan's forehead, as if only her hands might’ve been suffering from poor circulation; she was cold—just as cold as Deirdre. “No, no, that isn’t right.” Deirdre fell back with a heave, lost in her thoughts.
Morgan finally brought her eyes up to Deirdre in the quiet, remembering how she felt about her skin as she tried to process her body. “I-I’m just--I didn’t mean to--” But when Dierdre looked up at her, she was smiling with more light than Morgan had seen in a long time.
She followed her love like she might hold all the answers, crawling to the edge in spite of how her skin twitched with surprise and reaching over to meet her fingers. This time, when they touched, it was slow. Morgan braced herself for the full body shiver that rippled through her. The familiar words she had spoken when she was alive rushed to her mind but after a year of dull pressure, nothing in her vocabulary seemed sufficient. “You’re--I don’t even know how to--” Tears rose to her eyes as she mouthed stupidly, struggling for words. “You’re soft and smooth and cold but you’re so alive, I can feel how alive you are when you touch me, you’re incredible--” Her words trailed off as she shivered, all her conditioning lost to time.
“I’m cold too?” She asked, slow on the uptake. Her skin was still ash white and she did have goosebumps all over. But as Morgan sat with the feeling, she decided her cold was more stiff and stagnant. It wasn’t the strange death-in-life plunge she felt when pressed against Deirdre. She followed her love to the ground and reached for her hand, hesitated, then brushed their fingertips together. “It’s been so long I can’t tell if this is how the world used to be or if something’s turned up my sensitivity to a million. But you’re--” Morgan moved her fingers to Deirdre’s lips, tracing the outline as lightly as possible and gasping with tears when she felt how much more delicate they were than the rest of her. She did the same with Deirdre’s ear, her hair, always with the lightest of touches. “You feel real. Like, more real than anything in my memories. This is real, I’m r-really--I’m here.” She let out a quiet, tearful laugh of amazement. “Can I kiss you? Um, gently? I’m still trying to process whatever this is, but I will never forgive myself if I pass up the chance to learn what it feels like to kiss you again.”
It must have been a strange dream then, destined to be cruel in its ending, but how could Deirdre deny the look of wonder upon her love’s face? The cynicism, the weariness inside of her, dissolved quickly under Morgan’s rediscovery. In that moment, it didn’t matter to her if she was caught in a dream, or if Morgan’s sudden feeling was a dangerous infliction, all she could remember were the evenings soaked with tears, the nights plagued by the loss Morgan suffered. Their lovemaking, contorted to Morgan’s desperation to feel. It was absurd to question that she would even consider freezing her love out of the sensations she deserved. Her happiness said enough for Deirdre. She burned where they touched, she whimpered where they parted.
“Yes,” she breathed, smiling wide. “Yes, please, my love.” Deirdre leaned in, stopping just shy of Morgan’s lips with all the trepidation of a first kiss. She would let Morgan close the distance between them, but in the seconds she waited in twisting anticipation, her eyes darted between her love’s own and then her lips, her ears, her hair. They all appeared unchanged, just as beautiful as she remembered—as magnetic as always. She’d never forgive Morgan either if she passed up the chance to kiss her now.
Morgan trembled as Deirdre came close enough for her to feel her breath.”I forgot what morning breath smelled like,” she whispered, giggling. “How on earth do you put up with mine every day?” Before Deirdre could answer, Morgan guided her the rest of the way with her fingertips and brushed their lips together. Then again, and again, lingering in place. “Mmmm...more people need to kiss more banshees. Really--” Another kiss, more firm than before. “A much under-researched field of study. Because I don’t know what the words for this are anymore, nothing feels right enough.” She took Deirdre’s face and kissed her the way she wanted to for as long as she could until she couldn’t hold the unreal novelty of comfort and love rendered into something her touch could decode any longer.
“Have you ever heard of this happening? Should we be worried right now, or--” She trailed off, entranced by her sense of Deirdre’s hair. There was so much of it, a million little threads, so fine they felt like almost nothing by themselves but something like a cloud, maybe, when stroked by the handful. How could she have ever taken gentleness like her love’s hair for granted?
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot about—“ Deirdre’s sentence muffled against Morgan’s lips, forgotten in favour of a much more pressing matter. The kisses felt the same for her, of course, but that didn’t mean she was any less enraptured—kissing Morgan at any moment seemed to have that effect. “Well, I’ve always thought you’d look cute in a lab coat,” Deirdre smiled and stole a kiss of her own. “For science.” Deirdre could think of a lot of words to describe it, though Morgan was right, none of it could ever be accurate enough. “I love you,” she mumbled; that felt apt to say. She was reluctant to touch Morgan as they settled, worried she’d send her shivering back, so she kept her hands planted chastely on the carpet.
“Definitely worried.” Deirdre said simply, smiling with ease. The statement, however plain, did not upset or surprise her. “This sort of thing absolutely does not happen. Ever. Not unless someone slipped you some drug. Or this is a dream—though, is it yours or mine?” Deirdre hummed, playing with the thought for only a second. It didn’t matter. She glanced down at Morgan, watching amazement flicker across her features. “It doesn’t matter, my love. If you could see the look on your face, you’d know that too.” Days, weeks, haunted by mourning. Deirdre knew them well; she didn’t resent them, she didn’t even mind them, but her memories flared with them. Morgan curled under weighted blankets. Morgan floating atop their pool. The answer to her agony was partly this one simple thing: feeling. What did it matter if it was too good to be true? Many of the greatest things were: love, kisses, comfort and finding a fresh carcass under the summer sun. If this dream was going to end, it didn’t matter. Deirdre would be there, and she’d see them to a gentle end.
“If you can feel again, maybe we should take out the handcuffs…” Deirdre paused, “I’m joking. You seemed like you could barely handle the silk. Do you think you just need a moment to get used to everything again?”
Morgan let her hands fall to the carpet near Deirdre’s, just close enough that the space between them felt charged with their not touching. She tugged on the fibers, a little less unnerved by their density now that she knew what was going on. Then she looked at her love and might as well have been a teenager on her first date. “I never dream anymore,” Morgan said, leaning in again, her lips brushing Deirdre’s only when she pursed them to speak. “Or maybe I do now. Maybe it’s time for a nap. Cold pillows always did make me drowsy…” She shied away and ghosted her lips down her love’s neck and shoulder.
“I feel like...I absolutely want to try sex while whatever’s happening is happening, but also maybe doing that right now would be a ticket for a really not fun panic attack, So I--Earth and Stars, there is nothing in the universe that feels like you. You’re better than snow, better than anything I ever said, than anything I understand right now--” She kissed her shoulder and carefully brought her cheek down to rest there. “I love you. Adjusting sounds good. Maybe help me get downstairs for breakfast?” At the thought of food, Morgan sucked on her love’s neck. “Mmm. You’re salty-sweet. No surprise there, except that it’s way too addicting for someone this easily overstimulated.” She continued, inhaling deep and moaning at Deirdre’s scent. To her, it was as powerful as divinity. It made her think of cherries, sandalwood, and soft dark soil. And there was something else, bitter and intoxicating, something that had no memory or word besides Deirdre in Morgan’s mind, too fae to be categorized. “...hey, just so we’re clear, I’m still dead, right? You sense me like you did before?”
“Morgan…” Deirdre breathed, snapping her attention away. She flushed now, embarrassed to be treated as if she was the eighth world wonder. For a year now, Morgan hadn’t been able to say anything about the way she smelt, felt or tasted. It was almost too much to hear it all at once. Almost. Her fingers twitched, her body shivered as if sparks ran under her skin. “Definitely my dream then…” she mumbled, and then at once decided her theory of this being a dream was moot—there was too little murder and far too many compliments. Her mind didn’t usually conjure such creative images. But the wonder in Morgan’s voice and reverence in which she took Deirdre in, all of that felt like a dream. She closed her eyes, the carpet had begun digging into her palms, and she was sweating in ice cold droplets down her back. Her lips parted as she breathed. And in time, with a curse spilled in Gaelic against her tongue, she gave in and wrapped her arms around Morgan, holding her gently.
“You are still dead,” Deirdre explained, tangling her fingers in Morgan’s bed-messied hair. She was careful to be gentle, and more to be slow. She began first by playing with small strands of Morgan’s hair. “You still feel dead. I can feel you like a hand around my heart.”
Slowly, she took Morgan’s wrist in her grip. “I can’t feel a heartbeat, either.” Which only served to confuse Deirdre; nothing she knew about had this sort of effect. It must’ve been magic, she thought, but from where? By who? Why? Then she shifted, “here, shall we get up now and start moving?”
Morgan gasped to feel Deirdre around her all at once. She was a current and she was a rock, she was a body and a force of nature, she was melting and she was safe. Deirdre was more things in one movement than Morgan knew how to name or process, but she welcomed them all.
She sighed and went back to memorizing the taste of her love’s skin. “What if we try everything in the freezer until I can figure out what you taste like,” she suggested, only half-teasing. “You know, for scientific purposes.” She rose to her feet without letting go of Deirdre in the usual way she had. She was curious about the rest of the world in their house with the petrified wonder of a child, but she was more eager to re-discover her love in a new language. So she kept herself fastened to Deirdre’s side as they left their room and awkwardly climbed downstairs.
“Carpet is weird,” she mumbled. “I know it’s soft but it’s also kind of itchy and dense, right? It’s not one thing, I don’t know how we were so casual about walking barefoot on it for so—” Morgan’s foot slipped and her leg went out from under her and she reached for the bannister to steady herself but it was not enough and she fell the rest of the way, only a little slower now, until she finally stopped and landed on her clumsy foot. For one breath, everything was alright like it would have been the day before. In the next, pain rushed in.
Morgan had forgotten about body pain. Impact was one thing. Impact had become a comfort. When Deirdre made love to her, Morgan begged for more impact, more pressure. She wanted to be found. She wanted to know that love could pierce through the dullness of death even if it stung. This was different. Morgan felt the air on her raw skin as if for the first time, gasping and choking on how furiously it burned. And her leg. It was a little swollen, and her ankle didn’t look right, and when she tried to move it, the pain shot up all the way to her throat and she cried out, covering her mouth too late to smother the sound completely. There was hardly any blood, just a thin black smear down her calf and strips of skin scraped clean. It was fine. She was fine. Just hurt. Hurt was a feeling just like anything else. Then the flesh on Morgan’s leg moved and the bones in her ankle inched back toward their old shape and there was nothing within Morgan terrible enough to understand the preternatural agony of feeling her body try to mend itself on a hungry stomach. She curled in on herself, crying and trembling and screaming under her hands until there was no air left in her lungs.
Head tilted to the ceiling, Deirdre barked out in laughter, water growing in the corner of her eyes. With a pittering exhale, she pressed closer to Morgan. “Very funny,” she chastised, finding only amusement in her voice, “I don’t taste like anything frozen, I assure you.” Deirdre pressed a soft kiss to Morgan’s cheek as they rose, as if chasing her on the way up. “And I might get jealous if you mention the freezer too much.” Now it was her turn to tease and she did so with a bright smile, falling easily into step with her girlfriend. “I’ll think you’re trying to replace me.”
And in strange fortune and obvious curse, someone did end up tumbling down a flight of stairs. Not anyone she would have liked to, though. Deirdre reached for Morgan feebily, flesh slipping through her fingers. She rushed down after her love, just inches from tumbling down for herself. “Morgan--” She tried to speak over the screaming to a similar futile effort. She watched skin recede and bones recede into place; what was once a beautiful marker of Morgan’s zombism, now felt like a terrifying reminder of things out-of-place. What was worse, breaking a bone or having a bone snap back in place? How about both?
Deirdre crouched down, hadn’t she wailed just like this the first time one of her bones were broken? She wrapped one cold hand around Morgan’s now-healed ankle, as if trauma were only fiction; and pressed the other to her calf, equally ignorant to memory. “It’s okay,” she began calmly, just under Morgan’s crying, “you’re okay, just give it a moment. It’s okay.” She counted five beats before she tugged Morgan into her arms, sitting with her on their cold, dark hardwood. “Carpet is weird,” she answered slowly, “it’s kind of like wooly grass...if grass was that thick. Oh, my love, grass is going to feel so strange to you again. When I was a child, I liked to bunch it all up in my fingers and pull. I’m not sure why I did that. Must’ve been a nervous habit.” And when Deirdre was sure her nonsensical talk had lulled--though perhaps time had done that without her help--she kissed the top of Morgan’s head and looked at her. “How are you feeling right now?”
Morgan was grateful for the sudden rush of freezing softness that enveloped her through Deirdre’s arms. She couldn’t look away from her body, the skin papering itself over, the leg hair pushing through the new flesh, the swelling turning flat. She had never been afraid of this part of herself before. But now she caught each little mend with a prick and a whimper. Something was wrong. She couldn’t tell anymore which part of her it was, everything about feeling her insides race to fix themselves was very, very, very wrong. She should have been more worried. She should have been more careful.
Deirdre’s words finally reached her and Morgan latched on. Wooly grass. Handfuls of green earth in a child’s fingers. Yes, that sounded really good about now. Morgan took in a shuddering breath, then another. She closed her eyes. The pain was gone. All she was holding onto now was fear. When she opened her eyes again, there was Deirdre, filling up her whole world. “A little more nervous than I was a minute ago,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. She sniffled. “I probably should’ve figured feeling everything again meant feeling...everything again. I-it wasn’t a serious thing. When I felt it--” Her voice snagged on the memory and she eased herself slowly into Deirdre’s arms to push it away. There was her smell again, and the foral whiff of laundry on her robe. “It was just my ankle. I’m okay.” She said it a few more times to reassure herself as well. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
Morgan breathed again and dropped as much of her fear as she knew how and held onto Deirdre just a little tighter instead. She kissed her love’s shoulder and lifted her head so her tremulous words wouldn’t get lost against her skin. “Maybe we could try to get to breakfast again? Nothing complicated. And maybe you can stay close while I try to get used to...existing, I guess? I-I know something bad is probably happening right now. And that scares me. But it also scares me that feeling the world again will have to stop. And I don’t want to spend all this time being scared.” She sniffled. “I want my life with you back.”
Deirdre pressed a hand to Morgan’s cheek, pausing just shy of roughly rubbing at her skin, thumb hovering in the air. The pressure she once needed to apply was habitual, woven into her body’s understanding of Morgan just as old memories of gentleness were. It took her only a second to adjust again, tucking loose strands of hair behind Morgan’s hair—promptly bounced free again with their fluffy nature—as she softly traced the bones of her face. “Everyone forgets about pain until it happens,” she smiled. “Paper cuts, stubbed toes…all of them hurt with the shock of it; no one wants to remember exactly how things hurt. And you shouldn’t worry; I don’t think you have to live your life worried about all the ways you can be hurt anymore. So,” Deirdre kissed Morgan as she helped them both to their feet, catching Morgan’s weight in case her ankle still tingled, “personally, I don’t know what there is to be nervous about. You’ll have to tell me if anything still makes you feel like that.”
At the mention of breakfast food, Deirdre eyed the stove, still several steps away. Since it was a little earlier than their usual waking time, the cats hadn’t stirred yet either, but she knew the sound of cooking would call them over like some kind of lighthouse to hungry, hungry shores. “How about pancakes?” She started one step at a time, slow and steady and careful. Left foot. Right foot. A pause to make sure Morgan was following along okay. Left foot. Right fo— Deirdre stumbled.
She was back to standing stiffly only a moment later, but for a second, she had stumbled. “Bad,” she repeated, gut churning and lips pulled thin. Yes, all of this probably did mean something bad, she knew that. She had been thinking that. But it was different to hear it confirmed from Morgan. “I-I’m sure it’s not that bad,” she argued nervously in a soft voice, “I’m sure it’s nothing to really be worried about at all.” She smiled thin, anxiously tugging Morgan closer to her. Bad had only been a thought until now, but if Morgan thought so too then…we’ll, it was rare that both of them were ever wrong. And as much as Deirdre knew about death, she wasn’t any sort of zombie expert. This peculiar sudden burst of feeling wasn’t normal, and didn’t come with the warmth or heartbeat it should’ve if it was a drug. She didn’t know what it was, and that frightened her too. “You’re going to be okay,” Deirdre was nearly angry in her insistence. There was a good possibility that Morgan wasn’t suddenly becoming more alive but turning more dead. Deirdre refused it. “Right?” She begged, dragging herself flush against Morgan. If Morgan was going to die again, she wouldn’t know, and that was a fact that terrified her everyday. Deirdre liked knowing things, most people did. “I don’t—I don’t want to spend this time being scared either. But, I…” she swallowed thickly and closed her eyes. “I love you so much, Morgan. Always. If this is something bad can we just…can we just…” She wanted to suggest forgetting it for now, but thought about how much worse it would be to not know. Caught between the two ideas, she floundered for a moment before she gestured for them to keep walking. It was okay. It was okay. It was okay.
Morgan lifted her tear-stained face to her love and watched her thoughts play out on her expression with avid devotion. She strained upwards to caress Deirdre’s jaw with little kisses as she gave her wisdom (because that was something Morgan could do now; she could be so gentle, and so tender, and feel every ripple of sensation at the same time) and nodded along with the plan she was constructing to supplement her own in such a way that her cheek rubbed against Deirdre’s skin.
“Pancakes sound perfect. But you’ll have to stay extra close in case I burn my hand on the skillet again,” she said, voice light. She had gotten better, but the skillet liked to get the better of her and her once-dead nerves at least once a week.
Then Deirdre stumbled and her wise and wonderful confidence fell away and Morgan ached with how clearly her fear was imprinted on her body, her touch. “Hey…” She said. “We don’t know anything for sure. For all we know; this is just my White Crest trauma talking. But either way, I’ll be okay. I’m dead, not gone. And it is really, seriously hard to get rid of me at this point.” Now that she was speaking up to soothe her love, Morgan’s words came easier. She sounded so confident she almost started to believe herself.
Morgan kept still and held herself in place with Deirdre, who was getting desperate to submerge them safely away from their concerns. “I’m okay,” she said again and turned Deirdre’s face to look down at hers. “I love you too. More every day and always, always, Deirdre. And I am okay.” She kissed her as tenderly as she knew how and lingered, forehead pressed to forehead. “Neither of us want to live in fear and neither of us want to ignore a chance to be proactive about finding out what’s happening. So I’m thinking…we give ourselves today to be happy. I want to sample everything there is to sense in our little world. I want to learn the right words of everything I’ve been missing out on. I want to know how it feels for you to have your way with me. I want to feel you and everything that makes up my life like I never stopped. And tomorrow, we can start looking for answers in whatever White Crest bullshit is going on now. Tomorrow, not a minute before.” Another kiss. “So no eulogizing. Just be with me. Show me how life is. Okay?” She pulled back and gave Deirdre a bright smile. “And, most importantly of all: decide if you’re brave enough to try my brain sausage with your pancakes.”
On the days where fear grew large and vicious, where the loss of Morgan was fanged and snarling, Deirdre kept herself afloat with a small hope; a tiny idea that she could trust in the world allowing them to have the space they’d so carefully carved out. Didn’t they deserve it? Though, the more Deirdre followed that line of reasoning, the worse she felt; she was a murderer, torturer, apathetic and destructive weapon of a creature. What she actually deserved was very obvious. So, she never let herself think that far. She let her thoughts rest on her small hope, praying it wouldn’t be crushed one day—and of all days, not today. Deirdre closed her eyes and let Morgan’s words wash over her. Her small hopes always felt a little stronger with Morgan there. “Okay,” she breathed, opening her eyes. “I’m sorry. I love you.” And meeting Morgan in a kiss of her own—it was of Deirdre’s expert opinion that kisses be divided equally among them, as she explained to Morgan many days ago, stealing kisses when she could—her hope stretched and smothered her fear for the moment and she smiled again. Morgan said she was okay, and Deirdre chose to believe it. “Just don’t expect brains to feel like normal meat. It’s a little more creamy, or like jelly depending.” She paused, “I’ve had some of your brains before.”
It was easy then, to move forth as though things were truly okay. Morgan was in her arms, touching her, kissing her. Her hands rose to Morgan’s face, keeping her still, tracing pores and the lines her tears followed when they spilled. She kissed her again, sealing her hope there and pulled them along to the kitchen. She left Morgan to get acquainted with the countertops and the tile as she fetched ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, eggs, butter. The flour rained in small spurts when she put everything down, looking at Morgan. “How do you want to do this?” Deirdre smiled, knowing their usual division of labour was Morgan doing most (all) of the work and Deirdre doing the odd cutting job and the dishes at the end. This time, though, she wanted to do more. Her excitement portrayed in her holding the pan up, deferring to Morgan.
Morgan skated her toes along the tile. She remembered pretending to be Nancy Kerrigan in her worn out socks when she was a kid. The kitchens she’d grown up in had never been as smooth as this. The holes snagged on little chips and rough patches. She could only do circles a few feet wide. But the summer was humid. There was something slick about their wide, polished tiles, and she could spread the tips of her toes as far as she could reach and glide as if they were a single, icy blade.
She giggled, and looked up to explain to Deirdre, when she saw her love holding out the cooking pan, a look on her face that made her seem brighter, younger, than she had been in some time. It was almost impossible to misread her expression, so inviting, pleading but in the kindest way. Morgan couldn’t help but answer her smile with one in return. “Um…” She was strangely bashful, having Deirdre’s attention in this way, teaching her something they could share in for once. Morgan’s hands, ever curious, were dancing over the stovetop and over to her arms, which made her jolt with a sweet plunge of cold. “Well, the pan goes on the stove, and you turn the knob on low so it can preheat…” She guided Deirdre through the movement, starting to enjoy the gradations of goosebumps their closeness sent through her body. Somehow, they reminded her of the way water ripples looked. “And then we get to start the batter. Do you want to crack the eggs for me, farmgirl? I could use some strong fae muscles to help me out.” She batted her eyes, feigning the role of a damsel in need before laughing once again and reaching for the requisite measuring cups. Morgan made pancakes so often, she barely had to take her eyes away in order to find all her tools. But that didn’t stop her from sliding her thumb around the plastic and the rubber grips on the handles. She laid them all out and took a moment to consider what a miracle it was to have so much beauty in so many ordinary places, right at the tips of her fingers.
Morgan smoothed her hands over the countertop and pressed, with a delighted gasp, into her love. “Do you want to run the mixer too, babe?”
Whatever complaints Deirdre had about being shown how to work a stove, as if she didn’t know, shivered under the delight of having Morgan show her at all. She gasped at the fire, as though she couldn’t believe it, and nodded enthusiastically at being led along. It ended far too soon for her liking, but there was only so much to do with a pan. “Yes!” And, excited at the prospect of helping, Deirdre nearly forgot about the teasing. “Oh, right,” she coughed and was quick to correct herself. “Wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” But what should have been a smirk was a bright grin instead. Deirdre could crack eggs with one hand, which was all the better for her so she could use the other to pull Morgan close. As the mixer whirred, bringing everything together in a light and sweet-smelling batter, Deirdre had moved completely behind Morgan, arms wrapped around her waist. “I love you,” she mumbled against her neck, “and is it too late to say I wanted blueberry pancakes?”
For the rest of it, she cooed and hummed as Morgan worked. There were simple sensations that even she had taken for granted; the warmth of the skillet, the uneasy weight when it came to flipping a pancake, the sweet smell, the burnt smell. Deirdre gestured silently where Morgan should keep her fingers now, in case she forgot; don’t burn yourself here, remember you need to use the handle like this. But it was like nothing had changed from their first few mornings together, intertwined as breakfast was prepared. Where the sun was warm and the wind cool. It wasn’t like they didn’t share mornings in the wake of Morgan’s death, just that it was different. Deirdre always felt odd being the only one to enjoy a meal, even if Morgan said she didn’t mind. It always felt better when they could share things.
Deirdre moved and readied plates and silverware for them. Stirred by the sounds of cooking, and the scent of it, the cats emerged slowly from their slumber, walking and howling like drunk sailors towards them. Anya, despite being told not to, pounced on the counter, pawing at spoons before Deirdre scooped her up and turned her towards Morgan. “Hey,” her voice was soft. Their pancakes were done, and there was just one aspect of their domestic life that remained unfelt, un-petted. Moira was on her way to Morgan’s feet. Niamh had claimed the center island, also jumping up where she shouldn’t. Deirdre moved a little closer. “Do you want to…” her sentence trailed off, “I can plate everything up, if you want.”
Morgan stared at Anya, who blinked back at her with wise indifference. Of all the feelings she’d lost, Anya had been the strangest, because there was nothing to recover when the cat was too put off by her death smell and the trauma of their bond breaking to go near her. By the time they made up a few short months ago, she was all out of practice and the best she could think of was “cat” which was no association at all. She looked to Deirdre next, and saw that her love understood what she was offering. A piece of a life half-forgotten. A piece of herself that could never be fastened back in place but might be collected, carried for safekeeping. Morgan nodded without saying anything and took the cat into her arms.
By now, Morgan was coming to accept that ‘soft’ would never contain everything that belonged to it, but Anya and her fine short fur seemed to be at least three different kinds of soft at once. There was the tender flesh of her ears, which stayed on alert until Morgan scratched her under the collar the way she liked. Then the shorter hairs under her chin, almost like fuzz. Her toe beans, which tickled Morgan’s skin. Her sleek black coat. She was a lean thing, fit from her daily hunts. You wouldn’t think there was much to cuddle, but the fine hairs grew thick and Morgan felt whole bunches of softness between each finger as she carded them across her back. So this was what having a friend back felt like, soft leather paws pushing against skin, the scratch of cat claws, and a soft (so, so soft) little body warm against your chest.
Morgan looked at Deirdre again. “Um why don’t we...we could eat in the great room? Put on a fire and watch the snow. We might as well enjoy all the strange magic we’ve been given at once, right?”
Moira sat on her toes and mewled pitifully, wanting a turn. Morgan’s eyes blurred as she knelt to pick up the kitten with her other arm. She was so fluffy, so light, Morgan couldn’t believe how deep her fingers sank into her fluff in order to cradle her properly.
“I’ll just...I can meet you there?” She said, her thanks written all over her watery face.
Morgan relished every brush of movement and contact. Wood floors (very cold), fancy rug (even stiffer than normal carpet), cats scratching, cats wriggling, cats using her as a diving board and a jungle gym, firewood, kindling, poker. And then pillows, blankets, and cats again. They drifted through her, it threw her with the force of a wave. And yet the ocean wouldn’t have been half as overwhelming, as far as she could figure, because it was all one thing. The wave that threw her into stillness was at least a dozen different sensations, a world’s worth of being she hadn’t thought to appreciate.
By the time Deirdre arrived with breakfast, Morgan had done up the floor by the prickly-toasty-warm fireside to be comfortable for them. She sat on a pillow, legs tucked up, one hand still stroking Moira, who she decided reminded her of clouds and feathers and those awful fur pillows that had been popular when she was young. Her smile turned wide and sloppy with delight. “That looks amazing! Pretty excellent teamwork, if I say so myself. This might sound weird, but I’m having--none of the words I’m familiar with seem enough to describe how everything feels. Like you’re soft, and Moira is soft, but not in the same way at all. It’s probably just the novelty of everything, but I was wondering--how would you describe the way blueberry pancakes taste?”
Deirdre watched Morgan leave with a warm smile; she didn’t need to read her love’s expression to guess at what might be floating around in her head, but even so, she desperately wanted to ask. It was a gift, always, to hear Morgan’s thoughts with her own voice, said her own way. She plated their breakfast with care, arranging everything as she’d seen it done at the sort of restaurants they didn’t frequent anymore and just the way Morgan used to like everything—extra blueberries and a handful of blackberries on the side. Coming into the great room with everything on a tray, she figured the only thing separating this from the mornings she once coveted was the denial of romantic feelings. And the extra cats. But it was so much better like this; the moment in time they never got to have. The promise of a long domestic life filled with feeling; their world. Their slice of paradise and heaven; that dusk-covered beach with the stars. “My love,” Deirdre greeted, settling herself and the tray on the floor. Morgan’s smile wasn't the only one messy with affection and delight. She had never learned how to describe how anything felt, and she wasn’t even the one who lost feeling.
Deirdre poured maple syrup from the ceramic jar over her pancakes slowly as she thought about it. “You once said…” She offered the jar to Morgan. “That I felt like melting snow in your hands, the first time you held some. Like that cold pool, that one summer day.” Deirdre paused, watching syrup run down her stack of pancakes. How did anyone describe how pancakes tasted? How love felt? How happy some moments were? “Memory,” Deirdre looked up, “I think you describe things with memories. Blueberry pancakes are sweet and tart, but they taste like Sunday mornings before prayer, in August when the fruit was ripe and my mother faithfully marked the day as rest. They taste like one moment's peace, one good day, one allowed indulgence.” Deirdre cut a piece, stabbing her fork into the fluffy delicacy and holding it just shy of her mouth. “Words are often inadequate, they’ve been like that before this…” Deirdre stopped herself. She wanted to call it a miracle, a dream, but didn’t want to test the world. She’d heard some things said about curses and intentions and minimized emotional footprints, and while she never believed a word of any of that, she didn’t want hopes to run too high. “…surprise. I wouldn’t worry about a lacking vocabulary; even if the words did exist, they wouldn’t tell me that my coldness felt like falling in love. But you did, your memories did.” Finally, she put the bite in her mouth. It was sweet, it was a little tart, but mostly it tasted like Sunday. And some of this moment too. “I mean to say; I am soft, kind of like a squishy ice cube. Moira feels like a hairy cloud. But far more like that first day we got her, and it felt like everything would fall into place, like relief, reprieve. New life. And this fire is warm, but to me it feels like the first time we had sex, and I thought you had a fever. Did I ever tell you that I tried to check your temperature while you were sleeping? I couldn’t believe anyone could be that warm, but I didn’t exactly keep a thermometer at my bedside.” Deirdre turned her attention to the flames, reaching up for more as they always did. “What does everything feel like?” She looked back at her girlfriend, “the pancakes, the cats, the fire…does it remind you of anything? What words do come to mind?” She paused again, breaking into a grin. “And yes, it was excellent teamwork.” Most things they did were.
Morgan ate as Deirdre spoke. She wanted the pancakes to taste the way listening to her voice felt. She was so thoughtful, so patient, and when she paused over her ideas just as Morgan bit into her fluffy-heavy-buttery-melt-y pancake and a fresh sweet-tart-slightly-satin-skinned blueberry burst between her teeth, Morgan thought she understood what Deirdre meant by a Sunday’s reprieve. A quiet and wonderful relief, a present that arrived just in time.
As her love went on, Morgan tried to make everything work with one hand while studying the room, the light, and the strange little textures around her. She wanted to braid the whole room into Deirdre’s words so that when she touched the couch, her heart would feel as warm and light as it did right now. “A squishy ice cube,” she echoed, laughing tipsy on happiness. “Sounds a lot better than fleshy water. But I understand what you mean.” She shoveled another bite into her mouth and held it there until the pancake turned to mush on her tongue before swallowing. Then another.
“The funny thing is, with how much I doubt my memories of things sometimes, I’ve already started trying to turn everything I touch into feelings. Like, kitchen stuff,” Morgan twirled her fork as an example, “Feels like some of the early days, wanting to do something nice to impress you or make you proud. The bones in my art feel like forgiving myself. The bones everywhere else feel like discovery or wanting to belong. My books all feel like whatever I felt reading them, or how I used them. But, let’s see…” She paused to eat some more as she tried to puzzle the images and heart-feelings she subsisted on into words. “Moira feels like being a kid at the end of a good day and thinking tomorrow might be even better. Naimh feels like wanting to do better. Anya feels like missing someone who’s still here.The fire feels like that heavier grown-up kind of hope, the kind we have at Yule and Beltane. I’m still deciding on the pancakes, though. There’s at least six different textures and flavors in one bite, it boggles my mind that we shove all of it into two words.” It took everything in her not to smile with her mouth full as she shoveled another bite.
“Normally, everything is so dull there’s hardly any variety. Like, our couch and the carpet: totally different material, but absolutely the same to me unless I really try to pick the carpet fibers apart. And the floor, and the stone mantelpiece, same thing. It’s just hard or soft, solidly together or kind of coming apart. And when it comes to softness…” Morgan paused and looked away from her plate as she scraped her plate clean. She didn’t want the last bite to taste like the heavy feeling building in her chest. “So much of it’s the same. The only difference is the shape. How much of me it covers. If I closed my eyes, I’d only know you were kissing my cheek instead of touching it with your finger by the sound and the shape of it. It’s not a bad kind of same. It’s like cotton balls and moth wings and those chunks of lint you have to pick out of the dryer, or that’s what I decided early on anyway. But it’s been just as long since I felt those things too. So of course it doesn’t always do the trick, especially when I’m low. But I still feel emotions every day, so it’s easier to trust that your hands feel like wanting to be faithful and your hair is like longing for a gentler world and your chest is being certain I’m safe…” She reached over and touched each part of Deirdre as she named them, shivering as she tried to memorize this new, vivid touch.
Morgan crawled closer. She picked up a blueberry and fed it to her love and kissed her. “Your lips feel like saying I love you,” she murmured. She grazed her lips over Deirdre’s cheek, then stilled, pulled back. “You’re warmer,” she whispered, as though she had discovered this phenomenon for the first time. She slipped her hand under Deirdre’s robe and felt her shoulder. She bunched her hair in each hand. “The fire’s making you warm!” She laughed, loud with amazement. “Do you know what you feel like when you’re warm? You at least know it’s different, right? But it doesn’t make me think of being sick or worried. It’s…not really warm enough to be toasty but it’s nice?” She ran her hands over the same places again, then her lips. “You feel like you but..new. Has anyone ever told you that before?” She snaked her arms around Deirdre’s body and tried to cover herself in the feeling.
“I know I was overstimulated like an hour ago, so I’m gonna let you be the level-headed one and decide. Okay?” Morgan mumbled into her back, “I want to feel the rest of you, all of you. If I only get one day of this, I want to find all the different ways you feel like and melt my brain trying to name them all. Also, have hot cocoa again. And pie. And maybe build a snowman. And try on all my sweaters. But mostly you. Like right now maybe, while you’re warm? And then later tonight, when you’re cold again. And then maybe a few more times for good measure.” She kissed the back of her neck. “Sometimes I forget how much it broke me in the beginning, not being able to feel you the way I used to. Sometimes I don’t understand it. But I get it now. Your body is a whole world of wonderful things. And I could discover it for the first time all over again. ...Please?”
Deirdre never did take another bite of her breakfast. Her attention was captured by Morgan, watching her love as she spoke. Deirdre’s lips parted with each pause, silently encouraging Morgan to continue. Their worlds were different, and Deirdre had never stopped wanting to hear of Morgan’s. Anya, to her, felt like old memories. Niamh like loss, love, and the cold tingle of Lydia’s pearl hair. And Morgan, like everything good. Deirdre shivered under her touch, her eyes remained on her girlfriend and faithfully she sat and held her plate of forgotten pancakes. Her tongue curled around the blueberry offered, sweet juice burst under her teeth. Yes, yes she was warmer, very warm for a lot of reasons and only some of them had anything at all to do with the fire. “I hadn’t noticed,” Deirdre lied, flushed and grinning. And no, no one had ever told her that. No one had ever told her half these things. “Would you still say that knowing being hot makes me feel feverish?” She tried to joke. It came out as a rasp. She feared her mind was being too transparent with its ideas. She set her plate of pancakes aside; she wasn’t very hungry. Well, not for them at least.
One could imagine her excitement to learn Morgan was on the same page. “Hm,” Deirdre hummed, “only because you said please.”
It was true that for her, kissing Morgan felt just as it always had; like coming home for the first time. It was true that she had never lost the world of feeling and memory that Morgan gave. Touching her was walking down her favourite roads, looking up at the stars and choosing to let them guide her someplace. Her fingers tangled in her hair were the days spent sprawled in meadows uncaring for how the sun slowly hid behind the horizon in an explosion of pinks and oranges. Loving her was, as it always had been, the best thing that ever happened to her. Moments with Morgan always felt ripped from reality, placed in their own special glass-bottle world. But moments like these didn’t have a name and were too many feelings to let just one be picked. Deirdre described it simply as “I love you” said with the same rapturous affection every time.
Which, over the course of the day, was 192 times.
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Breaking Bonds || Morgan & Bea
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @beatrice-blaze & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Bea invites Morgan over to share a new discovery. The world will not consent to be fixed, but somebody has to try.
CONTAINS: references to Bea’s, Morgan’s, and Adam’s deaths
There were not many people in this world who understood life and death in the same manner Bea did. They may never have been close before either of their deaths, but after, Morgan and Bea were implicitly connected. This connection made Morgan the clearest person to go to about what Bea had found through her research. The kettle let out a shrill cry for attention as the witch finished lining up the tomes she had flagged for this discussion. It was good timing that Bea’s bracelet informed her that Morgan had crossed into the Vural’s property as she began steeping the tea. She went to the porch with a smile, Dia weaving between her legs as she waited for Morgan. “The tea should be ready soon! I hope you don’t mind that I tried to find something you’d like to eat, though I wasn’t completely sure what would be palatable,” She told the zombie, thinking of the container of meat that she had waiting for Morgan, if she wanted it.
It was no small relief to visit Bea at her place. Morgan didn't know her as well as she did Luce and Nell, but she had an ease with Bea that she couldn’t have with the others either. They had died and come back around the same time, and they were both determined to have a whole life as their altered selves. As she came up to the porch to meet her friend, she sighed and let that ease pull away some of the tension her body carried.
“I don’t mind,” she said, smiling with gratitude. “I will try any and everything you have prepared. I literally can’t get food poisoning, so there’s not much to lose. And thanks for having me over. I want to hear all about New York and Felix and whatever else people who haven’t seen each other in a while swap. But uh, you said there was something you wanted to talk about, right?”
Small talk, Bea had almost forgotten that she should be engaging in small talk because she was so excited by what she had found. “Oh yes! I need to hear all about what you’ve been doing too, I’m sure things have been very exciting over here.” And she did, just like she wanted to see how Morgan was, especially since Morgan was taking care of so many people at the moment. Still, that could wait until after.
Bea invited Morgan in, before walking over to the table and lightly touching a book. “But, first, you should see what I found in here,” She couldn’t help the excited tilt her voice took. Flipping open to the first tab in the book she pointed to a line and read,“‘I have found that some of the new undead can be controlled, tamed if the right-hand guides them.’ The wording is awful, but doesn’t that read like I could help people who are struggling with this? You were the first person who seemed right to call about this.”
“Oh, you know,” Morgan said dismissively. “Been better, been worse. Still kind of a mess. But as long as we have each other, or as much of each other as we can, and if we can keep trying to make hope…” She smiled, weighed down by every terrible thing that had happened over the past month, though no less genuine for it. “We have to get to ‘okay’ eventually, right?”
She followed Bea in eagerly. Distractions were good, learning and projects were better. If she was moving toward something, she might still be able to make something better, or at least be better. She came over to the book and looked at the words. Controlled and tamed were two different things, but maybe this meant that there was an under-utilized conditioning process. Use magic at first to mitigate the damage and get them used to things, Let them choose the right thing for themselves later. “With--by ‘this’ you mean undead hunger cravings, right? Like, if I lost myself in front of a dead body, or a vampire was trying to stay off people. Do you think…” Her hand went to her lips as she thought of Ashley the zombie last year and Nico Jemisin in the thrift store. She shouldn’t get too excited, she shouldn’t brew hope over just a stray phrase and an untested experiment. She shouldn’t, she shouldn’t. And yet. “How far have you gotten on this? This could be…it could save so many people.”
A small, sad smile took Bea’s lips as Morgan spoke. She knew that hope as well as she knew her shadows. Before all of this, the necromancer had never had to worry about being okay, she had simply trusted in the universe to balance itself again. Being hit with hardship after hardship had created that doubt in the world’s ability to allow her to have a break. “We’ll be okay eventually, Morgan,” She said softly, “We’ll be able to create our own okay, you’re strong enough for that.” Anyone who had survived what Morgan had already was more than capable of bending the world to her whims.
She nodded eagerly, “That’s what I would intend to find out at the very least. I’d like to think that the word ‘tamed’ would imply that, though I do hate the implication that the undead needs to be tamed.” She had found herself drawn to the power of necromancy at the beginning, the ability to twist death itself to what she wanted. Now, though, after experiencing that power, she had found something softer, something that could change lives, save them. That part of herself she felt had left in death was returning, the part that could help and care for others without asking what they could do for her. She could grant people some form of comfort again, she could help facilitate something beautiful from a hardship. “I’ve marked every mention I’ve found of it, but there’s not much I’ve seen. I think we can write something together on this, we can find a way to get this information out there to help others.”
A piece of Morgan’s heart unclenched at Bea’s reassuring words. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding something in, but she was swallowing tears and so loose in her bones she felt like she might fall over. It had been a while since someone had tried to comfort her, and even longer when she was able to accept their gift without any guilt. Morgan smiled, lips quivering, and whispered, “thank you,” before putting her attention back on the main subject.
“What would you need? In terms of resources or experiments?” Morgan asked. She was self-conscious enough about her now-constant discoloring at all times, but as she considered the possibilities, she felt the hollowness of her stomach too. Morgan shouldn’t be this excited for Bea’s idea. Fuck Odell, and fuck her hold on this cursed town. “Would it...I mean, you’re the expert, so you would know whether it’s safe or too dangerous if you...tested it on me?” She met Bea’s eyes with trepidation. “I’m not high risk or anything, obviously, and a year does a lot for a girl’s impulse control around viscera, but...I wouldn’t say no to some extra help.”
There were many forms of strength that Bea has seen over the years, many of them represented by the women she surrounded herself with. Morgan, she found, had one of the softest forms she had seen yet, but that did not mean she didn’t respect it. If anything, it proved to Bea that she could be strong without violence and anger. Her sisters, for as strong as they were, often hurt themselves from it. Luce with her anger, an all too powerful storm that untethered her, but kept others aware of who they were dealing with. Nell with her fierce strikes, hunting beasts and controlling demons that left her all too vulnerable to the world’s evil. Bea couldn’t always be like them, but she could be softer, she could adopt some of Morgan and create her own brand of strength that did not always mean striking first.
“Well, we’d need an area far from anyone else just in case something went wrong.” Bea wouldn’t risk doing it at her home when her sisters were so close by. She looked at Morgan for a long moment, she trusted the zombie, but it put Morgan in a hard situation if something were to happen. “We can try it on you, but I would want other people there, just in case. Who would you feel comfortable with helping?” Bea had her own list of who they could call, but Morgan was the one being controlled. She was certainly in a much more vulnerable spot. “I think we should start with small portions and then work our way up.” This would be a long process, but it would be worth it to explore the possibility.
“Well, there’s plenty of spots in the woods,” Morgan sighed. “If screaming moose can hide, so can we. Especially on the outskirts, near the border, I don’t think there’ll be anyone for miles.” She wasn’t that worried. White Crest liked to keep its secrets to itself as much as possible. But Bea’s second question was another beast. Deirdre came to her mind briefly, but her love had promised to never physically harm her on purpose and refused to be released. And then, Bea wouldn’t want to endanger her sisters after all they’d been through. Who did that leave? Mina, who barely spoke to her anymore?
At last, Morgan had to admit defeat. “I...don’t know. If you know someone or have ideas, I trust your judgement. You know about discretion as much as anyone, so. But, little bits at a time! That sounds good. Reasonable. It’ll, you know, probably come in handy some time. Even with someone like me.” Or especially, with how things stood at the moment. “You’re the one channeling big magic, so you should probably set the pace. I’ve got that infinite stamina going for me. So I...I can take it. Whatever might happen, I can take it. I want to, if it means having more control over myself.”
With everything, Bea had good and bad days. With the woods, she had bad far more often. She controlled her face as well as she could, only hesitating for a moment. “Let me pick the spot in the forest? I’ll find something in the outskirts for us.” She would pick somewhere far from the place it happened, where even on her bad day she could hold herself together. Her first thought would be to ask Leah to help, but that could be very dangerous for the phoenix. Her sisters weren’t an option. Maybe this wasn’t as easy as she had originally thought it would be. “I could see if Kaden was willing to help.” She trusted him to behave with Morgan, but she had no idea if they were on good terms anymore. “If you are feeling comfortable with that.” That was a good point, Bea had no idea how much energy this was going to take. If it was anything like the other necromancy magic she had done, she was going to need to work her way up. “We’ll go slow, there’s no need to rush what’s going to happen. Especially as we need to get more people on board to help.”
“Of course,” Morgan said. To her shame, she only remembered how much the woods had taken from Bea when she saw the look on the woman’s face. Morgan, for her part, never lingered on the part of main street where she’d felt the sun on her back for the last time, and ice cream trucks made her feel sick and bitter. But these were small things, specific. As much as the spot where Bea died was cursed ground, for all Morgan knew, every dark cluster of trees held the shadow of her trauma. Too late now.
Morgan considered Kaden. She didn’t want him to know she was struggling. She didn’t know how much of his fear and disappointment she could bear. And would he feel guilty for helping? Would he doubt himself? Or feel as though he were betraying himself? But a hunter was a clear and obvious choice, for Bea’s safety as well as Morgan’s own. And the only other hunter Morgan trusted was dead. “It makes sense. If you think he would, and that he wouldn’t...feel wrong or bad about it, yeah. That sounds like a good idea. And you’re right about needing others, strong muscle-y others probably, but don’t know who else is left.” She met Bea’s eyes slowly, knowingly, and ached as Adam’s loss stung once again. She cleared her throat and let the spectre of his memory pass. “Later, when we’ve got the basics down, I’ll be of more help. I’ve got lots of fresh experience with my muscle strength, and fighting off people, living and undead. But, slow and steady first.” With difficulty, she summoned a smile. “Who’d have figured it would take two people like us to make a new magic discovery?”
Oh, Bea thought, Of course Morgan knows. A fragile, brittle smile made its way onto her face. As the days went on, as his loss compounded, the closer she felt to slipping away. She was teetering on a precipice, close to falling over the edge of understanding grief as other people had. Her understanding before had been abstracted at best, a twisted and strange version of an emotion that everyone around her seemed to understand better than she did. A necromancer who had faced death, danced with her, but did not comprehend her affects seemed like an oxymoron. The room was spinning, twisting around her as she tried to focus on Morgan’s words. “Oh, I don’t know it makes sense, doesn’t it?” She replied weakly, “We like pushing and figuring stuff out. We’re fixers.” Fixers in a world that could not be fixed, would not consent to be fixed. Adam had been a fixer too, it was why he was gone.
“Fixers, huh,” Morgan repeated, her own smile turning sad as well. She didn’t think of that word often except in terms of her own shame and desperation. She broke something, therefore she had to fix it. But to hear Bea say it, they were doing something better than hastily atoning; they were solving the world. Not all of it, because no one could do that. But little hurts, difficulties, problems. They knew how to seal cracks in people’s hearts and put in new supports where old ones had snapped. And it didn’t have to mean that any of it was their fault or their responsibility. Just that they happened to know how. They happened to have the strength to try. And when everything broke all over again, they would fix it again. On and on.
The future stretched out in her mind’s eye, a line of patch jobs into centuries. Nothing holding or staying for long. She wondered if Adam had ever seen the future that way, and if he ever let himself dream of a green field and a quiet existence where the only things that needed fixing were fence posts and kitchen appliances, as she often did. She didn’t know which answer was sadder.
“I guess we are,” she said quietly. “I guess somebody has to be.”
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Keeping Vigil || Morgan & Eddie
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @specterchasing & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: When Morgan can’t carry her hope, Eddie is there to help.
CONTAINS: body horror, discussions of death, mortality, decay
After reaching another dead end in her search for answers, Morgan broke down and took an extra long shower to get rid of her smell and wash the rough parts on her body that had been hurt or picked at by bugs. The water pattered on her just right, steadier and softer than rain. When she let it fall into her ear and make the room feel like underwater, she could hold onto the water and nothing else and the aches and cramps faded, and everything was fine. She savored the change in water temperature as it faded from hot to cool as much as the change in the sky from light to dark.
A little later, as she picked at cold fried rice and brains, the waistband on her sweats started to feel a little tight, and when Morgan looked down her coloring had gone another shade of wrong and when she touched her stomach (first in the middle, then all around) she got the sinking feeling she used to once a month: bloating. Maybe it was water damage, maybe it was just that time in the un-life cycle. It didn’t fucking matter, did it?
“Great. First I’m dead, then I’m falling apart and ripped up like a rag doll, and now I’m a dead ripped up balloon doll waiting to pop.” She thought about how she’d announce this latest development to Deirdre when she got home and decided she didn’t want to. So she made some tea, remembered all the chamomile in the world wouldn’t actually calm her and threw it against her studio.
The mug bounced off the wall. Tea splattered the yard.
Morgan picked it up and holed herself up inside the four little walls where she was supposed to be alone. Maybe if she disappeared in a book or a playlist she could forget about what was happening to her body. Funny how she’d dreamed of feeling the world again every day for the last fourteen months; now she’d try just about anything to go numb and float off again.
As Eddie approached the front door of Morgan’s home, an unexpected sound from the backyard caught his attention. He took a few steps back and looked over the fence in time to see the studio door close. If that’s where Morgan was, it would be pointless to try getting into the main house. Admittedly, tracking her down would be a nonissue if she knew he planned to drop by, but Eddie had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t want visitors in her current condition. Be that as it may, he needed to see her. For all he knew, this might be his last chance.
Eddie reached over the fence’s gate and unlocked it from the other side, immediately re-locking it once inside. Even in his haste, he didn’t want to be the reason something unwanted took an open door as an invitation. Eddie quickly bypassed the garden that usually imbued him with a sense of calmness. Today, all it did was put more space between him and Morgan.
At the studio door, Eddie knocked only to enter without waiting for a response. The second he saw her, his heart fell into his stomach. Morgan, for the first time since meeting her, looked dead.
“I heard about what happened,” Eddie announced. He figured wasting time on small talk would be insulting at this point. “I wish you would’ve told me yourself, but I guess it doesn’t matter now.” As he spoke, he walked further into the studio. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of people in your corner right now. Is there room for me to throw my hat in the ring?”
Morgan only managed a few minutes of stillness before she heard a knock. She flinched, dreading what she would have to explain to Deirdre, but before she could work up the nerve to answer, Eddie came in. She was so startled she forgot to cover her face. Her blue-purple pallor was growing new colors, black in some places, yellow in others. Somehow, her skin was peeling and shriveled and swollen at once. Her eyes, now clouded like frost on a window, looked smaller than they should and her lids sagged around the empty space. For a woman who would never age, she sure looked like she had outlived her time.
In the brief instant Eddie held the door open, three flies flew in and circled lazily toward her. They knew a good thing when they saw it. She should probably have been more grateful that maggots and fungi hadn’t found her yet, but the only thought she had room for was, Eddie shouldn’t be here.
“W--what? I--” It didn’t really matter how he found out, did it? “I don’t want to be one of those people that puts their bullshit on kids and makes them carry it,” she sighed. “And I don’t...know what I’m going to do about any of this. If I can do anything about this. I went through the books I had, I tried looking through some others and--” Nothing. She slumped back in her corner on the day bed and covered her face with a pillow. Then, feeling ridiculous, tossed it away and settled for pulling her legs up and hiding that way. “You should probably grab some air freshener from the kitchenette,” she mumbled.
Eddie had never seen Morgan look so small before. In the past, her petite frame always seemed like an act of misdirection. When she spoke, the weight of her words commanded attention. Her laugh charmed a sigh of relief from the world around her. Out of everyone Eddie knew, he couldn’t think of a single person he respected more than Morgan Beck. Seeing her this way didn’t change that, it only proved the severity of the situation. It was time for him to start repaying her for everything she’d done.
“Well, this kid would rather help carry your bullshit than let it bury you,” Eddie replied as he took her advice and walked over to the kitchenette. He wanted to tell her he didn’t mind the smell but lying wouldn’t make the situation any better. Eddie pulled the trigger and a clean-linen scented mist mingled with the smell of decay. It would have to do.
“So,” he continued, moving closer to her before taking a seat beside her on the day bed. “Catch me up to speed, I only know the bare minimum.” Eddie didn’t think being told the details would lead them to a solution but that wasn’t why he came here. Other, more capable people would help Morgan in that area. What he wanted to accomplish was simply to make sure she knew she wasn’t alone. Maybe it wasn’t as glamorous of a purpose as finding a cure but believed it to be important all the same. “You woke up and, out of nowhere, you were alive again?”
Morgan grimaced at the hiss of the air freshener. She had suggested it, but smelling it and knowing how little good it would do was another matter. “You might wanna go a little heavier on that,” she deadpanned. “I’m almost a week into this, and whatever is fucking with me the slow, painful way, has a year’s worth of decay to catch up on.” She let her head rest against the wall and closed her eyes. All her physical senses back, and she still had to endure this latest cosmic ‘fuck you’ in complete sobriety. No rest. No relief.
She curled up a little tighter as he sat by her, as if her death-sickness was contagious. “Uh, if you haven’t noticed, I apparently don’t need to be buried. I can decompose all by myself.” She worked his question thoughtfully, trying to find the right words for it. How stupidly excited she was for so little, and how suddenly it was a little too much.
“I wasn’t alive,” she said at last, face still buried in her knees. “No heartbeat. No warmth. I could just...feel again. The bedsheets were cold. And soft. Weirdly soft. And my girlfriend was soft and cold but different, and the carpet was...coarse and thick and plushy...it was like I’d never been on this planet before. Everything was new. The words I had weren’t enough to describe it. I spent a whole two days convincing myself that whatever was happening it wouldn’t be so bad. Some weird town thing we’d have to reverse. But then I got hurt and it took me forever to heal. And then I didn’t heal at all. And I ate, I had so many brains, but my body was shriveling up, turning color, smelling, all that gross stuff that’s not supposed to happen to me if I do everything I’m supposed to. And do you know how it feels, literally feels, to have your body dry up? Or to--” One of the flies landed on her cheek and began exploring the new terrain. Morgan raised her hand and let it, waiting til it reached her hairline where she wasn’t so sensitive. She slapped it dead and left the goo where it was. “Be food for the bugs? Because that’s something I know now. Can’t wait for everything else to go, or for whatever’s keeping me wide awake for the whole horror science show to...decide what comes next.” She didn’t want to die. She wouldn’t be this frustrated if she did. But being nothing but wobbling bones and leather and dust frightened her just as much as oblivion. She didn’t know which she was really supposed to hope for.
Eddie listened as Morgan described the past few days. At first, her condition sounded like a gift. He remembered when she told him how badly she missed being able to experience the world as a living participant. No heartbeat or warmth meant certain sensations were still off limits but, other than that, he imagined those first two days felt pretty damn good. A false sense of security, obviously. He hated this.
Morgan swatted the fly and Eddie’s lips pursed in response. “Hold on,” he announced, standing up to make his second trip to the kitchenette. Facing the counter, he tore a few paper towels from the roll and wetted them in the sink. After wringing out the extra moisture, he carried them back to the daybed and took his seat again. Eddie tentatively reached out and, as gently as he could, washed away the insect’s remains. When his hand lowered, he kept the damp wad of paper in his hand in case another decided to land on her.
“Morgan, do you remember what you said to me about hope, that it’s a choice?” Eddie asked. Of all people, he knew how unqualified he was to preach the importance of hope but he wanted to try. “You also said that to stop believing in the future is to stop believing in existing.” Even if he lacked the experience to explain the importance of looking for good, he knew Morgan didn’t. He could use her own words to help him navigate the situation.
“This isn’t the first time life’s given you its worst,” he said. “Obviously, you can roll over and accept hopelessness. Or, you can do what you do best and tell death to go fuck itself.”
“Yeah, this is an anomaly—so are you. Nothing is written, right? Don’t give up. Not yet.”
There were a lot of words Morgan had spoken in the past that haunted her now. Magic is going to save my life. All I need is to break the curse. Hope is a fucking choice. What was there to hope for when the only thing on the horizon was another shade of suffering? How could she continue believing in existence, when existence seemed to be shutting her down at both ends? Was she supposed to bone-jangle her way downstairs to breakfast every morning? Or be carried on a stretcher in so many pieces, to and fro? Or would the magic take away her mind too, and this was simply a farewell tour she didn’t have a say in? Morgan didn’t see much hope in that. What had all her suffering been for? A year of half a life, and then this?
Morgan scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and said nothing for a while. Then, just peeking over her knees with dead, swollen eyes, she said, “Death comes for everyone, Eddie. That’s what gives life balance. We end. We go...somewhere. Home. Even if it’s not until this planet implodes or gets struck by the right meteor. Everything is change. To stay stuck one way, that’s the biggest waste of what we have.” She shrugged. “But...stars in the fucking sky above…” Her voice drowned with held-in tears. “I couldn’t find anything about this, Eddie. I haven’t figured it out. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to imagine to hope for. And I’m so tired...I am so tired of climbing back up, of fighting the universe for one scrap of good. And right now...I almost wish I could give up. But I don’t even know what to give up on. All of it looks like giving up something right now.”
Eddie knew death came for everyone. Until recently, he clung to that fact with everything he had. Even now, his grip was only a little looser than before. Death, to him, sounded like a release. Morgan was tired, it made sense for her to want rest. A few months ago, Eddie might not have argued that it wasn’t the answer, but now he knew what loss felt like. If Morgan died, a piece of him would too. Ironically enough, the more he cared about someone, the more selfish he became.
“Lots of things that happen in this town don’t have books written about them. That doesn’t make them impossible to handle,” Eddie insisted before adopting a softer tone. “I know you’re tired. If anyone deserves rest, it’s you, and you’ll get it.” Eddie reached out with his free-hand and took hold of Morgan’s. “Like you said, death’s inevitable but it doesn’t have you yet. As long as you’re here, there’s a chance for things to get better. And—and, no, I don’t know what your pain feels like, but I know my own. Most days, getting out of bed is a fucking triumph, but I still do it; for you. For Alfie, for Bex, and Kyle, and everyone else who’s been kind to me. I don’t know what I’m hoping for exactly. Maybe I’m just hoping for hope.” Eddie paused before speaking again. “Think about that scrap of good, are you ready to let it go?” He meant the question genuinely and without pretense. “If you do, there’s no getting it back. No more garden, no more Deirdre, no more laughter, no more anything. Is there really nothing left worth fighting for?”
Morgan hid her face again as it crumpled with grief. But she let Eddie take her hand, and though her fingers were stiff, she squeezed his back. Mina had told her once that life was a curse of its own; Morgan had brushed it off as a flash of witty irony. But it came to her again now: was this living? Was crawling out of one hole only to fall into another what life looked like from the inside? She couldn’t think of a person she knew who wasn’t crawling out of something right now. The difference was only in terms of degree. When she was alive, human-alive, she had coached herself into accepting happiness as a stolen gift, a thing she would be caught red handed with and have to surrender. It would all be okay, because when the curse was over, she could have as much as she wanted and more. She could chase down every bright thing and know that however it turned out, it was fair as anything on earth could be, and she had given her best. It made her dry organs shrivel just a little more to suppose this was the way of all things, not just a thirty-nine-year blip of existence.
And yet there was no better choice before her. It was just like Eddie said. If she tried to will this bullshit to the end, she would be releasing everything she’d fought so hard to hold. And if she surrendered to the thought of an eternity of true living death, it would be much the same. The world struck no natural balance in the course of a life, and in White Crest it arched toward cruelty, and yet there had to be another horizon. These scraps of good had to be enough because they were all she had. And maybe In another week, a month, in a decade, things would be different. Magic always had a key to unlock itself. What was done might someday be undone. (Might, and with so little evidence to make it feel like anything at all.) She tried to imagine it, coming out of a stupor like sleeping beauty, kissing her own skin for holding its shape and keeping her here just enough to try and make a better balance in the world, kissing Deirdre, and the cats, and having every fresh memory from those early days to guide her toward contentment. She couldn’t hold the image very long. It burnt in flashes. Somehow, it hurt worse than either path of doom she saw. Morgan nodded and let hope in and sobbed, breaking with the weight of it.
She tried to muffle her cries with her other hand, but it was no good. She shook and soaked her sweatpants with her tears and turned Eddie’s fingers red with her grip. At last she noticed the change in the feel of his hand and let go. “Sorry. I’m...s-sorry. Um.” She wiped her face on her sleeve and tried to look at the boy. “You know you’re...a really kind, brave kid, right? And that’s why we all want you to be more careful? Because we need more of that around. We need you. And I wish you could be there for yourself like you are for me right now.” She heaved another dry sob and scrubbed her face again fighting for composure. It was always harder to show up for yourself, especially when you were alone.
“I’m not--uh, this isn’t because--” She gestured vaguely at the mess of herself. “I mean, you’re right. You’re right and I know you’re right and it’s just--” Kind of wish you weren’t. It would be so much easier if you weren’t. She shook her head, abandoning words in favor of meeting his gaze. What she didn’t know how to say was this: it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, holding out for hope and hoping for its own sake. But Eddie knew dark almost as well as she did; maybe he would know this just by looking at her, too.
When Morgan broke down, Eddie knew he’d struck a chord. He could only hope that meant something good and that he hadn’t made things worse. Her grip on his hand tightened exponentially but the pain barely registered. All he could focus on were her anguished sobs—he wondered how long she’d been trying to swallow them. Despair like that didn’t come to term in an instant. It laid in wait, brewing and accumulating more grievances both big and small until it could no longer be contained. If he had managed to help her rethink the release of death, maybe a release like this one would suffice for now.
“No, no, it’s—” Eddie’s dismissal of Morgan’s apology cut off when she spoke again. His expression slowly relaxed, brows raising in gentle surprise. A few people had called him brave now but he never seemed to get used to it. After spending so much of his life in hiding, he didn’t think he deserved that kind of praise. At the same time, he wanted to believe he was wrong. Eddie smiled sadly at Morgan. “One day, maybe. It’s a work in progress.” He didn’t know what to say about being needed but he tucked the compliment away somewhere he could find it when he lost sight of what mattered.
What she said—or, more accurately, didn’t say next resonated exactly as she expected it to. “It feels impossible, doesn’t it?” Eddie asked before his smile returned. “Kind of like when you’ve been in the dark for so long your eyes adjust to it and suddenly a light comes on and blinds you.” He gingerly rubbed the back of her with his thumb. “We’ll adjust to the light the same as we did the dark, just gotta give ourselves some time.”
Morgan nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Slowly, she unfolded her legs. There wasn’t much of her left to hide, and the second fly was already crawling along her skull. She thought about what Eddie said when it came to the light and the dark, and wondered how long it would take for her vision to get screwed up from so much back and forth that everything hurt. It would have to be a long time from now, wouldn’t it? She would have to make it that way.
After what seemed like a long time she said, “You know, for someone who lumped in hope with the evils of the world, you’re getting pretty good at being hope’s cheerleader.” Then after another silence, “You don’t have to stay with me though, okay? I’m not gonna go off the deep end, or do anything I shouldn’t. Deirdre will probably be home soon anyway.” Time had a way of moving funny when you were miserable, something Eddie was probably familiar with too, but the last thing she wanted him to carry was more worry about her. She nearly reached over to pat his arm, reassure him in a performance of her good ol’ self, but she remembered how she looked and let it fall empty instead. “Thank you though,” she said quietly.
Since Eddie last gave Morgan his opinion on hope, a lot had changed—was still changing. He didn’t find comfort in misery as much as he used to. Now, he understood happiness took a little elbow grease and that brains need to be re-wired every now and then. Some days were harder than others, he didn’t always believe his positive affirmations, but he was trying. For himself and everyone he loved, he was trying.
“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” he said with a shrug. “I thought I might as well give your outlook a shot. It’s going pretty okay so far.”
When Morgan next spoke, Eddie considered her carefully. He didn’t want to linger if she needed time to decompress but he also didn’t want to risk leaving too soon. Finally, he said, “Okay, if you’re sure.” Eddie stood up and took a deep breath before turning to face her. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me. I don’t care what time it is. I know it sucks to feel like you’re weighing people down but I love you, Morgan. I like helping you.” He leaned down to wrap his arms loosely around her. “Don’t ever feel like a burden.”
“I love you too, Eddie,” Morgan whispered. “Go on now. Be good and I’ll see you soon.”
Eddie straightened up and walked over to the kitchenette to toss the wadded up paper towels in the trash. Afterwards, he headed for the door. “See you soon,” he said, glancing back at Morgan before taking his leave.
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Fitting In || Morgan & Marcus
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @emptytownes & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Two very normal people trying on clothes very normally because they’re definitely not dead.
CONTAINS: anxious zombies and snarky ghosts
The last thing Morgan needed at this time of her life was an impromptu shopping trip. But her arm hadn’t healed right, no matter how much she ate, and a tumble on the ice had only made it worse, and nothing in her closet accommodated her awful patch job or the new shade of discoloration she’d gained. So, July splurge on winter gear.
She made herself as small as she could as she shouldered her way into the thrift store, hiding in a hoodie and sweats. She took off one of her winter gloves. Most of the makeup she’d slapped on had already rubbed off. The dark ends of her fingertips were plain as anything and the purple-yellow marble splotched across her blue-white skin showed through in broad streaks. The stars alone knew what had happened to her face in the snow. She wasn’t about to check for herself.
Menswear would have the safest bet for baggy clothes that covered her all the way. Morgan made a beeline for the section, so focused on keeping her head down she didn’t look for other people’s feet and walked into someone. “Sorry,” she mumbled, and started looking for a big wooly coat.
After all that time on the “Internet,” Marcus couldn’t understand why everyone raved about how useful that thing was. No one gave any useful advice on where he could buy a nice hat, and now that it was snowing, he definitely needed to fix up this closet he inherited. Seriously, why the hell did this guy own so many boring clothes? Thank fuck there were stores that were within walking distance that he could visit. Now that he was in a physical body, he had forgotten how much energy it took to do things. Being human was strange.
What was even stranger, though, was this weather. Snow in the summer? White Crest was weird as fuck, he knew that much, but this was new. He never liked the cold so Marcus ducked into the first store he came across, a thrift store. The smell hit his nose right away, causing his nose to scrunch up. He missed some things from being a ghost, like not smelling thrift stores. Whatever, he decided, as he walked over towards the men’s wear. His hands pushed past jackets dismissively, nothing really catching his eye.
He was about to move into the next row when someone bumped right into him. “Hey,” he called out with a frown. But when he glanced up, his eyes caught sight of a very familiar face. It had been a while since he had seen Morgan, well, at least since before he fully took ownership of this body. Something seemed a little off with her though. Without thinking, Marcus leaned in towards her, his face silently tilting to one side as he studied her. “Mor-! I mean. Morning. Yea, morning. It’s cold out, yea?” he quickly caught himself with a crooked smile as he finally pulled back.
Morgan stiffened at the man’s response. It sounded an awful lot like someone saying her name. She lifted her head just enough to get a glance at his face, but didn’t recognize him at all. Maybe they’d met in passing on campus? Maybe she was just being paranoid? “Hey,” she said quickly, trying to hide her face with a duck of her head. “Morning. Yeah. It’s pretty wild, almost as much as the kids I saw making a snowman. One of them was tied to a tree like a leash so she wouldn’t float away.” She flicked through the rack closest to her faster, finding nothing she trusted to cover her and look winter-in-July appropriate. She looked at the rack above and, of course, that’s where all the parkas were. She got on her tiptoes and tried to pull one off, but all she managed to do was rock everything next to it and knock off a puffer vest she had no use for. Shit.
“Uh…do you think you could give me a hand? I kinda…” She reached up again, making her hood fall. For a terrible instant, her deathly pallid forehead was visible. Morgan grabbed it back, flashing a brief, desperate smile before trying to make herself small again. “Just the two long parkas? Please?”
It’s just Morgan, Marcus thought. Probably one of the safest people for him to out himself to about this whole situation. But at the same time, death and life were really weird and complicated things for beings who have a weird and complicated relationship with those things. Probably safer for the time being that Marcus kept that to himself.
“Wild, right? Snow at this time of the year? And what’s with all the flying? I mean I miss it but--” he cut himself off mid-sentence. Humans didn’t fly, he knew that, obviously. “I mean like in those things that fly in the sky. I miss flying in those things, not like what everyone is doing right now, floating like it’s free real estate up there,” he continued as he mindlessly pushed past another jacket that he didn’t even bother looking at. Looking up, Marcus missed the way Morgan slunk down after pointing to the parkas above. “Those things? Really? You want those?” he asked with a frown. Still, he reached up and grabbed ahold of the parkas and brought them down. “They don’t look very nice. Kinda frumpy and gross, really. You could do better than these.”
“--Do you mean airplanes? Are you looking for the word airplane? Or like, a hang-glider?” Morgan asked, confused. “You know there’s nothing stopping you from doing that, right? Except for maybe bad weather conditions, but this snow won’t last forever. Nothing does here.” She needed to stop making small talk. It was a nice distraction from her situation, but the longer she stayed, the more she risked exposing her walking corpse status or decaying even more in public.
But she wasn’t about to take a jab at her clothing choices laying down. “Air pockets are essential for staying warm in the cold! You don’t actually want anything skin tight at all. And I happen to like…” she looked at one of the coats before shouldering into it. It was, admittedly, one of the uglier shades of brown she’d ever seen. “Earthtones. They’re nice!” She looked at the other coat, fire engine red. “And red is great for being visible!” As she zipped up, she realized the brown was too oversize and would barely stay on her frame at all. “Who made you a fashion expert anyway?”
“Planes!” he repeated excitedly, snapping his fingers at her. Though Marcus was now intrigued by hang-gliders, whatever those were. It sounded fun! But also planes which he never got a chance to experience either. How did people go about getting on them? How did they fly and stay in the air? No idea. Science was for nerds anyways. He just wanted to be there for the ride. “Nothing lasts forever…” he echoed slowly with a nod. “Some things sure feel like an eternity, though.” Maybe he should stop talking about forever and things of that sort. “Sure but it’s not like flying like the way everyone else is right now. Kinda jealous, really.”
“It’s an ugly shade of poo-brown, ma’am,” he responded with a raised brow. He shoved his hands into his pockets as he leaned against the rack and watched Morgan drape on the parka. It looked massive on her and incredibly ill-fitting. “And that one is a hazard warning if you’d like to be a stop sign or something.” He sighed, pushing off from the rack and actually began to look for something decent for once. “Nothing here is great but, here, at least this one won’t make you look like a walking circus tent.” Pulling out a long, tan coat with some black detailing, he handed it over to the zombie. Hell, if this wasn’t someone he had liked so much, he would have tried to take the coat for himself.
Morgan laughed dryly as she wriggled out of the ugly coat. “Very funny. I can admit this one isn’t the most ideal earthtone, but I happen to like warm colors too.” Not in that shade. And not recently. But she had when she was alive. And maybe when the whirlwind winter went away and she figured out what was going wrong with her body, she would try them again. “And you know, ‘feels like’ and ‘are’? Two really different things. The DMV feels like an eternity, but it’s got nothing on--” Literally never sleeping again forever. “Insomnia. That, my friend, is a long time.”
She took the coat from him all the same and quickly tried it on. It actually stayed on her body, and there was a belt to help keep it secure and, yeah, define her waist and make it a little cuter when she pulled it tight. Not bad, actually. And with the hood, and the hand coverings, maybe she wouldn’t need to wrap herself up so much to look less conspicuous. “Why are you jealous anyway? Did you read too much Peter Pan or comic books as a kid? And there’s no reason it won’t happen to you. You should try walking over some place where a lot of floating is going on. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Just don’t get stuck in a tree. Or a light pole. Or the telephone wires.” As she spoke, smirking, it occurred to her that she was falling into some kind of familiar rhythm. It wasn’t just generic small talk, but she couldn’t put her finger on the specific thing. She turned to the strangely familiar man. “How’s this? Better?”
“Warm colors? Like fire-screaming red? I’m not gonna stop you from wearing the stop sign but I’m saying it’s gonna turn heads and maybe not in the way you want. ‘Ma’am, may I move my car now?’ is what people will be saying to you,” Marcus laughed, finding his own joke amusing. At the very least, he did take the parkas from Morgan and tossed them back onto the rack. Someone else’s problem now. The DMV. He didn’t know what that was… and there weren’t enough context clues to piece that together. “Oh, gods, I love sleep so much. You’re right; not being able to sleep does make everyday stretch forever. Never ending…” he trailed quietly, losing his enthusiasm for a small second at the thought. The days used to slip past so easily and years had gone by without him realizing. So much had changed in his death while he remained stagnant for so long.
“Flying’s the best. I mean, it sounds like the best. Walking is boring and so slow,” he groaned. Being alive again sure had its perks but the convenience of being able to fly and float and phase through things? Nothing compared. “I uh I never read much as a kid actually. Couldn’t afford to.” Marcus shrugged lightly, plucking a brightly colored scarf with peacock feather patterns. “Hey, if I figure out how to fly, I won’t get stuck like those losers out there. It’s all in the technique.” Immediately, he began to push his arms forward in breaststroke-like manners, the scarf still clutched in his hand. “Oh, far better. You look neither like a traffic sign or a pile of crap. You’re very welcome,” he smirked with a small bow.
Talking with this guy was almost enough to make Morgan forget how miserable and desperate she was. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice the state of her skin to be disturbed by her. If anything, he was becoming strangely at ease for someone she’d just met. She thought there was something about the way the man weighted his words. Something that went beyond a normie using hyperbole in a way that sometimes made her want to squeeze their brains. Flying, never sleeping, little things that she couldn’t really piece together, and his sense of humor.
“Couldn’t afford to…?” She asked carefully. It wasn’t really a casual conversation sort of topic, but she was curious. “It’s never too late, you know. Stories are for everyone.” She pulled back the parka hood just a little, trying to catch his eyes without showing too much of her face. “You’re pretty confident for someone who’s never done it before. Maybe it’s harder than it looks. Maybe some ten year old will have to help you off a roof somewhere.” She smirked, only wincing when she felt her lips crack. “This might be almost as embarrassing as that scarf you’re holding, but do I know you from somewhere?”
The more Marcus fiddled with this scarf, the more he liked it. Finally, fashion! Immediately, he wrapped it around his neck to free his hands. And it was perfect for this absurd weather. It wasn’t the coat that Morgan was wearing but still a rare find nonetheless. Plus, it was kinda nice to run into a familiar friend and chat it up like they used to.
“Nah. Family was dirt poor.” He wasn’t ashamed of his roots but he hated the way people used to look at him, like he was lesser than just because he was dirty or didn’t have any money. It always came down to that, didn’t it? Money. The only way to change all of that was to get more of it. He raised a brow again at Morgan. Him? No experience in flying? A playful scoff came from his lips as he placed his hands on his hips. “I’d out-fly any damn kid out there!” His smile didn’t last too long when Morgan posed her question. “Ye--Actually, nah, first I’ve ever seen you,” he lied. He didn’t like that, lying to a friend, but how the hell was he supposed to explain that he was a ghost and now he wasn’t a ghost anymore? “And this scarf is the height of fashion! Excuse you, miss almost-bought-an-ugly-parka.”
Yes--but also maybe no. How...completely unhelpful. Morgan thought she was pretty good with faces and voices; she’d be able to place if they’d crossed paths. But she couldn’t. And yet she was sure she’d heard the guy almost say yes, he did know her. But then, with how much she was hiding herself, maybe he couldn’t really be sure. She let out an uneasy laugh and ripped the price tag off the coat so she could wear it out, no more fuss, no more risk of revealing what she had become. “Maybe it was the height of fashion during the wrong side of the 70’s, but right now it’s just going to get you a bad double take. And maybe a headache, if you look at it too long. But, you should call me Morgan, actually, Ugly Scarf Man.”
“If the scarf can strike a statement and cause people to think they’re high, then what more can anyone ask for,” Marcus pointed out with a smug expression as he fluffed up the scarf around his neck. With enough distraction and misdirection, there was no way Morgan could ever figure out who he was. It was going perfectly. So smooth. Like butter. This time, he had the mental clearance to catch himself before responding. “And here I was ready to commit you to memory as miss almost-bought-an-ugly-parka, Morgan. Name’s Marcus.” That was his name now right? “Make another dig at my fabulous scarf and I’m gonna take that coat right back,” he threatened playfully.
“Marcus, huh?” Morgan said. “Well, Marcus with the acid trip scarf, you have made a really shitty day a lot less so. And maybe when I am not buried in a giant but fashionable parka, we will make friends under much better circumstances. Although--” She took a moment to scope around the lower shelves in the store and peer around the upper ones without showing him her face. Finding something she liked, she scurried over to pick them and bring the prizes over to Marcus. “If I’m going to follow your fashion advice, then you have to take these. This green plaid scarf is way more your color and will get you the good kinds of double takes, especially when you pair it with this beanie, or this newsboy cap. Never goes out of style.” She couldn’t see his face with her head down, but she hoped he’d at least humor her by buying them.
Marcus gave a beaming smile in response, incredibly proud of himself for brightening Morgan’s day. It didn’t even cross his mind that she was going through something difficult. Besides, who wouldn’t have a better day with him around? “We’re already friends,” he blurted out. “From now, I mean. This whole me-helping-you-with-the coat thing means we’re friends.” Easy clarification fix. His eyes narrowed at the green scarf and the cap. Taking the cap first, he secured it on his head, found the closest mirror, and you know what? He didn’t hate it. “Nice job, Morgan. You have some fashion sense after all.” The green scarf, though, he took that and held it up, nose scrunched as he considered it. “What if I like turning heads, hm? Or even better,” he said, wrapping this scarf around his neck as well and quickly adjusting everything so both garments were visible, “compromise!”
Morgan could only see the dangling tails from her position and she didn’t dare flashing him her decaying face. “Yeah! It looks--well, I bet it’s great!” She started to shuffle away, only to knock into another rack. And then a person. “Sorry!” She called. Right. Walking backwards without very literally looking where she was going. Not her brightest idea. But she didn’t really have a better one. “I’m glad I could help though!” She called to Marcus. “I’ll see you a--aah!” She stepped on another person and this time she was pushed away she fell, flat on her back.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that so hard,” the woman she’d run into said, “But you really should look where you’re--” She didn’t finish her sentence either. She was too busy gaping at dead, mottled face. Morgan staggered to her feet, not even bothering with the parka hood again. Yep. Definitely time to go.
“I mean, everything looks great on me,” Marcus beamed, hands placed triumphantly on his waist. The double scarves situation did make him warm but he was sure it’d work out just fine outside. He was so busy admiring his own reflection too with all the new accessories, that he turned too late as Morgan fell. Only then did he fully register the way she looked.
“Ay hey hey,” Marcus sang, easily slipping between his friend and the other woman. “It’s a tight space in here, and people are on edge from the snow and the flying and whatever. You know, they’ve got some great parkas in here, a delightful brown one and a very bright red one. You’d look great in either of those.” The rambling should be a decent distraction to give Morgan time to fix herself up. It seemed to work since the woman now was frowning at the man who was excitedly pitching every article of clothing. And he continued to sing praises that everything in there would absolutely shine on her while simultaneously backing both him and Morgan slowly toward the exit. “And they’ve got great scarves too!” he shouted. One hand on the door and he pushed the two of them out.
“Whoo! Just me or did it get colder out here?” Marcus exclaimed as he wrapped the scarves tighter around his neck.
The last thing Morgan expected was for Marcus to come to her rescue as if he knew, as if he understood. They’d just met and he hadn’t seemed to notice anything about her before. Was he something too? Some shifter with a good heart, or a renegade fae? Her mind spun like a top trying to figure him out. At least with his handiwork, they left the shop without paying and without anyone minding.
Morgan flexed her bare hand in the cold. She didn’t feel the cold as keenly as everything else, but there was a little more bite and the snow felt a little heavier as it blew onto her fingers. “Uh...yeah. I think it did. Maybe we’ll actually have a real blizzard. That’d be kind of funny and--” She just had to know. “Why’d you do that? Help me back there? You--” She looked him square in the eye. “For a human, you aren’t as scared of me as I figured you’d be.”
The snow was stil so fucking weird to see and the cold was even stranger to experience after over 100 years of not feeling any sort of temperature. Marcus scrunched his nose as he let out a breath, an amused giggle quickly followed as the breath floated up towards the sky. Turning towards Morgan, he gave a small nonchalant shrug. “And leave you there to freak that woman out? I mean that would have been hilarious but you also gave us the best cover for walking straight outta there with these babies,” he smirked with a wink as he affectionately petted his scarves. “And I’ve seen a lotta shit in my time. More than that woman obviously. You do look like you’re going through some shit but hey, that’s none of my business and it was definitely none of hers.”
Morgan stared at Marcus, completely stupefied. “R-right.” And he was right. She’d needed his help, there he was, and they were both a little better off for it. It made sense. It just also...wasn’t what she’d come to expect from a normie, or even a good swath of in-the-know humans. He didn’t bat an eye at her, even with her bad lying and strange behavior and the white street lights lighting up her features in the worst way. It rolled off him like nothing. All he seemed to care about was being kind and enjoying himself. Why was that strange? Since when did she become so suspicious of kindness from strangers? “I won’t ask you to show your cards or anything, but...I really appreciate that Marcus. Not every stranger takes all this with so much...well, chill.” She laughed at her own joke and smiled at him for the first time. “I really do hope I’ll see you around.” She gave him one last look before turning to go, crunching through the snow one careful step at a time. With the help of the parka he’d helped her pick, she melted into the shadows. There was only the prickly kiss of snow, the cold, and the painful throbbing in her back that she was determined to ignore.
Maybe he should come clean with all of this, or at least with why he was so nonchalant about all of this. Then again, Marcus knew sometimes it was smarter to wait things out until he was sure his path to success was clear. Morgan was a friend and all but considering even he didn’t have the full picture of his circumstances, he knew enough to keep that quiet until he learned more. “You too. Though, uh you probably should…” His hands pulled up an invisible hood over his own head before pointing a finger to Morgan’s. “And uh we should definitely leave. Best to split. The people inside seem to have noticed that we gave ourselves the five-finger discount.” As the zombie left, Marcus waved a hand goodbye, his gaze lingering for just a moment. It was nice to have a friend again. But that thought quickly dissipated when he heard the store door open. “Oop, gotta run,” he muttered to himself as he quickly skedaddled down the snowy streets.
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Death Rings Twice || Morgan and Eilidh
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @braindeacl @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: While searching for answers, Morgan and Eilidh realize the situation is worse than they realized.
CONTAINS: conversations with dead people
They came and went in waves. The first time, only the first time, Eilidh believed them to be just a part of being a ghost. James had done so many times—go in and out of view like the watts on a bulb. But those changes had been consensual, come upon by his own will, and he never truly left. Not like she had, and did, and still do. Moments of nothingness. Blink and she was gone, truly and ultimately gone. Blink and she was back, not even left with a memory. Just a faint recollection, a faint feeling of a blank. Like trying to recall a blackout. You knew it was there, you felt it too—pages torn from a book. But you also didn’t, couldn’t, for nothingness was all that remained. Nothingness that seemed to be her destination. Those blinks got longer, longer, longer. With no sign of slowing.
Eilidh knew Morgan was facing her own bouts of strangeness. Maybe they were connected. Morgan believed them to be—magic set loose like a wildfire, with them in its path. Consumed in its flames, would it burn them all the way to the ground? Or would they come out the other side, for the better? This curiosity, and a gnawing worry, compelled her forward, right into Morgan’s residence. She ventured through those great and winding halls, as if she already haunted the place. She ought to haunt at least one. Before it became too late. Passing by an open door, that familiar face was finally seen. Eilidh stopped, stared. Felt that nothingness threatening to claim her again. Visage flickered—like a light on its dying breath. But the feeling passed, leaving her there, shining on. The motion, or her very presence, must’ve caused a stir. The two women met each other’s eyes.
“Boo.”
Morgan just needed to find the right book. Zombies had been around for ages and so even if whatever was happening to her was obviously very rare, it must have happened to someone else before. And that someone must have wanted to write it down. Because magic directly affecting a zombie body at all was worth writing about; doing so in this cruel, backwards way defied everything she understood about magic and living matter. So, Morgan sat on the floor in the library, swimming through a large haul from the scriberary, searching. When Macleod appeared behind the volume she was holding, calling boo, Morgan yelped with surprise.
“Oh! Stars! That was--” she laughed uneasily. “That was something alright.” She sat back and looked at the other woman. She had believed everything Macleod had told her but seeing her friend, so wild and earthbound, so connected to her flesh, floating and transparent was uncanny in a way her mind struggled to process. “I wish I had good news on the funky magic boogaloo front, but there’s just lots of dead ends so far. But that can wait. Are you...okay? At least, relative to our situation?
Good-hearted chuckle lept out of Eilidh—breaking the illusion of the spooky ghost in the corner. She closed the distance between the two, eyes curiously scanning the cover and pages of the book nestled in Morgan’s lap. More were strewn across the room, circling Morgan in a protective barrier, or perhaps a tomb—either for future study or determined unsuited. Where one group ended and the other began, she wasn’t sure. Mouth parted to offer assistance, her hands and mind well-versed to such a skill, but the words quickly died just as her flesh had. Wouldn’t be much use when turning a page was a difficult endeavor. She had learned that fact rather quickly.
When attentions were placed on her, Eilidh perked. “Aye. Convinced this guy his cereal was sentient. And some lady she could control plants.” Snort of delight shot out her nose as their faces returned to memory. But as the chuckles faded, so too did this delight. That lingering worry remained. A hand brushed her lips, seemingly in thought. “Also…” In absence of external stimuli, she bit on a knuckle. But where a prick of sensation, a prick of life, would usually awaken her hand, only a mere acknowledgement greeted her. Fucking hell, how has James not gone mad by now? A low growl rumbled, and at least it felt nice in her chest. Familiar. “Been going in and out. Kinda like blinking. If you did that with a soul. James says it isn’t normal. And they’re getting longer.” Another knuckle met her teeth; that same hollow impact replayed. “Guess it’s soon time.” Her eyes scanned Morgan, transferring the focus back to the other woman. Wandering gaze found the darkness under her friend’s eyes. “What ‘bout you?”
For what seemed like a long time, Morgan could only stare at her friend. Or rather, through her friend. She could see every title on the shelf behind her if she concentrated enough, because Macleod, despite speaking and smiling and grinning and mischief-ing as much as she had ever done, was incorporeal and transparent. Like a ghost. A baby undead ghost. Which wasn’t supposed to exist. “..Blinking? What? Uh, that sounds bad. And weird. I’ve never heard of ghosts doing that before. They cross over, and they have some kind of teleportation thing, but they don’t play peek-a-boo with a whole plane of existence. That’s…” Another very strange, logic defying twist of magic.
Morgan cleared her head and tried to answer Macleod’s questions. “I woke up at the beginning of the week able to feel again. All my physical senses that went dull were back. It took some adjusting, but I think it was more or less how they were when I was alive. But then my body started decaying even when I was full, or more than full, and healing was fading and now it’s basically gone! So I’m basically rotting away for no discernable reason, and I get to be super physically aware of all of it. Also, I smell, so maybe it’s a good thing you don’t have any senses right now. When did your stuff start? I mean, none of this should be happening at all, because the undead are immune to spellcasting magic that engages with our body’s energy, as far as I can tell, and we’re immune to most drugs and toxins, and I haven’t found anyone else in town being effected like this, so it’s not the big cosmic town bullshit--but if we can get a timeline, maybe that will tell us...something.” She sighed and closed the book in her lap, staring off into anywhere but Macleod’s face. The whole world was slipping through their fingers, just when she’d thought it really did want them after all.
Curt laugh escaped Eilidh. “Yeah. You’re telling me.” Just her luck to be subjected to the worst game of peek-a-boo in existence. Maybe her soul truly did want to pass over, but this supposed magic was keeping her here? Maybe the universe was trying to remedy the fact she shouldn’t have remained—at least not in this form—but the magic tried to go against the very will of the cosmos? Thoughts followed that tangent until it caused a dizziness. Bah, there’s too many maybes and what-ifs. She snapped a finger, sharp noise bringing her back to the present. Mind focused on Morgan’s words, her own story. As such a tale unfolded, her face fell, allowing that worry bubbling inside to find itself in her eyes, her parted mouth. Just as quickly, her eyes tightened, mouth closed, jaws tightened. Resolve overcame the worry, gave her goal new fire. “Aye. That is real bad.” Especially when it started so promising—the worst kind. “Best we hop to it prompto, then. Know anything I can look over? Double-check? Triple-check?” The ways of magic, the ways others shifted the energies of the world to their will, was not a strong subject of hers. But perhaps there were other pieces of the puzzle her ever inquisitive eyes could find. She needed that hunt, after all. Needed something to do—when all things physical brought boredom at best, her mind frequently rushed into restlessness.
Eilidh recalled the start of this plight. “I died beginning of this week.” The same as Morgan’s own unfortunes; a fact that did not escape her. “Or alchemied this way. Or some other magic.” At this point, she wasn’t sure which was true. Death was more reasonable to her. Familiarity always felt more reasonable, and she was very familiar with death. But Morgan seemed convinced its cause was magically induced and, well, she was the expert in that regard. Not Eilidh. “Blinked out the first time a few days later. Didn’t think too much of it. ‘Til a few more days later when it kept happening.” How much longer would this affliction let her speak with Morgan? Would it rip her away mid-sentence, as it had with Milo? Sharp snap of fingers returned. Temptation to bite the nagging thoughts away surfaced—to subject another knuckle to her teeth. But the snap sufficed. For now.
Morgan sat back, thinking. The town had already been shifted in the cosmos by the time she and Macleod were affected. And no one else she spoke to, dead or undead, was feeling anything strange in their body. So why them? And how? It didn’t seem right that the universe should literally change its rules just to be cruel to them. And if an alchemy break-through was responsible for Macleod, it didn’t explain her progressive deterioration. She would have to be confined to a circle in order for that to be the case, and the energy required to continually re-write her body would be outrageous.
She looked over at Macleod, aching to give her an answer. “I only have a few general compendiums on the stuff, but maybe there’s some kind of sickness, or some kind of critter that can affect people like us. Like, bookwyrms and brain biters mess with people’s brains, and there’s plenty of necrophages out there maybe…” Some magic, universe defying critter happened to chomp on both of them without their noticing on the exact same night? Morgan could hardly stand to hope for the idea, it sounded ridiculous enough in her head. But she had to try. If she stopped trying, this thing would take her. “Maybe there’s one that can explain this. Weird abilities that make people incorporeal or mess with their magic composition. Um, it’s those thick ones back there--” She pointed. “Or you could check out the area, see if anything unusual is sniffing around. Every critter’s gotta eat and sleep somewhere.” She smiled feebly. “We’ll figure this out before it’s too late. We’ve got too much to live for, right?”
“Critters!” The word shot out like a bullet. That was more Eilidh’s forte. A hand returned thoughtfully to her lips, though a bite did not come. Her mind was moving far too fast to focus on anything physical. Feet began to pace without her knowledge, beating against the air as if they contributed to her movements anymore. “Those bees cause hallucinations…” What were they called again? Those dick-hive bees. She had still yet to encounter them personally—such a treat will have to wait when she finally visits… that woman. Knowledge was acquired specifically for said venture, so she really should remember… “Eintykara.” But as research came tumbling back into her mind, so did an issue. “No. Cold.” Such weathers would cause them to grow sluggish—springing into action now would make no sense. “Hm. Caballi?” Her encounter with one had been very brief, but James’ was much more intimate. And she had certainly heard stories that mimicked their own. Of ghosts being attacked by them. Or more accurately, being fed upon by them. Could be the cause of their deterioration, those astral feedings. Perhaps they can affect zombies too? “But never saw…” They weren’t exactly invisible, to people like them. But much of them was left unknown, on this world at least. Could be a special sort?
More ideas flowed into Eilidh’s mind. And just easily flowed back out—conflictions and contradictions found in every sort. Though the universe was vast and wide and full of exceptions. Hardly anything could be said with certainty. And hardly everything was stored in her mind—that vastness refusing to be contained in just one thing. Or even in one world; creatures not found in any book had laid just beyond those cracks in the air. One, or two, or more could’ve slipped through. “You could be onto something.” Her feet stilled, and it was only then she realized she had been on the move at all. But they already missed that constant motion. Focus turned to the mentioned books, causing a chuckle to stir. “Would. But these guys do whatever the hell they want.” She wiggled her fingers and they blended and meddled together, like waves crashing into each other. “I’ll look ‘round. You focus on the books. We’ll see this through.” There was an attempt to turn and leave, but something held her there just a moment longer. Those hints of decay sprinkled on Morgan’s form—some grown worse over the course of their conversation. “Think you’ll manage?” The question spanning far beyond just Morgan’s research capability.
With the way Macleod lit up at the suggestion, Morgan could actually start to believe they were onto something. The world was full of strange things and there was so much they didn’t know. Of course if it wasn’t someone it had to be something. Maybe even a creature from another dimension. Some of the critters in those portals had probably gotten stuck on this side when Adam closed them, too, and maybe that was why they couldn’t understand the rules this infection worked on.
Morgan met Macleod’s eyes bravely. They were looking for a needle in a haystack. It might take weeks to comb through all of White Crest and identify the exact creatures they were looking for, especially if they turned out to be beyond sapient record on this world. But they would figure it out, wouldn’t they?
Somewhere beyond them, bewildered geese flapped their way to the sky and called to each other for safety, snow crunched under tired feet, a wind blew through the hollow tunnels of the world. Morgan took it all in, staring through the frosted windows. This was a world that buried its secrets better than its dead, but it was also one where life persisted in the most bitter cold. If anyone was proof of that, surely it was her and Macleod. And Morgan had a future to get to; Macleod probably did too, and if she didn’t, she deserved to stick around long enough to come up with one. So she had to be okay. There wasn’t room in this scenario for her not to be.
Morgan summoned her best smile and hoped with all she had that Macleod believed it and let some of the warmth rub off on her. “I’ve got this. And so do you. Death cut us a break once, right? Twice should be just as easy.”
That smile filled the air, found its way on Eilidh’s face, lifting her spirits in turn. Hell yeah. They had this. That implication hung in the air, threatened to bring it all back down. The one where she died. This soul she carried certainly had—will again. And technically death had touched her a few days prior. But the implication ran deeper than that, tied her to an assumption she kept getting chained to. But she did not let that weight touch her; only a twitch of a brow, a tighten of lips, betrayed these thoughts. Resolve kept her steady—kept them both just the same. Fate may try to give them a losing hand, but she’ll keep playing until a full house. And if not, well, seems she’s had her time then. Her soul will enjoy more, if these pesky blinks didn’t consume her in totality. For fate was hungry this week—eating away at her very soul, at Morgan’s very flesh. Was it feeding on others? How far did this hunger spread? She had no mind, no time to worry about passerbyers on the street. Those teeth readied to pierce again, steal more of them away. But she’ll try her hand at dentistry and rip them out before all was taken. “Good to hear! Let’s give this a–”
She vanished.
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Turn to Loathed Sours || Morgan & Deirdre
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @deathduty @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours, even in the moment that we call them ours.
Morgan’s senses aren’t the only thing about her body that’s changing, and she can’t avoid facing it any longer.
CONTAINS: medical blood: references to first aid, stitches (not described)
Morgan’s arm healed from her injuries at the coffee shop eventually. But the ones she had collected that evening (a tiny burn from the pan and cat scratches from playing too roughly with Anya) hadn’t yet. That was over a day ago. And now she had new injuries. Serious injuries she couldn’t hide or brush off. A stupid fenodyree who’d gotten comfortable under the stairs at the bookshop pulled her ankle and bit the side of her foot. When Morgan prised it off (it hadn’t liked the taste of her after all), it bit a chunk off her forearm out of spite.
She sat in her car on the driveway, still trembling with fright and pain. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get home. It probably had something to do with urgency, and not looking at the damage done. Underneath her torn sweater, her skin was whiter, deader than she’d ever seen it before. There were fresh, sickly looking waves of green and yellow marbling along her blue and purple tones. The skin around the injury felt thin and dry, and what flesh she could see under the surface looked...wrong. Or at least wrong for her. She’d eaten enough animal corpses to know what rotting tissue looked like.
Maybe she needed to switch to a human brain to get herself back into shape. Those were more filling anyway, right? Maybe she could call Erin, tell her it was an emergency, and she’d do the hard stuff, she just needed a point of contact, a name, something. Or maybe she could try eating a supernatural brain, that might do something different. She hadn’t tried bies before. Maybe they were more...fortifying, somehow. And if her body was getting a little less magical, maybe some mundane treatments could help. A little Advil, a little neosporin, and a heavy duty band-aid could go a long way. Plus, stitches, if she really needed them. No one she passed during the day would think much of her sporting fresh stitches.
But as Morgan tried to bargain out a solution with her body, a small, tired voice inside her asked, What if there’s nothing? What if this is how you have to pay? What if it doesn’t stop?
No. There was a way to fix this. She just had to find it.
Bracing herself, Morgan limped out of the car and came inside her house. She dropped her keys in the bowl and made a beeline for the kitchen. She would stop being a baby about losing her zombie pain tolerance, patch up her injuries, eat, and figure this out. Everything would be fine. In fact, everything was already fine, she just didn’t know it yet. But it was. It was.
Neglected under her journey to New Zealand, Deirdre’s garden was repairing itself nicely. Her lilies had come into bloom along with her wine-coloured dahlias. Carefully, she cut herself a bouquet, eager to show Morgan her work and ease whatever guilt she might’ve felt for letting the garden fall into disrepair in the first place. The cats, lazing by her feet in the garden, rose first to signal Morgan’s arrival. Deirdre followed them with a smile, dirt under her nails and more on her overalls. Sweet floral notes lifted from her bouquet, intertwined with her scent of earth and sweat. When she greeted Morgan, she did so with a running kiss, pressed gentle and eager to her cheek. Then with a large step backwards, extending her bouquet. “You should take a smell--” Her delight was simple, clear. In the moments that followed, it withered.
“My love,” Deirdre urged, eyes drawn first to her torn sweater, then back up to her face--paler than it ought to be. She was bluer in the lips, more purple around the eyes. She considered where they were--the kitchen--and concluded that Morgan had come for a meal. Sometimes she forgot to eat, it wasn’t often, but in her new state of feeling, perhaps the joy of coffee and pastries had overwhelmed reminders to feed as a zombie ought. Deirdre decided she should worry. She smiled again, wider, thinner, nowhere near her eyes. The flowers were set down on the kitchen island. “Are you…” Okay? The word wouldn’t leave her lips. Okay? The word was a gurgle in her throat. Okay? A twitch in her lip.
Her eyes fell back to the sweater; the strange way Morgan moved, like her foot was asleep. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “...okay?” She said finally, knowing there was no way to avoid the question.
Morgan hadn’t meant for Deirdre to see her like this. Of course it would look bad. In the instant her love approached and kissed her cheek, Morgan tried to hold onto her, murmuring, “Hey, how’s my farmgirl? Your flowers look beautiful, and the--” the smell was lovely. Earthy and powdery and fragrant in a way people only called floral because there was nothing else like it in the world. But before she could try to put any of that into words, because if she just held onto this moment, everything would be fine and Dierdre would know it was fine and she could figure things out as she went, listening to her love talk about her day. But she could only hold onto Deirdre so much with one arm, and before she’d even pulled back Deirdre saw everything.
“Yes!” Morgan said, shrill and too quickly. “I just, um…” She searched for the words but she struggled to find words that didn’t imply VERY NOT OKAY. “There was one of those staircase fae, at the bookstore? The little furry guys that like to yank you down and eat your feet? And so I took a little tumble and he took a bite out of my foot, and he didn’t like how I tasted, but he didn’t like being pulled off either, so he took a little more when I pulled him off, but he’s fine! Totally, completely fine! I was startled, so I threw him kind of roughly, more than I meant to, but he definitely got up and scrambled back safely on his own!” If she focused on the stairs and the fae, she wouldn’t have to talk about what was much more obvious: that she had lost whole pieces of her at the two story bookstore, a half hour drive away, and her wounds were still fresh.
Morgan shuffled away, intending to make a very normal stroll to the fridge and see if feeding herself everything they had in there would make a difference, but as soon as she put pressure on her foot, she went rigid and gasped with pain. “It’s fine!” She said, struggling to get her air circulation back in her lungs. “Definitely nothing serious. I didn’t even lose my toes! I just, uh...haven’t finished healing yet.”
Why was it always fae? Deirdre frowned, she wished there was some way to tell all of them not to hurt this one person (the times she did try, she was met with a lot of “well, all humans look the same”). She wanted to fixate on the faeness of the attack; she wanted to apologize for her people and explain that she really was trying to tell as many fae as possible not to eat her girlfriend. She wanted the words that left her mouth to agree, she wanted the smile to remain. “The bookstore?” Instead, she said this. “...which one?” Instead she frowned, she shifted, her fingers twitched at her side, desperate to reach for Morgan and soothe a problem that didn’t exist. The closest bookstore was a comfortable ten minute walk; a small place with an adequate selection of new releases and classic novels. It didn’t have stairs. Morgan took her car, Deirdre knew this because the beeping lock was what had perked Moira’s ears up first. There was another, about a five minute drive, smaller than the first. It sold mostly board games and housed a small case of used books. There was one stone step to get inside; gapless. The big one with two floors was half an hour away. It had the kind of wooden staircase with the empty space underneath and the big gaps between the steps.
Deirdre didn’t care much about what happened to the fae that bit Morgan, but forced herself to smile and nod anyway. Really, it could’ve been a ten minute drive if traffic and law were ignored. Which Morgan must’ve done, feeling famished from all the missed meals in favor of coffee and pastries. Though, hadn’t she just seen Morgan eat some brains yesterday? No, no, must’ve been another meat. How could she know? She wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it was just a nibble; nibbles didn’t count. Morgan stumbled and Deirdre rushed to her side, quick to loop her arms around her love. “Of course,” Deirdre smiled, “but let’s just...let’s just have you lean on me a little, okay? I think there’s some leftover brains in the fridge from...whatever you were cooking, right? And there’s more in the freezer! I found a moose, so that’s there. And it’ll be cold and unseasoned but it’ll be…” Deirdre’s voice cracked and she swallowed the nervous tic away. “Come on, my love,” Deirdre assured softly, opening the fridge with her free hand. “We’ll get your food, and I’ll take you over to sit and...well, maybe you just need a bandage and some rest. You had to drive all the way over here, and that--maybe that’s why--you should eat, right?”
Morgan hated that she’d promised herself not to blatantly lie to Deirdre. It made answering direct questions she didn’t want to a special kind of painful. “The...big one.” She squeaked after a silence. The big chain bookstore with fancy staircases with little gaps that were just fae-tastic, a half hour away if she took the interstate. Morgan didn’t look at Deirdre as she answered. She didn’t want to know what it looked like as she put the timeline together. She didn’t want to see Deirdre grow worried. If she did, she’d want to comfort her. And she could only comfort her so much without lying.
She leaned on Deirdre as she was asked and gave her a little squeeze, and thumbed the flannel shirt she’d appropriated from Morgan’s own closet. Her overalls were a little damp and cold, there were grainy flecks of earth from the garden work she’d been doing. She was as soft all around as she was within, and all Morgan wanted was to rest there until everything stopped hurting and her body snapped back to being its old self. But Deirdre’s voice was growing thin. Morgan thought she could almost hear cracks of distress spreading over her heart.
“Yes! Yes, that’s perfect, my love,” she said. “Just get me to the great room with the first aid tub, and I can patch myself up from the couch, okay? And you can heat up the leftovers we have and everything else in a bowl. It’s too cold to have them raw. And then--” Then there wouldn’t be anything left in their power to do tonight. Then the future would keep going, smooth as ever, or it wouldn’t. Morgan’s lips trembled as she searched for the certainty she so desperately wanted. She stilled them with a kiss to Deirdre’s cheek. “Then you’ll sit with me, and tell me how the garden is doing, and let me smell those flowers. Just one thing at a time, okay?”
The big one. Deirdre wore worry in her eyes, smile pulled thin. The big one, she kept repeating it in her head hoping it would become less true. “That’s…that one is quite a drive away, isn’t it?” There had to be something said about asking questions she already knew the answers to. She didn’t say anything more about it, and simply nodded as she helped Morgan into the great room. When she was safe on the couch, she fished free their first aid supplies and placed them on the coffee table, then she pushed the table closer to Morgan. “You shouldn’t do it yourself, my love,” Deirdre said softly, “it hurts more when you do it yourself.” That wasn’t a claim founded by any science, but it was all Deirdre could do to keep from running around and spewing question and worry and question. “Just…” she sighed, leaning down to press a quick kiss against her girlfriend’s forehead. “…if you need stitches, let me do that. You must be in so much pain and…” Deirdre trailed off. She marked her exit with another kiss and said nothing more.
The kitchen was silent except for the whirring of the microwave and the sizzling of brains in a pan. Occasionally the sizzling would change in pitch and tone as Deirdre moved the meat around, trying to get it cooked all the way through. It seemed absurd—to be cooking the brains—but it was all Deirdre could do to keep from pacing around with questions and fears and worries and questions and running and crying and questions. The microwave beeped like an alarm. Deirdre was burning the meat. She shut the heat off and fished the leftovers from the screaming kitchen appliance with little mind for how her fingers scorched under the hot ceramic bowl. She topped it with her extra too-brown cooked brains and carried it to Morgan in a tray with a few of the flowers arranged nicely to one side, as if she were bringing Morgan breakfast in bed. “Here, my love,” she smiled as she set it all down. She offered Morgan the bowl, and a fork, and sat down next to her. “The garden is coming along nicely.” Deirdre was wringing her hands. “You should see the hydrangeas. The snow really confused them, for a bit, but I’ve got everything covered and heated and I was thinking of getting a greenhouse built. We have that space there, and as much as I like the outdoor garden, the weather can be so sporadic here and…” Deirdre rambled on, her story of little consequence about the state of their garden went on with stutters and stops. Skips and repeats. When Deirdre forgot which part she was at, she went back and told it all from the beginning, starting with the hydrangeas, which Morgan really should see. When the sound of her own voice began to sicken her, she picked at the dirt under her nails and said nothing for a moment. “I can still see where Anya scratched you.” Deirdre was looking at the floor; it was all she could do.
While Deirdre cooked, Morgan rushed to cover her injuries. She shimmied out of her sweater and bit down on it to cover her little screams when she doused her skin with disinfectant. She dabbed at everything as much as she could but there wasn’t much to wipe without any blood circulation to make a mess. But there was plenty to see: her arm looked like a kid had attacked it with squiggly scissors and her foot wasn’t much better. Morgan laid gauze patches over her foot and taped the whole thing up in a hurry, but it couldn’t completely hide the altered shape. As for her arm, she really did need more help than she knew how to manage with one hand and the pain every time she touched it was starting to make her head feel funny. Morgan laid her hanging bits of skin over the injury in an approximation of where it should go and gave herself a headache trying to will her body to heal itself. But there was nothing. Maybe even less than nothing.
Then Deirdre was back and Morgan had to drape her sweater over her chest so the extent of her discoloration didn’t look worse than it really was and eat her crispy food and listen to Deirdre’s story. It made her whimper with pain, but Morgan stretched her injured arm so she could take Deirdre’s hand into her own and thumb patterns onto the back of her hand. She tried to help her along soothingly, “A greenhouse sounds lovely. We could turn the back porch into a sunroom and attach it there. We could sit out in the rain with our tea and never get wet. Yes, the hydrangeas, my love, I want to see them. Soon, alright, soon…” But the only thing that came soon was the end of Morgan’s desperate meal and Deirdre’s last fatal observation.
“Oh, that.” Morgan tried very hard to sound dismissive. “I see it too, but I think it’s starting to scar over, don’t you?” But it wasn’t. And even though she had faithfully eaten everything on her plate, she was still hurt and in pieces and unmistakably dead. “It’s—“ Nothing to worry about, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t lie. She’d promised herself. “I’m—” Fine? Still? Really?
Morgan set her plate aside on the end table and reached for her love with her strong arm, rotting flesh and all. She stroked her soft hair and the side of her cheek. “I’m here,” she said plaintively. “I’m right here, babe.” Her voice choked and snagged and she had to swallow several times before she could speak again. “You still feel like a miracle. Like a chilly peach, only you never get wrinkled. It’s gonna be at least a hundred years before someone thinks you’re older than me, huh?” She forced a laugh and a smile. “Will you, um,” She inhaled stiffly as she upset her arm. She could hear how desperate she sounded, how frightened. She was fine, she was really fine right now in spite of everything wrong. But fine was a burning thread; it would finish without her and the fear of what would be left in its wake made Morgan tremble. “…Will you sit a little closer? W-will you hold me?”
Deirdre maintained her gaze away from Morgan, even as it hurt. There were many lies about how interesting the floor was swirling in her head. She burned to look at her, she desired to. Still, her eyes remained locked on the cracks in their hardwood. “A sunroom sounds nice. Are you sure you’re okay with covering the porch up?” She nearly sighed with relief as it seemed she was offered an excuse to look some place beyond the floor; she turned to stare at their porch. Soon, Morgan said. A lump formed in her throat. Soon. She turned back to the floor, blinking rapidly. Soon. Soon.
She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to. If their conversation could’ve carried itself to magical completion, she would’ve let it. Was it so wrong to want the okay and none of the in-between? Then she was in Morgan’s arms, and it was very, very, hard not to look at Morgan. Like refusing light; opening blinds just to shut them again. The sun sat beyond the curtains, she just had to pull them back. So, she did. Deirdre relaxed, relented, and turned to Morgan, wrapping her arms slowly around her love. Morgan’s futile sweater-cover-up was squished between them. Deirdre didn’t look at Morgan’s arm, but her gaze did drift to the misshapen lump of her ankle. Then up, to the bowl of brains, all finished. Deirdre pulled back, pressing her palm to Morgan’s bicep. Morgan was paler than her; banshees were always meant to look and feel corpses. Zombies were the living dead for a reason, the dead living were not meant to be paler than her. Deirdre’s hand fell. Soon. Morgan sounded more frightened than she was. Soon. It would be something like a century before Deirdre started to show any effects of aging. Soon. Soon. Deirdre chased a kiss, pressing herself gently to Morgan. “We’re going to get married sometime, you and me. And we’re going to have a family, even if that family is mostly feline. And it would be a special kind of cruelty if you never got to see my hair turn white, so you are. You are going to. All of this.”
Deirdre’s shoulders slackened, her arms snaked lazily around Morgan. “Will you let me look at your arm now, please?” One note shy of begging her love, Deirdre leaned in for another kiss—soft, slow, lingering. Almost as if she wasn’t worried about losing them one day.
Morgan closed her eyes as Deirdre settled against her chest. It was so rare to be gifted with having her like this, and even rarer to feel it, that for several moments she let the bubble of their world shrink down to the size of this one moment. Deirdre smelled like flowers, oncoming rain, the forest, and cherrywood. She was soft, almost plush, with her hair bunched in a ponytail and Morgan’s own flannel shirt ticking her skin. Morgan pressed her gently and kissed her head.
“Yeah, we can cover the porch. Maybe we’ll put in a glass wall there, and a skylight, so we can still watch the stars from there if we want. In the summer we can make s’mores right before the rains come and run inside to eat them and still feel like we’re half outside. And I know you like to nap on the window seat in the cat room, but we can put in a bigger one, just your size so you don’t have to curl up your legs.” Morgan gave her love another chaste kiss and laughed. Her voice was bright with false hope as she spoke and it was almost enough to convince her body that she was really okay. This was just another soft moment in the week, an ordinary gift of time, abundant as the flowers Deirdre tended so lovingly.
But there was nothing ordinary about getting married or making another family. Morgan tensed with longing. She could see them so clearly: curled up on a couch in a dark cottage somewhere, a baby in her arms, making light of the child’s screams for attention, and being interrupted by three new cats or one absurdly happy dog. She wanted it. She wanted it as badly as she wanted to get better. Much as she cherished her life with the girls, she knew how fleeting it was, and there were days she felt more than eager to leave White Crest behind. As Deirdre kissed her, she was sure she could taste it. But what if you don’t? What if you die here without doing any of this.
“Hey,” she sniffled. “Hold on, we can’t talk about marriage stuff too much when I haven’t even proposed. Or you haven’t. Or maybe we both should, because I want the whole thing: an engagement ring to shove in everyone’s face, a pretty dress too impractical to wear any other day, cheesy music, and the chance to do a grand romantic gesture since you got the last one.” Her voice snagged on her longing again and she hid her face against Deirdre’s. She couldn’t imagine doing any of that in her state. She couldn’t imagine having the time. White Crest would claim her body for its own before she had the chance, wouldn’t it?
“You can go ahead and look if you want. But it’s—” Bad. It’s bad and I don’t want you to know just how bad. I can carry this myself. I can figure this out. “You don’t have to. I didn’t get around to taking care of it, but I can.” She nosed Deirdre’s cheek and kissed her again. “I love you. Have I said that since coming home yet?”
A covered porch. A skylight. S’mores. Marriage. Family. The reel of future domestic delight played in Deirdre’s head; each piece of film, one after the other. A fancy engagement ring. A daughter. Their library finally fleshed out. A sunroom with a skylight. A big telescope. Tea surrounded by flowers and plants that she tended. Five hundred years; would the world deny them this? “Maybe we both should…” she repeated. She could imagine it; one big gesture each; two rings; Deirdre wanted to show hers off too. “But…that future…” Deirdre pulled away again, wanting to look into Morgan’s eyes and find answers in their shimmering blue. She raised her hand to Morgan’s cheek and held her tenderly there. “We can’t have it if we don’t accept reality as it is; if we can’t work through things together. My love, nothing is ever so bleak if you’re still with me…and you are. You are.” The question of how long hung in the air, but Deirdre didn’t ask it. It would have to be long enough. It would have to be five hundred years, at least. It had to.
When given permission to look at her girlfriend’s arm, Deirdre nodded and then laughed. “You might’ve,” she turned her head and kissed her again. “Sometimes saying it is just like breathing, I think it happens all the time and sometimes without a sound. I love you too, of course. So much.” When she leaned back, she pulled the sweater-shield away with her, gently placing it on the table in silent thanks for its service to Morgan.
Morgan didn’t have to say it was bad, though Deirdre wished she had. “Bad” was a kind understatement to the torn up decaying flesh that she was looking at. Her cold fingers pressed softly around the wounded area, as if trying to coax out some secret remedy. There was no blood to stop from gushing free; no sense that Morgan’s body remembered how to repair itself at all. She looked as she was: dead, and no different from any corpse Deirdre might otherwise gleefully stumble across. The kind of wound a medical examiner would find redundant to try and patch up. She supposed it was a good thing she wasn’t Regan. “Stitches?” Deirdre looked up at Morgan. “I don’t know if painkillers will help you, but I don’t imagine trying them would harm you. We could maybe try numbing the area with ice—or I suppose my hands might work—first; it’ll hurt very badly, trying to close it up. But I think we should try.” Her eyes moved to the scratch Anya left; just the same as Deirdre saw it yesterday. She looked at her own hand, Anya’s work from an hour ago—when she wanted to be fed earlier than her usual time and Deirdre tried to distract her with play—had vanished as though it was never there. Her gaze moved down to Morgan’s ankle. “How’s that?” Deirdre asked. “Is there anything that needs to be done there, do you think? A bone to be popped into place?”
Deirdre looked over at her girlfriend again—future fiancée, future-future wife. Two rings. Maybe they’d try a cottage for a decade or two, a proper mansion for some other ones. If they got lazy one lifetime, maybe they’d get a chic condo in a bustling city’s downtown. Maybe they’d get several and hop around. One daughter. A son. Grandchildren. Wasn’t it novel to be able to live to see generations of their own family? Their kindness passed on. Cats. Dogs. Cows. Chickens. Neighbours that wondered how they stayed so young-looking. People who thought Morgan married for money, a nice fur coat and a wink to make them think they were right. Friends who’d known them a century ago. People to make jealous of their ever-lasting love. A wedding. Two rings. Maybe she’d wear a dress, maybe a suit. Why not both? “Don’t do it by yourself, Morgan,” Deirdre said, finally giving way to tears that once remained politely inside. “I love you. I love you so much that I don’t want that. I don’t care how scary it is, it’s worse if we’re not…”
Morgan didn’t want to look at reality as it was. Not this one; not with Deirdre. She could hold two worlds in her head just fine, and if the true one was just her secret, a little wrinkle she could iron out herself, then it hadn’t really been so dire in the first place. And wasn’t this what she had been conditioned for? To carry suffering and pretend like she wasn’t? She exhaled stiffly as Deirdre shifted and examined her arm. When she kept it still, the throbbing was dull and steady enough to be ignored. But, much like reality, the gash burned fresh with even a little close attention.
“I don’t know what to say about how things really are,” Morgan said quietly, stiff with restraint. “I haven’t found anyone else this is happening to. I haven’t read of anything like this being possible.” Technically, that meant that whatever magic was running its course could be merciful, for all they knew. Maybe the undead really could get sick, and this was just an awful zombie flu that would run its course and leave her alone. And maybe this would end her, or make her so vulnerable that something else would all too easily.
She couldn’t watch Deirdre do her examination. It felt too much like failure, even if it had been the fae’s fault more than hers. “We can try to close it some, yeah. Maybe just bandage the rest. I can put it in a sling if moving it still makes things worse,” she mumbled. “I wrapped up my foot without any problems, but you can double check me. We’ll do whatever you think is best. Although I…” It took Morgan a few seconds to find her nerve. Things were bad enough already, adding to the pile seemed cruel. But Deirdre would find out on her own, and it would only be worse if she realized Morgan had been sitting on more information than she’d given. “After what happened at the coffee shop, I tried some ibuprofen. It didn’t take. I healed in a couple of hours, but it still…” she shook her head. “We don’t have to waste any pain-killers on me, okay? I’ll numb the spot with an ice pack and I’ll be okay.”
But Deirdre didn’t want her to do it herself. Try as Morgan might, she had already failed in keeping this contained to herself alone. It was happening to Deirdre, too, and her banshee, who already carried so much suffering, was left helpless by everything Morgan tried to do to make things better. Morgan brushed away her love’s tears with her strong hand. Usually, that helped. It was like wiping something clean. No more sticky sadness, only comfort. But in this moment, it felt like peeling away her last bit of protection. If Deirdre was already hurt, then she already knew. If she already knew, then there weren’t two worlds to hold at all. Just the one, frightening and miserable and shrinking around her existence until it crushed her. There was nowhere to turn her gaze with distraction. No place to hide. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her own tears starting to flood her lids too. “I’m sorry. I was trying to make it better, I’m sorry. I love you, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be hurt, or disappointed…” She buried her face in her shoulder. “I didn’t want you to be scared too.” She swallowed down a sob, sniffled, and kissed Deirdre’s cheek. “Don’t worry about hurting me. Just patch me up as best you know how. Whatever you think is right. I’ll deal. I’ve already had a few days to build up my tolerance again. Okay?”
Once, Deirdre was sure she knew everything about Death; it was her birthright, her gift. By extension, her knowledge of the undead was extensive—similarly once considered whole. She stopped thinking she was right the moment she realized humans were quite loveable, the rest of her inaccuracies piling up. But she wished it all back; all that arrogance of knowledge. This was unlike any drug she knew of, any common disease. If it was a spell or a curse, she had no way of knowing. If this had something to do with the out-of-season winter, she didn’t know. She couldn’t know. The only thing she did understand was that none of this was normal, and that she should be worried. “It’s like you’re fading away,” she said. “You were pale yesterday, and all sorts of discoloured, but I know you ate. And you ate again just now. And you’re even worse today. And that’s just besides the whole…” Deirdre gestured to her arm. She pointed frantically at her foot. “If I let fear talk, it feels like you’re dying again. Or being more dead. Or—Fates, who knows what it’s like? But it is scary, my love. It is even without an injury. What does hiding it from me do? I can see you. I can see it. I should’ve said something sooner, but I thought I was being paranoid. I’ve been waiting and worrying and watching ever since you woke up that day. If you start doing this all alone, then I’m going to worry all alone. And that’s what it’ll be for us. And if this is some end—which it’s not, it can’t be—but if it was, then it’ll happen alone. And I don’t want…” Deirdre’s voice cracked; she sniffled. “I don’t want us to be alone anymore, my love.”
In silence, Deirdre worked the wound; icing with the cold of her hands, stitching and trying not to wince or cry and wrapping everything up tight, but not too tight. She’d only ever been used to doing this sort of thing on herself, but she didn’t tell Morgan that; Morgan already knew. She wanted to work fast, so the pain wouldn’t last, but not so fast that the pain was unfair. She wanted to worry, but not so much that Morgan cried along with her. She wanted to love, and this alone she could do without fear or limitation--no matter what, pretending she loved less, cared less, would not make the pain of loss any worse. So why bother? When she was done, she pressed a kiss to Morgan’s bandaged arm and looked at her with a smile. She had done her best to be gentle and where Morgan ached, she ached. Where Morgan was pained, she was pained enough to find a way to be more gentle. They existed in a see-saw, striving to find balance upon the fulcrum. “You don’t have to ‘deal’,” she said, noting the hypocrisy in saying it. “My love, with anything...whatever pain...I wish you’d let me carry it too. I wish you’d think of yourself not as one person--not as one damaged vessel taking in water--but as two people. Two boats. And then one--one big one. Both of us. I care about you more than I know how to say, and I love you just the same. As much as it might be convenient to pretend we are two people devoid of each other's pain, we are not. In your hands--” Deirdre took them in hers. “You carry not just yourself, but the chronology of us, and my heart. What I mean is: I love you, and inevitably, where you ache, I ache. And one day, though I won’t mention it much, when we’re married, everyone will understand that you’re the woman I love most--that I would spend eternity with, if only I lived that long. And that day, I hope that’s a truth that comes like breathing to you. I’d promise it. If you’d let me, I’d promise so many things to you.”
It took everything Morgan had not to scream as Deirdre stitched her arm together. She hissed, gasped, whimpered, and strained her hand gripping the throw pillow she’d bitten down on earlier. But this was her world, her life, and the cost of feeling like a whole, connected person again. She would not scream like some hysterical kid in the face of it. Especially not with Deirdre, who had suffered so much worse for reasons far more terrible. There were tears in her eyes by the time Deirdre finished. Her love’s hands weren’t cold enough to take out the sting completely and the skin around her arm was strained trying to make up for what was missing. But she returned her smile with relief, mouthing, Okay, okay, okay, when her voice proved too frail to speak. She took Deirdre’s hands and brought them to her lips. She let her cheek rest on them, and kissed them a few times more: one for apology, one for affection, one for adoration, one to appeal for absolution, one for abundant gratitude.
“I am yours, as you are mine,” she whispered. “And you don’t have to promise, not out loud. I feel it. Even more so now.” She hiccuped a laugh and released Deirdre’s hands, nodding that it was alright for her to carry on with the rest.
With a smile, affection and praise unspoken except for where they shone through her eyes, Deirdre turned to Morgan’s foot. “Thank you for wanting to protect me,” she said, unwrapping the haphazard bandaging. “I wish you wouldn't be sorry about it; I would’ve done the same thing and I understand what it means.” Her ankle wasn’t as bad as her arm, which prompted a sigh of relief in Deirdre. Good things were possible, perhaps. But the ankle was still swollen, giving it the appearance of a foot bent wrong. To the bite mark, which she surmised didn’t need stitching, she cleaned delicately and wrapped everything up as her mother had taught her was appropriate. She’d watched Morgan heal greater wounds in half the time. “I love you, you incredibly strong woman.” Deirdre leaned up to kiss her girlfriend, peppering her first aid with affection rewards and whispers of how good Morgan was being. When it was all over, all that was left was Morgan’s good behaviour to claim. She could only guess at how badly it hurt, and was eager now to replace pain with comfort. “Are you worried?”
Morgan tried to relax as Deirdre finished with her foot. It helped that her hands were soft and careful, that her lips were tender, and she assured her that she was being good, so good. Somehow with all her stupid deceptions, Morgan had managed to face this and be good. “I know you understand because you have done the same thing before. And it hurt. It hurt so awful that you wouldn’t let me in, it felt like you didn’t really trust me, like I hadn’t done enough for you. If I’d thought more about you and less about my own stupid fear, maybe I would’ve figured that out.” She tugged on Deirdre’s sleeve and overalls, silently asking to be held over her lap. “I should have known not to, but I wasn’t thinking about it right. I don’t want to make you feel the way I did. I trust you more than anyone else. You’re the only person I’ve been able to bear telling so far. It was just...as soon as I told you, I couldn’t hide from it. Not even a little bit. It wouldn’t be some little thing I can solve on my own before you get home and turn into a story with a happy ending.” She breathed carefully, shuddering through a rising sob. “I love you too, and I admire you, and you are so good to me…” She nuzzled her way into the crook of her neck.
She owed it to Deirdre to be as honest as she knew how to be. But worried barely brushed the surface of what she felt. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I mean, I know I’m decaying in spite of doing everything I’m supposed to. I know that makes me more fragile. And I feel all of it, everything. But I don’t know why or how. None of this should be possible, and I have begged the universe so many times to let me feel like I’m a part of life again, even just one day more so I would know not to take anything for granted. But that was just grief. I never thought it would happen. Because it shouldn’t. I’m dead and it shouldn’t. And now…” She shivered and kissed Deirdre where she was closest for strength. “It just seems so cruel. I feel like I’m being punished and I can’t tell if I deserve it or not.” She shivered again, harder, as she stared down the heart of the dark inside her. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a plan. I don't know how I should even make a plan for the plan. I don’t know anything except that whoever’s done this to me is powerful enough to break the laws of magic I thought I understood. And when does this stop? Do I get to keep my mind whenever it does? Is that something I should even want? Is that something we’re going to be able to bear? I don’t know. I don’t know anything, or how to learn better. That’s what scares me most of all, not knowing.” She squeezed her love and took comfort in all of her.
“You smell like outside. And cherries, but an orchard of them, and the sandalwood candles my dad burned to cleanse the rooms after a fight or an outburst,” she mumbled. “Now you. Tell me where you’re at. If we’re three ships in a storm you can’t carry your pain by yourself either. Let me at least be good at listening. Please?”
Once tugged, Deirdre obeyed, scooping Morgan into her arms. “My love,” she mumbled softly as her girlfriend spoke. She kissed her where she could; the top of her head, the side of her face, all careful not to interrupt the delicate flow of her words. “Don’t say that,” Deirdre scolded softly as Morgan found peace buried in her shoulder. “You deserve more credit than that. The desire to hide pain away isn’t a bad one, and it isn’t even one so easily disregarded. I understand, Morgan. I understood. Don’t blame yourself for wanting that. You didn’t break a vase and then try to sweep it under the rug, and even if you had that’s…Hey…” Deirdre shifted, pulling Morgan’s face up to meet hers. “I love you so much, my Morgue. No matter what.” And then she kissed her, hoping to seal that chapter away and move them on to the next page.
The next page being, of course, the bigger problem to tackle. “You feel yourself decaying?” Deirdre frowned, even as someone who enjoyed the feeling, she recognized well how unnerving it must’ve been to feel it; for Morgan to feel herself dying and fading, slowly and without pause. Deirdre whined at the thought. “Is it fair to say this is magic, then?” Deirdre tried, “if you pick an angle, and then chase one set of answers…even if the conclusion is that it’s not magic, it’s more than either of us knew before. So, what I mean is, would it be helpful if we looked into this? We could split it up? You could try the magic thing and I can…see if there’s some undead disease that does this? I think I’ve ruled any kind of drug out; I asked around and it doesn’t sound like anything in the market here. But if it turns out it’s not magic, or disease, then we’ll have to revisit that. Would this make you feel better? Would this feel like a plan?” It certainly made Deirdre feel better—she enjoyed being actionable—but it mattered more what Morgan was comfortable with; what she wanted. “I know you’ve had to research enough magic used against you for one eternal lifetime but…at least so we don’t have to dance around each other with library trips and…journeys to dark alleys and damp basements trying to look at someone’s collection of drugs. Sometimes they don’t let you leave without buying something. I have so many magic mushrooms; I don’t even like them that much.” Deirdre tried to laugh, the sound pittering off quickly. It felt funny in the moment, with the sneaking around and the stuffing mushrooms away where no one would look. It was a little less funny when some fae accused her of hoarding the substance. Not so funny when a spriggan tried to fight her until she relented and gave mushrooms away. Really unfunny when a group of fae congregated outside their house, demanding mushrooms. And finally, horribly inconvenient to constantly pretend as though she were filling up a glass of water when in actuality drugs were being dealt and high pixies had to be swept off their porch. All of it meant a lot of glasses of water, a lot of peeing, and naked leprechauns passed out in their bushes. And that none of it was really funny in the end. Morgan could be dying, and some fae thought their backyard was the hot new party spot.
With a pause, a sigh and a kiss, she explained all of that to Morgan. “And every morning I wake up at four just to shoo the fae away and tell the brownies—which are fighting, by the way—that we’re uninterested in letting one stay in our house. Which then starts up this whole thing about how our house is so big, we should let more fae inside. And then the pixies get on this thing about ‘are the mushrooms ethically sourced’ and I don’t know! I know I should’ve asked but I wasn’t thinking about asking, I was thinking about saving your life! And now I might also have mushrooms that were stolen from pixies and I’ve inadvertently supported the trade of unethical magic mushrooms.” Deirdre groaned, pressing the palm of her hands to her eyes. “And you’re fading away, and you might be gone for good. And the best I can do is deal drugs from our porch and get glasses of water which I feel so bad lying about that I do drink them all. Every glass. And then the constant toilet trips are just…” Deirdre sighed, throwing her head back against the couch and then turning to look at Morgan. She laughed again, longer and louder and true. “None of this is fair to you, my love,” she reached out for Morgan. “That dying meant you lost feeling. That having it back means this. Just one nice thing, without cost, that stays…it would be nice to have that. Mostly I’ve been worried about you; only so much cherry and sandalwood smell can make everything else okay. Watching the delight and wonder you have tasting and feeling and smelling things…Fates, I wish I knew how to tell you how good it is to see you happy. And this specifically, this thing I’ve seen you grieve over. I want that feeling for you forever, that kind of happiness. But no matter how badly I want something, it just…” Deirdre tapped her finger against Morgan’s forearm, observing again how pale she was and where decay bloomed. “I just want you to be happy, for a long time. A proper long time. Five hundred years, at least. And I want the shape of that happiness to be exactly as you dream it.” Deirdre looked up at Morgan and shook her head. “What’s been the best part so far? With everything to feel and taste and smell…”
Morgan listened rapt as Deirdre spoke. Her blue eyes were murkier than they had been before, but they sparked with an intensity that went beyond the simple spectrum of life and death. She laughed when she couldn’t help it, and tenderly brushed her love with her fingertips. The game was the same: how lightly could she touch without losing feeling? But it was more fun when she knew her fingers sometimes tickled and sometimes ‘accidentally’ found a spot that made Deirdre shiver or pause in her telling.
“I might be partially to blame for the newfound interest in ethically sourcing.” She cut in softly. “It’s one of their newest vocab words, along with organic, fair trade, and Willowbud and Appleseed may or may not have spoiled everything at Took’s that didn’t have one of those kinds of labels on it recently.”
She peeled Deirdre’s hand from her forehead and thumbed the little worry crease forming between her eyebrows as she went on until the desperate absurdity of the whole thing overwhelmed them both into laughter. Morgan smothered hers with little kisses. She didn’t need another reason to cherish her love, but she was happy to have one nonetheless. “First of all, no more fake-real glasses of water. If we can’t find a nice leprechaun cave or pixie hovel to donate your stash to so they can deal with the others, we’ll have to have regular business hours so you can get some sleep.” She arched a brow, beaming with her usual bright determination.
“Secondly, none of this has been fair for you either. You’ve sacrificed and suffered so much, and nothing I’ve planted for your happiness has grown without weeds and thorns. And I want ease for you, so much. I want a whole garden of joy for you, joy and love and nothing else. But the world we live in is too complicated for that. We live on a wheel, and it always turns. If it stopped completely, it wouldn’t be life at all.” Morgan draped her arms around her love’s shoulders. “So, we can’t always be happy so long as we’re in the thick of the world and we can’t make the wheel turn at our pace. But we can be in love. And I would take that any day, if I really had to choose.” She kissed her, soft and lingering to emphasize the point. It was easy to be confident and wise in the service of comforting Deirdre. Maybe that was why sharing the load was always better. The strength they saved for each other was so much more resilient than what they could summon for themselves.
Morgan kissed the tip of Deirdre’s nose. “Lucky for me, at least fifty percent of the shape of my happiness looks a lot like you. You are a wonder of a person and you do so much for me. I never know how to tell you or show you what it means.” Slowly, she brought their foreheads together and let them linger like that for a while before speaking again. “I like being soft again. That’s my favorite. Our pillows, our sheets, snow on my skin, the cats, your hair, your body, all my sweaters, and the wind when it’s gentle. And frozen yogurt, pudding, cream pastries, and pomegranate juice. I can feel everything that’s gentle, and I can give gentle back. I’m a part of it. I understand it. There’s no adapting or thinking or concentrating. I just connect like I’ve always belonged. Wonderful doesn’t begin to describe it.” She teased her lips around Deirdre’s skin to prove her point. “And there’s getting to try everyone’s favorite everything. And being able to hug the girls and know what they really feel like for the first time. Then there’s laying with you and not thinking about anything, and not having to ask you to do anything but be. And all the little in between touches and pressures I’ve half forgotten. Your teeth, cat claws, leather, the Subaru, hard candies. And the sun. It’s a shame it’s been so cloudy, because the few times I’ve run out in time, the sun’s warmth is so…magical? It’s so unreal I don’t really know what to call it.” Morgan kissed her love again and smiled against her lips.
“What’s happening to us right now isn’t balanced or fair. But we have a plan. And if I am fading away, for now, for a while, maybe—” Or maybe for good. The thought hooked through her voice and she stopped before persisting. “I want to steal as much life and as much good from this as I can. Whatever this is already wins if I don’t.”
With the truth spoken so clearly, so simply, the brambles in Morgan’s mind cleared and Deirdre’s plan materialized like guideposts on a path. The way out shimmered just out of sight, any day now the right turn would take them there and it would be funny to look back on how long it took to figure everything out.
“I know time is screwing us over again, but I want to take an hour from it. The house is empty, you’re already holding me, and we don’t know how many more good days we have. So be with me, right here. Take me. We can hole up in the library after, and I’ll make soup for dinner when you’re hungry, and we’ll stay up reading as long as we can. But after. I want you first. I want to feel alive with you. And I promise, I promise, we will do whatever it takes to fix this and make it to our wedding.”
Deirdre’s eyes remained far, staring forward. Her gaze narrowed on the wall. “Is that why the pixies suddenly have such great vocabulary?” She turned to Morgan. “You know I had an actual discussion with Willowbud about commercial farming; I didn’t think she knew anything about it. You should know the concern is with freeing all the cows and trampling the humans and that…” Deirdre continued in her best imitation of the high-pitched dialogue of the pixies. “Like ten pixies can ride a cow at once, so much better than a cat AND cows are herbivores—also a word you must’ve taught them.” And then she laughed again, because it was absurd, but mostly because she loved Morgan. And she was happy being kissed by her love, touched by her love, held and listened to. Her body felt light, as if in their laughter, they’d lifted up from the couch and away for all that pulled and pushed on them; abducted by happy aliens who only knew paradise and utopia. A nice beach, Deirdre figured.
If Morgan said there would be no more glasses of water, then Deirdre could believe it--she saw them replaced with piña coladas sipped through colorful straws. The memory of fae clamoring for free mushrooms was eaten by the waves, crashing harmlessly against the shore. But life existed on a wheel, and just as soon as the vision of a beach lived by Morgan’s words, it too was washed away. It was just them and their house now, trying to live in a world that would turn and turn and turn and never spare a thought to who it crushed. The beach didn’t possess the nuances of their life but this terrible, spinning reality did. Anyday, Deirdre would also choose being in love over uncomplicated happiness, but she didn’t understand why there had to be a choice at all. Morgan made her uncomplicatedly happy all on her own, it was the world that spun and pricked with its thorns. Was it so wrong to hope for the beach?
She could believe that Morgan was happy. She could believe that the two of them together would always find a way to be. But as long as the world was spinning, something would get left behind--that was the inevitable truth. Deirdre smiled, she wanted to coast along Morgan’s delight, but knew it was about to be knocked off the wheel, one way or another. Deirdre leaned into each touch, shivered where Morgan brushed her skin and hummed where she was kissed. One day when the world spun them out of existence, she hoped that feeling of love would still persist: if just one other person could know what it was like to be loved so completely, cared for so wholly, and held so warmly. If someone else could know a word brighter than bright, maybe something could exist beyond the spinning and the weeds.
Deirdre just wished it could be them.
“You said that last time, my love,” Deirdre shook her head, laughing the observation into the casual. “And you--we--say it so often. I know it doesn’t make it any less true--that we should steal our moments where we can--but...aren’t you tired of stealing? Can’t we just have?” Deirdre shook her head again. “I’m sorry,” she leaned up into Morgan, kissing her and lingering. “I’m sorry. I want you. I want to make you feel alive. I want you here, right now. And I want--well, I’m not going to accept that promise.” Another laugh. “Those don’t end well, but I believe you and I understand you and I love you.” Another kiss. “And we’ve got a wedding and a life and a family to get to one day. Right now, we’ve got an hour.”
“Of course I want to ‘have’,” Morgan said. She’d wanted to ‘have’ all her life, and it was the bitterest truth of all that she couldn’t cash in her suffering for a pass to a kinder world where pain never cut too deep. “Badly, Deirdre. I want it so badly. And maybe someday we will. Maybe we’ll figure out the balance, or maybe we’ll find the softest, quietest place to hide as long as we want. We’ll make our world real. Maybe after this is over we’ll rest easy for months and it’ll be almost as good.” Morgan didn’t know if she believed her own words, or if she should. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt so badly or feel so hounded by the world if they accepted these turns as part of their fate. Maybe they could have a more reliable sense of safety, if they accepted that they never truly would be. But Morgan had never excelled at playing safe with her heart.
She eased them slowly down against the cushions of their prickly-soft couch. She touched a finger to Deirdre’s lips and lifted her eyes to meet her love’s. Just let me say one thing more. I know we’re losing something every second, but one thing more. “Don’t be sorry for wanting to ‘have’. And don’t ever think for another second that I don’t want that too.” She combed Deirdre’s hair down so it fell down other their faces and blocked out the room, the world, the whole stupid thing that wouldn’t let them be. She was a meadow of the finest grass and silk and simmered like the sun over an earthy river; proof that their world could be touched and maybe kept. Five-hundred years was a long time to try. “We’re just not there yet,” she mumbled, thumbing open her overalls one button at a time. “It’s on the other side of this mess. Now take me there.” Take me, while there’s still a me left to take.
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Souls of Mischief || Morgan & Caoimhe
TIMING: the recent past
LOCATION: UMWC
PARTIES: @evebrennan & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Two adjuncts square up against the new dean. Is it really a UMWC faculty meeting if everything goes according to plan?
CONTAINS: N/A
Since the dean of the arts and sciences college had gotten his face eaten and the volmugger dean who unofficially replaced him had been sliced and diced, the faculty meeting had to be postponed until summer. With all the deaths and disappearances from the last year, the faculty was able to squeeze comfortably into one of the small lecture halls from the early days of the school, pre AC. They were twenty minutes in and Morgan’s nose was starting to pick up the sour smell of human sweat filling the room. As she slumped deeper into her chair, she found herself thinking that maybe the volmugger dean hadn’t been so bad after all. At least his meeting probably would have been over by now.
She turned to the woman next to her. “Do you ever wish for a fire scare or a cryptid attack during these, or is that just a me thing?”
Humans were captivating for their creativity, and Caoimhe had never encountered anything as terribly uncreative as a routine meeting. Death by powerpoints, a man droning on about grading rubrics and research coming out of New York City. Somewhere in there was a hopeful message about Summer classes and plans for the Fall, but the man’s tone never changed. She felt liable to crawl out of her own skin should it go on for much longer, shifting restlessly in her seat. Typically, in a room so full, there would always be someone to whom Caoimhe was drawn. It was true, meetings sucked the creativity out of everything.
She was halfway through a list of ways she could get out of it, varying from a simple bathroom excuse to complete university meltdown, when a voice piped up from beside her. Ah, better. “Only every meeting. We could make it happen. Any of the above. I prefer bothering them with increasingly outrageous questions until they give up and let us go, personally.” She wondered how long it would take to get him going. If she could get him to give up before the PowerPoint was done. “Ten bucks says if we team up, we could be out of here before he can bring up the next slide.”
Morgan quirked her eyes with interest. Generally, the most she got out of someone was a little indulgent smile (so funny, Morgan; you and your little quips) or a grimace of agreement, because solidarity was the only thing that made these meetings bearable. No one really talked back, much less turned around and offered something back. Morgan scooted closer to the woman.
“Are you serious? Because I can’t tell if you’re serious, and if you’re not serious, I’m going to be really embarrassed when I ask that guy to explain why he chose the font he did for this thrilling presentation and no one jumps in to one up me.” She sat up a little straighter, tilting her head in a show of false interest at the presentation. “If we do make this work, we should give ourselves something nice. As a treat, you know?”
Oh, there was hope for the meeting yet. Caoimhe sat up, finding a grin that didn’t match the less-than-lively meeting topic in the least. She showed more interest in a matter of moments than she had for the entirety of the meeting up to that point, and she couldn’t even be bothered to care. It was so rare that anyone was willing to play along. Most meetings were spent tapping her toes against carpet, or filling quickly sketched staff lines in the margins of her notes. Some part of her felt she should pay attention, given she was new and working on a good first impression, but the meeting was unbearably boring, and there was someone present who was perfectly willing to cause some trouble.
“I don’t joke around when it comes to...joking around.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head around a laugh, turning back to the front. Displayed was a slide reading “2021 Changes,” and she was certain they’d been covering changes for at least thirty minutes. Freedom was imminent. “My vote is ice cream.”
Her vote was anything that wasn’t another staff meeting. She raised her hand, “Excuse me, sorry. I just couldn’t help but notice you’re using the Geometric theme by Slides. It’s an excellent choice, very clean. May I ask why Geometric instead of, say, Plum, or Spearmint?”
It took the New Dean several seconds to realize someone else was talking. He blinked behind his tortoiseshell glasses at Caoimhe, then at his presentation, then back again. “This...was recommended to me by my assistant.” He laughed affably. “And if you’ll observe, as we move on to the next section of the faculty code of conduct, the hexagons make for a very convenient grouping of text, so you can differentiate between the point and the rationale…” He fumbled with his clicker and brought the next slide up.
“Oh, actually, I have a question about that formatting!” Morgan called. “The color contrast you picked is interesting, but I was wondering why you deviated from black and white. And why the font? It’s not so great for those of us in the back or with visual impairments. Which, I dunno, considering our disciplines is probably a lot of us, right?”
A few women sitting nearby sniggered.
“Obviously I can’t speak for anyone else, but everything you’re saying reads like gibberish to me. And I feel like my professional enrichment is being underserved.”
Ah, the next slide. Caoimhe was only allowed a moment of defeat before her partner in crime piped up, and the Dean’s initial laughter faded into a look of disbelief. The energy in the room changed. People were shifting in their chairs, interest piqued. Caoimhe could see a few burying their heads in the crook of their elbow, or covering their laughter with a hand over their mouths. She had a feeling she was going to like UMWC. Not if every meeting derailed so easily, not if she’d always have someone so perfectly willing to try.
“Oh, my deepest apologies.” There was a pause, then, while the Dean twisted the clicker in his hands and considered his next course of action. Caoimhe could see the red creeping into his cheeks, and she might’ve felt bad for him, if she wasn’t enjoying herself so much.
“There’s actually a site to help with contrast, as well as outlines of the best fonts to use in presentations. For example, Garamond fonts look very professional, yet are still easy to read.” Caoimhe grinned, “I can send an email, even carbon copy your assistant, if you’d like.”
Morgan turned to Caoimhe as if noticing her for the first time. “Oh, my gosh! Could you? That sounds so amazing and helpful. Barbara--” She waved down a woman two rows up. “You had a student who was color-blind and dyslexic last semester, right? Did you ever figure out what the best format and coloring was for him?”
“No, that was me!” Another woman, Stephanie Shannon, called. Stephanie liked to be an authority on things. It made it easier to correct everyone else. And so, when Morgan happened to call the wrong woman, of course she had to be corrected. Stephanie launched into a long anecdote about her student and the research she did, and which websites were not at all helpful, and so on.
The New Dean tapped his microphone. “If we could turn back to business--”
“I believe Doctor Shannon is still speaking,” Morgan said, unable to hide the glee in her voice.
“Thank you, Professor Beck,” Stephanie said, genuinely touched.
Morgan leaned back in her seat and turned to Caoimhe. “So, the real question is whether we want to see if his face is going to get any redder or if we want to pretend to go to the ladies’ room and never come back.”
Chaos ensued and Caoimhe barely managed to conceal a smile behind her hand. The careful structure of the meeting falling to pieces around them was almost enough to make her stay, but it was still a meeting, and she was willing to bet Doctor Shannon had about as much to say as the Dean did. The deed was done. If she stayed in her spot another moment longer, her laughter would give her away.
A quick excuse and she was tumbling into the hallway, the sound of continued arguing cutting off abruptly as the door shut in her wake. The amount of joy she derived from the dean’s expression as she ducked out was near pathological.
“Professor Beck, was it?” Caoimhe had grown well-accustomed to starting over, to finding her footing in new environments. There was always a nook into which she could burrow herself, even if it was a box-strewn hotel room rented by the week. She preferred it when it looked like this. Like university hallways and bookshelves, drifting notes from a piano in a practice room, and sometimes people. They were always the hardest. They had interests, opinions, smiles and laughter of their own. It was easy to leave behind a bookshelf or a piano. It wasn’t always easy to leave behind people, the rare friend. Professor Beck had jumped in with the same glee Caoimhe had, and she already found herself thinking about what it would mean to leave. “I’m stealing you for every meeting. I’m sorry, it’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Morgan followed her new friend out. People seldom questioned women leaving in pairs, and she’d just earned some much needed goodwill. When the doors to the lecture room closed behind her, she finally let herself laugh, more pleased with herself than she’d been in a long time.
“Why yes,” she said, bowing dramatically. “Morgan Beck, at your service. I am great at distractions, petty theft, and driving away unwanted attention. My knowledge of literature isn’t so bad either.” She laughed again and sidled up to the other woman. “I would be honored, thrilled even, to be your partner in crime for the next meeting. But first, I definitely want to know who I have the honor of being in cahoots with, and if I can steal you for my meetings too.” It had been a while since she’d had a reason to feel happy at work. Since she’d had a real friend she could do shallow simple things with. There was no keeping the supernatural from coming to her door no matter where she went, but a moment of good, a little bubble of fun and nothing now and then, could be worth a lot.
“Oh, Morgan!” Caoimhe stood up a little straighter, grinning. “English professor Morgan? Likes the Cranberries Morgan?” She gave her own bow, “It’s Caoimhe, Music professor, new in town. Also great at distractions, and car sing alongs like you wouldn’t believe.” Suddenly, White Crest didn’t feel quite so daunting. It felt just that little bit more like somewhere she could settle, if she ever found herself in a capacity to do so. Perhaps there was something to the fog, to the way it felt disconnected in a way no other town had managed. Perhaps there was something to letting herself have friendships in the in-between.
There was muffled arguing from behind the door, and Caoimhe descended into another laugh, moving further down the hallway. There’d been some mention of a treat in reward of success, and the rapidly derailing meeting behind them was definitely a success. “Now, as much fun as that was, I’ve already enlisted you as my arm wrestling champion, how could I possibly expect even more of you?”
“Yes! That’s me! And you’re Vivaldi and Britney Spears Caoimhe?” Morgan gaped. She followed Caoimhe down the hall, shoes skittering in a cascade of delight as she avoided the oncoming faculty approaching the door. “Oh, you’re amazing! You’re like the first cool person my age here and you actually give a shit about your students and teaching and you sing in the car too? Do you also sing karaoke? I just--feel like you’re one swooping in here and making everything here a whole lot better. Let me get you something, a drink, or lunch or whatever people with sudden free-time do.” She caught up to herself, hearing the echo of her own rambling and her unchecked enthusiasm in the hall. “Or, um, a rain check. Obviously. But, you really do seem great and this place isn’t kind to great people, especially when they’re isolated. And, you know, selfishly, I really do appreciate having a partner in crime. There’s only so much mischief you can get up to when it’s you against the world.”
“Okay, okay correction.” Caoimhe matched the same excited rambling coming from Morgan. She talked with her hands. Her mother would grab them sometimes, pin them to a table and say her name sharp, but with a smile tugging at the edges of her lips. Caoimhe never did make an effort to fix it. “It’s you and me against the world now, so just jot that one down. Or...at the very least boring staff meetings. We can work up to the whole world part, but I’m dedicated.”
She tucked her thumbs into the pockets of her slacks. She liked the sound of Vivaldi and Britney Spears Caoimhe, and cool person, and lunch between classes. Of someone who seemed just as excited to wreak havoc as she was, who cared about her students, who liked karaoke, and oh. That one wouldn’t be the best idea, but the rest! Caoimhe would happily get behind the rest. “Yes to karaoke sometimes, no to the rain check.” She parsed through the onslaught to address one item at a time, quick and with just as much enthusiasm as the questions had been asked. “You seem great, I don’t rain check great. But reverse it, let me get you a drink, or lunch, or something.”
Morgan couldn’t fight the way she brightened up at Caoimhe’s assurances. “Okay! Then--” Shoot. She didn’t eat out anymore. Or enjoy most food. “Coffee? I know it’s hot and terrible outside, but we can get something iced. I know where the best places in town are.” And she could actually taste a quad shot latte. “I’ll let you pay this time, but only because it contractually obligates a second outing when I get to pay. And the sky’s the limit there, because while we adjuncts might get shit for pay, I get some very generous supplemented by my unspeakably wonderful future-wife.” She slipped her hands into her own skirt pockets and elbowed Caoimhe, grinning. “I like the sound of that, though: you and me against the department and really boring faculty meetings. Today the arts college, tomorrow the school, and then who knows?”
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Running in the Dark || Morgan & Mina
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @drowningisinevitable & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Sometimes grief isn’t what you’d expect. Morgan already knew this. Mina’s learning it the hard way.
CONTAINS: references to emotional abuse
Thaddeus had been kind to Mina. She didn’t tell him, as he walked with her to what was left of Dark Score Lake, about the different ways that she’d thought about killing him, and she didn’t tell him that she needed to walk back to the East End, anyway, if only to get some of her stuff from Morgan and Deirdre’s. The walk had been long, her side not particularly healed at all, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care. She just didn’t care. She’d patch herself up inside, and then she’d…
She didn’t know what she’d do. Mina looked at the large house, dark and (for the first time that she could remember) ominous. It looked like no one was even home. She grabbed the spare key that was hidden near the pool for her on the nights she locked herself out. If she listened, she could hear the sound of laughing, good memories begging to be heard and reminisced. She ignored them. There was mud and blood in the footprints that she tracked up to her room; she’d need to clean up before she left. She added that to the list of things to do.
Mina trudged up to her room and went to her bedside table where she kept a first aid kit. She took off her shirt, assessed the damage. Her phone was on the table, the battery dead. She plugged it up. She wanted to sit, to take a moment, to stop and breathe. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t. If she stopped, she’d start thinking again. And she couldn’t do that. She needed to not do that. She needed to fix herself and gather her things and leave. She needed to do that. She had to do that.
Morgan ran from dead time as much as she could. She was a zombie; she could outpace anything. She could try. The house could be scrubbed, dusted, polished. Books could be re-organized. Comments on student assignments could be longer, more thorough. And there were other people in town to talk to. Maybe she didn’t have much of a family anymore (maybe she’d been foolish to think she had one at all), but she could still do things. But time was more relentless than any body. It outpaced her and waited in a hallway she could not avoid, in silences she could not escape. Eventually, even soon, it would catch her.
But what caught Morgan now was a hushed sound of movement from Mina’s room. “Mina?” She called. She ran, fresh hope writing itself over her grief (she came back, of course she came back, Mina was so loyal, Mina was raised with a sense of duty and maybe that wasn’t so bad all the time, she must have been lost and scared, maybe she wanted to change before looking for her), and stepped through the doorway. Maybe Mina was going to change, eventually, since she was so caked in blood and water filth she looked liked the creature from the black lagoon, but judging from the neat stack of clothes and wrapped up charging cords, that wasn’t really her first priority.
The hopeful words in Morgan’s head dried up, the brightness in her face grew dim. “Oh.You...” The rest of the words she knew seemed to dry up too. “...So it’s like that, huh?” She searched inside herself for a shield of anger to put up, but her voice, frail and cracked, was already giving her away.
Head snapping up, Mina looked, and there was Morgan in the doorway, and there was Morgan looking so, so small. Mina felt herself shrinking a bit, falling in on herself. She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I thought the house was empty.” But why would it be? Everyone else didn’t leave just because Bex did. Everyone else didn’t leave just because Mina did. She fumbled with her hands, and she didn’t look at Morgan. “Like what?” she asked. But she knew what. She knew.
The best Morgan could do to protect herself was fold her arms over her chest, holding herself. “I mean…” her voice croaked and she had to swallow and try again. “You didn’t even want to shower or change your clothes first. Are you really gonna make me say it too?” She looked at Mina, pleading. “Why were you...I know your empty room would have spoken for itself, but to make me come home and suddenly know out of nowhere you were never…” Never coming back. Never wanted to stay. Never what Morgan thought she had been. “Do you blame me, for losing her? Is it the memories, and the quiet? Or something else? I know apparently you don’t want to talk to me but can you please at least tell me why?”
“I was going to clean up,” Mina said, her voice barely above a whisper. And she knew that want what Morgan wanted. She knew. She was well aware. “I just needed to…” She didn’t know. Tending to the place on her side had been paramount. Anything else would come after, she figured, along with an explanation to leave, a note to write. And she didn’t plan on staying gone forever. Her body just knew it couldn’t stay here, stay still, for too long, or it was going to break, shatter like her heart into a thousand little pieces. She looked at Morgan sharply. “Blame you? How could I blame you? Why would I ever blame you? I let her— she said it was— I stopped you, from hurting her parents, or I tried to, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t not listen to her. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.” She frowned. “Why do you think I’d blame you? Why do you think I wouldn’t want to talk?” Even if she didn’t. Even if she did. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Mina felt like she’d been still too long. She felt like she was going to crack open if she didn’t start moving again soon.
Morgan shrank under Mina’s gaze. “I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “I’m just...trying to understand why you’re doing this. I thought…” We were closer than this. That I wasn’t so easy to leave behind after all. Morgan sniffled and blinked her eyes dry. “I’m grasping at straws. I don’t know what to think. But you weren’t wrong to listen. She was wrong to ask you, and to make the choice that she did. You haven’t done anything wrong, Mina. You don’t need to think that.” Instinctively, one of her hands freed itself and reached for the girl. But she remembered herself and at the absurd question, gestured to what she thought was a pretty obvious mess. “Well, something about slipping in and not saying anything and being in a bigger hurry to pack than to take care of your injuries and explaining that you were doing this now because you thought the house was empty sort of gave me a vibe that you don’t want to see or talk to me. What am I supposed to think instead?”
“I’m sorry,” Mina said immediately. “I’m sorry. I don’t--” She wanted to leave. She wanted to be back in the forest, walking until she couldn’t anymore. She wondered if that was what it was like to swim in the ocean, to just go and go and go and keep going with no end in sight. She wanted that. She wouldn’t have to think if she could just keep moving. But here was Morgan, forcing her to stop. To think. “I didn’t want to let her down again. I feel like I did, though. I feel like-- I feel like--” Mina sagged forward a bit, and then she just sat, heavily, on her bed, not caring that she was getting dirt and blood all over it. “I didn’t want you to see me like this, and I wanted to get everything, well, not everything, I’m not taking everything, I’m going to come back, I promise I’ll come back, but I had to go. I had to. I stayed there, and I stayed, and I stayed, and nothing changed, so I started walking because, if I didn’t, I was just going to-- What’s wrong with me?” she managed to gasp out between words. “What’s wrong with me? Why is it like this? Why does it feel like this?” And Mina was genuinely at a loss as she looked at Morgan. What was wrong with her? Why was she like this?
“You didn’t let her down, Mina,” Morgan replied. Slowly, she came up to the girl and sat beside her. She was so young sometimes. So heartbreakingly young. How lonely must she have been to have gone this far without anything important enough to ache over losing like this. “Nothing is wrong with you. As a magically certified expert in suffering, I can guarantee you that all of this, as horrible as it feels, is as natural as the beat of your heart. Having your heart broken is the exchange for love.” Slowly, once again, she reached out for Mina in a timid request. “Can I touch you? Can I help clean you up? Please…? I don’t care how you look, but you won’t heal right if we leave you like this.”
“It can’t be that, no, no.” But even as Mina said the words, they hurt. They burned in her mouth like iron, but, maybe, if she kept saying them, they wouldn’t feel like a lie. “It didn’t hurt like this when my dad died, and Bex-- she’s not dead.” Just gone, and it felt like Mina would never get her back, and it felt like the world was ending, and it felt like it already ended. “It’s not that. It can’t be that. I can’t-- I’m not capable-- I was told-- It hurts so much, here.” She put her hand over her heart and hated the way it was pounding. When Morgan reached out for her, Mina could only look at the older woman with slight confusion before she remembered that she was bleeding, that she was hurt, physically. Swallowing, she said, “I can’t even feel it.” Another lie, though she wished she could feel it more. She wished it would drown out the ache in her chest. “It’s not that bad.”
Morgan slipped her hand under Mina’s to feel her chest. She had no sense of its beat, but she heard the girl’s voice strangling itself in her throat. She saw how her neck throbbed with each gasp. “No, she’s not dead. But loving Bex is different, and so is losing her, when she left.” Probably because where Bex was concerned there was more hope, and more return. The loss of a starved love hit different from one you had grown to trust. Morgan reached for the corner of the bed sheet and brought it up to wipe Mina’s face. They were already dirty from her sitting, and she didn’t want to turn away for a moment and lose her. “And of course you’re capable. Why wouldn’t you be capable?” She cradled Mina’s face carefully as she wiped. “You love her, and now that she’s left, it hurts. It’s awful, I know it’s awful, but it’s nothing mysterious.” Then she turned Mina’s head, hoping to get her to meet her eyes. “Slow down and talk to me, honey?” she asked quietly.
In. Hold. Out. Mina tried to control herself, to slow down the terrible, rapid beat of the heart in her chest, to make it less painful. She could slow down her breathing, but she couldn’t make her heart stop aching. It wouldn’t stop. It hadn’t stopped in days, and she didn’t know if it’d ever stop again. She shook her head. “I wasn’t taught to love. I’ve never loved. Not like that. It’s not my place to get attached.” But she had gotten attached, and now she was facing the consequences. It was almost worse, to think about it as love because it meant that she’d done this to herself. “I don’t want this,” she said. She’d rather go back to being chased down by a sianach. She’d rather go back to being hunted by a warden. “I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want this.”
“Yeah, that’s the funny thing about, love, Mina,” Morgan said, smiling in a way that hid nothing of her heartbreak. She started plucking the leaves and twigs from her hair, combing through soothingly. “You don’t need to be taught how to feel it. Just how to do it well. But even with that, you were doing so good, and I am so proud of you for that. You don’t have to say anything right now. I know it hurts. I know. Just let me help with this other stuff, okay? Hurting like this is hard enough on its own, right? Let me help with the rest. Please, Mina. Please…”
Shaking her head, Mina said, “I don’t…” It hurt. It hurt so much. It hurt in ways that she couldn’t even truly explain. This wasn’t the kind of hurt Mina was comfortable with. She was comfortable with iron burns from knives that had been sharpened the night before until they were razor thin, and she was comfortable with broken bones that came from both people and great heights, and she was comfortable even with the sting of sharp words from people that saw her as a monster, a pest. All of that was something she could understand. She couldn’t understand this. “I don’t-- I can’t stay, not here, not all the time, and I don’t want to go, but I-- I--” If she stayed, it’s just get worse, and she needed to be able to move and move and not stop moving, and Mina knew that Morgan would try to make her stop. She looked at Morgan, her eyes begging. “I’m sorry. I’ll come back, I promise. I’ll come back. I’m not leaving you. I’m not.”
“When, next month?” Morgan asked, barely loud enough to sound like anything. “Next year? When Bex gets off her bullshit? When some banshee’s screamed for you and your body drags you over to breathe your last breath over whatever’s left of this place?” She shook her head and tried to dispel the words and the desperation that came with them. She smiled. She could be that person that she sometimes believed herself to be: a woman who could hold up anything she was given, who could make any shithole of a problem just a little better. She started cleaning the girl again. “You’re not going to last long anywhere in this shape. You need a shower, and a patch up job, and maybe a soak in the pool. You’re hurt, honey. And whatever you’re afraid of, whatever you’re trying to outrun, I just have a feeling that you can’t. And maybe if you’re not so alone you won’t break so hard when it gets you. But that’s just my guess. I’d have a better idea if you told me?”
“Next week,” Mina said, immediately. “At least once a week. And she can-- she can do what she wants.” Thinking about Bex hurt. It hurt. And no banshee was going to scream for Mina. Maybe Deirdre. Maybe. Probably not, though. Not until it was too late. “I’ve been in worse shape,” she managed to croak out instead. “This was really my own fault. I fell down a hill. There was a sianach after me. I think a fallen branch just--” she motioned towards the place on her side-- “that.” She shook her head. “It really doesn’t hurt bad. I-- I feel like if I stop moving, I’m going to… I don’t know what’s going to happen. The last time, I cried.” What was she outrunning? Her own thoughts. Her own memories. This pain that wasn’t physical but somehow hurt worse. “I just can’t stop moving.”
“F-for the pool. Of course,” Morgan said. Once a week to top off and not keel over. “That’s…” Real thoughtful. Don’t strain yourself on my account. She had the good sense to taste something wrong in those thoughts and said, “Sensible.” She was running out of clean patches of sheet to wipe her clean with. They needed the first aid tub and the fae salve and a fucking shower. Stars, Morgan could barely smell anymore, but her brain could still concoct some ideas from how filthy everything was.
“Being impaled is a real bitch, though. Even if it’s just your side. For me it was always easy to destroy myself a little when I was grieving. Not just death grieving, any kind. My body acts like the world is ending, life goes on, and it feels kind of crazy to act like everything is fine. But then that’s what everyone else is doing, so I felt like I had to hide it. I’ve never run before though. You should tell me how it feels so I can imagine it.” Finally running out of ways to help with what little she had, Morgan put her hands gently on Mina’s shoulders. “What’s so scary about crying, through? What else do you think is gonna happen if you stop? Come on, we can move while you tell me. You can use my shower to rinse off and I’ll tape you up, okay?”
Mina sighed. “Not the pool, Morgan, no. It’s-- I mean, it’s a nice pool, but I don’t have to stay here. I don’t-- I like it here. I… want to be here. Not because of the pool.” She swallowed, tightly. “You know I’ve… never stayed anywhere for long, right? White Crest is the longest. Here, right here, is in the top three. I want to be here. I don’t-- I don’t have to be. Not even because of the pool.” She could go anywhere. She could go back to that pond in the forest and never move, if she wanted to, and her body would adjust, and it would be okay. But she felt… home was a foreign concept to Mina, but when she thought about it, she pictured this house, these people, even if one of them was someone that she felt like she’d never see again.
“Impaled makes it sound so bad. It barely did anything.” The lie was obvious just from the injury itself, but Mina kept her tone light, the taste of blood familiar on the back of her tongue. “I just need to move,” she said, more honestly. “I’m always-- I always have to move, somehow, someway. My dad would call me fidgety, as a child. All the time I would, well, move. Either my hands or my feet, anything. I just couldn’t stay still. It gets worse, when I’m… emotional.” She allowed Morgan to lead her down the hall with little resistance. She didn’t have much resistance in her anymore. She stumbled a bit. She was tired. She could curl into a ball right there on the floor. She knew she wouldn’t sleep. “If I stand still, I’ll cave in on myself. That’s what it feels like. If I stop to think about anything for too long, I won’t be able to stop. I won’t be able to get up, and I have to keep going. I have to.” She had to do better, starting then, starting the second she stepped out of this house.
Morgan didn’t know what to do with Mina’s assurances except look at her with stupid confusion. Somewhere in her mind, far away in places she had run from in her own way, was a thought from her books about not taking rebuffs and rejections personally. But where she stood now, she could only think, if Mina wanted to be here and felt at home here, then why didn’t she just do that? And since she couldn’t be totally lying, there had to be something wrong with the home or the people in it, and if there was something wrong, why couldn’t she just know so she could fix it. She could fix it. She could.
“I haven’t lived with Deirdre this long without catching how your lies burn your throats,” she said, leading Mina into the bathroom. “Also, I’ve been impaled twice. And it still kinda hurt when Constance got me on a chalkboard with a chair leg, so you’re really trying to convince the wrong person here.” She turned on the water and gestured for Mina to tend to herself and get in. “I’ll get you a better change of clothes and the good stuff we have from Deirdre’s stint at the fae clinic. Okay? The only thing running through town while you’re like this will do is make you stop somewhere you don’t want to be. So you can move by washing up. Then we’ll talk about the rest. But Mina--you won’t cave in, if you stop. Your body is telling you that it will, but your body is just a lonely, heartbroken animal. You won’t collapse. You won’t break. Not the way you’re afraid of. Okay?”
“It usually makes me sick, too, but I feel quite alright.” Lies also gave Mina nosebleeds, but she didn’t care. She didn’t feel one coming on, she couldn’t possibly feel any worse now than she already did, and she just didn’t care. “It’ll make me stop thinking. That’s all I want. I just want to stop thinking.” She looked at Morgan with tired eyes before turning away and stripping and stepping into the shower. She didn’t care. She was still covered in dirt and blood and debris, and she didn’t care. She felt like her feet were going to fall off as she stood still, but she didn’t care. She wanted to keep moving. She’d stop when she passed out.
Morgan closed each door behind her as she went back to Mina’s room and rummaged for some of the clothes she wore to their fighting practice. She thought about erring on the side of impractical. Maybe she wouldn’t be so keen on running away for a week at a time in a dress or pajamas. Maybe Morgan could get one night in the house where she wouldn’t have to be alone. But the more she tried to focus on holding Mina on the couch, or staying up together in the studio, the more she saw Mina tearing out of the house, more vulnerable to the elements than she needed to be. So, activewear.
Then she came back, opening the doors one by one again. She laid some towels near the tub, took out the salve, bandages, and supplies for stitches, just in case.
“Let me know if you need any help,” she called.
Water was usually a reluctant comfort. Sometimes, when Mina had been younger, she’d been uncomfortable with how much she needed it, how much her body would more often than not crave to be in the water. Then, she figured out it was the best way to heal, to get better, and it stopped seeming so damning. Yes, she wished she had the enhanced healing outside of it, but it was a hard world; she’d take what she could get because she had to, even if she didn’t want to. But now it didn’t feel like anything. Dirt and blood swirled down the drain, and it should have been a relief, to be clean. But it wasn’t a relief. She just wanted to leave, to start walking and maybe come back when she wasn’t feeling like this.
And Mina couldn’t help but think it was wrong, that she felt like this, no matter what Morgan said. She shouldn’t be grieving. No one was dead. Nothing had been taken from her. There had never been anything there to be taken. (Maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was what hurt so bad. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.)
Mina was out of the shower and dressed robotically before heading back to Morgan. Being clean showed off the bruises, the cuts and scrapes that had probably been much worse before she’d spent so much time in the pond. She just… hadn’t noticed them. She’d been preoccupied. If her eyes were red, then it was only from a lack of sleep. That was it. That was a lie she could tell herself. “I don’t think I’ll need stitches.”
Morgan lifted Mina’s shirt to examine her side. The shower had done a lot for the wound, but leaving it alone was probably a bad idea if running through the woods was Mina’s idea of self-care. “I think you’re right. Just a bandage and some salve and lots of tape so it doesn’t come loose.” She knelt down and started to work, thinking of ways to treat the more minor injuries as she did. She did not want Mina to go like this and she did not want to be alone in this house.
“You never did tell me what was so bad about crying that one time you did stop,” she said after a while. “That doesn’t sound like breaking to me. Can you tell me more?”
“I started crying and a sianach heard and decided I’d make a lovely meal, and now I’m… here.” Mina sighed. “Sianachs are really lovely creatures in the fact that, if they touch you, you’re going to die, and I’ve been pretty miserable since I left, but not that miserable.” She stood completely still as Morgan worked on her, not looking, not even paying attention. “I stopped, and all I could think about was the fact that I’ve never felt like this, and it’s like I’m being stabbed from the inside, and that’s just a wonderful metaphor, right? See, I’m getting the hang of metaphors. Stopping gets you killed, or at least really close to it.” Mina closed her eyes tightly, tears escaping even when she didn’t want them to. “It hurts. So bad. So bad, Morgan. I can’t-- I feel utterly ridiculous, but it won’t stop.”
“The spinach deer, right,” Morgan said, laughing softly. “We had one charge into this house once. Before you, obviously. I had a panic attack in the middle of the library when I heard about it because one of my ancestors was killed by one, so I thought, yep, that’s it for me and everything I love. Granted, I did die a couple of days later, but that wasn’t the spinach deer’s fault. But in the moment, just hearing that everything familiar that I’d finally come around to thinking would stay, or at least be kind-of-sometimes mine had been destroyed while my back was turned, it did feel like my insides had been ripped through. My lungs, my stomach, my tendons. I tried to leave the building, but I collapsed instead…” She paused to lay the bandage for Mina’s side just so and keep it in place with one strip of tape before adjusting herself to secure it better.
“But the pain you’re running from isn’t about the cursed deer. It’s you, and what you thought you had, and what you thought was yours, and all that space that’s left behind now that those things are gone. And so of course it doesn’t stop. It just does what wounds do: it smarts and it gets infected if you don’t take care of it, and it hurts even when it’s scabbing over, and it numbs out and scars over and fades after a while. It never gets undone. It just heals, or it doesn’t, and then really does keep stabbing you forever, depending on what you choose. There’s nothing ridiculous about that.” She looked up at Mina, all softness. “I am so very sorry, my poor sweet girl. This was your first time being in love at all, wasn’t it?”
Any other time, and Mina might have felt like scolding Morgan over calling something as serious as a sianach a spinach deer, of all things, but she was more caught up in everything else that Morgan was saying, what she was asking. Mina shook her head, the motion jerky. “I’m not in love,” she choked out. And the words did choke her like the lie that they were. If she repeated them, though, maybe they’d be true. “I’m not in love. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.” And they didn’t taste like iron, now, just blood that had gathered in the back of her throat, that would likely be pouring from her nose in minutes. “This isn’t love. It isn’t. I can’t love people like that. He always told me I couldn’t, and he was right. He was right. I can’t. I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to do my duty and protect people and not fall in love and I can’t even do any of that right.” She couldn’t protect Bex or herself or anyone, and she couldn’t do what she was supposed to, and, “I’m not in love.”
“Mina--” Morgan reached over for some cotton balls and held them against Mina’s nose. Dark blood was coming down, splitting down the curve of her lips and staining her chin. “Mina, listen to me. He lied. He probably didn’t know that’s what he was doing, but he lied. You can love. Your heart is so big and so steadfast. Of course you can love.” The cotton balls started to drip, so Morgan tossed them into the sink and grabbed more. She urged Mina to sit on the edge of the tub, so she could guide her head forwards easier.
“Lying just makes you hurt worse and longer, honey,” she said. “And I know you don’t want that. I know you want the hurt to stop. But the only way out is through. Don’t hurt yourself worse.” She kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay to be like this. It’s okay to be in love with her. And you did it just fine from what I could tell, especially for your first time. You can say it, it’s okay…”
This really was making just an already horrible time even worse, wasn’t it? Mina sat down and leaned forward, well-versed in the methods of taking care of a nosebleed. She pinched her nose tight and licked the blood off her lips. She’d just gotten clean. She didn’t care. Blood and tears. That was really all she had left, wasn’t it? “I don’t want this, if it’s going to hurt like this,” she managed to say.
Only that stung, too. Another lie, one she hadn’t even realized was one until it dripped off her tongue like acid, and she swallowed tightly against it. Because maybe she didn’t want to feel like this, but it felt real, in its hurt. It felt like the most real thing she’d ever felt. Her throat tight, as if her own body feared that the next thing she’d say would hurt it, Mina said, her voice small, “I love her. So much. And what a piss poor way I had of showing it. I couldn’t protect her, I made a mess of everything, I didn’t even tell her what I was, Morgan.” She tried, the day before, but then Bex’s mother was there, and it felt like the world was ending. It still felt like it was trying to end.
“Hey--” Morgan wrapped Mina in her arms. “What do you mean a poor way of showing it? It’s not your fault she chose what she did. It’s not your fault Frank chose what he did either. Love isn’t about being a bodyguard, Mina. You’re not bad. For two people who were barely shown what love really looks like, you did so well. You did so, so well, Mina. Isn’t it kind of incredible?” She pulled back to cup the girl’s face. “Love is so much a part of who you are and what you’re capable of, you did it without realizing, without knowing how. And it’s a mess, yes, but I think love is supposed to be messy. And you didn’t make it. Not the way you’re saying. You’re okay, Mina. You’re not bad. You’re just a girl who lost her first love.”
“I didn’t tell her,” Mina said, and she felt the same amount of panic building in her chest that had been there the day at the coffee shop. Her heart was pounding, even in Morgan’s arms, and she felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin. “I didn’t tell her, and you were right. You were so right. I should have done it sooner, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how. I still don’t, and it’s too late, and she’s-- I--” A sob forced its way from her chest, and Mina moved her arms, finally putting them around Morgan. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I wasn’t taught to speak about things, or be gentle, or let people help me.” And how strange it was, to her, that the woman in front of her was the one that was teaching her about those things. She was learning to be gentle from a zombie who couldn’t feel things unless pressure was applied. And yet she was one of the gentlest people that Mina knew. She tightened her hold. She was shaking. Everything hurt. It just hurt, and she was in love, and it hurt.
Morgan held Mina tighter and let her cry for a while. She rubbed her back and combed through her damp hair, starting a slow, steady rhythm she hoped would soothe. And if it didn’t soothe, maybe it would give the illusion that the world was still in tune, and she was still dancing in time, and this wall okay. Morgan would have given anything to feel like that herself, but she would settle for Mina.
“You were never taught those things, no,” she said at last. “But you’re learning so much already, so fast. You must be pretty good at it, to pick up so quickly. Especially being gentle. I never saw anyone be more gentle than you were with Bex. And you can learn the rest, if you want. Once you get over the first couple of tries, talking, letting people in, stuff like that, it gets easier. But I would be lying if I said that there’s such a thing as completely knowing what you’re doing. Because no one does. Even with all the experience in the world, doing something new, or with someone new, pretty much feels like you’re making it up as you go. So don’t hold that against yourself. Don’t hold anything that’s happened with Bex against yourself. You can learn without doing that. And you don’t need to hurt any more than you already do.”
She sighed and fit another kiss into her steady rhythm. “Can I help you right now, Mina? Would that be okay?”
It was so dangerous to fall apart like this. Mina knew that. She knew that she’d regret it, probably the next day when she got up and the need to be anywhere else was still there. But she’d allow it, if only for right in that moment, if only because she knew it was safe to do this with Morgan. And while Morgan didn’t make the pain go away, it was somewhat comforting to have someone else there. It made her feel less alone. She could almost believe Morgan, really, if she tried hard enough. If she stopped thinking for too long, stopped listening to the ever present voice in her head, then she could almost believe. But the voice was a bit like the ache. It was always there. It had just been around a bit longer. It sounded a lot like her dad. It sounded a lot like Mina.
“It hurts,” she murmured, and she felt young, younger than she had any right to, younger than she ever had, in saying these words over and over again. She should get up. She should tell Morgan she was okay. She should leave. She should make an escape while she still could. Instead, she said. “Please. For tonight, I-- Please.”
Morgan’s own eyes finally overflowed at hearing Mina’s voice shrink, at hearing her surrender to staying, even for just a night. It didn’t feel as good as she thought it would. But how could anything feel good when Mina was this devastated? “Oh, my love,” she whispered. “Of course. Of course. For as long as you want, even just tonight, I’ve got you.” And so with great care, she scooped her up like the child she still was and carried her out. She did her best not to think about how small and terrible things had become for them, that carrying a frightened girl felt like comfort. She only thought about her next plan (rest and dinner and the right kind of distractions and packing; she hated helping Mina leave her but if she couldn’t stop it, she had to make it good) and the simple fact that in the sunken places their heartbreak had made for them, for once, for a little while, they weren’t alone.
Mina went rigid the second Morgan picked her up, her eyes widening before she forced herself not to flinch, not to react too strongly. In theory, she knew Morgan was strong enough to pick her up. She had picked her up, months ago, in a desperate race against time to get her from the car to the bathtub after the werewolf attack. But it was still strange. Morgan could pick up passed out werewolves to put in the basement and animal carcasses to take to her shed, and it didn’t phase Mina, but the second Morgan picked her up, it took her brain too long to process.
She was still processing that as Morgan ordered food, and still processing it when she put on The Sound of Music, and still processing it as they sat on the couch as the food arrived. Surely Mina ate. Surely she fell asleep. She blinked as it was morning, and she blinked again and they were in her room, packing up some of her clothes. “I’m not… you know I’m not leaving for good, right? I’m not.” But even as she said it, Mina wondered how long it would take her desire to keep moving to make her want to leave town. This was the longest she’d stayed anywhere. Maybe this was a sign that it was time to go. But she didn’t want that. But it might be.
“No,” Morgan admitted quietly. “I don’t. Because I release you from your promise to come back.” She no longer had the strength to be resentful about it, or to conceal the plaintive waver in her voice that underscored her words with please tell me I’m wrong, tell me I don’t have to do this by myself, tell me I’m not losing you too. “I don’t want to be the kind of person who traps you with them against your will. I don’t want you to come just because you made some reckless promise to make me feel better.” But I do want you here. Why do you even have to go? You know it won’t help, so don’t go, please don’t go. “So...I don’t really know anything,” she sniffled. “Here, don’t forget your battery pack. Not a lot of outlets in the woods. And this first aid bag, in case anything else happens…”
She looked around the room but found nothing else to shove into Mina’s backpack that would do any good.
“There is stuff for breakfast,” she added quickly. “You should have a big meal before whatever you’re doing. Or for lunch. I can cook and pack it up for you, if that’s better. And…” And what else? “...Will you tell me to my face, please? When you go today, can you...say goodbye? And call or message or...something if you can if you do decide to...I-I know I haven’t confided much in you about my history, but I’ve lost so many people without a word, without a chance to say goodbye, so...I would appreciate it if you didn’t disappear while my back was turned or anything. It doesn’t make anything better.”
“Morgan…” And Mina didn’t quite know what to do, so she put down the shirt that she was holding and walked over and hugged Morgan, tightly. She didn’t even think about it too hard; she just did it, the action right. “I’m going to come back. I’m not going fully wild, you know. I like camping, really, but I like four walls and somewhere to keep my clothes so they don’t get all wrinkly.” She sighed. “I’m going to come back. I’m not even taking all of my stuff. I might just stay at the little house near Dark Score, make use of the rent money that comes out of my account every month. But I’ll be back, and I’ll be on campus, and I’ll always be around.” She didn’t promise it. She hoped Morgan knew she meant it.
Mina had never known comfort like this, or care, or love. Not like this. This was gentler than anything she ever had, so gentle that most of the time she didn’t know what to do with it. She felt like she’d break it, shatter it, make it to where Morgan wanted nothing to do with her anymore. And she wanted to trust this gentleness, but it was so hard. And she was a coward. She always ran in the end. She always turned her head away in the end. “Breakfast sounds lovely,” she said. “And of course I’ll tell you. Last night was stupid. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be one of those people to you. I’ll let you know before I leave today. I promise. But I’m coming back. I’m telling you now that I’m coming back.” Morgan was one of her people, and she was in short supply of those. She wasn’t going to leave without keeping in touch. She’d promise that, too, if she needed to.
Morgan squeezed her arms around Mina until she could feel the curve of her arms and the sharp ends of her shoulder blades. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t be a crime against one of them.There were no more assurances she could ask for. There were only the last steps of her plan (downstairs for breakfast, get Mina to take some lunch anyway, get her to help with the dishes) and the empty, unclaimed hours that lay beyond them. It was like lights flickering off halfway down a strange hall. You know there’s ground ahead, that’s how halls work, but there’s no certainty in the dark. There’s nothing but hope to keep you from falling.
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Coming Home || Morgan & Deirdre
TIMING: The night of Deirdre’s return
PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Morgan and Deirdre are reunited after a long and difficult time.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
-Mary Oliver, “Coming Home”
CONTAINS: brief references to domestic and emotional abuse, brief reference to internalized homophobia
The truth was a simple thing; it was or it wasn’t. Deirdre was home. There wasn’t a sound to greet her when she entered. Her suitcases did clatter to the hardwood. Morgan did not respond when she called her name, voice echoing off their walls. Deirdre moved through their foyer, their great room, into the backyard. The lights were not on inside the shed. Deirdre loved Morgan. There wasn’t a moment since her plane’s arrival in the country that her voicemail didn’t replay in her head. I was sort of hoping you could tell me when you’re coming back? I realized today I lost the post-it thing it was on and I can’t remember—it didn’t matter, she’d come home days early anyway. Because I need you. I know you have to be there so I’m not asking for you but I need you. I’m not okay and I need you—Deirdre was here.
The door to the shed was ajar, but the interior was dark despite the sun having set hours ago. It smelt like it always did: book musk and gentle florals. Deirdre’s eyes were not adjusted to the dark, but she could recognize the outline of Morgan in any circumstance. She moved slowly; she didn’t want to disturb her as she stared out into the dark. “What are you thinking about,” Deirdre asked quietly, “are you thinking about anything at all right now?” She wanted to hug her; she did not. She loved her; the truth was simple. She wanted to erase anguish; she could not. The truth was painful; they hadn’t spoken properly for weeks.
The truth, for Morgan, was that living alone in her house made her feel like a ghost. She could pass a whole day without moving if she really wanted. She could pass more without making a sound. And if the cats didn’t want her, and sometimes they didn’t, she could stand inside her still, silent body and hear the hum of the house powering a life that only nominally existed. The truth was she could pretend to be fine more easily in her studio. At least she was supposed to be the only one there. Once, she relished her weekly night to stay up in the space til morning and do as she pleased. But that night had since become every night, and though she was afraid to admit it, the truth was Morgan had lost the thread of giving time structure a while ago.
The truth was the only thing easier than pretending to be fine was pretending to be nowhere. After the house emptied, Morgan became better at it than she had ever been. Sometimes she didn’t even have to put much thought into it at all.
Tonight, for instance, she was reading and then she was looking out at the dark lawn and the empty pool and then she wasn’t. Like that moment of emptiness right before sleep, Morgan hovered in absence. She didn’t see the lights of the taxi that delivered Deirdre home, or hear her empty the space. She heard her voice only dimly, and blinked out of her trance, thinking it might have been one of the cats whining for attention.
Her eyes found Deirdre as if compelled, but she only stared with fascinated confusion. She spent a lot of her time en route to nowhere imagining Deirdre in the room with her. Sometimes she would set her phone down on the stool opposite her and play the few voicemails she had collected to help, so the sound would be coming from the right place even if it crackled with distance. But her imaginings didn’t usually come by surprise or look this detailed. This Deirdre’s hair was limp, her clothes were wrinkled with travel, and her expression wasn’t the dreamy look of happiness Morgan missed above all. It was sadder than that. So Morgan was either getting disturbingly good at this, or-- “A-are you here?” She whispered at last, still uncertain. Her hand rose to her love’s face, trembling in mid-air. “Are you really here? Deirdre?”
“I am. I am. Of course I am.” Deirdre’s answer was immediate, spilled from her lips like dirt shoveled over grave. She could fill it all up with her assurance. She could fill a cemetery. She met her love’s trembling hand and pressed it against her flushed cheek, hot from the sun and the travel and the worry. But withstanding it all, she melted only then, in Morgan’s shed. “I love you,” she mumbled, because she hadn’t said it to her in so long, “I love you so much.” And not knowing how to hold back a moment longer, she pulled Morgan into her arms and held her tight and close. One might have thought their reunion to be dramatic, but Deirdre didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, even one day apart was too much, and those weren’t bookended with vulnerable voicemails. I need you, the sound echoed in her head. I need you. If only she knew how to check her voicemail earlier.
“I’m sorry.” She felt it only right to apologize then, trailing kisses down the side of Morgan’s face. “I would’ve come back sooner; I would’ve. I missed you, and I thought--” It was so silly now, to even think Morgan must have hated her. But she had, and she did, and she booked her early flight silently and without update. “But I’m here now.” Deirdre moved her head back, holding Morgan’s face in her hands. Her bright blue eyes deserved to catch the sun, but they were just as beautiful finding the specks of moonlight that drifted into the shed. “I missed you.”
Morgan touched Deirdre’s cheek and every feeling she’d put to sleep came awake. “Deirdre,” she said, reverent and choked with tears. “Deirdre…” She fell against her love, crying and gaping insensibly. She pressed her palms on her back, her head, her shoulders, her hair, her arms, anything she could sense by the handful. Deirdre was real and here and holding her and loving her.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said through her tears. “I didn’t mean to make you think I was mad when I let your calls go to voicemail, I wasn’t mad, I--” She sobbed and pressed her cheek to Deirdre so she could sense how solid she was in as many places at once. “I just wanted to hear your voice. I hated spending an hour trying to parse out two sentences from you from that awful reception and our calls dropping as soon as I understood something and having to redial and I wanted to feel like you were talking to me and I missed your voice. I tried calling you to explain, but then I couldn’t even connect and--it wasn’t to hurt you, I never wanted it to hurt you, I’m so sorry, I just missed you so much.” She sobbed again and pressed them together until she felt the pressure of Deirdre’s chest firm against her own.
“Will you hold me?” She asked in a small voice. “Can we turn on a light and go to the daybed and--will you? Please?”
“Well, I know that now,” Deirdre laughed. For the first time since she’d gone, the sound bubbled out of her free and happy. As Morgan’s hands pressed firm to feel her realness, Deirdre’s own did the same. Her body was quick to decide that the real Morgan was far superior to the make-shift pillow bundle she held in the night. Her retreat was supposed to go on for another week, but she didn’t care. “I heard your voicemails. I had to ask someone to show me how, and then I forgot my passcode and I had to call the phone humans but…” she breathed in, pulling Morgan closer to her. “...but I know now. And it’s okay.”
To show just how okay it was, Deirdre cackled again, filled with warmth. She crouched down just enough to pick Morgan up in her arms, spinning her twice for good measure and only twice to avoid knocking anything over. She pressed her lips against her neck, laughing and kissing and biting. She found a light switch with great difficulty, but no less delight, and then the daybed much easier. Morgan went down first, and with a grin, Deirdre crawled on top. With a moment to adjust, she was holding Morgan as if they hadn’t spent a single moment apart. “Did you want to talk about it?” She asked quietly, angling her shoulders so she could look at Morgan. “Do you want to hear about New Zealand? Or should I regale you with stories of just how much I missed you?” Reaching down, she brushed Morgan’s hair behind her ears. Her lips followed the motion, nipping at her lobe as she buried her face there; tangled together.
“I wished you’d asked for me,” she mumbled, “I know we’ve never really used those promises; but I wish you had. I would’ve come sooner. I should’ve.”
For all the time they spent together, Morgan’s imagination wasn’t talented enough to capture the sound of Deirdre’s laughter in the dark. She held on that much tighter when she heard it, ear pressed down to hear its echo in her chest. When was the last time Morgan had laughed without trying to offset how miserable she was? She couldn’t remember, but she whispered Deirdre’s name into her neck as a prayer that she would get to find out soon.
Morgan shut her eyes against the bright light and the spinning room and opened them only so she could watch Deirdre (the very real Deirdre who loved and wasn’t even mad about the voicemail thing and wanted to be back sooner and knew just how to touch her) climb beside her and wrap her up the way she liked best. For a few seconds she only stared, still crying with awe and relief.
“You’re so beautiful,” she marvelled. “I never knew anyone could be so beautiful as you are when you’re happy…” She touched her fingertips to Deirdre’s sun-reddened cheek. She was all freckles and flush from being in the sun for so long, and there was a wildness to her travel hair that felt different, but these only made the mischievous curl of her smile and softness of her eyes, so gentle they were almost frightening, stand out. She had changed so much and not at all. And then Deirdre was in her ear, against her neck, Deirdre sprawled across her face and it might have been overwhelming if Morgan’s ache for her wasn’t so indiscriminately greedy.
“No. Don’t wish to be back sooner. You wanted to go and I told you that you should and they’re the only fae you’re really close to and after everything you’ve lost it means so much that you can be your real self with them without having to justify the choices that have made you so much freer…” Morgan pressed a firm kiss to Deirdre’s temple, then more down the side of her face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it together. I didn’t want you to leave or worry. I wanted you to be able to have this.”
She pulled on Deirdre so she could kiss her lips three times over, tender with longing and apology. Then she settled back against her chest and latched onto her tight. “Tell me about New Zealand. Or tell me anything. I don’t care where you start, I just miss you telling me things.”
At mention of her trip, how good it was supposed to be for her and how she had wanted to go, Deirdre tensed. The truth sat plainly at the edge of her tongue; complicated in its confession. Selfishly, she wanted to be home. They were not fae she was particularly close to; she was close to Sundew, who was close to them, who had chosen to stay back. And without the outspoken pixie, she seemed to forget how to talk. And then she thought about how stupid and silly that was. And then she thought about how stupid and silly she was. And then one night sneaking away from the group turned into two, three, all of them. And then it just felt like the thing to do. And she didn’t much know who her real self was, and she didn’t like thinking about it. And they didn’t know, not really, what her murdering was like. And Sally the spriggan seemed to think the whole duty thing was outdated and weird and Deirdre never wanted to mention it again. And why wasn’t she murdering in the first place? Wasn’t this a weird thing to do? Why abstain from something that didn’t matter? And was being ‘good’ really achievable for her? And what if she liked being alone anyway? And what if the world didn’t care about her? And when she got lost one day in the wilderness, before coming back late, no one even seemed to notice. And she felt like a child again, sitting at the edge of the fae, watching them. And she didn’t have wings, and maybe they really didn’t like her because she didn’t have them. And sometimes they mingled with humans, and she didn’t like doing that, and maybe they didn’t like her because she didn’t like doing that. And she felt like a child. And she hated feeling like a child. And—
Deirdre gasped, forcing air into her lungs. She pulled back and stared up at the shed’s wooden ceiling. She didn’t want to think about that, she wanted to look at Morgan and be with Morgan and talk to Morgan. And so, she didn’t mention it. “New Zealand was beautiful. We got to go all over, which was nice. There was so much green, and these beautiful mountains, and I wish you could’ve seen it.” Deirdre paused, settled enough to look at Morgan again. “I missed you. I got to see cows and I thought about that time I took you out to that farm; how maybe in retrospect that was more of a gift to me than to you. We saw The Shire, and I felt like a real human tourist about the ordeal. But it reminded me of Ireland—the aos sí near the estate—even as Sally got into an argument about how she thought the hobbits were offensive and that J. R. R. Tolkien owed all spriggans some royalties. I thought about what you might think when you saw it, what you might say to Sally. I thought about what you might think if you could see the aos sí.” She paused again to kiss Morgan, reveling in the fact that she could. She had wanted to; for weeks she dreamed of the moment she could again. Dreaming of Morgan never was as good as having her here.
“I felt homesick. But when I tried to think of what home that was, Ireland kept coming to mind. It made me feel wrong. I hated how much my body had forgotten what our home felt like; all it could remember was the farm. I wanted to tell you about it, I wished I could’ve heard you tell me it was okay. Or what the cats were doing. Or how my flowers were growing. If I could just hear you, talk to you, I felt like my mind would’ve been set at ease. But I couldn’t. And so it was all farms and memories in my head.” Deirdre sighed, looking back to the ceiling for whatever guidance the woodgrain offered. “You don’t have to apologize. You shouldn’t apologize, not when I was thinking the same thing. You seemed really happy for me, to be gone and to enjoy myself, and I knew I couldn’t just ask you to come to New Zealand, even if I wanted you there.” And then back to Morgan, to soft blue eyes that gave everything she ever wanted. “This will sound silly, but every time I saw a particularly beautiful tree or lake or flower—there are these gorgeous lupines that are actually invasive—it would make me think of you. If that’s because you’re that beautiful–more beautiful–or because I wanted you to see them too, or because I happen to just like spending time with you...I’m not sure. But I missed you, and I really am not fond of not being able to talk to you; we’ve done enough of that.”
Morgan listened, her face growing wet and more adoring with each word. To hear Deirdre talk, she had been to another plane of existence. There was longing, yes, but so much room for thoughts to grow, so much life, so much. The world Deirdre had left for seemed ever expansive. Beyond another hill was another memory. Fresh wishes grew in a clearing just ahead. Flowers trailed into meadows where hope grew wild.
Morgan reached up to touch Deirdre’s cheek and brush back her hair. What little resolve she had was crumbling and her breath trembled and hitched quietly as she searched for something to say. You should have made me. You should have asked for me, so I’d have to. It would’ve been so much better for everyone if you made me. She pulled herself back into the crook of Deirdre’s neck and stifled her sobs against her shoulder. She was trying, she really was, but the only words she could find were of regret and shame and she didn’t want to give that to Deirdre as a welcome home present. She wanted, more than anything, to be worth coming home to and worth keeping. She wanted to be laying Deirdre down in their bed and taking charge of her comfort. How many times had she imagined what she would do? The meals she would make? The sex they would have? The good she would show her? But everything in Morgan’s world had withered and broken, even most of Deirdre’s flowers. There was nothing to be proud of, nothing to share. Deirdre had come all this way to a mess she didn’t deserve, because Morgan couldn’t keep her shit together for a few weeks.
“Of course it’s okay,” she squeaked. “It’s always okay. If you want…” If you want to go there when it’s safe, you should. You should follow your instincts and do what makes you happy, was what she wanted to say. But she wasn’t selfless enough to suggest Deirdre leave again so soon. Only a sob came out when she tried. “Whatever you want, whatever you feel, it’s okay.” She clung tighter, shivering as her body begged her to surrender to Deirdre’s affection. For the first time in so long, she was held, she was loved, she was at home. It was everything she had ached and cried for and when Deirdre looked at her, there was no question of whether or not it was real or lasting. And yet.
“I want to see them. All those things. If you took pictures. I wish I’d been there too…”
Perhaps the truth wasn’t so simple. Deirdre could feel it in Morgan’s tears, wet against her wrinkled clothing. And her own truth, held still on her tongue. Morgan’s pain was not an ordinary loneliness, and Deirdre’s was not either. Neither of them moved to confess, but Deirdre arms tightened their grip around Morgan. Some things were simple, she conceded. That she loved Morgan. That she truly had missed her. That New Zealand had been beautiful and that parts of her did miss Ireland. She was happy to be back and would readily explain so. But her agony, its truth, was too shameful. Hadn’t she learned already that all truth was safe with Morgan? Didn’t she know Morgan never judged her; hurt her? Wasn’t this a game they’d played a hundred times? Isn’t it unfair? Yet, Deirdre, finally suspecting she might be an over-thinker, had over-thought her confession already. It wouldn’t leave her now until her mind had settled, and in truth, she felt it more right to make up for lost time than to start spilling her fears. “Thank you…” she mumbled along to Morgan’s reassurance, chasing each phrase with a kiss, “thank you.”
She lifted herself from the bed, or tried to. Their legs were tangled together, and their arms glued to the other. Deirdre laughed, realizing quickly that if she wanted to go anywhere, Morgan would be coming with her. And all the better, anyway. She wouldn’t want to suffer another moment apart. “I did take pictures. On the bigger camera, you’ll have to come in to see them. And I have gifts! Mostly bones, but bones are the best gift.” Deirdre leaned down and kissed Morgan again, and again, and decided she’d stop at five before she lost her thought entirely. “I love you,” she whispered with reverence, “and I’m going to move so I can carry you inside, alright? Is it okay to carry you, my love?” And with a whimper, either from herself or Morgan, an involuntary sound on both parts, Deirdre untangled herself quickly. The two of them were practiced in this sort of maneuvering, even with the weeks apart, and so Morgan was in her arms quickly again and they were out the shed. As they moved, Deirdre’s eyes finally took in the house.
The pool was empty. This was not so strange; Mina wasn’t always swimming around in there. The pool was clean. That was strange. Deirdre stepped into their house, flopping them both down on the couch with a laugh. She kissed her girlfriend again, and again, and paused only to lift her head up and run her fingers through her hair as it had fallen in front of her face. Then she looked around again. The house was clean. This was not so strange; they didn’t exactly live in squalor. The house was empty. This was strange. Their house was occupied by four women. It was impossible to have an empty home—not that the furniture was gone, if someone had stolen that, she’d have noticed sooner. But that the life was. And Deirdre was sensitive to such a sight, having lived in this house in such a state originally. She knew what it meant to have a house that wasn’t lived in. But their home wasn’t like that.
Deirdre loved to see some book on the table, to know that was what Morgan was reading. Some cup someone had forgotten to put away. Pieces of popcorn lost on the rug from the night before. A bag. A wet footprint. Footsteps in another room. A sock one of the cats had stolen. Jackets. Blankets. Scarves. Lip balm scattered around. Papers about tests. The TV remote always in a new place. Cat toys littered on the floor. Their house, in this way, was empty.
“Morgue…” Deirdre blinked, slowly shifting her attention back to her love. “....are Bex and Mina out?” Perhaps they had gone on a vacation of their own. It was summer, after all. She decided she would think nothing of it, and then...
As soon as Deirdre went quiet, Morgan knew she had begun to figure things out. Of course she had. She was Deirdre, and this was their home, and the life they had in it was supposed to be so full and beautiful and what Morgan had left her to come back to was only its shell. She didn’t respond to the question at first, just stared sadly at Deirdre’s shirt. She couldn’t bear to watch her face while she explained.
“...No,” she said, her voice wavering just above a whisper. “A couple of days after you left, Bex decided to go back to her parents. I-I did...I did try to convince her not to, but she didn’t feel safe and I couldn’t…” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “And M-mina didn’t want to stay after that, so she’s gone too.” And that wasn’t even the whole story. Morgan went quiet, crying silently, and wondered if she would really make Deirdre pry everything out of her one piece at a time. Was she that cowardly and stubborn, like some willful child trying to escape punishment? The thought brought Ruth Beck’s voice to Morgan’s ears and she whimpered. No. She would not do that. So she took a deep breath and tried her best to come clean.
“...I didn’t mean to ruin it,” she prefaced. But she never meant to. That was the problem. “I should’ve checked on Mina sooner, I should’ve tried to bring her in with me after Bex was gone but I felt like I couldn’t even stand and I just didn’t and then it was too late and she was off getting hurt somewhere. And later I met that girl again, that slayer, and I pushed her into a random interdimensional portal because I hated how she talked to me, how she looked at me and everyone like me, and she wouldn’t answer any of my questions and maybe I just wanted to be able to hurt someone back. But of course she found her way out and the only reason she didn’t hurt me when she tracked me down again was that Bex happened to be around and made herself into a body shield.” She smiled bitterly. That day had been so horrible, but she’d give a lot to go back to it. She’d had more hope then.
“But of course Bex’s mother, Odell, figured things out, that I’d been messaging her, trying to convince her to do anything else but stay there. Maybe she figured out that Bex had gone out of her way to protect me from my own stupid choices too. And so Odell shrank the department budget so there’s no TA or adjunct offices and me and my contract are now under re-evaluation. She was waiting for me in my shitty boxed up office to share the good news and she told me how much she wanted to break Bex and how powerful she was and when I heard that I--pinned her down on my old desk and broke both of her hands in several places because I thought if she couldn’t use them…” Morgan hung her head completely, the weight of her reckless stupidity was so much, she couldn’t risk seeing Deirdre’s face on accident. She couldn’t bear her disappointment and she didn’t feel like she deserved her grace.
“But Bex has a two parent household, so when her father came home, she was hurt worse than ever, to punish her for what I did, and I don’t know how much she will ever forgive me for it. Not when I spent the weekend yelling at her fake boyfriend, who also hates himself and is so far back in the closet he’s probably found Narnia. I probably just made them more excited to destroy themselves and each other in socially acceptable ways. And since hurting Bex isn’t enough on its own, Odell has all the butcheries in the county scared for their lives if they sell me any brains, so now I’m roughing it in the woods with the other wild animals and…” She shrugged. She had to be extra careful. She had to make meals stretch without becoming a danger to anyone. She had to do everything to make sure she only lost control once. She’d only managed to come back from the last time by more absurd luck she didn’t deserve.
“Sundew’s troop has been progressing really well with reading, but at some point they started sending out phishing emails for favors and promises, and they bound Erin into loaning them her cat, and it…” Stars, it was so stupid now. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “It was for some special secret pixie festival and it seemed really important. So I used my favor with them to get a promise that they’d take care of her and I was clear and detailed and I did try to think of everything, but the cat...I didn’t say enough about how they should get the cat home. And she got hit by something on the road and they let it happen and she died. Erin hasn’t really spoken to me since, so. There goes that too. I broke a lot of our things because I didn’t know what else to do and it’s all patched or replaced but I did it even though I said I wouldn’t and I know it doesn’t really do anything, I couldn’t even keep up with all of the flowers. You took such good care of them and I couldn’t remember even though I have so much time…”
Morgan pressed her palms over her eyes. Then she peeled them away and forced herself to look into Deirdre’s face. It was the bare minimum of respect she deserved. Her body screamed at her to turn away, to curl up and hide because it was better if she did it to herself, but she held still, trembling. As she did, Morgan’s voice shrank, meeker and more ashamed as she went on. “I know I should’ve done better. Everything just fell apart. I couldn’t hold onto it and I couldn’t fix it and I kept trying, but I was trying wrong and when I wasn’t doing that I was just here surrounded by nothing and I--” Her face crumpled again. “I’ve been so alone,” she sobbed. “I don’t know how to do it anymore, I’ve been alone for so long, I should know how to deal with it, I’ve done it so many times, I should, but I don’t have that, I lost it. I never wanted you to come back to this when you’re supposed to be happy and free and working on yourself and being with your people instead of just me all the time. I wanted to make things good when you came back, but I’m just so alone...”
“My love…” Deirdre’s voice carried thinly in the air, dispersed quickly. She wanted to tell Morgan to stop, slow down, breathe, let them get comfortable, but as she understood Morgan’s bravery in sharing it all at once, her protests were quickly replaced with rapt attention. A lot had happened in her absence, and by the time Morgan finished, she wasn’t even sure she understood it all. But this time, her voice was steady, “My love…” Her hands went to Morgan’s face first, trying to wipe tears away and undo the wrinkle of her brow. She pressed her lips to her forehead, whispering softly, “you’re not alone now.” Carefully, she pulled herself flush against Morgan, holding her as tight as their current positions would allow. “It’ll be okay. We’ll make it okay…”
It was no secret that Deirdre and Morgan’s emotions worked in tandem; Deirdre hurt as Morgan did. To transmute their pain, the two of them needed to push together. “First,” she pulled back, just enough to look at Morgan. In apology for the parting, she kissed her, and pressed their foreheads firmly together--enough to leave a red mark on hers from the pressure and a buzz against Morgan’s. “First, I love you. I love you and I don’t want you to feel guilty about the flowers or how you feel. Never, okay?” Deirdre paused, wanting her first point to sink before she moved on. She spoke with warmth; slow and measured. She spoke one thing at a time, one moment at a time, waiting for confirmation after each sentence. “I know this isn’t what you wanted and to know you intended for things to be well is enough for me, just as I hope you know that I would never mind if they weren’t. Second, there is no right way to try. I know it feels like there should be, I know your life has been filled with so many things that have felt like trying the wrong way but...but you try and I love that about you, and I don’t think there is a wrong way to try--a wrong way to wish for the best. You have been trying to do good, and that itself counts, it counts to me. And it's not wrong. It wasn’t wrong. It can’t be wrong. You never meant for things to turn out so poorly, you said that yourself, and it isn’t your fault they have. I’m sure you can tell me all about things you should have done, but perhaps I should have stayed in Ireland. Perhaps I should have known better than to fall in love with a human.”
She shifted, kissing Morgan again and again and trailing affection down to the crook of her neck before she lifted her head again and held Morgan’s in her hands. “Third, on our walks, we can start looking for brains together. I still have that portable cooler from when I used to gather them for you, and maybe most of them will be mushy by the time we get to them but…” Deirdre sighed, shaking her head. She could imagine the kind of person Odell was, her own mother was shockingly similar, but everything seemed to pale in reality. “...but you shouldn’t have to worry about food. If you want me to, I can make sure of it. Whatever Odell said to the butcheries, there’s a way around it, even if I have to promise-bind all of them myself. The same goes with your job but...but we can figure this out later, okay? When you’re ready, the two of us can put our heads together and come up with a plan. And we’ll try--together, not alone. Not anymore.” Deirdre dropped her hands. “All of it. Erin, Mina, the slayer...Bex’s….gay boyfriend…” That one needed more explanation. “...You’re not alone anymore. You’re not alone right now. And you don’t need to do anything by yourself, okay? And fourth--and I swear this is the last thing--my love, you are the strongest person I know. You are the bravest and the most amazing and--” Deirdre laughed, tumbling over herself in effusive adjectives, “--and thank you, for telling me all this. I didn’t think you’d want to say it all at once, but I’m glad you did. Every day we’re together, you astonish me more and more. My strong, brave and beautiful Morgan--” She kissed her once, smiling too wide to try for another. “--I love you so very dearly. You’ll have to tell me what you’re thinking now, okay? What do you want to do?”
Deirdre spoke and Deirdre kissed and there was no such thing as forgiveness, only grace and kindness for Morgan. She collapsed in her arms, breaking with sobs she didn’t know she’d been holding in. She didn’t feel strong. She felt like her life was ashes around her. She felt like she’d trade her regrowable body for wounds she could have someone explain and show her how to treat. Like she never should have tried at all, like she never should have come here. What was she, that she could ruin everything so quickly? Everyone said it was her, so they had to be at least a little right, if they weren’t right altogether.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I know you’re not mad, I know you want to help, but you shouldn’t have to and I didn’t want any of this and I’m sorry I didn’t know how to stop it. I wanted to make it good so bad and I didn’t, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” She broke off again, shrinking in Deirdre’s arms so she could hide in there forever.
Eventually her emotions spent themselves into quieter gasps and she turned her energy instead to clutching Deirdre tight to make sure this was real and she wasn’t in the middle of some mental break. And eventually, she remembered something about being asked what she wanted. It felt like a trick question. Morgan hadn’t asked it of herself in a while, and most of what she really wanted wasn’t hers to have. She tried to still her mind and sift for the answer. What did she want?
“You,” she croaked in a small voice. “And I--” She shifted to look up at her and shook her head with disbelief. Nothing in her imagination could come close to the look on her face, so open and adoring it made her shrink with shame. (Why her? After all this? Why did she not have even a little disappointment?) “I want to do something for you or give you something. Give me something to do and I’ll get it right, e-even something hard, or stupidly simple, I don’t know, anything. I want to be with you but nothing about you being here feels real yet and maybe if I can just do one stupid thing right, it’ll make sense and I can rest with you.”
“Well, I know that. But I love you, and I care about you and of course that means I want to help. You might not need me to at all, but it means I would like to, and I would—readily. Even if ‘help’ is just holding you.” Deirdre smiled, knowing that in most cases, Morgan had things figured out for herself before Deirdre could even think of a good plan. Still, helping wasn’t really about being right. If it was Morgan, she’d take being wrong any day. “You want to do something for me?” Deirdre nodded very seriously, normally she might’ve chuckled—it was a very Morgan thing to ask for. But it made complete sense to her, she wanted to feel useful to someone she cared about, to know she could be again. And normally, Deirdre might’ve had a dozen and two arguments about how she didn’t need to give her anything, and how she really couldn’t think of anything anyway, but all usual remarks or objections were silent. Deirdre perked up and looked around; her suitcase was too far away for her to bring without getting up again, and all that was in there for them anyway was skeletons to articulate, which they also couldn’t do without shifting themselves. The house was immaculate and Deirdre wasn’t very hungry.
Then, in looking about, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked tired, her face seemed thinner and her eyes sat deeper inside her skull. It made sense for a woman who hadn’t done much at all to care for herself in a month’s time. Her fingers rose up to her head, tangling in her messy hair, lopsided from travel and heat. It had grown longer and now measured past her chest. “You could braid my hair,” she looked at Morgan, eyes wide with the excitement of a good idea. “I mean, look at it! It’s a real mess. Certainly in need of some help. A nice style would do it some good.” She grinned wider, adjusting herself and offering to twist around if Morgan thought the idea was sound.
Morgan had waited, worried, in case Deirdre denied her with that gentle, overwhelming kindness she didn’t always know what to do with. But then she answered, and Morgan’s heart leapt as if it had been shocked back to life. Her wet blue eyes lit with excitement that matched Deirdre’s own and she scrambled to sit up. “Yes!” She said. “Yes, I can do that. I mean, you’re not a mess, you’ve just been traveling for two or three days and you’re probably tired, but you’re beautiful, always, and I missed your face so much, I can’t believe you’re really looking at me again and yes, I’ll do your hair…” She ran her hands over Deirdre’s face, cradling it so carefully, as though it might break beneath her touch.
Now that she was letting herself look at Deirdre without fear or disbelief, she could see the harder lines in her cheeks and the thick purple circle under her eyes. “My poor love,” she whispered. She kissed each eyelid and then each temple, finally brave enough to give affection feely. “If I do something you don’t like, you’ll tell me right?” She murmured against her skin. “With anything? I know you probably won’t mind your hair, but maybe I’ll pull too hard or you don’t want to be touched somewhere anymore, or I’ll say something weird.” She kissed up into Deirdre’s hairline and started finger combing through the fine, silky mess. “I don’t talk to people very much out loud. Maybe I’ve forgotten how. So if I say something, maybe it’s just that I don't know better anymore, but I will if you tell me.” She kissed further, up to the top of Deirdre’s head where she brought her cheek down to rest. “I want to be good for you.” She stayed there for a few seconds, letting the variations in texture on Deirdre’s body convince her a little more. This was happening, and she could earn it.
The moment passed and Morgan straightened up and situated herself behind her love and started finger-combing and sectioning in earnest. “I missed you so much, I started telling people stories about you. Just the good ones. It always seems like the best way to explain how much I love you without sounding like a bad movie.” A sidelong braid might be nice, since Deirdre usually moved so much. “Do you want to tell me some more now, from your trip? I know I seem--” She couldn’t find the word, but she knew the sunken, lonely feeling well enough. “But I feel better already, and I want to know all of it. From the looks of you, there was a lot more roughing it than I thought there would be.”
“My dear, sweet, darling Morgue--” Deirdre smiled wide, bright-eyed and body relaxed into Morgan’s grip. Her voice took up a familiar teasing inflection, while her lips turned lopsided in their mischief. She felt like herself again, and her love was to thank. “While I find it absolutely impossible that you’ll do something I won’t like; I will. With anything. Because I love you, so very much, and I can’t help but to be honest. If honesty is loving you, and…” Her words dissolved when Morgan kissed her, she tried to start up her grand monologue again only to be lost under more affection. “I want to be good for you too,” she mumbled, “I love you.” It occurred to her, in a flicker, that she wasn’t being honest. In another, that she didn’t really know what part to confess; how to confess.
Deirdre adjusted herself, humming under Morgan’s touch. It only took a moment for her to start squirming--she wanted to be closer to Morgan, she wasn’t close enough. “I told people stories about you too. You were all I could talk about, somedays. I could tell the others were getting sick of it, but were too polite to ask me to stop but I just--I just wanted someone to know how much I loved you, and I missed you, and about the good that you put into my life and sometimes it feels like the only good and it really started to feel like the only--” Deirdre shifted again, twisting around to kiss Morgan properly. With a smile, she apologized and moved back into place. “I, um, the trip was,” Deirdre fidgeted, picking cat hair off her shorts. “It was--well, I already told you about the trees. And the water was, uh…” She figured she might have been better at discussing her feelings by now, but it often still felt like she was ripping her heart out--hearts weren’t made to be outside the bodies.
“Well,” Deirdre swallowed. Morgan had been so brave for her, she was due the same in return. And she had said a great deal about honesty and thought well about truth, and both those things ought to be respected. “It didn’t really go so well, actually.” She felt alone. She felt lost. She felt disagreeable to the world. She had begun to imagine herself like a stain. And in her agony, she had turned somewhere. To someone. To home. “I’m not sure what to make of it yet…” Deirdre trailed off, her head slumped involuntarily. “...but I think--well, I think I’ve got it figured out; what I need to do. So it’s fine. In the end, it’ll be okay…” Stains had a terrible way about them, spreading if they weren’t wiped up quick enough. So, she was wiping. “It’s just--”
She wouldn’t say it, and she wasn’t sure how many seconds passed in silence as she stared at her fingernails, picking imaginary dirt out.
Morgan was delirious with relief as she pulled her fingers through Deirdre’s long hair and started working. She reveled in the way her blue-tinted hands looked combing through, caressing her love’s scalp just as much as she was folding her hair into a loose french fishtail. But she wasn’t so heady that she didn’t catch the faltering in Deirdre’s words. Her statements were flat and vague and simple. And then, as she peered over to gather hair by Deirdre’s ear, she saw her hands, picking and wiping. Something was wrong. Something was very very wrong. Or Deirdre thought there was and sometimes Deirdre’s worries were nothing at all. And sometimes they involved iron, blood, and grief.
“Babe…?” Morgan asked, her voice small in the silence. Was the world crumbling again. Was this moment of rest some kind of lie? Was Deirdre leaving again after all? Had she killed someone or bargained something foolish with someone? Given something? Promised something? She’d said ‘need’ to do and maybe that was her duty and maybe that was self-care. Everything good and terrifying was possible until she explained.
Morgan slumped against Deirdre’s back and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry the trip was bad,” she mumbled against her shoulder. “Please tell me the rest. It scares me when you don’t. And I love you, and I know I didn’t take care of our home, but whatever this is, I want to start figuring out how to carry it now. I can take it, okay? Please tell me what you’re hiding. I’m here and I love you and I want it. Please, okay?”
“Do you love me?” Deirdre blurted, suddenly feeling very silly and stupid to even ask. Morgan just said she did, she had no reason to question it. She had been feeling a lot of silly and stupid. She flattened her palms out on her legs, and started to smooth imaginary wrinkles. “I don’t mean--it’s just--” She could hear the way her voice turned small and soft. Diminished. She winced at herself, sighing as she leaned against Morgan. She lifted her hands and found Morgan’s arms, smoothing the pretend wrinkles there instead. “You have your shed. And you teach the pixies and I...I don’t have much of anything, do I?” She closed her eyes.
“At first, I think I must’ve been jealous. I thought it was strange the way people walked around the house to get to your shed. Your...visitors. Your friends. Around the house, like it wasn’t there, wasn’t something to think about. And I could see them through the windows and I thought...well, it felt like it must’ve meant something about myself. Something to walk around. Forget. And the hobbies never worked out. And the group--you see, the thing about the group is--” Is that everything she thought was silly and stupid, wasn’t it? She wanted to stop speaking now, but she’d already started, and couldn’t think of a way to wipe the stain of her feelings up. It had spread where Morgan could see it. “I thought it must’ve meant something about me, how hard I found the whole thing to be. And they’d been at it for a while, the same few people. And I didn’t know how to…” Deirdre opened her eyes and moonlight greeted her. “...I wonder where my place is, in this world. I don’t know. And I did--well, I--” she sighed, shaking her head. “Can I tell you about it later? I just need, I need a--I don’t even know what it is yet. But I want to know, before I say anything. I need to know.”
Morgan pressed her face firmly into Deirdre’s back, grateful that she couldn’t see just how scared she was. It was something bad. Something desperate. She didn’t know what. Was Deirdre only here for a few days? Was she leaving her for Ireland, after all this time? Was she giving up on their life? Was she going to go looking for purpose at the sharp end of a knife? Morgan didn’t know. That was the thing. If she didn’t know, the only thing worse than the horrible possibilities she imagined were the possibilities she couldn’t. Morgan took a deep breath. Then another, when that one came out wet and slurping and awful and sad and stars, Deirdre would never tell her if Morgan looked like she was about to shatter, would she? Another breath.
“I love you,” she said. “I love you like not being able to be in our room without you, because it feels wrong. I love you like reading your letters and remembering how I felt reading them the first time. I love you like playing our favorite songs and singing them and feeling happy and sad at the same time because they remind me of us but you aren’t here to sing them with me. I love you like looking at your pictures over and over, so I can imagine your face better when I miss you too much and I don’t want to be alone anymore.” She shifted, and turned Deirdre’s face gently to meet hers. “I love you like….the future isn’t an empty void anymore, it’s you, and it’s quiet, and it’s good. I love you like you’re a part of me. You’re in me and you make everything better and more worthwhile.” She kissed her before her resolve collapsed again. If they were close, if they closed their eyes, neither of them would have to know how frail Morgan’s grasp on herself was. So of course she kissed her again, whispering, “I love you so very much, Deirdre.” Then she pressed their heads together as Deirdre had done only a little while ago. “Please tell me. I’m already scared and my brain literally never shuts off anymore. Whatever you did, whatever’s about to happen, please. It won’t be better later. Please. Please. I don’t think I have it in me to yell or be mad or whatever you’re afraid I’ll do. So please…”
Deirdre was crying. She hadn’t meant to, and her mind bubbled over with thoughts about stains and wiping and the echoed remainder of her mother. “I-I called my mother,” she confessed all at once, “it didn’t--I don’t know how. But I was so--I wanted her to help me. So I called her. And I flew to Ireland before I came back here. And I told her about--she figured out--she knows about you. And she--the thing is, she didn’t say anything. I thought she would say something. But she just started praying, and then she got up, and then she left. And she didn’t say anything about it. I thought she’d yell, or she’d hurt me again but she didn’t. And I don’t know--” Deirdre’s head fell into Morgan’s neck, where she sobbed and shook, unsure of why she was doing either. “I am trying to fit, Morgan! I am trying to belong in the world, I am trying to prove I deserve to. And I can’t--I just wanted her to be a mother. She’s always--she always has something to say. Even if it’s not right. But she didn’t say anything! And I don’t know if she’s mad, or if she’s going to come here and--” Deirdre choked. “--I don’t know what to do. About myself. About her. About anything. And you--and you--” Deirdre looked up. “You’ve been having such a hard time too and you’re always so good at--it’s just that--you have your shed, Morgan. And I have...And I…” Her sentence was lost again, offered up to more crying. She dissolved against Morgan finally, having thought her strength was in the denial of truth. Having believed truth to be simple.
“Oh….” Morgan whispered. “Okay. Okay. It’s okay.” She leaned them back against the couch so now it was Deirdre half in her lap and she steadying their existence. Stars, Morgan was tired. Whenever she imagined Deirdre coming back, she was carried, comforted, soothed and wrapped up in an existence separate from all her pain. She turned to slime on their bed and Deirdre laughed and said it was alright. But this was not her imagination. Deirdre was lost and breaking in her arms and at some point she would need Morgan to say something besides, it’s okay. She needed Morgan Beck, not Morgan’s shell.
“It’s okay,” Morgan crooned, combing through her love’s hair again. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts. But it’s okay. You can be like this…” She was so tired. She couldn’t remember the last time she rested. Only her moments of being nowhere. If she wasn’t careful, she might do it now. She couldn’t wrap her head around the next ten minutes, much less the hour, the rest of the night, the future. What could she offer that would be enough when Deirdre was this scared and lost? What was left of her after everything she’d gotten wrong?
Morgan breathed and counted. In, hold, out. Again. In, hold, out. Again. She pressed her lips to Deirdre’s forehead, then down the side of her face.”You’re just learning. It’s hard when you’re learning and no one’s shown you how. You’re not doing anything wrong, it’s just hard.” She wiped her love’s cheek and kept her fingers there, thumbing the familiar lines. “We can come up with a plan and some ideas, so you don’t feel so aimless while you’re figuring out what’s right for you. But we don’t have to do it right now, if you don’t want to. We can go to our room and crawl into bed and love each other first, if you’d rather. But I won’t leave you like this on your own.” She gripped whatever was left inside her soul and tilted Deirdre’s face up to meet her own, which was suddenly soft and certain beneath her sticky tears. “My dearest love, when will you accept that you don’t have to hurt by yourself anymore?” And she smiled, warm with her secret prayers for strength.
Deirdre had longed to hear those two words spoken by anyone but the shadows of her mind, and she cried to know them finally, said by a woman who loved her. It’s okay. All she had wanted to know was just that. She could believe it if Morgan said it, she could believe anything. But the two of them had been through so much pain, and what mattered most was being together. Tomorrow’s problems could be handled tomorrow. With that in mind, Deirdre lifted her head and sniffled. Slowly, as Morgan continued, she began to smile until eventually, she broke out into a quick laugh. “When will you, my darling love?” She laughed again, realizing that their pain existed mirrored; their emotions in tandem. “Oh I would much rather just love you, Morgan. I would much rather just do that about any time of the day. I didn’t ruin your braid now, did I?” She tried to look up at the strands of her hair, as if she might catch a glimpse of her head somehow. “I’m okay. I meant it when I said it was fine, at least, for now.” She kissed her. “But I do want to take a bath first, if you’ll join me. I could use a rest from the heat.” And she kissed her again. “And you know the same goes for you? Whatever it is, we can do it together; we can figure out a plan together.” And again. “I love you.” And again. “I love you always. I’m sorry for–well, you’ll just tell me that I don’t have to apologize anyway, so I won’t do it. But I love you, I love you, I love you.” And again. And again, until they were back to the way they’d gotten onto the couch in the first place.
“Since you’re all beautiful and blue, will you do my the honour of carrying me up to our bed, my sweet love?” Deirdre breathed after a moment. “I don’t want to leave you like this either, you know. The two of us…I think we ought to be happy, I think we already know how to get there together. And right now, I think that means you carry me up to our room.”
At Deirdre’s retort, Morgan couldn’t help but laugh, too. It was awful, especially when her mind began composing a very detailed explanation about why it was different for her. And it was funny, because sometimes the two of them were so foolishly, wonderfully similar. Her face sagged down to Deirdre’s shoulder. “Oh, you definitely shook out the braid, but it’s not your hair if I don’t have to do it over at least twice.” Her laugh was heavy and odd in her ears, and suddenly she couldn’t tell if she was still laughing or actually sobbing with delirium.
Deirdre went on with her wonderful answers and assuring kisses, but at the thought of carrying anything, even the woman she wanted so desperately, Morgan whimpered and sagged a little further into Deirdre. She made herself breathe again and searched for more of the endless strength she was supposed to have. At last she looked up at her love, but her composure was all spent, and every uncertainty showed in her pleading blue eyes. I don’t know if I can do what you asked, I asked for one stupid thing to do for you but I don’t know how to carry anything else anymore, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. But nothing sounded better than their bathtub. If she could just skip to the part where she was already soaking, where no one had to carry anything and the water was iced enough that her skin prickled under it, she might cry with happiness.
“I’m so tired,” she croaked, words slurring. She hadn’t meant to say it. The words were simply too true to keep themselves in. Either that or she wasn’t rationing her meals as well as she thought, and her grip on her mind was getting loose. Morgan couldn’t figure out if one was worse than the other, just that she didn’t care, so long as she didn’t have to let go of Deirdre again so soon. “I--can you do it with me instead? I feel awful about it and I can’t tell if it’s the kind of awful I should listen to or the kind I shouldn’t, and I know I’m not tired like you are, if I made my body move, it would. And if what I’m saying isn’t good, I can make my body do that in a minute. I just thought…” She lost the thread of her thought, taking in Deirdre’s own exhaustion and the softness behind her bravery. She was so very strong. How could she not fit in the world when she had so much to give?
“...Maybe we help each other get up and fill some buckets, and we each take one, and we make everything nice and cold in the tub together, and if you fall asleep like that, at least you probably won’t get hypothermia? My first idea was we should teleport, but that’s not a real thing for us.” A pitiful laugh burbled out of her lips. “I’m sorry this isn’t what either of us really wanted. And you can fit in the world. You fit with me so well, you’ll fit other places too, you will. But...after we’ve helped each other get upstairs and soak and wash, and I braid your hair again...or maybe just after you let me lay on you like this, because I miss laying on you, and next to you, and holding you, maybe then we can find our way to ‘better?”
“My darling…” Deirdre’s voice was muffled as she pressed a kiss to her love’s cheek. Morgan was normally very excited every chance she got to carry Deirdre, and she took her refusal now as the final proof that Morgan was really just as tired as she seemed. “It’s okay. We’ll save that part for another day, and we’ll just get ourselves into the tub as soon as possible.” She smiled, she wasn’t so tired that she wasn’t willing to grab everything herself; there was always a burst of reliable energy within Deirdre where Morgan’s waned. She needed just enough to carry her, just enough to push through. It was a strength she never failed to summon for the woman she loved above all else. It found her with ease now, and she kissed the side of Morgan’s face again before pushing off the couch and pulling Morgan up to her feet and in her arms. “I believe we always do find our way to better; I believe things can’t help but to be better as long as we’re together, trying. So, yes, yes, let’s do all of that, my love.” She paused, “I wish we could teleport. That sounds useful in a practical sense. But I suppose, even these moments grabbing buckets and tumbling up stairs are ones I cherish. Every moment with you is one I wouldn’t trade for anything else. Tired, or sad or—What I mean is, I love you very much, mo mhuirnín. All of you, however you are, always.”
Deirdre was tired too; when she walked, she felt like her legs were more liquid than solid. Her arms rejected the buckets and they protested in stiffness and aching. Her eyelids were heavy, often threatening to close for hours when she blinked. Her mind, normally buzzing with thoughts and solutions and calculations, was an incomprehensible jumble from which she could only reliably extract a few sentences. Her love for Morgan remained, as it always did, the brightest star. The one truth she could voice without fail was that she loved Morgan, and she believed with great faith that she always would. And if not, then certainly, she loved her so much it felt like she would love her always—as if her love existed in all time, at all times.
Morgan followed behind Deirdre, bracing her love with her body when her legs faltered. On the landing, she nosed Deirdre’s shoulder and smiled without pain for the first time in a month. She did not pause by Bex’s door. She did not look at Mina’s to check if the girl had mysteriously reappeared when she wasn’t looking. She shuffled into the bedroom she shared with the woman she loved, and just barely stopped herself from slipping off balance on their bathroom tile. She poured the ice. She started the water. And at long last she shouldered out of her clothes and helped Deirdre to do the same.
She looked up at her and smiled once more. The look of adoring reverence she’d held since Deirdre arrived, as though she were a constellation incarnate, faded and Morgan tapped the end of her nose with her finger. Boop. Deirdre was just a person. Her person. And she was finally here. “You are the most incredible woman I know, Deirdre Dolan. But you don’t know everything. And you’re not supposed to. Actually, I’m pretty sure having an existential crisis means you get a special patch for your ‘I’m a person after all’ sash.” She trailed her finger down to Deirdre’s lip, then her chin, and brought her down for a gentle kiss, for Deirdre and Deirdre alone. “Of course you belong. And the world and I are so very lucky to have the gift of you being ours. Welcome home, my love. Come inside and rest with me.”
Deirdre wrinkled her nose, laughing into her kiss and throwing the rest of her useless clothes away. “It’s funny how that works,” she started as she stepped into the cold tub, beckoning for Morgan to follow. “I happen to think you’re the most incredible person I know, Morgan Beck.”
After, the heat of the day cooled off Deirdre’s body and her skin returned to the paleness it knew. After, Morgan settled against Deirdre as she picked up the water-damaged collection of poetry they kept by the tub, reading through doggy-eared pages with a slow, soothing determination. Words of Oliver, Glück, Brooks and Dickinson rolled off her tongue and it was only after this, in their tub, that Deirdre finally slept. The book fell softly and harmlessly to the tile with Deirdre’s fingers dangling above.
An hour would pass before she awoke, with a yawn, eager to get them into bed. But until then, she found peace. She dreamed of meadows and wild horses; glittering lakes and wildflowers. Mostly she dreamed of Morgan, and their life, and the magical place where it was all better.
In an hour, with a yawn, she would tell Morgan that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her and that she loved her, she loved her so much, and she was sure, like a prophet, that things would be okay. They had to be.
#coming home#wr deirdre#wr chatzy#wr deirdre chatzy#domestic abuse tw#emotional abuse tw#internalized homophobia tw
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Creatures in the Woods || Morgan & Dani
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @surmamort & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Morgan loses control. Dani walks a gray line.
CONTAINS: animal death, references to domestic abuse
The moose died from a blow to the head, bashed in when it hit a tree after being ambushed by a pack of wolves. The broken shards of skull pierced its brain and the bitter fluid that once protected its thoughts of soft meadows and sweet bark leaked out along with its blood and puddled on the ground and fed the soil until the grass wilted with its weight. When Morgan found it a day later, tense with dread, it was the brain-blood smell that pulled her off the trail of the rabbit she was hunting and into the ground. The last thing she noticed was the lullaby of the flies circling its head and the way the gore-slick skull fragments shone in the summer sun almost like porcelain. The last thing she felt was the mouth of death salivating inside her and the plunge of gravity when the ground falls away.
“Nnnnnggghh…” Morgan scraped the soaked ground with her mouth. The fluid made her appetite come alive. She growled, following the trail to the corpse. The wolves had torn away much of the muscle meat, but there were still crepe thin lungs dangling behind its ribs and a fat heart waiting to burst between her teeth. She tore her way through the carcass up and up until she was kneeling in it and tearing the skull apart to get to the brain. It was half eaten by scavengers but what little Morgan’s mouth could find made her moan with relief and a need for more.
Dani felt brittle in every sense of the word. Weak, weak, weak. Dani stood still in the small clearing she’d parked in. It was far enough away from the town’s edge that she felt it a good place to settle, at least until she either found somewhere else, or until she felt herself welcomed back home. It had only been a day, and yet, it felt like an eternity. In the back of her truck were a few different bags. Some with weapons, some with clothes, and some with food. She’d been out there a few weeks already, and while she’d been taught to live off the land in case of emergency, she needed to live quietly. There was a stream nearby that’d aid her in getting her hands on clean clothes.
She moved along the trail that seemingly only her feet traveled as she pursued the bubbling stream. She could hear it from where she was, but she could hear something else. Ahead of her laid a dead moose, its organs spilled from its insides-- or, what was left of them. It was picked clean, a crow to roadkill, all aside from its hide. It was ripped from the inside, blood smeared against the grass. It was so red. So was the individual ahead of it, bent over, hands gliding against sinew, fingers picking, digging for more. Dani felt her heart in her throat as she drew her crossbow and charged an arrow into the slot of it. She pulled back and leveled it with the zombie’s head, only to falter as she got a better look. Morgan Beck. Of fucking course. Dani watched as the woman dug for the moose’s brains, her fingers picking cleanly as if she’d done it before, or as if it were foreign and she was trying to be careful, the hunter couldn’t tell. It’d be easy, she realized. To kill Morgan now. She could end it here. The back and forth, the way that Dani’s skin crawled every time she saw her… It could all end here. The only issue? As soon as Morgan’s face flashed before her, Bex’s did too. The desperation in her friend’s face, the love that’d shown. Not only on Bex’s, but Morgan’s, too. The way that their care for one another was palpable. Dani felt like she was going to be sick, and not because of the gory scene laid out before her. She kept the bow raised out of her own protection but looked around them. Would Morgan try to attack her? She swallowed thickly before she pushed through the trees, closer to her. “Morgan,” Dani said, her voice leveled and careful.
There was only so much fluid and viscera Morgan could find. She tore the moose open, screaming with frustration. “NNrrrrggg!” More. The ache. Feed meat. Eat death. She heard a sound and looked, sniffing and licking her lips. She was a mess of blood from her nose to her feet. Patches of moose fur cand bone chips stuck to her clothes and bristled in the hot wind as she crept forward. She growled. Somewhere, there had to be more. More meat. More death.
Dani stared ahead at Morgan as she turned, gore dribbling from her chin. It was caught in her hair, at the lapel of her shirt. She was… disgusting. The hunter swallowed thickly. The urge to shoot, to put Morgan down, numbed her fingertips and clawed at the back of her throat. She couldn’t, though. Every time she thought about it, the documents with her father’s name attached appeared. Each time she met Morgan, she’d known her to be unlike what she’d been taught about zombies, but this…? She was playing right into stereotypes and a part of it made Dani’s chest ache. She took a step back. “Morgan, what the fuck?”
Morgan shambled forwards, her mind beyond any language besides hunger. Death’s appetite needed more than an abandoned carcass could provide. Noise meant food. More. Eat. When she could get her hands around the noisy body and eat the pieces, maybe then it would be enough.
“Fuck,” Dani grunted as she stumbled backwards. Morgan moved towards her, mirroring that out of a horror film. She glanced over her shoulder. They were going deeper into the woods now, away from the stream. The clothes she meant to wash were left behind in a bag dropped at her side. She should kill her, she should just do it, the hunter thought. But Morgan wasn’t herself. Dani had seen Morgan. This was not her. What was she supposed to do? It was clear now that she was starving. Dani would need to get her something to eat. “Over here,” Dani decided to say as she moved off in the opposite direction, closer to the stream. Hopefully there’d be deer there, or maybe another moose, or literally anything.
The body moved and Morgan lunged. Her hunger drooled in her open mouth, teeth bared, but the only thing she caught was the air. She stumbled and followed the body. It wasn’t a quiet body. The grass and twigs screamed under its feet. Squirrels scattered up the trees. Morgan reached for them. What moved could die. What died could feed. But they escaped and Morgan grunted with desperate frustration and then there was nothing but the tall moving body ahead and the sustenance it promised.
Dani easily evaded Morgan’s lunge with a step backward. Immediately, the zombie became distracted by a few squirrels that scurried near the trunk of a tree. As Dani watched her, she felt the pit in her stomach grow. Ever since she’d found out what her father had been killed for, the idea of hunting had left a bitter taste in her mouth. Morgan before her, clearly not herself, only deepened the wound. Had her father died like this? Helping one of the many fae he’d been forced to experiment on? She blinked back the sudden anger that ripped through her and turned towards the stream, hitting a stick she’d picked up against a tree to gain Morgan’s attention again. The stream was a quiet trickle, and as Dani looked around, she saw nothing at its bank. A little further, they’d have to go a little further. She made sure to maintain a careful distance between herself and Morgan.
A guttural scream came from Morgan’s blood-stained mouth as the body evaded her. Her staggering steps grew quicker, angrier. There was life under her fee and the shrieks of feathered flying meat and in the rushing river. It splashed in swimming meat unseen. It panted in the distance on fur covered backs of meat that ran.But Morgan knew none of this. All she wanted was death. She would cannibalize herself for it if she could, her stomach clenched so desperately. But she would take the body dancing in front of her. She lunged, teeth bared, and caught the edges of Dani’s clothes.
Dani had seen starving zombies before. She’d taken care of them with chicken wire and a dagger into the brain. She knew all the steps. She could easily hide Morgan’s remains, but there was no way she’d do that, not when Dani knew how much this… zombie meant to Bex. She knew it was dangerous, too, what she was doing. For a moment, the hunter wondered what Bex would think, seeing Morgan like this. Could Dani hold it up in front of her, explain to her that this was what she was trying to protect the world from? But as much as Dani didn’t want to admit it, this was still Morgan Beck, brought to the brink of her existence as a zombie due to her hunger. What had happened? Dani wanted to know, but felt it futile. She was a monster-- the kind of creature that Dani’d been taught to slay, so why was she helping her now? Irritation festered, licking at her skin, once Morgan lunged at her. She shoved her shoulder into the zombie at her advances and side-stepped once again. “You’re making it really fucking hard to hel--” Dani froze at the sound of something. A deer. She saw it with her own two eyes.
Morgan only knew the pull of hunger. The body shoved her back, tripping her to the ground, but once there, she began to crawl. Her reach was short but her urge was swift. She clawed at the body’s clothes salivating for the closest thing to relief she knew.
Dani wanted to remark how pathetic Morgan looked. She wanted to be cruel, to be as callous as the brunette had been in the thrift store, but everything that the hunter wanted to say fell short on a venom filled tongue. She pressed her lips together and turned her attention to the deer. If she left Morgan out here, how long would it be until she found someone incapable of taking her down? Or… helping her? Dani took a deep breath as she aligned the bow with the deer and let the spring go. The arrow shot through, and the deer kicked up for a moment before making an awkward run towards the stream only to fall to its demise.
Morgan was trying to gnaw through the body’s clothes when the sound of fresh meat falling tore her attention away. It was big and fresh and red where it was pierced. It was motionless. It was silent as death. It was hers. She scrambled across the ground until she reached it and tore in. Her blunt teeth pulled up more soft hide than meat, but her hands wrenched the red spot open so the death meat could spill out. She couldn’t open it fast enough. The tissue went down so well, soft and soothing as love. She stopped once to choke down a liver. Once again to crack open the skull. The gray meat was the best meat. She ate it so desperately she ended up smearing some on her face trying to fit all of it through her mouth at once.
Time means nothing to hunger or death, and so it felt like nothing at all for Morgan to gorge herself until all the good flesh was picked from the bones and she fell over, sated.
But time means a great deal to people, and so when the rest of Morgan surfaced, the first thing she noticed was the new tint to the sky. Hours had slipped past her in a few hazy moments. The second thing she noticed was the blood and flesh staining her hands and nails, and the taste of raw flesh l in her mouth. Trembling, she looked down at the horror show splayed across her curled up body. If she could slip under again, if she could stop thinking, if she could not know-- but she did. Too well. Morgan screamed. “No, no, shit, no…” She tried to wipe her wet hands but there was hardly any part of her still clean.
Immediately, Morgan seemed drawn to the deer. At least it had worked. Dani watched silently as the zombie clambered towards her meal. The way that Morgan ripped open the deer with such ferocity, she wondered what kind of harm could be done unto a human. She wondered how far she would’ve gone, should it have been somebody not immune. It was clear that the zombie was not in her right mind. Dani had seen gore. She had seen death. She had pressed others’ organs into the stomachs until help came. She had seen brain matter and loosened veins and sinew and bone. She’d seen it all, but not like this. Dani swallowed down the bile in her throat and gave Morgan a moment of peace, willing herself to look away. It was sickening, allowing the zombie to exist like this, to not end it. But her father and what he’d died for, as well as Bex’s face, it all flickered before her. Weak, weak, weak. Jeanette’s voice rang loud. She gripped the crossbow tightly until the sound of Morgan’s fingers squishing through the meat of the deer had ceased.
Dani heard Morgan’s scream and it made her jump. Unprepared, she drew her bow again and took a step back. Morgan was searching herself, probably for her humanity. Dani watched her carefully, and even though she couldn’t see her face, she knew that the zombie was scared. She hated herself for doing this, for allowing this, but she had to. She couldn’t kill Morgan Beck. Morgan Beck was a zombie, but she… Dani clenched her jaw. She knew that the sight of her would be less than ideal, but it’d only be a matter of time until the zombie turned around. She instinctively lowered her bow and set it on the ground, lifting her hands. The last thing she needed was for Morgan to tell Bex she had pointed a bow at her in her greatest time of need. It went against everything she had learned, and against everything she knew, but she did it. With trembling hands, she held them up to where Morgan could see them, the sleeve of her own shirt shredded from Morgan’s desperation. “Morgan.” It was like last time, only softer. There was no anger, no rage. It felt weak in her throat, the words. They felt twisted and gutted.
Morgan jumped at the sound of her name. Her body hunched to hide itself, but it was no good, she was drenched and dirtied all over. When she saw who had called her, panic flooded her body. She scrambled backwards into the stream, panting and whimpering and struggling to hang onto any thought beyond No, please, I don’t want to die. No, please… She was screwed. She was thinking like prey and she’d lost her bag with her knife and her phone and she couldn’t concentrate and she was so, so screwed. But this is just what Odell had hoped for when she strong-armed all the butcheries in the county to stop selling to her, wasn’t it? At last she managed to say, “What do you want from me?” She just barely managed to keep her voice even, but she was kidding herself if she thought she could come off as a threat like this.
The shock and fear that splintered across Morgan’s features should have gone ignored, and Dani knew it. She should have felt nothing but contempt for this woman, this zombie. But the contempt did not come. Nor did the anger. What Dani felt was relief-- relief that the deer had been enough to satiate the monster in her. The bow was still on the ground, and though she had her dagger strapped to her forearm beneath her sleeve, she had no intent to actually use it. Morgan scrambled backwards and Dani stayed glued to the spot. She had no energy to fight, even if she wanted to, even if it came to that. Another flicker of Bex, another flicker of her father. She took a deep breath, but all she smelled was blood, and it was so red. “No, nothing.” She stayed put. “I…” Did she dare admit what she had done for Morgan? It wouldn’t matter, and Dani wasn’t sure if she cared whether or not Morgan understood what had happened. “I found you all fucked up. You kept trying to eat me or some shit, I dunno.” She shrugged. “I--” She looked towards the deer, bones and hide melting into the water. “Shot that for you.” She pursed her lips. “Then you came to.” Dani tried her best to keep her voice level.
Nothing Dani said to Morgan sounded plausible. But there was a deer, ravaged clean. Something in the bit of her stomach wanted to fall down and lick the hide, just in case, but it was just a whisper, and she could tell it no. Behind the deer was a trail of blood. And Dani’s clothes looked like they’d gone through a shredder on one side.
Had there been anyone else in between. Morgan couldn’t sense any aftertaste of human and she didn’t have any intrusive thoughts that felt strange but maybe she was too scared to know for sure, maybe she had already washed down the taste with all that deer. Morgan stood slowly and took another defensive step back. As much as she knew she shouldn’t take her eyes off an opponent, the smear of blood that led back through the woods held her gaze firmly.
“What was I--um--” Her voice was small and stammered so badly she had to stop and try again. “I remember a rabbit. I was hunting a rabbit. But I was me,” she added quickly. “I wasn’t like this, I was trying to catch it before I got like this. I haven’t--” Her voice broke again. “The butchers won’t sell to me anymore. Not anymore in the county. I tried. I did. And rabbits aren’t so filling but I didn’t want to lose it being picky but then--” She searched her mind. What had happened then? “There was something. Something big and half eaten and beautiful and I know it was an animal but I don’t remember what kind. Do you know if I-- if I might’ve done something to someone? In between?” She couldn’t live with wondering, and no one would tell her the truth like the slayer who hated her.
Dani kept her gaze on Morgan. Despite having helped her, maybe against her better judgement, she was a hunter. She had fought against her purpose. It felt wrong. She felt her skin tickle with the wrongs she committed in not taking Morgan down when she saw her that way. There’d been no telling whether or not Morgan had gotten to a human prior to their coincidental meeting, but Dani had to trust that what she’d done was the right thing. Not so much for Morgan, but for Bex. For the memory of her father, too. Still, Dani kept her hands where Morgan could see them. She felt silly. No matter how wrong it felt, Dani couldn’t kick the feeling that there was some part of it that’d been right, even if it was something she’d wrestle with in her days to come. “The butchers?” Dani raised a brow. So that was how Morgan got her… sustenance. That’s what she had meant by not being like what Dani thought-- not being animalistic, not like now.
The hunter could see the fear and the frustration on Morgan’s features. It was loud, even to somebody like Dani who normally wouldn’t care. As Morgan rambled, Dani continued to search the zombie’s features. Her gut continued to twist. Whether due to the smell of blood that laid thick and heavy in the air, or because she was allowing Morgan to explain herself. Finally, Dani pulled her gaze away and allowed it to settle onto her shoes. They were caked with mud and dirt, but it hadn’t ever been anything she cared too much about. “I don’t know, Morgan.” The name felt weighted differently on her tongue than before. The malice was gone. Exhaustion followed. “It was a moose that I saw you snacking on, you know. When I first came up on you.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I led you here because deer typically are down this way. It seemed like the best option.” Despite knowing how to kill zombies and that being her priority, the texts, and everything else that Dani had learned from, told her how to satiate, how to bring them to. She supposed scribes included that information due to their own conscious being flooded with guilt due to the idea of being accomplices to murder, even by word of mouth. “I can’t tell you if you killed anyone. I wouldn’t know.” I hope you didn’t, because then what the fuck am I doing here?
Morgan’s face crumpled at Dani’s non-answer, but she nodded and did not argue. A moose fit the description of the blurry creature she remembered, but she was only half sure and maybe that was only because she didn’t want to be a monster someone had a reason to hunt down. She waited for Dani to go on. To explain how she couldn’t be too careful. How, now that Morgan was conscious and could be ashamed of herself, she should tell Dani how right the hunter was before she received a quick shot to the head. But there was only silence between them.
Finally she turned her gaze away from the bloody path and back to the hunter. “Why did you bring me back?” She asked.
Everything was quiet now, aside from the sound of the gurgling stream, swallowing and spitting past the corpse of the deer that laid against the cool rush of water. She made a note to move it after they were done here. Dani tensed at Morgan’s question. She had an answer, but it felt… wrong, explaining that it had been for Bex. A part of it had been, but her father had been involved, too. If she hadn’t approached either Jeanette or Lauren prior to this meeting would Dani have reacted the same? She inhaled sharply through her nose and looked up at the sky, taking note of the birds that fled in a hurry from the top of one to another. “It felt wrong. Killing you. Like that.” The words came out stiff and her voice sounded small. After a moment, the hunter finally leveled her gaze back to Morgan’s. “I’ve seen you. Maybe not like you are right now, but when you’re…” Almost human. “Not… covered in blood.” She tested out the words, but they still felt wrong. “It seemed wrong.” She nudged a rock just next to her foot with the toe of her shoe as she looked back down. “And, I guess… for Bex?” It felt odd, passing up on her obligation for others. Would it have been what her father would’ve done? She had nothing to offer either Jeanette or Lauren, she realized. They had lied to her about her father, about how he had died. No matter how many times Jeanette’s voice hummed in her ear, she knew it to be wasted.
Morgan gave a bitter laugh that came out like a sob. It must have been a while since Dani had talked to Bex, or Bex was too generous to tell her new slayer friend how upset she really was with Morgan. She wasn’t sure how much she could believe that this child soldier of a hunter was suddenly having a change of heart, but she did understand what it meant to do something for someone else. And just how fickle that could be. Would Dani regret sparing her if Bex ever said, oh I'm never talking to Morgan again? Would she come back to finish the job and take the question off her conscience? The longer Morgan stayed, the closer she came to testing that out.
“Good to know,” she said flatly. “Are you going to tell her about this?”
Dani was exhausted. There was no denying that. She wondered if Morgan could see her lethargy. The laugh that escaped the zombie caught her off guard and she took a small, tentative step backwards before she halted. She swallowed thickly and looked at Morgan once again. “Am I going to tell…” Dani thought for a moment. It would benefit her. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe Bex would be compassionate to Morgan’s situation, maybe it’d backfire. Dani hadn’t thought about telling Bex, not until Morgan brought it up. As far as she knew, it would be better that Bex didn’t see somebody who she cared about like this. At their lowest, at their most detrimental. “No.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s not my shit to tell. I’m a hunter, not a gossip.” She lowered her hands finally and crossed them against her chest. She dug her fingers into her forearms. “Why did your access to the butchers get taken away?” Dani had known very little about how zombies sustained themselves aside from eating living, breathing, innocent humans. At least, that’s what had been fed to her. If Morgan was telling the truth, then it meant she went against every urge she had to tear into a random human’s skull. It meant that all this time, she’d been telling the truth. Hell, the zombie had even admitted to hunting rabbits.
Morgan’s laughter spilled out a little easier this time and sounded even more defeated. “I tried to talk Bex into leaving her parents’ house. And then when her mother came by to gloat about taking away my office and my job security, we got into it and I tried to make it so she couldn’t hurt Bex for a while. But that seriously backfired and now--” She splayed her arms out, showing what she had so easily been reduced to.
Satisfied that she wouldn’t have her head cleaved off in the next few minutes, Morgan knelt in the stream and started rinsing herself off as much as she could. “She warned me. Both of them. But I figured I’d lost everything enough times over to learn how to deal.” But she hadn’t been a zombie with a conditional grip on her humanity for any of those other times. As bad as things got when she was alive, she’d never been put in a place like this.
If Dani weren’t so concerned for the words that came out of Morgan’s mouth, then she might have found it odd that they were able to have a conversation like this. At the end of the day, the two of them cared for the same person. Bex had become increasingly important to Dani, and ever since she’d almost lost her to Frank… Dani would do virtually anything to protect her. To protect anyone she cared for, really. Bex was strong, there was no doubting that, but it had become apparent that she thought she deserved to be hurt, and it was now obvious to Bex who the other perpetrator was. Her mother.
“That’s where Bex is now, right?” Dani ground her teeth. She could hear it in her ears and feel it in her jaw, the anger she put into the movement. “After--” She wasn’t sure if she should mention this, but Dani kept replaying Morgan’s expression then, and even now. One thing was for certain, Morgan Beck cared for Bex. “After Frank attacked her, after I got her to the hospital. I got thrown out of the hospital and Bex started to cry about how she couldn’t be found by her. I figured it was her mom, but I didn’t…” She felt disturbed. Was it right airing this information to Morgan? Though, she’d already been so much with Bex’s mother. Dani dug her fingers deeper into her forearms. “I didn’t know how bad it was.” Frank wasn’t Bex’s only concern. What kind of mother was she to hurt somebody who genuinely cared for her daughter? What kind of things did she hold against Bex?
Morgan stopped washing. “Frank what?” But why? There was no reason to use him to keep Bex in line. And stars above, she was with a boy even more closeted than she was. Wasn’t that torture enough? It didn’t make sense. Morgan realized too late that she’d revealed how out-of-the-loop she was, but that was bound to come out sooner or later, wasn’t it? She looked down at the blood still caked under her fingernails and felt the weight of her helplessness all over again.
“Wouldn’t make much of a difference if you had. Bex is too scared of this happening to someone else to let them in. And you hunters never lift a finger against a human no matter how horrible and dangerous they are.” She went back to splashing her face clean. Her warbled reflection in the water made her look like someone’s nightmare demon. It was a shame she couldn’t give this face to Odell and make her keep it.
Dani swallowed hard. It felt wrong, airing out Bex’s dirty laundry like this. But Dani had tried to help. It had taken Bex awhile to finally accept her help, but it’d only been recent, and she hadn’t actually gotten to any of the actual protecting parts of it all. “He…” She reached up to scratch idly at the back of her neck. “Stabbed her. She took the knife out.” Dani left alone how odd it seemed that Bex hadn’t relayed any of this information to Morgan, but decided against bringing it up. A wild guess told Dani that the two weren’t exactly on speaking terms, and Dani wondered if that had anything to do with Bex leaving with her, especially when Morgan had begged for Bex to go with her. “Bex said that it’s her ex-boyfriend.”
Morgan’s words struck Dani, but she swallowed the urge to bite back. She had no energy to do so. She’d been drained. Lauren and Jeanette’s words lingered, as did that fucking Prince song. It was on a constant loop. The distraction Morgan brought was welcome, believe it or not. “Yeah, well..” She trailed off before picking back up a moment later as Morgan stared into the water. “It’s in the code. We’re not meant to hurt humans.” Dani thought about her father. Despite him being a hunter, he’d been human, but they took him out regardless. Dani felt a pang of anger and it began to fester. “But I’m starting to figure out not all hunters feel that way. Frank is one, but he tried to kill Bex, so.” She dropped her arms to her sides. “She asked me… to protect her. Or be around her more. I don’t know.” It felt like a lifetime ago that Bex had asked such a thing, even if it’d only been a few days.
“Your hunter code is just a way of keeping things simple and shirking off responsibility for your actions. I’ve met a few of you by now and I haven’t found one decent hunter who wasn’t thinking for themself and using their own ‘code’ whether they admit it or not.” Morgan said, finally calming down enough to feel angry. She stood up from the stream, knowing this was as good as it was going to get, and started trudging out of the water. “No offense, but if your code says I deserve to die more than Odell Ochsenstein, I think it’s pretty bullshit.”
When she was back on solid ground she stopped and gave Dani a good long look for the first time. “Are you going to? Protect her? Because from over here, it looks a lot like everyone who’s ever beaten and used her is a hundred percent whole-grain human. What’s your plan for that?”
“I don’t do that,” Dani snapped. She carded a hand through her hair and took a deep breath. The hunter squeezed her eyes shut. Getting into an argument with Morgan wouldn’t help the situation. Bex was clearly in more trouble than Dani had originally thought, and by helping Morgan, Dani had uncovered just that. “I don’t do that. I don’t-- I don’t want to be like that. I only…” She swallowed thickly. Why couldn’t she push her father out of this? She hadn’t even known him, but she knew his stupid smile, and the cruel way in which he died. He had tried to help others, not even humans. Was she more his daughter than she was Jeanette’s? Despite never knowing him? “That’s…” She cleared her throat. “I’m not trying to kill you anymore, so.” She knew it didn’t solve for the time she had.
Morgan’s question made Dani’s skin crawl. “Of course I am.” She knew the implications. Frank was a hunter. Her mother was human, or at least that’s what Morgan had implied. Dani didn’t actually know any of that. “She’s…” Dani took another deep breath. “Important. To me. To other people.” Dani picked at the fabric at the hem of her shirt for a moment before dropping her hand away. “There’s a community of us. They’ll know what to do. But I won’t kill him. I’ll make it impossible for him to hurt her again, but I won’t kill him.” Dani looked up at Morgan evenly. “I’m afraid that Bex might try. She doesn’t know what it means to kill someone.”
Morgan wasn’t very comforted by what Dani had to say, but it had been so long since she’d felt soothed she wasn’t surprised. She shook her head. “You mean you’re not trying to kill me right now. Because I’m a well of useful information and you don’t want to make Bex cry. If I gave up everything I knew, if you called her up and she said she kinda hates me now for how badly I screwed up, that would change. Because I’m not a person to you. I’m something that used to belong to Bex.” She started walking back the way she’d come. The one good thing about her demon zombie self was that she knew how to leave a good trail home.
“Do your best to keep her hands clean,” she called over her shoulder. “Because, murderer to murderer, we both know she doesn’t deserve to learn how to carry someone’s life on her conscience.”
Dani steeled herself against the cruelty that Morgan provided. Logically, the hunter knew that Morgan did not owe her kindness. Dani didn’t even want it. Not really. What she wanted was to not see her mother’s gaze, but it was embedded now, even in Morgan’s features. Weak, weak, weak, weak. Dani closed her eyes and tried to focus on the beat of her heart and the way it felt in her throat, in the tips of her fingers, in her ears. She could hear Morgan’s footsteps fade, and only then did she open her eyes. The young hunter watched as the very thing she should want to put into the ground walked away, following the carnage she had created. Unable to provide an answer, she reached down for her bow and turned on her heel, moving toward the deer’s corpse. She dragged it out of the water and started back towards her truck. Morgan Beck was wrong. She had to be.
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Corpses in the Meadow || Morgan & Eilidh
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @braindeacl & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Nothing brings together two dead women like wildflowers and flesh eating watermellons.
Morgan had thought her days of laying in the ground for hours were behind her, but April really was the cruelest month and she hadn’t gotten free of its grip yet. Today, under a bright spring sun, she furrowed her nails deep into the earth and tried to pull herself under, as if the ground and all its creatures were a blanket for her. But of course the earth didn’t hold anyone like that except for the dead. The for real, permanent, definitely-no-walking dead. Morgan brushed her fingers along the newly sprung wildflowers, imagining what their petals felt like, if they were as tender and smooth as her memory told her they were. At least she could enjoy their colors, and their fluffy golden pollen centers. Morgan plucked some carefully by the stem and knotted them together from her sprawl on the ground. Maybe if she ever got to have a real funeral, she’d ask whosever was left to care about her for wildflowers. She should probably find out if her zombie goo was toxic to plants, but if she could go back to being a part of the world, if she could be felt and taken in, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Carefully, Morgan plucked more flowers from around her and wove them with care, on and off, between laying and watching the bright eye of the sun through the trees, until she heard the grass crunch behind her. Morgan tilted her head back, squinting to catch a glimpse of the figure. Please no hunters, she thought. I don’t want to convince a hunter I deserve to live today.
Springtime was here, and Eilidh couldn’t help but smile. For one so shrouded in death, life in all its forms filled her with delight. As the forest shivered, awoken from its winter slumber, she felt herself drawn more and more to its embrace. Of course, she did have the professional need to be there so frequently, but that wasn’t the main motivation. Even when her ventures were work focused, such as now, she took her time getting to the needed destination. Especially after the gateway adventure and all these damn fires. Between work and wondering what the hell was going on, she deserved to have a moment of relaxation. But she tried not to worry about that now. She inhaled a deep breath—the hint of spring air tickling her nose, so accustomed to just a suggestion of its true form she didn’t know the difference. The sounds of creatures, excited by the revitalized forest as well, filled her ears with a wonderful symphony. Colors that weren’t there the day before dazzled her eyes and—wait, who was that?
She squinted. Aye, looks like a person. Well, she should probably investigate. Changing course, she got closer, and closer, and closer, until she could clearly see what the other person was doing. Arms to her hips, brows furrowed, voice stern, she called, “Hey, you’re not supposed to do that!” A pause. Then, a grin. “Nah, it’s whatever. Just don’t pick too much, or I will have to actually ask you to stop.” Even closer now, she peered curiously as the braided flora, trying to make sense of its unfinished form. “What are you working on, anyway?”
The voice calling out to Morgan definitely didn’t sound like a hunter. “Sorry!” Morgan called dully. Then the voice warmed, not laughing, but bouncing like it wanted to. Slowly, Morgan sat up to look at her. Definitely a lot prettier and friendlier than any stranger she’d run into in the woods so far. “I’m making, well…” She looked down at her handiwork. It had gotten too long to be a circlet, unless she wanted to twist it over itself. “Honestly, I’m just passing the time. Making things helps me think. Or not think, I guess. Normally I do that at home, I’m not a serial flower picker or anything. I just didn’t feel like being inside about it.” But she did, apparently, feel like oversharing about it.
Morgan grinned ruefully and held it out to the stranger. “Do you want it? It’ll look better on you, with how tall you are.” She nodded at her, insisting. “Are these your woods?”
“Seems like you’ve had a lot of time to pass.” Eilidh mused while surveying the length of the, well, the to-be-decided. It reminded her of her own absentminded creations, especially during days when she would forego human society for days, weeks, months at a time. And it was a pretty little thing; she could tell its creator had experience.
She perked excitedly at the offering—eyes alight and giggle bubbling—and immediately claimed it, though with care. Within her grasp, she gently turned and twisted the woven piece, concentration on her face. Suddenly, epiphany. She dropped down to her knees, taking care to not disturb too much of the vegetation below. She wrapped it once around her head, quickly connecting the end piece to the rest, and then began to weave the remaining part within her own hair into a side braid. “I don’t claim them, but I do work here.” Feeling hospitable after the generosity, she continued. “Speaking of, I was heading over to do something. But I know a real good flower spot on the way. It’s not on a commonly used trail. So, nice and private. But you can’t pick any of those. And I’ll know, so don’t try. Still, they’re wonderful to look at, ‘specially right now.” She finished the braid. Part of the flowers still stuck out at the end; her hair just wasn’t quite long enough. Ah well. “Interested?”
Morgan looked up at the sky to check the position of the sun, then her phone to confirm her suspicions. She’d been laying here for hours and it had barely felt like anything. Maybe that could have been a relief, but she’d been down this proverbial hole too many times to be glad about skipping suffering by being absent from herself. “I guess I have, yeah…” Her voice tapered off into a laugh. Technically, she had all the time in the world.
She smiled in spite of herself as the woman wrapped the flowers into her hair. She seemed to have done it before. “So that’s why you’d have to stop me if I became too much of a flower thief. At least you’re a lot more pleasant than any of the other public service workers I’ve met in town.” Although between Marley Stryder and Kaden in his scowl-y asshole days, that bar was pretty low. Morgan looked at the sky again. It was well past morning, but she didn’t feel like going back home while everyone in it was away doing...alive-people things, presumably. “Uh...you know, I don’t see why not. It’s okay if I take pictures of them though, right? It’s not gonna hurt them any.” Slowly, she got to her feet and waited for the woman to show her the way. “If we’re going off on unknown woodsy adventures, I should probably know you as something better than ‘strangely nice park lady’. I’m Morgan.”
Mischief twinkled in Eilidh’s eyes when she looked upon the other. “You caught me. I want all the flowers to myself.” Sentence punctuated with a mock evil laugh. She did, perhaps, on her off time, pick flowers and use them for various things. She mostly placed them in her hair, or pressed them in a book, or added them to her crafts, similar to the one now braided in her hair. She always made sure not to take too much, and to give back to the earth in ways she could.
Her? Pleasant? James would scoff if he was near, but he was off having private time. Though, at times, she could be such a word. Especially when she was surrounded by all that nature could give: when the sun hit the nape of her neck and the breeze cooled her skin and the trees danced amongst the flow. It calmed her. It was why she always felt drawn to it. It was her home. It was the only true one she had left, anyhow.
She arose, brushing off remnants of the ground off her skirt. “Aye, photography’s fine. Just don’t have me in them. I don’t like paparazzi. And call me Macleod.” She nodded in greeting. Then, with her head, she motioned onward and began their journey. “This way. It’s not too far from here.” Initially, the trail they took was large and the ground smooth, packed down by many feet over the years: a main path. The trail Eilidh quickly turned into was less so. It was marked, and it would come up on the map if you looked, but the ground was noticeably less tame. And the surrounding wilderness knew this, knew the barrier between it and the path was weaker. Eilidh didn’t bat an eye as they continued.
Morgan laughed softly in response. “Are you saying you’re secretly an international pop star on the run, Macleod?” She teased dryly. “Because I could use the boost to my Instagram profile. Cat pictures interspersed with flowers, decaying animals, and their bones isn’t very mainstream.” She took out her phone, arching a brow, then turned and took a close shot of a tree branch. It was easier to hold herself up in front of someone, especially a stranger. She had her pride, even if sometimes she overshared to the point of distressing people. And then, new people were such convenient puzzles and experiences. She didn’t have to be sad looking at herself if she was learning their expressions and what they were like and how their presence colored the world.
She followed this woman, Macleod, down the trail. It was one of those obscure ones that was half grown over by neglect, or some unspoken message from nature. Morgan had a sense that they were passing into someone else’s territory. Morgan stumbled behind her, scanning their surroundings, the birds flying above the trees, the blur of butterflies in the distance. Further on, she thought she spied a shadow, some deer maybe, lazing on its way through its day. “And this is definitely a secret flower patch and not a secret murder patch, right…?” She asked.
“I’ll never tell.” She winked. Then, pause. Instagram. Eilidh was almost sure she knew which one that was. Should someone the age she looks like know what that was? She decided not to mention it and look it up later. “Really? ‘Cause all that already got my attention.” The brief moment the phone faced her, she stiffened ever so slightly—shoulders barely rose, face found a subtle hardness. As the lens passed on to a new target, the tension washed off her just as quickly as it came. Her eyes followed the new direction. A simple tree branch, but the way the light hit it just so… she understood the interest.
She let out a short chuckle. “Nah, the murder patch is half a klick that way.” She took note of Morgan’s unease and quickened her pace, figuring it was best to get to their destination sooner rather than later. The breeze picked up, brushing aside the flimsy vegetation ahead and the pair got an early glimpse of their goal. Colors erupted between the green, as if a window into another world. The wind took a turn, and the air suddenly became engulfed in a cornucopia of sweetness. Unfortunately, to her it was only a little tickle in her nose. Nothing more.
“Really?” Morgan said, brows raised. “Well that’s not something I hear every day. You don’t have a collection too, do you? Because I have a lot of death sculptures and I’m running out of shelf space.” Not that she’d been adding much to it lately. Between taking care of her family and being too miserable to cook for herself, she hadn’t been doing much in her studio besides breathing and spacing out. But if a normie like Cutler could find something nice in it, maybe Macleod could too.
But before Morgan could make her pitch, they arrived. It had rained the night before and the ground was still iridescent with water, which now shimmered in the sunlight as if enchanted with a glaze of pearl. White flowers streamed over the grass as if they’d been poured from the sky. Bunches of violets and peonies danced in the breeze and a thin haze of dandelion puffs and pollen floated like pixies through the air. Morgan gaped in awe, too awed to bother aiming her camera. “I was about eighty-five percent sure you were serious about this not being a murder patch, but stars above--” She tipdoed carefully into the flowers, trying to disturb as few of them as possible. “What are their names?” she asked, sinking down to brush the petals. “What do they smell like?”
Eilidh perked curiously. “Can’t say I have a ‘death sculpture’ collection. What’d they look like?” Images of a room overcome with ceramic skeletons filled her mind. And then, the same room taken over by structures constructed by pieces of the dead. But all theorizing dashed from her mind at the sudden burst of colors. Despite having found herself in the spot many times, the sight was still delightful. Especially now, when many of the flowers were finally awoken from their slumber—stretching, dancing in the spring air. Their full vitality overwhelming the area in every hue. The forest was a sky, and this was its rainbow. Morgan’s reaction reminded Eilidh of when she first found the area less than a year prior. Sadly, it was located just as the flowers began to take their rest. But now she can enjoy it in its full glory.
“Well, that one’s Jeffrey, that one’s Helga.” She pointed to flowers at random. “Kidding… Maybe. Who knows, they could like being called Helga.” Still, she wasn’t going to force upon them a name. But she wasn’t sure if her current company would understand the sentiment, so she continued. “Anyway, these are known as Dog’s Tooth,” she motioned to a congregation of yellow petaled flowers, “and those’re Lady’s Slippers,” it was the collection of peculiarly shaped flower’s turn to be gestured at. “To name a few.” She matched Morgan’s tentative steps and joined her by a dense patch of purple flowers, one of which Morgan currently caressed. While the petals were small, their large numbers resulted in a relatively tall plant. She nodded, regarding its presence. “This one is supposedly very obedient. But I can tell they still have a wild spirit.” She too placed a gentle finger on the petals, though her fingers hardly registered anything. Her nose faced the same situation. A faint sweetness lingered, but only enough to register its existence, not to understand. “Uh, they smell like flowers. Sweet. Ya know.” Odd question. It made her wonder.
Something lurked just outside of view. But it was coming closer.
Morgan was too swept up in the rainbow spray of flowers to notice anything in the shadows. She was picking her way over to the edge of the patch so she could lay down without crushing any of them. She took out her phone and photographed the biggest flowers up close, and then from as close to ‘below’ as she could. “Pixie’s eye view, you know?” She teased. She really did want to find out if this was how Sundew and the rest of her pixie family saw the world, but Macleod didn’t need to know that. “Also, I think it would be pretty great if you actually had named them. Helga’s especially pretty.” She brushed her finger over the petals and tried to remember what they felt like. She would think of them when she touched Deirdre’s lips. Sometimes they were so smooth, just a little sticky with her matte color of the day. Maybe this flower was like that. Morgan smiled fondly at the association. At last she put her phone away and sat up, simply enjoying the light in the moment. She took a deep inhale, but all she got was a faint whiff of...flower. She couldn’t detect enough to separate anything besides that soft, pollen-y perfume. “I...had my sense of smell damaged in an accident,” she said at last. “Nothing’s like it used to be. But it’s okay, if you don’t know how to describe it. And it’s probably hard, with so many around…” She let the thought go with a sad sigh, then sat a little straighter, forcing herself to brighten. “How did you find this? I know it’s your job to be here, but it must have taken a while to notice.”
For a moment, Eilidh’s eyes glanced upon Maybe-Helga: a beautiful white flower with magenta freckles at the base of elongated petals. She wished she knew what they thought of the name. She’d try asking another time. “Hm, maybe.” Before musing on that thought for too long, she looked back at the sound of Morgan taking a deep breath. Watched as her features and her words darkened in the aftermath, a rolling cloud casting a shadow over the otherwise beautiful day. Eilidh wanted to help. But she couldn’t even pretend. The true complexities of their scents had been lost to the forgetfulness of time. A part of a life she pretended was fully disconnected from her. What she could detect now was all she could ever know. Not that it bothered her much; how could you miss something you never knew?
“I spend lots of time exploring. Probably too much.” She winked, pressing a finger on her lips. “Don’t tell anyone.” While she took her job seriously, she never understood the notion that her entire time had to be utilized for work, and work, and more work. What’s the point of being among flowers if she can’t (sort of) smell them? But that thought was pushed out when a rustle occurred just on the outskirts of the meadow. An intrigued hum rushed through her throat as she got a closer look of the– “Watermelon?” Odd. She hadn’t spotted it when they first got there. And watermelons don’t just appear out of nowhere. Taking another step forward, her eyes scanned the nearby area. Trying to detect whoever left it behind. Focus drawn elsewhere, the watermelon quickly rolled up to her without detection. She looked down and it rolled to a stop near her feet. As if struck by an invisible knife, it was cleaved in two. Fangs protruded out of each half, filling the newly opened space. Her eyes held curiosity at the action.
But it craved blood. Its fangs dug into her leg. With a shout, Eilidh started wrestling it off.
“Watermelon?” Morgan repeated. She had moved on to another flower, which had a pistil so large it made the flower look like a face with a long, odd nose, and was thinking of a person-name to give it. So she didn’t notice anything was wrong until Macleod screamed.
“Oh, shit--!”
Morgan scrambled to her feet and trampled through the flower patch to get to the other woman. “Hold on, you’re gonna be okay!” She shoved her arm between its wet melon jaws, forcing it loose enough for Macleod’s leg to come free. The melon, hungry for anything, chomped down on her arm, shredding her muscles to ribbons. Morgan clamped her jaw shut to muffle the sound of her scream and tried to bash the melon into the ground. But strong as she was, the melon was pretty hefty, and with the pain and awkwardness, she only managed to dent a few chunks off its bulbous shape. “I got this!” She choked out. “Get as far away as you can!”
Pent up force building up as she struggled, when the hold of the watermelon was released, Eilidh tumbled backwards. She shot back up to see… Morgan had taken her place? Eilidh didn’t know whether to be worried or impressed by her tenacity. But it was no time for introspection, it was clear Morgan was suffering. Eilidh stuck out the—non-chewed up—leg and fished out the iron dagger strapped to the thigh. Then she launched herself back into the fray. The blade struck deep into the green flesh. She pressed it forward, adding a new gash. But this time, no teeth sprouted out. Instead, it seized, trembling for a few moments, until stillness took over. The teeth relinquished themselves from Morgan.
She stared at the mangled arm. But something, something familiar, was off about it. “Fuck. Ok, let’s get you out of–” More rustling. Eilidh whipped her head to the sound. Two watermelons revealed themselves. Perhaps this was their area? She’d usually try and leave them alone at this point, if willing. Or in this instance, pick up Morgan and leave. But her leg was still healing, so she wasn’t sure if she’d be fast enough to outrun their roll. Making a decision, she gripped her leg, fingers encircling the flesh loosened by the first watermelon. She ripped off a chunk and threw it away from the flowers. Bait. Like hungry sharks, the two dived at the morsel. While they were distracted, she kicked into one so hard it bent her toes into the balls of her feet. The watermelon went flying into the trunk of a tree. Smash! Red chunks flew out of the mouth cavity as it rolled back onto the ground. Her eyes locked onto the remaining one. While her attention had been focused elsewhere, it had started making its move towards Morgan. But Eilidh interrupted, pouncing on it and sending stab after stab. It tried to roll away, the thing was surprisingly slippery considering, but with one final strike of her dagger, it stopped as well.
Morgan tumbled free and rolled onto the flowerbed. The watermelon’s teeth hurt coming out just as much as they’d hurt coming in. She dug her hands into the ground, ripping up grass as her arm knit itself back together again. “What are you doing? They’re gonna--” She turned her head toward the carnage. Macleod was--handling herself just fine? She saw the woman rip off her leg and use it as bait. The rest of Macleod’s watermelon slaughter passed in a daze. That woman had just ripped off her leg. She ripped off her leg like it was nothing and she didn’t have anything coming out of it except for a few black globs of blood. She didn’t even look phased. Was this what it felt like when people watched her cut off her fingers?
When the last watermelon had been stabbed to a pulp, Morgan sat up, staring at Macleod with open wonder. “You ripped off your leg to save me,” she said. “And I turned my arm into hamburger meat to save you.” She held out the still-healing arm for emphasis, laughing deliriously. The two of them pouncing on watermelons to save the day when neither of them were in danger of dying again. It was hilarious. “So...you’re a zombie too, huh?”
Eilidh looked over at the carnage. Hopefully those watermelons would have a better go next time. She nodded, a casual bow, with words leaving her lips, so soft they were illegible. She turned, remembering eyes were still on her. Passions had distracted her. In the heat of the moment, she forgot to consider how Morgan would react to, well, the way her body reacted to violence. Her leg was in clear view, already at work to reseal the newly torn muscles. There was no denying it; no future attempt at naivety. She considered her options. The grip on her dagger tightened. Wait, no, no, not that. Not again. She sighed. “Let’s just forget this and get you help.” But before she could pick up the injured woman, her eyes focused on her arm. The arm that was also in the process of healing. Same as her own tattered limb. Tissue that hadn’t been there just a moment prior concealed parts of the lesion, with more on the way. Where the fresh skin hadn’t been produced, a familiar black ooze leaked out. Arm mirrored leg. Realizing no real danger to Morgan was present, Eilidh relaxed. All the two needed was rest. She wished she had known that a minute earlier, though. Poor critters.
And there it was. That word. Tension returned, forcing her body into a straight fixture. Face contorted, words sour. “No, I’m not! I’m a–” She took a deep breath. “Doesn’t matter what I am.” It sounded more like she was trying to convince herself rather than Morgan. “So you’re one then, yeah?”
“Oh, no!” Morgan said, grimacing with embarrassment. “It’s just. I’ve only seen two more of us. Ever. And one of them was my best friend who made me like this at the last minute. My last minute, not theirs, obviously. Uh--” None of these were the words she was actually trying to get out. “I’m not used to this. Or asking for personal terminology. Sorry. What I’m trying to say is I’m sorry. I know the z word isn’t for everyone and I shouldn’t have assumed, I was just--” She looked at her haplessly. “It’s just been a really lonely time for me lately. And you’re--kind of incredible. And it does matter to me, what you want to be called. Very much. But yeah. I’m one too. A year now, so, still new. Newer at this than it feels like. How long have you been...you know? Do you meet a lot of people like us out here?”
While her ears listened to Morgan’s words, Eilidh’s eyes drifted to the blade in her hand—both slick and sticky with the juices of the fallen. Curiously—it was flesh after all—she gave it a lick, collecting the remnants of the slain creatures on her tongue. Nothing. She tasted nothing. Figures. She wiped the rest of the juices off with her sock before returning the dagger to its holster. Her eyes returned to looking, watching, Morgan. Studying her. The heat from her outburst still burned at her throat, but it started to cool as the woman’s words sunk in. The apology seemed genuine, and the attempt at reconciliation was appreciated. The creases on her face lifted, revealing a softer expression. Especially at the admittance to the newness of her existence and the loneliness following; at that she finally lifted her hands, patting the air in a calming motion. “It’s alright, it’s alright. That word is just—I hate it. But I’m not mad.” Not anymore, at least. The flow of apologetic words had been enough to calm Eilidh’s sudden temper. Brief silence followed as she looked Morgan up and down. Considering. “I’m a Slúagh. Similar to—yeah. But not the same. Guess we’re sorta like cousins in a way. Besides you, I’ve only met one zombie in White Crest. But I’ve seen a few here and there over the years.” Never another just like her, however. But she refrained from mentioning or even hinting at… them. That would only lead to further questions; questions she was not in the mood to answer. “And let’s just say I’m old.”
Morgan squirmed under the intensity of Macleod’s gaze. “Hated, noted,” she said. “I’ve never heard that other term before. Slu-aagh? Is it a regional thing, or a time period thing, do you think? But either way, I mean, all my birth family died before I did, so I barely remember what it’s like to have a cousin. This still feels really--I know we don’t have biochemical instant affinity for each other like fae do, but it feels wrong to brush off finding each other, when there don’t seem to be many of us who survive long enough to be found. And if we’re lucky, there won’t be many other people who can know us as long as we can. That, and we just saved each other…” She petered into laughter. “Even if we were pretty much fine the whole time. So, why not? Be friends, or as much as we can be to each other. Have you fed recently, by any chance? Because I have some meal prepped brain burgers at home, if you want. Or I could grab some of whatever you eat, if that’s something different. If you want, of course.”
“Slúagh.” The word rolled off her tongue naturally. “Not just a term. It’s what I am.” Eilidh insisted, that fire ready to return if resistance was found. At the following statement, Eilidh simply just stared. She couldn’t remember having—no, she’s never had a family. At least not biologically. Slúaghs can’t reproduce after all. No matter how much she had tried. With the mention of friendship, the blank expression plastered on her face shifted into the hint of a pleased one. Eyes widened in interest. It was always nice, making a new connection. And she was right. This existence could get lonely, in that sense. It was impossible to find those like her, and rare to run into those like Morgan. At least ones that had a good grip on themselves. Not everyone was cut out for their unique lifestyle, even with help. And moaning and groaning didn’t make for good conversation, though the wrestling could be fun. The other ones, well. Most acted like she was lying about who—what—she was. Sometimes the thought was enough to send her tempers firing. Enough to make her generally avoid association with them, in case of opposition. But for some reason she still craved that kinship. While the use of us didn’t go unnoticed, and her face had tensed at the usage, Morgan seemed to be less dismissive than the average. And those gentle eyes were very persuasive, inviting. Morgan reminded her of James; she should introduce them.
A drop of hunger stirred from within at the thought of feeding, dashing out any contemplation. “Nah. And getting your leg chewed to hell makes a gal hungry.” The damaged leg was close to appearing as if nothing happened, a craving the only reminder it did. She hummed curiously. “Brain burgers! Fun. I usually don’t bother cooking. So, brain burgers it is.” A small chuckle escaped her. “What a first friend date, though, huh?” She gestured to the watermelon gore surrounding them.
It meant far too much to Morgan to hear the word “friend date.” She was smiling too much. When she looked at the watermelon gore around them, she burst with laughter that startled two birds from their nest. She had to clench herself still to keep from bouncing. “Yes! I mean, to the burgers. They take awhile to make, getting some flavor to actually, you know, flavor, but they’re pretty nice! Not like what you remember, if you do remember, but it’s better than plain grey stuff.” And now she was talking too much again. As you do. Morgan got to her feet and dusted herself off. “But all this--” She gestured, laughing again. “I think that’s just how White Crest brings people together.”
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Not Buying It || Morgan & Eddie
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @specterchasing & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Eddie tries to tell Morgan the good news about his new relationship
CONTAINS: Internalized homophobia
Everyplace on the home property felt a little cursed without Bex. Even the studio, which Morgan had made to be a safe-haven against every other failure of the world, felt off with the extra set of tools hanging untouched on the wall. So of course she invited Eddie over. It wasn’t the same. Nothing would ever be the same. But Eddie would fill the empty space across from her, maybe feed her scraps from whatever he knew about Bex’s life. And he liked her, maybe even needed her. He definitely needed something. If she could find out whatever that was, give it, help him find it so he could stop being a ghost in his own life, maybe there was still hope.
When it got close enough to his expected arrival, Morgan set down her paints and stepped out to the yard to wave him over. His hair was tousled in that way that suggested carefree ambivalence on one look and meticulous attention on a second, an illusion of product and styling. As he approached, she couldn’t help but recognize again how young he was for how much he put on his shoulders. All of them really; these kids thrust into a world that wanted to kill them were all so young. No wonder it was so hard for them to scrape together a little peace and comfort. They couldn’t get a break long enough to learn how to stop getting in their own way.
“Hey,” she called, beckoning him over for a hug. “I’ve got everything set up out back. Maybe some tea first, or soda, if you’re that kind of kid. You’re looking a little out of it.”
Eddie’s legs carried him to Morgan’s studio. Driving made more sense at this hour, but walking suited him better all the same. Being allowed to wander White Crest without barriers made him feel closer to his hometown, and he needed that distraction tonight. Morgan, as far as he knew, wasn’t privy to his and Bex’s blossoming relationship. He wanted to be excited to tell her, to tell everyone, but thoughts of Alfie kept his joy to a minimum. Why did this have to be so difficult?
He approached Morgan and eagerly accepted her invitation for a hug. “Out of it?” Eddie echoed, trying to laugh off her observation. “Must just be from walking. I hate how fast the weather changed.” A flimsy excuse, and he knew it. “Tea sounds good though. Texas-style, or?”
“You walked?” Morgan balked, giving him a squeeze. “You know I could have picked you up, right? It’s not a crime to ask for a lift. Or help.” She walked him through the little gate and past the garden and the freshwater pool to the little place she’d made into a second home. “I could make you some sun tea, but you’d have to stick around for a good five hours. Which I don’t mind, but.” She shrugged. “But I do ice and sweeten my herbals so you don’t break a sweat having a cup.”
She opened the door and led Eddie in, gesturing for him to have a seat somewhere while she started on the water and grinding one of the mixes she already had on hand. She’d made them for her sessions with Bex, which meant they were all sweet tasting and either took the edge off anxiety or gave a little caffeine boost and some focus chemicals.”Why don’t you tell me what’s actually been up with you these days while I get started? I feel like we only talk about philosophical deep stuff and de-mystifying our world online.”
“No harm in stretching my legs every once in a while,” Eddie countered, though Morgan’s offer meant more to him than he let on. He didn’t know many people as warm as she could be, even if her frequent wisdom-laced lectures came with a punch. As they walked through the familiar scenery, she claimed 5 hours spent with him wouldn’t be out of the question. Eddie looked at her with incredulously raised brows, but decided to keep his astonishment mute. “Herbals,” he mused instead. “I like the way you talk, Morgan.”
Eddie seated himself comfortably, his eyes remaining on her as she went through the motions. She asked about his life beyond discussing the metaphysics of death and a bashful grin immediately formed on his face. “I dunno if she told you, but….” So far, what he was about to say hadn’t been met with much fanfare, but he had high hopes that Morgan would rectify that. “Bex and I have been seeing each other recently. Y’know, actually dating.” He wanted Morgan to be proud, almost needed her to be. If she approved, maybe he wasn’t making a mistake after all.
Tea leaves spilled over the side of the mortar at the word dating. Morgan couldn’t even hide the falter in her grin. She should have guessed someone would have to replace Frank in the hyper normative prison Bex was being forced into. Her parents were determined to break her and Bex was so terrified of herself she obliged in the worst of ways. Of course. And here was Eddie, who was actually kind, who wouldn’t grab her or kidnap her away, who would listen. It wasn’t fair but stars, of course…
“Oh!” She said, her voice wavering shrill. “No, I hadn’t heard yet.” Mostly because her recklessness had ruined things with Bex, maybe for good. “That’s—wow. How long has that been going on? You guys only met a little while ago, right?” She tried to smile again. She didn’t know how or if she should break the news to him. It seemed too much to hope that he was doing this just to be Bex’s shield. But Eddie thought so little of himself sometimes… Morgan continued grinding, hoping in the smallest place of herself that this wasn’t something that would get these kids hurt. She checked on the kettle. Rising but not boiling.
Eddie didn’t know why Bex no longer lived with Morgan, she never mentioned it and it felt too personal for him to pry. In all honesty, he didn’t know much about Bex’s life at all. Sometimes it stung, but he knew how to accept what people were willing to give him. He worried that asking for more would lead to losing her altogether.
“Not long,” he said with a shake of his head, idly twiddling his fingers. He couldn’t quite pin down Morgan’s reaction, but he figured it could’ve been worse. Eddie doubted anyone would take the news as poorly as Alfie, but the fear of possibility lingered. “I know it’s a little sudden, but… who knows, right? I think it could be something good for both of us. I really care about her, y’know, and I think she cares about me. It might be nice to help give each other a little stability.” He watched Morgan carefully, waiting for her feelings to become more obvious.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed on Eddie as he spoke, trying to piece how much he knew without saying something that would endanger Bex. She’d seen them talking online plenty of times, and Bex had talked about him before… but if he was in on some grand conspiracy, wouldn’t he at least come clean to her?
“...Huh.” Morgan said. She didn’t know how to lie to him about who knows, because she definitely did. And the last thing this was was real stability. Maybe Bex was using him to stay safe, and in some vain hope she could please her parents. If it was so soon, maybe Eddie wasn’t head over heels, just...hopeful in vain. “That’s...a pretty...interesting development.
The tea kettle rattled behind her.
“How did it happen? I mean, you know, who asked who and...how did it feel...type stuff?”
Morgan sent Eddie’s thoughts back in time, albeit to the recent past. “Well, originally, I asked her, but she said she needed time to focus on herself. That was perfectly fine by me, it was kind of a heat-of-the-moment thing.” He gestured vaguely as he recalled that night in the abandoned building. His head hadn’t been on straight, he knew that much.
“But, a little further down the road, we went out to that new karaoke bar downtown and sang a duet. At the end, she kissed me and said she should’ve said yes.” He grinned, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It felt…” Eddie’s brows knit together. “I mean, I was kissing a beautiful girl in front of an audience, it felt great.” The lie left him sicker than before. “Kind of unreal,” he added, trying to ease the queasy feeling with a dash of honesty. “But, that’s… normal, right?”
As Eddie spoke, the kettle trembled, then steamed. By the time he finished it was screaming, keeping pitch with the alarms going off in Morgan’s head. Bex using Eddie was one thing, her life depended on it, even if paradoxically it was being damaged by this too. But Eddie. There was nothing sweet about that smile. Nothing hopeful in how he enjoyed the performance and needed his acting validated by her. The kettle continued to scream and Morgan continued to stare, trying to piece this together more kindly. Was he leaving something out? Had he pressured her, dangled their mutually assured destruction like it was a clean escape?
She turned away and took the water of the heat and started preparing the tea and the ice with stiff, heavy movements. “Unreal is...definitely one word for it,” she said. What was this kid doing? How did he not understand what he was doing? Did he know how serious of a game he was playing?
“Hey, Eddie?” She called, half turning over her shoulder. “You still haven’t actually told me how being with Bex makes you feel. I know it’s early days, but...you should probably know, if it’s right. Even if you don’t know the name, your body feels it.” The tea began to steep and Morgan brought the rest of the things over so she could look Eddie in the eyes while he explained. “You can tell me, Eddie,” she said, not gentle, but careful. “I know Bex and I know her situation and I’d really appreciate the truth from you now. What’s going on with you and this?”
The sound of his name made Eddie’s gaze snap to the back of Morgan’s head. The words that followed invited dread into his system. He should know, she was right about that, and maybe he did. But that was a pill too bitter to swallow. She walked over to him, tea in hand, and caught his eye.
“I’m not lying,” he said instinctively when she asked for the truth, but that in itself was a lie. “I don’t know what you want from me, Morgan. Why is—” Eddie interrupted himself with a scoff of laughter. “Why is no one happy about this, and why is everyone so shocked?” He knew evading her question wasn’t the brightest move, but he felt cornered. “Is it me, is it Bex? Did I somehow misremember the dating pool so badly that I forgot the third degree that goes with finding a nice girl you just… wanna see where things go with?”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. Evasion was one thing, but defensiveness? That was a little unexpected, and not in a way that endeared her to Eddie’s cause. He had no idea what he was getting himself into. He may not even know why Bex needed this. He asked her for himself, and he took her yes and her kiss without a second’s worth of concern. “Well you definitely haven’t told me the whole truth yet,” she challenged. “How about this: why are you so hung up on people’s reactions, Eddie? I know you want your friends to be happy when you date someone, and I’ve been in plenty of awkward situations when people find out who my girlfriend is, but that’s not really it, right? What were you really hoping for that night on stage? Did you need a crowd of strangers to make you feel like you were putting on a good show? Because your performance is a little too spotty up close?” She needling him now, letting her irritation bleed through her words. It shouldn’t matter, if it helped Bex. But somehow it did. How tight would Eddie hold on if he needed to live his lie this badly? How many pieces would Bex break into trying to please those soft dark eyes and his teen movie smile?
Morgan breathed deep and long, tapping the beat on the counter: in for five, hold for three, out for five. When she spoke again, her voice was low and calm. But it wasn’t the kind of calm that held; it was only the thinnest film stretched over something much worse. “I really need the truth from you, Eddie,” she said. “It’s scary for you, I get that, but you’re safe here and I won’t break your confidence. And what you are doing is...it’s bigger than just you, so please. Own up to whatever angle you’re playing. I need that. Now.”
The questions that poured from Morgan felt like carefully aimed blows. She saw right through him, of course she did. Everyone did. No matter what he did to try and keep this one piece of himself out of the limelight, people honed in on without issue. Eddie didn’t understand why it couldn’t be simple, for once, to play a part he chose for himself. He wanted the acceptance that came with obliging society, not the scrutiny that followed him everywhere he went. No one was happy with him, and he couldn’t honestly say he was happy with himself either. But Eddie was in too deep, and he couldn’t see a way out.
“Last I checked, appreciating validation isn’t a crime,” he said firmly. Eddie’s skin crawled as he realized how close he was to losing Morgan as a friend. It wasn’t fair, he barely got to know her and now this. People leave so easily.
“What angle?” Eddie rebuked. “If there’s something I’m missing, by all means, tell me what it is. What do you think is going on, Morgan? I think it’s your turn to answer some questions.”
“What I think is happening, Eddie, is that you are using Bexley to hide from yourself and you have no idea how dangerous this bullshit is and how many people you are hurting. My guess: you’re too scared to think about it for long, to ask the right questions, because then you might have to think of someone besides yourself and feel guilty,” Morgan replied. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you have a single clue about what the whole situation is, because that would be really reassuring right now, but--” She smiled ruefully. But hope had been making an idiot out of her for the past month; why should it stop now?
Eddie stood up from his seat, hands splayed out on the table in front of him. “Well, what I think is happening is that you’ve dug your claws too deep in Bex’s life, and maybe you did it out of love, but that doesn’t mean they’ll come out clean.” He couldn’t find it in himself to regret his outburst, not with fresh adrenaline coursing through him.
“Maybe, just maybe, you should trust her to make her own decisions. She’s not a child and you are not her mother.”
“I know I’m a fuck up,” Morgan sneered quietly. “But at least I own it. At least I try and give a shit on my way down. You--” She looked at him with disgust. “You still can’t tell me you aren’t doing this just for yourself. You still can’t tell me you would stop if it was hurting her. You can’t tell me she matters more to you than your sad, toxic fear.” Her fists clenched. “So what is it, Eddie? How many people are you willing to destroy hiding from the truth? Because it’s not just you and it’s not fair.” She hissed a trembling breath through her teeth, holding back a sob. “And I’ve already lost Bex. Which means I have no reason not to come after you if you decide that the life you continually shit on is worth more than everyone else around you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you don’t know me,” Eddie retaliated. His hands shook, leading him to press them more firmly against the table. “Bex is one of the few people I feel like I can breathe around. She’s bright and accepting, and I would never trade her happiness for mine.” As he spoke, his expression softened into sadness. “If she pulls away, I’m not gonna try to hold her in place. But, right now? Right now, she wants me and I need that.”
“I was born in 1981, Eddie,” Morgan scoffed. “I may not know you but I have seen this--” She gestured messily him. “Plenty of times. And Bex is so much more than that.” And you already are, she wanted to say. You’re hurting her and you and Mina and stars know who else in your reach. She pursed her lips, rage simmering down. “And living a lie is just destroying yourself slowly. And pulling down everyone you’re making lie with you. I still don’t know how a kid like you came to hate himself so much, but do you really have to spread that hate onto her? Say she really does feel the way you want her to. How is that fair? How is that anything close to what she deserves? How is that not already putting your happiness over hers? Where is the guy who said he wanted to help people? Who wants to connect? Because he’s not this selfish and he’s this much of a coward.”
As anger morphed into shame, Eddie knew Morgan was right. It didn’t change anything, however. The truth made his stomach churn, he couldn’t live with it. And having Bex meant he didn’t have to. He planned to give her everything he could, whatever it took to keep the charade from crashing down. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but neither was the alternative. “Like I said, you don’t know me,” he reiterated. He was a selfish coward. “I think I should go.”
“If you’re the kind of person you say you are, the kind of person who’s anything close to what she deserves, you’ll tell her what you’re really doing,” Morgan said quietly. “And as someone who knows...as bad as you think being who you really are might be, I can promise you that living like this is worse.” She shook her head, unable to look at Eddie without having a violent urge to shake him. “Go. Don’t make me regret knowing you.”
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Reading Rainbow || Morgan & Leah (feat. Sundew and her pixie troop)
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @phoenixleah & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: The White Crest Supernatural Literacy Initiative has its first test run. Results are....mixed.
Pixies fly in the sky
I can go twice as high
Just take a look
It's in a book
A reading rainbow
“Are you sure you’re good to go?” Morgan asked, rocking along the edge of the woods. She had secured her keys and phone to her carabiner and tucked everything else she needed in her knapsack: water, taser, knife, snacks, offerings, stationary. She’d asked Deirdre for advice on what pixies liked best. She’d gone through her checklist, and she had a good feeling about this expedition. The fae were so insular and some of the smaller of the bunch, so underserved by the world. Living out in the wild, away from even an Aos Si, surely they could use a leg up for when they had to deal with humans, or if they wanted to engage with the rest of supernatural society. Literacy had been Leah’s idea, of course. But while she had seemed plenty excited by it when they’d talked, Morgan still worried about that knack for suppression she’d mentioned, and the wolf injuries that were only just healing. Was this too much too soon? Was she being a bad friend for not waiting longer?
Morgan squinted behind her over the glare of mid-morning sunlight. Her friend’s hiking bag was at least half her sized, packing everything from a small library’s worth of board books and mini books, to shiny offerings, to camping equipment, including a tent, for some reason. She was one strong wind away from being knocked over, and Morgan couldn’t help but laugh a little. “We can always come back if you’re not up to it, or if you feel like you uh, need more supplies before going in.”
Leah looked over at Morgan, adjusting the bag over her shoulder with a determined nod. “I’m fine, really”, she said, although her eyes didn’t quite meet her friends. She was fine, right? She’d gone out plenty of times since her incident with Ada, and physically, she was fit as a fiddle, thanks to Nisa. Still, it seemed every time she ventured out lately- first with Nicole and then with Kaden, she was faced with another monster attack to deal with, all before fully processing the trauma of what happened with Ada. But she wanted to be over it- an encounter with a monster was never much of a bother before, and she was determined not to let it be now. “I’m fine”, reiterated. “I’m excited, actually… I really think we could do something good here.”
They had been talking for months about spreading literacy around White Crest, and so doing it here and now was the perfect way to clear her mind from all the annoying anxieties that seemed to be popping their way in these days. She shook her head playfully, a smirk playing on her lips. Nicole, too, had something to say about the size of her bag. “It never hurts to be prepared”, she said, holding up her hands in mock defense. “I’ve genuinely thought of everything, Morgan. There’s not one thing we could go back for.” As they walked toward a small picnic table in the distance, she glanced at her friend again, smiling softly. “Besides, it’d just be rude to back out now, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t, actually,” Morgan said. “I can handle this just fine on my own if you wanted to take it easy for today. I know you’re all shiny and healed, but that doesn’t mean you have to go running into the trees to look for pixies.” But Leah seemed sure, and they did have all the supplies they needed, and then some. “Come here,” she sighed, reaching for her friend’s hand. “Thank you for doing this with me. Lets poke a little way’s into the trees, okay?”
She squeezed Leah’s hand, securing her grip, and walked to where nature clustered the thickest.
“Oh no!” She called. “I think we’ve already lost our way back to the park! I sure hope no one comes to try and take advantage of us! Don’t you?” She winked and Leah, encouraging her to add to the ruse.
Morgan’s insistence that she didn’t need her help was sweet, but Leah didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity like the one they were about to take. Maybe Morgan could handle it on her own, but Leah needed to be there, for her own mental health. She took a deep breath, stepping forward slightly and letting Morgan’s hand wrap around her own. She was fine. Her eyes were alert for any tiny creatures buzzing by, knowing that in order to teach a pixie to read, they’d have to find one first.
She nodded at Morgan with a smirk, her eyes becoming comically wide and her arms outstretched. “I do hope we do not run into any tricks, dear Morgan. We are just two small friends, trying to find our way home! However will we solve this predicament?” Her voice was a bit too loud to be believable, but she was really committing to this act they were putting on. “If only there were someone to play a game with us!”
A high pitched giggle emerged from behind them, followed by a slight rustling of the brush. She pressed her lips together to suppress a smile, glancing at Morgan to see if she’d noticed.
“What’s that?” Morgan said, still exaggerating her voice for the benefit of any pixies hiding deeper in the trees. “Did you hear something? It sounded kind of scary, don’t you think?” She turned and started walking backwards, nodding encouragingly at Leah. “I think I’ll stop and have some of this candy to make myself feel better.” She slung her bag to one shoulder and took out a bag of candy fruit slices, crinkling it as loud as she could.
A hum of fluttering wings tickled her ears. Morgan turned. “Hello--?”
“GOT YOUR NOSE!”
The pixie was so close, she could only see a glowing blur of pink and green. There was a quiet pop like bubbles bursting under fingertips and then a gory impression of Morgan’s severed nose appeared in the pixie’s arms. She flitted back, cackling so hard with delight she started flying in backflips.
“I’ll take that!” Another pixie squeaked. The fruit candy bag was ripped from her grasp and plunked to the floor. Morgan turned, dazed, and saw two tiny sets of legs sticking out of the opening and kicking to find their balance.
“Wha--oh, Stars!” Morgan felt for her nose, just in case. She wasn’t sure if she got to grow a new one if anything happened to it.
“Made you look! Willowbud, look how dumb she is! I made her look!”
Sighing with relief when she felt it, Morgan finally let herself laugh. “You sure did! That was--whew!--some big magic. But I have much better candy if you and your friends will talk to me.” She grinned slyly at them. “And I have it on some very good authority that it’s one of your favorites.”
Leah followed Morgan slowly, her eyes still wide with fake fear, trying to grab the attention of the pixies that were sure to be nearby. “I am feeling very, very scared right now, Morgan. Thank goodness you brought so much candy to keep us well fed and nourished.” There was somewhat of a robotic tone applied to her put upon acting voice, but she felt it was doing the job all the same.
It was fascinating to be able to watch the pixies from so close, and she savored every moment, hoping she could remember it all to document later. She had seen a few as a child, and read about them tons, but being this close was a real treat. She wondered if the excitement shone on her face as much as it fluttered in her heart.
Strands of her hair floated above her head, and she heard the faint buzzing of wings as another pixie held it up, pulling and prodding as if it were the most interesting thing the pixie had ever seen. It flew directly in front of her face, it’s glow shining bright on her nose. “You’ve got a stain on your shirt!”, the pixie squeaked, pointing down toward Leah’s chest. She looked down, mocking shock, before it flew up playfully, poking her in the nose. “MADE YOU LOOK!”
The other pixies erupted in fits of giggles before marveling at Morgan’s news, all rushing toward the candy offered to them. Leah, for her part, got to work on setting up the mini chairs and table she’d borrowed from her niece’s play set, a perfect size for the pixies before them. “You can even sit down, if you’d like!”, she offered, grinning slyly and excitedly at Morgan. This plan might actually work!
Morgan eased to the ground, tearing open a handful of pixie sticks and hold them out. The pixies abandoned the candy fruit slices and flitted over, pulling at their favorites and dousing themselves in sugar.
“That one’s mine!” One of them cried.
“I saw it first!” Said another one.
“It has my name on it! See? It’s Appleseed!”
“They all say the same thing!”
“It’s okay, I have enough colors for everyone!” Morgan said. “But maybe one of you can tell me what these words on the candies do say?”
“Why? Don’t you know, Dummy-Boob?”
Morgan squinted. There was something strangely familiar about this one, the way she fluffed her pollen-strewn hair or flew a little ahead of the others, like she was the boss, or the name she called her. “I asked you first,” she said. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Sundew,” the pixie said. “Can I have yours?”
“No. Deirdre told me all about your little tricks, and she would be mad if you used our friend offerings to trick me. You wouldn’t make a fae mad on purpose, would you?”
The pixies swarmed into a tittering argument about whether Morgan could possibly mean their Deirdre, and who had last visited her and knew how she was doing, and could they trust this human to know anything about her?
“Not a human,” Morgan tried to interject. “And you can call me Morgan, and you can call my very good and also not-human friend here, Leah!”
“Oh! The Morgan Thing! Yes, yes, yes, I knew it all along,” Sundew said. “I remember you! Your face still looks like a Dummy Boob, but I guess since you gave us Pixie Stickses, you’re good for something.”
That was definitely not how to pronounce Pixie Sticks, but Morgan could see the mistake froSundew flew lazily down to the doll furniture and started munching on her treats. Only then did the other pixies join in. If Sundew thought it was alright, then they could enjoy what was being put in front of them. Morgan side-eyed Leah. She had never been especially good at speaking queen bee unless she was bartering something she knew was wanted, and how were they supposed to convince the pixies that this was a ‘them’ thing?
Leah had no doubt that Morgan would be well versed on how to deal with the pixies, especially after she avoided Sundew’s trick about names. She chuckled at the attempt, observing how the other pixies deflated with disappointment as Morgan refused.
She smiled shyly at the pixies as she was introduced, offering them a small wave as some of them swarmed around her in curiosity. “Morgan’s good for a lot of things, actually”, Leah said, noting how much the other pixies seemed to follow this Sundew’s lead. If they needed to get through to any of them first, it was definitely her. “If you think her Pixie Stickses are good, just wait until you get a look at her flowers and cakes.” Locking eyes with Morgan, she sent her a quick nod, a plan quickly forming in her head.
“Here’s the thing, Sundew. These human treats that the Morgan thing brought?...”- she glanced at Morgan at that, amused, before continuing. “...there are tons of them, all over the world. And they’re totally delicious, right?” The pixies around them tutted tiny noises of agreement as they munched on their own, and Leah sat down on the grass before she continued on, planting a dramatic, sad look on her face. “The problem is that Morgan thing here only brought us the very best tastes. Some of the tastes of the treats? Just awful. You get your tongue on one of the bad ones, it’ll be the only thing on your mind for weeks!”
Dramatic gasps erupted around them, and Sundew seemed to lean forward in her tiny chair. “There’s only one sure way to know which taste you’re about to get, Sundew, and that’s being able to read what flavor treat you’re about to eat.” She sighed dramatically, sitting back on her hands in the grass. Maybe, if Sundew thought this was her idea, she’d actually go for it. “Do you know how to read, Sundew?” She stared at the sky as she asked, as if the question was as casual as asking someone if they knew how to ride a bike (reading was obviously much more important).
“Of course I can read, Lee-lee,” Sundew said, puffing out her tiny, glowing chest. “And I can write too! Which is more than a dummy boob can do. How else would I know it says pixie stickies?” She proudly rippled open a blue pixie stick and dumped a heap of it onto her face to wipe and lick off her face.
“Okay, well, what about you?” Morgan asked, pointing to another pixie. “How do you know which one tastes the best?”
“Your face knows which one is the best!” Sundew interrupted.
“Obviously red always tastes best,” the other pixie said. “That’s why I get all the red ones.”
“See? We knowsy-knows everything we need to, Morgan Dummy Boob,” Sundew said. “You can tell Deirdre thank you for all her presents and I got that sexy spriggan’s number for her just in case she changes her mind, you’re welcome very much for--”
“Okay, moving on!” Morgan said, growing shrill.
Another pixie flitted up to Leah, pulling on her ear to get her attention. “Do you have any more of the stripey ones with the crinklies? I love the minty ones so much, they’re so good, and the stripes are so pretty and then if you get them sticky, you can put them under people’s fingers and toes and make them scream and it’s sooo much fun.”
“What’s this?” Two more said, picking at the doll furniture she’d brought. Together they pulled up one of the tiny cabinets with mini books and spun it around before letting it fall and tumble on the ground. Then up again, and down again, higher, letting the doors snap on their fragile hinges and all the carefully assembled books fall into the dirt.
“Oh, but you wouldn’t want to make people scream, would you?” Leah chided, tilting her head to the side. “That wouldn’t be very nice.” She was too focused on the pixie in front of her to notice the rumblings of Sundew and some of the others, who conspired with tiny whispers and giggles behind her.
Leah let out a sharp gasp as her ear was yanked, the action taking her off guard and causing her heart to flutter. She closed her eyes and let out a breath, and a flash of snarling, hungry werewolf teeth snapped into her vision. She had sworn that the flashbacks were over with, that they’d no longer be disrupting and distressing her at the drop of a hat, but somehow, she kept being proved wrong. Opening her eyes with a start, she swallowed a hard lump in her throat, attempting to focus all of her energy on here, on now, on this.
She reached into her bag, about to feel around for another candy cane to hand over to the small fae with some more coaxing toward reading when the commotion with the doll furniture caught her attention. “Don’t!, ...-stop!” All that hard work, all the arranging and careful planning she’d done, it was a waste if the pixies weren’t going to take it seriously. She reached forward, ready to pull the furniture away from them and carefully piece back together, but the pixies were quicker than she was.
“Don’t stop? Okay, we won’t!” one of them giggled, picking up the nearly destroyed, tiny books and dropping them again and again.
She pushed herself up into a standing position, determined to snatch the books and furniture away from them for good, when the pixies who had been conspiring behind her let out another raucous round of giggles, and Leah only realized why when it was too late.
In a matter of seconds, they had managed to tie her shoelaces together, causing her to tumble back toward the ground with a scream, landing on her hands in front of her with a grunt. Her mind flashed again, and suddenly, she could feel herself tumbling down her hall stairwell with the wolf, breaking and bending and bruising something new with each passing moment. No. No no no. She didn’t want to break anymore, she needed to get away and find a way out and-
“I think we do want to make people scream, Lee-Lee. Even not-human people, like you!”
She wasn’t in her house, it wasn’t that night, everything was healed. So why did she still feel so broken?
As she attempted to push herself back up, the pixies swarmed her, tugging at her hair, her ears, her fingers, her clothes- anything they could to elicit more silly screams and prove their point. Tears stung at her eyes, but she was essentially useless against their tricks, and even as she successfully pushed herself up into a sitting position, they continued to taunt her.
Morgan tried to shield Leah with her body, but there was no point when the pixies could fly over and around her to keep pinching, pulling, and laughing at Leah. “That’s enough!”
“You’re right, we should move onto tickle torture!” Sundew squealed.
“No, that is not what I mean--”
“But she’s so funny when she screams!”
“I know, a-and I understand that but…” But what? What was more important to a pixie than tormenting someone for fun? Panic tensed through Morgan’s muscles. She couldn’t hurt them. She couldn’t scare them. “WHAT IF I KNEW A BETTER WAY!” She shouted. “I know a better way to mess with humans!”
The pixies didn’t stop, but they did look up with eager faces, and some paused in pulling on her hair.
“It’s so fast, once you really know how, and the humans make it so easy, they won’t even know it!”
Sundew folded her arms and flitted up to stare Morgan in the eyes. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”
“I won’t tell you anything about it until you leave Leah alone.”
Sundew didn’t seem to like putting a stop to her fun, but she and the other pixies came to the same conclusion with one exchange of looks. Yes, finding easy ways to trick the humans did sound like more fun.
One by one they let go of Leah and flitted over to Morgan and as they each crowded around her vision, she realized that she had no ideas in her head but one, and she would have to hope very hard that this went over very well. “I--need you all to come over here and give me a little space while I show you.”
She took out a notebook and one of the markers she’d brought and wrote very carefully, one word on each set of lines. She was tempted to add an artistic flourish but remembered from her friend crying behind her that these pixies were not as child-like as they seemed, and she wasn’t in the mood to have her art critiqued. “Okay,” she said, donning her teacher-voice. “Can anyone tell me what this says?”
Silence from the pixies.
“This is a way to get humans to do almost anything you want,” Morgan said. “If you can get them to say this or agree to this in writing, You can have so many kinds of fun. Better kinds. And, it works both ways, so you should probably know how to read it.”
“That doesn’t look like anything so special to me,” Sundew said, glaring skeptically.
“We can break it down. It’s definitely a long phrase. You all know the first word, right?” They did. “And the second one?” Only Sundew knew agree, which she was very proud of. But when they got to terms and conditions, the little pixie folded her arms and stuck up her little nose.
“If you’re lying about these words, you’re going to be in sticky-sticky trouble,” She said. “No one gets away with lying to pixies.”
Morgan held out the marker to her. “If you really think I’m lying, then you should be able to check the box without any worries, shouldn’t you?”
All the pixies looked at her, waiting to see what would happen.
“I could tell you first, though, if you want to trust me,” Morgan said.
Sundew got as far as hovering the marker above the checkbox before her doubt came in. “Fine,” she huffed. “What does it say?”
And Morgan told her which each word meant, one by one, helping the others sound it out slowly. “Alright, so put together what does that mean?”
“I agree to your terms and conditions!” Willowbud cried. Her face fell as she realized what she’d said. “..Oops.”
“That’s okay, Willowbud. I release you,” Morgan said. “But you see, you don’t have to speak words to make them powerful. You can do all kinds of magic if you learn to write them down and leave them for other people to find. And there’s even more words than that out here. I could teach you some more of them, but, I’m definitely going to need you to do some things for me first.”
Sundew reluctantly agreed and the rest of the pixies let out the rest of their enthusiasm. Morgan would exchange one lesson in exchange for staying on task while they were in the learning area, which would be in her garden next but might change and be established by her later. And she would get one favor for releasing Willowbud so quickly and recognizing Sundew as her very special teaching assistant. When this was settled, Morgan helped the pixies gather all their candy into the spare dinner napkin they’d brought and waved at them as they flew away, carrying the stash between them all.
When the pixies were gone, really, completely, and not even in earshot gone, Morgan sagged on the ground with relief and crawled over to Leah. “Hey…” she said gently. “That was uh...pretty wild huh? Definitely not how I planned to do things. Are you okay? I brought some first aid stuff, if they did anything to you. Is it okay if I take a look? Leah?”
There was no end in sight, no stop to the pulling, and picking, and flashbacks. The torment- it was everlasting, even with Morgan’s muted voice in Leah’s ears trying to talk the pixies down. But the endless did have an end, even in the darkest of moments, and slowly but surely, whatever Morgan was saying seemed to lure them away.
As soon as it was possible, Leah pushed herself up, crossing her arms over her chest and walking briskly away from the group to lean against a nearby tree, trying to steady her breathing. The trees around them, despite staying in the same space, felt like they were closing in on her, inching and inching until she’d soon have no space left to breath. Suddenly, she was pinned under the wolf again, with no way out of the darkness that encompassed them. There was a sweat above her brow that hadn’t been there earlier.
Why did she still feel like this? Why couldn’t it just be over? She knew she was safe, she knew a bunch of pixies couldn’t hurt her- so why did her brain keep insisting on flashing back to that one, fateful night?
Something in Morgan’s tone shook her out of her thoughts, and Leah’s attention was turned back to her friend and the pixies, who were now surrounding Morgan. How much time had passed since she walked away from them? It had felt like hours, at least, but the position of the sun suggested it had merely been a few moments.
I agree to the terms and conditions.
Suddenly, a new wave of panic bubbled up inside her at what Morgan was saying, at what she was doing, and she closed the distance between them in a flash.
“Morgan-”, she warned, but it was too late- the pixies were already fluttering away with satisfied grins, clearly already planning the tricks they’d play with all they’d learn from Morgan. Her body slunk back down to the ground, in shock and disbelief at what her friend had just done.
“What did you just agree to?” she asked, her eyes wide and angry. Her voice sounded foreign in her ears. It was raspy and uneven and held emotion that she was not yet ready to let spill over. “Why would you… They’re going to torment the whole town, Morgan! Do you have any idea how dangerous what you just did is? How much damage it will do?”
She ignored Morgan’s offer of first aid, too enveloped in the thought of what the pixies might do with all they were about to learn. She was fine. She told Morgan as such, crossing her arms over her chest again.
Morgan flinched back, bewildered. “What did I--” Leah didn’t look tormented anymore, she looked furious. Instinctively, Morgan inched further away. She replayed the last few minutes, but the only thing she could see as wrong was abandoning her friend for so long. But she couldn’t have done things any faster. Or if she could have, but she didn’t know how. “I--I did what I could. I negotiated a no mischief or violence in the learning area agreement so this doesn’t happen again! I got them to leave you alone! What do you mean damage? They--it’s gonna be fine. They’ll have to write a whole lot more convincingly than Sundew’s chickenscretch before they can scam the town into hopping on one foot til they pass out.”
She still had this impulse that she should do something. Her bag was close by. She should check Leah for injuries, right? But stronger than this impulse was her confusion. “I--don’t understand what’s happening right now, Leah. You need to tell me what’s happening because I don’t--I-I know it wasn’t great but isn’t this what we--what is it you think I should be doing?” Morgan finally met her gaze, her look accusing through her hurt.
This was too much. There was a thought, somewhere in the back of her head, that maybe Leah wouldn’t be reacting the way she was if she hadn’t just been tormented by the pixies- if she hadn’t spent the last few weeks tormented by nightmares of being attacked by werewolves, and tiny snowmen that liked to stab your ankles. If the town hadn’t been plagued with people falling into sleep and never woken up again. “And you don’t think they’ll find a way around that? They’re pixies, Morgan. They’re known for their tricks! Giving them the power of those words is like tossing a lit match into a dry forest. They’ll learn… they’ll teach each other, and handwriting be damned, they’ll torment the whole damn town with this.”
She held Morgan’s gaze for a moment, her breathing shallow and heavy, before sucking her teeth and looking at the ground below them. “I don’t know”, she muttered finally, her voice small. “I don’t...know”. A panic began to rise in her chest, building and building in neverending wave of worry. “Everything feels like a big deal, Morgan. Everything feels like it’s about to come crashing down, all the time and all at once. I can’t differentiate between real danger and everyday mishaps, I can’t-...” She let out a sob and put a hand over her chest, struggling to catch her breath.
“No! They’re not going to take over the world! And what’s wrong with appealing to what they like? We’re not here to change them or make them like humans! I don’t--I don’t--I---” Morgan sputtered, quivering as she tried to assemble the pieces between them faster. Her mind whirred in place, nothing made sense, nothing fit. Weren’t they supposed to accept supernaturals the way they were, as long as there wasn’t recreational murder involved? Sure, the pixies might get up to some intense stuff, but education wasn’t about programming people to be like you. The pixies would always be themselves, that wasn’t something to fix.
But Leah breathed, and then she quieted, and then she cried, and then she panicked. Panic, Morgan knew how to handle.
“Hey. Hey, Leah...can I come close?” She inched towards her, hands in plain sight. “I just want you to breathe with me. You know all about breath control, yeah? It’s, um, it’s actually a nice game to play when your lungs don’t regulate themselves anymore because you’re dead.” She let out an uneasy laugh, unsure if levity was something that would help at a time like this. “Breathe slowly with me, and tell me how you feel.” Tentatively, she reached for Leah’s hands and tapped the familiar rhythm on her knuckles. “In, hold, out. In, hold, out. Where did you go, when they hurt you? Come back to me, help me understand…” She kept tapping, kept breathing, and strained all her dead senses toward the earth, searching for more answers.
Leah’s ears felt like they were clogged, and Morgan’s words were far away and muffled, and she could barely make them out. But she continued to hold her eyes, silently pleading with her to help stop whatever magic the pixies had sprouted that was making her lose her breath. This had to be the pixies, right? But then Morgan was requesting to come closer, clear as day, and Leah did what she could to let out a nod. Breath control. Yes. It was one of the first things she learned as a child in phoenix training. Controlling your breath was often the first step in controlling your fire, or even in focusing your heat. Focus, focus ,focus.
She tentatively let Morgan take her hand- it had felt like an anchor on her chest, as if before Morgan had reminded her about breath control it was the only thing keeping her grounded. In, hold, out. It was hard, now, but she kept trying. In, hold, out. Focus. In, hold, out. “I-I...my house, that night…” In, hold, out. She was here, not there. There was far away and gone and didn’t exist anymore, right? “...with A-...with the, ...werewolf”. She let out another sob, squeezing Morgan’s hand tight. “I… it’s still… I can’t stop…” In, hold, out. In, hold, out. “I thought I could… be over it. I thought I could forget. I can’t even get myself into my fucking guest room to clean up the mess we made, I … I can barely sleep through the night without waking up with a start thinking she’s there again, I…” She looked at Morgan again, clinging to her for answers, or comfort, or anything. “...I can’t stop feeling like this.”
“Oh, Leah,” Morgan whispered. She pulled herself closer to her friend and put her free hand on her shoulder and tugged, gently. You can fall, she wanted to say. I’ve got you. Let me catch you. I’ve got you. “Keep focusing. In, hold, out.” She did it with her even if her lungs didn’t need the exercise. “You’re with me now. You’re not alone. I’ve got you, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’re safe now, Leah. Keep breathing with me.” In, hold, out. In, hold, out…
Steadily they went, one round after another, and all the while Morgan told her I’m here, you’re safe, I’m here. At last, when the worst seemed to be ebbing away, Morgan said, “You can’t hide from it, Leah. It’ll just jump out of the shadows at you like this. Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must take care of what has been given.” She reached up to comb her fingers through Leah’s hair. “I’m sorry. I am so, so very sorry you must carry this with you. That you can’t pretend like it never happened, that you can’t go back to being someone this hadn’t happened to. But you can control it, if you look at it, if you hold it long enough, you can keep it calm and quiet, and one day it won’t be so big or so heavy.” She tugged on Leah again, urging her into her arms. “You have to be the one to decide, though. We don’t have to talk about it right now if you don’t want to. Whatever you need is what we’ll do. I am your friend and I love you and I am here for you as much as you’ll let me.”
In, hold, out. It was helping, Leah thought. In, hold, out. It seemed to be helping. The breaths started entering her lungs more willingly, although the pit in her stomach didn’t cease. And she let herself let go. For the first time since the incident, she let herself be cradled and held and cared for. It wasn’t to her sister, or Bea or Jas, who’d all offered countless times to help her pick up the pieces, but it was here, with Morgan, in the middle of the forest, when her resolve finally cracked. It felt ironic, but she didn’t know why. She listened to Morgan’s words, her voice grounding and soothing as she let herself be pulled back to earth. As she was wrapped into Morgan’s arms, she closed her eyes, her breathing finally… finally feeling steady enough to speak.
“I don’t know...how to look at it”, she admitted, anxiety bubbling up in her chest again. “I-... I’m so used to… I know about the supernatural, you know? I know how to d-deal with them, and handle the dangerous, and help them, and I thought that if something like this ever happened, I wouldn’t be so… sh, so shaken by it.” She let out a quick breath, bringing her hand up to wipe away at the tears that were falling down her cheeks. She swallowed a hard lump in her throat, slowly sitting up and pulling away from Morgan, a bit embarrassed at the whole ordeal. “I didn’t mean to yell at you”, she told her friend, catching her eyes.
Morgan bundled Leah into her arms as tight as she dared. She would have fallen to the forest floor with relief if she could have. Leah’s cries sounded as though they broke her body on the way out, as if her pain had become an invisible creature, clawing its way out. Morgan did her best to soothe the monster away with soft hushes and circles rubbed into Leah’s back, but that was only a bandaid at best. “Hey, don’t worry about me,” she said, brushing the issue aside. “We don’t have to talk about that today. I know you didn’t mean it now.” She kept on, soothing Leah while she held her and hoping with all she had that her dead arms were enough.
“You’re still a person, Leah,” Morgan said into her shoulder. “You can’t theory your way out of being a person, or suffering. You can’t skip around your pain. And feeling pain, carrying suffering, doesn’t make you any less strong or kind or wise, Leah. You are still every bit as valuable, as yourself, as you ever have been. And it’s so hard to feel that sometimes, I know. But nothing is going to be taken away from you if you look at it. If anything, Leah, you will understand more and have an even greater capacity to help people who’ve been hurt after you face this and learn to carry it better.”
Morgan’s skin was an interesting contrast to Leah’s, her friend’s cool and icy while her own burned red hot with embarrassment and sorrow. It was soothing. She let herself sink into it as she closed her eyes and listened to the logic that was flowing around her. She had been so in her head about everything that had happened with the wolf, and all that had happened after too. The snowmen with Nicole, the ballybog and vodnik with Kaden, and now the pixies with Morgan- they seemed to all be adding to an ever piling list of emotions that Leah was determined to deal with in some sort of metaphorical ‘later’ that she would never let come. But now, Morgan offered an out- a way to start digging through the pile and know she could still be herself once she reached the other side of it. And what better way to start than to just… look at it? To see it, to relive it, so that when the flashbacks inevitably came again, they wouldn’t be so jarring or scary. The idea scared her beyond belief, but it made so much sense that Leah couldn’t deny it was a good one.
After a long beat of thinking and sighing and breathing again, Leah let her eyes lock with Morgan’s, wondering if they looked as vulnerable as she felt. “You’re right”, she said finally, her voice just starting to sound like her own again. “I… I’ve been working so hard on pushing it all back- burying myself in work and scribe things so that I could move on and forget about what happened… but how can I expect to forget about it when I’ve not even let myself really remember it?” As she spoke, she picked at the grass awkwardly, needing something to do with her hands. She was fully embarrassed at the scene she’d caused, even if it was just between the two of them. Because of that, her attention was brought back to the mess the pixies had left- the wrappers and doll furniture were strewn about the grass around them, left without a care in the world. “Perhaps we should start cleaning up…”
Morgan took Leah’s face gently in her hands and held her steady while they looked into each other’s eyes, gently and clearly. “So remember. On your terms. And it doesn’t have to be alone.” She stroked her friend’s hair as she looked at the mess around them on the forest floor. “That won’t take so long. I still have the store bags, we can put the wrappers in one until we find a recycling bin and put your niece’s furniture in another. Maybe order her some upgrades to make up for the damaged stuff.” She smiled, relieved and confident. “What I want you to do is think about where you want to go next. Anywhere in town, as long as it’s just for you. No tumbling back into work, okay?” Giving Leah one more knowing look, a gesture to show that they were really okay, Morgan reached into her bag and started scooping up the mess.
Leah let herself sink deeper into Morgan’s touch, losing herself in the sheer gentleness that was presented to her. She let out a slow breath and nodded. “On my terms”. As they cleaned up, she thought about what Morgan said. Normally, she’d probably head to the library basement after an encounter like this, and write down everything she could remember. But she wanted to be better- to stop feeling like the world might fall apart at the drop of a hat, and so for once, she opted to take a break and take Morgan’s advice instead. “Morgan?”, she asked as they picked up the last of the garbage, moving on to the tiny furniture. “Would you like to go to the movies when we’re done here?” She leaned down to pick up the small table, one of its legs barely hanging on. “The Nordica is showing old classics tonight… it might be fun.”
Morgan beamed down at Leah as she stuffed the last of the wrappers and tied off the bag. “Oh, yeah? Hmm, I don’t know…” She scrunched up her face, pretending to give it some very serious thought. “You, me, and the rom com double feature with Irene Dunne and Katherine Hepburn?” Then she burst into laughter and pulled her friend up with a helping hand. “I would be delighted, Leah.”
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Flashback Friday || Morgan & Luis
TIMING: Distant past, in the days of yee-haw
LOCATION: The Magick Cauldron, Houston, Texas
PARTIES: @ontheluis & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Luis wanders into a magic shop looking for some herbs, Morgan spies an opportunity, and the cards know more than either of them reckon.
CONTAINS: Mellow yee-haw vibes
“Welcome, traveler, to the Magick Cauldron! Browse at your pleasure and inquire if you have any questions!” Morgan had given the scripted greeting so many times, it came out of her in full customer service cheer every time the shop door opened. She didn’t even look up from the book she had open under the cash register anymore, but flipped another page and let the customers let her know if there was something worth talking about by shouting ‘lady!’ or coming into her peripheral view.
The Magick Cauldron was the only occult shop still standing West Houston after the Y2K stress fads had died away and the first bout of shiny, corporate development had found its way into Montrose and bulldozed a crystal shop, a Greek deli, and one of the few ladies-only gay bars in favor of a mixed use building that so far only housed a nail salon and a Jamba Juice. Ralf, the fine proprietor of the Cauldron as he called himself, said that this space was protected. As the door chimed open again and Morgan made her welcome speech, bright and shiny as the plastic plate armor hanging in the kid’s section, she wondered if he was right. She never seemed to serve more than a dozen or so customers during her shifts, but the lights stayed on, day after sweltering day. If Ralf was right, it might just be the one piece of real magic in the place, not that she could say that to anyone’s face.
The warped outline of a boy rippled over the glass counter and Morgan blinked up from her book. “Is there something I can help you with, weary traveler?” She asked wryly.
“Sorry ma’am,” Luis assured, “didn’t mean to bring the stray in here,”
Evening had fallen outside, heat from the blistering still wafting off the pavement. Telephone poles and streetlights were thin black columns that stood stark against the blazing orange and wane blues of sunset.
“Go on, git!”
At the Magick Cauldron’s threshold was an enormous black dog. Even while quietly sitting on its haunches the shaggy canine was easily as tall as the teenage boy snapped at it. Pupiless red eyes regarded Luis impassively, only an ear twitch showing that the dog wasn’t just a statue.
When the black dog gave no indication of actually entering the store nor stopping its scrutiny of Luis, the young man cut his losses and regarded the woman at the counter again.
“Here,” Luis reached into a pocket of his jeans and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it on the counter. The names of herbs and powders were written in someone else’s prime neat handwriting. “I uh don’t know what any of this is…,” he confessed.
Morgan took the paper carefully between her fingers, trying not to let her discomfort at how damp and sweaty it was show too much. It didn’t take much to figure out she was looking at an herbalist mixture for anxiety and sleeplessness. She looked up and the boy, and down to the list again. “We’ve got everything you need over here,” she said. She lead the boy over to the bulk aisle where the dried herbs and bottled oils were kept and alphabetized. “Did you want these bagged separate or together? Or--you probably don’t know how these work huh? We’ll do separate, so you can use any excess as you wish. But fair warning, we have a purchase minimum of one ounce for each item.” She put a small paper bag on the shelf in the middle of the display and started shovelling the herbs in. As she worked, she glanded sidelong at the kid and the dog that had decided to become instantly fond of him. Someone cared about them, to throw together this recipe, and he looked embarrassed enough for a kid his age to seem like he needed help. Would it be wrong to squeeze a few more dollars out of him if it so happened to brighten his day or give him some direction? Sure, he was scruffy, but not so much as to be desperate. He could afford a few extra bucks, right?
“Hey, you okay there?” Morgan asked him. “You seem a little lost. I’m getting some ‘needs direction’ vibes from you.” She gestured vaguely. “If you’re looking for Niko Niko’s, it’s just further down the street. You’re not supposed to leave your car here while you go over there, but I won’t tell. And if you need something a little less literal, I might be able to help you with that.” She nodded toward the oracle room at the back of the shop, with its hand painted sign hanging crooked from a nail and entryway draped with lavender beads. “I do have sliding scale rates, if it helps you make up your mind.”
The great black dog continued to watch Luis in silent stillness, the Barghest’s posture poised as if waiting for something.
“No offense ma’am but I don’t believe in…,” the teenager half-turned but caught sight of the enormous stray waiting for him in the darkening sunset. Those pupiless red eyes immediately filled Luis with a nameless dread. Cold sweat stained the back of his T-shirt as Luis’ skin went clammy despite the Texan heat. Luis couldn’t process why some random big-ass dog would wig him out so much. He wasn’t even afraid of it biting him or even the dog itself.
So why was his heart pounding in his temples?
“Yeah uh..s-seperate would be great,” Luis reaffirmed to Morgan needlessly. The labels on the tinctures and herbal selections blurred in his vision as Luis tried to get a handle on his thoughts. “Direction like, oh you mean to the interstate,” Luis replied in a misinterpretation of Morgan’s broader meaning. “I’m alright thanks, yeah merging on that triple hairpin by Foster is a pain in the ass but it's chill.”
Luis looked over to the oracle room with the dubiety of someone for whom the occult was just a vague ‘other’ mentioned at Mass or when abuela suggested a Sonora Market cure for whatever new cold was going around. He seemed about to decline again until the creeping skin-crawl of Barghest’s glare boring into his back made Luis amenable to any distraction.
“Yeah uh sure,” he said, taking a step towards the beaded shroud. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Morgan followed the boy’s eyes to the dog. He was looking pretty well fed for a stray, and his eyes--red, alert, sharp with an uncommon intelligence--made her shiver. Definitely supernatural. She didn’t know, how, or what, but it didn’t look good. “And I mean--” How to put this in just the right way? Or at least the more convincing way? “I mean your spirit, your chakras. Believe in your connection to the universe or not, but are you really going to say to my face that you know how you’re going to make your life worthwhile to yourself? That you know how to reach your greatest good?” No one did. Heck, she was a devout wiccan most days out of the year and even she didn’t know what her highest, greatest good looked like. “And if you’ve got the cash, I’ll throw in a cleansing, something to make--” she gestured at him vaguely, “Whatever negative heavy energy this is that’s stuck to you. Seriously, do you ever feel tired out of nowhere?” It was summer and the sun was exhausting; everyone got tired out of nowhere.
Maybe she was laying it on a little thick, but Morgan was tired of ordering off the dollar menu for dinner and she felt like she was taking her life into her own hands when she conjured money from school pens and laundry lint cotton. This kid’s money might get her a pot pie that didn’t come from the freezer, or enough tacos to last her a week, or maybe she’d blow it all on seafood, or a dress that hadn’t been worn by someone else. “I’ll ring you up first, and then we’ll see about getting the rest of you squared away.” Morgan did, and when that part of the transaction was over, she lead him into the oracle room.
In truth, the oracle room was an old storage closet with the door taken out. Morgan breezed through them and went to the antique flea market find armoire, where all the necessary items were kept. Morgan took out a small tray of tarot decks and took the one she liked best, a well loved Raider-Waite with stars on the backs and gold-gilt edges. “I’ll shuffle them myself, but you should tell me when to cut and start again and when to stop. When I’m done, you’ll spread them. You’re the one who needs to connect with the deck, after all.”
Rafael Martininez had given his son that smirking half-smile while Malia had given Luis the pale blue eyes watching Morgan shuffle cards. Sweaty light brown hair clung to his forehead beneath the Dallas Burn hat, stray strands dangling back his eyes. The lanky teenager sat awkwardly across from the cartomancer, doubting not only her veracity but that a term like destiny could even apply to someone like him.
Like many children who’re so profoundly blessed to grow up in a home of unconditional love, Luis had no idea that Rafael and Malia given him a protection rarer than talismans, weirds, or wards. Rafael had come to this country for a better life, and Malia had wanted a home that was safer then the hell she’d left. Together they’d given both dreams to their children, so Luis and his siblings would never have to go through what they had.
The freckled face that lifted to Morgan’s was innocent of hate, abuse, or fear of abandonment. Even in following a strange woman into a shrouded back room, it’d never occurred to Luis to worry about anything more sinister than carnival charlantry.
“So uh...like this ma’am,” Luis asked as he placed some cards face down on the table.
It was this very innocence in Louis that dulled the edge off Morgan’s guilt. It was wrong (if wrong was a real concept) to spoil something pure, but if she was really the worst thing that was going to happen to this kid in his teenage years, he was pretty darn lucky. At least he was getting some introspection out of the deal. Could he have gotten a tarot deck from the discount bookstore two blocks over for a quarter of what she was going to charge him, or thought everything out on his own for free? Yes. But he was also some bushy tailed high school kid; could happen wasn’t the same thing as would happen.
She’d had more instructions to give, some arbitrary waving of hands and maybe some visualization in what one of her co-workers called her ‘yoga voice’, but Louis, in his eagerness, had taken more than the requisite three cards she had planned on, wich just meant she had a ready-made excuse for the forty dollars she was going to take from him. “My, my, aren’t we eager?” She said. “What’s interesting to me already is that you have intuitively drawn out one of the more complex and energy taxing card spreads. Imperfectly, but--” She straightened them out at random until they made more of a geometric pattern. “See? I barely did anything at all. These cards must really like you. I don’t normally do something this involved, but it looks like there’s something here that wants to come out, and I’m not in the business of stifling anyone’s growth or energy.”
Morgan flipped the first card over to reveal The Fool and managed to keep her laughter light and soft. “Well, even if I hadn’t been doing this for so long, this is you, where you are right now. Don’t take the title personally, these are antiquated terms. He’s just young, and at the start of a great journey, not even begun, just on the precipice. He’s got his whole life ahead of him, and the sun, see? It’s shining on him to show that the universe is aligned with his desires. The world wants you to support you, wants to see you succeed.”
The second card. The Tower. Morgan’s eyes widened. Not really vibing with the story she’d been telling, but maybe the one after… Eight of Cups. Morgan flipped over the last ones. Death and The Moon. “Hmm...Fascinating...” Morgan said, stalling for a way to spin this. “The thing about the major arcana is the magnitude of forces. Forces like destiny and fate and the collective consciousness. These forces are bigger than a ten minute fight with your friends or what you want to do after graduation, these are ‘beyond your control’. And you have four. The universe really does have plans for you, that’s kind of exciting, right?” She smiled, hoping to get some confirmation from him, or at least some more of his trust. “What does your intuition tell you about this journey, honey?”
Morgan’s performative coaxing elicited a dubious look, but the striking illustrations of the Tarot drew Luis’ attention regardless. The fool was poised with one foot over the cliff, smiling blissfully as the sun warmed his back. The tower’s blackened crenellations tumbled down the cliffside as the once indomitable edifice was battered into ruins by a storm. A haggard traveler slumped down in relief on a river bank as eight golden chalice stood resplendent over the churning rapids. Death rode on its pale horse, a scythe clutched in one skeletal hand while offering an exquisitely detailed rose. The Moon slept in the sky above a verdant shore. Wolves howled in its light while pelagic creatures breached on the lunar tide.
“Woah that art on these is something else,” admitted Luis as he squinted at the intricate illuminations, clearly sensitive to aesthetics but not the higher esoteric meaning.
Unfortunately intuition is only as good as the experiences which inform it and Luis Martinez had been sheltered from the world’s cruelty. It was a blessing to be sure, but it also made Luis unable to imagine that evil doesn’t need consent to claim you.
“My intuition is uh,” floundered the young man who had about as much affinity for divination as the average block of cedar. “The ranch’ll catch on fire, maybe a relative will die, but we’ll find like eight things that’ll make it better before the next full moon,” Luis posited.
Morgan’s stomach rumbled as the boy ogled the artwork on the cards. She was tempted to commend the kid on his ‘uncanny insight’ into the realm of the divine and take her money and run down the street for a hot stack of tacos. But the kid was so bright eyed and easily awed. She felt like she owed him at least some of her knowledge, even if she thought the tarot was psychological self-talk at best.
“Fortunately for your relatives, nothing here is quite that literal,” she said, laughing warmly. “But this journey you’re on, both within and without, is going to be perilous.” Perilous to the point of being seriously dangerous and traumatic, if this really was his subconscious sensing something on the horizon. But that wasn’t something she was going to say to his face. She wanted money without having to lie to her mother about where it came from later. “Even though your desires are upheld by the earth and stars, there will come a time when it feels as though you’ve been cast out and lost everything. But the key to staying your course is to…” What was a precious uplift-y way to spin this? “Hold fast to your sense of self. Remember the core of who you are and what you want. Because, if you do, then you will survive the upheavals, and you will be able to choose wisely what to keep, what to leave behind, and end up so strong, it’ll feel like you’ve been resurrected and leveled up into a new, better, cooler version of yourself!” She had no idea how to make sense of the moon card in a positive five star customer service rating sort of way, so she moved it underneath the spread, smiling like this had been her master plan all along.
“This card with the moon and the wolves isn’t your endgame, it’s an indicator of the vehicle, the thing that encompases the whole. All this massive change ahead of you isn’t necessarily going to be visible to everyone. It comes from within, sometimes hidden, like how you can only see the stars when it’s dark out and most of the world is asleep, and wolves howl when the world is in shadows. It’s like that. And it’s going to be amazing.”
Morgan checked her watch and slumped back in her chair as if she were exhausted. Not a hard thing to do when it was this hot out. “So, that’s gonna be forty dollars for the energy and the insight. Technically, with how many cards you pulled, it should be a little more, but I can tell you’re taking a risk on something new here and I want to honor that. But we can keep going if you have any more questions!”
“Vehicle huh...not sure dad’s gonna let me spraypaint moons and wolves on the truck,” Luis mused, perhaps taking the ‘vehicle’ thing a bit too literally or not wanting to think too hard about the possibility of his life changing.
Luis looked over the intricately illustrated cards, eyebrows wrinkling as he tried to parse through the profound chicanery Morgan had spouted. A bite of the lower lip hinted that Luis had never really encountered those who could appear to say everything while stating nothing particularly specific.
“Well shiiiii..,” the teenager breathed before glancing up at Morgan and catching himself with a small hssk of inhalation, as if some inner parental voice had scolded him about cursing in front of a lady. “That was pretty cool,” he amended, clearly at a loss before everything he’d been told, too polite to claim he didn’t believe any of it, but also too much a child of modernity to heed the weird feeling in his gut that recognized something...hit different...about this chance prophecy.
Luis grinned bashfully and unknowingly let fate’s final warning pass him by.
“Forty bucks huh, I’ll havta explain that somehow,” the young man noted with the mild consternation of someone blessed enough to just worry about a family member who’d be more peeved about gas money going to “fortuneteller” then the actual cash itself.
The bills slid across the table after some awkward wallet-riffling. “Thank you ma’am.”
Morgan snatched up the bills and shoved them down her shirt before the kid could change his mind. Whatever ominous feelings his subconscious were trying to air out was no concern for her. She had too many problems of her own to bother with anyone else’s. “It takes a long time to read the cards,” she drawled smugly. “And lots of energy, to open oneself and reach beyond the veil.” She waved her fingers as if to say tootles, and went back to fanning herself until he was gone.
She helped a lady find some yarrow and made up a policy about consultation fees to get another $10 in her pocket. She was using her agency to bridge the gap between minimum shop girl wage and living wage, working her will to get the right kind of energy flowing her way. Mostly, the energy of not-starving and not invoking the ire of darkness from using alchemy to get ahead. It didn’t line up with the rest of what she understood, neutral magic forces should be lining up to help her right her cosmic access and be less chronically miserable, but that was a problem to untangle another day.
At the end of her shift, Morgan shuffled the cards once again and lined them up on the cleansing plate the shopkeeper wanted the used decks put on. By chance, or so she told herself, she picked up the topmost card to see what was there for her. But it was just the death card, and Morgan knew the last thing that was gonna happen to her life was a hard reset. She stuck it back in the middle of the deck and slipped away into the long shadows that marked the summer evening.
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