It was a hazy autumnal day, the streets clogged with the hallucinogenic fog once unique to the fey realms. Lin’s gas mask lay on a counter near to hand, just in case the shops air scrubbers died out again. There were few angelic or demonic denizens in attendance today, but the store was flush with fey customers. The motley bunch, varying from beautiful, winged sprites to scaled, knobbly goblins danced about the shop’s tight confines. A pair of feathered gremlins, disturbingly similar to a pre convergence earth toy that Lin saw no mirth in, swung from a light fixture as they led the crowd in singing an atonal song about a butterfly’s bottom.

“Am I going to have to call security?” Lin cried out; her voice lost in the din.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got this.” Spoke a chipper voice in her ear. Before she could look to the source, a small, feminine figure zipped from behind the bar, directly into the beak of one of the singing gremlins, this one a bright neon green. Its already wide eyes bulged as if they might explode, and it’s fan-like ears fluttered frantically from side to side as motes of fairy dust began to spin all around it. A soft, blue light began to emanate from the yellow, sputtering beak as the miserable creature began to float away from the chandelier.

The song fell away from the now captive audience’s lips, only to be replaced by thunderous laughter at this unexpected but fully welcome new spectacle. The motes of dust began to spiral more erratically at this change of sound, as if they were insulted by it, their loops becoming more jagged after each rotation, until they suddenly exploded outward into a cloud of dust. Throwing on her gas mask, Lin beheld the sparkling fog apprehensively. She had a guess as to what was happening, but guesses weren’t worth much in this world.

As a newfound silence fell upon the crowd alongside this fairy fog, the same bright and chipper voice from before spoke up, only slightly muffled from within the gremlin.

“Now that I have your attention, please listen well and listen once. Our Féth Fíada celebrations, while true and good, cannot end in damage to this fine establishment. If you wish to revel in such a way, please go to Murkrowe Concoctionary down the street!” She finished with a giggling shriek, to the delight of the crowd, who gave the voice a cheering toast.

As the gremlin floated to the ground below, out of its mouth flew Astra, a young but boisterous Sprite that worked for the shop. Shooting Lin a triumphant beam, she zipped off to prepare more drinks. A sigh escaped Lin’s lips as she let herself enjoy a moment of calm. Such moments are fleeting and should be treasured, but seldom are until they’re long gone. This thought floated through Lin’s mind like an otter in a pool as an impatient cough came from the cash register.

There was always more work to do.

But when Lin stepped to the counter, there were no customers waiting. After a moment of looking around in bewilderment, Lin turned to leave.

“Estoy aqui abajo!” Came an angry voice in a comically high pitch from beneath the counter. Leaning as far over the cheap wood as she could manage without breaking something, Lin looked directly at the ground, and time stopped.

Sitting in a puddle at the foot of the counter, was a small man with a disfigured face and bleeding ruptures along all of his limbs. Dragging behind him on ropes were piles of corpses. In any other situation, this would have been the most noticeable thing about the man, but not in this case. No, those were all of secondary importance to the fact that the man was melting into ink.

“¿Hablas español?” Croaked out the unnaturally high and ragged voice. Despite how comical everything about it was, Lin found herself frozen with fright. Unnatural and alien sights were commonplace ever since the convergence, but Lin hadn’t seen anything quite like this.

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Well. That wasn’t completely true. She’d seen it the night she had tattooed it onto Grizz’s arm after all. Shaking her head slowly, Lin desperately tried to get ahold of her wits. The shop wouldn’t manage itself, and who cared if the newest customer was a living tattoo made by Lin that had allegedly murdered its bearer? Stranger things had happened.

Probably…

“Sorry sir, I didn’t quite catch that, what can I do for you?” She said, putting on her best customer service face. The rote nature of it helped put Lin at ease.

The tiny, inky Cortez let out a squeak that Lin supposed was a sigh, trying to put a hand to his head though he was stopped by the corpses weighing his hand down. Favoring the literal deadweights with a quick glare, he then turned it upon Lin, making her whole body shiver. Within those tiny, asymmetric and squarish eyes was a cold-blooded malice that embodied the spirit of who Cortez must have been. The man that shattered the Aztec empire and built a new nation from the corpses. One who had cheated on his wife, and then murdered her when she couldn’t further his goals. A monster that had risen from the grave to strangle his own demonic torturer to death.

“¡Cùrame por favor!” Squeaked the little ink man angrily. It was only the years of witnessing customers do ridiculous things with a straight face that allowed Lin to maintain a calm exterior.

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t speak…”

Cure me.

Lin froze. She had understood what he said, but desperately wished to deny it. That she knew wasn’t a part of her chosen reality.

Talking slower, as if that might help continue the lie, Lin leaned down to make eye contact with the monstrous thing. It made her skin crawl. “What… Do… You… Want… From… Me?”

“Hey, Lin, we’ve got a line forming, is this customer causing you problems?”

Lin looked up in shock. Half a dozen exasperated firbolgs, goblins and what looked like a humanoid mushroom waited impatiently.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” She yelled out to them before whispering to Astra. “This guy speaks a dead human language.”

Astra clapped her hands together excitedly. “Oh how fun! I love learning new languages! I’ve been getting so bored with the ones I know!” Before Lin could utter a word of protest, Astra had zipped over the counter and begun covering Cortez in fairy dust. The inky Spaniard swiped at her feebly, but his restrained hands were far too slow for the quick sprite. She then began whispering in his ear, nodding at his responses. Moments later, she popped back up in front of Lin.

“Oh, how interesting. This isn’t too far off from English, which is the root of what we speak, so it’s pretty simple stuff.” She scrunched her tiny little nose. “Though the conjugation of past tense seems like a real headache. Anyways, he wants you to tattoo him.”

“What? But he’s a-”

“A tattoo? Yeah, I told him that, but he insisted that it was the only way he could survive. Honestly, the things you humans become addicted to baffles me.”

Lin’s facade of composure crumbled away at this. “Astra, you know that’s not a human right?”

“What?! But you’re so similar!”

“He’s a foot tall! That’s smaller than most babies!”

Astra raised an eyebrow and gestured at her own, foot and a half long frame. “I thought I had finally met a reasonably sized human. My mistake.”

“He’s made of ink.”

“It’s basically the same as blood.”

“I-” Lin waved her hands in defeat; this was accomplishing nothing. “Did you tell him that I don’t do tattoos?”

“Of course I did! This is a potion shop; we’re not licensed for needles!” She said with a shiver, revealing one of the sprite’s few fears. “But he was adamant that only you could do it.”

“How am I supposed to put a tattoo on a pile of ink?” Lin moaned. She needed to end this and take the other customers’ orders, but she couldn’t get her mind to focus.

“Say, that’s a good question! Huh. It must be hard being a loose puddle of ink. Do you think he wanted you to put him on somebody else?” Astra seemed to be taking all of this far too easily compared to how it made Lin reel.

“I- Maybe? I don’t know.”

“Hey! Go solve this mystery on your own time!” Yelled a waiting goblin. “We’re thirsty over here! I’m practically fading away!”

This shook Lin from her stupor. “Right. Astra, please tell Cortez that I will… tattoo him tonight after my shift.”

Letting off a crisp salute, Astra fluttered down to whisper in the ink man’s ear, who begrudgingly oozed his way out of the shop. Resisting a sigh, Lin put on a bright smile.

“Sorry about that, ha sido un dia muy extraI help you?”

Inside her, a dark shadow rumbled ever closer to the light.

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