In the far corner of an enormous junk yard somewhere in the southern edge of Michigan, a glowing green portal abruptly appeared directly between a hollowed out sedan and the remains of several old washing machines. An old mutt of a dog that had been lying idly watching a nearby ball as though deciding whether or not to give chasing it a go made a noise in the back of his throat and looked up in time to see three figures emerge from the portal. One was a young girl about nine or ten years old with dark hair and very pale eyes that were almost white, while the other two girls appeared to be in their teens. One was a pale red-head, and the other looked Asian, with very short hair. In the case of the latter two, their actual ages were roughly twice what they appeared to be.
After emerging from the portal, the three representatives of the so-called Calendar slowly moved their gaze around the junkyard, looking toward the dog briefly before their eyes shifted to take in the rest of the area. The canine itself didn’t move other than to bump its nose toward the tennis ball so that it would roll up a few feet through the dirt, then roll back. Beyond that, he gave no real reaction to their arrival. He was old and quite done being a guard dog. Or perhaps there was another reason he stayed put and didn’t start barking to sound an intruder alarm.
“What do you think?” April asked, squinting in the direction of the mutt. “That easy?”
“Could be a double bluff,” May pointed out while continuing to split her gaze between the dog and the rest of the junkyard. “Be right in plain sight so that we would think it couldn’t possibly be that one. After all, they know we have December with us. She tends to win at this game.”
The particular game, in this case, was something that members of the Calendar played with one another when they had to meet up after being separated. They would possess various animals and make the new arrivals guess which ones they were. You got two points for successfully guessing on the first try, one for the second attempt, and if you failed then, the member who had hidden received three points. It wasn’t an idle game either. They kept obsessive track of the score and had actual prizes, including a jackpot that could be won once someone got high enough. Others, including Cahethal, thought it was a waste of time. But members of the Calendar took it very seriously. It was one of the ways in which they bonded with each other. And December did tend to have an advantage at it, for one particular reason.
“Speaking of which, what do you see?” April asked the younger girl. She herself had already picked out three more potential options in the form of two rats under one of the washing machines, and a mangy-looking crow who had set up a nest in the old junked car.
December, for her part, appeared to be gazing off at nothing, her eyes unfocused. “There’sfourteenpossibilities,” she informed them. “Fourratsunderthemachinesthere. Twomoreunderthecar. Twocrowsnestingontopofthejunkpilethere. Anotheroneinthatcar. Thatdogwiththeball. Threecatsaboutfiftyfeetthatway. Andarabbitunderground… throughaholethirtyfeettheotherway.”
She was technically blind, of course, thanks to a rare genetic mutation that had arisen through experiments in earlier generations. But that same mutation had left her with the ability to see magical energies, including that given off by living beings. And not only magical energies. She also saw electricity, heat, sound waves and the way they bounced off of objects, and so on. Put together, it allowed the girl her own particular type of vision, a three-dimensional image of her surrounding area, full of various energy patterns that she had become accustomed to deciphering until she had reached the point where interpreting the energies she saw and mentally translating that came as easily and instantaneously as an average person’s ordinary sight did.
“Only fourteen?” May asked, looking toward the rabbit burrow that the girl had pointed out.
December’s head bobbed rapidly. “Uhhuhuhhuhuhhuh! That’sallthestuffthat’sbigenough. Toosmallisstillcheating,right?”
May gave a very slight nod, considering those options. “Yes, using something too small is still cheating. The game has to be played with something at least the size of an Earth mouse.”
“So one of those fourteen,” April murmured. “Who was supposed to be meeting us here?”
“Tember and Julie,” May replied, focusing her attention on the dog once more. It had slumped over onto its side, enjoying the very end-of-fall sun. The air was briskly chill, though there was no visible snow anywhere. Shiloh, the Heretic student who had taken to hanging out with them a bit, would have been dismayed by that fact, given how close to December (the actual month) it was. According to her, snow at the very beginning of December meant there would also be snow at the end, when the holidays came. None of the Calendar trio were exactly convinced of that logic. And truth be told, they were certain Shiloh wasn’t either. But the human girl certainly played up the superstition, possibly for comedic effect.
It was a strange thought to have in that moment, May realized a bit belatedly. She was standing here, attempting to identify which animals their fellow Calendar people had possessed, and instead of focusing on that, she had thought about Shiloh for the past several seconds. Odd.
Setting those thoughts aside, she focused on the issue at hand once more. Fourteen possibilities, and two of their companions to identify. For a moment, she thought about what she knew about Tember (September) and Julie (July). Both had been members of the Calendar longer than any of this trio, long enough to have adapted their given monikers somewhat. Despite that, neither happened to work together that often. So May was assuming they would have separated and chosen different animals to hide in.
“I know Tember,” April announced. “We hang out a lot. I’m gonna say he’s…” Trailing off, she leaned over to whisper quietly to the other two.
There was a very brief conference back and forth, before May gave one more look at the junkyard around them and stepped forward. “Tember is the crow by itself in the car!” she called, loud enough to be heard. “Julie is the rabbit in the hole, pretending to be asleep.”
There was a brief moment of silence, aside from the old dog panting a bit as he looked at them. Then the rabbit emerged into view while the crow in question flew down. Both animals promptly broke their own necks by twisting their heads too far to the side. An instant later, as the bodies fell, glowing humanoid energy forms appeared before resolving into each respective Seosten.
“Very good, I thought we finally fooled you that time,” Tember, a large man who would have been considered Latino were he from Earth, announced while dusting off his clothes. They were old, having been repeatedly patched and repaired to the point that almost none of the original material remained. The clothes were the first that he had been given here on Earth, and Tember was loath to either replace them or use magic to repair them. He preferred fixing them, as he put it, ‘the human way.’
“So did I,” Julie put in. She was a black woman who appeared to be in her early twenties by human standards, wearing dark pants and a pristine, button-up white shirt under a long tan trench coat. “Especially with the magical tranquilizer we gave the dog there. He was a noisy little thing before that. You were supposed to think he was Tember.”
“Youcan’tfoolusthateasily!” December declared, before abruptly sprinting that way. And in her case, that meant using her improved boost to turn into a blurred form, appearing directly in front of the two almost immediately. “HiyaImissedyou!” She was hugging Tember tightly even as the man reacted to her sudden appearance. “We’vegotsomuchtotellyou,” she added, figure blurring once more as she darted the few feet over to embrace Julie just as tightly. “WehelpedstopaGehennaprisonernamedKwur…andkilledFossorhimselfthebigmeanNecromancer…andwentonapirateship…and–”
Chuckling, Julie gently eased the young girl back by the shoulders to look down at her. “You do know that May and April have been submitting regular reports about everything that’s happened, don’t you?” There was a mixture of amusement and fondness in her voice as she ruffled the girl’s hair with one hand.
“WellsurebutIwantedtotellyoumyself!” December insisted while eagerly bouncing up and down. “Theymight’veleftstuffout! AndI’vegottatellyouaboutTabbris!”
“Yes, Tabbris.” Tember noted thoughtfully, giving the girl a curious look, his tone casual. “She’s the one who was ahh, giving our people so many fits, right? The one who made them lose their minds trying to figure out why the Chambers girl couldn’t be possessed.” Even as he said that, there was amusement in his voice. It was very clear the revelation of just what–or who–had vexed their fellow Seosten (including Cahethal) for so long positively tickled the man.
December beamed at that, bouncing up and down even more as she launched into a full-on rant about how positively cool and amazing her new friend was. The spiel went on for awhile, as the girl went deep into all the things Tabbris had done, without much in the way of chronological order. She simply blurted out everything that came to mind all in a rush. But every member of the Calendar was well-acquainted with the girl and accustomed to listening through her extended and very rapid stories to pick out the details of what she was talking about.
While Tember listened attentively, asking questions now and then to show just how much he cared about what the youngest member of their group was saying, Julie stepped aside a bit to speak more privately with April and May. Her voice was soft. “You asked for a face-to-face with the entire Calendar, and then Cahethal. Is there something we should know?” The tone of her voice made the underlying question clear. Was something wrong with their assignment to the Fusion school?
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April shook her head. “The assignment’s going fine. We only…” She glanced at the girl next to her, raising an eyebrow as though asking how they should put it.
May, in turn, spoke up flatly. “The humans have asked for a bit of information, which we might be able to provide.”
Looking back and forth between the two, Julie considered their words. “And is it information that we would want to give the humans?”
“They are on our side,” April pointed out carefully. “Or they can be. Helping them now is the best way to ensure they are actually in a position to help our real war against the Fomorians if this truce continues beyond its first year and we begin a full, official alliance with the humans.”
“Yes,” Julie agreed, “if the truce continues. But if it doesn’t, what sort of information are we giving them? Don’t forget, this could very well be a temporary situation. If the Seraphs choose to move to full invasion, every bit of information you give the humans could be used against us.” Her gaze moved between the two, then glanced toward December, who was still cheerfully talking to Tember about everything she had been doing with Tabbris. “In a few months, we may be taking very different, more direct measures against the people you’re trying to help now.”
“Nowewon’t!” That was December, who had abruptly pivoted away from Tember, revealing that she had actually been listening the entire time. Her face had grown heated. “They’reourfriendsandtryingtofightthemwouldbestupidandwe’renotstupidand–”
“December,” May interrupted, giving the younger girl a firm look to stop talking. “It’s okay. We’re just talking right now. Remember, Julie hasn’t been there. She doesn’t know what they’re like.” Her voice was calming, even as she gave the older Seosten girl a brief squint while pointedly adding, “No one’s going to ask you to hurt Tabbris or your friends. Don’t worry about it.”
A moment of silent conversation passed between May, April, and Julie, where the latter made her opinion on the situation very clear. She believed it was a mistake to get too close to the humans, and had thought that sending December there in the first place was a bad idea. Not that she had anything directly against the humans (she was, after all, using a very human nickname). But when it came down to it, she was loyal to the rest of the Calendar, and to Cahethal for giving them the opportunity to be together. And, of course, to the Seosten in general beyond that. Her own people loathed her existence, yet she still longed for acceptance from them. She still believed it was possible to change their minds simply by being effective enough at her job. No matter how emphatically so many of the Seosten rejected that idea.
Tember spoke up carefully after that long moment of silence had dragged on. “Well, why don’t we head back to the camp and talk to everyone else? You did say you wanted to get everyone. Even Cahethal agreed to show up. She’s… interested in seeing what has you so worked up.” As he spoke, the tall man reached down to pick December off the ground, setting her on his shoulders while the girl gave a squeal of delight. “And everyone else has missed you.”
“Didyoumissus?” December cheerfully chirped the question from her perch on the man’s shoulders, leaning over to look him in the eyes (or at least as close as she could get, being technically blind) from an upside down position. “Didjadidja?”
“Hmm,” Tember playfully teased the girl, making a show out of pretending to consider before nodding toward May and April. “I suppose I might’ve missed those two, just a little bit.”
“Andmeyoumissedmetoo!” December insisted while patting the top of the man’s head empathically. “C’monyougottasayityougottasayyoumissedmetooplease!”
For another minute, Tember continued to tease the girl by pretending to consider whether he had actually missed her or not. She clearly knew he was only teasing her, and yet dramatically played up her reaction, lamenting how terribly mean he was and making a show of telling the man, who was essentially like an older brother, just what a mean and terrible jerk he was.
“Jerk?” Julie asked the other two with an arched eyebrow. “A very human thing to say.”
“A very Tabbris thing to say,” April replied mildly. “They’re friends. They’ve gotten pretty close.”
“So I see.” Julie’s voice was a murmur before she shook her head, clearly uncertain about how that situation was going to unfold in the future, and concerned about December’s reaction. “In any case, you’ve made the first jump and it’s obvious you weren’t followed. Our detectors would have told us if they put any tracking spells on you. So we can go back to the camp now.”
They still didn’t go directly there, of course. The Heretic rebels were not the only ones who knew what sort of downsides could come from allowing others to track them back to what should be a private location. Despite the confidence that they weren’t followed, the Calendar quintet made a couple extra portal jumps, just in case.
Eventually, they arrived at their home here on Earth, a former summer camp next to a lake, with several cabins, and some boats. One of which was in use at that very moment as two figures in a canoe in the middle of the lake, fishing. The Calendar Camp should have been too cold for any boating or fishing at all, this close to winter in a place that was actually pretty far north in Alaska. But it was a relatively simple bit of magic between them to keep the surrounding area warm. It was already hard enough for people like them to have a place they could call home as it was. Now that they had a place, they certainly weren’t going to spare any expense or effort making it as comfortable as they could. This was their place.
As soon as she saw the pair on the lake, December immediately hopped down from Tember’s shoulders and took off. She became a blur that raced across the water, using her enhanced boost to get all the way over there without falling in. A moment later, she was in the middle of the boat, gesturing wildly while already starting to tell those two stories of her time at Fusion.
“Still as excitable as ever, I see.” Those words came from a much-older man, standing on the porch of the nearest cabin. He wore a painstakingly tailored suit that perfectly fit his slim form, which only added to the dignity afforded by his silvery-gray hair. Bystanders who saw him thought the Calendar man known as August looked quite a bit similar to the human actor Charles Dance.
“Did you expect anything less?” the long-haired black man beside him, who also wore a neatly tailored business suit (though his was very white as opposed to the dark suit of his companion) asked. February (or Feb, ever since he had lost a bet with April that made him answer to the shortened name), looked out on the water, where the boat was making its way back with its now three occupants. December was still emphatically waving her arms around, her voice carrying just enough for them to hear the excitement in it, if not her specific words.
His question was answered by a six-foot-tall blonde woman, who emerged from the cabin itself wearing a long red evening gown that glittered with each motion as she stepped into what little sunlight was visible. “I do not believe anyone expects, nor wants December to change.”
“Good afternoon, January,” April greeted the other Seosten politely. Of them all, January was often seen as the leader of the Calendar, despite the fact that she was not the one who had been there the longest. And not because she had the earliest month name either, having replaced an earlier January who had been killed. No, this January being seen as the default leader of the group simply came from being the type of person she was.
With a fond smile at the red-haired younger Seosten, January reached out to brush a hand over the girl’s face. Casual touch may have been unheard of between so-called ‘normal’ Seosten and those they called Lies, but among the Calendar, it was fairly common. Because from each other was the only source many of them would ever get such casual touching. “Hello, April. It’s nice to see all three of you again. Getting your reports is just not the same.”
“She’s not kidding,” a thin, wiry blond man wearing a flannel shirt put in as he stepped out of the cabin, carrying a clipboard in one hand. “I think she might make me start reading your reports out loud in character if this goes on much longer.”
April smirked a little at that, “I’d pay to see that, November.”
By that point, the boat had docked, and December was the first off it. She gave a loud, squealed, “Januaryfebaugustnovember!” Once more, her form blurred as she raced over to embrace each of them in turn, clinging tightly before babbling a long, very involved story about attending actual school classes with Tabbris and some sort of history project the two of them were working on.
In the meantime, the two other boat occupants had emerged. There was the very tall, very introverted March, whose only sign of standing out in any way from any other pale-skinned humanoid was his magically-colored green hair. He tended to stand slouched, attempting to blend into the background. Which was difficult for a man of his size.
The man climbing out of the boat behind him, however, was at the opposite end of the spectrum as far as standing out went. Though also Caucasian in appearance, he wore a long, very obvious lab coat over a loud Hawaiian shirt. His hair was naturally light, but currently magically colored similar to his quiet companion. His was electric blue.
“Hello, March, Otto,” May greeted the new arrivals in turn. “Catch anything interesting?”
“Sure,” Otto (October) replied with a gesture toward December. “Think she’s big enough to keep, or should we throw her back?”
After a few moments of good-natured teasing back and forth, the group was interrupted by the appearance of a new portal, as Cahethal herself emerged. Their true leader and benefactor came into view. She was on the small side, barely five foot three inches, with very light hair and intensely green eyes. Like Otto, she wore a white lab coat, and immediately got right down to business after brusquely greeting the three by name. “You’ve asked for an audience with everyone, something about questions that can help your new… friends?”
“Um, yes,” May confirmed. “But we hoped to talk to everyone. Where’s June?” That made the rest of the group look around, as though only just then realizing that the man in question wasn’t in the background.
“Ah, yes.” Cahethal took a moment before quietly, yet bluntly telling them, “Unfortunately, June did not return from his last mission. You have my deepest sympathies. I did what I could to aid him, but he… ahh… it did not go well.”
Lower lip trembling a bit, December tentatively asked, “Wha-what happened to him?”
“I’m afraid that must remain classified for now,” Cahethal informed her. “And please, take all the time you need to grieve, after I have left. There is no rush to return to work. But do not lose yourself to that grief, as this is an opportunity. Kushiel’s daughter, you may extend an invitation for her to join your group and become the new June.”
Those words led the three Fusion-guests to exchange glances before turning back to her. April replied quietly, the words thick in her throat. “I don’t think she’ll be interested.” Beside her, May and December were still silently reeling from the revelation of June’s death. As were the rest of the Calendar members, though the others did a better job of concealing their reactions to the blunt news for the time being.
“It is your job to make her interested,” Cahethal informed her. “All three of you. Now, what is it you wanted to gather everyone here for? As you should know, I am quite busy at all times.
“But please, tell me how I can aid with your mission.”