“You’re the first person to ask about this in a while,” Sunshine begins, clicking the key in the lock, “I do hope you’ll find it lives up to your style.”
Peony quietly takes hold of Sebastian’s hand as Sunshine opens the door to the bathhouse. When she heard the scream, all she could think to do was distract Sunshine from whomever it was, but she knew she couldn’t do it alone. She debated telling Sebastian, but the words didn’t come. All she could muster was please, and that was all he needed.
“Thank you for showing us, though,” She replies, “I figured I’d ask before we got too carried away with the show and everything.”
“Don’t worry about it, we all have questions to ask. And all things considered, this is quite the simple task.”
He opens the battered door into the room. As Peony takes her first step in, candles ignite around the room, casting formless shadows on the walls in the halos of pink flame. The floors of sea glass tiles click with every step she takes. Soon, Sebastian follows her into the room, his feet clinking against the tiles too. Sunshine doesn’t join them. Instead, he gently nudges the door almost shut with a quiet groan.
“Probably one of the nicer bathhouses in Portar,” Sebastian says in a hush.
“Yeah,” Peony replies.
Bottles and jars of every shape, color, and contents pile high atop the shelf next to the door. Opposite of it, forming almost a hallway coming from the door, are cubbies full of neatly folded towels and washcloths. Inlets perfectly obscured with opaque curtains stand ominously at the end of the hallway. From underneath one covered stall is a puddle of sickly black liquid that Peony hopes is only a stain. The air is cold, almost dusty, yet still smells vaguely of herbs and salts from days gone by. When Peony starts to walk down the hall, Sebastian dutifully follows behind her. Peony slips on her ring, and Sebastian blinks the wings on his eyes. In a moment’s time, they are invisible to whatever might want to see them.
Past the doorway at the end of the hall is the vast expanse of the inner bathhouse. Old scrolls of flowers and mountains inked on yellowed paper hang motionlessly on the walls. To their left, a grand mirror leans against the red tile wall, supported by melted candles with waxy roots that flow between the sea glass. In the corner rests the opalescent outline of a sprawling bathtub with the clawed feet of a griffin cast in gold. On the wall beside it, a once golden tap protrudes awkwardly from the wall alongside a single dial. Glyphs and warnings find themselves smeared along the back wall with the same ink as before. The other wall hosts a shower with a crooked copper pipe which sprouts from the ground like some awkward weed with no dial to be found. Near it, more scribblings. In the very center of the room lies the drain, and from it rises some odd scent of stagnant water.
Peony starts to walk about the room. Even in the dim light, the black splotches and stains stick out like searchlights. She follows a trail of footprints (or at least, what look like footprints) to the bathtub. The basin is vast, perhaps large enough to cradle all the vast coilings of a grand Wyrm king. The white porcelain is completely untouched by the stains, but for a second the gold-filled cracks along the bottom appear to be carvings of teeth. As soon as the image fills her mind, though, it vanishes from sight.
The candles along the edge are lit with little pink flames that stand firmer than trees in the dead air. Though the wax on the candles is melted into ghastly piles and carvings, it seems now like the candles will never erode. She wonders if the mirror candles are the same. Not that she would mind when she would return. The dim light like this is perfect for a sanctuary like this. They’re mysterious, cast perfect to hide within, provided just enough light.
And dare I say romantic?
She snaps around in shock. Her eyes dart about the room, frantically looking for Sebastian. For a moment, she expects him to accost her for her thoughts. If she could be watched, why not by him?
“Sebastian?” She calls.
Sebastian sheepishly turns away from a splotch of ink oozing from the walls. “Yeah?”
“Nothing,” She replies, “Never mind.”
Sebastian turns back to the splatter on the wall, and Peony returns her gaze to the tub. Her mind froths with a flurry of thoughts so disjointed they resemble white noise. She almost feels betrayed by her brain.
Besides, she thinks, trying to collect the scatter into some coherent mass, He’d never feel the same.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
It’s a solid solution and a modest conclusion. She can’t prove it, but she can’t disprove it either, and in some weird way that makes peace. Peace enough, at least, to ignore the flurry of thoughts whirling around her head like fish in a bowl.
Well, except for one thing.
She doesn’t know yet, but she’s wrong.
Sebastian has good reason to be hiding away by the stain of ink. He caught one glance of Peony in the mirror and went catatonic.
He knows good and well why he gets like this around her, and by now he’s learned to stop fighting it. After all, when the men of Greek myth laid their eyes on Aphrodite, they couldn’t help falling in love with her, right? And Peony, who pulled him from the Abyssal Sea, who stitched him back together after their scuffle with Malus, who always sat so attently to listen to his music, is no different. She’s a goddess, and he is her devotee. With all the kindness she’s given to him, perhaps his love is the only way he can make up for it.
She’s his ally, his friend, everything he can want from her. Every step they take is for each other anyway, so who’s to say they aren’t already a little in love with each other? How happy it makes him to have her at his side, standing back to back, or leading the way into whatever danger they could face. He can’t be more blessed to have her as a friend, and he’s content with that. Yes, he is content.
Satisfied? No.
All he wants is an answer. Every day he asks the same wordless question hoping she replies. He doesn’t even mind the answer being no. Perhaps the answer would be better off no. Maybe he’d finally be rid of the longing gazes that tear at his chest and the discordant dreams that leave him wide awake with nosebleeds in the misty hours of the night. Maybe, if she said no, they’d be better friends. Friends don’t just yearn for one another like glassy-eyed lovers in gothic novels. Friends don’t find that the world has less color when they’re apart. And certainly friends don’t have to stare at a splotch of ink in a bathhouse to distract themselves from the other. Yes, it would be better. It’s just his humanity that makes him want what he wants, even if it’s not for the best.
He thinks about a yes much less than he does a no. But now, surrounded by the dewy scent of the herbed water and the hazy light of the candles, he does. He imagines Peony brought him here for the sole purpose of telling him. What a way to start an adventure, she’d laugh, to tell your partner in the magic show that you’re in love with them. And he’d tell her just how he feels, and he’d joke about how maybe now their magic would be stronger, and they’d kiss and leave the room with a little secret between them. And whenever either of them came down to get cleaned up or just relax, they’d think of the other, and everything would be ok. Everything would be ok.
And we could come down here together if we wanted to.
Sebastian coughs to snap himself out of his daydream and focuses back on the ink. Those are the thoughts he’s come to fear. Peony would hate him for thinking like that.
“Hey, Peony?” He asks, looking away from the blackness.
“Yeah?”
It’s hard for him to pull the words from his head. “You know, I’ve, uh, been staring at this for a while, and it sorta looks like a door.
“A door?” Peony asks.
“Yeah. Like, maybe you could just walk through it if you wanted to.”
He knows it sounds stupid. Anything to distract him from her, he supposes.
Peony cocks her head to the side. “Huh. It does, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Maybe a little later we can come back down here and try going through it?”
“Sure. I don’t see why not.”
“Great, wonderful.”
“Should we go back and tell the others about this place?”
“Yeah.”
They hesitantly turn and leave the inner chamber, then slowly walk down the main hallway. Peony slips off the ring. Neither of them say a word to each other. Their thoughts are too preoccupied with how much they love the other and how much the other must despise them.
Sunshine waits at the door. He scowls at the pair when they emerge from the darkness within. He couldn’t hear them when they were in the room, and now, with their amorous thoughts, he suspects the worst.
“Glad to see you again, and about time too,” he growls, “You weren’t messing around in there, were you?”
“Messing around?” Sebastian asks, “What?”
“Don’t think I don’t pay attention when boys and girls go off alone. Now, I may be a lenient man, but this is not your home.”
“Oh god, no, we weren’t doing anything,” Peony rebukes. “We did only what we told you we were gonna do, and that was check the place out. We were there for five minutes, nothing more!”
“One can do a lot in five minutes, I daresay. You wouldn’t want to know what happens when you disobey.”
“Mr. Sunshine, with all due respect, if I was gonna do something like that, I’d take a hell of a lot longer than five minutes to do it.”
Sebastian goes red.
“Come on, Seb,” She grimaces, taking his hand in frustration. “Let’s go tell the others where the bathhouse is.”