Content Warnings

Self-loathing
Allergic reactions (kind of)
Gender dysphoria

Shaking, not even out of fear, but pure shock, I pull myself against the wall of the sewer. I’d want to sit down, if it weren’t disgusting in here.

It burns. The sun. It happened. It actually—

My hand is shaking too hard to assess the damage. My brain is too scattered to assess the pain. I can only stand here, so overcome and full of disbelief that I’m practically numb.

The others turn, and crowd around me at once. Alabastra practically leaps from the ladder. “Moodie!”, she says as she lands.

Faylie says, “Oh, no…” She starts fretting with her hands. “Moodie, I’m… I’m so, so sorry!”

And Tegan grips her hair in frustration, and lets out a pitiful little, “Fuck.”

For just a moment I don’t quite let myself acknowledge them at any level beyond surface. I just need… need a moment. I grip my wrist with my other hand to quell the trembling, and inspect again with a medic’s eye. The skin is a touch irritated, but not quite burned. It was only a very brief brush, after all. It’s already not even hurting anymore. It certainly wasn’t enough to turn me to ash; unless this is a quite extended death.

I look back to the rays of gold spilling into the sewer from the alley above. And tentatively, I try my other hand. A fluke, perhaps, or… or perhaps I just need to know just how bad it is. My hand illuminates under the sun, and it feels like a plunge into near-boiling water, unpleasant, nearly unbearable, but I could tolerate it in short bursts. Very short. I pull my hand away again after a few seconds, before I cause any lasting damage, practically hissing at the pain.

The curse waiting around the corner has finally come knocking. The fangs, the mirror, now this; who knows what else has changed that I haven’t even discovered yet. My time in the sunlight is over. Taken from me, by this damnable sickness. I’m… I’m an herbalist for Gods’ sakes, and now I can’t even—

I can’t—

Alabastra steps closer, running a hand down my arm. “Hey. I am… I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve this, Moodie. And it’s not your fault, and—”

My eyes lock with hers. A single breath beats out of my chest like a drum beat.

And then I start to laugh.

It’s absurd. It can’t be fucking happening, but it is, and… and I think I finally get the joke. So I laugh. A wild, manic, and hysterical laugh like a rabid hyena. I asked for this, didn’t I? When I wanted it to not make sense anymore? Here it is! I wanted nonsense, and I got it! The alchemist, without sunlight. The person finally trying to see themself, without a reflection. The human-hopeful, who can’t stop looking and acting more like a monster. A walking fucking punchline.

“Of fucking course“, I say through laughs that morph more into half-panicked breaths. “OF COURSE!” I scream into the tunnels, hearing my own terrible, too-deep voice echo back at me. “This may as well FUCKING HAPPEN!”

The others are staring at me concerned, heads slightly tilted.

I can’t stop now I’ve started. “Because I’m your fucking punching bag, right? The universe’s cruel Gods damned joke?!” I lay my head against the wall, seething with disbelieving rage at all of it. All of it!

The three look amongst each other, stunned and clearly not quite sure what to do.

And then out of the blue, Faylie yells up at the brickwork, “Y-yeah! Fuck you universe!” Her eyes are darting, unsure.

W-what? What is she…

Alabastra looks down at her, and shrugs. “Hey, yeah! What the hells is your problem, anyways?”, she exclaims to no-one in particular. “Leave my vamp alone!”

“You’re being a real jerk to one of my favorite people and it’s so not okay!”

They’re just… shouting at the ceiling…?

“A fuckin’ jerk to all of us! Fuck you!”

“Yeah, fuck you!”

The two are feeding off each other’s energy now. Alabastra starts throwing wild middle fingers up into the air. “Fuck you, you fuckin’ shitbag fuckin’ world!”

And despite how foolish it is, they’re working me back up. “F-fuck you!”, I yell at the ceiling.

Faylie screams, “Eat shit!”

Then she taps Tegan on the arm and the knight joins in, “Uh, yeah, fuck you!”

And then we’re just a mess of voices, screaming in a sewer.

“How ’bout you get fucked?”

“I am sick of being your fucking punchline!”

“All the shit I went through?! For fucking what?!”

“Fuck you, fuck you, fucking fuck you!”

“Fuck you universe, and fuck you Anily, too!”

“It isn’t fuckin’ fair!”

“Fuck you!”

“And you know it! So fuck you!”

“Get fucked universe!”

“You can’t hurt us anymore!”

“Fucking go fuck yourself!”

“You lose!”, Alabastra finishes with a swipe of her hand. “Because we’re STILL FUCKING HERE!”

We all look to one another a moment. And the tension is gone. I start laughing again. Not out of hysteria, but simply because it really is funny. Just four idiots in a sewer, yelling their futile lamentations at the world. Ridiculous. Impotent. I start to choke up, and I’m not the only one. They pile around me and pull me into an awkward and desperately needed embrace. I knock my head against Alabastra’s in the huddle, and I hear her chuckling with me.

And it’s so much warmer here. They pull me tighter and somehow I’m glad for it. For a moment in that little yelling match with fate I started to drift away entirely, but I’m on solid ground again.

I think all this time, I just needed to hear someone else say it—that it was unfair. That the world really has been cruel to me, it wasn’t entirely in my own head, I have been unlucky. They can see it too. I don’t feel nearly so alone in that crushing weight anymore.

To think, I ever wanted them anywhere but here. Who else’s solution to crisis would be to shout it away? And I think at some point in that shouting it stopped even being about me, judging by the way we’d all be shaking if we weren’t held so flush to one another. Gods, we must look insane.

Finally, Alabastra pulls away, almost joyously dumbfounded. “Think it heard us?”

“The universe…? It better have. I’m not sure how much louder I could caterwaul.”

“We’ll getcha a bullhorn”, she says through her own chuckling voice, standing straight again.

Cold and inevitable resignment sends me back against the wall, and I turn a lazy head to the sunlight once again. “That’s it, then. Nocturnal by force, now…”

In truth, now that the screaming is done, there’s almost a relief to it. All this time the thing I was dreading most has finally happened, and… and I’m still here. The worst has come to pass and it didn’t kill me. The anticipation is over, the dreading anxiety that I can finally let go of and actually find a solution now that the problem is so directly out ahead of me. Not to say I’m glad it happened, but that if it was always going to go this way, at least I’m on the other side of it. No more waiting, only doing.

Though, considering I seemed to have skipped over a few other side effects to get this one, I may have left some things untested. If so—Gods I’m going to miss garlic.

Faylie lilts, “I mean, is it really so different…?”

Tegan flicks her harmlessly in the head for that comment, but she isn’t wrong. “No”, I say. “… But it might have been.”

“Might still be“, says Alabastra. “Alright, sure, it’s a complication—but it’s nothin’ we can’t handle. I mean, at the end of the day it’s basically just a real bad allergy. Nothing wrong with that.”

My gaze drifts up the ladder, failing at this angle to catch any sight of the blue sky beyond. “And how am I getting out of this sewer?”

Alabastra darts her head toward the ladder. “Stardust?” And the two climb up and away into the sunlight.

As we’re standing in the damp dark, Faylie sidles up next to me. She doesn’t say anything, but bumps into me softly with her shoulder, to remind me she’s there. I bite my cheek to tamper the smile. I feel like if I start thinking again, the sniveling will follow. So I just wait.

Before us, the rays of gold that had been half-blocked by the shadow of the two is now entirely occluded. “Alright, c’mon up, Moods!”, shouts Alabastra.

I raise a brow, but step into the now-darkened space of the ladder. Looking up I see a veritable tarp of gabardine, pulled taut over the sewer entrance—Alabastra’s trench coat. That does get a laugh. No point in staring agog at the bizarre scene. I pull myself up the exit under the makeshift shade. When I reach the top and stare ahead into the street-level, it is a damnably sunny-sky day. What I wouldn’t do for a rain cloud.

Waist-down still in the hole, I look to Alabastra and Tegan, who hold the coat above me. “Well, we’ve handled the first five feet. Now what about the rest of the trip?”

Alabastra chortles. “Always complaining…” Without her coat on, her scarf bundles loosely around her neck, and the white tanktop stained with grime more obviously hugs her form, and— ugh, stop staring.

To my right Tegan walks closer, draping the coat overtop my head, and Alabastra suddenly pulls me up to the rest of my feet, and then tight to her. She shuffles around, stretching her arm back through the opposite sleeve of the jacket, leaving me enveloped in her clothing like a baby bird under its mother’s wing.

“There”, the rogue says. She holds the rest of the jacket over me like a blanket, arm rested atop my head, and somehow this seems to be sufficient.

Underneath this spacious half of Alabastra Camin’s trench coat, I feel easily twice as preposterous as I look. “Surely you’re joking.”

“What’s the matter?” She bends down, sniffing. “It’s the stink, isn’t it?”

She smells like rosewater and sweat. And I don’t dare say that I honestly don’t hate it. “It’s demeaning.”

Behind us, Faylie clambers up to join. “It’s temporary! I have an idea!” Tegan scrambles to replace the manhole cover, and Faylie skips ahead. “C’mon!”

* * *

Though the streets of Grennard are no less ugly and suffused with trash than they were a week ago, I’m starting to believe I’ve looked too harshly on Grennardites for that. After all, that’s hardly their fault; they live in a world made to depress their lot in life. This city would sooner send police down here than a street sweeper, and would call it ‘cleaning’ all the same. Nobody wants that for themselves, to be squeezed and pressed and pushed to the edge of society. The people here are, really, just like anyone else.

That does, unfortunately, include the rudeness. Heads turn again and again to the strange sight of myself, sequestered inside Alabastra’s coat like a dirty secret.

“People are staring”, I intone.

“Let ’em stare. You need this, no matter their gawking.” And under her breath, quiet enough that I only hear because I am so close in this moment, she says, “I know the feelin’.”

And that implication strikes deeper than I expected. She would be familiar, yes. Those early days at the Institute drew more attention here way than I’ve almost ever seen anyone draw. Nowadays, she, ah- well, not to say she wasn’t always gorgeous, but with the aid of the potion, now, she—

Ugh. The point being, she is used to standing out. Even now, her height makes a beacon out of her in any crowd. If I’m to take lessons from anyone on how to cope with the ogling of others, she’d have a great deal of experience. Though, not to say that this is an unfamiliar feeling for me, either. I’ve always been cast as eerie, off-putting, aloof at best and sinister at worst; that would only intensify, the further I step outside the norm. I’m not sure how much more attention I could bear to bring.

But then, that’s why I’d look to her.

This close, I can feel Alabastra’s heartbeat. I hadn’t ever noticed just how slow my own heart was until much later in life, when I’d truly heard another’s. My mother’s, then Lainey’s, and now hers. She is as erratic and frantic within as she is without; entirely unlike me in that regard.

That deathly slow heartbeat used to be one of my only overt signs of my vampirism. Now it seems I continue to pile downside on downside. Without any sign of benefit, either. At least, I think without benefit. Would I even notice without experimentation? Should I try walking up a wall sometime?

It’s still sinking in, bit-by-bit, that this is my new reality. Regardless of my personal distaste for daylight, I still have need of it. I’ll require a way around the sun when it comes time to garden again. Hmm. I don’t suppose I might concoct something that would help with that?

In fact, I pull out my notepad, jotting awkwardly as I walk in-time with Alabastra under her trench coat cover:

In need of mitigation of sun damage. Obvious first thought—sun creams, though will likely need something much, much stronger than what would be sold at a general store. Likely cannot handle any amount of absorption—must be refracted. Ingredients with high zinc content? Bolster with rashvine?

My foot catches a crack in the ground. I feel myself spill over in a trip, before Alabastra catches me. The edge of my arm slides out of her coat and I wince against the biting pain, before she pulls me back tight to her.

“Careful!”, she says.

And now she’s holding me rather tightly. “You can let go now”, I murmur into her shirt. It must a sunny, warm day, if it’s causing me to feel so flush.

“Oh. Yeah.” She releases me, coughing into one hand.

Better I save the brainstorming for later, then. I put the notepad away.

We walk a while longer, bearing the brunt of the public’s judgmental stares, until we’re firmly back in The Reds once more. Faylie cuts a path northward towards the closest skyway station, but then diverts down a side street.

She stops in front of one particular building, and says, “Okie-doke! We’re here.” And I have to wonder if she’s joking for a moment, because she’s led us to a clothing store. ‘Sandriff’s Boutique‘. Hmm. Mannequins through the glass wave back at us in still-life facsimile, dressed in outfits of beige and black, with long coats and short dresses.

Alabastra clicks her tongue. “Good call, Firefly!”

“And we’re here because…?”, I venture.

“Ain’t it obvious? We’re dressin’ you up.” She lets the ludicrous statement hang only a moment before clarifying, “To cover the sun, of course.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’ve always despised clothes shopping; just a miserable reminder of the fact that I inhabit a body at all. Drab adornments to hide away my form from the ceaseless eyes of the world.

And there, I catch the thought out of the air, something that would have passed me by in an instant before, never to be thought of again, or internalized. Of course I’ve always hated this. It took a contrast to see that, a contrast I buried under mountains of guilt, but with it dug out of the earth once more, it seems so obvious now.

I think I’m starting to see what Lainey must have seen in me—like some desperate animal, wounded and bleeding. I’ve been a mess longer than I knew.

As far as the present goes—despite my initial panic, it’s not a terrible idea. It can’t hurt to try covering myself tip-to-toe, shade myself from the sun. So long as they’re not expecting anything too ridiculous or out of my comfort zone.

We step through the doors, and the cold interior is stark in its drop from the sunny day outside. I finally pull myself free from the rogue’s coat. Rows of clothing racks and shelves packed with boxes line the inside of this prim department store in a sea of color and fabric. The shop is frigid and clinical, and a single bored clerk idly watches us enter, lazily reading from a catalogue. A few other customers sift through the selection, but it looks to be a slow day.

Alabastra dons her leader’s mantle, directing hushed instructions to her girlfriends. “Glowbug, go distract the clerk. Be ready to throw on the waterworks, in case she spots us. Stardust, keep your eyes peeled for plainclothes.”

She’s talking like she intends to turn this into a heist. Perhaps she’s just paranoid. The two nod and fan out over the store to see to their unexpected roles. The rogue grabs me by the hand, an action that certainly does not leave me dumbstruck by the sudden contact, and leads me through the store.

And very quickly it is apparent which side of the gender-segregated establishment she is leading me to. “Wh-where are we going?”

“Where’s it look like we’re goin’? What, you thought I’d put you in a men’s suit and call it a day?”

“Why?!”

With a deep breath, the rogue turns to look at me. She stares for some time, head tilted down, peeling me apart. “Okay, I’m gonna ask you a question, and I need you to be completely, entirely honest with me.” She draws hers up, hands bound in loose fists in the air. “Do you… want me to lie to you here? Do you need that for this to work?”

Gods we’re so far gone she’s asking me to be complicit in my own cognitive dissonance? And the worst part is— Fucking dammit. “Yes”, I say, quick and sharp, “I-I do.” I squeeze my eyes closed. This is unfathomably foolish.

And when I look again she’s laughing, and puts an overdramatic hand to her forehead. “Oh, oh gee I— gosh Moodie, I didn’t notice that’s where we were going! I guess I just got lost.” I’m surprised she can talk at all, with her tongue so firmly in-cheek. She smacks the top of her head facetiously. “In fact, that’s our bad! This store doesn’t even have a men’s section looks like, I— ah, gee. Oh well, you know, we’re already here! Might as well… et cetera.”

Untenable. Absurd. And entirely necessary if we’re to do this without me wanting to tear my skin off. “Just…”, I say, “Something neutral, at least? Leave me some amount of plausible deniability?”

She at least has the decency to try to not look smug. “Sure thing.”

We arrive at a rack of tops, and immediately I feel woefully incompetent for this. With Lainey, I never did have to do my own shopping. “I’m not sure what to…”, I mutter, drifting, eyes landing between lines of sequins and laces and silks.

Alabastra leans lightly against the clothes rack. “Need some help?” I’m still loathe to admit it—another behavior I’ll need to pry from myself. I nod. “I’ll pick you out some stuff.” And she backs up a touch, sizing me with a glance. Then she starts rifling through the clothes on offer. She drapes one button-down over her arm, then another—and another, and several more—she doesn’t expect me to try all of those on, does she?

She darts to a side section, and grabs a few pairs of leather gloves. I suppose I did leave mine back home. Then we come to a wall hosting rows of hanging hats. “Alright, pick one to keep the sun out. One of these ones, pro’ly”, she starts to point a few out.

“Yes, I am aware of the basic conceit of the endeavor.” I roll my eyes and appraise—too small, too unwieldy, too obvious, too masculine… The wall of options starts to look more like cannons poking from a broadside, waiting to fire on me for my indecision. Finally I just pick one that’s least objectionable—a wide-brimmed black hat of felt that tilts along its edge as I try it on. It’ll keep the sun out, at least. Though, it is almost a shame, having to hide the new hair so soon.

Alabastra smiles. “That’ll work! C’mon.” She leads me to the dressing rooms, and practically shoves me inside. “Pick out which one ya like best! Lemme know when you’re done.”

The booth is a cramped little corner with a single bench built into the wall and a full length mirror. Gods dammit. The clothes she piled into my hand float helplessly in the air where my arm should be. “And how am I going to do that?” I open the door and gesture with an angry open palm to the empty sliver of silver.

She taps one finger to her nose with a guilty lip snarl. “Right…” Then she shrugs. “I mean, I can be your mirror…”

I slam the door in her face. Inveterate flirt. Then I realize how my little outburst could be read. “No… no thank you”, I mumble into the air.

I’ll just go off which one feels the least irritating to wear, I suppose. That it fits should matter most of all.

To my surprise as I work through the fitting, it’s not so bad as I’d have assumed. Likely an easy answer as to why. Gods, have I always been so transparent? Lainey certainly saw through me, at least. And it’s hard not to keep coming back to her, again and again, in my thoughts. Especially now; I’m feeling outright nostalgic. Those stolen nights in her hidden trove of clothes, like two stage actors donning costumes, but to feel more like themselves instead of someone else. Looking back, it seems so obvious that’s why we were doing it. It was never just a hobby for her, and, not to say it would be wrong or immoral if it was for me, but—

But I’m getting tired of lying to myself. I needed that outlet, too. A ‘hobby‘—a lifeline is more like. I was drowning then, every bit as I’ve been drowning now; only back then, I didn’t have the vile impulse to put the lifeline around my neck instead. I’ve been at rock bottom for so long; now it’s like I’ve broken through that floor, and I’m terrified at how much I want what I’ve found.

The first top doesn’t fit very well, and peach isn’t really my color, anyways. As I pick up the next I realize the commonality—all still in a similar style to what I’d normally wear anyways, just a little more daring, feminine, with a personality to them that isn’t there in the sad drab garments that stock my drawers. I appreciate that she’s eased me in, but it’s still far more daunting wearing a blouse in public than a dress in private.

Before long I’ve tried them all, and pick out a pair of gloves, too. I open the door to an awaiting Alabastra, who lights up like she hasn’t seen me a million times before. “This one will do”, I say. I’m wearing a black silk button down with a bit of lace around the high-collar. Best as much of me is covered as possible, after all. That was ostensibly the point of this venture.

She’s smiling wildly, almost manic, and claps her hands slowly. “And you said you weren’t an artist.”

“Shut up…”

Her hand sticks out to her hip, as she appraises me a little longer. Then she flicks her finger to indicate back into the booth. “Alright. Change back into your old shirt.”

“Couldn’t I just walk out with it? Pay for it at the till?”

The rogue’s eyes roll. “Well the thing is Moodie, it’s my treat.” I’m… not sure what she’s getting at? “Just go with it, please?”

At least she said please. I turn and re-enter the changing booth, switching back to the shirt that I only now realize really is absolutely filthy. Wait, how do the three of them always manage to stay relatively spotless? Perhaps I’ll ask them later. The door swings wide for Alabastra again, and before I can step out, she steps in. She closes the stall behind, leaving us both in the small cramped room.

Awkwardly for her height, she reaches down for the blouse I’d picked out, and starts to fold it this way and that. “Okay. Lift up your shirt.”

“W-what?!”

“Unbutton your trousers, too. You’re gonna wrap the blouse around your hips, like this—” She makes a stuffing motion with her hands along her belt line.

I wave my hands out in front of me. “What are you talking about?!”

Her eyes roll, like I’m being the ridiculous one. “What? I said it’s my treat!” She wiggles the fingers on one hand. “And I’m paying with the five-finger discount!”

How does she manage to catch me off-guard every time? Not that I’d ever have doubted that shoplifting was their modus operandi, but that she’s entirely insistent that I partake in this is absurd. “Alabastra, this is hardly necessary.”

She shrugs, frustrated. “Of course it is. We’re not exactly flush with cash right now, and I heard you back in Stilton—you’re not doin’ so hot either. Put your pride down and think, would ya? These people aren’t gonna miss a few clothes, and you need ’em.” She stuffs her hands into her coat pockets, and leans against the door. Her smile is strangely sweet. “Plus, if you’re rolling with us, you take us warts n’ all, Moodie. This is how we do things.”

Pushover. “Gods, fine.” I motion for the blonde to turn around, then take the garment and maneuver it around my pants line.

“If you’re doin’ it right it should just look like you have a fat ass.”

“Alabastra.” Keeping it as smooth as possible, I tie the sleeves together, and readjust. This is absolutely preposterous. Not to doubt the expert’s methods, but… “Why are we not just putting these things in our pockets?”

Rolling back around to face me, she says, “Because they look at your pockets. They don’t expect you to make a fool out of yourself—now roll up your sleeves.” No point in arguing anymore—I’m already in the depths of absurdity. She takes the gloves and ties them around my forearms, then tugs the sleeves back down again.

“And the hat?”

“Oh, we are payin’ for that. Less suspicious if you buy somethin‘, and it’s the hardest to smuggle, so…” She shrugs, and pushes out the door.

It truly shouldn’t surprise me, yet it does. I think it’s the pettiness of this that has me caught off-guard, the copper-keeping. “You know, I know you’re a thief and everything, but I never took you for quite so much a cheapskate.”

I meant it in jest, but to my shame she turns with a genuine edge to her eyes. “It’s only bein’ a cheapskate if you got a choice. I’m a survivor.” Then she relaxes, taking the temperature down before I have to. “But… you didn’t mean it like that. I know. Didn’t mean to jump down your throat.”

“It’s fine. And, no, I-I didn’t mean it that way, for the record.” Now I want to crawl into a hole all over again. The scratchy, sweat-stained fabric of the shirt I’m already growing to resent isn’t helping.

“You didn’t do anything like this, when you were on the streets?”

My head shakes. “No.” I was never quite a regular thief, except in absolute emergencies. It… it would have been worse, if I had been.

She turns, and leads us back to the till. I remind myself over and over in my head to act casual and natural and not strange or suspicious at all.

When we get there, Faylie is mid-story to the exceptionally bored and bug-eyed clerk. “And then Polli swoops in on a big rope and she kicks the Lord Duke across the face, and because of her lucky rabbit’s foot it breaks through his defense spell, and—”

The clerk meets our eyes and lights up at an escape from her situation. “Oh, are you ready to check out?”

We pay for the hat, and the whole time I feel eyes all over me. Judged for the selection, and nervous for the theft. Normal and casual, dammit! Just when I’m ready to shake out of myself, we finish up, and swiftly make for the exit. When we cross the door threshold I half-expect a legion of cops to descend upon us and finally make good on our luck officially running out, but nothing of the sort happens. That was shockingly simple.

The exterior is thankfully shaded, and Alabastra leads us around the corner of the building into an alley that’s likewise block from the sun at this early hour of the day. I pull to the side of the building and clutch my chest, not realizing how hard my heart was beating until now.

“We’re really putting you through the ropes, huh?”, Alabastra says, leaning against the wall.

I glower.

She turns, motioning Tegan to do the same. “G’on get changed, we’ll keep the eyes off ya.” Faylie follows, though mostly for privacy’s sake I imagine. With all their backs to me I feel marginally less ridiculous, swiftly as I can peeling the old shirt off me again and officially donning the new. Gloves to follow, and the hat placed more comfortably atop my head; I am feeling relatively shaded, though it won’t entirely help if I catch the sun on my face at an unfortunate angle.

“Alright, I am finished, though I likely look ridiculous.”

The three behold me—and immediately Tegan looks like she swallowed a bug. She turns and starts to march down the alley, grabbing the sides of her head, letting out a whistle like an engine with her tail hitting either wall as she walks.

“Did I offend her, somehow?”

Alabastra smiles at her panicking girlfriend pacing down the side-street. “No, you most certainly did not. Just give her a second.” For a moment, she appraises me like a buffet. “And for the record, you look incredible. Like a million bucks.”

Faylie adds, “Like the cutest vamp around!”

I shrink. “You don’t have to flatter me…”

Crossing her arms, Alabastra retorts, “And you don’t have to pretend not to like it!” I pull the hat lower over my eyes.

“Ooo, one more thing!”, announces Faylie, and she produces card bearing a woman in a robe, surrounded by nine coins in a garden. “LAUTUS“, she enchants, and the coins flip from the card in yellowish magic, there’s the audible sound of metal clinks and clanks hitting surfaces, and when I look down at myself, I’m positively spotless, without any of the grime or muck of our venture. She and Alabastra are much the same. I suppose that answers that. The lack of dirt or sweat on my skin is a welcome change, and it feels genuinely stellar after what we just went through.

“Y’know, some folk might call that a waste, Bug. Not me, mind”, says Alabastra. Then she turns back to me. “And finally, the finishing touch.” And like a stage performer, she unfurls the side of her coat, and produces what looks to be a large piece of dark cloth folded around itself around a central handle of wood. A black, lace-y parasol, that she unfurls the arms of with a swift jerk along the pulley. She twirls the umbrella around her shoulder, before handing it off to me.

I take the parasol with a resigned lax to my shoulders, then look her up and down. “How… did you fit that whole thing in your coat?”

Beside us, Tegan returns to the fold, as her taller girlfriend says, “Sorry, Moods, that’s the advanced course. Gotta pay for that one.”

“Well, we did just establish that I don’t exactly have much in the way of money to pay with…”

Tegan starts coughing, practically hacking up a lung.

I turn to her. “Seriously, what is the matter?”

She sputters, “Uh, ju— I just, uh… guh— um. Good. It’s good, it’s a good. Yeah.” I’m not sure I’ll ever quite understand the knight, if I’m entirely honest. And by that I mean audibly.

Still, the lack of sunlight now from the new additions and the parasol are leaving me far less pessimistic about the rest of the day. It could still very well be our last, of course, but at least if it is a doomed undertaking, I’ll not have fallen to the sun before reaching the end.

The worst has already occurred, I may as well tempt fate. “Any more distractions?”

CAW, cries a bird from above.

Of course. And I was having such a nice morning, too. “Ah, fantastic. Is your bird here to mock me for no longer standing in the sun, then?”

Paella flits down onto Alabastra’s shoulder. She scratches the bird’s black feathers a moment before responding, “First of all—she’s not my bird. And second of all—she’s not cruel, Moodie!” Then she looks a moment longer at the raven, and snaps her fingers. “Oh! That reminds me! Since we’re all ‘open book’ now we should probably tell you about—”

I hold up a hand to stop. “The last thing I want to have to learn about is your bird, Alabastra.”

“Not—”

“Yes, I know, not your bird.” I huff. “To be quite honest, it’s either a shocking revelation, in which case I think I’ve had more than enough of those for the time being, or more likely it’s highly unimportant, in which case I do not need the distraction.” In all matters but this, I’d prefer they not dance around information any longer—but I truly, deeply do not care about the corvid.

She puts a hand to her hip. “You… sure?”

My eyes roll. “Will it be important when facing Lyla Serrone?”

“Well, we’re goin’ underground, so probably not, no—”

“Then save it for tomorrow.”

Alabastra and the others confer with their eyes, coming to a mutual shrug. “Fuck it then, it’s funnier this way.” For once, I am glad to be on the outs of a joke. Then she visibly gets an idea. “That bein’ said, I do want you to apologize to her. You were rude as all get out the other day, and after she saved your life at the hotel, no less!”

“You’re… you’re not serious…”, I intone. She narrows her eyes. She’s serious. A lump forms in my throat. “Ugh. This is a tartarus…”

“Moodie.”

“A true and ungodsly farce. Torture incarnate. Of all the confessions you have extracted, this would by far be the most degrading, Alabastra. Shameful, even! Would you have me dragged through the muck, next? Build a temple to my follies, why don’t you?”

Faylie cuts in, “So dramatic…!”

They’re all staring at me. Complete. And utter. Pushover. “Fine!” I look to the corvid. It twitches its ungainly neck. “I… ugh. I… apologize… for my rudeness, Paella—”

CAW.

“Oh, I will pluck you like a Gods damned game hen!”

The bird issues a few more cries in my direction, before furiously flapping its tarred wings into the sky.

Alabastra tsk-tsks, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “After this is over, we’re gonna have to build up some teamwork between the two of you. Maybe some training exercises.”

I reposition the parasol over my shoulder, and walk into the street, heading the pack toward our next destination. And I deadpan as I go, “Well, I hope you’re not expecting we trustfall.”

Recommended polycule bonding activities:

- Scream in a sewer
- Shoplifting

Thank you so much for reading. I'd say "this one is one of my favorites", but that pretty much becomes true for damn near every chapter in the third act here, so it would start to get redundant.

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Next update is (1-40) arcana; on Monday, October 28th.