She’d been pacing around her room for the past hour, trying to decide how to approach Riley. The problem was that eventually, if she didn’t do something, Riley would come looking for her. She’d either want to do divining, or more likely, she’d pick up the continuous font of anxiety and worry that Therese’s emotions had become.
How do you tell someone they’re fated to die?
‘Fated’ might be too strong of a term, anyway. It was just a prophecy dream. It was one of the many possible options being expressed by the principles that formed the infrastructure of the Tree. The trouble was, it was also the only vision Therese had seen so far where the Tower existed at the end of it. It was the only one that didn’t end in hopeless universal tragedy.
Just a very particular, very targeted tragedy, instead.
Therese wasn’t even considering the case where Riley said ‘no’ and refused to do whatever the Tower was going to ask of her. She wouldn’t. That was the problem. She’d agree to it, because it would give her a sense of meaning and purpose, and Riley had spent her entire life looking for meaning and purpose. She’d probably be eager. Really, the question wasn’t so much ‘how to tell Riley’ as it was ‘how to tell Riley without her becoming fatalistic and determined to sacrifice herself for the greater good’.
What if I just lead off with, hey girl, can you promise to be really normal about what I’m going to tell you? Therese thought, and then snorted. Riley didn’t really have a ‘normal’ setting, as far as she’d seen. Drama accreted in her orbit, and she collected trouble like planetary debris.
Still; if she was right, if her vision was right, if the message the divinatory trance had tried to convey was accurate, could she really let her affection for Riley stop her from offering the girl this path? Could she afford to? Her instinct was to go looking for more prophecies, for anything that might suggest a better outcome. An outcome that didn’t leave Riley incinerated in celestial fire. Anything.
But how long could she keep looking, when she’d found a solution? How long could she justify it?
I hate this job sometimes.
She sighed, turned her focus inwards, and sent a questioning emotional tone towards the Riley-spark. Riley had started calling it her ‘u up?’ signal, and while this was annoying, it was also true. And funny, you joyless adult, you, she thought.
Riley was up, and gave a vague sense of being in motion. Probably already on her way, or about to be. Depending on how enthusiastic her previous night had been.
Like you have any room to talk, you horny slut, Therese thought, and giggled at the memory of the night before, of Nora’s sudden predatory aggression. She thought she could probably spend the rest of her life learning the depths of who Nora really was, and still wouldn’t have the complete picture.
And then she realized how much she wanted to spend her life doing that, and shivered.
It took Riley another quarter hour to get to her Divination study, and she was alone. “Sorry, nobody else was available. Himari’s still sleeping from the Healing and everything, and the others had already gone to the Archives.” She gestured back at the door. “I could run over and get them; they’re just in a study room, not the actual Archives.”
Therese shook her head. “No, that’s probably better anyway. I need to show you something, and I’m not sure who else I want to show it to.”
Riley’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? Something important, I’m guessing?”
Therese chewed her lip and nodded.
“Well?”
“Easier if I just show you, really.” She sighed. “If anyone asks, this was my idea, and I insisted it was an emergency and that’s why you don’t have a cadre-mate with you.”
Riley frowned slightly. “Wait, is it an emergency?”
“Sort of. Not exactly. I don’t know.” She waved her hands helplessly. “Just, let me show you.”
Riley nodded, kicked off her shoes — slippers, really; she was wearing loose pajama bottoms under her dress, and Therese got the sense that the dress was probably an afterthought, just a quick trade for the nightgown she’d probably been wearing.
She was vaguely annoyed when she caught a glimpse of Riley’s bare calf. Bare of body hair, as well. And she’d bet anything Riley had never shaved her legs even once, and Therese knew quite well that a month ago she’d had a boy’s light dusting of leg hair. The Tower was clearly taking care of it.
You couldn’t maybe shave my legs for me, Tower?
Which was silly; she could figure out a Working to do that if she really wanted to, but like with so many tasks, the mundane solution was just simpler. A Working to get rid of your leg hair would be like a propane torch to light birthday candles on a cake: lots of effort for something you could do with a match. That doesn’t really answer the question as to why the Tower’s doing it for Riley, of course. If it’s so silly and simple.
Riley sat down on a cushion near the one Therese was already settling into. This whole process had become somewhat routine for the two of them, and Therese no longer found her presence distracting. She slipped directly into the trance, and Riley was pulled in with her, with no effort from either of them.
Where to?
Therese began to drift. Atlas. We haven’t been there before.
Huh.
They drew closer to the side of the Sisters closest to the Tree, and approached Atlas.
Immovable Certainty of the Protective Father? Riley asked. She sounded skeptical.
It’s deeply creepy when you do that, you know.
What?
Most people can’t pick up the name of a Sigil just from being near it in the celestial realm.
Oh, Riley said. Um, sorry?
No you’re not. Therese looked for the particular prophetic vision she’d seen, though she had a suspicion that all of them were going to be roughly the same, if it was proximity to Atlas that was causing the change in outcome. Endure, rather than submit, she thought.
Huh?
Nothing, just thinking aloud. Aloud-ish. Never mind, it’s not important. Come closer. Okay, ready? This is, uh, this is going to be a lot—
—and then they fell into the vortex.
Time passed.
When they emerged from it, Riley was completely silent. They floated together, in celestial space, motionless.
Finally, into the silence, Therese asked, Are you going to be okay?
She felt Riley withdrawing from the trance state, slipping back into reality, and so she followed. Riley was emotionally flat, which could be shock or it could be concentration.
“Are you okay?” Therese asked again.
“I’m not sure.” Riley was looking down at her lap, frowning. “Can I just— Can I recap what I saw, and you can tell me if I’m missing anything?”
“Sure, yeah. Go ahead.”
“So it was a Tarot dream again, and then the Tower gets destroyed, and you die, and somehow I get hit by the lightning and I’m just floating there.” Riley started biting her thumbnail, which was a habit she’d picked up from Therese somewhere along the line.
“Right.”
“And then I uh, I get crucified? On the Tree?” Riley’s hands were shaking.
Crucified? “I um, I hadn’t thought of it that way?”
“I dunno, it seemed pretty clear to me. The dream wasn’t exactly, uh, subtle? Arms out, cross of fire?”
Therese nodded. “Okay, yeah, I guess that fits.”
“And then there’s some kind of battle in the sky, between me? I guess? Or some kind of me-shape made out of lightning bolts or fire or whatever that stuff is? And the other, the Voice and the face from the dreams, that fucking thing from the Spike, the distortion thing. And we both die, and I guess that makes a new Tower?”
Therese blinked slowly. “Uh.”
“No?”
“I didn’t see any of that stuff. I saw you all filled up with celestial fire, and then the storm closed around you, and when it pulled back you were gone and it was just the, um, the Tree-sigil.”
Riley nodded slowly. “That kind of makes sense. I was inside the storm, and it sounds like you were outside. So you couldn’t see what happened in there.”
“It was a fight?”
Riley shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t really understand any of it. It was like we were arm-wrestling with fire. Or shouting at each other. Or maybe Working? It was really abstract.”
Therese tilted her head, thinking. “It’s a Tarot dream, so everything in it is going to be fairly abstract. Ugh, I hate Tarot divination.”
Riley’s smile was a ghost of its usual strength. “You’ve said. About thirty times, in fact.”
Therese sniffed with faux annoyance. “Well, they’re shit, and useless most of the time. Anyway.” She frowned. “So it might not be a physical battle; it could be some kind of metaphysical struggle. Or even something entirely metaphorical, some kind of contest of will.”
Riley shook her head. “Sure, but I do know one thing.” She tapped herself in the center of her chest. “I don’t survive it, whatever it is. Neither does the Voice, so there’s that to look forward to, at least.”
“Riley, I’m—”
She shook her head again. “No reason for you to apologize. It’s not like you made this happen.”
“It’s just a divination. It might not be anything. We’ve seen dozens of these that go totally differently.”
“They all go worse, Tee. This is the best outcome we’ve found, assuming it actually means we — well, you — win in the end.” Riley shrugged. “Doesn’t look like I get to be at the afterparty. Except maybe in spirit.”
Therese hesitated, not wanting to snap at Riley over her entirely reasonable pessimism, but also not finding it particularly helpful. “We’ll figure something out.”
Riley eventually sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I mean, we have magic and shit, right?” There was a little too much bitterness in her voice, Therese thought.
“I’ll keep looking. There’s plenty more prophetic dreams in that region that I haven’t explored. Dozens, maybe more.” She paused, considering. “I um, you can probably skip the rest of the afternoon if you’re not feeling up to doing any—”
Riley looked away to the door. “I think maybe that’s a good idea. It’s not that I don’t want to help, it’s just—”
“That was a lot to deal with.”
“Yeah.” Riley’s lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and she turned back to Therese. “You don’t get to find out you’re in the Garden of fucking Gethsemane very often, you know?”
Therese looked blank for just a moment while her brain tried to search out the clearly Biblical reference.
“Let this cup pass from me?” Riley covered her mouth in feigned shock. “You don’t know your Bible? Therese Lasalle! I am shocked—”
“Shut up, Riley,” Therese said, and smiled sweetly. “You haven’t exactly been leading any prayer circles since you got here.”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like my family was actually religious. More of a special-occasions kind of thing.” She shrugged. “In retrospect, maybe I should have paid more attention. Anyway. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to watch any more of me dying horribly to save the Tower, and I’m guessing that’s mostly what you’re going to be exploring, so if it’s all right with you?”
“Of course. We don’t have any of your cadre here anyway.”
“And I’m betting they don’t want to watch me get fried by the Tower, either.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
Riley chewed at the inside of her cheek. “I don’t… No, I don’t think so. Not yet. Not until we’re sure. Otherwise it’s just going to be a lot of the same things you’ve been saying, like ‘we’ll find a different way’ and ‘it’s just a divination’ and ‘it might be symbolic’.”
Therese pursed her lips at Riley’s mocking recitation of her arguments. “Oh, thanks.”
“Listen, I believe you. I just don’t think it’s going to help for me to hear it from them again.”
Therese blew out her breath. “Okay. Okay, but if you don’t tell them eventually, I’m going to. This noble self-sacrifice thing sounds cool but it leaves actual broken hearts in its wake.”
Riley winced slightly. “Yeah. Yeah, I get that. I’ll talk to them. Just… just not yet, okay?”
Therese nodded slowly. “Two weeks. Then I tell them.”
“Okay. I’m, um. I’m gonna go lay down, I think. My head hurts from, you know. All of this.”
Therese watched Riley depart, considering the changes in her after just three months. I am not going to let that girl sacrifice herself. I am going to find another way. She finally has something to live for, and people to do it with. Fuck the Tower, I’m finding another way.
# # #
If I tell them, they’ll worry. She’d been thinking this since Therese had shown her the dream. She knew it was both true and an understatement. Worry was the least of what they’d do, Eve, Suliat and Himari. They’d throw themselves into trying to change this, this destiny the Tower had apparently planned out for her.
She looked up at the ceiling of her room, the gloom near the upper corners giving her eyes no purchase, and her vision drifted with her thoughts.
The Tower giveth, and the Tower taketh away. And wasn’t she feeling very Biblical these days? She’d gotten an elaborately annotated Bible from Key, who had several that had turned up in a chamber of the Archives about thirty years ago — illuminated, too, in a kind of art deco style that made Riley think of the architecture of Chicago, somehow. She’d tried to read the Gospels for something like comfort, but it all felt really presumptuous and in the end she’d just shelved the thing.
Two weeks. She’d been given two weeks. She’d used up one of them already, and she still didn’t know what to say to them.
The Tower giveth. Friends. Lovers. Happiness.
Identity. Girlhood.
Tits, Riley. Just say it. They’re tits now. She resisted the urge to squeeze one of them. Barely, but there was no mistaking the shape and fullness for anything but actual breasts.
And the Tower taketh away. Everything.
You were ready to die before, weren’t you? You stepped into that portal in the park because you didn’t give a fuck what happened next, right? You said yes to the Headmistress and the Tower because you had nothing else, right?
All this was true, but she still couldn’t accept the inexorable, cruel balancing of the scales the Tower was offering. Everything she had that was worth having was because the Tower had given it to her, but she still didn’t want to give any of it back.
I’m in love, and there’s so much more love than I ever expected to have, and I didn’t know what life was like when you’re in love, and I was so fucking stupid for thinking I wanted everything to end. She imagined a life where she’d never kissed Himari, where she’d never tasted Eve, where she’d never had Suliat’s mouth on her breasts, and she shuddered. How could she want to give that up now? There was so much more life to live.
What happens when I tell them that I’m going to die?
She heaved herself off the bed. This was stupid. The sitting here in the dark alone. It was stupid. Her knowledge wasn’t radioactive. She wasn’t going to poison them with it by being in the common room.
And besides, she could smell wood smoke, which meant that Himari had finally talked the others into letting her use the hearth, and Riley wanted to cuddle someone by the fire. Someone? She wanted to cuddle all of them, but Himari probably wouldn’t be interested in a group cuddle pile. She was still very standoffish, especially when Su or Eve were around. Riley could only count on hugs and hand-holding when it was just the two of them. She hadn’t yet worked up enough courage to ask Himari if they could kiss again, though she was certain the answer would be ‘yes’. Trying to understand what someone else wanted, what they felt, it was all so goddamn difficult.
People were complicated, and Riley felt like she’d spent eighteen years failing to learn a goddamn thing about them, and now she was in graduate-level courses and rushing towards a final exam.
A very final— Argh, no. Fuck you, Riley Hawkins, get the hell up and stop being like this.
She felt a little amused bit of encouragement from Therese, and sighed. They couldn’t not feel each other like this, but it was sometimes still deeply annoying to have the girl lurking about and trying to steer her towards good decisions and emotional maturity.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry about Himari being put off by Eve and Su, because Himari wasn’t in the common room. Riley looked around and Su said, “Gym. She wanted to practice hitting things.”
Riley smiled. “She’s thinking about that stupid tournament in the spring.”
Suli and Eve were curled up together on the couch, and Eve was knitting. She looked up from the… whatever it was she was making, and gave Riley a pointed look. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the stupid tournament in the spring?”
Riley waved a hand dismissively. “Brynn talked me into it, but I’m mostly just doing it as a favor—”
“You’re doing it because you like showing off in front of Himari, dear.” Suli smiled broadly, a crescent of white peeking from behind her lips. “I understand; she is very pretty.”
“Ryyy,” Eve said with an exaggerated whine. “Are you going to come sit with us or what?” She tucked her knitting into a cloth bag with a picture of a kitten on it; the kitten was playing with a ball of yarn, and Riley thought that seemed like asking for trouble.
Why are there no cats in the Tower? This was an odd, left-field thought, and Riley set it aside for later consideration.
Eve and Suli scooted apart on the couch, and Riley obediently came over and sat down between them, hands in her lap, back straight. This lasted less than five seconds, as Eve tackled her down to the same slouch that the two of them had been in, and Suli’s arms encircled her stomach.
“Better!” Eve said, as she settled her head on Riley’s chest. Riley flinched, and Eve looked up with worry in her eyes. “Is that— did that—”
“No, it’s fine. Just, um, still sensitive. It’s not bad!” She pulled Eve back down with her left hand, vaguely aware that she was pushing a girl’s head towards her tit. “Just surprising.”
Suli pulled her legs up onto the couch to lay her knees sideways onto Riley’s lap, so she could pull herself close and get her lips near to Riley’s ear. Not that she was trying to whisper to keep secrets from Eve; the girl’s head on Riley’s chest kept her well within listening range. “We have been trying to get you to sit with us on the couch for a week, Novice Hawkins. You are extremely difficult. The fire was a last resort.”
The hearth was, in fact, lit. The wood in it wasn’t actually burning, though. The whole thing was Worked, and the wood itself was a Charm that some enterprising Crafter had figured out, that could burn forever and give off heat and the smell of burning wood, without any actual wood smoke. The Tower could vent real smoke away, but it seemed silly to bother with it at all, given that importing actual firewood from the Primary was prohibitively difficult.
“Sorry. I’ve—”
“Had a lot on your mind. I know.” Suli kissed her ear. “But you know that even if you don’t want to talk about whatever is bothering you?”
“We can give you hugs so you don’t have to deal with it alone,” Eve finished, and she turned her face up to Riley and kissed her cheek.
Riley could feel herself starting to sag into the space between them, their warmth and the physicality of them leaching the anxiety and tension from her. The dream was still there, lurking, with its attendant sense of inevitability and despair, but here, between these women she loved? Riley could feel the terror muting, quieting, becoming just a distant buzz of alarm. She could ignore it. She could drift off between them.
Maybe she was too relaxed. Maybe that’s why she didn’t notice when Suliat’s hand slid in through the open side of her slip-dress, the sleeping nightgown she’d been wearing. Not until Su had her right breast encompassed within her hand, gently squeezing, her thumb finding Riley’s nipple, brushing it, making Riley gasp at the sudden jolt of pleasure.
Eve’s hand, meanwhile, had slid along Riley’s side until it found her knee. Then, reversing course, she slipped her fingers under the hem of Riley’s nightgown and stroked upwards, along her thigh, up and up towards her soft stomach. Catching for a moment in the band of her panties, tugging idly, fidgeting, before spreading across Riley’s abdomen. Eve’s fingers were splayed, and then she gently began to stroke them in small, feathery circles.
It should have tickled, but it didn’t.
Riley struggled to open her eyes again, pushing past the growing sense of surrender to her partners, trying to rouse herself from ‘victim’ to ‘active participant’. But as her lids fluttered open, she found Su’s face just a few inches away from hers, and Su’s lips descended on hers.
Su was so very soft.
But at the same time, she was assertive. She wanted Riley, and her lips and tongue spoke silently of that desire, hungry and eager. She tangled her tongue into Riley’s, briefly, tentatively; then, assured of compliance, she locked herself onto Riley’s open mouth.
So much for ‘active participation’.
Eve’s teeth reached Riley’s left earlobe, and then her mouth traveled down Riley’s neck, kissing and then biting, one and then the other, her attentions wandering, slipping down to Riley’s exposed clavicle.
“Why,” Eve whispered, pausing to bite and lick and kiss. “Do you.” Another kiss. “Taste.” And a fiercer bite this time, almost enough to hurt. “So good?”
The question wasn’t intended to be answered, because Eve’s mouth had moved further south from Riley’s clavicle, across the open expanse of skin that ended in her small, soft breast and her pale pink nipple.
Riley began to whimper through Suli’s kiss. She felt possessed just as surely as by a Sigil. I am being taken by them.
But she fought her way back up through the layers of entrancement, of bliss and joy. “Room,” she said, pulling her mouth from Suli’s. “Room.” If Himari comes in and finds us fucking on the couch in the common room, it will hurt her, and I never, ever want to see Himari hurt again.
Suliat kissed her temple. “Yes, let’s.” She looked at Eve. “Mine?”
Eve lifted her mouth from its place on Riley’s breast, and nodded.
The two of them stood, slowly, languidly, pulling Riley by her hands, each holding one of them, lifting her to an unsteady standing position. Riley let herself be led to Suliat’s green-lit room, the unaccountably spicy odor of it like a deeply intoxicating perfume.
It felt like there was some question she should be asking, some kind of context she should have but didn’t. But their pull was inexorable and insistent, and Riley couldn’t think of what to ask, anyway. Just the awareness that they should move out of the common room had consumed the remainder of her clear and conscious thought.
Eve climbed onto the bed to face Riley, and got her knees under her so she could raise herself up to meet Riley’s lips with her own. Suliat came up behind Riley and her arms wrapped her waist, and then slid up towards her breasts, gently squeezing, careful of their tenderness. Riley gasped into Eve’s mouth, who giggled and bit at her lower lip.
Eve held onto Riley’s neck to support herself with her right hand and her left found the shoulder strap of Riley’s dress, worried at it, and then slipped it off her shoulder. Then she reversed the operation, right hand moving the other strap off, the whole dress becoming precariously held up, purely by Suliat’s hands pressing it against Riley’s skin.
Suliat withdrew, just an inch, and the dress slid to the floor.
Eve had pulled away to watch, and she let out a tiny whimper. Her eyes, huge and shining, rose slowly up the length of Riley’s body, lingering in several places, before meeting Riley’s eyes once more. “Ry, you’re, you’re.”
Riley flashed to what Himari had said. Imagine yourself from Eve’s point of view. And now, abruptly, in the look she saw in Eve’s eyes, she could.
Suli was kissing Riley along her shoulders and spine, and she pulled away to look at Eve. “—Beautiful.”
Eve nodded silently, and then she lunged back up to Riley’s lips. Suliat’s hands returned to Riley’s now-naked breasts, teasing them, gently stroking, then gently pinching. The sensation was almost too much for her, and she felt herself sag back against Suli, her knees trembling.
“She needs to—”
Eve nodded, scooted back. “Riley?” She motioned Riley forwards, but Riley’s eyelids were fluttering, and she seemed unfocused. Suli was forced to guide her forward, helping her onto the bed, shedding her own dress before joining them there.
Eve, meanwhile, had pushed Riley over to one side, and begun kissing her way down to Riley’s nipple once more, catching it briefly in her teeth without biting, then teasing with her tongue before returning to kisses.
Su moved up Riley’s right side, dragging her nails along Riley’s thigh, leaving faint pink tracks against the pale skin. Riley shuddered.
When Suli’s right hand slid down to her inner thigh, Riley moaned, levering her hips up off the bed. Both Eve and Suli paused, and something passed between them, and then Eve brought her lips up to Riley’s ear.
“Love? Are you there?”
Riley nodded, her eyes still fluttering and mostly closed.
“I want. I mean. Would it be all right if I. Um.”
Riley realized almost immediately what she was asking, and a shock of fear rushed up her spine, goosebumps rising across her chest and arms. Before the fear could settle into her stomach, though, Riley’s mouth opened and she was talking and she couldn’t imagine who was saying these words, who was thinking them, where they had come from.
“Yes. Oh god yes please, Eve, I love you so much, yes.”
Eve exhaled with a shudder, whimpering with the release of restrained desire.
Suli made a delighted sound, and her fingernails hooked into the waistband of Riley’s panties, and dragged them down. In a perfect storybook world, this would have worked, but there were several awkward moments of struggle to remove them, hindered partially by the aching erection they’d been covering, which caught and tangled, damp, in the fabric.
Then Eve’s mouth was around her, and Riley bucked upwards again, her moans becoming a voiceless gasp and an equally unvoiced scream.
And before she could find the voice for it, Suli’s mouth silenced her, kissing, needy and demanding.
And, undone completely and powerless in their hands, Riley finally let go. With a surge of eager arousal, bordering on frantic lust, Riley’s right hand found the back of Suli’s head, pulling her in, and her left hand found the back of Eve’s head, and pressed her downwards.
# # #
Therese knew that Riley wasn’t in the common room, of course. It’s why she’d waited, once Nora had told her that Riley had asked for some of her office hours to talk about ‘something’. Therese expected it was the dream. Riley hadn’t been back to divination sessions since the dream, and Therese hadn’t found anything new to share with her regardless, but she couldn’t imagine what else Riley might want to talk to Nora about.
You could just ask, she thought, but honestly if it was critical in some way, she trusted Nora to let her know. And this had been the perfect opportunity to catch the rest of the cadre together. Without Riley.
Two weeks, Hawkins. I gave you two weeks.
She hesitated outside the door. Technically as an Adept she had access to all of the suite common rooms, and was barred only from the private individual rooms of the second and third year Novices. But aside from her sense of herself as not particularly older or more adult than the cadre, she didn’t want to be rude.
And it’s entirely possible they’re having some kind of group makeout session on the couch in there, she thought to herself, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. She didn’t know that’s what they got up to, but she’d felt the stirring of Riley’s emotions enough times over the past week, and had to fight to shut them out, that she had a pretty good idea the girl had become very sexually active.
Well, so have you, you hypocritical slut, Therese thought, and stifled a giggle. She still hadn’t had the chance to talk to Brynn, but she was spending every night in Nora’s room now, and this made for very pleasant awakenings almost every morning.
Focus, Therese. You’re stalling.
She knocked.
Suliat answered the door a few moments later. “Adept T— uh, right. Just Therese.” She smiled sheepishly. “I forgot. Um, come in?”
Therese entered and looked around for— yes, they were all present. Himari was sketching out the field diagram for a Working, and Eve was reading it with the Geometry open on her lap, checking Himari’s work. The couch was piled with blankets and a cup of tea on a tray, and a rather raggedy-looking length of knit fabric with two needles sticking up from it.
“She’s off to a meeting with Adept Nyström, if that’s—” Suliat faltered, a slight frown on her face, because like the rest of Riley’s cadre, she knew damn well that Therese knew where Riley was at all times.
“No, I know. I wanted to, uh. Can I sit down?” She waved at the chairs. “I wanted to talk to you three about. Well, about Riley, I guess. Kind of obviously.” You’re being exceptionally eloquent right now, Therese. Definitely a credit to the profession and your department.
Suliat nodded. “Let me just move my—” She stuffed the implausible tangle of yarn into a bag with a frog depicted on it; the frog was sticking its tongue out, and the tongue was yarn, and the tongue ended in a ball of yarn. Cute. “I’m learning how to knit. Eve is teaching me.”
Eve and Himari had pushed back from their work. “Adept,” Himari said.
“Hi, um, so I wanted to— thanks.” She sat on the couch in the space Suliat had made for her. “I wanted to tell you about the dream Riley and I had.”
“You’re going to explain why she’s freaking the fuck out?” Himari, straight to the point.
“She is?”
Eve nodded. “She’s trying to hide it from all of us, but she’s not very good at it, and we all know her. Um.” Eve blushed bright red. “Kind of well.”
Himari snorted. “Biblically, even.”
“Mariiii,” Eve said in an exaggerated scolding tone.
Suliat sat at the other end of the couch from Therese. “She’s worried about something. Maybe even terrified. But when we try to draw her out, she gets very… brittle. I’ve been afraid to push her further.”
“And me and Eve would be like wrecking balls if we tried,” said Himari.
“You would, anyway,” Eve said, poking Himari, who squirmed away from the poke and giggled.
They really are a polycule now, aren’t they? Therese felt strangely jealous of their bond, even though she had a strong suspicion that Suliat was right, that they had been manipulated by the Tower. It wasn’t any less real for that, was it?
“Yes, um. Yes. We had a prophetic dream. Or I did, I guess, and then I showed it to Riley.”
Suli raised an eyebrow. “Without any of us?”
“It was, there were um, extenuating circumstances. Once I explain, you’ll see what I mean.”
Therese went silent, and the moment lingered until it started to become uncomfortable. Himari shifted in her seat, and Eve began to fidget. Only Suli stayed completely impassive, the barest polite smile on her face.
You have to just tell them, Therese. You have to tell them.
“You know that the Headmistress told Riley and I to find out where the… I guess we’re calling it the distortion? Where it comes from. Why it’s here. What we can do about it. You’ve been along on some of the divination sessions.”
“Which are mostly just you two getting sweaty while we watch,” Himari said.
“And an awful sense of dread! Don’t forget that!” Eve offered.
“It’s honestly bizarre that Riley and I can share divinatory dreams the way we do. I’m pretty sure it’s whatever the Tower did to link us together, but investigating that is kind of low priority? Anyway, it usually takes a lot of training to sync up divination dreams like that. So it’s not surprising you didn’t see any of the visions.” Therese looked down into her lap. “They’re awful. All of them. And we’ve been looking for one that’s less awful.”
“And you found one, I would guess?” Suli’s voice was calm and measured. She’s probably the closest of them to just leaping up and shaking me by the shoulders and shouting at me. She’s just more controlled about it.
“We… we did. I did. Two weeks ago. In this latest dream…” She looked up, met Suliat’s eyes. “Riley doesn’t survive.”
Suli sat back with a blank look on her face, and Eve gasped, but Himari leaned forward with sudden intensity. “Wait, okay, wait, let’s rewind a bit,” she said, speaking a fraction too loud and too fast. “When you say prophecy, like, I know I gave you shit about that earlier in the year but, what does ‘prophecy’ even mean? Like visions of the future?”
Eve nodded, and her hand snaked out to take Himari’s and squeeze it.
“Right, yes. Um, a quick Divination primer, I guess.” Therese closed her eyes, paused, then opened them and began. “You pull Sigils out of the Celestial realm. Ancient people knew you could read your fate from the stars, but what their priestesses were actually seeing was the Celestial. They’d go into a trance, and wander in the star-field that’s the Celestial realm.” Therese’s lip twisted slightly. “It was when men took the role of elders and wisdom-keepers away from the women that true Divination became the astrology nonsense you’re probably thinking of. They couldn’t access the Celestial, so they just looked at the stars and, well. Made shit up.”
“But you don’t make shit up.” Himari motioned for her to continue.
“Right. The Celestial realm is, hm. A map of all the ways the universe could be. You should know this from your introductory Working class.”
“The further a Sigil is from reality, the harder it is to call and use, but the more potential power it has,” Eve recited.
“Yeah. So the stuff right in the middle, the stuff… uh, let’s say right above the Tower? That’s basically what’s really happening. The universe is following that path.” She pointed up as she said this, and then moved her pointing finger over her head in an encompassing spiral. “Around that, things get less and less likely. And we can see what kind of unlikely reality might come from any of the further-out parts of the Celestial realm. They’re prophecies, and if you’re in a Divination trance and you run into one, you have a dream, and the dream is ‘what if this part of the Celestial were closer to reality?’ So they’re kind of like previews of different paths we could take.”
“How reliable are they?” Suliat asked. “If you see one of these… prophetic dreams, does it mean it’s going to happen?”
Therese shook her head. “It means it’s a possible outcome. We could, if we can figure out what the dream is telling us to do, steer reality in that direction. The dreams give us a signpost, basically. Follow the signs to reach the destination. Except we have to learn how to read the signs.”
“All right,” Suliat said. “So then. We just don’t do whatever it is that you’ve seen, whatever leads to Riley—” She broke off, and her eyes flicked to Eve and Himari. “Whatever leads to what you said.”
“That’s the problem.” She scrubbed at her face with both hands, her head aching and her sinuses feeling puffy with fatigue. “We’ve spent the last month looking through every single prophetic dream we can find that’s in any way tied to the distortion, the rot out in the City. Everything out there, probably a hundred different dreams at this point. More.”
She gave them a bleak look, meeting each of their gazes, looking around the room. “Everything else we’ve found is worse. Everything else is the end of the world.”
There was a heavy silence as they all digested this.
Then Himari said, her voice brittle with fear, “Bullshit. That’s bullshit. You just haven’t looked hard enough.”
Therese shook her head. “I haven’t found anything else.”
“Keep looking,” Himari said, and it was almost a snarl. “Find a different fucking way.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing since I found this vision? What do you think I do every single day? If I’m not sleeping or eating, I’m in a trance cataloguing dreams.”
Himari was about to say something else, something even angrier, but Therese saw Eve tug slightly on her hand, squeezing, interrupting.
“I’m trying, Himari. I promise you I’m trying. I’m doing everything I can.” She exhaled with a shudder. “I don’t love her the way you do, all of you, but I do love her, and I am doing everything I can think of to save her.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Suliat said into the pause that followed. “Why are you here, and Riley isn’t? Why… why now?”
Himari snorted, angrily, but it was Eve who answered. “Su, it’s Riley. She’s never going to tell us this on her own. She’s known this for weeks and hasn’t told us.” Eve sighed. “She doesn’t want to hurt us. She doesn’t want us to worry.”
“God fucking dammit.” Himari pulled her hand away, standing, and paced to the hearth, then back to her chair. Anxious like a caged animal. “That stupid bitch.”
Suliat said, “That loving bitch, Mari. Who knows how much we care, and doesn’t want to be a source of hurt or worry for us.”
“So what, she was just going to do whatever this dream thing said, march off to die, save the fucking world?” Himari collapsed back into her chair, slumped over, looking at her hands in her lap. “No. No, that’s bullshit. No.”
“I don’t know,” Therese said. “She’s talking to Nora now, and that makes me think she’s looking for some other answer, something else we can do. If anyone can find another way through, it’s going to be the two of them.” She smiled faintly. “Nora’s brilliant, and Riley’s…”
“She’s Riley,” Eve said, returning the smile.
“I gave her two weeks to decide what to do, how to tell you all, and said if she didn’t, I would. So here I am.”
“So what do we do?” Suliat, immediately pragmatic.
“For right now? Be supportive. She’s pretending she’s okay with this, but she can’t lie to me, so I know it’s pretense. She’s terrified. She needs you to be there for her. To hold her, just… support her. Comfort her.” Therese shrugged. “And if you have any ideas, I mean. Working together as a cadre is kind of how problems get solved around here, so once she’s over her tragic-noble-sacrifice drama moment, some brainstorming sessions, maybe?”
Su and Eve giggled.
Himari’s head was still bowed, and when she finally, slowly, looked up at Therese, her face was wet and streaked with tears, and her eyes were red, and her shoulders were hunched and shaking.
“I’ve, I’ve n-never been in. In. L-love before,” she said, barely able to speak through the tears. “I’ve n-n-never even known what. I’ve. I’ve never had anyone, anyone care a-a-about me.” The sob escaped, and then more, and she was crying, wailing, and both Eve and Suliat were on their feet and then crouched next to her chair, their arms around her.
“Please, please, Therese, please.” Himari said through the waterfall of tears. “Please save her. I love her so much. Please save her.”
you're f*cked up.
thank you for the chapter. but f*ck you. (not really)
belatedly (I read this the hour it came out, I just wasn't in the right headspace to comment): super fun chapter, thanks for it. wow, yeah, I hadn't stopped to think how Riley would feel about it...
I'm not one to complain about getting more words :DDD several of my favorite authors are prone to their chapters ballooning as the plot develops...
I'm liking how, though the stakes are cosmic and all that, the story focuses on people's feelings. to me that stuff is the good part :3