Watch Madoka

While Cambion and its successive works’ basis in canon is limited to a specific span of episodes, that’s still six seasons, which means Envesseled is not only grounded on that material, it must trellis upon six prior stories as well, and avoid inconsistencies and contradictions. The story’s cumulative plot is written practically to emphasize the complexity of this, as Envesseled's point-of-view character, Claire, must give up the safety of her senses (and the third-person narrative tense) to experience another character’s memories.

(As we witness Claire witnessing this other, very distinct character’s recall of canon and Cambion history, these memories aren't even discovered in chronological order!)

These sequences are only one way the story weaves ritual and characters’ potential understanding. Claire’s being both bound to and prevented from expressing this, by forces beyond human will, creates the most consequential moment of the fic so far, at the climax of chapter one.

As these connections (and how Claire and her companions can or cannot talk about them) become the material of the story, Envesseled does possess some advantages as well. Not the least of these is the authors’ skill at balancing the pace of events and the characters’ reactions. Some of those discovered memories are sudden, or surprising. Others are links to previous works in the series. Others enter the narrative as though invited, and stay like hauntings, letting us know what Claire cannot help but keep.

The writing is aided by another factor, also, one unique to this series in particular. Where most dialogue would begin to lose meaning if its intent could always be countered, (especially reading in third-person point of view), this story belongs to Cambion, and Claire’s sense of spoken lies means dialogue she hears can offer a shape and its negative space at once.

However, none of those factors are the thing that most distinguishes the craft of this fic.

Though the story — as of this writing — is not yet complete, with six (again) of a proposed eleven chapters available, the chapters we have so far all demonstrate a remarkably realized technique. Namely: Envesseled’s arrangement of areas, and distances, and the meanings these hold for the characters that interact with them.

Being based on a canon so concerned with warding, binding, and abjuration (perimeters of salt, marked chalk or oil, areas of sacred significance) some of this should already be expected.

Claire takes a steadying breath and crosses to the wall, flipping switches until she gets the blacklight to reveal the large glowing circle that covers nearly the entire living room.

—

This is where Ben got the palo santo for his bracelet.

"Holy shit," Jesse breathes, coming up beside her. "What is this place?" He starts forward, eyes bright and curious, but it's barely a few steps before he grimaces and backs away again.

—

Jesse stays just on the edge of the clearing as Claire begrudgingly approaches. He doesn't say anything, for which she's grateful, but it's clear he doesn't like Claire entering this space that keeps him out.

In more than one way, access to space is tied to identity.

There's Enochian here too, scrawled on the eaves in her own hand, and for a second Claire wonders if she's going to be cast out by her own protective wards—but no, it seems she is not enough of an angel yet.

Claire’s surprise at Ben and Jesse’s new connection, separate from her, sits in her thoughts as a breach of proximity.

Casual hookups don't come anywhere close to actually dating someone, for an extended period of time, while there is someone else that sleeps in the same room as you.

As she tries to literally walk away from this shock, the thing she wants to regain for herself is, of course:

Maybe she'll buy a bus ticket and get herself some proper distance from those two assholes she once counted as friends.

What makes the woods of chapter one so perilous for experienced hunters isn’t the witch that wants them to play out an allegory for broken love, it’s isolation.

Claire draws in a lungful of cold air and screams. "Jesse!" He'll never hear her, not with the snow muffling the sound.

When Claire guesses as to how people might be interpreting her sexuality, a thing she's in some way detached from, the cues she considers are those of distances, before desires.

Claire thinks of this morning, of the look on Marie's face when she saw them waking up together, the knowing way Katie sipped her coffee at them. She rarely bothers to correct people's assumptions about her, and she knows there will always be certain things people think about a young woman sharing hotel rooms with a boy her own age.

Even her own assessment of herself, in this way, starts as a measurement.

She sleeps less than three feet away from Jesse every single night. What's the difference?

Chapter five (from which this writing takes its title) even makes distance a key device of the plot, as Jesse and Claire attempt to hone Jesse’s control of his abilities.

“Before you can be trusted with a passenger, you need to gain control of where your own body is in space.”

In instance after instance of this, Jesse’s agency (and Claire’s direction) is extended and exemplified as command of position.

Claire thinks, Why is it that I always land closer to you than where we started?

—

"I certainly hope so," Claire answers, stepping closer. As a rule she doesn't let people touch her unless it's absolutely necessary, but Jesse has made himself an exception in this too. It used to feel like a big deal, when she allowed him close enough to heal her or whisk her away.

The writing is almost saturated in examples of this, as varied as they are evident, in such a way that these cannot be separated from how the story must be read. Cambion's Claire, at a point between human and holy, is a being we must understand in terms of physical domain as well.

oh, the relief—to no longer be hollow

Again and again, emotional range is paralleled by range itself, closeness mirroring closeness. It is though before Envesseled was ever planned in passages or phrases, it was something rendered in stage direction, or choreography.