I locked the door behind me and turned to face Vivian’s dead daughter.

Eiah had the same deep-tar branch hair and yellow eyes as her mother—except where Vivian’s eyes were clouded and her hairs were shriveled and dried, Eiah’s was healthy. Young. She stood behind me, naked, soaked, and with her arms hugging her shoulders. She looked down at the ground, shaking. Her teeth chattered from the cold.

In all aspects, she looked like a normal, sixteen-year-old girl.

But she was not Eiah.

No, the girl in front of me wasn’t even an amarid. It was an eldritch abomination—a tag-along that had crossed from one side of reality to the next. And now, for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand, it had chosen to take the form of my immortal mentor’s dead daughter.

Vivian was going to kill her. Us. I shuddered to think of what would have happened if Aami hadn’t run into me first.

Frowning, I turned to face her.

“Aami,” I said, and she flinched. The frown on my face deepened, “Why are you walking around Vivian’s house with her dead daughter’s face?”

The eldritch horror didn’t look up to meet my eyes, “I’m sorry,” Aami replied, looking only at the ground, speaking with a voice almost too soft to hear. Her drenched hair fell over her face, hiding her expression from me. I noticed the fumbling of her fingers—her trembling shoulders and her slurred speech.

Symptoms of hypothermia. Did she swim all the way back here?

I didn’t know why she refused to alter her biology to make the symptoms go away, but the questions could come later. As confused as I was with what she was doing, having my shoggoth friend shiver to death wasn’t one of my intervention strategies.

My hands reached for the clasp around my cloak. They unhooked it, and I bundled it up into a pile in my hands. I passed it to her.

“Dry yourself before you get a fever, at least. We need to talk.”

She looked at the cloak in my hands for a few seconds, hesitating, before reaching out to take it. Aami stared at it. Then up at me.

I sighed, “Come here.”

Walking over, I took the cloak from her and began drying her hair, letting the raggedy cloth absorb the moisture. It was an old piece of clothing, but we had no towels. No other alternative. To help, I began humming, once again channeling Song into my voice. Sorcery. It was weaker than when I used an instrument, but it was sufficient to warm the air and cause it to blow against her head.

With it, I quickly dried the shivering eldritch monstrosity and stepped away, leaving the cloak hanging over her shoulders. Even if she wasn’t an amarid, a little dignity never hurt.

It seemed Aami had none at the moment, however.

She stared at the ground, clutching the cloak tight over herself. She curled her body inward and tried to make herself as small as possible. Out of sight. As if balling herself up into a small enough bundle would make her invisible.

Aami muttered something under her breath.

I frowned, “What was that?”

A moment passed.

“…Am I scary, Rowan?”

I narrowed my eyes at her downtrodden appearance. Where did this come from? She was fine just this morning, so what changed? At her question, I shook my head and kneeled down to match her height. As an amarid, and a sixteen-year-old even, she was tall. But still, she was barely up to my chest.

“No,” I said, and she looked at me. I hesitated, “Well… to be honest, yes. Kind of.”

Aami seemed to shrink further as her lower lip trembled.

“Even when I look like this?”

“That’s not…” I sighed and stopped myself. Reaching over to her, I peeled the hood away from her face. She was crying. Just a few tears—lines of faint moisture on her cheek. But the expression was so… genuine. So much like a real person. I frowned at her, “What’s this about, Aami? Why did you do this? You know Vivian will kill us if she finds out you did this, right?”

She sniffled. “N-No, I didn’t know. I just thought…”

“You thought..?”

“…That she’s pretty. This girl.”

“So you decided to turn into her?”

Aami nodded, and I pursed my lips. It was difficult—how was I supposed to handle this? What was it even about? Unable to come to a conclusion, all I could do was be stupid and ask. Again. The same question.

I tilted my head, puzzled, “Why?”

She looked away, “Venti said everyone would hate me. And I know that it’s because I’m ugly that Venti hates me and why the animals kept running and why you keep screaming whenever I jump you in the morning.”

No, no. That really wasn’t it. It was just that no one liked getting tackled after waking up.

But still, I supposed the fact that she was a black tentacle monster played a part in my reactions. And she could talk to Venti? That was new to me. I’d been preoccupied trying to learn and teach with Vivian over the past week that I’d pretty much ignored them both.

“Do you think I hate you?” I asked.

Aami shook her head, “I think. I don’t know. My heart hurts.”

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Pursing my lips, I took a seat on the floor. Right in front of the bed, where she sat. I looked up at her, “Do you know what friends are, Aami?”

“They’re…” she hesitated, then her mouth flattened into a line. “I don’t know either.”

“I never explained it to you, did I? Do you want me to?”

She nodded, and I leaned back. I crossed my arms and sat, thinking. To be honest, I wasn’t sure either. I didn’t have many friends. Ancestors, I didn’t have normal friends. Just Venti and Aami. As a child, it was always study this, study that. And whenever I snuck out to play, mother would discipline me with her stick. Alchemy first. Other, more important things first.

So I didn’t know what friends were. But I knew what I wanted them to be. And to someone like Aami, who I realized was in some ways still clueless about the world, it could mean far more to her than it did to me.

But I was bad with words. I was crass. I was rough. I was insensitive. So I turned to what I knew—to the thing that could speak without speaking. To the only thing in the world that could move the heart and sway the mind and speak without the need for a voice.

Music.

I reached for Vivian’s lute case at the foot of the bed and Aami watched me unclasp it. The silver locks fell away, and inside, there was a slender-necked lute made of beautiful, black wood. It had strings so white that they looked like they were woven from stars, and etchings so beautiful that they seemed to move and come to life. It was a wonderful instrument.

And it was one I couldn’t play.

But still, I tried. I fingered over the metal strings and plucked once. A terrible twang came out of it, harsh and sharp. I winced. Tried again. Better, this time. A smoother sound. Aami watched me fiddle with it, not really sure of what I was doing.

And that was okay. Because she was listening. And I knew that with this, I could tell her things that my lips couldn’t ever possibly hope to say.

The seconds turned into minutes, and the minutes turned into an hour. I played random chords and strings, and thanks to my experience with the bansuri, I wove together a weak little song. Just some halting, awkward sounds. A collection of jumbled notes that barely gathered themselves into a tune. My fingers were hurting already, but I played. I learned. I showed Aami everything.

And that song whispered a thousand sounds of sincerity.

When my feet leave no prints on the mud,

No one thinks to remember who passed,

And when there’s no one there to hear my song,

I leave no memories that truly last.

But even if I’m no one, even I am not seen.

I have a Name, even when it’s taken from me,

And not even Fae can deprive me of my identity.

So I want you to hear it—the sound of my voice,

The whispers of the wind and the desperation I showed,

When I lost my Name and gave it away by choice.

I’ll haunt you, who walks where the water flows,

Until you hear the sound of your music echoed,

Until you join me on the ghost road.

I looked up as I finished the song, and the world around us was still. Slowed. The rains fell one inch at a time. The leaves drifted like snails sliding down the wind's trail.

And as I finished the faulty version of my song, the world moved. The rain fell. Blurred. And the swaying leaves began to shake once more. I pulled my fingers away from the lute and winced. The ends of my fingers were cut. Bleeding. Unlike the bansuri, the strings were jealous things—stronger, more forceful. They didn’t sing as freely as the bansuri, and they demanded my attention. My control.

I put my thumb between my lips and sighed, tasting the blood leaving my cut thumb. I looked at Aami who was quiet and smiled. “I’m a terrible lutist and a worse singer,” I said, “but you listened to me play. You stayed. And that’s all that friendship needs to be.”

"...And we're friends?"

She looked so small, at that moment; when she asked me that question. I shook my head.

"What else could we possibly be?"

She stared at me for a moment, and then her eyes teared up and she lunged. Hugged me tight around the neck. Aami broke into sobs that soaked tears into my chest, and underneath the cloak I gave her, I watched her form unravel. Her amarid features collapsed. Her arms turned into tendrils of black goo, covered in eyes and mouths, all crying, wailing out different sounds. I sighed in exasperation and smiled.

The shoggoth cried in my arms, and I hugged her back.

We stayed like that for a few minutes, until Aami's crying softened into nothing. Until she was only sniffling, wrapping herself around me like she would never let go.

“There, there,” I said, patting her. “It’s okay. Go on—let go. I won’t leave.”

Aami squeezed me for a moment, then her tentacles slowly loosened around me. She let go. Fell back. Down into a mass of black sludge on the ground. Her eyes all closed and disappeared, save for one. And that one eye looked at me with a warmth that I never thought I would see from anyone but my own father.

Strange, that I received it from something that didn’t even come from the same reality as me. But it wasn’t a bad feeling. I liked it.

I tilted my head at her, “Are you okay now?”

“Mm,” she nodded with her new voice, worbling again. “I’m okay now. My heart doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“That’s good.”

“I feel light. And bubbly.”

I smiled, “That’s good too.”

I reached my hand out to pat her, and the gooey mass swallowed my hand as I reached out. It was warm. Pleasant. Aami slithered forward and hugged me again. I didn’t resist. No, this was probably going to be normal now. This was how it was going to be, now that I’d gone and done what I did.

I’d turned myself into an eldritch monstrosity’s best friend.

Aami’s one eye looked up at me and asked, “Does this mean that I’m not allowed to look like the pretty girl anymore?”

I blinked, “You still want to?”

She bobbed her mass in a nod, wriggling against me. “Mm. You’re okay with me looking like this, but I think you’re weird.”

“Wow.”

“You like weird stuff. Like me.”

“You’re really not putting me in a good light here.”

“That’s okay,” she said, before quickly hugging me again. It was strange, hearing a normal girl’s voice come from the shoggoth, but I could get used to it. Aami looked up at me, “You’re nice. But other things aren’t. Venti says she hates me. And the wrinkly lady also doesn’t like me. Or the animals. Or the plants. And probably not other people. So I want to look pretty too—like the sun, whenever it’s not just the two of us. Bright and happy. So that maybe I can make other friends too.”

“Well, you can’t use Vivian’s dead daughter as your face unless you want her to cook us both alive.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It is.”

“So when can I look like a person again?”

I shrugged, “We’re headed to Felzan, aren’t we? We’ll stop by some towns along the way—to buy more alchemy supplies. Vivian says it’s also a good chance to practice my glamour weaving. And while we’re there, you can look at people. A lot of people.”

Aami tilted to the side, “Why?”

“So you can see what they look like. You can change yourself, right? So look at people. Remember their features, then put it together into something you like.”

“Isn't it easier to just take someone else's face?"

At her confusion, I only shook my head and smiled wryly, “You don’t have to steal a face, Aami. You can make your own. Don't you want one that belongs to just you?”

She stopped and her singular eye started to shine, as if a curtain had been lifted and she was seeing the light for the first time. Aami wriggled, trembling, and just when I thought she would cry again, the shoggoth giggled. I listened, surprised, as that giggle turned into a snicker and into a full-blown laugh. A pretty, mischievous sound. From a creature that was beautiful in her own way, no matter how horrifying she looked. Aami worbled happily, practically vibrating with excitement as she rubbed the top of her mass against my cheek.

“Mine, mine, mine! Something that’s mine! I get to be—” she paused, stopping, as if it was only really setting in now. Her worbling stopped and she relaxed, amazed. Aami whispered, “I get to be me.”

I grinned, “Yeah. So relax, okay? We have plenty of time.”

“Okay. My heart feels nice. And I’m hungry.”

“You want to eat?”

“Mm. Fish.”

“Let’s cook something downstairs, then. I haven’t had lunch, either.”

I stood up and nodded to myself, stretching my arms over my head. I turned to the door and unlocked it—opened it. I stepped outside before glancing back. Back at her. At Aami. Not the shoggoth, not the eldritch abomination.

Just Aami. Aami the person.

My friend.