“Alright, stop it. That’s too weird.” Anna said, holding her hands up to shield her eyes from me.

I let my glamor fade and returned my face to its natural state. “You’re the one who told me to look like Arthur.”

Peeking out to make sure that I looked like what I was supposed to look like, she lowered her hands. “I didn’t think about what it would do to me, seeing my brother’s face on your body, but what else am I supposed to ask you to do? You already look like your mom, you’ve got me down, mostly, I’m running out of options.”

“I could look like someone from one of the memories?” I offered. Bess had been recent enough that I was confident I could craft her sweet face.

Anna shook her head. “No. You might know what they look like, but I don’t. How could I tell if you did it right?”

“Hmm.” I placed my hands on my hips. She said we would talk inside. I remembered, thinking about asking her what I had done instead of thinking about what I should have been. Standing there in front of her, it could have been any other night. Once she had started telling me what to do, we had fallen into the familiar training routine we had built over the last two months. Still, I could not shake how it had felt to be ignored by her and to see her truly troubled by something.

“What about stuff like what your mom has been doing with the garden? Could you do something like that? Outside of yourself?” She asked, taking a drink from her wine.

“I don’t know.” I answered honestly. My mother had told Arthur on Morrow’s night that she had changed the garden with her glamor. How the fuck she had managed to make the grass under my feet feel so real or the podiums raise up from the ground was beyond my understanding.

“Try this,” Anna held her bottle steady with one hand and reached back on the bed, throwing one of the red pillows at me. “Make this blue.”

I tried to catch it, but wound up knocking it down onto the rug. How could I do what she had asked me? More than likely because I had spent several months wearing constant glamor, changing my face had become so easy that I hardly felt a loss from it. Changing something outside of myself, even something as simple as the color of a pillow, seemed like a much more difficult working. “I don’t think I can.”

“Try or I’m marking down that you failed.” Anna threatened.

“That’s not fair, I’ve done three already.” I argued against her unjust ruling.

“Those are the rules, kid. At least when I’m coaching you.” Anna said, shrugging her shoulders and taking another drink.

I glared at her, but focused my aura anyway. Picking up the pillow, I pushed my power through my palm and willed it to cover the soft surface. A thin wave of iridescent light spread over the right side from where I gripped. The further the end of it moved away from my skin, the harder I had to push. My hands began to shake and I felt myself beginning to thin.

“Hey, are you okay?” Anna asked.

“I can’t do it.” I strained out, struggling to not lose any ground. Something inside me, right behind my navel, felt like a string wound too tight between two fingers. If I pushed further. . .

The image of Arthur’s blown out sleeves popped back into my mind.

Blue like the sky over Erosette when I met my mother in the garden for lunch.

“Autumn?” I heard Anna say my name, but I couldn’t answer her.

Blue like the dress Anna had made me wear.

“Hey, stop it! You look like you’re going to pass out.” She said, jumping off the bed.

Blue like. . . Sam when he was wearing his skin.

The red fabric of the pillow, to the end of where my aura quavered across its middle, darkened to blue.

“Blue.” I said through gritted teeth. The tension behind my navel released, like it had unwound from the fingers that had tightened it. My focus broke and my glamor turned to dust on the once again red pillow. I couldn’t grip it any longer. It fell to the ground, sparkling dust and all. My head swam. Suddenly unable to hold myself up, I followed the pillow down.

Anna tried to catch me as I tipped forward, but my weight knocked her back to the footboard. I crashed into her and slid down her legs before finally settling on the floor.

“I’m sorry.” I muttered. Keeping my eyes closed until the dizziness left me.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d bet that you were the one who had been drinking all night.” Anna said.

I rolled off of my knees and threw myself back against the footboard. Anna slid down off the bed and sat beside me. “No,” I said with my head hung between my knees. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? You didn’t hurt me or anything.” Anna said. I felt her look at me.

“For whatever I did to upset you tonight.” I mumbled, not realizing I had made the choice to bring it up until I had said it.

Anna placed her hand on my arm. “You didn’t upset me? What are you talking about?”

Everything came out all at once. “You wouldn’t look at me until I pinned you down and forced you to. I spent all night wondering what I had done to you to make you not talk to me because I know you wouldn’t do that if you hadn’t had a reason. I haven’t figured it out, but I’m sorry.”

“Shit.” Anna sighed. I heard the slosh of wine as she drank again.

I managed to raise my head enough to peak out at her. The shadow from before had settled back over her and though she sat close enough that our shoulders were touching, the distance between us had grown. I asked, speaking quietly. “What did I do.”

She let out a small laugh. “Nothing. You’re just naive and I’m an asshole. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I thought, you just have so much on your shoulders,” She rolled her head from side to side as she spoke. “The Well shit, The punishments, trying to keep secrets from your mom. I didn’t want to let my bad mood bother you.”

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“What was wrong? Why were you in a bad mood?” I asked, looking up a little more.

She drank and quirked her head so our eyes met. “It doesn’t matter. But I promise, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“It does matter. If something is troubling you, I want to help you with it. It is what you would do for me.” I said, sliding myself around until I faced her.

Anna waved me off. “It’s nothing you can help with. It’s nothing anyone can help with. Besides, didn’t you say you were going to ask your mom to go into the city? What did she say?”

“Don’t try to distract me. What shadow darkened you tonight?” I pursued.

“Autumn, it’s nothing. Did you see Arthur’s sleeves split? I think something is going on with him.” She tried to divert me yet again.

I pushed her, just hard enough to make her look at me. “Quit that shit,” I quoted her to her. “Talk to me.”

“You will probably do something stupid like tackle me if I don’t, won’t you?” She sighed through the question, mirroring my position.

“I had something much worse planned, but yes.” I answered. I had not planned on doing anything of the sort, in truth, but it did sound like the manner of thing I would do if she did not start talking soon.

“I don’t like talking about it but,” She drank. “It’s my mom.”

I didn’t speak, letting the air hang heavy in the room. Just before I thought that she had said all she was going to say, she continued.

“I knew she was sick. I knew she was going to die, but it was different when we were back home.” She drank.

“How?” I asked.

“Because she was the same. She still woke up at the same time, drank coffee on the front porch if it wasn’t raining, and would give me the same list of a thousand things to do every morning. She might take a nap after lunch or go to bed a little early, but it was still Ma.”

“Do you,” I said, thinking I understood. “Want to go home?”

“What? No. I am home. I just mean that it was different when we were somewhere she couldn’t get better. It's just,” She stood up and walked to the door before spinning back around on her heels, anger suddenly lacing her words. “Your mom has offered to try to heal her, which is apparently just something that she can do, almost everyday since we got here.”

I had killed, seen people die, felt the life leaving my body, all through the eyes of others. Through all of the memories I had lived through, nothing had felt like seeing the hurt on Anna’s face. The hushed and harsh way her words came out of her, it hurt me. It hurt me that she was hurting.

“She won’t do anything. All she does is insist that,” Anna mimicked her mother’s punchy way of speaking perfectly. “When it is my time, it is my time,” She finished the bottle of wine in one long pull before handing me the other one to uncork. “Seeing her pass out like she did last night, it just. . .it feels a lot more real.”

There had been enough strength left in me to open the bottle for her and I handed it back. She raised it and drank until a red line trickled out of the corner of her mouth and dropped into the shoulder of the white dress she was wearing, blooming into little wine colored blossom stains. Anna wiped her mouth, her eyes glistening. “The worst part is that I feel fucking guilty. It should make me sad, right? But I’m not sad. I’m fucking angry. How can she just let herself go? Isn’t that selfish? Does she not care about Arthur and me?”

I didn’t know what to say. A punishing weight had settled on my chest, but something made me resist the urge to try and distract her or turn her mind away from what was upsetting her.

Anna paced back and forth across the room. “Then there is Arthur. He just walks around, all smiles and laughs, as if Ma isn’t upstairs getting closer to death by the second. That’s why I hit him. He should be as mad at her as I am.”

She stepped onto the torn scrap of red curtain I had left on the floor that was still slick with chicken grease and her foot slipped out from under her. Back she fell, her dark hair thrown forward over her face as she went. I pushed myself forward and layed out across the roses and thorns of the rug, my right hand extended towards her.

Anna stopped a hair above the ground, caught by the thin layer of iridescent aura I had been able to force out of myself. A small pain twinged behind my navel and my aura turned to dust beneath her as she landed gently on her back.

“I think I’ve had enough to drink tonight.” She sighed, brushing her hair back off her face.

“That was my fault, I shouldn’t have left that on the floor.” I said, laying my head on the rough surface of the rug. If I had been tired before, that last little burst of aura I forced out of myself had well and truly exhausted me.

“True, but I’m not sure what it says about me that I can fall like and not spill a drop of wine.” She answered.

“Maybe you are magic after all.” I said, raising myself to my hands and knees despite the shaking weakness in my arms and legs.

Anna laughed. The sound of it alone gave me enough strength to crawl the short distance to where she lay. I looked down at her, blowing a strand of my hair to the side with a sudden puff of air. “I’m sorry I’m not better at this. You are the one who usually says the right words and makes me feel better, but if I’m not allowed to keep things from you, you aren’t allowed to keep things from me. That’s how this is supposed to work, right?”

“This,” She said the word slowly, a strange look in her eyes. She repeated what I had said through a sigh. “That’s how this is supposed to work.”

My arms and legs could support my weight no longer. I dropped, my head bouncing off of Anna’s stomach. Rolling onto my back, I left my head resting on her middle like a pillow. “I could charm you? If you wanted me to, that is.”

“You’ve already done that.” She answered, brushing my hair out above my head with her fingers.

I threw my arms in front of me and sat up. “Wait! You said you knew how I could find my color again.”

Anna climbed to her feet, using my shoulders to push herself up. Her bottle of wine was left on the stone just off the rug. “I did and I do, but not tonight. I’m drunk and you can hardly hold your head up.”

She offered me her hand and I took it, letting her do most of the work of pulling me up. My legs shook as soon as my weight settled onto them. Through the open canopy at the foot of the bed, I let myself fall forward and crawled up into the blankets.

“You never answered me,” Anna said, getting into her side of the bed and snapping the room dark. “Did you ask your mom about going into the city?”

I closed my eyes, sinking into the full darkness of the room. “No, but I earned a favor from her tonight. I’m going to ask her tomorrow and you are going with me.”

“I’d like that.” Anna said.

I felt her weight shift. Underneath the blanket, her fingers found mine and we intertwined our hands. Nothing but the sound of Sam snurring above us on the canopy, I could almost see what her delicate fingers looked like in the grip of my own.

“I don’t want her to die, Autumn.” Anna whispered.

Before I really knew what I was doing, I had pulled Anna towards me by her hand. Laying on my back, she fit herself to my side and rested her head on the inside of my outstretched arm. Near silence stretched for an indefinite amount of time, but when I felt her breaths deepen into the rhythm of her sleep, I spoke quietly. “She will not. I promise.”

Whatever manner of celebration my mother managed to craft out of seemingly nothing, I would ask her to go into the city. My power to resist the rash and irresponsible impulses that plagued me every time I looked down into the city would only last for so long, but I would not be using my favor to do it.

I had discovered a much more important use for such a precious prize.

Who would I be if I let Anna hurt the way she was without doing everything in my reach to stop it?