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Her brother’s dead. Not literally, and he doesn’t know it yet, but Veth’s gonna make sure he does when she’s done here.
Her knuckles drag over the bark of the tree and she makes another fruitless grab at the hem of her pants, which sway from the outermost branch. Veth growls under her breath and inches further along the branch, which creaks beneath her.
“Bott, you shithead what am I supposed to wear tomorrow!” she yells in frustration at her brother’s window, which is latched close. He’s there though. Veth saw his shoulder lingering by the frame when she first caught sight of her wardrobe strung about the tree.
Something lumpy crawls up her throat when she snags the edge of her dress – her favourite dress! – and the nape of its green fabric tears along the calloused wood. She’d had to beg dad for that one over the frilly purple monstrosity he’d pushed her toward and Veth had worn it to the last three Harvest Close Festivals.
“Hey, Veth, your fat rump’s sticking out!” Alexei shouts and she almost startles, glimpsing him at the base of the tree.
“Not as fat as yours, belly-boy,” Veth snarls and the anger makes her daring. She squirms forward and plucks a pair of dark shorts from a near branch before making her way a little closer to the dress.
He flushes an ugly red that turns his ears blotchy. “What’re you trying so hard for, fatass?”
She scowls and fervently prays for him to go away. “If Dad finds out you helped–”
“You look like a sack of potatoes in anything you wear,” Alex jeers and it's her turn to flush. “Who cares about a few torn shirts? We all feel the house tilt, you know, when you come stomping inside!”
The branch cracks beneath her, but Veth only half-notices with her ears rushing. She raises her fists as her stomach swoops up in flight and the air goes weightless. Alexei’s eyes widen, but she’s already in his face, fists on his chest, nails scrabbling to get a hold on his ears, his neck.
“Get- off!” Alex sputters and her face blooms with pain as a knuckle meets her cheekbone. “You rabid fucking dog!”
Veth digs her knee into his gut and relishes in the pained wheeze he gives.
His fingers pry her forehead up and Alex knots his hands in her hair, which hurts like a bitch.
“That’s why nobody talks to you! Maybe if you just acted like a bitch,” he hisses and Veth jams the heel of her palm against his bruised jaw from last week. Alex curses and reels back. “You look like one too,” he spits.
“What? Lexie, feeling butthurt about a few scribbles,” Veth asks mockingly and Alex glares as he bares his teeth. She wrinkles her nose at him. “They looked better after, trust me,” she says and he lunges.
Veth’s ready, though. She rears a fist back and—
“Alexei!” A shout booms from the side of the house. Mom, storming toward them, shoulders nailed back like a steel beam and face dark as a thundercloud. “ Re vettha,” she snaps and Alexei falls back immediately, jaw hard as he glares at her. Whatever. He can get bit.
Veth crosses her arms. She hasn’t done anything wrong.
“Botter can’t find his tools, Veth,” Mom opens with and Veth’s mouth falls open. Of all the things to focus on! Veths’ clothes in tatters, streaked with mud on the ground around them, and that’s the important part? “What happened to them, hmm? Because he can’t take care of the shop without them, and your brother has some interesting things to say about what happened.”
“Mom–” Veth goes, outraged.
“He’s already being punished,” Mom tells her, which blows the steam right out of her chest. She feels wrongfooted, confused suddenly. “But you can’t say you didn’t ask for it, this time.”
Alex mutters, “Maybe if you didn’t act like such a–”
“Alex, what’re you doing out here,” Mom snaps. “The workshop floor hasn’t been cleaned and that’s your job.”
Alexei’s face opens like a shocked fish and Veth has press her lips together to avoid snickering. “She’s the one who started it!”
“Unless,” Mom raises an eyebrow, “you want to clean the woodshed. Or– I have an idea– there’s some slag clotted in the back of the welder?”
He opens his mouth again.
“Another word and that’s your job.” Her voice is hard. “For two weeks.”
He closes it again. She balls her fists in her pockets. Veth kind of wants him to. On one hand, he’s such an annoying whiner. On the other, Alex deserves a few second-degree burns for the next few weeks.
Common sense clearly returning to him in a rush, Alexei sends her a wordless look of fury and stomps off, shoulders balled into a tight knot. Mom watches him go and folds her hands together in front of her primly. Veth glances down the length of her arms, which sag above the elbow and are dotted with little scabs and marks like hers too.
She carries it differently, though. Like a stone. Mom’s always been a firm old woman, carrying herself with a heft, a weight that shakes the ground beneath her. She isn’t soft, a loose collection of stringy skin the same way Veth is, though their cheeks and stomachs pad out in the same shape. Veth looks at her and imagines a boulder rolling downhill, gaining speed, unstoppable in its force and the way it levels the moss beneath it. Path-carving, forest-shredding strength.
Her mom presses her lips together and Veth stands stubbornly in the face of her disapproval.
“He was being an asshole,” She says.
“He does that sometimes,” Mom tells her, though her voice is free of judgement. “So do you. I think I found some paper buried beneath the flowerbeds last week. Now, I wonder how they got there?”
Veth looks down and bites her tongue. That was when she’d grabbed under her bed for her seashell collection and found all the petal-thin shells in jagged pieces. It’d only taken her a couple of days to get Alex back then, but he’d asked for it. So’d Botter. He thought she didn’t know he told the baker who’d stolen his donuts.
“You could always say something,” Veth mutters darkly and shrugs off the hand that comes to rest on her shoulder. “You’re raising a household of bullies.”
Her mom’s eyes flit to the sky, briefly, just long enough for Veth to catch it. Her stomach’s shrunken in on itself. Quietly resentful and sick with it.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” her mom says and starts leaning down to pick the clothes from the muck, shaken loose with her fall. “Help me get these washed.”
So Veth balls up the rage in her fists and tucks it away for later. Her arms ache from the strain of clinging to the tree and when she tosses her pants over her forearm, the wet legs slap against the fingerprint bruises dotting the underside of her arm. One of the boys leaned up behind her desk and pinched her hard during class, wiggling the fat around between his thumb and forefinger.
She’d racked up three suspensions already. And Yeza’s in that class, smartly putting his hand up and then stuttering through every second word. So Veth’d borne it silently, gritting her teeth. She had broken every pencil is his desk afterward though, so he probably wouldn’t do it again anyway.
It’s not until she has mud dripping through her fingers that Veth realizes she’s holding her dress. The embroidery on the neckline’s drenched with mud and half of it sags, the torn edges slick at the side.
“What’s that?” Her mom’s come closer now, obviously waiting for Veth to finish up. “Hmm. Well, it was getting old anyway. We can get you a new one the next time the caravans come by.”
Veth fists her fingers into the stained cloth, the only piece of clothing that made her feel something approaching pretty. Lovely, even.
God, she’d been deluding herself.
“Sure,” Veth says.
She finds him, after, a damp spot at his feet as Jester gets their room. He’s spitting crimson flecks. His jaw’s rotating strangely, like he’s running his tongue over his teeth, only more forceful. A slow persistence to it.
“You look like shit,” Nott greets and Fjord looks up. The corners of his eyes tighten.
“Ass-handing will do that to you,” he says and spits a glob to the dirt.
His tusks catch the light when he does, peaking up over his bottom lip. They’re still ugly, ragged things. Hard enamel shaped into serrated tips. Pretty sharp too, given the glimpse of torn skin Nott gets when Fjord carefully lifts his upper lip with his thumb and hisses.
“Looked like it,” she replies and crosses her arms. “Maybe try catching them fists with your sword instead of your face next time.”
He sits back on the bench, arms crossed. “No shit? Geez, I’ll have to try a thing or two your way next time. Save me the headache.”
“Toothache,” Nott corrects and Fjord curls a doleful lip at her.
“Talking about the headache you’re giving me,” he shoots back and pinkish saliva seeps through the gaps in his teeth when he grins.
She flops onto the bench beside him, pulls her hood up a bit more and pats her bags wonderingly. “Y’know, I think I got a medkit on me. I wanted to get some practice in, but only if you’re offering.”
“Git,” Fjord says and smacks away the clawed hand wandering toward his face. “Those nasty-ass claws away from my face.”
She blinks at that. Nott curls her fingers to the palm of her hands and tucks them away.
“They knew you,” she says after a second and Fjord makes a face at the reminder, rolling back his shoulders uncomfortably. “Not Fjordy-boy, y’know. They knew Tusktooth.”
“Think they’re Revelry?”
“I think we got popular,” Nott corrects. “It’s all about reputation, Revelry or not. How many tattoos has Jester done by now?”
Their once-captain half-heartedly rolls his eyes at that. “Lost count.”
“We’re gonna be the Tusktooth crew before anyone knows who the Mighty Nein are.” Nott wrinkles her nose at the idea.
It’s because he’s noticeable. If she could get Caleb a haircut or a new scarf… Like she’d follow Fjord . Why anyone would think Fjord’s their sort-of all-the-time leader when he’s really just a glorified lackey. Some guy with a sword. A sword and a murderous water-demon god hellbent on unleashing itself upon the world. But still a guy with a sword. You can grab one of those off any street corner.
Fjord rubs a thumb over his knuckles, eyes fixed somewhere between the drag of his nail and the split skin. Huh. Doesn’t look happy with the idea either.
“It’s only for a little,” he refutes. “While we’re close to the sea. Bet it’ll wear off in a bit. ‘Specially once we’re further inland.”
She scoffs at the idea. See, this is why! How’s a leader supposed to solve all their problems if he can’t even face his own?
“What?” Fjord says, voice reluctant.
Nott rolls her eyes. “Big whoop.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re like a fish out of water, floundering about, don’t know what the hell you’re doing. If you don’t like it, fucking–” She throws her hands up, “I don’t know! Throw a fit! Blow something up! What the hell’s a name if you can’t do what you want with it.”
Fjord stares at her, eyes squinting. “What?”
“If you don’t like ‘Tusktooth,’ than pick a new one,” Nott says. “God knows Jester hangs off your every word.” It’s just a hunch, her assuming the name’s his issue. Given the squinty, hell-you-talking-about look he gives her, she’s off the mark. “Or if that’s not it, I probably got some sandpaper somewhere.” She unhinges her jaw and makes creaking noises as she pretends to scrape at her incisors.
“I–” He runs his tongue over his lip, still bloody. There’s something uncertain in the shift of his weight, from thigh to thigh. “Don’t know.”
Nott shrugs. “Seems kind of dumb to me, then. Telling everyone to call you something you hate about yourself.”
Fjord blinks at that, rapidly. “I don’t hate– what?” He rubs at his forehead. “Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“Big word for such a small–” Fjord narrows his eyes at her, shoulders squaring. Try it, he seems to dare. “Pair of tusks,” Nott rectifies and grins with all her teeth.
“Not for long,” he tells her and grins back, or pulls back his lips. It doesn’t look like much of a smile, anyway.
“So you like ‘em now,” she asks, ready to laugh when he makes a confused face and does that thing where he’s not sure how to respond.
Fjord leans real hard on the polite charm when he’s offended like that, in a snide, sharp sort of way. Nott’s got his number. She knows a liar when she sees one.
He cricks his neck to the side and shrugs a shoulder to his ear. She’s waiting. Still waiting. Okay. Not as quick of an answer as she thought. Nott’s not uncomfortable right now.
“It’s not that simple.” His voice is low when he finally answers.
“Seems pretty easy to me,” she persists.
He shoves at her shoulder and Nott fake-tumbles off the bench, coming up snarling. His shoulder knocks against the bench as he flinches before smacking a palm to her face. Big mistake. That’s where the sharp things are.
“FUCK!” He shouts and tries to wring her neck in that fun, joking way of theirs. Pretty fun for her, at least.
“Your blood tastes like fish!” She shrieks as Fjord bears down on her, outrage and a little relief bleeding through his wide eyes.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!” He shouts.
But she’s pretty sure he’s not moping about his teeth anymore. Hey! Maybe he’s not their leader. Doesn’t mean Nott wants to be around him when he’s acting like a limp piece of seaweed left out to dry.
Veth tugs at the underside of her sleeves, uncomfortable with the thick cut of the fabric, how it bunches up around her armpits. Maybe this is a mistake. (She’s had that thought five separate times. She still hasn’t gone down the stairs.)
Just her and the handrail. That stupid handrail. Veth eyes the bottom of the stairs with something approaching loathing and descends– quickly. She doesn’t want to make a whole scene about it, and if Yeza notices something’s off with her, there’ll inevitably be a scene. Communicating our feelings, he calls it. Veth does that. On the inside. And to no one else. Not even Yeza, though she loves him. But that bit’s easy to get right.
The stairs creak beneath her and Veth beelines to the kitchen. There are a few dishes from last night still stacked up in the sink, though another plate’s been set aside, two slices of toast and a sunny-side egg wobbling seductively on the counter. Veth grabs at it and meets Yeza’s eyes across the kitchen, his fork hanging limply from his fingers, wide-eyed.
His mouth is hanging open stupidly, brown eyes liquid in the fresh amber light. Veth’s pretty sure she flushes from the roots of her hair to her toes.
“What’re you looking at?” She asks and sits down roughly at the table.
Yeza snaps his mouth close. Even his little gulp of air is endearing. “Wow,” he goes and then, softly, “Woot, woot!”
Veth swallows down her toast and wonders if her husband’s having a conniption.
“What,” she starts, “are you doing? What was that?”
Yeza fumbles with the utensil, twirling the fork in his hand. “I mean, I can’t really whistle, or– sorry. Was that too juvenile? Not that I wouldn’t whistle, but if you wouldn’t appreciate that sort of thing, of course I’d never–”
Veth stands up, cold all over. “I’m getting changed.”
“Wait– no don’t,” Yeza sputters and reaches for her hand across the table. “I wanted to say,” he clears his throat. “You look gorgeous.”
She’s all-too aware of the round folds that billow out at her sides, lumping over each other. How her chin spills too far over the neckline of the dress, like sagging dough stretched out into shaggy strings.
“What the fuck,” Veth goes and stands up, properly this time. To do what, she’s not sure. Cover her ears maybe. Tell Yeza to shut up.
She doesn’t. That’s too cruel. Not to her but to Yeza.
“I really like it,” he says and looks for all the world like he means it. Yeza sighs, overdramatic and props his chin on his fist. “Look at my beautiful wife. She has such nice legs and shoulders and if I didn’t have a job, I’d stay home all day just to press all her pretty dresses and cook her supper.”
Veth snorts at that, even though it sounds like satire. She sits down grudgingly and spears the egg which has slowly gone rubbery.
“Don’t try to be the funny one,” she cautions. “That’s my job.”
“I’m not joking. I think you’re beautiful,” Yeza says and his stark sincerity rocks her world a little bit. Haha. Sincerity. Absolutely terrifying.
Veth curls her tongue in her mouth. “Thanks,” she tells him, because what else is she supposed to do? Her thighs hurt, sore from all her pinching.
Yeza frowns. He’s onto her.
“I’m more excited to see you in your lab coat, Mr. Alchemist,” she rallies and doesn’t entirely succeed distracting him, but Yeza lets her carry the conversation away anyway. Veth loves him a little more for it.
“I’d like to see you in a lab coat,” he rephrases weakly and then, when they’re headed to the shop for the day, rushes in to peck her on the cheek. “Y’know,” Yeza starts, haltingly, “I could always– if you don’t like it, which you should ‘cause you look amazing, I mean—”
“We’re gonna be late.”
“I could, um, take it off?” Yeza squeaks and his pinks go a lovely rose. “Later? Tonight, that is?”
Veth blinks and laughs. She laughs so hard her stomach hurts, doubling over and Yeza stands there and slowly goes pinker and pinker in the doorway.
“You’re going to pity fuck me?” Veth guffaws gracelessly and then Yeza’s tripping over himself, hands out like he doesn’t know where to put them.
“What?!” He says, eyebrows at his hairline. “No! Oh god, that’s not what I meant at all. I just–” Yeza peters off and worries his knuckles with his nails. “Think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And I’d like you to like the way you look too.” His voice is quiet by the end and Veth is instantly, uncomfortably sober with his earnestness.
How does she tell him to stop? That, if he doesn’t, she’s not going to be able to laugh him off anymore and then what’ll she do? Confront her issues? She’s fine with woe and misery, thank you.
“Well,” Veth straightens up. “Gives me a lot to think about,” she bustles and shuts the door behind them. “Maybe,” she softens when she turns to see Yeza looking at her, still with that same ill-concealed concern.
She’ll have to buy more candles. The last few times, Veth’s been able to get away with the excuse of mood lighting , but she’s pretty sure he’s catching on, given the uncomfortable look he’d given her last time she’d reached for the lights.
She hadn’t figured out how to say, they’re not for you . She’s still putting the words together in her mind. How do you tell your husband you only know how to be beautiful in the dark?
At first, it was a good way of making money for her and Caleb. Buttons were easy to get ahold of with her small hands, and safe. No one notices a missing button from their lapel. Not right away, in any case, and that was more than enough time for her to squirrel them away into her pockets, threads cut easily by her sharpened claws.
Her first few attempts to make jewelry were clumsy, the necklaces turning out more knot than not, the twine torn far too easily between her razor-like nails. She’d thrown down a lot of her early attempts, storming around their fire as Caleb watched her idly, always a note of reassurance on his tongue. They didn’t need the money. They had more than enough for now. He knew what to do if they ran out . But books cost money. And Nott knew Caleb needed books to become–whatever it was she could see squirming up behind his eyes, piercingly ravenous and burning.
Anyway, she got better at it. Good enough that people were willing to approach the small, hunched creature with too-sharp ribs, if only to take a peek at the bracelets and necklaces dangling from her coat. And when she wasn’t selling them, Nott kept it all tucked beneath her shirt, where no one could mistake them for valuable and try to snatch her work away.
Seeing them again, glittering prettily on Luc as he dances is a strange whiplash.
He bares the necklaces on his neck palms-up, spinning around her room. “You can’t steal from me!” Luc declares. “Or I’ll steal from you first! I’ve fought trolls and dragons and,” he frowns, thinking hard before hissing wordlessly.
Veth doesn’t make a sound from the doorway, watching bug-eyed. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. If she laughs, he’ll stop.
“And if you comma bit closer Imma gut you!” He lunges forward, eyes wide and lip lifted in a snarl. “Gut you like a fish!”
Did she teach him that? Yikes. Veth places her feet lightly around the carpet and when his back’s turned, snatches him up into her arms.
“No!” She crows and plants a kiss on his forehead when he shrieks in delight. “I’m gonna getcha! And you know what I’m gonna do?”
“Nooo!” Luc screams, two powdery black eyes and a mouthful of lipstick curved in squinty joy.
“Gonna eat you!” Luc squirms in her arms, pushing at her shoulders as she plants kisses all over his adorable, little face. “Um num num,” she smacks her lips before licking her thumb and wiping at a little smear of eyeliner on his cheeks.
After a second or two he stops resisting and starts clinging to her shoulders, pulling himself up like the little monkey he is. Luc tucks his chin into the crook of her neck and warmth pools into her stomach, the corners of her eyes faintly stinging. This is fine. It’s not like she thought he’d never willingly hug her again. Goblins don’t get hugs from their sons and neither do long-forgotten mothers. But Yeza’d kept her alive for him. Veth breathes in the smell of his hair and it curls up under her chin. He’s getting a bit big for her hip but Veth pulls him up a little higher. Still her baby. Still hers.
“What’re you doing with all this junk?” She asks and rubs harder at his makeup.
There’s a frightful little frown on his face as he pulls back and tilts his chin up at her. “It’s pretty! And look,” Luc shakes the necklaces’ cords and they jangle in his hands.
Veth hums. “Well. No more of this gunky stuff until you’re older.” He wrinkles his nose at her ministrations but doesn’t pull away.
In fact, he throws his arms over her head and she’s not sure what he’s doing until Luc leans back and two necklaces are missing from his neck, strung around hers instead. The buttons wink, like eyes dancing with refracted light in yellow and umber and turquoise.
“What’re you doing,” she laughs and tries to pull them over her head and back onto Luc’s. “You should keep them,” Veth says. “They’re very pretty on you. Much nicer.”
Luc tugs her arms down, a look of concentration on his face and only stops when she releases the necklace.
“Mama’s pretty!” He tells her. “And so am I! Just like you,” Luc insists and a little tug of recognition rushes through Veth.
Oh. Oh . Her makeup, her favourite lipstick, and her jewelry. Luc baring his teeth and running around the house with his crossbow like the most incredible, amazing thing to be in the world is Veth Brenatto. And what’s she supposed to say to that?
“You look very nice,” Veth agrees and strokes his hair. “My gorgeous little man. Who needs to get ready to go swimming like we said! Swim trunks are in your room.”
Luc wiggles in her arms and puts his hands up. “Lemme do the drop! I can do it, I’ve been practicing!”
“Yes, I hear you,” she says wryly. “You sure?” He nods, a blur of vibrating hair and bright eyes.
Veth drops him and Luc bends his knees and drops his weight so he doesn’t fall onto his butt before looking up to her for approval, hands fisted at his sides. He’d insisted a few weeks ago to learn the ‘awesome-cool-super-landing-fall’ Veth did when she wasn’t feeling like using the stairs and jumped the hand railing. Yeza had been quietly upset in his No, I’m totally fine with our son’s finite lifespan sort of way until Veth had promised no higher than two-to-three foot practice drops.
“Keep your ankles straighter,” she tells him. “And be ready in five minutes, okay?”
“Okay!” Luc agrees and then he’s off like a shot.
Yeza’s waiting for her downstairs when she gets changed, a basket packed full of cucumber sandwiches and no less than three jars of sunscreen potions (by her count) hanging from his elbow. When Luc comes down, it’s with his mouth set into a stubborn line that tells her getting that makeup off is going to be a fight. Veth eyes his raccoon-like eyeshadow before sighing and looking to Yeza, who merely shrugs with a small grin.
“He wanted to look pretty,” Veth explains and eyes her messy, unrepentant child. “And like me,” she adds.
“Well, those aren’t two separate things.”
The quirked corner of his mouth says he knows exactly what he’s doing. Veth tries very, very hard not to love him a little more for it.
Veth can’t tell Luc she’s not pretty. How’s she supposed to explain something like that? Not to those rounded cheeks, so much like her own. Yeah, by the way, she hates her stomach and thighs which look exactly like yours. So help her if she won’t teach her kid to hate himself.
“Look at you two,” Veth snorts instead. “Peas in a pod. This is a conspiracy against me and I’m calling it off right now.”
Yeza just shrugs. “You know what they say,” he says. “‘From the mouths of babes.’”
She’s cold. Her legs shiver and wet grass tickles her curled toes. When Veth sits up, her throat aches and she coughs when she tries to suck in a breath.
Her stomach revolts and she lurches up, retching into the grass. Her palms smack the dirt and Veth heaves out water. It must be enough to fill her stomach twice over, or at least it feels like it as a runny brown liquid spatters over her knuckles, flecking her skin.
She wipes at her mouth and freezes. There’s something on her hand. She holds out trembling fingers in front of her face, and no. No. It’s part of her hand. She can control it. The skin is swampy and the tendons in it pull, veiny through flesh so thin it’s membranous. Starved. Veth can flex her knuckles and make a fist and dig her fingernails so hard into her palm that bloody crescents scour the skin.
No. No, she–
– Water, stinging at her sides, in her throat, she can’t breathe, shit shit , her lungs seizing on nothing, Veth opens her mouth –
drowned.
She scrambles to her feet, hands sweaty, heart pounding. She’s behind a wooden hut and Veth falls over herself in her haste to get away from it, running, she runs (she was running, that’s right). There’s a small bog, a murky pond a little ways away and she flinches back from it. Veth forces herself to lean closer even as her feet refuse to take another step forward. She has to see.
Through the debris and murky water, there’s a face. Sharp panes, like someone took fistfuls of broken glass and welded them together. Everything about the creature in the pond is sharp. The nose, the chin, the scraped-out hollows of its cheeks, and when it opens its mouth (gasping, maybe) knife-like fangs peek out, serrated and clustered together. Too many.
Veth snarls and reels back, the horrible thing in the pond mimicking her. Its eyes are wide, unnaturally bright. It reminds her of yellow lantern light, gleaming in the dark. The noise that claws its way out of her throat comes instinctively, and it sounds like a feral creature. A hiss and stone scraping on stone and a scream all at once. It sounds like nothing human.
She snaps her mouth shut. It feels like all the air’s been punched out of her and the next noise she makes is a wounded thing. She died, Veth thinks. She died, she knows she did, and it was the worst thing she’s ever felt.
Oh, god. She wants to hold her little boy. She wants Yeza’s face in her hands. She isn’t safe. Not here. But where’s safe?
Not important. Not important, none of this is important. Where’s Yeza, where’s Luc, she was running, running faster than she had in her entire life. Before she knows it, her feet are hitting the ground.
There are monsters at the side of the wooden hut and they lift their heads to her. Goblins. Their mangy hair and slitted eyes narrow at her. They throw themselves at her, sharp talons gleaming and outstretched, the kind that ripped her and her family from their home. When Veth snarls this time, a part of her likes it.
She digs her claws into one of their eyes, presses her thumb beneath the socket and tears it out. She claws her way through them, half-instinct, half-burning, consuming rage that tightens her stomach and warms her fingers. But they know how to use their nails, ears flicking as they make clicking, hissing noises at each other that she only partly understands. When they do finally get her to the ground, there are two goblin bodies on the ground and three pinning her.
Veth has blood on her teeth and the taste of iron makes her want to puke again.
“Get the fuck off me!” she shrieks.
They slam her shoulder into the dirt, face first, and her wrists crack. Hot breath, putrid and heavy, wafts past her cheek.
“Good with your claws, little goblin girl,” he hisses. His voice is thin as high wind and just as gasping.
Another one spits, bitter. “Too good.”
“Lots of trouble finding you. The earth folk are quick on their feet, very quick,” he says, and the distantly admiring note in his voice makes Veth want to claw her skin off. “Of the three gone, we only find you, hmm?”
Three. Her. Luc. Yeza. They only found her. Veth could cry into the stones biting at her skin, but she only tenses.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” she bares her teeth to the ground. “Let me up! Let me up and I’ll tear off your skin!”
“No. You’re going to come with us,” she can practically hear the grin in his voice. “And you’re going to make a very good goblin.”
She thinks of the green skin in the pond, the wide, jaundice eyes. “I’d rather be dead,” Veth spits.
The mouth gets closer and this time she knows he’s smiling because the goblin’s lips curve at her ear.
“Good,” he whispers.
She doesn’t get further than her sunglasses before Veth freezes in place, fingers slowing when they come to the long line of buttons from the hollow of her neck to just above her knees. She pops open the first button, which peels open to reveal a deep ‘v’ between her breasts. Veth hates it immediately. Ah, right. Discomfort, her old friend.
It’s like she’s thirteen again, popping her head from a too-bold blouse and curling her legs to a newly aching chest, confused and bitter with the soreness.
“Veth?” Yeza’s voice startles her from her thoughts. He stands a couple feet from their umbrella-towel setup. “You okay, hon?”
“All good. Go make sure Luc doesn’t drown,” Veth waves her hand at him.
Yeza glances to where Luc determinedly digs himself a hole in the sand at the shoreline.
“O-kay,” he says unsurely. “You want to come in with us, or… sun tan? You know, it might be better to take it slow,” he suggests, eyes brightening as he figures out what’s wrong with her this time. “All of us hanging out a little bit, just to get used to the idea of swimming.”
“Luc already knows how to swim,” Veth says and her husband works his ring around his knuckle.
“A good dose of caution never hurt anyone.”
She’s being uncharitable. This is her husband and god knows Yeza loves her. Veth smiles at him and he raises his eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.
“Oh,” Veth tells him, bemused, “go get the fuck in the water. I’ll be there when I’m ready.”
“Sure?”
“Sure,” Veth agrees and lobs a tub of sun oil at him before he turns to go. “For Luc,” She yells after him and he waves his hand back at her in acknowledgement. “And no further than twenty–no–fifteen feet out!”
Yeza spins on his heel to shoot her finger guns and stumbles over a small mound of sand when he does. God, that man. What a mess. He recovers, grinning at himself and Veth uncurls her legs in front of her, fondness like a wave sweeping over her. She hit that.
Then Veth takes a breath, undoes two buttons, and does not hunch over in place. Carefully, languidly, she places one hand behind her and then the other. Enjoying herself. Sunbathing, she tells herself.
Sunbathing feels bad. Her toes curl.
When she was Nott, that’s all she ever did. Make herself smaller. Less like a feral thing dragged out of the sewers and more like a little wasp in the corner of your eye. Sharp and flitting in the periphery with her curved hands tucked beneath her sleeves, the serrated edge of her ribs beneath bandages and a shirt and a robe for good measure. The planes of her body tucked away, even from herself. Until nightfall, where she had to take each part of herself out, one by one, examining and then stuffing it all away. Where no one had to look at it.
Veth’s spent so much of her life not looking at herself, turning all her focus outward to eyes that always saw the flesh beneath her chin and then, slit amber pupils first.
Take off the cover-up. She does. Toss it away from you. She does. Relax.
It’s the last step Veth stumbles over. Every fucking time. Despite the shade of the umbrella, her skin still feels too hot. Heavy with stares.
Her hand curls into a fist.
Yes, yes. Isn’t this routine getting a little old by now? She’s self-conscious, she’s annoying about it. A passenger in an alien vessel, watching others watching her. It’s tiring. Veth wants to wave down her own body. Hey, when does the ride stop? She’d like to get off now .
“Oh, hello! I didn’t expect to see you here.” Veth blinks up, ignoring the sun spots that skirt her vision.
Marion Lavorre stands outside Veth’s oasis of shade, elegant in a sweeping white sun dress with an embroidered neckline and tassels waving at the hem.
Eager to abandon her train of thought and previous efforts, Veth grins up at the other woman. “Jessie’s mom,” she greets. “What’re you doing here?”
“Well, it’s a beautiful day out,” she smiles.
Veth’s sweating so much right now. Alright! Maybe because she’s been kind of anxious. But also she’s pretty sure it’d be less sweltering stuffed up a buttcrack.
“That’s a word for it.”
“The heat is… bearable,” Marion amends. “Though maybe just to those with my sort of constitution.”
Veth waves a hand to the umbrella hanging overhead, distantly aware of Luc and Yeza bobbing at the shore. “You think I’m cowering under this thing for fun?” She sniffs. “You’d be right. It’s a hellhole out there and I’m not ashamed of it.”
Veth’s only lying a little bit but she’s ninety-nine percent sure Marion doesn’t know her well enough to clock her tells.
“Maybe tomorrow will be nicer,” Marion suggests and hesitates, something apprehensive in the stiffened lines of her elbows. She smiles wryly, the shape of it a little more honest. “But if I tell myself that, I’m never going to leave my house in the first place.”
For a moment, the line of her shoulders is familiar. Set. Already weary.
The four of them had come to the ocean for Luc, who should never have any reason to be uncomfortable in the water. And if they were going already, it made sense for Veth to wear a swimsuit. Luc had to go swimming. Veth had to do this. And the inflexible tower of Marion’s shoulders is familiar.
“Huh,” Veth merely says. “I like your dress. You look like a whole knockout. I mean if there’s any way to reintroduce the world to you, it’d be looking like that.”
“Oh, well– that’s not fair,” Marion huffs and clasps her hands together when Veth peers up at her questioningly. “I was going to compliment your bathing suit.”
She carefully doesn’t curl up. “You don’t have–”
“But now I’m afraid It’ll come across as too obligatory so I’d like to mention that I noticed how beautiful you look before you commented on my dress,” Marion finishes and tucks a curl of black hair behind a pointed ear.
Holy shit.
When she opens her mouth, all that comes out is a weak wheeze. Then Veth clears her throat.
“Well, I got the drop on you, so,” Veth coughs. “Tough fucking luck. Be a quicker draw next time ‘cause now you just look like a try-hard.” Her brain is backpedalling even as she says the words. Fuck, fuck , she’s so bad at this. Call the Ruby of the Sea a ‘try-hard.’ This is why she has no friends in Nicodranas.
But Marion just grins. “May your beauty be the first thing remarked upon in any room,” she says imperiously and sniffs before smiling, just a little awkwardly at Veth. It strikes her then that the Ruby of the Sea, best courtesan in Marquet, might not have a lot of practice with this whole ‘friend thing’ either. Like, sure, she’s probably had a lot of practice making small talk, but that was in a very specific environment. She knows what it’s like to make your way in a world that you don’t recognize, which doesn’t recognize you in turn.
“You can sit down, you know,” Veth gestures to the blanket sprawled around her.
Marion, sort of standing to the side of the umbrella and peering down at Veth in an elegant, perfect way–like she’s literally unable to be anything less than graceful–sort of blinks at her before toeing off her sandals and sitting beneath the umbrella. The tiefling woman folds her legs beneath her and looks so out of place on Veth’s ratty old towel with little sunshine faces smiling up, that she can’t help but snort. She doesn’t look like Veth’s made her uncomfortable though, which is nice.
Marion does raise her eyebrows at Veth’s little laugh. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” She asks and her gaze sweeps over the towel.
“Just thinking to myself,” Veth says.
“Ah.”
The former courtesan slowly unfurls her legs beneath her and she places her hat to the side, the line of her shoulder catching Veth’s eye, as well as the black ink stretching with her biceps.
“What’s that? You got ink?” Veth demands and leans over to get a better look. “You did not have that last time I saw you,” she announces and Marion sort of presses her lips together in an amused way.
“Well, I don’t have the same limitations on how I express myself,” Marion says and leans a little closer to Veth to show off the mark, “Babenon suggested it.”
The shape is an anchor, dark and stylized, its outline stretching from Marion’s shoulder blade to the tip of her shoulder. Instead of an upright anchor, it seems to be crooked, a long line of twine loose above it, as though the anchor were drifting instead of set in place—unmoored. It could be for Jester or the Gentleman, both had attachments to the sea after all, but Veth didn’t think so.
“The Gentleman’s idea?” Veth asks. “You didn’t want to get a tattoo before.”
She twists her shoulder as if trying to get a better look herself. “Well. Not entirely. I suppose I could have gotten it before–some do– but, hmm,” Marion pauses, and her eyes squint, “my reputation left me a little untouchable in some’s eyes. Any change to myself, I thought, might be unwelcome to my clientele.”
Which could damage the Lavish Chateau, Veth fills in mentally. Which would be bad for business. And it wasn’t like Marion had any other sources of income. Veth wouldn’t have risked it either.
“Well you look incredible,” Veth says honestly. “It suits you.”
It’s hard to tell, beneath the shade, but she thinks Marion blushes at that.
“I mean,” Marion says and folds her hand neatly in her lap. Almost nervously, she notes. “I do have to admit to finding a bit of inspiration elsewhere.” She waves her hand at Veth and a second later Veth realizes she’s referring to the tattoos that curl around Veth’s eyes. “I wanted a bit of that boldness for myself.”
“Like Jester?” Veth says wryly and Marion laughs.
“Oh, I don’t know where she got that from,” Marion chuckles. “Though I guess I have a better idea now with that god of hers. But yes, like her and your friend Beau.”
“And me?” Veth asks and when Marion turns to look at her, waggles her eyebrows.
Marion grins. “I suppose,” she allows. “Yes.”
Huh. She’s been talking with Marion Lavorre for the past (five? ten?) minutes and they haven’t said a word about the only person they actually have in common.
“You’re probably wondering how Jester’s doing,” Veth doesn’t quite ask, but alludes. Subtly.
“Well, only if she’s told you more than what she tells me. She reserves at least two Sendings for me every day if she can manage it and pretty much makes up for it on the days she doesn’t have any leftover.”
Veth grins at that. God, but it sounds just like Jester to waste precious spell-words explaining to her mom how she’s Sending to her and the next time she’ll be able to. For a second, Veth misses her so much her teeth ache with it. But Caleb and Essek are coming over for tacos on Saturday, so maybe she’ll get them to magic her over to the Nein Heroez for a visit.
She mentally stuffs away her plans for later. “You still get to talk a lot then? Wait, has she gotten you on the toilet yet?”
“Oh, all matter of compromising positions,” Marion says, a little fondly, but the phrasing of it sticks out at Veth.
She cringes. “Sex? I think I would die before I could look my son in the face if that were us.”
“Ah, no,” Marion shakes her head slightly. “Not to her knowledge,” she looks at Veth significantly. “And not to an extent I would ever want revealed to her.” Veth wordlessly zips her mouth shut.
“You ever miss it?”
Marion raises an eyebrow, inquiring.
“The work,” Veth clarifies. “Y’know. Must’ve been fun some of the time.”
Marion goes sort of still at that. Not in a my-past-haunts-me sort of way, but her hands go limp in her lap and she stops projecting mischief and humour. Veth hadn’t even realized she’d been clocking her body language until now.
“I still have Babenon,” she says, voice measured and graceful the way it was when they started talking. Veth hadn’t noticed the distant eloquence melting from her tone. “He seems fine with the state of us, thus far. Honestly, I don’t, ah, get the same things others do from intercourse.” Nervousness, Veth finally notices, in the stillness of the other woman’s body language.
Huh. Like Caduceus then.
“I miss the people sometimes, I suppose,” Marion says. “They always had interesting stories and some simply came for the company. I liked meeting new people. But most days, I find Jester has more than enough stories for me and I don’t miss my more disreputable clients.”
This is her version of rambling, Veth realizes. Marion stares somewhere past Veth.
“Did anyone ever realize?” Veth asks.
“I was quite good at what I did.”
Veth snorts. “Yeah, I got that from the decorations and the clothes and the performances and the solid gold bathtub . A gift, right?”
Marion’s shoulders slope, just those few extra millimetres and when she smiles this time, it’s with her teeth. “I was very good at listening,” she says thoughtfully. “Apparently that’s something rare in a partner.”
Veth laughs, honestly and loudly at that, little snorts that burble between her teeth. “Ohmygod,” she snorts. “You rocked that man’s world .”
There’s a little giggle from next to her, girlish and not at all refined but full of grinning mischief that sounds exactly the same as Jester’s laugh.
When she stops giggling, Veth rests her hands on her thighs and catches Yeza’s eyes on the shoreline. He cocks his head at her questioningly, an eyebrow raised like, you coming ? Veth holds up a finger and Yeza gives her a thumbs up.
Marion must be following her gaze because she raises her eyebrows at Veth. “Your husband’s a very lucky man.”
“I’m a very lucky wife,” Veth refutes.
“I’m sure,” Marion agrees and then blinks at Veth. “You haven’t joined him yet.”
“I’m going to,” Veth says. She licks her lips. “Just. The water, you know…” she says weakly. The water. It’s the water for sure.
“Ah,” Marion says, knowingly, gaze tracking to where Veth’s knees have crawled up to her chest. Veth puts her legs down again quickly. “As much as Yeza loves the water, I’m sure there are other reasons he’d love to see you out there with him.”
She says, “We’re teaching Luc to swim.”
“Veth,” Marion says frankly. “Your husband’s shirtless in the water. You could always go and take a peek and if you feel like coming back,” Marion’s eyes dart to hers, hesitant suddenly, “I wouldn’t be one to refuse your company. If I’m welcome to stay a little longer.”
There’s a protest on the tip of her tongue, but what’s Veth supposed to say about that? Make an excuse about her swimsuit–which Marion had complimented her on. Also, Yeza is shirtless in the water and she kind of wants to lick all the saltwater off his chest. Not literally, but damn. Veth eyes Yeza’s shoulders, flexing in the water as he hoists Luc above a wave. Damn , her husband’s hot.
“You’re welcome,” Veth tells her. “You’re–stay here. I’ll be back. But we are doing this in the future too. How much do you like tacos?”
Marion smiles, a small, pleased sort of thing. And yeah, okay, this is why she’s so good at what she does. Wow, Veth likes her and she doesn’t usually do that. (Like people.)
“I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure.”
“Awful. Terrible,” Veth declares. “Everyone has been acting with criminal intent toward you all your life. You’re coming over on Saturday. Stay,” Veth insists and gets out from the cover of the umbrella, “and I’ll be back!”
Marion waves at her from the cover of their little beach shelter and Veth runs to Yeza and her son in the water, who shouts in excitement when he sees her coming toward him. Her thighs swing and her feet leave heavy marks in the sand behind her as she does, but it’s nice, it feels nice and not awful for once. It helps that Yeza’s looking at her like she’s the fucking sun rising over the mountains.
She settles her hands on her hips just before she gets to them and it’s just her. It’s just her body, not some wretched thing she’s dragging along with her. Her skin is warm to the touch.
“Your dad is the worst,” she snorts. “Look, your hair isn’t even wet?” Veth sets on fixing that and when Luc shrieks and throws up his hands over his head, her stomach only wobbles a little as the waves crest over her hips.
“Water fight!” Luc cackles and throws up a spout of water at Yeza.
Her hair gets pulled from its braid as they splash each other and at some point, Veth ends up with Yeza’s mouth pressed to her ear. She can feel the curve of his lips, smiling against her face.
“Look at you,” he says, gleeful. “Look at you ,” Yeza tells her, the words swooping up and up and up in her stomach. She smacks two wet hands on his cheeks and he laughs before returning the favour.
Her first three escape attempts fail during the first week. The goblins have to drag her back, clawing and spitting each time.
Next time, she’ll get her hands on a crossbow earlier. There are just so damn many of them, that’s the problem. She’s fighting a whole fucking ocean of goblins.
“Bitch,” one of them snaps at her. “Settle down! Where do you even think you’re going!”
She throws the goblin’s arm (a female, she thinks) off her and bares her teeth back.
“Stupid question for a stupid animal,” Veth bites. “What do you think?”
Another one chimes in, “Hasn’t got it through her head yet. She’s no earthfolk anymore.”
A single clawed finger digs into her chest and the sharp tip of it draws a bloody line down the front of Veth’s shirt.
“I asked,” the goblin girl says, “where you’re going. So desperate to run away. Where’re you running to, little girl?”
“Anywhere’s better than here,” Veth spits in her face and a look of fury crosses the girl’s face before she wipes from her chin.
There’s a second of vicious satisfaction, even with the rest of the tents behind her, the goblins waiting for her to come join them. Then Veth’s neck cracks to the side and a grunt of shocked pain escapes her. Blood trickles from her cheek, sluggish and itchy. Her whole body hurts. Veth’s pretty sure her left leg’s sprained and at least three of her ribs are cracked but this blow across the face hurts worst. It burns with humiliation.
“You don’t get it,” the girl hisses, close enough Veth can see her nose flare. “Who’s going to take you? Your home? They’d sooner bury you.”
Veth pushes her away, stomach weak. “Get the fuck away from me,” she hisses and the goblin does.
“Stop trying to run,” she hisses back and then scampers into one of the tents, the others dispersing, probably to lick their wounds.
Veth retreats to the edge of the camp with her tail between her legs. She curls by one of the far tents and doesn’t move to run past it even as passing goblins scowl and hiss at her when they cross. They make that clicking noise with the back of their throats–talking about her.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. She’s not safe here, she can’t cry. Veth can’t remember the last time she did. She couldn’t in front of Luc, not when he had to believe they’d escape. And for him to believe they’d escape, she had to too. Veth wants to now. She doesn’t.
Her hands, thin and disgusting, sickly in their stick-like sharpness, clutch onto the legs of her pants. A strange hitching noise hicks and catches around her. It’s the back of her throat, trying to cry, hiccuping with the effort not to.
She buries her head in her knees, her knobby kneecaps disgustingly wet and warm. With coagulated blood or tears, Veth’s not sure. She shivers in place and clutches at her legs harder, even as her leg protests. She wants to go home.
It feels just like last week she was worrying to Yeza about her baby fat, which just wasn’t going away. Hasn’t it been three years yet , she’d scowled to Yeza, a month ago. Or maybe months ago, now.
It’d felt like shit. And still! Look at this, she’s found a body she hates even more! Veth hadn’t thought that was possible before, but look! She’s managed it.
She starts hiccuping at the thought and then laughs into her knees. That’s pretty funny! She’s a monster!
She’s a fucking monster!
She’s never going to hold Luc again. Veth digs her teeth into her knees, sending her mind away from the way blood floods her mouth. Half of the time, Veth still wants to attack her image in the puddles she comes across. She can’t go back.
Really, truly, Veth can’t go back. And she’s not smart enough to figure out how to turn back. How to make it all better. Veth’s not even sure she’s brave enough to try another escape attempt.
It’s like someone carved Veth Brenatto into the truest parts of herself. A coward. An idiot. They’ve turned her into everything she’s ever hated about herself.
And, in the end, Veth Brenatto had people who loved her. Goblins didn’t.
(Not pretty, not smart, not brave. Not loved. Not anymore.)
When she slinks into breakfast the next morning, taking a spot at the table beside the other goblins, maybe she’s a little quieter than normal. She eats instead of turning her nose up and tries not to smell too closely what’s in the food. Her ribs still hurt but at least it’s not from hunger anymore. Still, she feels sick.
Nott looks up across the table when she feels someone’s eyes on her. It’s the goblin girl, eyes glinting and smug. Nott raises her lip at her. She doesn’t say anything. She picks up her bowl and keeps eating.
Veth frowns at one of the dishes in the sink, working out a particularly stubborn spot of grease in the crook of a pan.
“Hey, honey,” she says. “Do you think I should get more tattoos?”
She crooks her fingers so the blunt edge of her nails scrapes along the grease and–ah, there we go. Got it. When Veth looks up, Yeza’s mouth is pulled to the side, considering, but the tips of his ears are spotted pink and so’s the bridge of his nose.
“Yes. Yes ,” Yeza agrees fervently and fidgets with his hands in front of him. He coughs lightly. “If you wanted to, that is.”
Veth squints at him. “Maybe one for Luc,” she suggests.
Yeza thinks about that and nods a little. “Maybe I could get it too. We could match!”
“You’re so bad with pain,” Veth grins. “Just a small one.”
“Just a small one,” Yeza agrees.
He turns his attention back to his book and Veth finishes off the last of the cutlery and tableware.
“I was also thinking of getting a sleeve. Only if wouldn’t bug you, though,” Veth says and looks up to find Yeza’s face red. So red.
“Itwouldnotbugme,” he blurts, cheeks splotchy with colour. “You should if you want to. Definitely. If you’d like.” He’s so weird. She loves him so much.
Veth hums and stacks the last of the dishes into the rack. “Maybe,” she allows.
“It’s not too much, is it?” She asks and twists to see how her butt pokes out the back. This is the deciding factor, Nott thinks. If her butt looks bad in it, she’ll have to burn the damn thing.
“I don’t think so,” Caleb assures her for the third time this morning, her patient boy, too kind to hurt her feelings. “You look good in it. And the hem,” he pats at his knees where he’s sitting on the bed, “has a good swing to it.”
She squints at him. Holds out her hands. “Gimme back my bandages.”
Caleb pats at his pockets ineffectually, not moving his eyes from hers. “Ah,” he says. “They have gone somewhere I cannot find. Maybe they don’t want to be found,” he suggests at her suspicious look.
“Like where?”
“The fire, possibly.” He admits. “Probably.”
“Fine,” Nott narrows her eyes at him. “I was getting tired of these curtains, y’know, too much cover from the sunshine.” She raises a clawed hand toward the window threateningly.
“There’s no sunshine in Rosohna. And you don’t need them here anyway,” Caleb frowns unsurely, heavy eyebrows pressing like stone doors coming together. He sighs. “If you really want them back, I can get you new ones. But you look fine without and no one is going to give you shit for it here. Not like the empire.”
“I know that,” Nott snaps. She sniffs. “Maybe I just like them.”
“You don’t. You think the mask makes you look cool,” Caleb says and then tilts his head to the side, considering, “and you’re not wrong. But you like when… ah. Hmm,” he stops and pauses, the bridge of his nose scrunching a little.
“What?” Nott insists.
Reluctantly, Caleb goes, “When Yeza has access to your neck. You two are relieved to be reunited,” he explains, even as he looks as dismayed to hear the words come out of his mouth as she is.
“But you didn’t have to say that,” Nott grimaces. “Ugh! I bet no one else has noticed.”
“Everyone has. They just do not wish to say anything.”
Briefly, Nott considers the benefits of telling her husband to back off on the public affection. But that means no more kisses from Yeza. She discards the idea immediately. Not worth it.
She stares down at the dress swaying just above her knees. “Maybe I’ll wear a coat with it,” she sniffs. “Soften the look.” Caleb nods agreeably. “It’s not like there was anything wrong with my old clothes.” He looks a little less agreeable at that.
“Except that you hated them,” he reminds, ever-so-helpful. “If you go back to your old clothes, I am going to start wearing Mr. Holeys again.” Nott gapes at him.
Mr. Holeys are the pair of fingerless gloves Caleb wore for the first four months she knew him and their name was dubbed by Nott, who hated the damn things, the way the thread was fraying at the cuff. There were more holes in the godforsaken thing than there was thread and there was less of that every time Nott caught sight of them. Caleb spent half the time with them on his hands rubbing at his palms to bring back the warmth. They were also one of the first things Nott replaced with her hard-stolen wealth.
“You are not ,” she says immediately. The flat, unimpressed line his mouth becomes suggests otherwise.
“There was nothing wrong with them,” he says like she doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. “And you know me. Maybe I am not suited to all this fancy dress wear. I look like a street dog stuffed into a suit.”
Caleb’s gaze is nothing less than smug as he watches her internally grapple with the urge not to correct him (he looks so handsome in those clothes sometimes Nott could implode with pride), which she is incapable of doing, and the intense, all-consuming desire not to let him have this point, which would be her death, she’s pretty sure.
“Not true. Not true, and you know it,” Nott glowers and she’s pretty sure the crinkle of his eyes is amusement. The bastard.
“Well, if I am not allowed to wear the gloves,” he says like he’s conceding when he’s really a scheming little shit, “and I, in fact, look better in these clothes I have purchased for myself and feel good in. Maybe you could forego the bandages and do something similar,” Caleb suggests, as though the idea wouldn’t have been fucking revolutionary at one point in time.
Nott bites her cheek. “Fine,” she says and then snatches her coat off the bed before Caleb can grab it from her. “But I’m wearing the coat.”
“It’s not very warm outside,” he nods, “good idea.”
She pulls it on. Licks her lips. This is already enough, isn’t it? A part of her feels ridiculously overindulgent with just the dress. Veth Brenatto, she thinks, was made for frumpy smocks. They were the only thing that hid her rolls.
Huh. She kind of sounds like her brother.
“One more thing,” Nott says and untucks her button necklaces. “These too.”
And Caleb, who made up the entirety of her world at one point, says, “I like it. Do you like it?”
She stares at them, gathers them in her palms and then lets them drop.
“Yeah,” she says. “A lot.”
The buttons clink against each other when she moves, bright red and frosted glass clicking against the warm amber of her dress. Like little beetle shells, sheening when the light catches them.
“I think that’s my favourite part,” she admits, Marion sitting with her legs folded to her side across the bed. “Like–fuck! I’m the boss now, so get out you fucker. I can do that.”
“It’s a very satisfying feeling,” Marion, who’s been managing herself for the past thirty years, agrees. “The looks on their faces. Makes me wish I could draw well enough to permanently capture them.”
They’re in Marion and The Gentleman’s home in Nicodranas, Veth curled up on one side of the bed and Marion on the other, a pile of books between them. Her cobalt curtains flutter with a warm breeze, the wooded walls holding a brightness unique to summer. The white armchair beside the coffee table is the comfiest thing Veth’s ever sat in and she’s pretty sure she’s made an imprint the precise shape of her butt in it.
Small. Lived-in. Books splayed on the night table, a half-full glass of water and gold reading glasses on the Gentleman’s side. A seashell-knitted tablecloth on the dresser. A framed painting of The Nein Heroez in Jester’s unmistakeable style hung crooked. It’s nothing like The Lavish Chateau, which, while comfortable, was ornate to the point Veth always felt like she was in a high-class establishment. Which, she was. This place feels welcoming. Homely.
“Okay, no,” Veth amends. “That’s not the best part. So, here I am.”
Marion nods, the side of her cheek indented as she bites it.
“No, no, listen. I go upstairs and–I don’t know where he was when it happened, but he must’ve heard because I find him in his room.”
“Mrs. Brenatto, the suspense,” Marion groans. “The drama.”
Veth grins so wide her molars peek through. “I find Luc, and he’s got his stuffed animals all laid out in a big circle around him, Dynasty-courtroom style, and at first, I think he’s doing some big execution–he’s big on that, the blood and violence stuff, dunno who taught him that– and I go, wow, my boy’s got such a great imagination. And then.”
“And then,” Marion echoes, eyebrows slowly creeping up her face.
“He plants his hands on his hips,” Veth shuffles up to her knees on the bed so she can imitate the proud little wiggle he’d done, “purses his lips, and says, in the most cutting voice I’ve ever heard from him, You can take your copper and poop it out. I know what my work’s worth. Get out of my shop! ”
“He said that?” Marion asks, delighted. “ You said that?”
“Word for word,” Veth tells her, dropping her hands from her hips and leaning in closer. “Except, I didn’t say ‘poop.’”
Marion giggles, a real giggle that curls her top lip and reveals just her two front teeth. It’s horrendous. Veth’s made it one of her life goals to make Marion do it every time they see each other.
“He gets it from you,” Marion waves her hand in her direction, still breathing out wheezing gasps of air. “All of it.”
“I don’t know,” Veth squints.
“No, no,” the edge of Marion’s laughter tapers off. “ I do. So does Yeza. You think your husband was ever as excitable a child?” Okay. So, maybe she has a point. Maybe.
It reminds her of something else. Do not make a face, do not make a—
“What is it?” Marion asks immediately. She and Yeza have been spending too much time together.
Veth says, “Nothing.”
“Well,” Marion hedges. “I’m glad to hear how Yeza’s rightfully made you co-owner of the shop, that Luc’s excited for his first day of school, your summer-camp is attracting a lot of interested parents.” Missed the mark! “That Luc’s only crossbow casualties have been his stuffed animals.” Veth winces. Regrets it.
Marion settles back with all the satisfaction of a cat that got the cream. Her eyebrows creep higher and higher on her face. Veth doesn’t care. Veth could out-silent-game the universe if she wanted.
Only, she doesn’t really want to. Because Marion is her friend. Her friend, who uses their relationship against her at every available opportunity. Like now.
Veth sighs and drops back into the blankets, the fabric flopping over her legs. “Sometimes, I see that crossbow and I could just,” she clenches her hands in front of her, “ slap it out of his hands.”
Marion hums understandingly. “That bad?”
“I mean, I want him to like it, of course,” Veth says, desperate. Not sure what she’s desperate about, “but. Could it kill him to like it a little bit less? Why can’t my kid have imprinted on a fluffy bunny or something? Or a nice, durable beaker.”
Marion raises a single, delicate eyebrow at her. She’s good at that. Veth feels adequately judged.
“What?” Veth gives in.
Marion shrugs a single shoulder– still elegant, how – and says, “Well. You’ve answered your own question, haven’t you?”
“Teach me, my queen.”
“He’s your son,” Marion smiles, mocking, she’s mocking her. Her mouth puckers at the side of her face.
Veth groans wordlessly and the presence at her side covers her smile.
When she looks up, Marion’s face is screwed up slightly, eyebrows creased with the slightest tension. “I know,” she says, “I know how it is.”
Veth rolls her eyes. “Jester adores you.”
“I did my best with what I had. Lots of mistakes, lots of very-close mistakes.” Marion closes her eyes and winces with the memory. “If you think, after five years of stories about the Traveler, I didn’t want to shake that twelve-year-old to figure out what was going through her head,” she clears her throat delicately. “You would be mistaken.”
Veth sits up properly. Blinks at the lines at Marion’s eyebrows, the needle-fine evidence of stress. Grimaces.
“Yikes.”
“Yes,” Marion agrees.
“Sometimes, I just look at him and,” she runs a hand through her hair nervously, “he’s so good, right? He’s so good, and I just- how the hell did I raise a kid this good?”
Marion makes a sound of agreement.
“And it’s like holy shit. I’m gonna fuck it up somehow,” Veth looks at Marion, who gives her a look of profound sympathy. “Almost one-hundred-percent for sure gonna fuck him up. I won’t even mean to! I just will.”
“I understand,” Marion says simply.
Veth thinks of Jester, always smiling, and imagines the little kid she must’ve made. Fuck, she probably does, though.
“I had to let her go, at one point. It broke my heart a little, I think,” Marion says but, despite her words, she holds Veth’s eyes. Thoughtful, instead of sad. “She was ready. I wasn’t. That’s the way of children.”
Oh god, Veth hates even just the thought of letting her boy leave home. “Not for Luc,” she says weakly. “Not until he’s thirty,” she tries.
Marion laughs a short huff. “I tried not to let her see when she came home,” She says and hums in remembrance. “I might have done that a little too often when she was a child. I never was very good at telling when she was faking a smile. That was my fault, I think. The Lavish Chateau suited me well, but,” she hesitates.
“Claustrophobic?” Veth suggests. “Just a little bit?”
“It’s a very small world for a child to grow up in,” Marion agrees, smile weak. “So I tried to make it fun. Positive for her.” Her mouth curves, eyes squinting as she grins suddenly at Veth.
“What?” Veth asks immediately, suspicious.
Marion shrugs, the thin bones of her shoulders peeking through her cotton shirt. “That’s how I know. That worry, the constant feeling that you’re doing everything wrong, that you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing– that’s it.”
Veth wrinkles her lip and shoots a glare at her friend, whom she’s pretty sure is enjoying herself. “Glad my fuck-ups are big enough people can see ‘em across town.”
“No,” Marion shakes her head. “No, I mean, that’s how I know you’re a good mother.”
You could say trying to look at yourself in the dark is kind of pointless, eye-straining at best and migraine-inducing at worst. However, whoever thinks so probably doesn’t have darkvision.
Well. To be fair, neither does Veth anymore. Side note: it’s really, really hard to kill those goblin instincts. Not the ones that demand bloodshed and teeth like she thought. The ones that keep trying to make out the shape of her hands on the railing, the bobbing waves beneath the ship. Those ones.
She doesn’t even want to look at her hands. It was just… good. A good feeling, seeing the warm brown skin and not swampy green. A little jarring.
“What’re you doing?” Fjord’s voice emerges from behind her out of nowhere.
Veth inhales at a completely normal rate. If he can sneak up on her of all people maybe she’s more distracted than she thought.
“Looking at the ocean. My hands. Nothing,” Veth says, all over the place. “You’re the only green one now, how’sit feel?”
“Real special,” he says, eyes thin with amusement. “I also like staring at the sea in the pitch dark.”
“Get your own hobby,” Veth tells him and Fjord crosses his arms over the railing like she’d invited him there.
(Maybe she wanted company a little bit. But she’d never say it and maybe he knows that too? That thought makes her uncomfortable. Time to stop thinking about this.)
“Not what you were expecting?” Fjord asks.
She says, “I’m a halfling. That’s exactly what I expected.”
“Sure. But there’s theoretical knowledge,” he raises his eyebrows at her. “And then there’s real-life. And that bit’s pretty different than all the made-up scenarios that knot up your head.”
Well, Veth had been expecting them both to stand there in solemn silence until she said something witty, so this is kind of smashing her expectations to pieces already.
“I guess you know a lot about making shit up and pretending, huh?”
“Not really,” he says easily and grins.
“Uh-huh.” She rolls her eyes. “No, no, what do you know about changing species and going on year-long quests to get back your old life?”
“Not a lot.”
This time, it sounds weird to her. Veth stares at Fjord, whose lips are folded together. Then she gets it.
“Are we acting like children now?” she asks. “Is that what we’re doing?”
He dips his head to the side consideringly. “No, I’m not.”
She says, “Oh good, just checking,” and then snaps her foot out beneath him so he pitches forward hard, rails slamming into his armpits.
He hauls himself up, reaching up for the rail, which is why she doesn’t expect Fjord’s hand to land on her head and start yanking at hairs. That shit hurts!
“Leggo!” Veth hisses. “I’m gonna tear your arm to shreds, I’ve got fucking teeth don’t test me!” She grips at his arm, only her hands don’t actually have claws anymore and her teeth aren’t very long either. Her fingers are very small and meaty now, little fleshy nubs, and the way that’s sort of disappointing is a little disorienting for her.
Veth does manage to get her teeth in, though.
Fjord yelps and starts shaking her off him. “Woah, woah, woah!” he laughs nervously. “All in good fun, pleasedon’thurtme.” She unlatches, pleased despite herself.
Fjord wipes his arm nervously on his trousers even though Veth would know if she’d drawn blood. She’d probably have to put more effort into it now and that concept should not be near as disappointing as it is?
“Thank you. Veth,” he says, just a little stilted. “No, I was just thinking, it’s at least a little strange to us. I mean, I’m going to have to get used to not immediately reaching for a broom when I see you in my periphery, you know?”
If Veth saw a goblin, she’d probably go for a knife first, so she nods. That’s fair.
Fjord squints at her. “That was a joke.”
“I knew that,” she says. Right. These people like goblins.
He gestures at her vaguely. “So, how’re you doing with the whole…” he hesitates. “Everything?”
“Everything I ever dreamed has come true,” she says.
“Yup.”
“I have achieved my wildest hope, which at one point I had completely given up on.”
“That’s also true.”
Veth narrows her eyes at him. “Stop agreeing with me.”
“Is it working?” He asks and his face pulls, skeptical. “Well. You could put a little more effort in on the conviction and convincing me. Because I don’t even think you believe yourself right now.”
She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to respond to that.
It’s not like it hadn’t been relieving at first. Because it had been! For the first day, at least. The first few hours. Before she had to stuff her body into the dress Jester bought for her and take a good long look at her armpit folds in it. Turns out, all those issues? Still there, actually. They didn’t go away (even with magic).
So, she’s sort of frustrated, yeah. And confused. She hadn’t gone back to her family even though she hadn’t… wanted to yet? Even though Veth wants to now, sort of. So she’d stared at the swaying rattle of the roof until she felt awful enough to stand on deck and feel awful there instead. If she could just pack all those feelings back into the floorboards, that’d be great. Where’s Caleb’s fraught trauma when you need it?
At the end of the day, she was Veth Brenatto, and Veth Brenatto had always been disappointing, most of all to herself.
This is Fjord, though. Obviously, Veth doesn’t say any of that.
“It’s fine,” she says. “It’s great and good and awesome and I’m all of these things. Simultaneously.”
He lets that sit for a moment, which Veth spends watching the clearly visible ocean.
“Sounds like a lot of stuff to be.” Fjord tilts his head at her, curious. “Y’know, I’ve wondered for a long time now why you called yourself ‘Nott.’”
“Were you not listening when I told you?”
“Why,” he ignores her, “would you tell people to call you something you hate about yourself?”
Wow. WOW. No, he didn’t. Veth’s never had her own words turned back on her like this and big surprise– she hates it.
“You don’t get to do that,” she says, very evenly. Very even. “Use– my words! And sound smart! This isn’t a cool moment, you’re not wise.”
“Nope. Not my words,” he leans against the rails, casual. “But, it’s not like you went out into the world, calling yourself ‘Nott the Brave,’ and started acting as cowardly as possible, huh?”
“No, I definitely did that,” Veth disagrees. “I did that lots.”
“Yeah, no. I know,” he says, exasperated. His eye twitches and at the very least Veth can make sure he enjoys this conversation as much as she does. “And the other half of the time you were ending wars and helping us pick fights with gods.”
She snorts because if she doesn’t what the fuck else is she supposed to say to that? “We mildly irritated Ukato’a. Knocked on his doorstep at most.”
“Irritation is a word for it,” Fjord says and his eye bags stretch a little at his half-smile.
Huh. Maybe she’s not the only one with a brain hopped up on anxiety and bad coping mechanisms. They’ve been on the sea for a day, but their voyage is far from over after all.
“And we kept the name,” he says. Veth has no idea what he’s talking about.
“What?”
“Captain Tusktooth,” Fjord clarifies and scratches at the back of his neck.
“Oh, yeah. Why did you keep it if you didn’t like it?” Veth asks. She’d half-forgotten that conversation, but now curiosity has her trying to recall.
“Didn’t want it to be… uh,” he ducks his head, looking anywhere but at her. “Something I hated about myself anymore. So. Kept the name.”
Great! Now she wants to look anywhere but at him.
And yes. Yes, she gets what he’s trying to tell her in the most awkward, awful way they could’ve possibly done this. This. This is the ‘people-person’ of their group.
“Great. Good for you,” Veth rubs at her wrists and wrinkles her nose at him. His face is green. Green er .
“There’s a comma, I’m saying.”
“Yes! Yes,” she drags a hand over her face. “I’m a person of my own making. Literally.”
“Right, right. But did you wanna stop being called ‘Nott’ because you’re back to being Veth or because you’ve already got what Nott wanted?” Fjord says and she stares at him.
This is too much to process. She was already working through an upheaval in her personal life, she doesn’t need this self-assured version of her friend to singlehandedly deliver her another.
“Well,” he says, and starts walking away. “Night!”
“What?” Veth yells after, him forgetting to quiet herself and Fjord shakes silently with laughter as he raises a finger to his lips.
“Shhh.”
“Where’re you going?” She hisses, incredulous.
“Feeling better about my own life, so I’m going back to sleep.” Fjord gives her double thumbs up and the door shuts softly behind him.
Then it’s just her. Just Veth and Fjord’s stupid profound wisdom he must have regurgitated from Caduceus. Haha. ‘Just Veth.’ She huffs out two sharp snorts with her face in her hands.
When she lifts her head, the night stretches on, an opaque darkness that peers through the night back at her. This is way too many feelings to be having about commas.
She sets aside a few more of Luc’s toys, not because she’s worried the others are going to trip over them but because Veth doesn’t want the smaller ones fucking her up. Stupid goddamn brick things, she’s going to bag ‘em all up and tell Luc Nugget ate them and she has them again but obviously he doesn’t want to touch them anymore.
The door chimes and Veth cracks her knuckles.
“Supper almost ready?” She asks and peeks her head into the kitchen on her way to answer it.
“Almost,” Yeza says, voice unusually flat as he balances about three different dishes on the stove. “I’m going to be another five minutes. Ten at most. They’re not here yet, are they?”
“I think Jess’s just early,” Veth says as the doorbell clangs more insistently. Definitely Jester.
“Okay, okay. I was going to make breadcrumbs with last week’s loaf, but I haven’t crumbled it yet,” her husband throws her a wide-eyed look over his shoulder, hair pulled back with a headband. “I’m going to have to stick the macaroni in the oven with just a cheese topping. Just cheese, hon.”
She takes a second to admire his hair curling over the headband and then gives him a thumbs up. “They’re gonna love it!”
“Veth!” Yeza says, distressed as she goes for the door.
Jester’s on the other side of the door, fist raised to start banging apparently. She grins at Veth and Fjord waves over her shoulder.
“Hi! Look at these sketches, Veth, I drew them practically a hundred times just like you asked even though I’m pretty sure my first drafts would have been fine,” Jester says, whipcrack quick. She pulls Veth into her own home and opens her notebook.
“Is that fire?” Fjord sniffs at the air.
“Minimal dicks?” Veth asks Jester.
She flaps her hand. “Of course! I would never draw permanent penises on you, Veth! I know tattoos aren’t pen, silly.”
“I think I smell fire.”
“I’m not going to stop you if you want to help Yeza finish with the cooking,” Veth informs Fjord. “But if he kills you for trying, I will watch and laugh.”
“Oh, Yeza’s cooking?” he raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I didn’t need to swallow down all that vinegar after all.”
“You’re already a sour, bitter man,” Veth agrees.
Fjord’s face falls. “Okay,” he goes. “Well. I was gonna say something, but that was much better than the joke I set up.” Jester giggles into her palm.
He’s not wearing his captain’s hat, Veth notes, the big, feathery one Beau got him before he and Jester sailed off. Jester’s white puff sleeves seem at odds with the kind of work running a boat would allow, but they both seem straight-backed, not exhausted or run ragged like they’d just escaped with their lives from a tarrasque or some shit yesterday. Jester’s freckles spot her face a little more obviously, Fjord’s cheeks a darker green– sun-warmed.
“Well, now I’m curious,” Veth says.
“No,” he sulks. “It won’t be funny anymore.”
Veth rolls her eyes and ushers Jester into Luc’s playroom, mostly cleared of tiny, lethal bricks. “You’re a sad, sad man!” She yells after him as Fjord retreats to the kitchen.
“You sap all the light and joy from my life,” he calls back.
“You’re definitely going to faint, like, at least three times while I do this, so I don’t know why you’re waving your dicks around now,” Jester says and Veth deflates. She could swear Fjord’s footsteps take on a little hop around the corner of her house, though. “You’ll have a lot more to flash around when I’m finished,” she grins and the top row of her teeth flash.
“No dicks,” Veth reminds her.
Jester pushes her down onto the table Veth’s set up, covered in pillows for her own comfort. “I was going to but then you said minimal instead of none, so I have a bit of leeway, right?”
She spills her bag out onto a little table Veth’s set aside for them and takes out a huge fucking needle.
“Stay still, this is going to hurt a lot.” Okay. Well, pillows work just as well for muffling screams anyway.
Veth muffles a swear or two as Jester makes her way along Veth’s arm, which she holds limp as a dead fish beside her. Which is to say, sometimes she twitches involuntarily and her eyes roll in their sockets but all in all she’d say she’s doing a pretty fucking good job of it.
“You invited my mom, right?” Jester asks with no room for disagreement. “She’s been talking about you soo much when I Send to her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s all like, ‘I saw Veth’s family. They’re doing well,’ and ‘Veth invited me to lunch’ and ‘Luc reminds me of you,” Jester murmurs over Veth’s back. The needle pinches at Veth’s skin and she winces. “Which is a lot! Like, trust me, usually she’s all talking about how excited she is for me or how well Dad’s doing.”
“Is that a weird thing for people to do?” Veth winces. “Tell you about their life?”
“It’s weird for Mama! ‘Cause she never tells me about her life. I’m pretty sure you guys are the only thing to properly happen to her since she got back with dad. So,” Jester lowers her voice and the ends of her hair tickle at Veth’s shoulder, “if you didn’t invite my mom, who’s super into you as a friend and don’t keep bringing light and happiness into her life, we are going to have words .”
“If you make me flinch, I’m going to mess up your art,” Veth protests and rolls her eyes. Like she doesn’t know this already. Alright, the ‘one good thing’ part was news, but Marion knows she’s welcome anytime. “Anyway, I invited Marion to babysit Nugget while I’m gone. It’s not like we’re going to leave her alone.”
“Oh.” Jester’s voice says. “Good!”
Veth specifically does not roll over to look Jester in the eye because she’s hit what Veth’s pretty sure is her shoulder blade and the feeling of the needle marching over the hardened shell of her bone hurts like a bitch. Like, wow. Ow. Ow .
“And there’s no way your mom doesn’t have a bunch of other friends by now,” Veth grunts into her pillow. “Have you met that lady? She pulls ,” Veth emphasizes. Stops. “Platonically.”
“I mean, when I was home, not really? You know, ‘cause it’s not like she was comfortable going to the bar or letting other people into our lives.”
Right. Because she had a little blue child she very much was not supposed to have. Veth screws up her face and pretends it's from the pain, which isn’t that hard because of all the very real agony she’s actually in.
“Fuck, she didn’t wander down to the bar sometimes to get drunk?” That’s what she would’ve done.
Jester wheels around a little on her chair, her furrowed eyebrows drawing closer. “Not really! I tried, I mean, when I was younger, ‘cause man she had some really hot clients, but,” and she shrugs. “Not a lot of other ‘Rubies’ around Nicodranas, y’know? It made her special!”
“Sounds lonely.”
“She had me,” Jester says with all the stubbornness of a child who’d decided that was all her mother would ever need.
It sounds lonely for Jester too, but Veth isn’t about to say that. She has tact. When she wants.
“Yup, you sound like a perfect angel of a child,” Veth agrees and cackles wildly in her mind.
“Oh, I totally was! So well behaved,” Jester sighs. “Maybe that’s why I make such a good mother to Sprinkle.”
Veth’s pretty sure she would have killed that rat twelve times over if it wasn’t some weird avatar for her god, but yeah. A great mother.
“Sprinkle, your god in disguise,” Veth protests and then yelps when a particularly firm jab catches on her skin.
“Okay! This is the bit that’s really going to hurt, so hold onto your horses,” Jester declares.
“ Do I get something to bite onto?” Her arm hurts so much, a persistent ache swelling beneath the skin. “Isn’t that a thing people do? I should have something to bite onto!” She’s not delaying. This is a perfectly reasonable amount of fear. Especially because she’s had a tattoo done before! And it hurt like a bitch!
“Bite me.”
“What?”
Jester grins, “Nothing! You have pillows. Freshly ready to catch your screams,” she waggles her eyebrows and right when Veth’s about to protest, jabs her.
Veth’s brain whites out a little bit. There is, however, a pillow against her face when she comes to.
Her head pounds. “Done yet?”
“Close!”
“Really?” Veth says, relieved.
“Nope,” Jester says and god her teeth are sharp, but so’s this fucking needle !
Veth passes out once. Twice, at most.
“Veth, Veth, I’m not dragging your unconscious body out in front of your son.” Something smacks against her forehead and Veth glares at Jester.
“I prefer waking up to Yeza,” she grumbles.
“That’s adorable,” Jester grins. “And super embarrassing for you, also. Anyway, all done! You look fucking awesome now, you’re welcome.”
Veth twists to get a look. “I look more fucking awesome.”
Jester blinks at her, face stilling in what looks like surprise before an incorrigible grins splits her face. “That is true, I should have considered that,” she says with a bird-like bob of her head.
She only counts two dicks, which, really, is a very tasteful number considering it’s Jester . And they’re hidden in the swirls and curling embellishments feathering up and around Jester’s art.
Stylized waves flood over a thin beaker, a crossbow shooting through the peak of two waves at their crest. Buttons and flowers decorate the edges and her inner wrist reads ‘More than stories’ in elegant cursive. The back of her wrist has a comma (sue her, she’s allowed) and a ginger cat curls around her elbow. Yes, she picked symbols for the Mighty Nein. No, she’s never telling them what they mean.
“Wow,” Veth gapes. “I’m the coolest mom on this street.”
Jester scrunches her nose. “That’s sort of pushing it. But, yeah, what do you expect? Obviously, you already know I’m an amazing artist. People pay big bucks for Jester originals, so you’re worth even more now. But yeah, you look like a fucking badass. Shit, I would bet on you in an arm-wrestling match!” She packs away her needles, shooting smug little glances at Veth’s arm as she does. “I’d think, ‘woah, look at that lady’s cool tattoos, she’s gonna wreck house!’”
Veth lifts her right arm. Regrets it. “Thanks, Jess.”
“Of course! And if you ever wanted me to do your other arm, I would be so okay with that,” Jester says. Veth leads her into the hall. “But no worries. You can pay me back by hanging out with my mom. Like, keep doing that.”
Veth squawks, “You don’t need to buy my affection!” She rolls her shoulders back. “Your mom’s already doing that. She makes a mean scone.”
Jester laughs and the door’s bell rings again, twin horns only just visible through the frosted glass. Marion opens the door and Jester gasps in delight.
“I said we were looking after her,” Veth only half-grumbles to herself as Jester runs at her mom, who catches her in her arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Hi , Marion mouths at her from over Jester’s shoulder and then pulls her daughter down before they start talking to each other. Veth wanders near the kitchen, which, thankfully, doesn’t seem to be billowing smoke.
What she finds is Caleb and Essek, clearly dressed up for the occasion and only just back from Aeor (given the badly concealed cuts and scrapes on the wrists and necks), Fjord, standing to the side, and her husband, wringing his hands, as Yasha in their frilly yellow apron pulls out the macaroni in a pair of gloves that only come down to her thumb knuckles.
“It’s easy,” she explains to their wide eyes. “Just. ah. I like to sprinkle a little parmesan on top. Really improves the flavour profile. But the bread crumbs are a great idea,” Yasha says to Yeza’s surprised expression. She sets it on a cloth on their dining room table.
“Can you stay,” he begs. “Forever?”
“Sure,” Veth says and wanders up to put her finger in the middle of the macaroni. Hot. Hot. “Only if she convinces Luc he’ll like school, though.”
Yasha looks thoughtful at that. “I’ve never been.”
“Nope! Yeah, no, I don’t think so,” Beau voice chimes from the stairs, footsteps loud as she trundles down, Veth’s boy on her shoulders. He’s grinning ear to ear and wobbles precariously from her shoulders. “I am not finishing that garden by myself. That’s your project.”
“There’s a school where we live,” Yasha agrees.
“Y-ES!” Luc squeals, apparently distracted from dragging his hands on the roof. “Can we? I wanna see TJ again!”
“Our place is a bit… loud,” Beau says, face completely straight until she snorts and ruins it. “What?” She says to Caleb’s flat look. “Creaky floorboards.”
Luc pats her back in a signal to be let down, which Beau does in a sweeping move that has his legs swinging out and him giggling. He runs over to her first, which doesn’t have Veth smiling at all. It’s not as though she’d worried for a long, long time that their relationship was irrevocably damaged and he’d never go to her like he did Yeza. That he thought she was a bad mom. Ha! Ridiculous. She holds him tight. But with her left arm.
“Your home is beautiful,” Essek tells her as Yeza returns to setting out the food, Yasha and Beau following to help. “Very warm.”
Veth narrows her eyes at a scrape along Caleb’s cheekbone and watches him squirm at the attention. “Aeor fucked you guys up.”
“But think of the radical leaps our journey contributes to the world’s understanding of magic,” Caleb jokes. “Ja. We are in a bad way.”
“You are as handsome as ever,” Veth hikes Luc onto her hip (Yeza says he’s too big and Veth says, never ). She pats Caleb on the cheek. “And when you come to help me with the camp tomorrow, you’re gonna start running five kilometres every morning.”
She could swear Essek pales which is kind of ridiculous considering how much distance they probably cover in Aeor, but then. Veth going to inflict as much exercise on them as she can get away with.
“That’s not necessary, surely,” Essek says, a little weakly.
“No tower?” Caleb says, voice already resigned.
“Are you kidding me?” Veth says cheerfully. “We need to keep eyes on the kids!”
She’s distracted a moment later when Luc tugs on her shirt and holds out a small piece of metal, glittering under the gold kitchen lights and twisting in his hands like cornsilk. Bronze wire. He holds it up to her and Veth has to pull her head back so he doesn’t poke her eye out with it.
“Careful,” she says absentmindedly and raises an eyebrow at Caleb.
“As good a first spell for him to learn as any,” he shrugs and haha, wow, her throat is hot, are anyone else’s eyes itchy in here?
“Uncle Caleb and Uncle Essek said they’re gonna teach me!” Luc says and her mouth falls open a little bit.
For a moment she looks to Essek, because who else would teach him to say that? But he’s gone very still, pointed ears flat to his head and not breathing. Marble-like. Caleb’s mouth drops open before he grins and reaches over to ruffle Luc’s hair and her boy preens under the attention.
“Of course,” Caleb tells Luc and then raises an eyebrow at her like, did you …?
Veth shrugs a little helplessly and then sets her boy down. He goes running to Caleb’s legs and the second love of her life embraces him warmly before he goes next to Essek’s legs and wraps his arms around his knees. To his credit, Essek manages a pat on the back before Luc’s off like a whip shot.
Caleb does that thing where he lifts his hands like he’s going to grab something or cast a spell and instead fumbles with them. They end up splayed in front of him helplessly as Essek shoots him an open-mouthed look.
“He, ah, probably got it stuck in his head when Yeza’s side of the family came to visit,” Caleb suggests. “And. Misunderstood what it meant?”
Veth decides then and there. “I’m not gonna stop him.”
“I hadn’t meant,” Essek says, face still stiff with shock, “I mean– understand, I never meant to come to your home and establish myself as such.” His eyes tighten as he looks at her.
Caleb opens his mouth, frowning. Veth makes a face at him over Essek’s shoulder as the drow’s eyes drop to the floor. Shoo , she mouths and flaps her hands. Caleb makes two ‘okay’ hands and backs into the dining room. Okay, Veth. Big girl pants on. She’s going to have this talk because no one else is willing to and she’s the only one available.
She peeks out the hall, but Luc’s somewhere not here and that’s good enough for now. “I don’t want you saying that around Luc, okay?”
“What?” Essek blinks at her.
Veth waves a hand. “That whole, ‘oh no, I’m not an uncle, I don’t want to be’ thing.”
“It’s not a matter of want –”
“It’s about earning it,” Veth finishes and fixes him with a look. “Yeah. I know. I’m his mom, and every day! That kid wakes up and shows me how little control that word gives me over his life. It’s like trying to wrangle a tornado.”
Essek stares at her, eyes dark in the cavern of his face. His mouth twists uncomfortably and it stretches the dark slats atop his cheeks.
“That child,” he begins quietly, “and that child in particular. Should not let me in his life so familiarly.”
“ My child is going to do what he wants. And neither of us can stop him.” Veth scowls, “If you go and tell him you aren’t his uncle, though, I am going to eviscerate you before the night’s over.”
“That’s–”
“Uh!” Veth interrupts.
“Veth–”
“Uh-uh,” She raises her eyebrows.
“We attacked his village, kidnapped his father, and nearly made him an orphan,” Essek breathes out in one fell swoop and glowers at her. She could almost pat herself on the back for making him lose composure. “Surely, for even one of these reasons, never mind all of them being what they are, I am the last person Luc Brenatto should welcome into his family.”
God, wizards are stupid. And pitiful. (Veth technically doesn’t count. She barely knows a handful of spells, and she’s a rogue first and foremost. That disqualifies her.)
“You’re going to get in there, eat my husband’s meal, tell him it’s perfect, and go the extra mile for the rest of your life to make sure my son is well-loved and cared for,” Veth tells Essek under her breath. She can see Yeza shooting her expectant looks around the corner and she’d much rather be kissing him on the cheek and digging in than having this conversation right now. “That’s what being an uncle is going to mean. You don’t like it! Tough! But–”
Veth holds a finger up.
“It’s the least you can do.” She says.
Essek presses his mouth together. “I’m sensing an egregious mistake on my part,” he says and it sounds a little like relief. “Overestimating the amount of choice I have.”
“If you tell him you’re not his uncle, I’ll fucking kill you,” Veth agrees.
When she sits down, it’s to see Caduceus across the table from her. She eyes him and he waves amiably across from her before she shrugs. Fuck, well it’s not like he doesn’t have a standing invitation anyway. Even if her house is feeling more like a bus stop with every passing moment.
“And, here’s some more salad for you, Mr. Clay,” Yeza dishes out a bowl for him and stares at Veth meaningfully as she takes her seat next to him. “Wow, look at that! Just the right amount.”
“You were right,” Veth rolls her eyes at her smug husband and then goes very quickly, “andIwaswrong.”
Across the table, Yasha says to Marion, “It’ll be good exercise for her.”
Beau nods. “If she can be near kids for a long time, with their sticky little hands ‘n stuff, she can be around anyone .”
“And you’re sure you’re set on ‘Widocat’ as a name,” Jester pouts. “You’ll confuse her!”
“You gave it a cat name,” Caleb agrees, eyes narrowed. “My name. To a dog.” He sounds almost offended at this last part.
They got a dog! Veth points across the table. “You got a dog!” She says, “You could’ve just HAD Nugget! We would’ve agreed!”
Luc gasps in shock from his spot beside Yeza. “No, we wouldn’t!” He shouts, standing up. “No, we wouldn’t!” He shakes his head vehemently like they were threatening to take the dog away right now.
Beau raises her hands placatingly. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll just bring her around for playdates. How about that? You wanna see our dog, Luc?”
“We’ll have to get him neutered,” Yeza mutters to her as Luc agrees eagerly, worries forgotten. Oh boy. Another pet.
Across the table, Caduceus hands Essek a small brown bag which Veth almost hopes is weed.
“I experimented a little with how much cinnamon and lavender I’ve been adding,” Caduceus explains. “I think you’ll like this new ratio. It’s very mellow.”
“I’m not sure how you can top your last mix,” Essek says, a bag full of boring, dull tea in hand.
That’s right. If it was weed, it would be too interesting. Then again, Caduceus’s tea is kind of the fucking bomb. Veth mentally makes a note to ask him for some later.
Her arm erupts with heat and– shit ! Holy son of a –
“FUCK YOU,” she yells at Fjord, wearing a shit-eating grin from ear to ear next to her.
“Whoops,” he says unapologetically.
“What?!” Luc demands from the other side of the table. “What what what?!”
“He punched me!” Veth shouts, shrilly. Wait, fuck words. She punches him back in the arm. Hard. To his credit, Fjord barely flinches. His eyes tighten with restrained agony, though.
“Still sensitive, then,” he jokes, voice only a bit hoarse. “Nice ink, by the way. It was a camaraderie thing.”
“Really? Hold still, that first one was for revenge. This one’ll be for friendship.”
Fjord shuffles over in his chair, making an aborted gesture for the food near Jester a little too fast to be casual. Jester laughs and Beau side-eyes Fjord like she’s rearranging his workout routine in her head.
That night, as Yeza’s pulling on his pyjama shirt across the bed from her, it hits her.
“Hey, babe,” Veth asks and Yeza looks up. “Were you the one who told Luc to say that?”
“To say what?” He asks, voice nothing more than a murmur in the sweeping dark of evening.
“He called the wizards ‘Uncle Caleb and Uncle Essek earlier.’”
He picks his glasses up from the table after a moment of squinting at her in the dark. “Well, yeah. I mean, they’re your family too, Veth.”
Okay. Okay. She was going to say something but her throat closes so completely Veth can do barely more than mouth the words.
“I thought you’d be okay with it?” Yeza continues, then grimaces and shakes his hands together, “Ah! I should’ve asked first before I went ahead and just told Luc they were family! It’s just, when my mom and dad came to visit and we told him to call my sister ‘Aunt Miriam,’ he was asking about your friends and I thought, it’s not like they’re not family–”
“Honey, honey,” Veth marches around the bed once she thinks she can speak. “It’s okay, you’re right.” She bites her lips and then throws her arms around him.
He catches her, surprised. Then, the arms around her tighten.
“Oh,” he says, relieved. “That’s good.”
“Thank you,” she rasps and he kisses her on the cheek.
“Of course.”
Veth hugs him a little tighter, unwilling to let go for a few seconds.
“As long as I never have to ask him to call your brothers ‘uncle,’” Yeza says happily into her ear and Veth has to let go so she can cover her snort with her hand. “I would do it. But I would resent it every time I had to hear Luc say it.”
“No, that’s fine,” she wrinkles her nose, “Also, never. Don’t even say that or it’ll haunt me into my dreams.”
“Uncle Botter,” Yeza says and they both make a face of unified disgust.
“Awful,” Veth says.
“Nightmare material for certain,” Yeza agrees and then leans in for a kiss that wipes her brother’s face from her mind. And. Well. Veth only means to reciprocate but also she puts her hand on his ass. And what did he expect her to do giving her a look like that?
Anyway, Veth’s husband is fucking hot and he does an excellent job of being considerate of her new sleeve which, in hindsight, was a very good idea of hers. A very, very good idea.
A part of her lights up at the sound of footsteps from the shop door. Veth misses him, alright? First day of school came and they thought they’d have to bodily drag Luc but instead Veth was the one that had to be peeled from him. Hey! That was her baby! Her kid. Veth was allowed a bit of well-earned attachment.
So, when she catches a small head through the fogged glass, Veth walks at a very normal speed to greet Luc.
She swings open the door.
“Luc!” Veth grins and then leans down and smooches him on the cheek. “Welcome home!”
“Hi, Mom!” He says and pats her hand. Luc slips inside.
“I was wondering, if you aren’t too busy with school stuff, if you could help me count the ruby supply and put away the most recent flask shipment. We could go shooting after,” Veth offers (shooting shit, you reliable old bribe, you) and pulls Luc’s lunch from his bag. She frowns at it. It’s mostly full, still. “Hey, did you eat?”
Luc shrugs. “Yeah. Then I was full.” He cracks open the store room door behind the counter and goes to grab the flask crates.
Except, Luc loves her cooking? Mostly because she cheats with canned foods and prepackaged lunches (which is why Yeza makes his lunch the other four days of the week). But the only thing that’s been emptied out is the container of strawberries she sent with him. He should be starving right about now.
“Should I get them ready for healing potions or put them with the rest?” Luc asks, arms full and eyes innocently wide.
“Cupboards,” Veth says, eyeing him. Luc bobs his head and either he’s actually fine or he’s her son who inherited a streak of deceit so wide it matches the Dwendalian king’s incompetence.
If she had any doubt something’s wrong, the swell of silence that stretched between them like a chism would’ve driven that thought away. Luc wheels silently on the mid-rung of their rolling ladder, grinning over at her as soon as he catches her eye. So many alarms are going off in her head. They sound in the place of her boy’s normally upbeat and chipper voice.
“So,” she says. “How was school?”
“Good.” Luc pushes a flask back into the cupboard. “I had fun!”
“What’d you do today?”
“We played tag at lunch. And looked at ants. It was good,” He grabs another flask without turning around to look at her. “Nice.”
Veth purses her lips together and puts down the rubies she was methodically grinding into a fine dust.
“How’s Mr. Fleetwind?”
“Good.”
“And your classmates?” She presses. “I think I remember you being really excited about making friends with a certain Kyla girl? And that boy, Samlin?”
“Oh.” The flask scrapes across the wood as it joins the rest of their collection. “They’re good too.”
“Everything’s fine,” Veth says disbelievingly and slides around her work table, “except, you’ve said the word ‘good’ four times in the past minute. That seems… good.” She waits.
Luc turns around on the ladder slowly, one hand hanging on to the side. His eyes are puffy and red, snot running from his nose and tears streaming down his cheeks.
“It was not good,” he says in a remarkably even voice. Then, in a slightly less even voice, “Not good at all!”
Wow, those alarms in her head? Turning very quickly into drums! Her gut clenches at the look on his face. Veth opens her arms and Luc jumps down from the ladder, Veth wrapping him up in an embrace. She presses kisses to his hair as he cries into her shoulder, a slow dampness that seeps through the cloth. Veth doesn’t shush him. It’d always made her hiccup when she was shushed.
“He- they- my cheeks,” Luc wails. “Look like chipmunks! They said- and they kept watching me when I ate and- and squeaking! And I didn’t want to eat in front of them and they got other kids to- to call me fat and chipmunk and they said my hands were chubby and my tummy!”
She’s never wanted to punch kids more. Well. Save for when she was Luc’s age and they were saying all the same things about her. In a quiet corner of her chest, her heart breaks a little. Fuck.
Because Veth loves her little guy’s chubby cheeks and round face and thick hands. But she didn’t love them on herself until she saw them in him. Why did she think Luc would get to escape unscathed?
“That felt…” she rasps, unsure where to begin.
“Bad!” He cries harder.
“Hey!” Veth says loudly, “Hey, I want to show you something! Look!” She grabs his hand and maybe it’s her insistence that stops his crying or maybe it’s the blunt change in subject, but he stops crying for just a second. Veth jumps on the opportunity.
“See that?” She says and holds his hand. “See?”
“Your…” he wrinkles his nose, “hand?”
Veth lets go of him to gently take his hand and lay it on top of hers. “That’s a hand! You see both of our hands are like- like when you and dad get your fingernails the same colour.”
“Matching?” Luc sniffs. His voice goes a little flat. “We match?” He rolls his eyes. “You gave birth to me.” Duh , his voice seems to say. At least it’s better than crying.
“But your hands look like mine, right?” She asks. Luc nods, hesitant. “You know what else looks like mine? This.” And she cups a hand to his cheek.
“So?” He pouts, face drooping with disappointment.
“We’ve got the same hands, Lukey.” She puts her hands on top of his again and doesn’t let go this time. “Same face, see?” Veth smiles. God, she hopes this works. “If you didn’t have those things, you wouldn’t be my son.”
He instantly looks horrified, eyes wide as marbles, which kind of does wonders for her self-esteem, but that’s a thought for later. Luc holds up his hands to hers like he’s seeing them for the first time again.
“Oh,” he says thoughtfully, eyes skittering from her knuckles to his palms and back again. Luc furrows his eyebrows. “Oh,” he goes again, and something hoarse pitches his voice heavy.
Don’t fidget, don’t fidget.
“Alright there?” She asks.
“‘Cause I’m your son?”
“Yup.”
Luc’s mouth sets into a line and he nods firmly, seemingly have come to a decision. “Okay,” he says. “That’s alright then.”
That’s so sweet that for a second Veth doesn’t know what to do with herself. Is it alright? For now maybe, but– it won’t always be. She wants to tuck him away from the world. She wants to breathe down the shoulder of every person who so much as gives him a mean look. She wants to be the most overbearing mom who’s ever existed and it chafes at some unreachable part inside of her that she’ll never be able to do any of these things. But she can talk to him. Relate? Is that what she’s doing? Relating? Parenting is wild.
Veth doesn’t know. She does her best. And she does what she can.
“I think we’re good on flasks and ruby’s ‘n stuff. Wanna go shoot some shit?”
“Yeah,” he says seriously and with grave emphasis.
Luc runs over and hugs her. He lets go before she can hug him back, darting up the stairs to presumably grab his crossbow.
Veth doesn’t know if she’s doing any of this right. But he’ll always have her in his corner. It’ll be better for him than it was for her. That’s the important bit.
She’s really careful about it. So careful, Nott scampers between the legs of at least five people before she even gets within reaching distance of this guy. She even straightens up so she seems less suspicious! And Nott hates standing tall. People might mistake her for someone worth talking to or something.
And if she’s being so extremely careful and mindful of where she is in the crowd and whose eyes are on her, that means she’s allowed to let her attention wander a little. Caleb gives her a thumbs up from the edge of a crowd. Wow, what she wouldn’t give to know where that vendor got such a large piece of topaz… She sighs at a baker’s stall full of danishes and lets her gaze drag over the gleam of colourful masks. One of them catches her eye but the target takes a left and she has to begrudgingly move her attention elsewhere.
She pretty much did all of it right! Except for that last bit. Else she probably would have noticed that this apparent nobleman had guards trailing him in civvies through the thrush of people.
A learning experience. The profusely bleeding gash on her arm is teaching her a lot, actually.
Nott grits her teeth as she wraps her bandages a little further up her arm than they’d usually go and curses when she reaches the end of the fabric. She’ll have to tear some more from the bottom of her cloak tomorrow. It’s not like the thing could get any more ragged. Nott’s irritated enough that she yanks the bandages from her ears, which twinge with soreness at the rough treatment after a day of being bound.
“How is it?”
Nott sits up. “Good! Totally fine! Saw the blade coming a mile away so it’s shallow. Minimal damage.”
Caleb blinks at her. “Can I see it?”
Right. Because she has her arm behind her back. Nott takes it out and rubs at her wrist uncomfortably. “No need.” She wriggles her fingers and ignores the jolt of pain that sends up her tendons. “All good, see?”
He seems to accept that answer and pokes at their campfire, settled comfortably at the base of their tree, which was replacing the ramshackle inn they’d planned to stay at. With real beds. Veth’s pretty sure she’s forgotten what sleeping in a bed feels like anyway. Tree sweet tree.
“Sorry,” Caleb says, breaking the silence between them. He doesn’t look up. “I didn’t mean that to go to horseshit. I will stay closer, next time.”
“Absolutely not,” Nott protests. “That was not on you! On me, Caleb. I should have picked a better target. And paid more attention. Also, how were we supposed to know he had guards?”
“You will be okay without a new coat?”
She waves it off. She’d been planning on squirrelling it all away for Caleb’s future book fund anyway. “Of course.”
“Okay,” he says, still dubious.
She thinks that’s it as Caleb pulls his bag into his lap. Then he’s holding something out to her, shoulders crowded inward.
“It is not a coat,” he says. “But I hope you will find use for it anyway.”
It’s a mask. The one she’d been eyeing in the market earlier, the porcelain aglow with amber light and the lips pursed like a bloody slash.
“It’s not gold or, ah, very practical,” he stumbles on after a moment’s pause. “But you deserve a little more dignity than simple bandages. This may do the trick to keep you hidden without so much–” Caleb gestures vaguely to his own face.
“The bandages work fine,” Nott says. She’s not sure what she’s thinking. And she’s feeling something right now but who the fuck knows what.
“This will hold better. And be more comfortable,” he suggests and doesn’t retract it. When she doesn’t move to grab it, still frozen in place, his mouth creases in a frown. “You are allowed to have nice things, Nott. At least, you deserve more than what we have now.”
She hums uncertainly. “Why don’t we call that our haul for the day? Fetch a pretty penny for it in Trostenwald.”
“I don’t–”
“I want to do what’s best for both of us,” Nott says firmly. Caleb blinks at her and she spends a few moments floating between confusion and the weird dread in her gut. Oh. She interrupted him. Has she done that before?
“Sorry,” she says immediately. “Sorry, Caleb, but… it’s very pretty, you know.”
“There is nothing to apologize for.” He says factually, voice lifting in his confusion. “And yes. It would suit you.”
She eyes him. Smiles placatingly. He’s so smart. But even geniuses can be biased and he has a bit of a blindspot when it comes to her. Every time she looks at her reflection she wants to vomit a little.
“Think of it as a gift,” he insists. “From me. Practical. You will save bandages.”
She’s being rude, hedging on a gift from Caleb. Nott takes it between her fingers. The porcelain’s cool where she touches it.
“Thank you,” Nott amends. “It’s a lovely gift.”
She glances down at it. It’s not perfect, is the thing. There’s a hairline fracture running through the mouth, triangular chips jagged at the top right. Probably from their hasty escape. She likes it a lot. Her throat is slick with disgust.
She avoids water like the plague, yes. But she catches glimpses. In windows. Shop mirrors. Nott finds a shrivelled, sharp little creature in every one. Like a rat wandering a crowd of mice with its incisors peeking out its mouth and little fingers twitching. Her bandages sloped down her face, hiding the gaunt, starved hollow of goblin cheekbones and her cloak hanging in tatters around her ankles. She looks pathetic. It makes a deep part of her feel sickly satisfied. She doesn’t look good, but she looks right . How she should, like this. Something sputtering and reluctantly fished out the gutter.
So it helps, a little, to think of the mask as practical. It’s just something Caleb said to trick her into taking it, but Nott comforts herself with the thought anyway. She’ll be able to hide them better like this. Protect Caleb better.
“How’sat?” It’s cool against her cheeks, too.
“I would not want to meet you in a dark alleyway,” he nods at her with some apparent satisfaction. “You will be fashionable in day and terrifying at night.”
She hisses at him, overdramatic, and gets a slow blink in return. Nott thinks that’s the precursor to a smile. She hasn’t quite gotten him there yet but she’s planning on it one of these days.
He gets ready to sleep soon after, but Nott doesn’t follow him quickly. She holds the mask to the sky on her back, trailing the path of cracks with her eyes. Caleb’s words play back in her head. You are allowed — She shunts them away. They’re hard to think about. The rough edges on the top drag at her thumb when she runs her hands over it again and again. She looks right, she’d thought. Maybe this’ll all eventually feel right too.
