Isra woke up alone. The room had gone chilly in the night, which often happened in Pucklechurch, even in midsummer. Beneath her blanket, all was well, and there was a temptation to hide there until the sun had warmed the room, but she threw off her covers anyhow and went into the closet, looking for something to wear. She had not just her new wardrobe, but more than half of Verity’s things as well, since Verity had thought that she’d be sleeping at the cabin only for a short while. It had been almost a week and showed no signs of stopping though, and Isra wondered whether Verity would end up simply living there, even though she wasn’t suited to the woods.
Dressing was harder without Verity. Isra had sometimes just stayed in the room until Verity woke up late, so they could get dressed together, because Verity was always helpful with navigating the ins and outs of fashion. Fashion had many rules, and while Verity couldn’t always articulate why those rules existed — many of them were made up, it seemed — she could at least define what they were, and help Isra to avoid the most serious missteps. Certain shoes went with certain dresses, and certain colors went with each other, and there were something called ‘accessories’, which was a name for more or less anything that you wore that wasn’t clothing. More than once, Isra had asked for advice and Verity had come over to redo almost everything, from the shade of her lipstick to the shoes she’d be wearing.
Black and brown weren’t supposed to go together, except in certain circumstances. A simple blouse would need to be paired with a vibrant skirt or a printed pattern. Skin could be shown, but only so much, and the idea that most people went with was to tease rather than flaunt, though that varied.
The irritating thing had been that Verity was, most often, entirely right. The changes she’d suggested really did make Isra look better. What Isra found most annoying was that she couldn’t just figure it out on her own, even having been told a handful of the rules. She was, apparently, a quick learner — people had told her that about many things, even when druidism wasn’t guiding her along — but in fashion it felt like she was still fumbling around in the dark. No one had said anything, and Verity had said that they wouldn’t say anything, and that was almost worse, because it meant that they might notice and then stay silent. When it came to fashion, you could put something together, look in the mirror, and end up looking wrong anyway, without even knowing that you were wrong.
And of course Verity had never helped with prim efficiency, not once they were partnered. There had been touching, the undoing of buttons, the slide of a zipper, hands touching hips and waist, or legs when explaining where a hem should lay for such and such purpose. As instruction, it was perhaps lacking, but as entertainment, it was nearly unparalleled, and Isra missed that too.
Their conversation after the concert had gone poorly. Isra blamed herself for that. There was a time and a place to talk about those feelings, and it hadn’t been right after Verity had gone through another moment with her mother. Isra had tried to disengage, to go to sleep with everything that had been brewing left unsaid, but Verity had pushed, and it had spilled out. And from there, it had mostly been silence between them. They were avoiding each other, and after a brief, awkward conversation about their living arrangements, when Isra had said she’d move back into the cabin, Verity had offered instead.
Isra was laced with regrets, but she was also convinced that there was something real she’d been feeling, and it wasn’t as though a reunion would make those thoughts go away. She loved Verity, deeply, but she worried that wasn’t enough. Hannah had said that, more than once, that it wasn’t enough to love.
Isra spent the morning in the garden after eating a small breakfast sandwich that Mizuki had prepared. Mizuki had declared it the Day of Three Sandwiches, and seemed to think that she could make all three distinct enough for it to work, which she seemed quite pleased about. Isra didn’t understand it, but she thought it was one of those things that most people wouldn’t understand. At least there would be sandwiches along the way.
Isra and Verity both worked on the garden, and in the week that had followed the concert and their return, it had been something of a way of interacting with each other, at least from Isra’s perspective. Isra did most of her work in the morning, before Verity came home, and Verity worked through the day, while Isra was busying herself around town. There wasn’t actually that much to do in the garden, not with all the work they’d already put in, but Isra knew the place like the back of her hand, and always noted what Verity had done, whether it was a new trellis for the tomatoes or an attempt to make sure the spinach wouldn’t bolt. Isra had left most of the harvesting to Verity, and noted which of the strawberries Verity had missed. She assumed that Verity was doing the same, and in that way, they were still friends.
“Hi Isra,” said Alfric as Isra was telling the bugs to stay away. His voice was soft, like he was trying to sneak up on a deer. “Just so you know, after lunch I’ll be doing disclosure. I wanted to wait until everyone was here, so we could do it as a group.”
Isra looked at him. He looked apologetic, but there was something else, not like he was wincing, but like he was preparing to wince.
“What happened?” asked Isra.
“The short version is that we tried to do a dungeon and it went bad,” said Alfric. “The long version, I’ll give at lunch.”
“Okay,” said Isra. She wanted more, but it was clear that Alfric was waiting for the right moment, and so she went back to the plants, willing them to grow bigger and better. There was a knot of tension in her stomach though, and it was hard to concentrate on anything, so she soon went back inside to wait.
Verity came right around the time lunch was being prepared. Isra saw her coming through the eyes of a few birds, though she was careful not to let the birds stare, and she hoped that Verity would be none the wiser. It was something they’d joked about before, but now the spying felt less like a joke. She hoped that Verity was doing alright out in the cabin, and all the reports from animals had been that things were going well.
“Verity, I need to do some disclosure, but I’d like to wait until after everyone has had some food,” said Alfric.
“Uh oh,” said Verity. She stared at him. “How bad?”
“We did a dungeon, and we didn’t all make it,” he said. “There’s also something that I’d like to talk with you about after I’m done with the others, alright?”
“Yeah,” said Verity. “That’s, uh. Fine.”
Because Isra was in the living room, Verity went into the dining room. It was how they were doing it, each of them in a different place from the other, if for some reason they ended up in the house together. Isra was doing her part to maintain some distance. She hoped that it was for the best. She didn’t want to lose the relationship, she just wanted it to be better, and some space seemed like it would help with that. And if they weren’t going to be girlfriends, then they should at least still be friends, colleagues, and maybe roommates. It seemed like that was for the future though.
They all ate together, mostly in silence. No one had all that much of an appetite. Isra wasn’t sure what was really accomplished by having them eat first, and she wondered whether that was deliberate on Alfric’s part. Whatever she was picturing in her head though, she was sure that it must be worse.
“Alright,” said Alfric once everyone was done eating. “Let me tell you how the dungeon went.”
Isra was wrong. It wasn’t actually that bad, not as Alfric had told it. She was the one who had died, which was a bit of a relief. If she had let someone down, or gotten in the way of Mizuki’s spells, or not listened to Alfric, or forgotten something they’d drilled on, it might have been different. Instead, it seemed like it was just chance, and all Alfric’s gravity seemed a bit unwarranted.
“Why are the dungeons so bad?” asked Verity, once Alfric had delivered a largely uninterrupted report.
“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “We don’t have enough to say that they’re above what we’d expect from variance, but it’s something I’ve talked to my guild about. They seem to agree that we’ve faced a bit worse than we might have expected. It takes some time for guild conversations to happen, but from the reports I put in for last week’s dungeons … yes, we might be getting bad variance, or there might be something else in play.”
“It’s me,” said Verity. She looked at Alfric. “That’s the conclusion, right?”
“Wait,” said Mizuki, holding up a hand. “Haven’t we had good variance? Like, a lot of money from the growstones, the theater, all that other stuff?”
“That’s not going to be worth anything if we die,” said Verity. She looked over at Isra, just for a moment. Their eyes met, then slipped away, like raindrops rolling off a leaf.
“No one died for real,” said Alfric. “It was all like a bad dream.” He really didn’t seem like he meant it though, or if he did mean it, then it was a bad dream that was sticking with him.
“I know that,” said Verity. She let out a sigh. “But if it’s me?”
“You said there was a large rift in the forest,” said Hannah, arching an eyebrow.
“I’m not sure that’s anything,” said Alfric.
Mizuki looked around. “I don’t get it.”
“The rift might be about us,” said Isra.
“Alfric, you said you had something more for me?” asked Verity. She wasn’t meeting Alfric’s eyes.
“Yes,” he replied. “I wanted to keep it confidential.”
“Can we do that now?” asked Verity. “I want to know what it is.”
Alfric paused, looking around the table. “Sure,” he said. “We can talk up in your room?” Verity nodded.
They left, and there was some silence.
“I wonder whether it was the Day of Three Sandwiches in the undone day,” said Mizuki. “Alfric didn’t mention it.”
“Well, ay,” said Hannah. “Probably didn’t think that it was worth the breath, to be honest.”
“Ouch,” said Mizuki.
“I don’t mean it like that, I just think this is hard on him, not just because he had to live through it, but because he’s our leader and feels like he let us down,” said Hannah. “Now, I don’t think that’s true, not as he’s described it to us, and I trust the man, but it’s what he feels, and that’s why such an august event as Three Sandwich Day wasn’t of concern to him.”
“Day of Three Sandwiches,” said Mizuki. She crossed her arms.
Isra was tempted to turn her attention elsewhere. She wanted to know what Verity had done or said that required a private talk. It would have been easy to send a nearby squirrel up the side of the house to sit by the window and listen in, or even to have Tabbins get up off his spot on the couch to saunter upstairs. Isra resisted the urge. They had gone up there for privacy, after all, and while she sometimes watched people when they didn’t know they were being watched, that felt manifestly different from watching people when they’d taken some pains not to have eyes on them.
“How are you?” asked Hannah.
“Fine,” said Isra with a shrug. “We know that this happens.”
“We knew it could happen, which isn’t the same,” said Hannah.
“It’s what Alfric’s chrononaut power is for,” said Isra. “He could tell me that I died in a dungeon a hundred times and I don’t think I would care, except that I would try to do better next time. We were all fighting for our lives, as he tells it.” She shrugged again. “Is that weird, to not care?”
“No,” said Mizuki. “I mean, it makes me sad that we don’t have a perfect record, but I mostly care about Alfric.”
“Ay,” said Hannah.
“Normally he’s so confident,” said Mizuki. She glanced at the stairs. “And, you know, I don’t want to die because of personal stuff.” She looked at Isra. “The whole relationship that Alfric warned you not to get into.”
Isra frowned and stayed quiet.
“No, I mean, it was fine when you guys were going at it, when you were peas in a pod, cuddled on the couch together, but now the party channel is quiet all day, you’re hardly ever in the same room, we don’t really know what’s going on except that it was probably you having a problem with her, we’re not doing dungeons and the dungeon we did do we failed —”
“Enough,” said Hannah.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“Well I’m just trying to explain how it feels,” said Mizuki, turning to Hannah. “You understand that, right? And you’re the one who says that people should talk about their things.”
“It’s neither time nor place,” said Hannah. “Wait a day, maybe two.” She looked at Isra. “No need to have everything cascade at once, there’s a thing that can happen where too much silence means it’s like a dam breaking, and I want no one to get flooded.”
“Sorry,” said Mizuki. She looked at Isra. “Sorry. I wasn’t — I was just trying to explain how I’m feeling.”
“It’s fine,” said Isra, though it really wasn’t. That they were putting a burden on Mizuki was something that Isra hadn’t even really considered, and being told their personal problems were impacting everyone else was exactly what she didn’t want to hear.
“Alfric will need our support,” said Hannah, changing the subject with an abruptness that Isra quite appreciated. “It’s not been half a day since he saw us fail. It would be odd if he just said that it was variance and moved on like nothin’ happened. Odd, or maybe just good trainin’, but I don’t know how you train for that.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “Is there something we could, I don’t know, do?”
“No,” said Hannah. “Besides, we did some work to help in the undone day, after the dungeon was done. He talked with me privately about it before this, mostly to get some advice.”
“Hmph,” said Mizuki. “Well I don’t know why I didn’t get a private talk for some advice.” She was still ruffled.
“You know I’m trained, right?” asked Hannah. “Not for this, exactly, but for situations that bear some similarities.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “It’s just … I want a private talk too, if everyone is getting one.”
Alfric and Verity came down the stairs not long after that, and Verity returned to her seat, where she immediately began picking at her sandwich. Alfric stayed standing.
“Mizuki, can I talk with you?” asked Alfric.
“Ah crap,” said Mizuki.
“I’m personally done here,” said Alfric to the others. “Unless there’s something that we need to discuss as a group?” There was silence from around the room. “I’d like to schedule a dungeon, properly schedule it, for two days from now. I think there are a few actionable lessons, and I want to have some time to get moving on those things. We can talk about it more later, I wanted to give everyone some time to think their own thoughts. I’ve already had time to process, I want you all to have that too. Nothing else for the rest of the day.” He glanced at Hannah, and she nodded.
“But I’m still in trouble?” asked Mizuki.
“No,” said Alfric. “Just some disclosure I wanted to talk with you about.”
“Alright,” said Mizuki. She seemed skeptical. They went upstairs together. There was a stretch of silence at the table.
“Well,” said Hannah, coughing into her fist. “I’m off too, I s’pose. Not sure there’s much that I need to process, as it were, though I was told earlier, as Alfric said.” She looked first at Isra, then at Verity. “I’ll be back later in the day, if either of you want to talk in a professional capacity, or just to a friend.”
“Thank you,” said Isra.
“It’s appreciated,” said Verity.
“And I can talk now, if either of you would like, either separately or together,” said Hannah.
Isra looked at Verity. For a moment, it seemed like they might. They hesitated at the precipice, together, or not together, but on either side of the rift.
“I need to think about what Alfric said,” Verity replied. She seemed apologetic. She looked at Isra, then back at Hannah. “And I need to think about my role in the dungeons.”
“Of course,” said Hannah. “I’ll find you later, if you don’t find me.”
Verity nodded and rose from the table, then quietly walked out of the room.
Hannah turned to Isra. “I want to talk to you.”
“You do?” asked Isra.
Hannah nodded. “Maybe not right now, maybe later on, but I’ve asked you both about what happened, and neither of you wanted to give me a straight answer —” she held up a hand, “And that’s fine, I understand, every cleric gets to know the feelin’ of a person not wantin’ to talk to them about somethin’ that should be talked about, and maybe it’s me, but —”
“It’s not you,” said Isra. “I like you.”
“Well,” said Hannah. She seemed temporarily disarmed by that.
“You’re like a sister to me,” said Isra.
“Ay,” said Hannah. She seemed taken aback, as though this was news to her.
“You explained about the birds and the bees for me,” said Isra. “Not the actual birds and bees, the metaphor, for sex.”
“I’m glad that I could help you,” said Hannah. “And thank you for the kind words. But what I was goin’ to say was that talkin’ to someone might do you good.” She cleared her throat, more for effect than because it was necessary. “If you’re tryin’ to be a new you, one who’s outgoing, who moves through society like a fish through water, then it would do you good to have these other skills. As I said, not now, I don’t want a cascade of all the unspoken things, but you should steel yourself for it, because it will need to happen.”
“I … don’t want to say anything bad about Verity,” said Isra. “And it’s personal.” She folded her arms. “Private.”
“And you don’t want to talk to her either,” said Hannah. “Because you’d worry you’d hurt her feelings?”
“I already hurt her feelings,” said Isra. She frowned. “Are you trying to trick me into talking?”
Hannah raised her hands and leaned back in her chair. “Tryin’ to help someone by trickin’ them isn’t going to work, ay? And it’s a bad idea for other reasons too, mind you.”
“Okay,” said Isra, but the frown was still on her face. She didn’t like it there. Frowns were unpretty, stern things, and she’d decided that she didn’t like them. She hadn’t realized how much she frowned until someone had said something, and from that point on she was always conscious of it. She’d tried her best to retrain her face to smile instead, to be friendly and approachable, even when she felt wary and out of place.
“If you don’t want to talk, no one can force you, and no one wants to trick you,” said Hannah. “But it’s good to talk, if only because sometimes we have some ideas about the world, or about other people, that just aren’t true.” She sighed and got up. “As you’ve said, I’ve been some help to you in the past, but if you feel you want or need to handle this one on your own, I’ll step aside so you don’t feel pressured to speak with me. I don’t want to risk our friendship because I couldn’t stop myself from bein’ too much of a cleric.”
“Sorry,” said Isra. “I just … it is personal.” The word didn’t feel quite right. It was bigger than that. Their friendship was a burrow that needed to be hidden from predators. It was a stash of food that needed to be jealously guarded for the winter.
“Ay,” nodded Hannah. “I understand. It’s hard to talk about in a way that talkin’ about whether other people can see through birds isn’t.”
Isra gave a weak smile, and watched briefly as Hannah took her leave. That meant that Isra was all alone at the table. She rose, slowly, and tried to decide what she was going to do with herself. There was some temptation to go into town and visit the school, or talk with some people, and if she hadn’t gotten the news, that was what she might have done. Isra was fairly sure that Bethany was pregnant, but she’d stopped herself at the last moment from saying anything about it, because it was something she might have picked up from the plants and animals. Isra had then almost asked at the dinner table how people knew whether they were pregnant, and how people went about handling that whole business, but she hadn’t found the right time to bring it up, and worried that it would be enough of a misstep that she’d feel the hot shame of embarrassment, even within the party.
Isra found herself going outside and spreading her senses. She wasn’t looking for Verity, but she also wasn’t not looking for Verity either. Eventually, having stretched to the limits of her ability, she saw Verity a half mile away, walking toward the cabin.
Isra followed after.
She wasn’t sure what she was planning. If Verity returned to the cabin, Isra imagined that she might knock on the door, and then might come in, and they might kiss together, and it would be just like how it was. Or they might talk, and something other than hurt might come from it. Or Isra might just stay outside, wondering what Verity was doing inside the cabin. There was a temptation to spy, naturally, but Isra kept thinking about how she’d feel if someone was watching her.
Watching someone as they walked through the woods was different. There was no reason to expect that you were private in the woods, and the animals were watching anyhow. All Isra was doing was watching through them. She was, however, being careful not to stare or follow, or at least not more than an animal would already do. It was normal for animals to look at people as they walked, worried about a potential predator. It was also normal for them to follow people, if they thought those people had food, or they were curious, or they wanted to make sure the person left their territory.
Isra walked as she watched.
Verity was in a poor mood, that much was obvious from the heaviness of her footfalls, but it wasn’t a normal sort of poor mood. No, Verity had her brow furrowed in concentration, as she did when she was playing a difficult piece of music — a frown that was always eliminated for actual public performance. Verity was in a thinking sort of poor mood, almost certainly because of what had happened during the dungeon, or whatever Alfric had wanted to talk to her about.
Isra knew that if anyone was watching her, they’d think she was a fool. She was creeping through the woods, following after her girlfriend, if they were still girlfriends. Isra tried to walk with her back straight and head held high, so it would seem less like she was a cat stalking a mouse, but there wasn’t really a point to that. She knew there was no one around to see her skulking. Still, she wanted to look good and dignified for the animals that turned their heads toward her.
When Verity reached the cabin, Isra slowed herself. There was something about the way that Verity had gone in, a lack of hesitance, that made some strange emotion bubble inside of her. She wasn’t angry, exactly, but it was a close cousin to that. She’d been completely fine with Verity spending time in the cabin, but actually seeing it made her stomach twist into knots. Isra sat still, cooling herself, as she kept eyes on her home — her former home.
It was about territory, she decided. She knew it was different for humans, but in animals, invasion of territory got the hackles up. To have a predator prowling around your area was one thing, but to have a competitor doing the same was another, and of all the fights between animals that Isra had seen, there was something of a different character to those of the same species. That, it seemed, was what she was feeling, as though Verity was trying to steal her nest or pee up against a tree in the heart of her domain. It was a surprising emotion, and one that she couldn’t have imagined. She hadn’t felt that it would be a big deal for Verity to be in the old home, but clearly it was.
Eventually, the wild emotions calmed and calcified into a hard lump of discomfort. She didn’t know how she would explain any of this. It was the sort of thing that didn’t have an explanation, that was just a thing of emotion, and to say it out loud would be to sound crazy to the people who heard it. Verity had offered to live in the cabin, and Isra had accepted, not thinking too much of it. There was no reason that it should make Isra feel so awful, especially not when she had said that it would be fine.
Seeing it shouldn’t have been different from knowing about it. And yet it was, somehow.
Isra waited, three hundred yards away, cloaking her scent, making sure that she was behind a tree. She was spying, plain and simple, but didn’t go so far as to look inside the house. That, somehow, felt a step too far. Verity had noted Isra watching through birds before, and had seemed to enjoy it, to see it as flirtation, but this was different, uninvited in a way that felt different, at least to Isra’s muddled thoughts.
Just as Isra was about to leave well enough alone, Verity came out from the cabin. She had stripped down to just a thin shirt and a short skirt, cool clothes on a warm day, and she held the neck of her lute in one hand. There was a chair just outside the cabin, one taken by Isra from a dungeon, where furniture could be easily had. Verity sat herself down in the chair, gently tuned the lute, strummed it once, then began to sing:
The falling girl
She stopped, cleared her throat, and started again:
A fall from grace
To a pleasant town
A scenic place
To lighten my frown
She stopped the song, tapped her fingers against the wood of the lute, then tried once more, the tune completely different.
My first love, my only girl
I thought we had some time to twirl
To dance and sing, to stay a while
Something something faded smile
Verity let out a low moan and hung her head, then swore. When she started up again, the song was fast and with pep, having a jauntiness and energy that hadn’t been there before.
I saw her die in dungeon deep
And then I took a fatal leap
But when the day reset for me
I found myself like wet debris
My love was living, bright and hot
But love me, she, I fear, did not
That, at least, explained why Alfric had a conversation with her. It made Isra's stomach clench to hear it. Of course it wasn’t real, and Verity’s stated feelings on the undone days was that they didn’t really matter and shouldn’t be worried too much about, but it still caused a cascade of emotions in Isra. And it wasn’t that Isra didn’t feel any love, it was that the love seemed to strain at them both in different ways. Before Verity’s mother, it had felt perfect.
Verity sang on, stopping at various points to restart or rephrase. She was spilling her feelings out into the open air, and Isra sat there, listening to it all. It lasted for well over an hour. The sun moved across the sky. The clouds crawled along above them.
Isra felt the need to say something, and might have, if she weren’t three hundred yards away. She wanted Verity to look up at one of the birds and say, ‘I know you’ve been watching. Maybe it’s time we finally had that talk.’ But Verity never did look at the birds, or the squirrels, or any other animals. Eventually, she picked up the lute and went back into the house.
Isra hesitated. She needed to come clean about the spying. She shouldn’t have stayed and listened, not when Verity was singing important things to the wide woods, thinking that they would only fall on the unappreciative ears of animals. Isra had a frustrating lack of words though, an inability to get across what she was feeling inside. If she went up to the cabin, and knocked on the door, she felt like the conversation would go sour, as it had before.
One of the things they had said, at the wedding, was that they would support each other through everything. That had felt right, to Isra, that a true partner would support you through anything, and that you would in turn support them. She wasn’t sure why it had felt so off with Verity. Maybe it was because the wounds felt like they were self-inflicted, like Verity had been taking none of the good advice on how to handle her mother. The stress of the concerts, the anxiety that had come before every trip to Dondrian, the tears that seemed to flow … it had all seemed so avoidable, at least to Isra. She hadn’t understood. She still didn’t, really.
Isra walked through the forest, back to the house. She was lost in her own thoughts, and arrived there before she knew it.
It took Hannah some time to come back, and when she did, Isra was ready.
“Alright,” said Isra. “I’d like to talk.”