10 - Cleanup

 

The past few hours have been a nervous haze for Lacuna.  So much sitting around being useless while other people put themselves in danger.  Throw in Bridgewood’s comments during the first half of the day too and…  

She pauses her pacing and checks her pulse for the third time in the past five minutes.  Still high.  Of course it’s still high, she keeps checking it without waiting and getting more worried by the result.  All she’s accomplishing is making her wrist sore.  It’s a feedback loop and she knows it.

Stop it.  Think about something else.  What?  Anything.

At least Eris and Glassheart are okay.  That’s good.  Those supplies Bridgewood brought along had included alchemically-enhanced first aid kits so they’d been able to stop the bleeding and get them both warmed up safely.  Eris was even awake and cracking jokes again before Bridgewood packed up the communications hub.

Bridgewood.  Communications.  Bridgewood who - when she was scrubbing back through the footage and system logs to figure out what happened with his feed - definitely turned his headset off on purpose before that first big explosion hit.  Bridgewood who’s hiding something.  Bridgewood whose house she’s in right now.  Bridgewood whose floor she almost threw up on.  Bridgewood who confirmed the dragon was dead by eating a small chunk of it.  Bridgewood who moved so fast with those knives once his feed was back on and all the bloodsuckers were fleeing the ship at once and getting in his and Road’s way.  Bridgewood who the video could barely keep up with as he turned the hallway into a blender and smiled while he did it.

She feels her empty stomach heave as those clips from his and Road’s feeds flash back through her mind.  She still has the taste stuck in her mouth and smell in her nose from the first time, hours ago now.  She should really ask for a glass of water or something.  But she would hate to impose.  To be a bother.

Could she even swallow a glass of water right now?  Her throat feels so tight.  Not that again.  That’s a psychosomatic panic reaction, not the contract breach coming closed to choke her to death.  She knows this.  The same for the headache.  Well, that one might be dehydration.  Or it could be the violated geas that’s slowly going to get worse and worse until - 

No, don’t get sucked into that spiral again.  The loophole worked.  It’s such an obvious oversight, it couldn’t have worked.  It obviously did, or else she wouldn’t have been able to do what she did in the first place.

She hadn’t even been thinking of the consequences when she started frantically hunting through her saved (stolen) library for the glyphs to send through Eris's phone and the incantation to play over the communications line.  One image-formatted glyph whose incoming photo thumbnail was enough to get activated by the sped-up ritual incantation synthesized from her own voice.  That activation forced Eris’s phone to unlock and autoplay the more complex video-and-audio-formatted glyph ritual upon reception to make the air pocket.

And it had worked.  It had actually worked!  She lets out a short, nervous, slightly manic laugh thinking through all the technical details that had to go right for that.  The sense of relief and… and… exaltation… when the bubble appeared.

And then she’d tried it again after Road had gotten Eris out of the water, this time with a digitally-accelerated ritual to warm them all up.  It had just overheated Eris’s phone.  Probably fried it inside its waterproof case.  Eris would have to get a new phone now and go through the whole annoying process of trying to recover data and contacts lists and everything and it was all Lacuna’s fault.

She’s pacing again.  When did that start back up?  She touches a hand to her head and yanks it away as soon as she realizes she’s doing it again.  What does she even think she’s checking?  That she still has a headache?  Yes, she does.  She doesn’t need to keep poking her temple until it bruises to verify that.  And if RevaTech has a way of remotely detecting that she broke her nondisclosure and noncompete contracts and doing her in for it then it’s not like touching her head over and over again is going to help or give her warning so why does she keep doing it of all the stupid stupid useless nervous tics and nervous tics isn’t even the right term and why does her body do these things and have these reactions even when she knows there’s nothing wrong she’s just the stu-

She stops.

Takes a deep breath.

Lets it out.

It’s not the first time she’s done this.  It won’t be the last.  She consciously syncs her breathing with that of the laptop.  It’s a nice paratech bio model, all squishy on the inside beneath the metal and plastic shell.  It respirates instead of using a fan.  Respirate.  That’s a nice word, respirate.  Yes, just like that, in and out, slow and even.  Not thinking of much of anything at the moment.

Calmer, Lacuna opens her eyes, only now realizing that she’d closed them.  She’s not dying, and neither is anyone else.  They’d saved all the passengers, she’d saved Eris, Eris had saved Glassheart, and Glassheart had saved Road and Bridgewood.  

She grips the back of one of the chairs that got left behind in the foyer and leans on it, drumming her fingers on it in a rolling motion while she muses.

She suspects those two hadn’t really needed saving themselves, but Glassheart had definitely made it easier for them to get those last two passengers out unharmed.  And he’d looked amazing doing it, no matter which point of view she watched the feed from.  The fluttering dress, the flowing wand motions, and that conjuration at the end.  Goddess, now that was the sort of working that she’d only ever heard about.  Having gotten to see it, even remotely, is almost enough to take the sting out of wishing that could have been her out there doing that, being even half that useful.  Half that brave.  Half that - dare she even think it? - that beautiful.

She indulges a self-deprecating chuckle.  All this, all her… well her everything and now she finds herself wishing she could be like a guy.  Well, to be fair, it’s one specific guy whom she would still be mistaking for a girl if someone hadn’t said something.  Yeah, no one ever needs to know about that mixup.  Seriously, of all people, she should know better by now than to assume.  At least she’d realized her mistake before she actually said anything.  That would have been mortifying.

She checks the time on her phone and groans.  What’s keeping everyone?

She knows the answer to that of course.  They’ve got one hundred twenty-eight unconscious passengers to transport back to this pocket dimension of an estate and there's a bad storm going on over there.  Even with the main danger behind them, that’s enough to slow anyone down.

Come to think of it, is this a pocket dimension?  It’s got enough weird going on that it would make sense, but at this point she’s afraid to ask, much less investigate for herself.

She stops herself from spiraling down again into why she’s afraid of that and tries to think of something else good from today to focus on.

Everyone almost died today and she was useless and it’s going to be like this every time.

Road.  It was good to see Road again.  And of course her first time seeing them in years is with them once again helping her to her feet after something terrifying.  Maybe she really hadn’t had anything to worry about this whole time with Road there.  Sure, she made the air bubble around Eris, but it was Road who dove into the water and fished her out.  And with how fast they were, Eris is tough enough that she probably would have been fine even without Lacuna’s intervention.  Also, Road’s jacket-cape-thing (that she’s increasingly convinced is alive) turning into a full-body suit with mermaid tail mid-leap was objectively the second coolest thing she’s seen in a long time, next to Glassheart’s spectacle.  And yet another case of vicariously living out a long-held fantasy through the way-cooler-than-her people she’s suddenly surrounded by.

Lacuna glances back at the laptop.  If she can’t measure up to everyone else, she should probably at least be doing more of that research for figuring out their next mission like Bridgewood told her to.  Or maybe fix up the website so the people in need can come to them.  

She cringes at the thought of that abomination of a website.  She didn’t realize it was still even possible to make something that looked that out of date.  The last time she’d seen that many animated gifs and clip art in one place was a class back in middle school on the basics of how to use a computer and the internet almost two decades ago.  And the navigation is practically unusable where it exists at all.  Yeah, on second thought, probably better to burn it down and build it from scratch.

Not that she can concentrate enough to do any of that right now.  Not well anyway.

As she stands there, leaning on the back of a chair in a pose that’s starting to make her hand fall asleep and debating the relative merits of doing a poor job that she’ll need to redo later versus more pacing and fretting, the spidery cleaning golem that’s been attending her all day tugs on the hem of her skirt.  She thinks it’s the same one anyway.  They all look alike except for that one she briefly glimpsed dusting the portrait of the woman she assumes to be Bridgewood’s late wife looming over the foyer.  She could have sworn that one had a tiny maid outfit.

Lacuna follows this current, uncostumed, cleaning golem out through the front door that opens on its own just enough for her to slip through before it gets stuck again.  Outside, the four larger-than-life classical marble statues have left their plinths flanking the gravel path in front of the manor.  Now they stand waiting at the far end of the path, past the outer row of hedges, where they’ve been hitched two apiece to a pair of empty wagons in lieu of horses.  Unlike the carriage she’d watched Eris and the others leave in with its cushioned bench seats, these are little more than flat wooden beds on wheels with some low sideboards to keep hypothetical cargo from rolling off.

Watching the cleaning golem skitter ahead and scurry up the spoked wheels to climb onto the nearer wagon, Lacuna figures this must have been what Bridgewood meant in his final words before turning the communications hub off.  He’d talked past her to the two golems that had been staying at her side this whole time, telling them to make preparations for his return.  After that, one had stayed with her while the other made a chittering noise then disappeared into a shadowy corner.  As much as they all seem to look alike, she suspects that the one now perched upon the further wagon is her other chaperone now returned.

“Do you,” Lacuna hesitates, looking from the cleaning golem on the wagon to the statues pulling it, “want me to get on?”

The orb on legs without an orifice from which to emit sound chitters back at her.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was expecting there.”

Another pointed squeak from the tiny construct and Lacuna flinches then starts climbing onto the wagon, apologizing all the while.  She manages not to trip over or rip her skirt in the process, which she counts as an achievement.  Not that there was any real danger of that, but it’s the sort of quasi-rational fear that usually flashes through her mind whenever she’s already worked up about something.  Acknowledging that might not stop the thoughts from cropping up, but it does help with letting them pass on by instead of fixating on them like she used to.  Still does, but less often these days.  Maybe one of these days she’ll get the moving on down to enough of a reflex that she won’t get so distract-

The abrupt inertial shift of the wagon lurching into motion knocks Lacuna off balance, nearly sending her to her hands and knees while thoroughly derailing that train of thought.  She carefully lowers herself the rest of the way down into a seated position in the center of the wagon and leans back with her weight on her palms, telling herself to relax and enjoy the ride.  She thinks about splinters, forces herself to keep her hands where they are, and lets the thought go.

Looking around, as far as she can tell the Bridgewood Manor is surrounded on all sides by forest for as far as she can see before the wagon moves into said forest, further blocking her view of the horizon.  She wonders if it’s all spatially-doubled transport trees or just this one well-kept and organized section.  While she can pick out some of the more obvious discrepancies in species Eris was pointing out earlier, for the most part it all just looks like a bunch of brown and green to her.  

The angle of the late afternoon sun filtering down through the leaves tells her that if this place somehow isn’t a pocket dimension then it’s in the same time zone as the initial bridge she took to get here.  Similarly, the comfortable warmth would seem to indicate being at least a little north of that point.  Curiosity finally gets the better of her and she checks the GPS on her phone.  The current location indicator bounces wildly around the globe several times a second and she exits the map app before she gets sick from looking at it.  On second thought, it might be safer not to figure out where exactly this place is.  Bridgewood might not like it.

They’re deeper into the woods now than her arrival point had been this morning.  With all the winding splits and reconnects in the gravel pathway she doubts she could very well find her way back to the manor on her own at this point.  As she takes in the view of the greenery, it occurs to her how quiet and still it is out here.  No birdsong from the branches, nary a squirrel in sight, not even any wind to speak of to rustle the leaves.  Only the creak of wagon wheels and the scrape-thud-crunch of the statues’ footsteps.

For the past several minutes of the ride Lacuna’s been torn between staring in fascination at the constructs pulling the wagons and pointedly looking away in discomfort.  On the one hand, to see stone moving so fluidly without apparent joints speaks to truly impressive craftsmanship, perhaps employing active transmutation as well as animation for the simulation of muscle and other soft tissue.  Or maybe they just look like marble statues and have some other mechanism underneath.  On the other hand, she finds something deeply uncomfortable in riding a vehicle pulled by servants.  Even if the servants are eight feet tall, made of magically animated stone with unchanging neutral expressions, never speak, and probably only look like people without actual sapience.  Or maybe they just look like marble statues and are actually people who offended the Bridgewood family and were turned into stone and bound to service as punishment.

No, that’s ridiculous, she tells herself.  Sure, Bridgewood’s plenty scary and maybe even kind of mean, but there’s no way Road would be friends with someone who would do something outright evil like that.

Still, when the wagons come to a stop in front of a tall pine, she makes a point of nervously thanking the two statues pulling her wagon for the ride when she climbs off.  When they don’t respond she gives a small wave, mumbles a jumbled half-thanks-half-apology and doesn’t-quite-run back around to the rear of the wagons where the two cleaning golems are working together to extend a ramp down to the ground.  She moves to help but raises her hands and backs off at the ensuing noises they make at her.

Back to waiting then.

She finds herself wondering how she should greet the others when they get back.  Should she congratulate them?  That feels a little gauche given how rough things got at the end and the, well, the state of the crew they found on the ship.  Act casual then?  No, she doesn’t want to downplay what they accomplished.  

For a moment she fantasizes about being overcome with emotion at seeing Eris safe and sound, throwing her arms around her friend, and crying on her shoulder.  She snorts a second cousin to a laugh, half smiles, and shakes head.  A nice image, but not one that she could ever be expressive enough for.

“Hey.”

Lacuna turns around from watching the statues unhitch themselves to find Road standing behind her.  They’re looking none the worse for the wear.  Not even wet.

“Is Eris - I mean, are the others - ” Lacuna stammers.  “Is everyone okay?”

Road smiles softly and puts a hand on her shoulder.  Normally she’d flinch at the uninvited touch, but somehow this feels… nice.  Steadying.

“Everyone’s safe,” Road says.  “The storm held us up for a little bit coming back down the coast, but that’s it.  I just went on ahead and popped over to verify the wagons are here while the others prep the passengers to unload through the bridge.”

“Oh, cool.  Good.  Good to hear.”

Road slips their hand off her shoulder and goes to lean on the side of one of the wagons.  On reflex, she follows suit.

“How about you, Lacuna?”

“Huh?” 

“How are you holding up?”

She’s vomited more than once today at the sight of dead bodies over a live video feed, been mocked for it, saw her best friend nearly die, exploited a loophole in a contract with a corporation that will absolutely make her life a living hell if they find out, and spent the past hour fighting to keep herself from descending into what would have been the worst anxiety attack she’s had in years.  She doesn’t belong here.  She’s not capable.

“I’m fine.  It’s not like I was doing anything dangerous today.  Not like all of you.”

“Alright then,” Road says, tone casual.  “Well, if you ever stop being fine, I’ll be there for you - we’ll be there - whenever you say the word.”

“I… Thanks.”

“Of course.  It’s not like I’m going to kick you off the team or something for having a normal human reaction to stress.”

Lacuna laughs nervously.  “Right.  Of course you wouldn’t.”

“Seriously though, it can take a while for the shock from this sort of thing to wear off.  If it starts hitting you hard all at once later, you’ve got my number.  It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I’ll pick up.”  Road pauses for a moment, then continues when Lacuna doesn’t say anything.  “You might not have been out there in person, but you saw more than enough today to shake anyone who’s not used to it and I know as well as anyone that having to watch people you care about in danger while you can’t do anything to help isn’t easy.  Then again,” Road gives Lacuna a sidelong glance and conspiratorial grin, “you’re not exactly helpless at a distance, are you?”

Can she talk about that?  Literally, can she talk about that?  The glyphs she’d used had been pre-saved files, not the software itself, so that might have happened to be okay after all, but actually saying where they came from and how they were generated?  Aside from the fact that the contract might stop her if she tries to speak, would actually admitting her guilt aloud trigger some form of retaliation?  She’d made a point of reading the fine print before signing, but in retrospect she wouldn’t put it past RevaTech to hide something in there that made you forget a line after reading it or forced your eyes to glance past without processing.

“Oh, uh, yeah.  I.  I guess not,” she stutters and looks away.  “You’ve, you know, kind of been here a while.  Should we be keeping the others waiting?”

“Just between you and me, I was stretching this out so they’d have to rest for a few extra minutes before pushing themselves again. But,” they say as they push off from the wagon and stretch, “you’ve got a point.  You mind hanging tight here for a few more minutes to help with the passenger transport on this end?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.  See you in a bit.”

What was she thinking,changing the subject like that?  If it’s going to be a problem then they deserve to know, the whole team.  And if there’s one person she’d be safe with it’s Road, right?

“Hey, one more thing…” she starts to say as she looks up.

But Road’s already gone.

Some ten minutes later the bark of the nearby tree begins to ripple and two horses made from the same shiny black material as the cleaning golems break through the surface followed by Bridgewood and an almost-human figure riding at the front of a carriage upon the rear portion of which half a dozen chrysalises are stacked.  The whole assemblage - horses, carriage, and riders - all unfolds as it exits from a space too narrow for it to have logically passed through in a way that hurts Lacuna’s head and twists her empty stomach to watch too closely.

Bridgewood brings the carriage to a stop just a few yards away from the tree where it sits dripping puddles of cold arctic rain onto the grass beneath it.  The storm on the other side must have washed away the blood that he was covered in when Lacuna last saw him on camera.  

Almost immediately the statues begin moving once more, this time to transfer the chrysalises to the awaiting wagons.  A moment of hesitation later, Lacuna steps forward to help the figure she recognizes from the video feeds as Dis!ma*s down to the ground.

“Please, let me help you.  You’re safe here,” she says as she takes his hand.  Or at least, she thinks that’s what she says.  She never actually got to practice speaking the language with anyone else before now.

There’s a moment of horrendous silence as Dis!ma*s’s feet touch the ground.  He makes one slow blink with horizontally closing eyelids and then doubles over.  Laughing.  He says something but it's fast enough and interrupted by gasps of laughter that Lacuna can’t follow.

“I’m sorry?” she says on reflex before remembering the language barrier. “I mean, I apologize.”  The latter sentence sends Dis!ma*s into a renewed fit of what Lacuna really hopes is amusement as the rainwater shakes off of him.

“Your pronunciation is so garbage it was half gibberish and half propositioning him,” Bridgewood says from the other side of the carriage.  He’s not literally laughing at her, but he may as well be with the face he’s making.  “And then you -”

“Okay, okay, I think I get it!” Lacuna’s voice cracks as her face grows hot with embarrassment and frustration.  She tries to remember gestures that she’d read up on for some culturally appropriate sign of contrition but draws a blank.

Recovering, Dis!ma*s stands up straight and speaks again, slow and loud this time.  “I apologize,” he starts and Lacuna immediately sees where she went wrong with the pronunciation but has no idea how to make her mouth form the right phoneme.  “You surprised me.  It has been a difficult day.  Thank you for trying.”

Or at least, the parts Lacuna can parse are something along those lines.

“He says getting hit on at the end of the worst couple days of his life was too absurd to deal with, but A for effort on the welcoming attempt,” Bridgewood offers by way of translation.

“Yeah I… got… that…” Lacuna replies, beginning to sharpen her voice in irritation then trailing off to a mumble, unable to look straight at him, as she remembers who she’s talking to.

She and Dis!ma*s stand there in silence, unsure of what to do with themselves while the statues finish unloading the carriage.  A sudden series of thumping sounds gets their attention and they turn around to see the black supply boxes have suddenly appeared in a pile on the ground next to Bridgewood.  He digs one in particular out of the pile, drags it to the side across the grass and flips the top of it open to reveal neatly-packed white towels.

“Hey, techie, if you would so kindly make yourself useful and dry the passengers off while I get the next batch,” Bridgewood says, already walking back to the carriage.  “I’ll not have anyone saying a guest in my house caught a cold.”

And just like that, without even giving her a chance to say yes or no to the order phrased like a request, he vaults back into the driver’s seat, takes the reins, and wheels the vehicle back around to pass through the tree once more.  The leaving is just as disconcerting to watch as the arrival.

The next couple of hours pass with Lacuna and Dis!ma*s drying off the rain-drenched chrysalises and working towels and winter coats under and between them for comfort and protection.  Lacuna tries to tell Dis!ma*s at first that he doesn’t need to help, but it seems that he’d rather be doing anything right now to keep his mind busy.  Lacuna can sympathize with that well enough.  The two of them mostly work together in silence with nodding and pointing.  Lacuna’s more confident in understanding his language than speaking it, but she still misses a lot of it and she’s terrified of opening her mouth again after that abysmal first impression.

The chrysalises themselves are both softer and smoother than she expected and, as inert as they appear to be, if she leaves a hand on one for long enough she can feel a pulse and a subtle expansion and contraction of breathing.  Amazing to think that there are people inside, no, that they are people.  People from a place where doing something like this to yourself is a standard way to make a commute pass by faster is normal.  People from a place that regularly and dramatically reshaping your body to a form that best suits you is not only accepted but expected.  People from a place she’d fantasized about going to off and on ever since she first heard about it.

And then she’ll suddenly remember that they’re people whose bare skin she’s technically touching and abruptly pull her hand back and be more ginger about the toweling off of the icy water.  At least until she starts daydreaming again twenty minutes later and repeats the whole process over again.

The two of them get a good pace going, finishing drying off and repositioning one set of passengers just as Bridgewood returns with the carriage for the statues to transfer the next set.  When Lacuna asks about it, she’s told the others are on the other side handling the unloading from boat to bridge point.  Apparently the security on the transit makes it a bad idea for anyone other than Bridgewood to make lots of rapid back and forth trips.  Thinking back to her own frightening trip this morning, she’s more than inclined to believe that claim.

Eventually though, Bridgewood returns with the carriage for a final time, now carrying Road, Glassheart, and Eris rather than further chrysalises.  All of them but Road are soaked head to toe from the rain on the other side of the bridge tree.  

Stepping away from drying off the last chrysalis and walking toward the carriage, it occurs to Lacuna that her limbs are shaking.  Why is she nervous about seeing them again?  She shouldn’t be nervous she - oh wait, when did she eat last?  Not since before leaving her apartment this morning.  That’s probably it.  Just when she thought she was getting better about accidentally skipping meals too.  It’s alright, she had a good excuse this time.  That excuse being that she was sitting around doing nothing in the safety of a mansion while watching everyone else throw themselves into danger to rescue one hundred twenty nine people.

“You need a ride?” Eris asks jovially, leaning over the side of the carriage.

The question jolts Lacuna’s attention back to her surroundings with a twinge of shame that she’d been staring off into space again instead of giving them a proper welcome.  She glances back at the now-full wagons where the statues are hitching themselves into pulling positions again and the cleaning golems have resumed their chittering places at the front.

She nods, mumbles a thanks, catches herself, and says a louder “That sounds good,” before climbing in the back.  Once aboard, she doesn’t so much sit down on the wet bench next to Eris as stumble into it, dizzy.  She must be hungrier than she’d realized.

Eris reaches into the pocket of her third orange coat of the day and pulls out an oblong foil-wrapped object that she holds out in front of Lacuna who takes it automatically.

“I pocketed a few extra for later out of one of the boxes earlier,” Eris says.  “Doesn’t taste like much of anything but it’s filling.  Honestly I ate more of them than I probably should have earlier.”

“Thanks,” Lacuna says as she unwraps the food bar to find what looks like nothing so much as an unusually firm rectangular block of tofu.  Feels like it too, as she bites into it and it slides down surprisingly easily, leaving behind the faintest taste of sugar and salt.

She looks back at Eris to tell her she was right about the lack of taste when she notices the bandages around her leg and peaking out from under the winter coat.  There’s a pink tinge to them in spots and a red rim around the hem of her shorts.  Lacuna averts her gaze, appetite lost.

Trying to find a middle ground between staring and obviously looking away, Lacuna finally turns her attention to everyone else around her.  Road’s jumped back off the wagon and is examining the chrysalises with Dis!ma*s while Bridgewood watches from the driver’s seat.  Glassheart is sitting across from her and Eris, wearing a composed expression under his now less-than-perfect makeup but visibly trying to suppress shivering.

“Would you… like a towel?” Lacuna asks, proffering the one she’d brought with her from the wagon.

“That will not,” Glassheart begins then changes direction, “go amiss.  Thank you.”

“Here, sorry if it’s damp already.”

“It is less so than I am.  It will do.”

Glassheart is still in the process of trying to squeeze the water out of his long hair when Road and Dis!ma*s climb back into the carriage, taking their seats on either side of him.  Just after, Bridgewood gives a flick of the reins and the horse golems spring into motion.  The two statue-drawn wagons follow close behind.

The ride back to Bridgewood Manor is hung with the intermittent silence of people that feel they should be talking but are too exhausted by a long day to say much.  It was before noon when Lacuna and Eris first walked up to the old elm tree on Emmett Street and now as the carriage and wagons pulled by beings of stone round the back of the old mansion into a sprawling garden overlooking a expansive hedge maze the sky is edging into dusk.  The subject of what Lacuna did with Eris’s phone almost comes up a couple of times along the way, but each time Road changes the topic for her.  She’s equal parts relieved to not have to explain that right now and stung by the obvious show of protecting her, or rather the implication that she can’t handle it herself.  It’s not an entirely wrong implication, but that just makes it worse, really.

“End of the line,” Bridgewood says, irritatingly chipper as he pulls the carriage to a stop and hops down.  “The staff will see to it from here that all of our guests are provided suitable accommodations for the night and until we can get them home.”

“That includes all of you, if you want it,” Road adds.  “It’s getting late, we’ve all had a long day, and there’s no shortage of spare rooms here.  Food too.”

Lacuna almost jumps at the offer of a proper meal and not having to walk all the way home.  And then she goes stiff, remembering the sight of the master of the house’s blood-spattered grin and whatever secrets that he turned off his camera to hide.  Out of the corner of her eye she catches Eris glancing at her.

“If it’s all the same to you, I already ate my fill on the ration bars and I’d prefer my own bed,” the larger woman says.  “Lacuna, you wanna come with?”

“Yeah, same.”

Bridgewood rolls his eyes and climbs back onto the carriage.  “Fine, you two stay seated, everyone else out.”

“I will not further impose on your hospitality either,” Glassheart says while Road and Dis!ma*s disembark.  “I can make my own arrangements for the night as I always do.”

“Nice try wizard boy,” Bridgwood says, “but I know an overchanneled mage when I see one.  You couldn’t even do a self-cleaning spell right now even with the Estate to draw from, much less conjure yourself a cloaked shelter in the middle of some random park.  Yes, I’m aware of your usual ‘arrangements for the night,’ now out.” 

His usual cool ruffled into chastened surprise, Glassheart obliges without further comment.

“Kids…” Lacuna just barely hears Bridgewood sigh.

“Before you go,” Road speaks up, “I want to say you all did great today.  I mean that.  I’ll admit things got dicier than expected there at the end, but the way we all pulled through just goes to show that we can take anything.”  They pause for a moment, looking at each of them in turn.  When their gaze falls on Lacuna, they give that same warm smile as ever and, for a moment, she feels like maybe she actually did do something worth contributing today. 

“Now,” they continue, “I wanted to do something a little more formal to celebrate our first successful quest -”

“Mission,” Bridgewood coughs.

“But I get the feeling that no one’s going to object right now if we put that off for another day.  In the meantime, you three take it easy for a few days to rest and recover while Sullivan and I reach out to some old friends about getting these people home.  You’ve all earned it and should be proud of yourselves.  We did a good thing today and I know I’m proud of this party and I look forward to our future adventures together.”

Not sure what else to do in response to that, Lacuna hesitantly starts clapping.  She makes it four claps before she realizes no one else is joining in, stops, and looks around with an apologetic grimace.

“Go team!” Eris whoops and pumps her fist, killing the impending awkward silence before it can settle.

“Go team,” Glassheart echoes more calmly with a nod.

“Go team it is then,” Road laughs.

“Idiots,” Bridgewood mutters as he rolls his eyes and flicks the reins to get the carriage moving.  It lacks his usual bite though.

 

*******

 

The walk back to their apartment complex from the elm tree is a long one, dipping in and out of Crossherd for shortcuts twice along the way, although not the longest that Lacuna’s made escorting an exhausted Eris.  Only, there’s less punch-drunk banter from Eris than usual this time to keep Lacuna’s mind off of the reality of why her friend’s so tired.  A joke or two about it being “a literal Hell of a first day on the job” what with all the fire and explosions and some bemused speculation on what sort of flawed translation charm kept changing captain Cabetha’s accent, but not much more than that.

It is well and truly night by the time the two of them ascend the stairwell of their building.  Neither of them break the heavy silence as they pass Lacuna’s floor on by up to Eris’s together.  Lacuna strains to keep from grunting as Eris leans on her more heavily than she had been for the last ten minutes - ever since she started limping - while she fishes out her keys and opens the door to her apartment.  It’s Lacuna who quietly flips the lightswitch as they step inside and then gently shuts and locks the door behind them.

It’s not the first time Lacuna’s helped her friend to bed.  That had been about three months after meeting her, and had thoroughly killed the crush she’d had on her at the time but thankfully been too scared to confess.  The fact that Eris took to calling her “sis” not long after had nailed said crush’s coffin shut tight.  But in all honesty, she prefers their relationship this way.

It is however the first time Lacuna’s seen what got her friend into this state for herself.  Sure, even that first time Eris had regaled her with the dramatic tale of the monster hunt that left her tired enough and badly cut enough to ask for help getting home (that one had been something called a “hodag”), but she’d always found her friend already some distance away from wherever the battle had taken place, even on the night when she took Eris to Doc’s instead of home.  And even on that worst night, sitting in the waiting room of the clinic they met at, the reality of what her best and only friend does for fun never truly sunk in until now.

At least going through the familiar motions of it all helps.  Glancing behind them as they cross through the neatly kept living room (far more clean and organized than hers) to check for any mud or blood to clean on her way out.  Checking the bedroom’s blackout curtains to be sure the morning sun won’t interrupt a well earned rest.  Half-dancing through the cumbersome maneuver as they turn around together at the edge of the bed.  Sitting down herself as she lowers Eris down next to her.  Reaching over and turning on the dim orange light of the lamp on the bedside table.

“You good?” Lacuna asks, the next step in the ritual.

“I’m…” Eris sighs, trailing off.

That’s not right.  She’s supposed to say “I’m good.”  Then Lacuna’s supposed to ask if she needs anything and she’ll respond with some outrageous, impossible request.  Then Lacuna will laugh and say she’ll see what she can do.  She’ll wait around to make sure Eris at least gets her boots off before getting into bed and then she’ll promise to be back in the morning, get up, close the bedroom door, clean up any footprints, then go back to her own apartment for the night.

That’s how this is supposed to go.  It’s supposed to be quiet and comforting for the both of them.  It’s not supposed to be this quiet.  This isn’t comforting for either of them.

Why isn’t she saying anything?  Why isn’t either of them?

“That’s the second time I’ve almost drowned,” Eris says.

This isn’t right.  It’s supposed to be Lacuna that doesn’t look at people when talking to them, not Eris.

“It was seven years ago, on my third time fighting that lake monster I’ve told you about.  The one that comes back to life every year.  I got cocky.  I’d killed it twice already after all, and the autogenesis was just starting to really kick in and bulk me up.  I felt damn near invincible.”  She shakes her head.  “I was a dumbass kid who couldn’t even drink legally for a few months yet.”

This isn’t right.  Eris isn’t the one whose voice shakes.

“When the thing retreated into the water I figured it was scared and I had it on the ropes.  So I dove in after it like an idiot, just like it wanted.  I won eventually, I mean, obviously, but only because it was enough of an idiot to toy with me instead of finishing me off.  And even then it was still dumb luck.  It… it let me go and brought me back down… three, four times?  Or was it five?  I lost… lost count.  Don’t even remember how I got away.  Found something sharp… at the bottom, I think.  It’s a blur.  Closest I ever came to… to d- to dying.”

This isn’t right.  Lacuna’s the one who stutters.

Eris breathes in, sharp and strained.  An elongated gasp attempting to be something else.  She barely sounds calmer after letting it out.

“Until today.  Truth is, I’d been on edge ever since Road mentioned a shipwreck in the briefing.  I tried to convince myself I wasn’t, but it was like, on some level I just knew it was going to happen again.  I know that’s just paranoia and trauma and hindsight talking, but…  It’s embarrassing.  I can handle pools and the beach just fine.  Hell, I even got over facing that slimy bastard at the lake after killing him a couple more times.  Started looking forward to paying him back on the regular, even.  But you get the conditions just right… deep water, unknown variables, high stakes, something lurking… and it just sends me… sends me right back down there.  I always brush it off.  Though.  That’s what I do.  Put my head down, power on through to the other side.  Maybe let myself go a bit, having fun in the vio- in the hunt, along the way to take my mind off it.  And then today happens and I can’t even be scared as I’m going down because I’m fucking hypnotized by the damn sky like the dumb beast everyone thinks I am!”

This isn’t right.  Eris isn’t the one who cries.  Eris is the strong one.

That isn’t right.  E isn’t…

Lacuna leans in closer, wrapping her arms around her friend.

“You’re not a dumb beast,” she whispers.  “You’re kind and funny and smart and gentle and laugh at my lame references and explain why romcoms are great actually and listen to me when I ramble and do volunteer work and get me to go out in public and show me how to do makeup even if neither of us ever actually bothers with it usually and your smarter than me and know like a hundred different trees and are quadlingual or something and are good with directions and… and… and…”

Eris puts her own arms around her friend.

Lacuna remembers what those hands did to the bloodsucker on the ship, flinches, then hugs her tighter.

“Shhh…. Shhh…” Eris whispers.  “Can’t have both of us crying.  Where would we be then?”

“Crying on your bed together like a couple of losers.”

“Well, that can’t be right, because, I don’t know about me, but you’re definitely not a loser.”

“If I’m not then you couldn’t possibly be.”

“It’d be pretty weird then if there were a couple of losers crying on my bed then, huh?”

“Yeah, it sure would be.”

This is right.  This is a comforting silence.

Even after being rained on, Eris still smells like the ocean, still has a salty feel to her shirt.  But she’s warm now.  Warm and alive.

The moment lasts until a full minute after Lacuna’s back gets sore from twisting around at an odd angle.  She loosens her grip and sits back up straight.  Straight as her usual slouch anyway.  Eris does the same, but without the slouch.

“That’s the second time you’ve saved me today,” Eris says.

“Please, it was nothing that dramatic.”

“You’re right, having a good heart to heart and telling me something I really needed to hear isn’t exactly in the same league as literally saving my life from drowning.”

“I didn’t really, I mean, Road was there.  They were the one who got you out.  You would have been fine without me.”

“You sent a spell through a phone, a quarter of the way around the world, and made an air bubble to get the water out of my lungs before Road even dove in.”

“It was only a couple of seconds difference.  You would have been…”  she trials off.  “You would have been, right?”

Eris sighs.  “Take the win sis.  You did something cool.  Something that I’m guessing has to do with your old project, right?  You don’t have to answer, I’m sure there’s some evil corporate magic keeping you from talking about it.”

Lacuna nods.  “Something like that, yeah.  I’m not sure if it’s actually stopping me from saying anything or not but…”

“But tonight’s not the night to find out.”

“Right.”

“I’ll be there for you when it is.”

“Thanks.”

Lacuna leans against her friend again.  A more comfortable position this time.  She’ll still be going back to her own bedroom before the night’s over, but for now… for now she’s fine with stretching this out a little bit longer.

 

*******

 

“E.”

“Yeah sis?”

“I’m sorry I broke your phone.”

“Heh, it’s fine.  I’ll make Sully buy me a new one.”

 

*******

 

“Sis.”

“Yeah E?”

“Santa Claus is real.”

“Yeah, I know.  I considered becoming an elf for a while.”

 

*******

 

“E?”

“Yeah sis?”

“Is it going to be like this every time?”

“No, this was just a rough start.  But we can keep the parts you like.”

 

*******

 

“Sis.”

“Yeah E?”

“You can crash here tonight if you want.”

“Thanks, but it’s not far.  I’ll be fine.”