Proprietor of the Homecoming Commune

“It would be ideal but I understand if there’s some…discomfort, given the situation. The sensibilities of Earth are very different from the sensibilities of Vampiru. This is hardly a bad thing,” Neht said, not sure if discomfort was too light a word or not. “If you would prefer them not to come into the commune, I’m sure we’ll figure out something suitable. Perhaps I can drag her father out from underground at long last.”

Stefano and Jaegeun would never win awards for being good people, but she trusted them with her daughter and rested comfortably with the knowledge that if they ever so much stepped out of line, she had so much blackmail on them that they’d be lucky if they spent the rest of their life running from Interpol. Perhaps to others it would seem strange that she would have faith in killers but Neht never kept clean hands herself, not even before infiltrating the cult.

It wasn’t as if Jess was a stranger to being on the wrong side of the ‘law’, if that’s what one could call the Regulators. He was, however, more used to those united under a common goal with a mutual understanding of what was at stake, of what needed to be safeguarded. His sisters’ bodyguards would care more about her well-being than the Commune’s, which was both good and bad. There were a lot of people at the Commune who could suffer if they got too nervous during a routine Regulator inspection (or a Regulator inspection became very un-routine).

Jesseth was so careful. That was hardly a bad quality to have but it was certainly one not shared with his sisters. Neht worried about Jodie and Blanca, albeit for very different reasons, but of course, Neht always worried. That was not a good quality to have but then again, her constant fretting over worst case scenarios paid off sometimes when she needed it to.

“I know that it has been such a long time but yes. She does. She asks after you. She would like to see you again.”

More leaves snipped, more leaves carefully put away.

“It’d do her good, I think, to come up more. Trees and open skies are good for the soul and other people are even more so.“

Neht’s circle of trusted people did not extend far but she trusted her son and she trusted her wife.

A snip here, a snap there, leaves piled up in a basket. One might not be able to control everything in one’s life but you could, at least, control a garden.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” she said. “We’re something that was never meant to exist and it goes down so far beyond the body. There’s something very spiritual about dreaming together. I don’t know if my presence in dreams would be enough to corrupt her but it’s best not to risk it. It’s an awful thing. Most Egregori don’t dream -I suppose the initial taboo must have been put into place to prevent corruption of Sibyl- but I wasn’t always Egregori.”

Snip.

“Of course, if anyone ever asks, you never heard anything so silly as that and I’m just the last of some little Egregori farming village.”

Sometimes the things his mother said only made a little sense to him, but Jesseth didn’t always like to press. Sometimes you could come up with too insightful a question and trigger thoughts his mother had purposefully safeguarded herself from, perspectives she was deliberately avoiding. One had to be careful.

That, and she was entitled to her privacy. He’d dug often as a curious little hatchling, but he was old enough now to only dig as deep as she’d let him.

“I’ll be careful.” He found a little weed and carefully extricated it with as much of the roots as possible, deftly and slowly pulling it out from between more prized plants. “For everyone’s sake.”

The basil grew lush and thick thanks to plenty of care, proper fertilization and irrigation, and a persistent belief that nothing less than an act of god could kill these godforsaken plants. Neht loved basil. Neht used it in so many recipes she couldn’t actually taste. Neht consistently had so much basil she wanted to scream. It was an entirely self-made problem.

She knelt in the dirt and if she got muddy, well, clothes washed.

“That I need to know what she might expect roaming because I cannot join her. That I need to know what dangers she might face because I cannot protect her. That I would very much appreciate very specific examples of why you shouldn’t trust anyone you meet across the universe because she is young and she has a rebel’s heart and she is, most importantly, thirteen. I’ve met about three thirteen year olds total that wouldn’t summon demons if given half the chance. And if they should happen to know someone Sibyl-friendly who can provide glamours off the radar, that would be lovely. And as for me, I do not think there is any way around it, they need to know that I am an Egregori nun before they make the decision on whether or not to answer any questions. We’re like radios that can never fully be turned off, sending and transmitting information. I can shut off the sending but were I in their position, I wouldn’t trust me.”

A sigh.

“The rest…I must think. I must talk to her father and her uncles before anything else. Living in secret forever is neither feasible nor good for anyone but she has no legal identity, I have no legal tie to her, and everything is, forgive my language dear, so damnably complicated.“

An aggressive snip of a stalk of basil.

“I had hoped there wouldn’t be any need of rebellion after Vampiru but clearly I set my expectations too high.”

Jess considered what she had to say, his focus on taking care of the Basil less intense than his mothers. He’d managed only a single snip in the entirety of the conversation.

Uninteresting, he might call himself, but Neht, always the contrarian, would argue otherwise. As far as she was concerned, he carried the spark of something grand inside every inch of him: in his scales, in his heart, in the softness of his voice and the shape of his signs, in his patience, in his kindness.

Neht kept many things in her apron pockets: little prayer beads, thimbles, old notes, hard candy, cat treats. She retrieved a pair of thick leather gloves and then scissors. The witch didn’t much care for handling blades of any sort around other people without some protection. Too risky.

“…If they should not like to talk in any capacity, I understand. It is smart of them, I think, if they do not,” she said.as she knelt down in the dirt to harvest her herbs. “The stakes are higher for them than there are for most and I am of a bloodline that is not to be trusted. We who are as I am are…”

She mulled over the word.

“Aberrations. Hazardous. And most Egregor are very fond of regulators, you see.”

Once Neht had started, Jess carefully removed the rubber tips off his natural claws so he could snip herps where directed, putting them in his own apron pocket.

What a good son. It amazed her sometimes that she had anything to do with the creation of someone so polite, so responsible, so good. If you had told the silly little singer back on Vampiru what life would’ve been like, he wouldn’t believe it for a lot of reasons but especially not the children.

Neht took his hand carefully and considered how to answer the Blanca question.

“Oh, Jodie’s popped in and out. She’s always going every which way. The last I heard, she was going to explore Nevada for a bit but she does so like to roam as it suits her,” she said.

“Blanca is…”

Doing everything in her power to throw herself into the strange and unknown, which was all well and good when she wasn’t trying to throw her soul at each and every strange place she could. Being far too interested in Egregori rituals and rites for anyone’s good. Doing her damnedest to test the limits of her powers at all costs.

So, all in all, far too much like a little temple singer who’d one day turn into a heretic woods witch.

“She’s well,” she says instead. “As well as can be, considering the…situation.”

Namely that she had bodyguards at all times in the very likely event that regulators received a hint to the whereabouts of their former “property,” Neht couldn’t even take care of her own children the way she wanted because she’d warp everything around her given enough time thanks to a stupid cult (she loved the Egregori because she had to but god, stupid, stupid, stupid), and that she couldn’t just go down the street to chat with other Sibyl about what to expect because a bunch of jumped-up little egotists ruined everything.

(Neht was angry about a lot of things.)

“…Well, if I must be entirely honest, I hardly know the first thing to do when a Sibyl child is manifesting their powers. When I was her age, the most I could do was flip a coin and have it land head’s up most of the time. Sibyl can simply go off to Pluto if they want. Pluto. I don’t even go to the grocery store if I can help it.”

Jesseth took his mother back outside, back to her garden where they’d started. He listened attentively, knowing that his poor mother needed at least one child who was, for the most part, uninteresting but interested. Jess had somehow come out so mundane compared to his siblings that he thought it a bit ironic, considering he shouldn’t exist at all.

“...I know ssome Ssibyl.” Jess told Neht slowly, each syllable bearing some weight. To admit it at all, even to someone like his mother, who knew and loved and protected them, felt like a breach of trust. “I could sspeak with them. Ssee if they would like to connect, or ssimply...ferry messsagess through me.”

“That would be grand.”

Neht would like that, in fact, and would like that greatly. She had been soul-bonded to her wife before everything went to hell, when the two of them had no reason to worry about cultists and entities and politics bleeding into everything, but there was still so much that Neht did not, perhaps could not understand. Adagio showed him the universe and now Neht had only a single blue planet to show for it. What a planet though.

“Well goodness, if they move any more in, you’d practically have to stack them on top of each other to save space and that, I think, wouldn’t be much liked by anyone. If you do start a new commune, have you any thought as to where? It’s so hard to find anywhere that’s not piled high with humans these days and enough said about regulators, the better.”

Neht could say quite a few things about regulators, none of them very good, but if she started in on it, she’d never stop and what a terribly dreary visit this would turn out to be. She hated anyone telling her what to do, for one, and there were many, many things she’d prefer not to draw attention to, the prison tattoos on her hands being the least of them.

“Well now, as much as I really do appreciate your help in here, if I dally about cutting those herbs any longer, all the deer in the forest will nibble them to bits and then I’ll have to pay $5 a box for basil, which is really one of the worst things that can happen to a person.”

Jesseth knew that his mother would never run out of Basil, even if the deer did get to them, but he also wasn’t the sort to argue with a parent. He got to his feet and offered Neht his hand to help her back out of the house.

It’s entirely peculiar, to the creature of children’s nightmares. This rat– she talks, and not only that! Is so, so enticingly personable with that crackling voice and pink pawpads. They’ve been bitten, scratched, hissed at by critters much smaller than they. Pointed finger retracts on the wave, to line with tilted eye, to take her between forefinger and thumb in sight.

 Mull the words over teeth, tongue over lips. 

She’s just that, a rat, strange tint to fur under sun. Large… from a shipwreck, learnt in speech over the seas so far out of their reach?

“Yes,” It’s a rasp on salvaged wood, chunk of charcoal to the sidewalk. Dust a hand down back to push on small, straighten up with audible pop! pop! sounds off, a final crack! with the roll of neck along shoulders.

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from a commune in the woods!” Rubbish informed them cheerily. She still stayed where she was--she was a trespasser, after all, and she hadn’t been asked to leave or approach. Her hand lowered and her too-long tail wrapped about the railing to help her keep balance.

The creature is alone, if only counting an animal’s company: the birds don’t hop here, raccoons don’t trundle; the lizards dare not climb. Of the ruined bits that this place reeks of, one is that of a stranger’s thing their short lives had never inhaled scent of. Rust of a metaphorical kind, and wrong, and foreign to the atmosphere. A field mouse is faithful to it’s side of the fence with nary a spare glance to that paced thun-thump. The sort glints in the awkward sun, desperate to pull through the tree branches– there! In the aisle of food stalls thickly pressed together. Details are caught between. The first, the prominent: there’s a hatchet resting it’s handle on shoulder.

Lumbering, blue. Tacky threads of reflective plastic sewn into the fabric of a quilt inching it’s way between frosted glass windows in the near-far. Blanket bows in hug along broad shoulders fallen forward in permanent hunch. Something drags behind feet, gripped in glove that flashes for moment when they readjust. Turn the corner, towards the ratkin perch. Closer, closer.

What luck for the nervous mind, that carcass is not what they are towing on! But, a sled with fresh-chopped wood weighing it down. Yet, the attire of the person is not one that would sooth a twisting stomach. Gaudy, brightness of a clown dulled by the age to fit into the dilapidated scene. Even mask is haunting; a feline half-mask, a drape covering both hair and dropping down to shade skin down to neck. Eyes aren’t visible, yet…

…When Ratsauce looks at Rubbish, she would know. Be it the stare, or cock of the head. –Or! That they drop the sled and point.

Now, Rubbish wasn’t supposed to be seen by humans. Ratkin as a whole, though, often ignored this rule, especially when it came to helping out people they met. The grace of being described best as ‘a large rat’, even a wrongly-colored one, meant they didn’t often get in trouble for it.

So, when this masked figure pointed at her, Rubbish raised a small, pink rat hand and waved from her perch. “Hello! Is this your home?”

Rubbish had found the abandoned theme park while exploring outside the bounds of the Commune. She’d taken the long way during one of the trips to drop off food for what she now knew to be Ruin’s encampment, but hadn’t had time to do more than mark its location in her mind. Now Ruin and his kids had relocated to the Commune, and it was too cold to do a lot of the chores, she had some free time.

Wrapped in a rat-proportioned wool coat and wearing a little hat to tuck her ears into, she bounded over the snow and past the entrance. She supposed this place might seem eerie or haunted to many humans. To her, all of three feet tall without including her tail, and used to traversing through back alleys and sewers to get to the people she needed to help, it was particularly colorful garbage. A little sad in the way all abandoned places were, but not particularly dangerous.

In fact, she would bet a lot of this would make great salvage, either to help expand and improve the Commune, or to fix up and sell online for extra funds. She would have to convince Jess to come out and carry some back, or the gryphons. So many people loved vintage, and vintage carnival was sure to be a hit.

Oh, how wonderful! It was very grand thing when the people you met hit it off right away. It took away so much stress out of everything and in a world full of chaos and uncertainty without end, that was such a lovely thing. Neht very nearly opened her both to ask a thousand questions about them but luckily she realized the implication in time. Oh. Oh dear, that would have been an embarrassing faux pas.

“Well, if you say so, I suppose I won’t be placing any curses. Not even a little one,” said Neht. “I suppose.”

The mention of a distinctly Sibyl name did not go unnoticed by Neht, who looked on in curiosity to see if her son would elaborate more but who didn’t press the issue when he didn’t. Well now, Sibyl. What a remarkable development. Before Earth, before she was Neht, back when he was just a silly little twit with nothing but parties and music on the mind, there had been a Sibyl girl with wild hair and more sense than any version of Neht ever had who came into the temple to confess that she had watched the opera one day and instantly discovered they were soulmates, a very shocking development since they were both already married and had never spoken before. Adagio was gone before the death of Vampiru but Neht’s husband and his pet assassins were raising her great-granddaughter in secret, a girl with powers manifesting that they didn’t quite know how to deal with.

(There was also the fact that Neht had suspiciously long ears for an Egregor hidden underneath all that hair but the witch didn’t like to think about her origins too much.)

“If your friend should ever like to visit, just know that she’s welcome, alright? My house is open. And just know that dating, romance, all of that, it’s not the end-all, be-all of life, okay, my darling? And besides that, you’re so young. Dating is messy. It’s a lot of trial and error before you meet the right person or persons. Between you and me, I know that your mother would be positively delighted if you married someone right now and hatched a thousand eggs (which is hardly economical) but don’t feel as if you have to rush into anything. Anyway, if you do visit your siblings, give them my regards.”

“I’ll let Caper know she’ss welcome.” It was important to him that, despite the Sibyl’s (perfectly understandable) reluctance to confide in him, Caper as well as her sister had options should something happen. And he knew his mother would understand. Maybe she would like to meet Skipper, too, sometime...

“I think there’ss too much to do here to go travelling.” Jesseth mused, letting his mother’s concern and advice sink in. “The Commune alwayss hass work. The Regulatorss want to relocate ssome more gryphonss here, but the current oness already fight all the time. There’ss not enough sspasce, but we’re sstruggling to find a plasce not packed up tight with them. We might need to make a new commune, ssoon, which we’ll need their cooperation for, which will mean insspectionss...”

In all fairness, being wary of Neht was a wise and sound decision for many, many reasons…but with that being said, once Neht had the idea in her head, it would happen come hell or high water. The scarf? Happening. Sorry, Verssik.

“Yes, Jess, but…oh, oh really, you have?”

The books and where they should go were quickly forgotten. Knowing how her wife could be, Neht tried not to pressure her son in regards to dating and marriage…but also, had everything gone swimmingly, had they treated her son well, would she need to show up in the middle of the night to put the fear of god into someone? Which, incidentally, not a thing that Neht would like to do but she would if she had to.

“Oh, you have? I hope that everything went well. Were they very nice? Because if they weren’t very nice, then that’s no good of them and I’ll place a curse on them. But if they were very nice, well, then that’s marvelous.”

Jess settled in to give his mother the mixed bag that was his love-or-lack-thereof life. He did hate to let his parents down.

“They were very nisce. Two of them are dating each other now.” Jesseth knew he was making a few assumptions, but if Vic and Toby were not in a relationship now, they would be soon. Just the glimpses of what he’d seen at the beach party from the sidelines had been enough to convince him not to recommend Rodger pursue Vic. If what he’d seen online was any indication, though, his guess was spot on. “I ssee a vampire woman named Caper ssometimess. Ass friendss. No curssess needed.”

He knew that Neht would know what a vampire named ‘Caper’ might mean, but she had never shared her Family with him and he would never pry. He’d once known a Sybil named Rush, and the Commune had ultimately needed to relocate her under terrible circumstances. It was only one instance in the Commune’s long-running history that had him know, for sure, it wasn’t his business until she made it his business.

“Oh, he is? I do hope he can. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen him,” she said. "I think I have time enough to knit together a scarf for him, something soft on the scales.”

Family could be…messy. Complex. A puzzle she still didn’t know how to piece together even years later, complicated by the fact that she was winging it with little frame of reference of her own.

Neht harbored no ill-will towards Verssik -frustrations sometimes that he’d leave when he didn’t have to, yes, but after three children whose life she could never linger too long in, she didn’t think she, of all people, really held a right to harbor resentment- but Neht still had lingering guilt that by breathing life into that egg, she led towards things souring between him and her wife. She wouldn’t change it for the world, absolutely not, couldn’t imagine a life where she hadn’t looked at that egg and thought ‘no, this one’s fine and strong and mine, actually,’ but if Neht couldn’t find a reason to be guilty about something, she would simply make a reason instead.

"Oh, my dear, you really needn’t bother with the books, you know, or else you might be doing that until spring comes and we can’t have that.”

“I think he would like a scarf,” Jess said, which was a little bit of a lie. Verssik found a lot of what Neht did unnerving. But, then again, he found much of life unnerving on Earth. While Jess could keep his fears under control many times, letting them sit like a background hum of manageable anxiety while in familiar spaces, his egg father never had. And he refused to do anything at all about it.

He paused with book in hand, then sheepishly slid it onto the shelf. “I like to help you out, mom. Even if it takess until sspring.” But, just in case it was a command politely veiled as a request, he refrained from picking up another book. Instead, he pivoted to a conversational topic he knew would both delight and frustrate his vampiric mother.

Neht would, in fact, go looking for that book sometime later and, upon not finding it in the usual pile of disarray, would tear the house apart looking for it before giving up in despair and finally calling her son at last in case he had seen it. Jodie would help, of course, but she was much better at losing things than finding them.

“I’d love to, my darling, although I hope you know that I will go overboard on the cooking and there isn’t anything you or I can do about it,” she said and considering that Neht always overdid things in that department anyway (it’s not as if she could taste pie crust, though the innards were a different story, but baking was such efficient stress relief), that promised to be a lot. They weren’t the celebrations back on Vampiru, no, but

But Neht did hate that it was always just a little while, never as much as she’d like, a life spent dancing close to what she wanted more than anything and then retreating much too early lest she corrupt everything around her with her own perceptions. Every aspect of existence became so much more complicated when this body became infected. She’d anthropomorphized cats into toddlers. She had to measure the walls every day to make sure they hadn’t closed in on her. She drugged herself into a dreamless stupor when she visited her husband because she didn’t trust the resident Sibyl not to slip into her dreams and infect herself.

Gloomy talk but then, Neht was often gloomy.

Jess also wished his mother could stay as long as she liked to (or longer), but understood why it was only ever for a little while. Being the one to make note first of the length of time, like he was telling her how long to stay, was a little sacrifice to try and lessen her guilt. He didn’t think it worked.

“I don’t think anyone would ever complain about your cooking.” Jess said, even knowing the gryphons could and would complain about anything. Their forced close quarters made them endlessly irritable, however, and they weren’t to be taken seriously.

Jesseth slid another book into its probable home and pinned another mental note. “I think dad will be coming to sstay, too. Er, my egg-father. Versssik.” One had to be specific, with the number of husbands Mars had and thus the number of fathers in Jess’s life. “If he can take ssome time from the Tennesssee commune.”

A pair of extraordinary fluffy cats surveyed this work from their perch on a chair or, rather, they surveyed Jesseth’s tail like they were considering whether or not they, as mighty predators, should ambush it. They evidentially decided against this, instead scampering off to the kitchen where assorted treats awaited for vampires and Viperans alike. If anyone ever came to Neht’s house, they’d leave with at least two pies to take home and a jar of homemade jam at the very least.

“That is very good. The history of Earth or histories of elsewhere? Either way, the preservation of knowledge is always a very good endeavor,” she replied. “If anyone should ever want anything from my library, it is open to all but it is almost entirely silly things, I’m afraid.”

Meela, poor thing. Neht understood becoming something new and unfamiliar better than most born of Vampiru but it was hardly the same thing as the fate of fledglings, especially not those unfortunate to be turned by the Brux. If she couldn’t reverse what had been done, at least she could knit her a scarf, though that was poor consolation.

“Then that’s a good thing,” she said. “Actually, no, that’s hardly a good thing at all, is it? The whole situation is an awful thing that shouldn’t have been done, but I am glad to hear that she is adjusting to some extent, at least.”

“The hisstory of Earth. Noemi hassn’t lived elssewhere, though I think she may know at leasst ssome about the hisstory of Vampiru. We do not have any at the moment who might appreciate that, however.” Jesseth shifted a stack of books and began searching the shelves for where they belonged.

“I’ll let them know. I’m sure the ratkin have been in and out of here where they’ve been able.” Jesseth slid a book into what was probably at least close to where it would belong, and made a mental note in case his mother couldn’t find it later and called in a panic.

It did indeed: bitter and cold, everything buried deep under the snow, the type of weather that made you want to hole inside for an entire season with provisions and not emerge until the flowers started blooming again. Neht was born among soft ocean breezes and flowers blooming all year round, an oasis in Vampiru; later, the Egregori capitol might have been a chilly wasteland but at least it didn’t snow.

Poor Jess. Perhaps worry was the family curse.

“Well, if you insist, my dear. Ah, let’s pop that just inside where the wild beasts of the woods won’t get into it. You’ll be very proud of me: I have decluttered. I’ve been told that is en vogue now.”

Of course, Neht being Neht, decluttering the little stone house meant that Neht had simply put away a stack or two of books and thrown away exactly one little trinket (and only because one of the cats knocked it down and broke it) instead of tackling the greater issue of hundreds of books stacked up against every wall and countless baubles collecting dust. It was, at least, navigable to both vampire and Viperan; Neht’s organizational system might be unknowable to anyone except herself but there was an order to the madness.

Jesseth’s face would betray no surprise, not even to his mother’s practiced gaze. He found the area semi-cleared of books and used his free hand to gently shift the least delicate-looking stacks out of the way. The crate gently placed upon the floor, he resolved that part of his stay would involve helping to get things put away.

If Neht allowed. Sometimes, he stuffed his son so full of food the Viperan struggled not to brumate along with his mother.

“The Commune hass been getting bookss from the library. We have a wonderful librarian friend named Noemi who comess by to teach hisstory.” He said as he worked, chattering happily to tell his mother about the Commune’s business. “Meela iss sstruggling sstill, but that’ss to be exspected. She’ss been through a lot. But her hunger iss under control and she’ss learning to get along with the ratkin’ss patiencse.”

“Never fear, she’ll be back soon enough.”

The little black cat stared, unblinking, but didn’t scamper off. Perhaps he understood on some level that Jesseth was part of the colony or perhaps he just didn’t register that a giant serpentine being could possibly be a threat to his existence, though Jesseth very much wasn’t. Tarragon Ink might have been smarter than the average cat but he was still a silly little kitty with an insatiable urge to gnaw on all plastic wrappers that he might happen upon, so the chances were good it was the latter.

“You cannot steal what is freely given, my dear,” said Neht. “I have an enormous amount of time, so you may have however much of it you would like.”

“You do, but what about your garden?” Jess shifted the crate under his arm. “How about--you show me where to sset thiss, and then I can help with whatever needss doing, and we can talk while we do sso? Winter alwayss comess fasster than I exspect.”