As Iris waited patiently on the sofa of her new lodging, it dawned on her the futility of Evalyn’s concern when she had first met Elliot. Most windows and doors around the house were often open, allowing for infinite routes of invasion. With nothing but fields around, the house was left practically defenceless. If anything, someone opening the front door with a key was the least suspicious method of entering she could think of. That was until the two adults opened the front door and ushered her through it.

She found herself in an apartment block hallway. Her heart dropped momentarily, fearing she had been again taken into that illusionary liminal space. Yet the light was natural, the carpets were softer, and the doors either side of her were just that. Doors.

Evalyn’s door was the only one the least bit suspicious; Iris couldn’t even sense any Aether circling it.

“You locked the door?” Elliot asked.

“Yeah,” replied Evalyn.

“And turned off the stove?”

“Yes.”

“You checked the lights were off, right? The electricity bill last time you didn’t, made me cry.”

“Check, check and check, so would you please calm down? I’ve got a meeting to get to.” Evalyn shoved the keys into her trench coat pocket and ushered her husband and ward onto the street, each adult holding onto a suitcase. It was a back road, but still one of a decent size, allowing for the passage of cars and carriages. The noise the city made at lunchhour was lighter than the racket of the nightlife. Everyone had somewhere else to be, and so the streets breathed softly.

Iris and Elliot kept Evalyn between each other as they travelled the pavement, Iris getting glimpses of each building’s inside as she went past. Wood-furnished lobbies dominated the area, but the occasional coffee shop or boutique gave the street something more interesting to stare at.

Above the street ran a light railway, its pillars running along the median between the road’s two lanes. The rumbling of a train going past sent vibrations through the soles of her boots. She watched the lines of the track curve past the maze hedge buildings and into the distance. She could only assume the train would congregate at that place—the station she dreaded.

Elliot’s eyes were finally a little livelier after coming into their element earlier in the day, and he confidently kicked stones into the gutter beside him. His steps felt as though each was brought forward only by the momentum of the last. He swung himself forward, and it was relaxing to watch. Evalyn, on the other hand, enjoyed the wind as it came to her, observing each tree’s rounded silhouettes and how they were framed against the rigid lines that composed much of the city.

The three walked in silence, and that felt fine.

The largest intersection in their commute saw Elliot and Iris part ways with Evalyn, who had promised to meet with her client as the other two made their way to the station first. Seeing Evalyn saying her temporary goodbye to Iris was a first, Elliot watched as the small hands learnt what waving goodbye meant.

Once it became just the two of them, the awkwardness between he and Iris had nothing to stop it. The melancholy Evalyn had kept it at bay, but now the silence was audible.

“Is she taking care of you?” he asked. Iris nodded, obviously comfortable speaking just yet. Elliot smiled. “She’s pretty excited about it. It’s things like that that remind me about how much of her is still a kid.”

Iris cocked her head to the side, and Elliot had no choice but to take it as confusion. Whether it was confusion as to how Evalyn was a childish or what his words meant…. Elliot pursed his lips, taking guesses at how Evalyn had communicated with Iris until then.

Evalyn wasn’t that smart, she probably treated it as though talking to herself, and so Elliot followed suit.

“Some people don’t grow up, but I wonder if she grew up too fast sometimes…” he pondered, unable to finish his sentence with proper punctuation.

“She’s pretty…” Iris muttered, her words slurring by the end as her tongue got caught between her teeth.

“Yeah, she is,” he sighed. “I guess she, you know, as a person, can be pretty dazzling sometimes. If I didn’t know her as well as I did, I’d probably be intimidated,” he admitted, shrugging his shoulders.

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“Were you?”

“When I met her? No, she had butlers and maids and fancy dresses. I didn’t feel any sympathy,” he scoffed, but was only met with two big, brooch-like eyes. “Okay, she was attractive, but if I’m asked if she was pretty in that sense…eh? Don’t tell her I said that.”

“Okay.”

Elliot chuckled at the muted response, laughing off the fact his gravestone might soon read ‘death by babbling’. But it was true; the woman he loved had grown into who she was, and no one other than her had led that growth and seen it through. That, to him, was beautiful, if not blinding.

“What does she do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Work.”

“Oh, work….” Elliot thought of a definition that Iris would find satisfying, a sentence that would encapsulate Evalyn, her work as a Private Investigator and her shadow obligations as a Witch, the same tasks Iris had to live up to without much knowledge or any consent.

“She helps people? Yeah, I think that’s how you could put it. She helps the people she’s paid to help, sometimes even if she doesn’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Elliot asked, scratching his skin and searching for an answer.

“Evalyn and I are from Sidos, same as you. Her daddy was a very important person, and he was running out of things he needed to fight Spirits. Fuel, metal, food. So one day, he told a lot of people with guns to come here, to this city, and steal all the things he needed. Evalyn fought back with everything she could and one day got her powers. The war ended, but she could only keep her powers if she used them to help people, no matter what.”

She remembered asking his wife as they sat as newlyweds on their cottage’s veranda, her hair taking on the wind like the tail of a shooting star and her face ever so blissful. “She said that she wants to live happily. Not much else besides that.”

Iris seemed taken aback making Elliot wonder if his explanation had been too long-winded. But how could he express it? The complexity of the physical power manifested by a single, simple dream. A wish even. And it was perhaps only Elliot who truly knew the cost of that single wish.

He held out a hand to Iris.

“Take it, hm?”

She timidly grabbed it, and he guided her through the slowly thickening crowd. The buildings became taller and the streets wider, but Iris seemed as though she couldn’t take her eyes off Elliot.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why? Flying?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Because I’m the best,” he grinned. “It’d be a waste of talent otherwise, no?”

Evalyn had taken an uncomfortable seat in the woman’s home. Her client’s mask was still as it always was, but it somehow betrayed such painful emotion as she stared out the window.

“When was the last time he contacted you?” Evalyn asked her. She barely registered, seeming to have forgotten letting anyone into her apartment in the first place. “Mrs Farehn?”

The woman turned towards Evalyn slowly. She carried herself as if all hope had been lost and the mourning period had already begun. Her voice box was quiet, and it crackled as she spoke.

“A month ago. He said he would call me every other day but hasn’t in weeks.”

“What did the police say?”

“They cannot say it’s a missing persons case.”

Which was correct. Moving out was a harsh reality for some parents, and police couldn’t waste their time with everyone who opened a case to find their child. In most cases, they didn’t have the time or did not want to keep in contact frequently. However, this case was different.

“Can you give me an idea of his last known whereabouts? Anything that could point me in the right direction.” Evalyn, if not the best at solving convoluted murder plots, could follow leads to a target with relative ease.

“He gave me an address; I-I can write it down.” Her body strained as leaned out of the corduroy couch, bending over the circular coffee table to scrawl a quick hand note. 14 Docking Street, Sidos City Zone three. Near the industrial district.

“Was your son in manufacturing?”

“He left for a job as a mechanical engineer. He didn’t talk much about what exactly his speciality was. I’ll write down his work address as well.”

“Thank you,” Evalyn said, unsure how to console her for the time being. Of course, the best thing she could do for her was find her son. “I can start by investigating his residence and his workplace. I'll let you know if I can pick up a lead.”

She nodded at Evalyn’s words. “Thank you. Thank you,” she whispered. Evalyn got up to leave, giving her another meaningful, reassuring look.

“Do you have a child, Detective?”

“Recently, I’ve gained a ward.”

“Take care of her.”

“I intend to, ma’am.”

Iris spotted a head of orange hair amongst the crowd bob closer and closer, until she could recognise Evalyn’s face, and Evalyn spotted them. She jogged over, waving her hand. “Why aren’t you inside?” she asked, looking first at Elliot then at Iris, backsides firmly planted by a bench near the front gates.

“She said she’s too scared to go inside,” Elliot said. “Did something happen yesterday?”

“Yeah, she got real spooked the last time we were here,” Evalyn said, kneeling. “You sure you can’t go inside?”

Iris shook her head. No matter how much Elliot had tried to allure her with ‘rest-ronts’ and ‘soo-venir’ stores, just the sight of the main entrance gave her shivers.

“I can’t see,” she tried to explain, ineffectively articulating how the coats of the people around her would form suffocating walls.

“If you could see, would that make you feel better?” Elliot asked, and Iris nodded. “Well, that’s easy then,” he finished, standing from his chair and kneeling in front of Iris. He beckoned her onto his back with his hands, and she nervously obliged. She climbed on, wrapping her arms around his neck as he stood, and she once again felt the unnerving sensation as her feet left the floor.

They waded through the crowd, Iris watching her surroundings over the top of everyone’s heads while felling none of the nausea she had experienced before. In her surveillance, she saw the train she had boarded the day before and pointed. The moment she did, a high-pitched screech bellowed from it.

“Ah,” Evalyn said. “We’ve got to run.”