#adding tags later

A continuation from this past WIP, for Evie's birthday on March 8. I've figured out how to make outfit alts so I could do all the outfits suggested to me. I traced them over the original drawing using cheese paper. Middle one is taking a while.

Thanks to @lover-also-fighter-also + @biglenny93 + @gaiuskamilah for the outfit suggestions!

Nightmares.

Quinn was familiar with nightmares.

Her every brush with sleep was stained with their darkness and torment.

Except… they weren't "just nightmares". They were real.

Living nightmares. Horrors that haunted real people within the real world—or, could've haunted them.

Because that was Quinn's power. To see wide swaths of time as though they were a horizon she could peer out across, and see "what could be". See the very real horrors that could—and would—befall real people.

The ones that currently were.

Terrible things that were inflicted upon people in the past, terrible things people were going through in the present, and things she both could and wouldn't stop in the future.

Her sense of guilt had faded away to almost nothing a long time ago.

Quinn took a slow, deep breath as she opened her eyes.

She wasn't trapped in dark corridors smelling of blood and chemicals, she wasn't trapped in a cage, she wasn't running from a murderer or about to lose her home or in de—

Quinn was at home. In bed. Safe. She was an immortal in an all-too-young body that ached from overwork, strain, and injury instead of its age.

Despite her couple-hundreds-years-long lifespan.

Struggling not to cry as a sudden wave of exhaustion and grief washed over her, Quinn squeezed her eyes shut and let out a weak laugh. So much pain. Everywhere, always. What was even the point?

Quinn weakly rose her voice to ask into the air: "Mom? Where are we? When am I?"

Her voice trembled.

The wide swathes of time Quinn saw weren't just a horizon she could look upon. They were the horizon she was forced to see, while struggling to pay attention to the tiny blade of grass she actually lived on.

A flutter of magic saw {Fate}—the goddess of Fate, who Quinn's magic came from and whose version of it was much stronger—appear across from her. Her mother was knelt at the edge of her bed, brow furrowed in concern, and watched her sadly as she brushed Quinn's thick curls out of her eyes.

"Three-fifty-three After {Magic}," {Fate} said gently, "{Exact date and time}. In Tiqhra, sweetie. You had a close fight with Fire's avatars yesterday, remember?"

'Of course I remember,' a younger Quinn would've snapped.

'How could I forget anything?'

Except, ironically, Quinn was very good at forgetting things. There was so much—too much—information constantly digging into her mind, making it hard for her to process anything but everything.

So the individuals—the small "things"—were very hard to keep in mind.

{Fate}, at least, was able to shut off her own magic.

Quinn wasn't so lucky.

FIRST FIVE COMMENTS GET JUST ABOUT ANY (not super spoilery) QUESTION ANSWERED ABOUT THE EXISTENTIAL WAR