“Books?” June asked, head tilted to one side.

“Books.” Neil agreed.

Neil sat in the library, which had become a place of comfort for him, these last few days. Quiet, warm, and dry; always with the smell of paper to keep him company.

“No one’s seen you in the last five days… because of books,” June said slowly, nodding her head as if asking for confirmation.

“That’s what I said, yes.”

“Books.” She repeated, staring at him like he’d grown a third head.

“And drilling with the city guard, and getting to know the townsfolk.” Neil shrugged. “I’ve been busy, you know? How’ve you been?”

“Busy?” She frowned.

“Yes?” Neil said, smiling thinly. “Is there an echo in here, or what?”

“No—” June shook her head, dirty black hair falling dangling just past her shoulders.

She’d cut it recently, Neil noticed. It looked good on her. Made her look like a dark-haired fairy princess. Except angrier, and more likely to swear like a drunken sailor.

“—I mean I’ve been busy. With the team? The one that you’re supposed to be a part of?”

“The team?” Neil repeated, his thin smile quirking into something more genuine. “Wow, there really is an echo in here.”

“Har. Har.” June said in a flat voice, giving him a hard stare.

She did not, Neil thought, look very amused.

“Your friends are worried about you, Neil. This routine you’ve gotten into…” she shook her head. “It's gotten stale. Find better material, Mr. Comedian.”

He stopped smiling and closed the book in front of him, focusing all his attention on the woman before him. She’d gotten less pale than when he first saw her, though the shape of her face remained unchanged.

She looked, in a word, sharp. From her eyebrows to her chin, every one of her features came to an edge that Neil always thought of as cat-like.

This quality also applied to her words, and Neil found—with some surprise—that he was cut by them. Wounded, even.

He set his jaw and stared deeply into June’s storming green eyes. “We’re roommates, June, not friends. Not even roommates. Not even housemates. We’re six random tenants living in the same building, who occasionally do chores for the landlord instead of paying rent. And we’re certainly not a team.”

“You don’t think we’re friends?” June blinked at him, something behind her eyes breaking.

The mistake-generator in Neil’s head—he called it his brain—informed him that he had made one, and promptly burst into flames.

He found himself immediately shaking his head, wincing, and attempting through sheer willpower to retract the thought from June’s head.

“That’s not what I— we’re not— I mean— we… might be friends?”

Neil knew even as the words left his mouth that that was a pathetic attempt at backpedaling, and that he may have been better off just keeping quiet.

“No.” Said June, in a quiet yet cutting voice. “I don’t think we are either.”

She stepped back, breaking off eye contact with Neil. “Come find me when you’re feeling less like a pissy-fuckin’-asshole, I guess.”

Her voice was small, almost like she didn’t intend for Neil to hear her. She turned to leave, and Neil stared after her, eyes wide.

All at once, it felt like, she was gone. Neil’s jaw hung open as he stared out the door she left through.

“Keeping quiet wasn't the right choice either, huh?” He said aloud when silence lay thick over the library. “Shit.”

His words failed to produce an echo, and silence reigned once more.

…

…

“Friendship,” Slurred Gary, Neil’s drinking buddy for the evening. “Faith, and family. The only things in this life that are worth a damn.”

The drunk frowned, swaying in his seat. “Not neshess— not neceresh— not neccesharily in that order, though.”

Gary was a trainee of the town guard, and a frequenter of the town guard’s pub. Neil did not know much about the man other than these two facts, and was content to keep it that way. Three beers in, and the man was already a mess.

Castle Retmor’s surrounding town—also known as Retmor, which Neil thought was poor naming sense, but whatever—had two pubs. There was the one where guards were welcome, and the one where guards were technically welcome but never went to, on account of the frequent brawling.

Neil was in the former, for all that the latter sounded like fun. It was a quiet night, but the dull drum of conversation did well enough to keep the silence at bay.

He frowned at Gary, who was either nodding sagely or about to fall asleep.

“I know I messed up,” Neil admitted running a hand back through his hair. “I’m a hypocrite, and an asshole, and I want to be friends with these people, but…”

He sighed, resting his elbows on the dirty wooden table they were sitting at.

“…Instead I’m here, drinking with you guys.” He finished, his tone low and miserable.

“Apology sex,” Said Barry, his other drinking buddy, shocking Neil’s attention to him. “When I’ve got lady troubles, I just show her who the man is, and ugh!”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The man made an obscene gesture that involved the entirety of his body, making Neil grimace. He was another trainee of the town guard, and he practically lived at the town pub.

The fact that Barry had ‘troubles’ came as no surprise to Neil. The man was, to be frank, disgusting. Neil didn’t like him in the slightest. The fact that a lady was involved in these troubles was a shock. He felt sorry for whatever poor girl the man was involved with.

“Gross, Barry,” Neil said in a flat tone. “June and I aren’t that sort of friends.”

“You’re friendsh with a women?” Gary squinted as if this was an alien concept. “Why? You gotta be shome kinda marshochist.”

Neither Barry nor Gary were feminists, it seemed to Neil. It didn’t seem incredibly likely that they could spell the word feminism, much less imagine a conversation that might pass the Bechdel test.

He sighed. “I think I’m gonna stop coming here, you guys.”

Barry frowned at him. “D’ya come here often?”

Neil opened his mouth, closed it, and stood up from his seat.

“Gary, Barry…” He sighed. “It’s been… an evening.”

“Shame to you.” Gary smiled drearily up at him, raising a tankard in salute.

“Right,” Neil smacked his lips. “Shame to me.”

He left, wondering why he even went there in the first place.

…

…

“Fear?” Said Argus, frowning at Neil. “And you’re afraid of what, precisely?”

The old man’s office was, as ever, uncomfortably intimate. The warm light of Argus’s candles and the swarm of dancing shadows cast by them pressed around Neil, making him feel swaddled.

Shadows flickered around the odd trinkets he kept on his desk, and the animal skulls smiled at Neil with malevolent glee.

“Death,” Neil answered, massaging his temples. “Dying. Getting hacked into little pieces by a psychopath with an ax. Getting chewed up and shat out by a sleep paralysis demon. Emotional intimacy. Spiders. Take your pick.”

“You feel affected by what you saw in Vergandale,” Argus said. It was not a question.

“No,” Neil gasped, unable to keep sarcasm from his voice. “Do you really think so?”

“Neil,” Argus warned. “Do you want my help or not?”

‘Goddamnit.’

“Yes,” Neil winced. “Sorry. I’ve been feeling… off, lately.”

“I’ve heard,” The old man nodded. “You’ve not been attending the afternoon meals. We’ve missed you, my boy.”

“Have you really?” Neil muttered nasally, slouching in his chair.

“We have,” Argus gave him a small smile, smoothing out the front of his copper robes, mostly hidden by his massive desk. “Today marks the second ten-day since your arrival here. We had a suckling pig for dinner, to celebrate. Perhaps if you’d attended, we might have come closer to finishing it.”

There was a smile in the old man’s blue eyes that Neil didn’t appreciate, and he slouched further in his seat.

“I’m a vegetarian,” Neil muttered, before wincing. “No, sorry, you're right. I should have been there.”

The old man frowned at him. “I have a distinct memory of you salivating over a slab of pork belly not three days after your arrival here. Since when are you a vegetarian?”

“Since meat started to smell like death.” Neil shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Whatever line of communication existed between his stomach and his brain, the topic of meat threw it in disarray. Neil’s stomach ended these communications by complaining loudly: both at the injustice of its deprivation, and in protest of ever eating such a thing again.

“Really?” Said Argus, raising his rimed eyebrows. “Quite unusual. Do you believe your humors are out of balance?”

Neil smiled weakly. “I know the setup for a pun when I hear one, if that’s what you're asking.”

Argus blinked at him. “Beg pardon?”

“My ‘humors’ are fine, Argus,” Neil said, propping his head on his fist.

Though really, if the local medical practices were based on humors, he was going to have to have a long talk with some doctors about a little thing called ‘washing your damn hands.’ Neil resolved to consult an updated medical textbook at the first convenient opportunity.

“Hm,” Argus stroked his beard. “I suppose it’s not entirely impossible that you’ve been cursed, lad.”

“Cursed with vegetarianism?” Neil said, smirking. “I know a few people that’d agree with you on that one.”

“Cursed from your encounter with the barrow-ghoul.” Said Argus, giving Neil a flat look.

“Oh,” Neil sat in attention. “Seriously?”

“Precisely one of us has remained serious for the entirety of this session, and it is not you.” Said Argus, voice dry as a bone.

Neil frowned, tilting his head to one side as he looked at the old man.

“Asking for help makes me uncomfortable, and I compensate by making jokes about my problems, even if it alienates the people trying to help me, and I apologize,” Neil said in one breath, waving a hand dismissively. “Now what was that about a curse?”

Argus blinked at him, made a hesitant motion towards his desk—as if he was about to write something important down before he forgot—frowned, aborted, and leaned back in his massive desk chair.

“You—” He shook his head. “The curse is hardly of consequence when you’ve just explained to me the very heart of your problem!”

Neil shook his head. “I have trouble opening up to people about my emotions, I already knew that. Let’s talk about that curse for a second.”

“Heroes collect curses as often as callouses, or scars.” Argus stared at Neil. “They can be difficult to remove, but many come with a sort of fringe benefit that makes it not worth the effort. Now tell me: if you know what your problem is, why not simply fix it?”

“‘Fringe benefit?’” Echoed Neil, lip curling in disgust. “How could I possibly benefit from thinking that meat is disgusting?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” Said Argus, exasperated. “Perhaps you’re immune to cancers of the colon, or you’re resistant to starvation, or poison, or you simply aren’t cursed: you’re just being an obstinate fool!”

Neil leaned back in his chair, away from Argus’s outburst. When he spoke next, he spoke carefully, and with precision—choosing his words like grapes off the vine.

“Sorry,” He said, meaning it. “I am—genuinely—sorry. I apologize, and… I will make an honest attempt to stop being obstinate. And… in the future, if I am anyway, I hope that you’ll have patience with me, and help me to stop, as you already have. Thank you for letting me know.”

Argus blinked at him, and a tension that Neil hadn’t noticed building swept from the old man’s body.

“Thank you, my boy.” He said, with a small smile. “And I am sorry in turn, for being short with you. Young people possess issues to which I am no longer accustomed, and I apologize if I have been… reductive. Your decorum has impressed me, and I am glad to see you taking my advice seriously.”

Neil’s lips tightened into something like a smile, and he shifted once more in his chair. Silence rang loud in his ears for a moment longer than he was comfortable as he and Argus took note of each other.

Neil smacked his lips to fill the vacuum.

“So…” He started, gesturing between himself and Argus. “I just have to do this five more times, and I should be good, huh?”

He did. And he was.