"Tisali, what an exciting place to live!"

"All we have here is snow, smoke, and sorrow."

I’ve always hated clinics— their ever-so-slightly off-white surfaces and pristine conditions made it feel wrong. The lights were too bright— too white and stale and clean in the ways sunlight wasn’t. Sunlight was refreshing, warm— it reminded one of sunflowers and green and nature. The lights in clinics were cold, ice-white, and sterile.

It was never just the light or smell either, everything— from the drapes to the counters, to the reception to the nurses that worked there were so clean and pristine, like if they cleansed everything— scoured everything of dirt and any visible grime, made it all so clean that nothing could live there— they could ward off death itself.

But they couldn’t. They never could— despite that endless lie they told forever and ever.

It didn’t matter what you did— medicine and magic held no ways to reverse death, no matter how much the High Cardinal wanted to preach otherwise, no matter how many children’s stories were told saying otherwise. Clinics were a place people went to die. The intermediary between a person’s home and a graveyard. That’s all they ever were.

Some clinics tried to be other things— reminders of patients’ old homes, filled with paraphernalia that reminded them of home or loved ones, pictures to serve in place of actual family members. Shitty substitutes and hollow comforts for the dead and dying.

Amaryllis Clinic was no different.

White, perfectly smooth ceiling filled my vision as I woke up, the scent of bitter medicine filled my nose, undercut by the distant smell of burnt cleaner fluid. The air was dry and stiff— stagnated and lonely and cold in a way that burnt your nose.

I slowly got off the floor, groaning at the headache looming over me. My body felt stiff and dirt-filled and nasty. I needed a shower.

“Ah! You’re back, Lady Estelle,” said a nurse sitting in a chair by the bed. I ground out some jumble of groans and affirmations, before sparing a glance at Mr. Lestine.

A cloth had been draped over him, covering his frail and failing limbs, hiding his gnarled and old features. I suppressed the urge to take the cloth off him, to pick his brain more through conversation.

“Did something go wrong?” the nurse asked, tilting her head. “You’re scowling.”

“Just tired,” I lied, tearing my gaze from him. I dug out the marble I’d gotten from him, handing it to the nurse. It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now. You wouldn’t get anything out of it other than angering the clinic. “Did the family want anything else?”

“No, thank you for your service,” the nurse responded, smiling.

Without sparing another glance at the corpse, I exited the tiny patient room, and strode down the dim, empty hallway. It was oddly quiet compared to when I came in, caretakers had been buzzing around, resolved to making sure their patients were comfortable. Many had been cheery-faced, though the receptionist I walked past wasn’t.

“We’ll send for you if something else comes up,” he said, tiredly nodding at me. “Have a good night, Lady Estelle.”

“Mhmm. You too.” I paused before the door, rearranging my scarf, tightening my cloak around myself, before stepping out into the snowy cold. The sloped streets weren’t very populated at night, and I found Stephen waiting for me farther down, carriage waiting under a dim lamp light.

“Sorry for making you wait out in the snow,” I called to him.

“Don’ worry ‘bout it, little lady.” Stephen gruffly snorted, grinning with a cherry red nose. “I’ve layered up.”

I snorted, climbing into the carriage. “The horses don’t look too happy.”

“’ily and Jasper can take it.” My coachmen took up the reins, turning to face the road. “Takin’ the scenic route?”

“Your choice.” I shut the door as he chuckled and snapped the reins. I leaned back after a moment, exhausted and reflecting while I stared out at the slowly passing cityscape.

I’d been thrown out of Dmitri’s dream early— a mixture of his death and my running out of ether— that had led me to be laying on the floor with a slowly growing headache. I could’ve pushed further, I hadn’t truly ran out of ether, but his coincidentally timed death would’ve kicked me out regardless. Dead people had no dreams to traverse through.

By normal accounts, I did my job perfectly. I peacefully sent off Dmitri with no problems, and I’d given him a better last day than he’d ever get in that clinic. I sighed, slumping against the wall. Beyond that, the job had been a resounding failure. I hadn’t gotten anymore information about my father than I’d went in with, and now that the man was dead, there was little else I could do.

I checked my pocket watch and shoved it away. It was a few hours past midnight— which, while not something I wasn’t familiar with, it did irk me a little that it’d taken so long. Normally dream-related jobs only lasted a couple hours.

But that had meant I’d wasted the better part of a day gaining virtually nothing. I slumped farther against the side of the carriage, sighing.

At least the silver arcs worked fine. The silver arcs served a separate purpose from Dreamspinning, while the silver conducted and related to the dream well, it mostly served as an elaborate anchor for me. The pattern of the string, mostly comprised of lead, functioned mostly alone to shift the dream. For it’s actual purpose, I’d need a wire drawn from tin.

You see, my real discipline didn’t lie in dreams, but rather the traversal of space— Dimensionalism, it was officially called, though I had some choice words to whoever started the school of magic. “Dimensionalism” sounded like you’d travel through other worlds, open rifts through space and time— but that notion was just another child’s fairy tale. Actual Dimensionalism, as it currently stood, was an obscure, dying branch of theoretical magical study, whose closest physical relation was the rumored teleportation gates around the world.

The next closest branch of study was Dreamspinning, which only partially overlapped, and even then, both disciplines were either dying, or so heavily restricted that possible merits out of study were questionable at best. No, Dimensionalism and Dreamspinning were both grandiose and oversold arts— a dream sold to apprentices to lure them into magic— that existed as nothing more than utterly vacant shells of their promises. Any one who believed otherwise were childish fools.

Pot calling the kettle black? A part of my mind snorted.

“Maybe,” I absently muttered to my too-thin reflection in the window.

Regardless, Dimensionalism and Dreamspinning in their current states were frustratingly lackluster. The former more so than the latter— at least Dreamspinning was an uncommon, but well-known specialty. I shoved the irritation from my mind with a sigh.

It is what it is.

Past my reflection, outside, the city sat slumbering, bereft of the usual amber-bronze glow it held in the light, muted by the dense snowfall. Drifts of snow blanketed the city; from the tall spires of the ancient clock towers, to the clustered and branching network of interlacing waterway bridges, to the largest mountains I could barely make out. In spite of the frost and the hour, smoke lazily plumed through the sky, pockmarks of the city’s industrious nature. Though, the sky remained empty of the usual airships.

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

All in all, tonight, framed by the snow, the city looked more like a muted snow globe than anything man-made. Still and silent, yet thrumming with activity beneath it all.

The carriage continued up the roads, the rhythmic clicking of its wheels along cobbles muffled by the crunching snow. My breath fogged up the window, and I let my eyes fall shut.

[][][]

Eventually, I woke up, bleary-eyed and scowling as the coach shuddered to a stop. I hadn’t felt like I’d slept at all. Wiping off the window, we’d arrived at my house.

Well— not my house, more my family, but there was little difference now.

The door opened, and on the other side, was Esmerelda, who dusted off her pants, stood fidgeting for a moment, before stiffly bowing. I frowned.

“Welcome home, Lady Estelle,” she said, eyes down.

“… Why are you still here?” I climbed out of the carriage, shutting the door before she could reach for it.

“’Cuz she wanted to welcome her mistress home!” Stephen called, grinning. I gave him an unamused look. He knew how I hated the title. ‘Master this’, and ‘Mistress that’, never sat right with me.

Esmerelda bowed again. “I— You have a visitor, my lady…”

I sighed, before moving to walk past her. “It’s dark out, go home, Esmerelda. You don’t have to stay after hours to care for the house.”

Her footsteps hurried to catch up to mine. “But— but, you pay us so much… compared to how much work we—“

“I pay you a wage you can live in comfort off of— it’s not exactly unreasonable.”

Stephen laughed from behind us. “Drop it, Eldy, the little lady over there won’ ever change her stance ‘bout it— trust me— Javier’s been tryin’ for years.”

“Uhm— it was actually Javier who asked me to stay…”

“It was a request— right?” I paused, glancing back to her quietly nodding, and gave her a small smile. “Good— Thank you Esmerelda. Go home for the night— actually— have Stephen take you.”

“Wha’? I was thinkin’ I was done for the night!” Stephen mock-protested. Esmerelda meekly bowed again, stammering a nervous “yes ma’am” before walking back to the carriage. I silently watched them as she climbed up next to Stephen, before they rode down the road and around a corner. I slowly turned and walked towards the front door of my home, silently thanking Esmerelda that she’d cleared out the snow on the path. Cold feet wasn’t another thing I wanted, along with dirt and my returning headache.

Laurent Estate was a grand, old thing. Built before the revolutionizing of the sleeker, more industrial architecture present in the new buildings around the city, it stood as a relic of old money and older times.

Past it’s wrought-iron fence and cracked stone path, the lawn had fallen to nature; ivy and moss and trees stripped bare, doing their best to reclaim the home, colonizing the fence, crawling up the walls and eating at the crumbling statues. The veranda lay unused and mostly forgotten, once being a place to gather, but now only gathering snow.

The building itself, huddled under a blanket of snow and hiding within a nest of inhospitable foliage, was a dying, two-story thing. The estate hadn’t had a proper maintenance staff for years, and it showed. From the slowly aging-pink brick that had once been red, and the washed-out slate roofing that hadn’t been changed in years. The ancient wooden beams, sagging and groaning under the weight of eternal snow and neglect. The latticed windows, peeking out from beneath their veil of snow and ivy, sitting silent, lightless and lifeless.

An odd, dying beauty could be found in the estate, and admittedly, it sometimes made me wish that I’d maintained it over the years. It really had been prettier in my childhood, all new, well-maintained stone and latticework, living comfortably with the vegetation that now threatened its life. But that was then, and this was now.

Making my way up the pockmarked steps to the door, I dug through my pocket for the key, before finding it missing.

Concerning, the part of my brain that often spoke of useless things supplied.

It’s not like it mattered, regardless, I was keyed into the wards anyway, so having a key was really just a formality. I unlocked the door, strode through the foyer, the wood-paneled hallways and living room, and shucked my dirt-clad cloak into a bin in the bathroom. Turning to the mirror, I examined and dusted myself off, primarily rubbing at the dirt that had turned into lighter, black-brown spots in my hair, and running water over my hands and face. Afterwards, I was still faintly scowling at my reflection, but at least it no longer looked like I had decided to roll around in the dirt.

Next was the topic of my “visitor”. I had a pretty good idea of who it might’ve been— no one else would show up at this hour, and even if they did, only one person wouldn’t be turned away. And I knew precisely where I’d find him, if he wasn’t in the living room.

I checked my library first. A sprawling double-floored space of overflowing books and journals stacked precariously on old, sanded shelves that arched into the homely architecture of house. Thick, multicolored rugs consumed the floor, shoring and pooling along corners and walls, cobbled together without a care for aesthetic or theme. They’d been picked solely for the fact that they’d been plush and numerous.

The first floor was occupied by desks and bespelled, floating orange lights— meant to imitate candles— that flitted lazily through the first floor. They’d illuminate the desks and shadowed corners. Farther up, on the mezzanine, were occupied by arching sash windows and smaller, private rooms. Up there, the candle lights were replaced by pinpricks of snowy light that did nothing but shine, creating the illusion of a star-filled sky.

Slightly impractical— as it meant that you couldn’t actually use the mezzanine to access the books farther up during night time, but a problem I’d resolved years ago through moving all the books I used to the first floor. As a result, many of the desks on the first floor had been swallowed by books and journals, and at some point, I’d started stacking them on the floor.

I found Arthur on the first floor, tucked away in a corner. He was carefully leaning over my desk— which wasn’t much better than the rest of my library. Choked by empty mugs, journals, ink pots, and clusters of candle lights, sat a silver, speckled arc that had been delicately set onto a silk cloth. Arthur was carefully thumbing through my journal, making soft noises of wonder as he glanced between the journal and the arc.

“Esmerelda?” He called as I approached, not looking up. “Is that you?”

“Sorry to disappoint.” I stopped beside him, smiling. “Nosing through my stuff?”

“Elle!” He spun, grinning, mahogany eyes glinting. “Esmerelda wouldn’t tell me when you’d be back!”

“Because she didn’t know.” I picked up the silver arc. It speckled with each twist in the light. Numerous pockmarks decorated every area of its surface, forming an odd, white-black-gray glisten. It was blade-thin, deceptively delicate, and about the length of my forearm before eventually tapered off to a fine point. “What did you drop by for?”

He pointed to a smaller, covered basket by the desk while leaning over my shoulder. “Mom wanted to give you some, and told me to deliver it.”

“At this hour?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

I let a small smile come to my face. “… You sure you didn’t do something to her and she kicked you out for a bit?”

He choked, coughing into his fist. “N— no…”

It was then when I noticed the dampness along his clothing. Frowning, I ran a hand along his shoulder. He stilled, and my hand came away damp and cold.

“Elle?”

“Did you trod through the snow?”

“Uh…“ Arthur looked sheepish.

“Did you even bring a coat?” I asked, growing more incredulous.

“…”

“Arthur.”

“H— hey! I thought it’d be fine, y’know?”

I shot him a look, and we fell silent. He knew he’d done something dumb. I knew he did something dumb, and we both knew that the other knew. He chuckled.

“So— can I, uh—“

“Yes—“ I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Please. Go shower before you catch a cold.”

“Is—“

“Yes. Your room is still in the same place.” He gave me a mock-salute, before turning and leaving the library. After a moment, I checked the time. A quarter before four.

Only Arthur would be dumb enough to trudge through a half-hour of snow without a coat— knowing him, he probably tried to run through the snow. I sighed and rubbed at my headache.

“You’re staying the night, too!” I called after him. I wasn’t about to let him go back out in the middle of the night. “I’ll see you in the morning!”

“You too!”

I sagged, exhaustion having made itself at home in the growing aches in my body. I slowly dragged myself to my mess of a bedroom, haphazardly changed, and promptly fell into a dreamless sleep.