persenche

cw: more sex! but also medical trauma. not, like, together or anything.

Therese wrapped her arms around Nora, pressing her face against her girlfriend’s back as they sat together in Nora’s vast cozy pillow-pile of a sleeping area. Nora was reading, taking occasional notes, and leaned up against Therese, who was serving as a chair and a soft, portable heater.

“I’m not sure who to even talk to about it,” Therese said, picking up a dropped conversation thread she’d been mulling over.

“Me?” Nora said, sounding distracted.

“I mean, other than you. It seems really important that someone else knows about that voice. Especially if it has something to do with the Spike.”

“Sengupta knows.” Nora leaned into her further, setting her pen down. “I assume she’s talked to Gaveny and the other department heads by now. Who else is there?”

Therese started to answer, and found her voice catching each time she tried to say it. “The. The um. Ma— Magisters.”

Nora took Therese’s hand from around her waist and laced their fingers together, squeezing gently. “You still have nightmares about the last time you talked to the Magisters, Tee. You’ve woken us both up with them more than once.”

Therese shivered, remembering both the meeting and the nightmares. A horrible thought had occurred to her, and she’d told Nora about it hoping that talking would exorcise it, but it hadn’t, and it woke her up every so often in a cold sweat.

What if her memory had been altered by the Magisters before?

She had told Suliat that nobody had tampered with her mind to make her care about Riley, and she still thought that was true, but once you knew there were people around who were able, and willing, to edit your memories? Who didn’t seem to have any moral issues with that?

How could you trust anything you knew or remembered, after learning that?

She sagged against Nora’s back. “I… I guess that’s not really a good idea. I just feel like. Like I shouldn’t be the one dealing with this. I’m barely an Adept. I’m first term. I’ve been out of school for just two and a half years.” She knew she was letting panic slip into her voice, and she took a steadying breath. “And Riley, she’s. She’s already such a—”

“A mess, yes. She’s a walking, Sigil-calling catastrophe.”

Therese nodded, her face pressed to Nora’s back to convey the motion. “And she’s so fragile, on top of it. What started it was her freaking out about her body around everyone, about being naked, and she just kind of… went away. Like she wasn’t even there anymore, mentally I mean.”

Nora squeezed her hand. “I… I can imagine how that would feel.”

Therese kissed the back of Nora’s neck. “Me too, though not as much. I don’t even look like a corpse anymore. Well, maybe a fresh corpse.”

Nora used her free hand to wrap around her own waist to reach Therese’s side, where she poked her. “Twit.”

Therese squirmed and giggled.

They were silent for a minute, Nora’s book set aside and her notebook closed, Therese breathing slowly in rhythm with the rise and fall of Nora’s back.

Then, Nora broke the silence. “You know that I don’t mind that you have a crush on Brynn, right?”

Therese’s throat closed up and her pulse accelerated. “I um, I—”

“Shh.” Nora squeezed her hand again. “Do you love me?”

“Yes!” Therese nearly hissed the word. “More than anything, more than anyone, I love you so much—”

“I’m not asking for your reassurance, älskling. I do not doubt your love for even a moment. I’m asking you to remind yourself.” She paused, turned her head to one side so that Therese, who had sat up straight, could see her face in profile. “So. Do you love me?”

“More than. More than I could ever find words to express.”

“You see? So neither of us have any reason to worry. Now, Brynn.”

“Brynn.”

“Have you kissed her yet?”

Therese swallowed, her mouth dry. “I— yes. But then I told her I had to talk to you before—”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Nora leveraged herself up to turn so that she was facing Therese, and she had a soft smile on her face. “Remember, I am not doubting you. Therese? Love? I am not doubting you.”

“R- Right. No. Yes. Yes, she. I kissed her.”

Nora let her smile grow into a little grin. “And?”

“And what? I said that I told her—”

“No, gulleplutt. How was the kiss? That’s what I want to know.”

Therese looked at her girlfriend’s earnest face, her own mouth slightly open in astonishment, momentarily unable to find any words.

“What? I am a woman who loves women. Brynn is,” and Nora looked down at her hands, tangled in Therese’s hands in their shared lap. “She is very attractive. And I have seen the way she looks at you. So I want to know. Was it a good kiss?”

Therese nodded, still wordless.

“Show me.”

“I— show you?”

“Kiss me like she kissed you. If you can.” Nora smirked. “Or are you afraid I might like it too much? Are you afraid Brynn might steal me away from you?”

Therese closed her mouth, swallowed again. Oh, it’s going to be like this, is it? She leaned forward, taking Nora’s face between her hands, and her lips met Nora’s, tentative the way Brynn’s had been, but she remembered, and her hand slid down to Nora’s throat.

Nora broke away for a moment to gasp, and then leaned back into the kiss, and Therese put her hand behind Nora’s head to pull her closer, remembering the same easy, casual intimacy from Brynn, her memories swirling together into a timeless place where she was kissing both girls.

She felt Riley’s mental withdrawal, and broke the kiss herself to smile against Nora’s mouth. “I love you.”

Nora panted, trying to catch her breath. “I love you.” She leaned forward again, and got her legs under her, on all fours, hands and knees, and she shoved Therese back, overbalancing her backwards into the pillows that covered the floor. “And I am going to take you, älskling. Because I love you, I want you to kiss Brynn. But because I love you, you are mine.”

Therese knew that the whimper was involuntary, that her conscious mind had no real control over her body at this moment, and she writhed, squirming, getting her hands up and onto Nora’s hips.

“And I am going to devour you.”

Nora fell onto Therese, her mouth finding Therese’s soft throat, and her teeth took Therese’s skin into a nip, which quickly became a bite, almost painful, right on the verge of discomfort, not quite passing into it.

She moaned, and thrashed, and Nora’s hand bunched her dress up, dragged it upwards, then found her panties, already damp. Nora’s fingers crept up and down Therese’s vulva, the sensations like a feather brushing her, something adjacent to a tickle but so much more direct and intense.

Then Nora slid her hand under the waistband of Therese’s panties, and Therese hissed and arched her back. “Oh, yes, oh Nora, there, there, please—”

Nora’s mouth was still at Therese’s throat, and she raised her head to look at Therese, whose eyelids were fluttering. She was so far away right now, but Nora looming above her brought her back enough to see her girlfriend’s cheshire smile.

Nora leaned down and her fingers curled. As Therese thrashed at the firm pressure against her clit, Nora whispered in her ear. “You may love who you like, but you belong to me.”

# # #

Suliat and Eve had swapped duties at some point while Riley had slept, and so when she was shaken gently awake, it was by Eve, who leaned over her and kissed her temple.

“Hello, you. Suli says that Himari’s awake, and they’re going to do the rest of the healing.”

Riley struggled to drag herself up and out of the enveloping darkness of her exhaustion. “How, how long did—”

“About two hours. The medics decided to wake her up so she can tell them if anything still hurts while they’re doing the healing.”

“Okay, gimme a minute to— oh, I’m still dressed.”

Eve giggled. “We had an argument about that. I wanted to take your clothes off you, but Suliat said you needed your rest.” She looked down, her cheeks flushed. “I don’t know what she meant. It would have been very restful, I think.”

Riley snorted and got to her feet. “Let’s go. I don’t want Mari to be alone.”

The Infirmary was four long flights of stairs down, on the Supply and Logistics floor, and Riley was feeling every single one of those steps in her hip by the time they reached the door. Suliat waved from the room where they’d left Himari, and they joined her there.

“Okay, they’re here,” Suliat said. She’d apparently been arguing with the medic about whether she could begin; the eyeroll from the medic told the entire story of just how insistent Suli could be when she decided to have her way.

“Great, yes. Let’s get started.” Riley could hear the fatigue in the medic’s voice, and wondered how long she’d been awake, triaging the incoming casualties from the Mountain. Her hands were steady, though, as she reached out to tap one finger on Himari’s temple. Instantly, the girl’s eyes snapped open, and she looked around blearily. “Oh, hey. I thought you were going to take a nap while—” Himari’s gaze sharpened as she came to full consciousness. “I’ve been unconscious, haven’t I.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, they decided to let you sleep until they had someone who could do the Healing,” Riley said, moving to stand by Himari’s good shoulder.

Himari winced as she shifted her weight. “This hurts. It wasn’t hurting before,” she complained.

The medic said, “That’s because the person who treated you back in the Mountain put a block on your pain to keep you from passing out. It’s wearing off, and it’s going to just get worse and worse. Which is why we’re going to get you fixed and out of here.”

Suli and Eve, holding hands, moved next to Himari, and Suli put her free hand on Himari’s forehead. “So hold on, dear. We’ll get you back upstairs and you can complain up there instead of down here.”

“Hey, wait a— ow!”

The medic peeled back the bandages from the ragged bloody mess that was the upper left side of Himari’s chest. From the ball of her shoulder joint down to the soft tissues just above her breast, the mouth-parts of the wasp creature had torn her apart, leaving a ragged red mess.

Himari looked up and away from the ruin, which meant she was looking at Riley, who smiled reassuringly.

“Can I—” Himari moved her hand tentatively. Riley took her meaning immediately and then took her hand. “Thanks.”

The medic held a flat disc out over Himari’s left shoulder, and slowly lowered it. It began to pulse with golden celestial light, throbbing in time with Himari’s heartbeat. After a few moments the torn and ragged area of her shoulder had started to desaturate, shocking red giving way to pale flesh, still all wreckage but not, well—

Meat.

Riley didn’t want to think the word, because in this context it came with a whole suite of associations. The open, gaping hole where a car’s windshield used to be. The red lights of the shattered car’s brakes. The steady drip drip drip of the rain mixing with other more visceral fluids in the car’s interior.

Riley shivered, and Himari squeezed her hand. “You okay, Ry?”

“What the hell? I’m not the one who got chewed up. Hush, Mari.”

The medic withdrew the disc, and released a long ragged breath. Her voice was strained and trembling when she spoke. “Okay, give me a minute. Gotta let the pain dissipate before I can do more.”

“You have to feel the pain of the injury?” Suliat asked, alarmed.

“Sort of. I get to take it a little at a time, ease my way into it, let it drain out before I take another spike.” She smiled, but it was all teeth and no eyes. “Pain’s a constant. The best we can do is move it around.”

The little disc’s golden glow was slowly fading as they spoke. Riley gestured at it. “What if you handed that to someone else while it was still glowing?”

“Then someone who isn’t a trained medic would end up eating a bunch of the pain I just drew out of her, which would be a terrible idea, by the way.” She looked at Riley with a sidelong glance. “Because I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no.”

Riley frowned. “What makes you better at tolerating pain than anyone else?”

“I’ve done it a lot more. I’ve practiced it. I’ve been through drills and live exercises and, Novice, the answer is no. I’m not going to give you this disc, and I’m not going to let you, any of you, absorb any of her pain.”

“But—“

“Look, even setting aside the professional nightmare what you’re suggesting represents, uh… Riley, right?” At Riley’s nod, the medic continued. “Yeah, hi, I’m Nomin. Setting that aside, do you know what would happen to me if I let a Novice do what you’re asking? A first-year? Gaveny would have me Sealed and on my ass in the Primary faster than you could say ‘oh, it was my idea, Headmistress!’”

Suliat reached across Himari to touch Riley’s shoulder. “She’s right. There’s no way. Let her do her job, dear.”

Himari grinned. “It’s the thought that counts, though!” She tried to laugh, winced at the pain, and continued. “Well, okay, not really, but it was a nice thought anyway.”

The disc had faded to an inert gray once more, and Nomin held it out over the injury. This time Riley could see the overall size of the wound shrinking, its edges drawing in, not healing so much as they were being erased, drawn back to an unmarked earlier state, like the trauma was running in reverse.

It took two more long, gasping, pained sessions from Nomin, each one leaving the little flat disc incandescent with golden light, each one taking her longer to purge. After the last one, Eve touched her shoulder. “You get to take a break after this, right?”

Nomin grinned and nodded. “Oh yeah. I’m going to go drink a giant protein shake and crash for a couple of hours before I treat anything bigger than a bruise.” Her face seemed pallid and gray, slate rather than earth, and her eyes were distant.

Himari was pulling on a hospital robe to cover herself. She was still trembling with exhaustion and pain; each pass with the disc had led to her squeezing Riley’s hand until it felt as though she might break her fingers. But she could stand, and she could walk.

She put her hand onto Nomin’s. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Nomin waved her off. “It’s the job.” She smiled. “But you’re welcome.” Then she looked around at the others. “Your cadre seems like good people. Hang onto them.”

Himari nodded, and let Riley lead her away and up to the suite.

# # #

There was an argument about whether Himari was well enough to sit in the common room in her big stuffed chair, but as she was basically incapable of physically resisting any of them, even Eve, the rest of the cadre won the fight. Riley helped her onto her bed, and turned down the lights.

“Throw me that nightgown,” Himari said, and pointed to the armchair that seemed a standard part of the room layouts. The rumpled gown was, at least, clean; Riley handed it over as Himari slipped out of her hospital robe and tossed it aside.

The thing was, Riley was never not aware of Himari’s body, of her casual nudity, of her lack of self-consciousness. Even after spending the past day in about as many possible situations as one could while completely stark naked together, she still averted her eyes from Mari’s lithe form, her small breasts, her softly-defined muscles flexing just under her skin. She knew what Mari looked like, but she didn’t feel like she’d been permitted to know that. It had been an unfortunate consequence, a situational thing, a happenstance, just a cultural thing in the bath, just an inevitable consequence of time spent together in close company.

And she knew that Himari didn’t feel that way. About her, about anyone.

Himari had paused, her arms through the arm-holes of the gown, the rest of it held against her chest. She was looking at Riley. In the gloom of the dimmed lights, she couldn’t read Himari’s expression. This frozen moment held, and then finally Himari sighed and pulled the gown over her head.

“You want to talk, don’t you?” Himari asked. “Sure, let’s talk. Sit.”

Riley sat in the chair, recently the resting place of a rumpled nightgown, still with assorted laundry tossed over its back.

“You’ve been trying not to make eye contact with me all day, Ry. Since the baths. So what’s up? I mean, we saved each others’ lives. What else is gonna make you comfortable around me?”

“It’s not—” Riley started, and then she looked down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t know where to look when—”

“When I’m naked. When you’re seeing me naked.”

“Yeah.” It sounded so stupid and petty when she put it like that, but that was the essence of it.

“Because I’m not… interested.”

“Sort of?” Riley wrung her hands together. “I’d feel weird about it even if you were interested, I think? It’s not like I, um. It’s not like we’re. I haven’t, um.”

“You’ve got two girlfriends and you’re growing your own pair of tits and you still can’t figure out how to talk to girls.”

Riley flushed red. “I didn’t ask, is the thing. We just kinda got stuck together naked a bunch today. I didn’t… I didn’t realize the bath was going to be nude or I wouldn’t have gone.”

“Then I’m glad you didn’t know.” Himari paused, then gestured vaguely at her shoulder, at the healed but raw injury there. “I mean, except for the obvious. That part, I coulda done without.” She looked intently at Riley. “Ry. Here. Look at me. Right here, look at my eyes.”

Riley dragged her eyes up from her lap, forcing herself to make eye contact with Himari’s shadowed face.

“I’m as close to you as I am to any other person in the world, Ry. I’m closer to you than I have been to anyone in my entire life, my family included.” She grinned. “I’m comfortable calling you my best friend, if that feels okay with you.”

Riley nodded.

“But I don’t want to fuck you. That’s it.”

Riley nodded again.

“So, what, if I did want to fuck you, you’d stare at my tits?”

Riley shook her head. “It feels… disrespectful.”

“Hey bitch. Lemme ask you something.” Himari leaned forward, crossing her arms over her knees. “You ever think about why I’m naked around you?”

Riley gave her a puzzled look.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.” She smirked. “Because I like the way it makes you blush, you fucking idiot. I like you looking at me.”

“But—“

“What part of ‘I don’t want to fuck’ isn’t clear?” Himari leaned back again, propping herself on her arms behind her. “Not ‘I don’t want to be seen’ or ‘I don’t want your attention’ or, like. ‘I never want my best friend to hug me.’”

Riley stared, bewildered.

Himari rolled her eyes. “That was an invitation, dumbass.”

Oh.

Riley got up, moved over to the bed, and put her arms around Himari, who immediately curled in against her. She was warm, and surprisingly soft, and her hair smelled of sweat and flowers.

“Sorry.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to enjoy the moment before you say something else I have to yell at you for.”

They sat quietly for a while, and Riley could feel Himari’s breath rising and falling, and her occasional stirring as she shifted position to get more comfortable. Eventually, she realized Himari was looking up at her from where she’d tucked her head down into Riley’s arms.

“Listen, there’s something I want to tell you.”

Riley felt a fluttering creep into her stomach.

“Come down here. I don’t want to shout.”

Their voices were already low, to the point of being barely above a whisper. This was pretext, and they both knew it. Riley leaned over. “What’s up?”

She raised herself up to meet Riley’s lips with her own, and cautiously kissed her.

The moment held, and it held, and then they parted.

“Kissing is still fucking weird, that’s what’s up.” She started to sink back down, but Riley took her face between her hands and returned the kiss, less cautious and more eager.

When they broke apart, Himari was grinning. “I’d tell you that you’re a good kisser, but what the hell do I know? But… that was nice. You have permission to kiss me again, in the future.”

Riley started to lean down, and Himari snorted. “I mean this is technically the future, you horny bitch, but—”

Riley put her finger on Himari’s lips, and the fluttering in her stomach turned into a flock of newly-emerged butterflies. I’m going to do this, and I don’t know what happens next, and I hope this is the right moment, and I hope I don’t fuck this up—

“Shh. Mari. Listen.” She dodged aside from Himari’s face, to her ear. “I um.”

Himari hissed as she took a breath in, and then held it in anticipation.

“I love you, Mari.”

Breath released.

Then a long silence, and Riley’s butterflies turned slowly into a throb of panic. Had she fucked up?

“Ry?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Their foreheads touched, and Riley’s eyes were blurred with tears, and she could see Himari’s were shining, as they met in the inches between them.

“I don’t know what that means for me, or for us. Or Eve, or Su. But I love you, whether I want to or not, I guess.” Himari curled more firmly against her, pressing herself into a little ball within Riley’s enclosing arms. “I guess I have done since our first week here. And I hated it, because I don’t like feeling… anything, really, about other people. I like being on my own and independent. I don’t like needing anyone.”

Riley tentatively stroked Himari’s hair back from her forehead, and Himari instinctively leaned up into the contact.

“But guess what, it turns out I need you, Riley Hawkins. I need you. When I think about not having you around? I feel like shit. I feel like, what kind of boring-ass washed-out life would that be?”

“I’m what, an adventure?”

“Sure. Or like, trying to get to the bottom of you is the adventure.”

“Wait, I thought you weren’t into my bottom?”

“Asshole!” Himari smacked her arm, and she giggled. “Anyway. Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Himari’s voice and face had become abruptly serious. “That shit today where you just went underwater and started trying to grow gills was fucked up, and just thinking about what you looked like when you fell out of the portal… Fuck. You just laid there and you didn’t move or even breathe.” She shivered. “I never want to think about that again.”

“Yeah, my naked body is kind of a horror show.”

Himari hit her again, and she giggled again, but then the smaller girl looked up speculatively from the circle of Riley’s arms. “You don’t, uh. It sounds like you don’t, uh, see it.”

“See what?”

“How long since you looked in a mirror?” She waved a hand to cut Riley off. “Shut up, I mean a full-length one, a big one. When?”

“I dunno, a while. Why?”

“You don’t know what you look like, then.”

Like… a boy with tits? What’s she getting at here?

“Go check yourself out sometime. Try to imagine it from my point of view.” Himari hesitated. “Actually, never mind. Imagine it from Eve’s point of view. That bitch is the most dyke-ass lesbo I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Can you give me a hint, here?”

Himari laughed. “Jesus, you really don’t see it. This isn’t a bit, is it?” She shook her head. “You look hot, Ry. You look like some kind of hot androgynous model, like, I dunno, early Hari Nef or someone like that. You’re different than you remember.”

Riley’s initial dismissal of this as obvious teasing had started to fade at Himari’s certainty. What did she look like now? How much accelerated hormone therapy had the Tower dragged her through? How far was it going to go? She wanted to prod at her tit in a kind of self-soothing ritual, but that would set Himari off all over again, talking about boobs and groping them and just general lewd bullshit. So instead Riley contented herself with a promise to do a thorough self-assessment.

Later, though. Later tonight.

“Ry?”

“Yeah, Mari?”

“Stay with me for a bit? Just like, an hour maybe? Just so I can fall asleep.”

Himari’s breath was a little fast, and her heartbeat was, too. Riley squeezed her a little tighter. “Yeah, of course, Mari. Of course. I love you.”

“Thanks.” She shivered. “I was. Um. I.”

“I know.”

“So scared. I was so scared.”

“I know. Shh, Mari.” Riley kissed her forehead.

“Fuck. Fuck.” The sound Himari was making was a soft sobbing. Riley realized she’d never seen her cry before.

“Shh. You’re safe. We’re both safe.”

“I— I was— I—” Himari’s voice was soft and threaded with tears.

“Shh. We’re safe, Mari. We’re keeping each other safe. Shh. I love you, Mari.”

“I— I just— I love you, Ry.”

“I’m here, okay? You can sleep.”

“Just stay for an hour? Please?”

“Yeah, I will. Of course. Shh.”

But Riley did not stay for an hour. Riley stayed the whole night, waking up every so often to marvel at the small, beautiful, fierce girl in her arms.

# # #

The advantage of waking up in Nora’s room was that it was altogether a far more pleasant space than her own gloomy chamber. And, of course, it had the substantial benefit of waking up with Nora. This typically involved drifting up through soft gauzy white layers of consciousness until Therese’s eyes finally opened to find Nora curled around a book, one hand resting gently on Therese’s head, stroking her hair slowly, the other turning the pages with precise dexterity.

She loved being able to look up at Nora in the watery pale light of mornings, her forehead drawn in concentration, her eyes flicking back and forth, back and forth, across whatever text she’d spirited off from the Archives. Apparently oblivious, but immediately aware of Therese’s wakefulness, her fingers dancing through her hair, toying and twisting, untangling and playing. There had been a time when Therese would go a week without rinsing and caring for her hair, but the thought of leaving it to the vagaries of natural scalp oil and whatever grime or dust happened to settle into it, thereby to transfer to Nora’s perfect tapered fingers? She didn’t care for her own sake, but she wanted always to wake up to Nora’s fingers tangled in her hair, and never wanted to give her a reason not to.

“Love. You’re awake.”

Therese made a long mumbling hum of a sound, stretching and uncoiling. Her hand found Nora’s lower back, and began to wander idly up her spine, dancing like it was the keys of a human piano she was stroking, running up and down the length of it. She felt a kind of warm reluctance to move further than just this little bubble of reach that surrounded her.

Except that she needed to pee, so that was going to lure her out of the comfort and warmth, and force a start to her day.

She ached, her hips and butt and thighs all sore with the previous night’s exertions. She wanted to blame her still-ongoing physical recovery, but the truth was simpler: at some point, Nora had managed to land Therese into a mental state of complete abandon, her conscious mind gone in a cacophony of sensation, and she’d bucked and thrashed and screamed delight for longer than she’d thought possible. An orgasm that just kept flowing, like a creek carrying a leaf downstream, slowing in places but never completely stopping, the pleasure never entirely subsiding.

She swallowed. Her throat hurt, too. Whoops.

She sat up and rubbed her face into Nora’s shoulder, feeling the sleep falling away from her puffy tired eyes. “I feel nice this morning.”

“I should hope so.” Nora’s voice was flat and precise, and it was only long years of knowing her that allowed Therese to hear the hidden smug satisfaction in her tone and delivery. The implied completion of her sentence was, after all, ‘considering the effort I put forth last night,’ and she was absolutely not wrong.

“Love you. I—” Therese yawned as she pitched herself forward to a full sitting position. “I gotta get up. Supposed to work with Riley and one of her girlfriends this morning.”

“They’re all dating now? The entire cadre?”

Therese laughed. “I dunno, though the love and contentment from her last night makes me think the answer is probably yes or at worst, not yet but soon.”

“Hm. I think I am glad for them.”

“Me too.” Therese crawled on all fours out of the pillow-nest that served as Nora’s bed, and served as a comfortable, irresistible Therese-trap every morning she awoke here. The only disadvantage of this as a place to wake up, really. Her usual morning work, sorting notes and picking follow-up references to purse in the afternoon, was slipping bit by bit into the lunch hour, because her office was a poor substitute for the glowing blonde vision that sat illuminated in a shaft of—

“Did you mess with the window panel to do that?” Therese asked, and when Nora looked up uncomprehending, she pointed at the shaft of what looked like soft-focus morning sunlight, a coherent god-ray beam with motes of dust caught in its golden midst.

“Oh! I, ah. Not precisely. That is…” She pointed at the window panel. “That paper screen there, that I cover it with to diffuse the light more? It can also serve to move light elsewhere in the room.”

“That’s. How the hell—”

“Spectral Fragments.” When Therese still looked blank, she sighed. “Foundation Built Within Spectral Fragments of Phenomenology? The Sigil I’ve been working on for the past two years? The one you’ve even led the Divination session to map?”

“Oh. Oh! Right! I thought that was something to do with invisibility—”

Therese got there at the same moment the word came out of her mouth. Visibility. Invisibility. Spectral fragments. Light manipulation.

Nora had seen comprehension on her face, so she just nodded. “One of the many parlor tricks I’ve devised from it. Not useful, but…” She looked up towards the sourceless diffuse beam. “It makes morning reading easier, and saves me the need to turn on any of our unreliable lights or melodrama-infected fire spheres. And, well.” She spread her arms in the beam. “It looks nice. You looked beautiful, caught in its center.”

Therese blushed. Her girlfriend had put a magical sunbeam spotlight onto her to check her out while she slept. She considered how to feel about that, settled on ‘glowing with an unquenchable inner flame of love,’ and stretched on her way to the bathroom.

Her lately-abbreviated morning routine completed, she made her way up from the Residence floor to Divination and Archives. Key wasn’t in the common area, which meant she was probably already at work, and Therese was late getting started, so she decided against bothering her friend. The only reason to stop by would be to delay the next set of aggravating Divination trances, and while she’d love to find a reason to put them off, it was work, it needed doing, and her own sense of herself as professional and competent was on the line.

She gently prodded her link to Riley, wondering if she’d be joining this morning. It seemed unlikely; that soft contented feeling that came back from the link was absolutely Riley still in bed with someone, perhaps multiple someones. She couldn’t really justify disrupting what was undoubtedly a painfully cute cuddle session, so with coffee from the Archives canteen in hand, she headed to her office. Might as well get the first few done while Riley enjoyed a nice slow morning. She and Himari had more than earned a break, after the previous day’s events.

Still, she wasn’t eager to get started, so she took her time, drinking her coffee and rearranging her desk in a completely useless attempt to tidy it. This largely just involved moving clutter from one area to another, without actually reducing the amount in any way. Finally, she decided that she could no longer pretend to be working without actually doing some work, and she settled down into a preparatory meditation.

Today’s target was Atlas, out on the edge of the cluster. She had a Sigil reference, Immovable Certainty of the Protective Father, and had spotted a handful of prophetic vortices lurking in that region. She’d be able to get at least one done before lunch, and after that she’d bring Riley and one of her cadre in for two more. She hated taking up their afternoon class time, but she also figured this could count towards Divination work for their second year classes.

She finally managed to enter the opening trance, visualized the celestial field, and then performed the little mental trick to pivot to the Tree.

The Sisters were all clustered to one side of the bowl the formation created, with the exception of Pleione and Atlas. The parental figures of the cluster, holding position away from their strayed children, weaving their twisted braids of light off towards their differential destinies.

She thought of the Immovable Certainty, and let it draw her to Atlas. The Sigils here were closer to the trunk of the Tree, and were more straightforward in their metaphors. This one was largely useful for defensive Workings, anchors, and endurance. She knew that one of the Crafters had made a set of crampons that could only be dislodged by the wearer’s intent, and would never otherwise slip, and Immovable Certainty had been the Sigil involved.

Personally she disliked it. It lacked poetry, and all the other Sigils that spun themselves off Atlas were the same. Solid, dependable Sigils. Obvious metaphors. Simple pathways from the Sigil to the Working. Boring.

She found the first prophetic dream vortex, braced herself, and moved into it.

# # #

The dream was a dream of the Tower.

It stood in the center of the bleak and empty plain that featured so often in these more abstract dreams. She knew that these were the dreams most likely to need endless layers of interpretation, and wouldn’t offer up any simple answers. She suspected this one was going to devolve into Tarot imagery; it was a pattern she’d come to recognize and find irritating. A morning spent parsing the semiotics of the Tower Arcana was going to give her a headache and, going by past outcomes, accomplish absolutely fuck all.

She waited to see what the dream-Tower would do.

Predictably, the celestial storm began to gather around the crystalline dome that topped the Tower. It would, she knew, begin striking the Tower with golden fire. This might shatter the dome, it might cleave the entire Tower, or it might just tumble two figures from its heights. If she could see their faces, they’d be her and Riley.

So another Tarot dream. She sighed impatiently, aware of the complete waste of her morning, but it was poor divinatory practice to exit a prophetic dream without seeing it through to the end, and if she didn’t stay, she’d have to admit that in her report, and that would likely get her a nasty note from Diviner Rajavi, who was very much a stickler for proper procedure.

She watched. The storm gathered, the golden celestial fire began to rain down, the massive bolt reached out from the clouds to shatter the Tower.

In that moment, in the strobe-flash of the lightning strike, she saw the figures at the top of the Tower. In the center, a girl with her arms above her head, spread, making a Y-shape, as though calling up to the swirling storm overhead. Nearby, another girl, crouched, arms up to shield her head.

Riley was the girl in the center. Therese was the girl at the side, cowering.

The bolt struck Riley, danced around her upraised arms, leaping from one to the other and back again as though she were juggling the golden arcs.

The Tower beneath Riley cracked, convulsing, and Therese saw the little avatar of her own role in this drama tumble away, falling, surrounded by fire. As happened so often, the Tower was split, riven down the middle, and each side of it crumbled away from that central rift, collapsing.

But Riley didn’t fall. Riley hovered there, arms outstretched, still engulfed in the golden lightning, which flowed around and through her, drawing endless patterns along the lines of her muscles and bones, erupting from her eyes and leaping back down through her feet, circling, always circling.

Endurance. Resistance. Atlas. Therese understood what she was seeing, now: this was what Immovable Certainty of the Protective Father brought to the dream. Riley, held up by the absolute refusal to be shifted from her post, atop the Tower, even with the Tower itself torn away from beneath her.

Riley, as Atlas, holding up… what, the Earth? How far did this mythological imagery work as an explanatory tool?

As before, the loss of the Tower caused the celestial storm to spin larger and faster, and engulf the place where the Tower had been. This is where the dream ended; sometimes the voice of the Spike would be present, or the Spike itself would leap up from the tortured plain below, or both. Always mocking, laughing, somehow the architect of this moment of despair and collapse. The end of the Tower. The end of the world.

The storm reached the ground, and the dream had become just a howling nightmare of wind and flashes of celestial fire. She couldn’t see what had become of her; in most iterations of this vision, she had long since perished. She couldn’t see Riley, either. The resilience of Atlas seemed to have not given her the fortitude to withstand the storm’s ceaseless turning and scouring.

She sighed, hoping the dream would loop itself soon, because this endless swirling darkness was dull, and she already had a headache.

Then, something changed.

Then, there was gold light glimmering in the murk of the storm’s center.

It lashed its way down from the point where Riley had been suspended, reaching fingers of electric fire down to the ground, shrouded by the storm’s whirling mass. There, it grounded, pulsing, and thickened. The fire was throbbing now, drawing from the ground, pulses rising along the golden rib to reach the apex where…

Riley still hung, arms out, spread?

Therese couldn’t see her, just the outline of her carved in the shadowed storm-darkness by the gold fire, but that was Riley there, arms out, head back, being consumed by the power coursing up from the ground.

And then the gold fire exploded from her hands, through her and out of her, rising like two branches, each branch fractioning again into fingers, and then fingers of fingers, endlessly complex, fractal—

Therese was looking at the fucking Tree.

Riley had become a Sigil.

And that Sigil was the entire Tree.

Of Riley there was no sign. Riley was gone, swallowed in the gold fire that made the trunk of the Tree, her hands and arms become the fractal branches of the Tree, her heart the channel through which the Tree was pulsing upwards into the celestial infinity.

Riley was the Anchor.

And then, in that moment, Therese understood what the Tower was. The gold fire spread up into the sky, chasing the celestial storm away, dispelling the clouds, which rushed off in ragged torn fragments of chaos, dissipating. The whole swirling mass evaporated to leave the vast open plain, the golden orb of the sun hanging low over it in a red sky, and the glowing, pulsing, eye-burning golden majesty of the Tree standing there before her.

Rooted into the ground, anchored.

Branched fractally to infinity overhead.

And it was a Sigil, Riley had become a Sigil, and the Sigil had a name, and that name came to Therese in an explosion of comprehension that threatened to burn her sanity out of her mind and her mind out of her body.

The Sigil was a Tree drawn in fire, and its name was—

The Tower in the Final City at the End of the Universe.

persenche

Well, there it is. Does this qualify as a big reveal? I dunno, but I really enjoyed finally getting to write it, given how long this bit of lore has been lurking in my mind. Now Therese has to somehow convey all this to Riley, so they can figure out what to do. Which you'll get to see next Sunday in Sacrifice (Part 1)!

I really don't like this slower schedule, but the things going on for me irl aren't really relenting so I'm going to have to stick with it, and hope I don't end up having to delay the end of the book. It's so close! It's within sight!

Anyway, <3 you all!