Once LoVelly was out he was out, Mez quickly discovered. She’d had her suspicions when she realized he must have slept through her getting up in the barn. She didn’t actually remember doing it, only laying down and trying to find a comfortable position but the space had been small and they’d been so closely tucked together that she must have shuffled or bumped him. Either way, he was a deep sleeper when he was exhausted. She had watched his eyelids droop closed several times on their ride back from the library.


    He slept the rest of the driev away and she left him to it. She’d tried at first to lay down and close her eyes too but no matter what she did, no matter how comfortable she got, the soft dreaminess of sleep never came. She was plagued by the memories of the farmhouse at first, afraid that if she closed her eyes and drifted off that she would accidentally relinquish control to the monster again. There was no telling how much damage it could inflict if it took control and she shuddered at the thought.


    At one point LoVelly rolled over toward her, resituating, and she thought he might wake up but he stayed blissfully asleep. He didn’t snore but now she could hear his gentle breaths puffing against the pillow beside her. She tried to focus on those little breaths, tried to let the rhythm of it lull her into a slumber. She realized after some time that in her focus on his breath, she herself had stopped breathing.


    It felt strange to be so still. At first her mind tried to force urgency upon her but as she laid and did not draw a breath, nothing changed. Her lungs did not ache, her body didn’t scream for air or send alarms to the brain that something was wrong. She was like a statue lying in the bed beside her companion, motionless and cold.


    It didn’t feel bad to lie there per se, she’d been telling the truth when she’d told LoVelly that she wanted to lay down. It was just that she was expecting the sweet release of sleep or of dreams but it never came. She was starting to think that much like breathing, sleep was no longer a requirement for her body.


    LoVelly did not stir when she got up, nor when she pulled the chair out at the small desk beneath the window. Her note still sat there untouched where she’d left it for him. She settled into the seat and flipped the page over, picking up the pen. She tapped it against the page a few times, attempting to organize the chaos that her thoughts had been in recent driev. She wasn’t even sure what her goal was but she thought maybe being able to see the words on the page would help her put the pieces together.


    She started by simply writing ‘LoVelly’ in one corner of the page. Since she’d just spent a couple of lof digging up what she could about convergence points and what they might have to do with him, she figured she might as well start there. She wrote ‘no memory’, ‘can’t read’, and ‘possible glamour’ to start with. She recalled then that LoVelly knew at least some Lelistik in addition to Yoshkish and Hecten, which…did not help at all to narrow down where he might have come from. She wrote it down anyway. She added convergence points and underlined it. LoVelly was using natural ley lines to navigate using his fen, which ultimately led them to the ruins of what she was almost certain was Wulphera. She’d seen that picture in one of the books and while, of course, it was hard to tell from ruins, she was so sure that that was where LoVelly had taken them.


    That then brought up the context of the picture itself. She wrote ‘kenna seltzaka’ and drew a circle around it. The figure that had been backlit in that image, taken decadi ago, was supposedly the mage that had been called across the cosmos to Dhelra during the second Great War to destroy the Vott. According to the information accompanying the image, the Wulphera convergence point was where the kenna seltzaka had originally come through from their world. They too had used the planets natural energy wells and ley lines to navigate. Mezalie found it interesting LoVelly had taken them there, to that convergence point, of all places.


    Opposite of all that she wrote her own name and then between the two of them she wrote in ‘vasdaat fensa’. Something told her, despite the very spotty information she had, that LoVelly had something to do with the strange mage that had come to their world so long ago. When she’d turned the page to the photo she’d had the strangest sensation, something that told her to stop, a feeling of familiarity she couldn’t shake. She thought somehow she recognized the grainy, shadowed figure in the photo, which was impossible.


    If LoVelly had something to do with that then maybe the thing that linked the two of them together was the awful thing lurking within her. The Vott had been summoned to their world through a gross misuse of fen and then the mage had been led there in response.


    That seemed like…something?


    But a lot of it, most of it really, was conjecture. She sighed and laid the pen down for a moment, rubbing her hands over her face and then back over the top of her head and through her hair. She realized how tangled it felt already and she wished again that they hadn’t lost LoVelly’s bag, comb included. She busied herself running her fingers through it and working out the knots section by section as best she could with her fingers. She thought about what she knew about her own situation. She’d been avoiding it for long enough, even feeling a little bit guilty about it.


    She still didn’t know what, if any, kind of selection process there had been in attacking her Pod. There were other people too, they’d discovered, being held prisoner in temples. To what ends? She still wasn’t sure. Was it random? Was their plan simply to kill as many as it took to find a…a vessel? Is that what she was now? A vessel for some kind of horrific, cosmic, thing?


    She took a deep breath trying to prevent the spiral from going any further but like before there was no relief, only a strange sensation in her chest as the air moved through her. She paused her detangling and picked up the pen and tried to jot down the relevant information; ‘dead’, ‘vessel’, ‘Grand Wizard Teramyn’.


    She vividly remembered the man’s face from those final moments aboard the TVE. She remembered it from the photo in the paper. Somehow that man was responsible for this, for the trauma that she’d been through. He was also very clearly behind, or heavily involved in, the government upheaval taking place across the mountains. She needed to find out more about that man.


    Finally, with no small amount of dread, she wrote hunger in small letters. The creature had shown on several occasions that its hunger was ravenous. It could eat and eat and eat. She didn’t think it would ever stop if she allowed it. It brought her some comfort that she seemed to have some control over the monster’s ability to emerge. She thought maybe it was because it was her body first but again, there was no evidence to back that theory up. She scribbled a tangle of lines at the bottom of the page, frustrated that she had spent all that time researching and still could only guess at things. She turned in her seat, looking back at LoVelly’s sleeping form.


    “Hey-” barely a hiss came out on her lack of breath. She took a deep breath and tried again. “LoVelly.” She said it louder but still not quite at talking volume. “LoVelly.” She tried one last time in a normal voice and still not so much as a twitch or any indication that he’d heard her. She thought she might need to be wary of that in the future. For now though she thought that perhaps trying a new angle couldn’t hurt. She slipped her boots back on, a little bit less concerned about the noise she made now and snuck out of the room.


    She wandered back out onto the street where buildings cast long shadows under the light of Dhelarly and its rings, slowly trekking toward the loren horizon on it’s luel-long transit. Ahraan had already disappeared for the driev, taking its brighter, more direct light with it and leaving everything that wasn’t in shadow in a bluish-purple haze. The lamps were already lit outside and Mez found herself certainly not alone on the streets. In fact, as she walked down the way she found herself behind a somewhat rowdy group of friends that she had a suspicion were probably headed where she was headed.


    She followed them for a block, keeping a respectful distance both to not be weird about it and partly because the group tended to weave and wobble about as they went. Another corner turned and another block passed and she was about to give up, thinking that the group was on their way home instead of out, when she finally spied the sign. Her unwitting guides must have noticed it just as she did and a cheer rang out between them. They quickly filed into the pub, disappearing through the doorway while Mez instead ducked down an alley on the street before. It was much darker in the shadow of both buildings, effectively hiding her as she paused to take stock of herself.


    First of all: remember to breathe.


    She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before settling into something that seemed like a normal rhythm. She felt like her body, her mind, should remember how to do these things on their own. It always had before, without complaint even, but now it seemed that the responsibility was on her alone to fake it for the comfort of others.


    Secondly, what was her story? She knew that they needed to be discreet. There was no telling who they could trust and who might feed them right back into the jaws of the thing that had chewed them up more than once already. She was in no hurry to face another situation like they had in the temples. The man at the inn had drawn his own conclusions and she supposed others might too and it didn’t hurt to run with those. A half truth was better than a whole lie anyway; one less thing to keep track of.


    She slapped her hands against her sides a couple times in an attempt to hype herself up. She was going to act normal and have easy conversations with people. She was going to see what she could find out that way; she’d always had better luck with people anyway. She backtracked out of the alley and made her way to the door of the pub and pulled the handle so there was no turning back now.


    Nobody even looked when she slipped in, not that they could have heard the door over the music and the noise. There was a Band playing something smooth on a tiny stage tucked into the back of the room. The space between her and them was packed with people, drinks in hand and moods elevated. Curiously, she noticed they were almost all wearing something purple. Some wore shirts, others had scarves or hats or just some small accessory but they all had it. In contrast her neutral top and faded, rust colored overalls stuck right out and she was immediately self-conscious.


    Just remember to breathe, she told herself.


    The mantra repeated itself in her head and each time she would try to take the most normal breath she could, not too long, not too short. She shuffled through the crowd, careful as she picked her way around boisterous patrons and beer being sloshed onto the floor. She found her way to the bar eventually and she waited in line behind a woman with thick, curly blonde hair in a long-sleeved purple sweater. Mez thought about digging up the courage to ask her about it but by the time she’d gathered herself the woman had moved forward to order and then all too quickly she was gone and it was Mez’s own turn.


    “Ka’nente,” the bartender greeted in Yoshkish, “What can I get you?” Mez could see the little beads of sweat forming just at their hairline. There was another bartender working the other end of the bar but even then, they were clearly busy.


    “Please a bitter-sweet ale for me,” she told them, leaning down to rest her elbows on the countertop. Her Yoshkish was still stiff but she’d get it by the end of the nente. “If I can ask, what’s the occasion?” She did her best to sound as casual as she could instead of as anxious as she felt. The bartender offered her a kind but tight smile as they tipped a glass against the tap to begin to fill it.


    “It’s the first driev of the pre-planting season. The farmers unions met for the first time this soltzet.” They let the glass overfill to run off some of the thick, bitter, foam that had fizzed up in the glass, leaving only a thin, fizzing cap on the dark liquid. Mez could only blink back at them, because of course it was the beginning of planting season. Sol was creeping closer to the horizon every driev. She felt like her mind had been spinning in a whirlwind for driev’ and she felt so disconnected to what should have been obvious.


    “Oh. Of course, thank you!” She took the glass that was handed to her and slid them the coin she’d brought for the sole purpose of buying a single drink to use as a social buffer. Hopefully nobody else would notice if she nursed the same drink all nente.


    She quickly stepped out of the way and faced the room at large again. This was the worst part: trying to figure out who she might be able to strike up a conversation with. She scanned the room as she moved; there were a few old men at the corner table sitting solemnly and quietly sipping their liquor together, they were out. In the middle of the room were the most concentrated groups, people who seemed to know each other. In this group of people she spied the blonde woman from the bar chatting with another woman at a table crowded with people. She decided that there were entirely too many people in that area and they all seemed to know each other already. She didn’t especially want to figure out how to insert herself into any of that.


    She wandered to the back, closer to the Band. The noise level was higher but it wasn’t so densely packed either. Many had their attention turned to the Band as they drank or chatted over the tops of small tables. She took a sip of her drink letting the bitter shock of it settle on her tongue. The aftertaste was sweet and she felt it slide down to settle in her stomach. She knew that she would likely be forced to rid herself of it later like she had the food she’d tried to eat. Her body did not need food nor could it process it, the creature had told her and that probably extended to beer. Anything she put in would have to leave the same way. If her body needed something the creature would provide it, though through what means it wasn’t clear.


    She took her time wandering around the edges of the room until she found an empty seat at a table of three. There were a couple of empty glasses between them but the empty seat seemed unburdened and she decided to take her chance.


    remember to breathe


    She was momentarily stunned, frozen mid step, at the feeling of the creature’s voice across her mind but beyond that single reminder, there was nothing- no further presence or whispers, no demands. It was there and then gone. And then as if the reminder had been her own, she took a breath and the moment broke. Suddenly she was back in the pub surrounded by noise and she was placing her hand on the backrest of the chair and leaning in.


    “Is this seat free? Could I sit with you?” She tried very hard to sound normal despite her momentary panic. She cringed a little bit at how stiff her words sounded out loud but she was greeted with smiles and passive waves inviting her to sit anyway. She took one deep breath as she pulled the chair out and took her seat on the outer corner.


    She turned to look as the song faded down to just a baseline and the Band prepared the next song. She turned back to the strangers at the table who were all equally pink-cheeked and cheerful. One was a woman, older than herself but probably the closest in age. She wore a very sharp purple blazer over a pressed white top. Anything else about her was eclipsed however by the man next to her and the energy that Mezalie could somehow sense radiating off of him. It was new to her, she’d never felt anything like it. There wasn’t anything outwardly abnormal about him, just another intoxicated man in any pub. The young man next to him in contrast seemed unremarkable to say the least.


    “Are they any good?” she blurted to the table at large, trying to parse the growing sensation in her mind. She took a sip of her drink to avoid saying anything else, wiping away the foam that stuck to her lip. The woman lit up at the question, jumping at the chance for conversation.


    “Oh they’re okay I guess,” she waggled a loose hand around in a vague gesture towards the Band. “I’ve heard worse, That’s for sure.”


    “That Band in Cysivvey, they were terrible,” the young man piped up. “Couldn’t hear a yarking thing over that noise.”


    “Oh by the seltz, yes they were terrible.” the woman bemoaned, earning a chuckle from both of her companions. The music picked back up around them as the Band meandered into their next song.


    “You travel? I had assumed you were local with the-” she pinched at the fabric of her blouse, eyes flicking purposefully to the woman’s blazer.


    “Nah,” the older man interjected with a gentle smile. “We came down with the Harvest Caravan for the start of the season. This-” he waved a hand around at the room, “is just where everybody decided to go after the big meeting.” He spoke with a softness that made it difficult to hear him if not for the low booming timbre of his voice. He also had a thick accent that she couldn’t quite place that had her spending several extra tes to make sure she’d heard him correctly. “Where’re you in from?” The way he asked was polite, curious, but there was the unspoken bit that she obviously wasn’t local either. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    “Rinot, originally. I just got in from Syskel.” She was proud of how natural it sounded despite being sure she was going to forget what she’d pre-planned in the alley. She turned her glass in her hand for something to do. The sensation she’d felt from the man when she sat down had gradually shifted into what she could only call a pressure, something thick and heavy; the air around her felt saturated with it. Strangely it wasn’t a bad feeling, seeming like a big, heavy blanket thrown over her.


    “‘D’you come around pel or lor?” he asked further. She met his eyes briefly before she decided to answer the question. Despite his lightly pinked cheeks and empty glass in front of the half empty one he held, his eyes held a surprising amount of clarity.


    “Pel.” she said simply. Better to distance herself from anything to do with what happened, even being there. The man nodded at her response but she could somehow tell he saw right through her lie. “Though I’ve just heard about what’s happening over the other side,” she said, because of course she would have heard.


    “I can’t believe it,” the woman seethed. “It’s one thing for the political changes but I’ve heard all kinds of things about people being held prisoner for ven. It was just in the last news cycle!” Mez was genuinely surprised that word had traveled so quickly. She wondered what else was public knowledge yet. Did they know about her?


    “That’s awful. I hadn’t seen that yet.” Mez said before taking another sip of her ale. The young man leaned in.


    “I heard two of the temples got burnt up over there. There’s a lot of rumors about who did it and there’s even been talk about whether this whole thing could spark another war.” He all but whispered the last word, everyone at the table going a little bit rigid at the utterance. It had been decadi and decadi since the last Great War but the subject was still a sensitive one. The older man’s face dropped into a stern frown, eyebrows drawn.


    “Don’t you dare be spreading those kinds of rumors.” He said, low and careful. The strange pressure Mezalie felt shifted slightly but didn’t let up.


    “Of course, sir.” He raised his glass to his lips to hide the twisted frown at being chastised.


    “Are you staying for the Sol season or will you keep moving?” The man shifted his attention back to her and she hated the way his eyes seemed to see through her. His outward demeanor was so soft and unassuming yet just a few simple words paired with the powerful presence he exuded was enough to make her feel unbalanced. She tried to focus instead on the cold glass in her hand, how she was firmly sitting down despite her head starting to spin. What was this man?


    eat


    The voice cut through the noise of the pub, like someone whispering into her ear. She could feel the alarm that the creature was projecting to her. It startled her enough that she gasped, taking a sharp breath. She looked across to the other three at the table and it was obvious that they’d noticed her surprise. “I uh- I haven’t decided yet.” She tried very hard to simply pretend everything was fine. The woman gave her worried glances as she took a sip of her own drink. For a lack of anything else to do she held her glass to her lips and drank. She drained half the glass before she put it back down. She desperately wished for it to calm her nerves the way it used to.


    “Are you alright?” The younger man spoke up first, his eyes were on her shaking hand on the tabletop.


    there is a threat. it can be dealt with


    The whisper came again and with it came horrific, visceral memories of blood and flesh and a wave of grief welled up inside her.


    hunger


    The intent came with the word and it was clear, it wanted to eat the man and his strange energy. It supplied this information in a terrifying visual across her mind''s eye of a body being…well she wasn’t sure what was happening to it exactly but oh, she could feel it. Even though she hadn’t had control, even though she had barely been aware of what was happening she remembered the feeling of what it did to people. She looked up from the dark liquid in her glass to meet the somewhat alarmed and concerned faces of her table mates.


    This had been a bad idea.


    Abruptly she shoved her chair back and stood. The Band was painfully quiet at the exact same moment and the sound of the legs scraping across the floor was enough to draw several more eyes.


    “I’m so sorry, excuse me.” Mez apologized on her last puff of air before she spun away and began picking her way towards the exit. She couldn’t get there fast enough between people standing around in the walkways or crowding around full tables. She felt a tightening sensation and the tell-tale beginnings of gurgling low in her gut and she knew what was coming.


    She burst out the door in a rush, startling several others who were milling about outside the pub for a smoke. She quickly looked to either side of the street, looking for a trash can or something but there was nothing to be immediately seen. In her panic she simply started walking as fast as she could, away from any other people. She didn’t want to be there anymore. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this.


    She made it just over a block before the hot, burning, acid began climbing up her throat and she looked for the first secluded spot she could find. She ducked down on her knees behind a large planter. It had thick, curly patches of ornamental grasses with long, thin, stalks raising up and bulbous flowers on the ends. She leaned down and heaved, hard, choking at first before vomiting back out the drink she’d only half drunk. At least it wasn’t much. She retched several times before she was done, taking heaving breaths out of habit more than anything, they didn’t help or make her feel any better.


    She pushed herself upright on her knees, only half hidden behind the planter, and stared up into the dim, hazy lavender sky. At least she was alone. She was so, so, tired. Tired of having the worst interactions she’d ever had with people. Tired of panic attacks triggered by things she didn’t expect. Tired of being puppeted by something insidious. She laid her forehead against the rough lip of the planter, determined to sit until the misery passed, however long that took.


    Maybe forever.


    She closed her eyes, no longer concerned about breathing for appearances and she listened to the ambient noise of the city late in the nente. She could hear the low rumblings of the street cars still running in the distance. She noticed the humming and chittering of weather fae talking amongst themselves, unseen in the shadows and eaves of buildings. She could hear people talking in the distance, probably outside the pub. She wanted to cry, just for the catharsis of it but she had no tears left. Even when the tight, sharp pang of misery welled up in her, the tears never came nor the sniffles.


    A light sound, a whisper of rustling among the grass in the planter, alerted her. She picked her forehead up slowly and froze, eye to eye with a tiny little treffae. Its bulbous black eyes watched her, unmoving for several tes, before it slowly stretched its long thin legs out and began to move away from her. It moved extremely slowly at first, never taking its big eyes off of her until its little body couldn’t accommodate the torsion anymore and it quickly skittered to the end of the planter, out of reach. She stayed there as it moved about in the plants and when it came around again there was a second one with it. She was transfixed by them as they made their way back towards her before disappearing again into the grass.


    When they burst back out of the grass right near her she moved on an instinct. She didn’t even know she was going to do it when her hand shot out and caught one of the treffae, its slightly slimy body squirming violently in her hand but she held tight. Before she’d even thought about why she’d done it her hand came to her face and like a starved man she slurped the little thing down with fervor.


    It was disgusting, slimy and cold. It wiggled in her mouth for a moment before she swallowed it down. She’d never eaten a fae before. There wasn’t a point to, they weren’t always corporeal and if they were they didn’t stay that way. There wasn’t anything there to eat, and that was if you could even catch them in the first place. The most thought she’d ever given to treffae was for their help in the garden. She and the others in the Pod had cultivated a thriving ecosystem onboard their TVE and the evidence was the presence of the treffae they would occasionally glimpse in the early drievett or after rain. She hadn’t considered catching one since she was a child and even then, she’d never considered eating one.


    The relief was nearly instant and it was immaculate. She felt like she’d swallowed all of Sol in one gulp. It heated her from the inside out and the heat spread violently from her core outward. It flowed out into her extremities in piping hot torrents. It was the best she’d felt since…well since dying. She felt like she had become a glowing ember, burning up from the inside, like she’d laid under the hot rays of Sol for too long and burnt herself, her skin staying hot to the touch for driev'' as she remained tender and peeling. Instead of the pain and tenderness of the burn though she felt radiant.


    She waited, still as a statue, to see if the other one would come back but after several dib it seemed that it had gone, slipping back across the veil to wherever else it belonged. Strangely disappointed, she shot straight up onto her feet but found herself flailing wildly as she rocked on her heels, dizzy and disoriented. She looked down at her feet and her vision swam trying to keep up with the movement. Was she drunk? She hadn’t been drunk in ages but still, something wasn’t quite the same even if she couldn’t pinpoint what. She felt light, almost buoyant as she began to walk back towards the inn where she’d left LoVelly sleeping.


    LoVelly.


    What a strange man, she thought. He was young but he didn’t seem young. Something about him felt too worldly to be as young as he appeared and there was something strange about how he appeared at all. She couldn''t quite put all the pieces together even in her mind to make a clear picture of LoVelly. What was he hiding and did he even know? Was he like her, some great evil trapped in a body for better or worse or was he something else altogether? Sometimes when she thought of him she thought she remembered him from somewhere, a tickle in the back of her mind.


    The buildings bled together and so did the backdrop of the street. She passed buildings that were only vaguely familiar and it felt like her feet were taking her somewhere of their own choosing. She was just along for the ride. She hoped she was going back to the inn but she wasn’t sure where it was anymore. She couldn’t keep track of the scenery as she stumbled along.


    She believed LoVelly, she decided, when he said they’d met in a past life. It was the only way she could explain the strange familiarity she felt for him. In actuality she might have accepted any answer to make something in her life make sense anymore. She wanted to believe him though. Some kind of innate sense was telling her it was okay to believe him. She wanted to trust herself but she wasn’t sure she did…


    She blinked and suddenly the scenery changed. Instead of urban sprawl and buildings there were trees, fluffy and gently luminous up on the tips of the branches and up near the tops of them. Cobbled streets gave way to well treaded paths framed by tangled grasses and blanketed patches of tiny, white gendan flowers. She had enough wits about her to pause, looking for a sign or something to orient herself but she didn’t see anything helpful around her as she turned. She didn’t mean to but she continued to drift down the dirt and gravel path she was on, unable to stop.


    There was water. She didn’t know where it came from but suddenly she found herself knee deep in dark, calm waters. She closed her eyes and stood there, letting the coolness soothe the fire within her. She liked the fire but she also liked this feeling of the water flowing around her. It was peaceful and soft, so unlike the burning chaos inside of her. She wiggled her toes in her waterlogged boots and felt a giggle trying to escape her but it died of a lack of air before it could make it out.


    The soft, even, tone of a water sprite came from further out in the water. Then she heard it again, a bit closer this time. It was just one at first but then another answered back, and then another joined in and it became a chorus of watersong. It was sweet and melodic and it was vibrating the surface of the water. The air became alive with the vibrations of the singing sprites.


    Watersong was for healing but she wasn’t feeling healed when she stood there like a pillar, waiting in the softly humming water. She felt ravenous.


    She felt bad, somewhere in the back of her mind where she was still processing things, because she figured the fae were doing what they thought she needed. They wanted to heal her, they wanted to help her, which was more than some of the people she encountered thus far had offered. They were only doing what they thought was right and she knew that she was just the bait. Her wounded soul, trapped beyond life and death and tethered to flesh and blood with a monster, was full of pain. It drew the sprites out from between the veil and into the water which is exactly where the monster wanted them.


    It wasn’t even her hands that shot out into the water in perfect unison. It was three strangely long and disjointed limbs that each successfully dragged a screaming sprite from the water. She never even noticed that she’d somehow become more monster than woman. She saw now in the rippling reflection of the water the impossible moving shapes and colors of the monster as it dropped one sprite after the other into its waiting maw. Once the final sprite was swallowed down, the screaming went with it.


    The silence was so much heavier now that the struggle was over.


    …


    …


    She didn’t know how long she stood there in the water, staring at nothing in the dark water while the monster retracted itself back within her. At some point she must have waded back out of the water because by the time she was starting to feel like herself again she was laying in a patch of wet, muddy grass near the water’s edge. It was especially dark under the canopy of larger trees, fed and fattened by the water of the pond. The lowest branches there did not have the luminescence of the upper branches she remembered seeing on her way in.


    She rolled onto her back, cringing at the feeling of dirt and mud stuck to her, under her nails. She’d just been in the water and yet she needed a bath so desperately. She only had the clothes she wore and the ones she’d stolen from the people she’d murdered. Now they were covered in mud and she would need to wash them. Shakily she pushed herself up to her hands and knees first, then onto her feet. Her boots were soaked and sloshed when she stepped in them and she hated it. Clumsily she reached down and un-tied them, pulling her feet out of the squelching confines. She tipped them both upside down and let the water spill out of them before tying them together by the laces. She slung them over her shoulders and began her long trek back from wherever she was.


    When she cleared the trees and low shrubbery it occurred to her that she was in some kind of park. The treeline opened up into a well kept field that had lines marked on it for sports. She marched on through it, boots clunking against her body as she went. She surely looked ghastly, waterlogged and covered in mud but she felt better than she had since it had all begun.


    She let that warmth lead her back.


    It felt like it took so much longer to find her way back than it had to get lost. She’d blinked and found herself in the pond. By contrast the walk back to the inn seemed to drag on forever. She skulked down dimly lit streets and slithered through the darkness for quite a while before the writing on the front of the building came into view. She was thrilled to finally recognise the face of the building.


    She took herself around the back and up the stairs, no mien to accompany her this time. She went straight to the bathroom, not bothering to check in on LoVelly first. He was there, and he would still be there when she was done, she knew it in her gut and she was choosing to trust her instincts for now.


    As soon as the door had closed behind her she began peeling the muddy clothes off her body. She didn’t bother with the light now, she didn’t need to. She was aware of the room in a way she couldn’t explain, a sense she’d never had before mapping the placement of things. She navigated smoothly in the dark, turning the water on and getting in, letting it pour cold over her first while it heated up.


    She let the water first wash away the dirt that had dried and stuck to her. She felt the water soften it where it had dried and flaked, running down the drain in the dark. Then as it heated she let it run, filling the room with steam and chasing the heat she’d felt after eating the treffae but of course it wasn’t the same. This heat came from the water and while it warmed her skin it didn’t warm her to the core like she wanted it to. It wasn’t the same.


    Suddenly, like a slap to the face, a memory came to her in the hot, steaming darkness. She remembered someone at the temple saying something about ‘feeding it faeries’. She barely even remembered hearing it but now it seemed so clear; this was her solution to the hunger. She would feed it fae as much as it pleased if it meant she wouldn''t have a repeat of the farmhouse. She shut off the water, found a towel and dried herself down with a numb sort of detachment, like she was doing it for someone else. She would absolutely need to find a brush of some kind she realized because her hair was a mess and running her fingers through just wasn’t going to do it anymore. She made her way down the hall in a trance to their door, muddy clothes forgotten in the dark bathroom and a towel wrapped tightly around her.


    She let herself in, the only indication was the squeak of the door as it opened. The light was off, LoVelly had got up at some point and turned it off. She noticed he had also turned the chair around at the desk to face the room. She wasn’t sure what he’d been doing but the paper she’d been writing on was still where she’d left it, scribbles and all and he was fast asleep again so she closed the door behind her and locked them both in. She was tired but it didn’t feel right, not the way it used to. She knew she wouldn’t sleep. She just wanted to rest for now, to let the floating feeling fade away. She found the stack of clean clothes that LoVelly had washed for them and slipped back into hers. They were stiff and a bit scratchy but they were clean and dry.


    She pulled back the covers on her side, trying as best she could to not wake LoVelly. He was, of course, laying on the blanket so she had to tug it out from under him. He shifted, mumbling something and rolling over when she pulled it free and she waited for his eyes to open but he did not wake, instead smacking his lips and settling back in. She slipped into her side of the bed and lay there, head spinning around and around about what had happened. It all felt like a dream. The pub seemed like driev’ ago and the pond felt like another world altogether but she had discovered a new piece in the bizarre puzzle of her existence.


    She could eat fae and the rush she felt after was intoxicating. She could work with that; she had to. As she lay there in the dark, trying to settle her swirling mind, she listened to LoVelly breathe. She tried to let that rhythm lull her into a sense of calm. Would she tell him about what had happened, about her new diet? She wasn’t sure yet.


    She had no idea what time it was or how long until the light of Ahraan joined Dhelarly in the sky and the lights outside began to dim and shut off. She listened as the sounds of a new driev began; floorboards creaking under sleepy feet, voices murmuring through the walls. She no longer felt strange and disconnected from herself and neither did she feel like an inferno trapped inside a body. She thought perhaps she could perform some trial and error with her newfound knowledge in the coming driev’. If this was her life now she was going to learn how to live it.