I'd done an abysmal job of finding a healer, and Meloai and Lucet had failed just as hard to find employment. I suppose we couldn't exactly be to blame for that. Discovering that the city we'd hoped would give us asylum from the mindfuckery of the Silent Peaks and the endless wars of the Redlands was actually its own shitshow of horrors wasn't exactly conducive to acing an interview.

"Although we should have no problem finding employment in general," Lucet hastened to add, finishing off her summary of how she'd spent the day. "I mean, I'm a fairly competent witch of sorrow, but I'm also directly attuned to passion, fear, calm, shock..."

"Have fun posting that on a job board," Meloai muttered. "You know, I tried nailing a 'for hire' poster on the local sorcery guild's wall, but for some reason they wouldn't let me sign up as a 'witch of insecurity and trust and repentance and hope and shame and guilt and rue and curiosity and anxiety and exhaustion and wonder and grief.'"

"Plus all the possible combinations of those emotions," Lucet added.

"Really, it's the fact that we know how to gain attunements—and combine them—that makes all the difference," I muttered. "It's not witchcraft as we've learned it, using the attunements you have to the best of your ability. It's something... new."

"Well, it's a kind of... metamagic, right?" Lucet asked. "Manipulating your soul as a whole, instead of focusing on a single emotion, in order to produce magic? And if you wanted a name for someone who uses soul effects for mage spells—"

"An effectspeller!" Meloai burst out.

Lucet and I looked at her, and she deflated. "What? Too many syllables?"

"A soulmage." I tapped my lips. "Yeah. That's simpler than listing every attunement we have, at the very least."

"Speaking of jobs..." Lucet squinted towards Knwharfhelm, the setting sun in her eyes. I opened my soulsight and saw the familiar, blazing fireball that made up Sansen's soul walking our way. "Let's hope Jiaola and Sansen did a better job of setting up shop than we did."

To my surprise, Sansen was alone when he arrived. He'd hardly left Jiaola's side ever since they'd reunited in the Redlands. I supposed that it had just taken this long for Sansen to accept that Jiaola would still be there when he returned. We met Sansen halfway, standing on top of a small hill overlooking the city.

"Judging by the lack of Jiaolas, I'm guessing he managed to find a place to stay?" I asked.

Sansen grinned, futures still blazing over one eye. "You could say that. You guys should come quick, though; the soup's almost done."

The three of us traded quizzical glances, but Sansen just waggled his eyebrows in excitement. "Sansen," I said slowly, "the current date is Feathers and Trust. If you're expecting us to know what you mean, you haven't explained it yet."

"Really?" He blinked, then shut off his futuresight for a moment. "Ah! So it is. Sorry. Uh, yeah. Honestly, you should just see this for yourselves. It's easier than explaining, and it's tastier this way, too."

Well, I was hungry. "Sure. Lead the way, fearless oracle."

"To food!" Lucet said, pumping a fist in the air.

"For everyone except me," Meloai added. Right, being a soul-eating demon had some drawbacks.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Sansen said, eye twinkling with futures only he could see.

Huh. We reached the city gates, which showed no signs of their traffic slowing despite the night. I saw witches of joy sending pulses of light walking down the packed-dirt streets of Knwharfhelm, lighting everything from beneath with a gentle white glow. It was such a simple spell, but it transformed the dirt beneath our feet into rivers of liquid light, and for that alone I resolved to learn it as soon as I could.

Sansen led us down streets and shop-awnings lit from below by the enchanted streets, the shadows streaking up awnings and walls giving everything an inverted, ethereal cast. Though we swerved off the main street into the maze of alleyways where Svette had infected me, the sheer confidence with which Sansen strode down Knwharfhelm's alleyways kept me calm. As we kept walking, I heard the distant sounds of laughter, and smelled something spicy and thin drifting on the wind. Mist filled the night air, cool on my skin. Light blazed in the distance, casting twinkling rainbows in the fog. And as we passed through the mouth of the alleyway into a small, unused lot, I saw the source of the magic.

A handful of children, ranging from half my age to nearly grown-up, lounged around a bubbling, glowing cauldron with no apparent source of heat, looking up as Sansen brought us in. I recognized Svette in one corner, trotting over with a bundle of parsnips; she gave me a cheerful wave as I entered. But she wasn't what took my focus.

Jiaola stood by the cauldron, opposite a scowling girl who glared into the stew. "I know you're hurting," Jiaola murmured. "I was too, when my parents tried to split me and Sansen apart."

"Hurting?" The girl scoffed. "You think hurting is the right word for how fucked up my asshole family is? They threatened to kill Svette if she ever kissed me again. I'm furious. If my parents lay a hand on my girlfriend, I'll kill them myself."

"And you're right to be angry," Jiaola said, leaning over the cauldron. "Some things have to be opposed—why do you think I came back here? But you can't be angry all the time, or it'll burn you out from the inside."

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"You say that like it's a choice," the girl spat. "So what do you want from me? Should I go crawling back to my parents and pretend they don't hate me? That I don't hate them?"

"No. I'd never send you back out there. What I want to give you is a place where you can set that fury aside for a moment, and pick it up when you need it."

The girl tightened her fingers on the rim of the cauldron. "How?" she whispered.

"Do you want me to show you?" Jiaola asked.

Mutely, the girl nodded.

Jiaola inhaled, and in my soulsight, I saw an echoing memory reach into her soul, draining the swirling oil of anger that roiled in her soul, his witchcraft converting passion into heat as it streaked from her soul into the cauldron. With my physical eyes, I saw the soup he'd been cooking broil, the girl's anger and trapped fury finding release as it set that broth to raging.

And viewing that glowing cauldron, a flash of insight struck me. Jiaola had been a witch of lust for longer than I'd been alive, and he was a master of his craft. He could harden air into a cauldron's steel with an effortless spell.

But the glow of the cauldron? That came from pure, unadulterated joy. The spell holding the cauldron together was his pride and sexuality intertwined, and it was radiant in the mist-strewn night.

The girl exhaled, her shoulders un-tensing as some of that helpless fury was finally set free from her wrung-out frame.

"It gets better," Jiaola whispered. "Truly, it does."

The girl nodded mutely, still staring at the bubbling soup. In my soulsight, the soup was rich with the passion and fury of the lost children of Knwharfhelm.

Sansen stepped towards the cauldron and asked, "May I add one thing more?"

Jiaola looked up at the oracle, his husband, and smiled. "You already know I'll say yes."

And Sansen willed a fragment of memory into the palm of his hand, then dropped it into the soup.

"It's ready," Sansen said, and I'd almost forgotten my hunger in the moment.

It seemed that the children Jiaola had gathered over the course of the day were more than ready, though, because I found myself at the back of an instantly-formed line. Jiaola gestured, shaping power into the form of a memory, and a ladle and soup-bowls of glowing air solidified in his hands.

When Jiaola reached me, he winked.

"Sit down before you drink up," he said.

I held the bowl—the magically-frozen air it was made of felt cool to the touch—and shook my head in disbelief. "You did this all in a day?"

"Knwharfhelm is my birthplace," Jiaola said. "Some things about it... won't change, unless someone changes them." He nodded. "But we can talk once the line's gone."

I realized Lucet and Meloai were waiting their turn, blushed, and scooted aside. Lucet and Meloai sat next to me, the bone broth that was so foreign to me but second nature to the Crystal Coast steaming in my hands.

Lucet was still giving the children a wide-eyed look. "Did... did you know Jiaola was planning this, when he said he was 'setting up shop'?"

I shook my head. "Sometimes I forget," I muttered. "He was fighting his own battles long before we were born."

"And this is what he was fighting for," Meloai whispered. She stared at the soup, and even though her body couldn't metabolize its physical form, I saw her draw the memory Sansen had dissolved into her own soul.

That was my cue, I supposed.

I lifted the bowl to my lips and drank.

And I was no longer Cienne, a wonderstruck teenager in a haven forged of magic and kindness.

I was Sansen Tsihk, he who crossed a battlefield to save his husband from the storm, and I saw every future.

#

I opened my eyes, and overlapping visions of every possible future flooded the empty lot. That stump of a wall would become a window, sprouting flowerpots, curtains, or woodwork. That empty, wrecked hallway would be lined with soft mats and toy balls. A bedroom upstairs would hold one crib, or two, or three.

And the house we'd build would fill with children. Adopted, of course—but they would be our children nonetheless. I saw a giggling toddler chase after a shrieking child, a snake in one chubby fist, while my husband looked at the two of them, exasperated. And simultaneously, I saw a drooling, zonked-out teenager sleeping off what must have been a hell of a hangover, my husband giving them a knowing look as he worked on his woodcraft. And our future sons and daughters ran and played and laughed and lived everywhere as far as I could see, rippling in my futuresight like the sky caught in a puddle.

I reached out my hand, instinctively, to touch one of the visions, but my flesh passed through the possibility like a stone through a pond.

"What do you see?" Jiaola asked from my side. I turned to look at my husband—the Jiaola of now, not the hundreds of him I saw in the endlessly branching futures—and he must have seen the bittersweet melancholy on my face, because he took my hand in his.

"If we choose to stay here," I said, "there are children. Maybe one. Maybe many. But always children."

Jiaola gave me a teasing smile, poking me in the ribs. "I wonder whose idea that was?"

"Well." I felt at my body, wondering when it would betray me. When the first odd swelling would begin. "It must have been yours, because..." I trailed off, gaze caught by one particular possibility. A future where the sun had set, and Jiaola had returned to the windowsill that he had lovingly cared for over the years.

The windowsill that overlooked a simple grave.

"Because, my love?" Jiaola prompted.

"Because I'm not there," I whispered. "In all the futures I see, I'm not there."

Jiaola shook his head. "Don't let it get to you, Sansen. You told me yourself—your futuresight only shows you elemental possibilities."

"Which is why I know that, when something is absent, it has left the realm of possibility entirely." I held up my hand, and in my futuresight I saw straight through it, as if I was already nothing more than a ghost. "I've checked the future, Sansen. The cancer catches up to me eventually. Slower, in some timelines, than others. But always, always inevitable."

Jiaola squeezed my hand, and I wasn't sure if he was reassuring himself or me. "We'll find a way," he whispered. "Those futures you see? I want you to live through them with me."

"I do, too," I murmured. "More than anything."

But the futures cared little for what one oracle desired.

And no matter how long I watched the children and their father play, I never joined them.

#

The memory passed as memories do: in a heartbeat of present, and an eternity of past. When I came back to myself, the soup bowl was empty, the anger at injustice that had been poured into its making filling my soul with warmth.

And everyone in the courtyard, every soul Jiaola and Sansen had touched, were all looking towards the couple, anxiety and worry and care written into their very souls.

"I've come here today," Jiaola said, his voice carrying in the silence, "to ask you all a favor. The people I love put themselves at great risk on my behalf, and fell terribly ill in the process. So I ask you all a favor. If the children of Knwharfhelm are anything like you were when I left, you all know more than your parents think you should."

A rumble of agreement and fuck yeahs and you heard its rang around the circle.

"Then if anyone knows anything about how we can meet a healer who can help my family... or if you know how we can find out... please. Don't hesitate to tell us."

The circle fell silent.

Then Svette raised a hand, and I felt a chill run down my spine.

"I..." She hesitated, as if fearful of breaking the silence, then more firmly this time, spoke once more. "I think I know a guy."