Katherine stared at me almost reverentially with her crystalline red eyes after I’d presented her with those ‘choices’ — which were functionally almost one and the very same in the sense that they both fulfilled an identical objective: to preserve her soul, and to take her away from the river — and a slight discomfort nagged at my academic mien as her gaze persisted upon my person without end.

  Her ruby red lips shortly parted to reveal two rows of shark-like teeth, and a rush of air left me as I was presented with a shimmering smile that reflected the sun’s light in a dazzling glitter! Katherine was thankfully properly dressed in one of Carmen’s more subdued black outfits, for her enchanting smile already had such a hold on me that if the rest of her unnatural beauty was still within my vision: I might’ve been wholly unable to resist being drawn closer to her fascinating form! 

  Mercy but she sparkled so, and the lights which flitted across her had such a hypnotic charm to them that I’d almost entirely lost track of precisely which wonderful words might have precipitated this serenity of mine… but so great was my appreciation of her that I found I rather didn’t care to know what had been said! Her effect upon me was tremendous, and if beauty were a sin: hers was such an affront that even the Lord might not have endured to look upon her!

  Her teeth in particular held my lingering academic attention, for they looked to be almost unsettlingly inhuman, and I had to wonder why she might’ve possessed such pointy teeth. They seemed perfectly made for rending flesh, and yet their purpose eluded me even as my mind cast about for one, for what cause could a spirit have to sustain themselves through such a mortal method?

  They could scarcely have been solid, for none of the rest of her was, so what ends did her sinister smile serve? I found that whether my eyes remained upon her devilish grin or briefly chanced a glance directly into her sparkling gaze: this predatory demeanor she’d affected was rather emphasizing the chill that my wet clothing administered to my skin!

  I shivered from this undue duress, and I very nearly asked my Arianna if she could remove only the water from my clothing, but I restrained myself despite my desire for salvation! I was reasonably concerned, given my general impression of the indecipherable feelings that bubbled up from inside me: that she might quite intentionally flub the execution, and an apparel malfunction was almost certainly not to my benefit at this juncture!

  Conversely, I especially didn’t trust my own efforts, for while it was ‘my power’ in truth: I was less than a novice with it, and who could say what my intentions might have accomplished when they were already fluctuating with such erraticism? I didn’t have such a confidence in myself to risk such an endeavor, and so I would simply have to suffer this wetness upon my person.

  Really though, a rusalka's eyes were such mysterious things, for without pupils to them: there was no telling what they might be admiring at any given time! This exciting new observation of mine quite nearly made me miss the sweet words that came out of her delightfully intriguing mouth,

  “I’m not totally sure what to think about lichhood, but you look amazing, so it can’t be too bad. I’m already an elemental though, so tell me, lovely: what does a soul crystal do?”

  Goodness, Katherine was such a dangerous creature that in some ways it was good that she was interested in me. I could just imagine having to protect Luca from this woman, and the thought was more frightful to me than anything I’d ever had to endure before! Still, why did she call herself an elemental… did she really not know what she was?

  “Katherine.” I delicately started, for my heart had rapidly swelled with such compassion that her beguiling splendor was swept aside, and she was again ‘stood’ as but a woman before me; beautiful yes, but not so unthinkably gorgeous a creature to enthrall me with but a smile! It was a tragic thing to be free of the peace that I’d recently come to know, only to be reminded of the pain I'd felt for having been misguided about my nature for all the years of my life, but the truth has to be heard before a person can move to face it, and so I continued with a greater determination, 

  “An elemental of water has no tethers, but their freedom has a cost: they have no soul. Katherine, you’re all soul, and a lovely one at that. You’re not an elemental, dear.”

  She just shrugged with acceptance when I told her this, and I was startled by how readily she seemed to acknowledge her very world turning onto its head! My surprise must have shown on my face, for she stepped towards me and shortly had my hands in her more illusory ones, and she spoke to me as a gentle tide pulled upon my fingers,

  “If I’m not one monster, then all that means is I’m a different one, sweetie. I’ve been a monster for a long time, but I’m still me.” Katherine squeezed my hands with still more force as if she’d meant to reassure me, and she must have cut right into the heart of an argument that I didn’t know I’d still been having until she said this! A fearful sorrow came pouring out from within me, and this new emotionality of mine again sought to take my mind from me!

  I would not let it have me, though… for this unwarranted distress came to me from so small a thing as an obviously dichotomous statement: an undead spirit declared that she was ‘still herself’! What nonsense this was that she believed herself to be so unaffected by such a change! She spoke as if she were impervious to the world, but perhaps it was rather that ‘people’ change so irreparably upon becoming inhuman monstrosities that they simply cannot tell the difference anymore!

  Certainly, she might still very well be the very same ‘person’ all these years after she’d first found herself already so distorted, with her humanity reduced to a dissipated memory… but what could she even truly remember of being human?! I ate a man and I barely blinked! Even Arianna had more humanity to her then than I still did, and she’s a thrice-damned bodiless lich; an evil shadow of the archon she’d meant to be!

  I couldn’t even fool myself into feeling ashamed of what I’d done, and so if my undeath truly hadn’t changed me, then my humanity all along must have surely been a mere facade for the vile Monster I was in this unlife! But I was not unchanged in this undeath, so perhaps this evil came from my Arianna instead? Had I exchanged my goodness with her evil, or had we both been such fiends all along and we’d only recently exchanged enough of our traits to become aware of it?!

  Just what could Katherine know of the matter? How could she still believe that she was herself after so long; that she was not merely tricked by some fundamental change that lay between a person and a creature of such a dark and foul origin as a rusalka?! I’d barely swallowed back a furious sob in my trembling throat when Katherine continued, 

  “I’m still a person, and so are you. No matter what form we take, beautiful: we’re still God’s children. Did He not put you on this Earth to begin with? Was it not His Hand that shaped you? Is it not with His blessing that you’ve risen?”

  She was perhaps more right than she knew she was, and my body stopped its ever more violent shaking as a stillness came over me. My blood froze delightfully in my veins, and I was released from the anger, fear, and sadness which had held such a grip upon me. My emotions no longer controlled me because they were mine from the start, and I was thrilled with the giddiness that at least this feeling hadn’t forever abandoned me in death!

  Arianna shuddered with aversive delight and apprehensive dread in equal measure, as if this wonderful control I felt had provoked an irresistible agitation in her! I quietly relished the trepidation she sent through my body, but she needn’t have worried, as I was hardly going to do anything of that sort while in a conversation! My penance would come later, for I had five corpses to account for, but there was no call to rise in the present.

  A total calm came over me, and I gently withdrew my hands from Katherine’s grasp. I willed myself past the religious elements of what she’d said in favor of her earlier question, which I answered with a plastered smile,

  “A soul crystal, Katherine, is a theoretical phylactery which can entirely contain an elemental’s body, as well as a soul to guide it. Nobody has ever successfully achieved this before, and I wouldn’t have brought it up at all if we hadn’t happened upon circumstances which could potentially make the impossible less so.”

  Katherine stared blankly at me for a moment, as she was probably lost by how totally I’d changed the subject and my visible feelings, but she shrugged after a short moment, and she didn’t make any waves about my having switched our conversation to a better topic. Instead, she asked me with a curious note in her voice,

  “I’m the soul in that equation then, am I not? It probably doesn’t matter for a decision, but if not an elemental: what am I?”

  This was infinitely preferable to attempting to stop my Arianna from talking about something, as she would’ve just kept on forcing a conversation which had no positive endpoint, even as it fell to a monologue! The only options were to entirely silence her, or to bear with her, and there was no in between! I loved her dearly, but I would have to find a way to quiet her down in this afterlife of ours.

  That was something to look into when things settled down again, as there were simply too many overwhelming elements about our strange unlife, and until I could solve them: I would likely just have to endure her. She was mercifully quiet at this point, probably because she knew me best, and she knew that I was not feeling so warm and friendly as I was trying to affect.

  But I was very much striving to be calm, for I had control over my emotions for the first time in this unlife, and I absolutely refused to yield to them any further before I was home again. I’d build our house up myself if I had to, but I was sure my Arianna would do it for me.

  Emotional wounds are the kind a person can only cry to sleep for, and there is no better cure for distress than to rest securely in the comforts of home. I would face Arianna about these shared feelings of ours then, but not now… blowing up with anger can provide an instant catharsis, but only by sustaining a hard dialogue can a bitter situation be made right between two people. The future would have to come in the future, but I had a spirit to answer presently,

  “You’re a rusalka, Katherine,” I said with my mind as unfocused as I could make it, “an undead spirit tethered to the body of water you drowned in. Yes, your soul is at risk, for it’s the only thing you have left to risk.”

  Katherine had gone back to pondering for some time, and I had fallen into a meditative silence while I awaited her next query. For a short span I simply listened to the sound of my own breathing as the river ran along with its rushing, and I’d nearly found a tranquility in it when my Arianna surprised me by speaking,

  “So, actually, I don’t remember any rusalka having that kind of ability to control water in anything I’ve read, Mira. I’ve been thinking about it and I just don’t know of any cases where they could greatly affect the waterbody around them. Drowning, yeah they do loads of that usually, but nothing like the thing she did with the river, or that stupid drill thing she did, I mean… I know what a drill is Mira, and it’s weird that she brought it up like it’s something normal.”

  My dearly departed had said such an interesting thing to me, and more than anything I was impressed that she’d dared to interrupt my momentary repose. The peaceability between us had been so strained since we died, and so this normal engagement had such a tender affection to it that I turned to see her despite myself.

  Obviously, she wasn’t there. She was inside me now, trapped inside my heart just as Katherine was trapped inside this river. I needed to see my Arianna again so terribly, and although helping Katherine with her troubles wouldn’t necessarily assist with the more arcane process: I decided that I should apply myself to the one if I should ever see my beloved again.

  “Katherine,” I spoke to break her musing, “you don’t have to make such a hard decision today. Rianna and I will do some tests at home, and we’ll come back with some more answers or options for you.”

  I figured that she wouldn’t mind having more time to think on this decision, for if I were in her shoes when Arianna first decided I should be preserved after death: I might not have been convinced by any reasoning, and I would have probably fought with her on the matter. Undeath was hard on a person, and I had every reason to believe it hadn’t been easy on Katherine.

  Which is why I didn’t expect for her to suddenly tackle me to the ground. The impact with the ground winded me for a moment, and my mind was agitated with adrenaline, so I turned towards her anticipating that I would burst with some emotion or action, but then I saw her, and whatever it was I was going to do had entirely frozen inside me.

  She was crying with her watery arms around my waist, and there were tears leaking out of her… well, everywhere. Her illusory form maintained its general human shape, but its colours and contours were shifting every moment as she desperately begged me in a cascade,

  “Don’t go! Please, don’t leave me! Don’t say you’ll go! I don’t want to be alo-I can’t do this again! Please stay!”

  Her tears affected me greatly, but I… I couldn’t stay. That was the reality: I had too many things that needed doing, even outside of my own needs emotionally and physically. I needed to change Petyr’s dressings, check on his general state, and ensure his survival to the best of my ability. I needed to examine Bart to know exactly what punishment Arianna should suffer for his ‘resurrection’. I needed to see our son, and to get back before he ignored my order that he rest: he could do permanent damage to his eyes! They were a doctor’s second most vital resource after their hands, and there are no blind surgeons!

  “I cannot stay,” I grit my teeth as I informed Katherine of the bitter truth, “but I will come back tomorrow, I pro-.”

  I held my tongue, for I wasn’t ready to make another promise again even if it was what Katherine needed to hear. The watery form around me just disintegrated into a puddle beneath me, and the clothing she’d worn fell upon the ground beside her. She cried out with such a sorrow even though she no longer held me, and I felt like the world’s greatest villain for having the responsibilities of a doctor, a lover, and a mother.

  “You can go, sweetheart. I’ll be fine,” she warbled and bubbled from below me as I reluctantly lifted myself to my feet, “I apologize, I didn’t intend to guilt trip you, but I really do hope to see you again. This was nice, I haven’t had company for so long, and I just suck with goodbyes because I’m out of practice. I’ll see you later alligator? No, let me try again, hang on.”

  Katherine rapidly reformed her liquid body into a vaguely humanoid shape, and I watched with relief as she brought her sodden clothing around her body before she filled in the ‘details’. Her beautiful red hair was still enough of a sight by itself that I almost had to turn away from her, but she was usually so conscientious to me, and one instance of emotional overflow that hadn’t hurt me didn't deserve that kind of treatment from me, so I stood my ground and watched the rest of her come back into ‘being’.

  Her lips and eyes came back into existence, and they sparkled in that same red shade as her hair, but I was more resilient now that I could watch her like a masterpiece being painted. Every individual ‘brushstroke’ of illusion added a depth to her appearance that hadn’t been present but one addition prior, and until the whole of her came back into being: she wasn’t quite so hard to look at without losing myself in her beauty.

  Still, she stood there again before me, in her complete ‘body’, and she said to me with a resplendent grin, “The Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore, sweetie.”

  I would have left then, after her delivery of that Biblical line, but I had time enough left to ask a question that had been fundamentally bothering me since she’d come so far away from the river,

  “Katherine,” I began my question, “have you ever been separated from the river before?”

  Arianna’s thoughts as I said this began moving at a thousand kilometres an hour, as her little ants indicated by running whole marathons around my heart, while Katherine just tilted her head in confusion before she answered with a perplexed gesture,

  “The river dried up once, and I was stuck in a puddle, why do you ask?”

  Why? Why? Oh Katherine, this was the best news for you that was possible. She wasn’t bound to the river, she was only bound to the river’s water! Mercy, we’d been so stupid. We were so completely focused on an arcane solution that we’d ignored the simple scientific one that was staring us in the face all the while!

  “Because you might be coming home with us, Katherine.”

  Arianna summoned up a massive quantity of river water, and floated it in a giant orb over my head in an almost threatening manner, before informing me in no uncertain terms, “She can come ‘home’ with us to the village, sure, but like, not to the house. That’s what you meant, right?”

  Katherine’s illusory jaw came open so far it was actually a little freakish, but before she could respond with any enthusiasm: I addended what I said, for I’d had rather enough of being totally soaked through,

  “To the village. Home to the village. It’s not much of a village right now, but we’ll make you a nice well or a pond or… whatever you want. There are plenty of children around, and as long as you don’t try drowning anyone: you shouldn’t want for company.”

  She absolutely beamed at me as her jaw came back up, and she trickled a thin line of water along the single length she stood away from me, before she moved as if she were going to tackle-hug me again! Luckily for me and my poor clothing, Arianna was there with a massive ball of water to catch her, and Katherine was lifted entirely into the air and separated from the river at that moment.

  These first few seconds were the ones which mattered most, for they would tell us whether she would actually be able to survive the disconnection with the river. Things were tense for me and Arianna both as we watched, for while Arianna might not have cared for her in the same manner as I did: she wasn’t so amoral as to hurt an innocent person without cause, and so we both held my breath in conjunction.

  This… breathing together with her thing was getting rather on my nerves, but at least it helped me to know that we were of a similar mind when it came to Katherine. We hadn’t both changed that much when we became monsters together, we could only be relieved. Still, a sigh of relief came from us both when Katherine’s form remained entirely intact and she didn’t seem to struggle at all in this new massing of water.

  Arianna formed up another ball of water, this one not from the river but entirely aetherial in origin, and she held this one next to the other. Since she wasn’t quite able to communicate this next step to Katherine, I took over for her with a shout, for I did not know how my voice might reach through the orbs of water,

  “Katherine! Would you please try to see if you can integrate with the aetherial water! Don’t be dangerous about it, just chance a small amount of your spiritual body until you’re sure!”

  Such a look of happiness the rusalka had, but she could clearly still hear me through all of that water, since she made her over to the edge between the types of water, and she prodded a single finger into the aetherwater. I felt Arianna stressing slightly as we all three waited to see if anything bad might occur, and so I placed my hand over my heart, and I was relieved that my beloved could feel my sentiment.

  Nothing unfortunate happened again, and so Katherine shortly tried in stages to cross the divide with differing amounts of her liquid form inside the spheres, until at last we were running the reverse experiment: she had only a single finger left inside the riverwater, and I could see trepidation come to Katherine in this final moment of truth.

  With a bracing look upon her face, she pulled her finger free of the river she’d been trapped inside of for all of her unlife, and she grinned and cried inside the aetherwater as Arianna carefully deposited the other sphere back into the river.

  Katherine came to the edge of the remaining sphere, and she slipped ever so slightly outside of it before crying out to me, “Thank you! Thank you so much! I just knew that meeting you here was fate! I am so glad to be out of that river! Thank God for the both of you!”

  Her joy was infectious, and I couldn’t help the wide smile that came over my lips. Still, my Arianna was struggling a bit for some reason, but she was the most powerful magister that I had ever so much as heard of, so how could she possibly be having such a difficult time? Although I couldn’t imagine her having any trouble with ‘so small a thing’ as lifting up hundreds of liters of water, and so I felt somewhat awkward about asking: I figured that I should still find out what she was struggling with,

  “Rianna, why are you stuttering inside me like you’re about to go into aethershock?”

  She spluttered at my suggested possibility, and it really was terribly unfair of me to have said, but this was usually the easiest way to get a full picture of a situation out of her, and she supplied the details in her typical manner: relentlessly, and utterly without concern for the potential presence of children — it’d been quite the battle to keep Luca from speaking like she did, and he didn’t get out of our parenting unscathed from her personality.

  “Pft, I am so not going into aethershock, why would you even think that I was?! I’ve got aether for like, well… forever! I can barely run out of the stuff if I tried! Short of me trying to do something impossible: nothing can even remotely possibly under any circumstances happen that’ll empty me of aether!” Arianna took a breath here, and then she took another one because the first one clearly hadn’t done the job, before she continued to the answer buried under her pride that I was looking for,

  “It’s just that your ridiculous pet rusalka keeps throwing off the balance of this stupid fucking ball of water. Water’s always been stupid hard to control, but I’ve obviously got it under control, Mira, so get off my case while I keep Katherine from splattering into the dirt and potentially getting hurt!”

  So, to parse her language, she’d meant to say that Katherine’s watery form, which she had no control over, was causing issues with her usual method for keeping water afloat in a sphere.

  I remembered how she used to struggle with it when we were children, as keeping water molecules held aloft in the air involved a continuous swirling motion, so anything that interfered with it would almost immediately cause the spellcraft to fail… she was most cross with me when she’d discovered that I’d been secretly tossing pebbles into it before, and making it come apart at the moment she most wanted to impress me with how 'like awesomely cool' she was.

  A whole month I was at it before she’d finally caught me, which was no surprise really, since if your arcane enterprises are successful at every instance except when you’re with one particular individual: there’s probably a reason it’s failing only then. At the least, this was true enough of me, and the thoughts brought me to giggle here in the present.

  I had a solution for my Arianna, though I wasn’t quite sure if Katherine would quite fit, but she’d clearly defied gravity with ease before, so perhaps it wasn’t such a tremendous concern. Just as I’d done with the spray bottle: I imagined that I held a plastic bucket in my hand. I’d seen one while I was apprenticed to a Zoroastrian doctor, and it’d proven to be quite the marvel of science.

  I didn’t know where he’d found such wealth that he was able to possess such a thing, for he’d been impoverished for as long as I’d known him. Still, I was able to bring forth my memory of the thing, for I’d used it often enough that I had quite missed having it around when I’d left his apprenticeship.

  The blackness spread out below my hand, and a fluorescent orange bucket formed up from the handle to the base. I looked at it, and I was rather satisfied with my work. So I spoke to my Arianna then,

  “Rianna, is it really your plan to carry Katherine for five kilometres while you’re struggling like this?”

  Irritation just erupted inside my heart, and I immediately knew that I’d struck a nerve, for my beloved absolutely growled at me in frustration — it was probably quite the difficult task to keep a sphere of water going in such a form, and I knew that it was only her pride and sensibilities that were keeping her from just dragging Katherine across the ground — and she shortly brought her emotions to bear against me,

  “Obviously, Mira! It’s not like you have a better plan! I’ll keep her alive, so why don’t you just start walking!”

  I supposed that I could’ve done that and let Arianna suffer needlessly, but I felt rather a bit stubborn about trying out my new bucket, so I next envisioned a wheelbarrow, and the blackness spread out before me and an almost perfect replica of Gerald’s wheelbarrow appeared from within the darkness, except that it now had both of its handles again. It’d only been broken for a few days now, but it wasn’t as he could just grab a branch and make do… not that it’d stopped him trying.

  It was fixed now, though. I couldn’t fix his hypertension, or his lonely heart, but I could repair his wheelbarrow! It was a shame he didn’t live to see it, and it was ever more tragic that I wouldn’t get to hear about how he’d fought off a vicious dryad for the piece of wood that now made up a handle. I sighed, and I supposed that Arianna was too busy with her spellcraft to notice my efforts for her sake, so I spoke aloud to her,

  “How about you put Katherine in my bucket, Rianna? I think she’ll fit.”

  Arianna’s ants did a thousand meters a second, though I didn’t know what was all that interesting for her to be thinking about, and the stability of the sphere of water fluctuated for a moment, causing a small amount of aetherwater to rain onto the ground. Finally, she must have looked around for the answer to whatever had affected her, because she suddenly cried out,

  “Oh, fuck that’s awesome. Right, yeah okay, we are absolutely doing that instead! That’s brilliant, Mira. Seriously, I love you. I’m sorry for being snappy, but this spell just really frustrates me. I’m really sorry, and seriously, great idea with the bucket.”

  She lowered the sphere of water down towards the bucket, which I’d set into the wheelbarrow, and she carefully let just a little bit of water spill out of the sphere until the bucket was completely filled to the brim with water. Katherine seemed to mostly follow what was going on, because even without my telling her to: she’d slid herself from the sphere to the bucket with ease, and she only slightly disturbed the surface of the water in doing so.

  Arianna immediately launched the water sphere some distance away where it crashed against the ground with a rushing sound, and came completely undone. Immediately, I could feel several layers of stress had peeled off of my beloved, and I could only smile in shared relief.

  Katherine formed up just her head from out of the bucket, and her vibrant red hair, ruby lips, and sparkling crimson eyes came back into being set in her pale skin, and she asked me as just a disembodied head,

  “There’s not a lot of water in here, so please don’t go too fast?”