#and so ..................................

(also on AO3)

It’s not supposed to be a secret. It doesn’t have anything to do with them, even if it has everything to do with them. It’s not about them, really. 

It’s about Mira.

It doesn’t stop her from feeling a little guilty about it, anyway.

It’s about Mira.

About the reason for it in the first place. 

About the nightmares wrapped in guilt, served on a platter of indemnity. 

About being stuck between the fire and ice of it all because she knows she deserves to burn at either extreme; deserves to feel every lick of panic, every flame of fear. 

She brought it on herself. 

Brought it on them. 

Brought the shadows under Rumi and Zoey’s eyes; never sleeping enough even on good days, before the last few months had even happened. 

The way Rumi jumps sometimes, startled by their shadows down the hallway unexpectedly late at night or around the corner unseen. 

The way Rumi pants sometimes after a workout while catching her breath and Mira’s heartbeat skips because she’s backstage again, hearing the terrified gasps of panic as Rumi released the handrail and took shaky steps in the dark. 

The way Mira flinched when Rumi innocuously asked Mira to pass her a bowl from a high spot in the cabinet with a ‘Mira, please.” And even if it wasn’t in that high-pitched, desperate whine, the words took her right back to panic. Her chest presses tight, like the muffled booming thunder of the crowd under the stage. 

Brought the extra nervousness to Zoey; how she sometimes fluctuates between anxious energy and an eerie quiet distance that strikes a cold note of fear straight down Mira’s spine. She never used to hesitate like that before that horrible night.

Mira sends Zoey spiraling and empty all at the same time. Mira brought the hunger and fear warring in Zoey’s eyes, how she looks at them sometimes as if they might disappear. Because they had. Because Mira had taken security and family from her.

The sharp edge of Mira’s shoulder blades was just as deadly a weapon against Zoey as her gok-do. That betrayal cut even deeper because Zoey hadn’t done anything to earn Mira’s ire; she merely held on to hope just a little bit longer. Zoey had been trying to help, to do their duty and Mira abandoned her. Zoey had been the most stalwart of all of them, a lone Hunter against an ocean of lost souls and Mira just….walked away. 

There is no we, Zoey.

Mira was no better than her father; her mother; her brother. She had absorbed their poison after all, never falling far from the tree. This whole time, she had been rotten; festering and putrefying under a guise of arrogant moral superiority. 

She had forsaken Rumi all on her own with her own two hands, but she had kept herself back from Gwi-ma’s gaping voice for just a few moments longer - enough to wound Zoey with words before giving into the darkness.

Deliberately.

Callously.

Rumi may have been a demon, but Mira turned out to be the true monster in the end.

There is no we, Zoey. 

Mira left her. 

Mira left her.

So when cosmic justice comes peeling back around, Mira’s not at all ashamed to find herself reaping what she’s sown. She fucked up. Which means dealing with the consequences of her actions. The guilt, the pain, the nightmares, the panic attacks - they all feel right. They feel deserving. They feel like the only repentance worth having.

There’s something like relief in it. Punishment feels like the only way Mira can stomach being allowed to keep living. If she could, she would self-flagellate every day to cleanse her soul; she would get on her knees, beat her chest, and recite mea culpa. Anything to keep her sins fresh and vivid, forefront in both mind and body. Nothing else would prove a sufficient safeguard.

To be forgiven would be to validate her actions. 

To be forgiven would be to say “It was okay, what you did,” when nothing could be further from the truth. 

To be forgiven would be to forget and Mira will never allow that.

So, no. Forgiveness is not an option Mira is keen to seek; a crown Mira wishes to be bestowed.

The problem is, it keeps getting spit back in her face. 

The problem is, no one has a mind to let her do that. ‘Insane’ is the word Zoey offered pointedly. 

The problem is she feels like she’s getting to keep the cake and eat it too.

She committed unspeakable acts. 

Unforgivable wrongs. 

Hypocritical transgressions.

Instead, Rumi and Zoey, whom she loves, pay for Mira’s sins, accepts their ramifications, and takes the pain brought by them as if they were nothing but theirs all along.

Mira destroyed them that night - Rumi and Zoey both. And Mira somehow doesn’t even have to live with the consequences. She gets to have them, still. Within arm’s reach. Within fingers’ reach, honestly, most of the time these days. All so desperate to remain close, as if only proximity can shine a light over the shadows of doubt and lingering fear. Touching, to ground themselves as if a mere breath of wind could carry them away. They fall asleep together, wake up together. Spending their days together, even if engaged in their own bubbles of thought and activity. They were magnets existing on the centrifugal force of the others’ to keep themselves in the air; a living, breathing solar system. 

Mira destroyed them, that night, but somehow she still gets to keep them. 

She shouldn’t get to wake up to breakfast steaming and ready in a bowl for her. She shouldn’t get to fall asleep in the safety of their arms, tangle in their limbs on the couch, or tuck stray hairs behind the shell of an ear, lingering over the miracle of a simple touch. 

The guilt of the crime itself is outweighed by the guilt of such an unbefitting punishment. 

Mira destroyed them that night. She should not still get to keep them. 

You don’t get to abuse people you love and have them come back, what kind of person- \

She closes her eyes. Can hear the sound of a glass crashing, pieces scattering all over the floor, the eerie, thick silence afterwards. Angry footsteps crunching over the glass as they walk away, tentative and shaky ones sweeping the remains into the bin. Can feel the way her cheek smarted and burned-

“Hey.” 

Mira flinches out of the memory, startled, but only soft brown eyes meet her own. She’s in the penthouse. Something is sizzling in the pan while Rumi stirs, humming under her breath. Zoey’s hand rests on the small of Mira’s back. 

Breakfast. They’re having breakfast.

Mira exhales slowly and spreads her palms wide to kiss the cool marble of the countertop. It’s solid and steady beneath her hands. It grounds her. Zoey grounds her. 

Zoey, who looks at her and knows she was somewhere else for a moment. Zoey, who senses the spiral that dragged Mira away in an undertow. Zoey, whose hand anchors her to this moment. 

Rumi, the lighthouse that beckons them home.

Rumi, who stiffens at the stove, head lifting as if hearing something from far away and straining to hold onto it. She turns and fixes her gaze on Mira. A look like that should make Mira feel pinned and flayed open - bare and exposed under museum glass. Instead the sharpness comes from a feeling echoed in her own heart. She’d direct it to either one of them. She definitely has more than a few times over the past few weeks as they’ve bared their souls again and again and again in conversations and tears.

Rumi, whose gaze pierces but does not wound. It sears but soothes. It’s a look that says ‘You’re hurting. I feel you. I see you. Enough beating your own chest.’

‘Patience’, Zoey’s voice rings in her mind. 

Grace still isn’t something Mira thinks she can stomach granting herself. That’s something too holy that she doesn’t deserve yet. But patience? That’s something she can try. For them. 

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? The whole thing is a trap. Mira knew it was too good to be true, and she was right, just not in the way she expected to be. 

Mira doesn’t want either of them to shoulder an ounce of guilt over what happened. The shadow of shame shouldn’t pass over them even once. It wasn’t their fault. 

Mira trusts them, more than she trusts herself. 

And that’s where the logic breaks. That’s where Mira’s own convictions are bent right back in her face. 

Mira trusts them, more than she trusts herself.

Mira loves them. More than she loves herself. 

Wallowing in her own pain and shame and misery would only hurt them, even if Mira can’t fathom why, because she deserves it, but -

….Patience.

If she wants Rumi to break her bad habits, then as much as Mira is loath to, she must practice what she preaches.

If she wants Zoey to wake them up and let them sit with her in the bathroom so she won’t suffer in silence anymore, then she’ll have to follow suit.

She won’t be a hypocrite. 

Not anymore. 

So for them, she’ll try. For them, she’ll practice being patient with herself the way she wants them to be for themselves. 

Mira scowls. 

A finger comes out of nowhere and boops her right on the nose. Mira scowls further, turning toward Zoey. “You were spiraling,” the offender simply says with a shrug. “I could hear it. Rumi could, too.”

The accused shrugs one shoulder bashfully. “In here,” Rumi places a hand over her chest. 

Right in the middle where Mira had pointed-

Ice fills her veins and swoops low and sharp in her belly. Her heart thuds. She closes her eyes. Mira plucks her thread within the Honmoon, letting it vibrate in tandem with the two golden strands on either side of her own. 

She feels Zoey and Rumi thrumming through the Honmoon. 

She inhales slowly. Releases it slower. 

“Thanks,” she murmurs, feeling raw and exhausted but safe. Buoyed. 

Everything stops where it is, the symphony of breakfast paused as Rumi turns off the burner and moves the skillet to a cool part of the stove. Wordlessly they all pad over to the couch for a short lay time. Mira still hates the name but finds she can’t protest the content. With Mira’s legs over Zoey’s lap and Rumi threading her fingers through Mira’s hair, gently scratching her scalp, there are no thoughts to chase or blister under, no bruises of guilt. Simply the warmth of being held and cradled and loved. The food can wait. Her own onerous thoughts can wait. Anything else besides this can wait.

It goes like that a lot. The three of them rotating being patient with themselves. Being near. Bearing witness to grief. Holding discomfort. Letting it relax. Sharing the burden of relearning. The process of healing. 

It’s dirty work, but it’s easy when they do it for each other. Slowly the water turns clear. 

It happens in every morning that Mira’s butt turns into a combination of cold and numb on the bathroom floor as her and Rumi bear witness to the wreckage of Zoey’s trauma. In the quiet hours of company, something peaceful begins to blossom and as the weeks go by, Zoey is able to let them hold more of it. It becomes a ritual of its own, almost, watching the soft glow of dawn slowly crawl across the floor and up the walls while they sit. 

Rumi leaves post-its on the outside of the bathtub - silly doodles, games, items to add to the grocery or to-do list, song ideas, and the like. Once all of them ended up with post-its on their noses and competed to see who could blow theirs off first. Rumi won, which Zoey complained was unfair because of her insane demon lung capacity. Mira just called her full of hot air, which earned her a smack. 

Mostly it’s just ‘I love you’s’ plastered everywhere, an echo of ones that adorn Rumi’s room, until the walls are covered, too. They warp and fall off eventually, victim to the humidity and moisture of showers, but are no less lovingly replaced in a benediction of devotion: I love you I love you I love you.

It happens on days when Rumi grows cold and dim, like a flickering bulb, a filament struggling to survive its own liminality. Rumi does not glow those days. Sometimes struggles from the past cast shadows into the present.

They reach to keep her company in the grey darkness, reassure her that it’s okay. That she’s no less luminous when not shining. Rumi is allowed to retreat into herself, as long as she remains close. There are lots of taptaptaps and few words on those days, and Mira and Zoey are keen to do nothing but hold her in silence: watching the sun move across the wall like a giant sundial, waiting together as time heals.

One grey day she told them about the years of aching, bitter loneliness that clogged her throat so thick with want some days that it felt like she was gagging on it. And that even now, so far removed from anything resembling that loneliness, sometimes it still feels like she’s choking. Zoey confesses that she used to feel it, sometimes, the longing. Both Mira and Rumi’s eyes snapped toward her, stunned. Zoey merely shrugged. ‘The Honmoon was never really…quiet,’ she explained patiently. ‘Even when it wasn’t screaming.’

It turns out Rumi was never alone, her pain felt by Zoey even halfway across the world. Mira wonders if she would have been able to hear Rumi too, if it hadn’t been muffled under so much anger; how long she's been standing in her own way. 

It’s three more weeks after that before Mira finds she’s able to stomach leaving Zoey or Rumi out of her sight for longer than an hour or two. 

It’s less than she deserves, she knows, but can’t help herself from needing their steady presence. Like knowing how to walk but pausing to regain balance when dizzy.

It’s three months before Mira feels ready to go to Celine’s.

At first she wasn’t even sure how to go about it. Should she message first? Make an appointment? There wasn’t a precedent for this, not really. Any time she’d needed to go back to the hanok was with either Rumi or Zoey or both. There was never any reason, really, to go on her own before now.

So would it be better to just show up? What if she wasn’t there, though. From what Mira understood that was how it had happened in the first place. In a puff of pink smoke, appearing without warning. Without a word. Without expectation. All had been exceeded regardless.

It’s not a lie, she tells herself as she invents some excuse to leave the house for an extended period of time. 

It’s not a lie that burns in her hands as she rests one hand on Derpy’s side, fur rippling iridescent under her palm like a current, as they sink through the ground. 

It’s not a lie that churns in her stomach as they re-emerge in the driveway of the estate. Mira scratches him under the chin and he purrs contentedly before she makes her way to the front door, gravel crunching underfoot. She feels seventeen again. Younger and older all at once, the weight of the last few weeks pressing as heavily as the stone in her chest.

But it is a secret, and Mira never liked keeping anything from them aside from a delayed gift or surprise, let alone now, after everything. It feels wrong, somehow, to hold onto something that Rumi and Zoey don’t also know; to have something separate from them. As if the very concept of having a single ounce of distance from each other was antithetical to their existence. 

It feels strange to be here on her own. Mira is so used to sitting on the last step of the porch, breathing through her own conflicting thoughts and emotions while Rumi visits Jinu by the tree. This time, Mira’s not here to bear witness to someone else’s grief but to confront her own. 

Two knocks and the door opens a moment later, wood still kissing her knuckles, before it’s pulled away to reveal Celine. Celine, looking as cool and smooth as a pane of glass but now, Mira realizes, as transparent as one too. “Mira,” she blinks, surprised.

There’s a small halo of frizziness to Celine’s hair that catches the light, a heaviness in her eyes that had never been there before. Or maybe it was, just hiding behind a facade as carefully constructed as Rumi’s. Mira doesn’t know anymore. She thought she was pretty good at reading people. At one point had thought she was an expert at it, but if anything, recent events had taught her that it turns out she didn’t really know anything at all. 

“Please,” Celine clears her throat. “Come in,” she opens her arm to gesture inward and Mira nods and steps through the doorway. She removes her shoes and follows to the sitting room where a tray of tea is resting on a small table. Several traditional string instruments line the walls, one of which (Celine never told them which one, in order for all of them to be treated with equal care and reverence) had belonged to a previous generation’s Hunter. A row of cushions crisp and clean as the day Mira saw them for the first time lined the seating area.

Mira remembers nights laughing so hard with Zoey and Rumi that they’d fall over and toss the cushions at each other. The moment before things would escalate into a full-blown pillow fight, Celine would step in and direct them to ‘take it to the bedroom, girls’. Zoey would inevitably snicker and after a beat, Rumi would flush before they ran down the hallway in shrieks and giggles.

“Let me get you a cup,” Celine startles Mira out of the memory and disappears into the kitchen.

The sound of opening cabinets filters through as Celine grabs a porcelain cup that tinks gently as it’s placed on the counter.

She returns a moment later, along with a plate full of dasik on a small saucer. Placing both on the tray, she brushes the backs of her thighs as she sits, bringing her hands together in her lap. Careful but still polite. Mira takes the seat adjacent, crossing her legs and angling her knees toward Celine.

Grasping onto ritual gratefully, Mira pours the tea, offering Celine first before taking her own. It’s familiar, how the porcelain is just on the edge of too hot, making Mira’s hands tingle; her posture straight and tall, back ramrod like a steel beam.

The quiet was a tension she had hated as a kid, with ridiculous formality and tradition.

Stiff.

Funny, how it’s practically all that’s holding her up now.

Celine doesn’t say anything, merely takes small sips of tea in the silence.

Mira notices - not for the first time but certainly with new clarity - the way grief and regret crinkle at the corners of Celine’s eyes and mouth. Recognizes it in a way that makes Mira’s stomach swoop and for a few moments, she’s backstage again. Feels the press in her chest, can hear the booms of the crowd, remembering how her hands went numb holding the gok-do. Knows with a sickening certainty that if things had gone even a little differently that night and something happened to Rumi, there would be a matching set of haunted lines on Mira’s face.

Remembers again, why she’s here.

The tension threatens to snap like a taut rubberband. 

Instead Mira plucks her thread and sees two golden lines glow in the Honmoon. 

Inhale. Exhale. Patience.

The purpose for this entire visit slips off of her tongue like a prayer, reverent and pious.

“I never thanked you,” Mira says. “For the night of the Idol Awards.”

Celine stiffens. There’s the closest thing to horror Mira has ever seen in her eyes as they widen almost imperceptibly, almost in fear. ‘Why?’ lingers in the air unspoken.

“For Rumi,” Mira simply shrugs, as if that’s explanation enough. And it is. 

Has always been enough, even when she didn’t believe it. 

Especially when she hadn’t.

For Rumi, the answer enough. 

Because despite everything, Celine had given them Rumi. This woman had taken a life already sworn in service to others and rededicated it anew, warping it around the shape of a child. 

Because despite everything, Celine had helped shape Rumi into the woman she is. 

Because despite everything, time after time Celine came home bleeding and bruised from demon attacks, only to lay one duty aside and pick up another, caressing a sleeping infant’s cheek with the back of her cracked and scraped hands. Celine sacrificed countless already sleepless nights humming an age-old mantra that wove blankets out of hope while rocking her whole world in her arms.

Mira knows firsthand what nights of demon hunting look like. What performing a show takes. Mira knows the exhaustion, and she knows it as part of a complete group; buoyed by and shared with two others, as it should be. And Celine had to bear it all alone. 

For Rumi, answer enough.

If anything, Celine seems to harden further. “You shouldn't be thanking me for a single thing about that night." Mira aches at recognizing the self-loathing in Celine’s words.

Mira aches. 

“You saved her.” The complicated truth of it all laid down simply in front of them.

“Saved her? I’m the one she needed saving from.”

For the first time, Mira meets Celine’s eye and faces the mirror of her own face reflected back. 

A memory rises - Celine, backstage, just before their debut. Their hearts and nerves a buzzing livewire electric between them. She had gathered them up in a hug and placed her hands around their shoulders, hands atop their heads as if in prayer. “I’m so proud of all of you,” she choked, voice thick with emotion. Then she had pushed them back gently, all of them dabbing delicately at their eyes so as to not ruin their makeup further, and clasped her hands together at her chest. “Go,” she'd said, pride beaming, “Show them your voices. Your song.” before releasing them to the cameras and the soon-to-be fans. 

Mira looks at Celine now, hands clasped together white-knuckled on her lap, as if they’re the only things keeping her together. “I’m the reason she came here in the first place.” 

Your faults and fears must never be seen. 

Mira knows what it’s like to destroy something you love with your own hands.

In another world, she could so easily have been Celine. 

In another world, Rumi might not have-

“No. You’re not,” Mira says calmly, low and certain, and confesses her remaining sin. “I am.”

Celine’s eyes narrow, almost offended. Mira continues. “That night, she came to us and begged, meanwhile you threw every weapon offered to the ground. I lifted mine up. I’m the reason she came here. Everything else…” Mira trails. “Maybe you were part of why she felt she had to to begin with, but…”  Mira shakes her head. “Its not that simple.” 

This truth had been branded across Mira’s heart. She’s in no place to judge. Not anymore. “You were the only one that night who did the right thing. You saved her from herself. You refused. So…thank you.” 

Celine stares at her, brow furrowed, like a puzzle she’s angry at not being able to solve. Mira doesn’t know what’s going on inside Celine’s head and quite frankly she doesn’t care. She didn’t come here to absolve Celine’s sins but to acknowledge her own. She’s been holding onto them so tightly it feels like her bones could crack. It’s not letting go, not really. Her mistakes will always be a part of her. But she’s learning, with excessively annoying patience, to not let them control her. It makes it a little less difficult to do things like sit and wait for Rumi while she visits Jinu. She was no different than him that night and Mira’s betrayal was arguably worse. Rumi was part of the marrow of her bones and Mira was ready to cut her out like a cancer using her very own blade.

So. 

Mira’s learning how to hold her misdeeds and also put them down; tucked away on a shelf, part of the library of her life, along with every other book and chapter. 

Besides, she’s ready to write a new one.

There’s nothing more clean and hopeful than an empty page. 

“You have time, too.” Mira echoes back Celine’s own words.

Despite the unbelievably complicated nature of their relationship, Rumi loves Celine. And more than anything, Mira knows how much Celine loves Rumi. The fact that Rumi is alive is the hardest proof there is.

‘So we can all do our duty.’ Mira will hear those words echo through her heart for the rest of her life, she knows. She’s….making her peace with that. 

Mira may have raised her weapon out of fear, but she also did it out of an unthinking sense of duty - it was all she could hold onto when everything around her seemed to be crumbling. Rumi had torn the very foundation of her world. Nothing made sense so she grasped the hilt of the only thing she knew with both hands and prayed that it would make things right. 

Celine had taught her that. 

Had taught them that. 

Had taught Rumi that. 

But Celine had also taught Rumi how to keep a sharp eye for windows of opportunity in battle as well as for kindness. Celine, who would work herself late into the night in order to make sure her assistants were home at reasonable hours and had holidays off; who had some of Zoey’s favorite snacks already stocked in the pantry before she even arrived at the house as a trainee; who never failed to celebrate Rumi’s birthday despite the grief that bled at the corners of it; who was sometimes cold but always kind; tough and exacting but also fair; who kept a distance borne of weariness and duty and grief yet was somehow present everywhere. 

Rumi, who knew the names of every person on the Sunlight Entertainment team from the board of trustees to the latest pages and interns; who remembered the security team’s birthdays and made sure they had days off scheduled on their kids’ birthdays as well; who went very cold and very scary while verbally castrating a photographer who’d gotten little too handsy with a new PA on the set of a shoot and made sure he was blackballed for good measure (and followed up with the girl a few days later, complete with HR resources and a gift basket); who organized a meal train for one of the marketing exec's family when he was in the hospital; who would teach dance moves to kids but made them promise to keep it a secret. 

That doesn’t come from nowhere. Sure, part of it is just Rumi’s inherently kind, good nature. Mira doesn’t think there’s a single world in which Rumi could be anything but kind and good. But she also knows the environment in which Rumi was raised and despite Celine’s sometimes constrained formality, it was built on such a deep, overwhelming love as to overshadow everything else. Mira knows firsthand what a cold, abusive home looks like. And despite everything… this was not that.

This was just… someone trying their best and fucking up along the way.

Mira knows a little something about fucking up. She has no right to cast the first stone and she’s so tired of being angry and missing important things along the way because of it.

There’s so much to unpack and work through and Mira thinks they could keep half the therapists in Seoul busy with all of their shit, but she’s not here for that right now. 

Mira’s not here to offer Celine absolution. That’s between her and Rumi. Between Celine and her own demons. 

Mira is here to express her gratitude. To thank her for Rumi. 

Because in the end, Rumi will always tip any scale. 

It doesn’t mean the mistakes didn’t happen or that they don’t exist. Or that they’re not all still dealing with the repercussions. That the mistakes won’t mark them like scars.

It means that despite them, things will be okay. 

Mira places the teacup gently down on the table and stands, formal positioning and posture still ingrained. She doesn’t bristle against it, letting herself draw strength and comfort from the familiarity of the movement.  The walk back to the front door is quiet, but not heavy, like a storm has passed. For Celine, perhaps there’s more devastation and debris in the immediate wake of it, but it will clear in time, as is the nature of things.

Mira steps outside, feeling lighter than when she arrived. Derpy perks up from his spot curled up further down the path and trots up silently, somehow conveying his excitement at seeing Mira without a flicker in his blank expression. She huffs fondly and mumbles under her breath, “What an idiot.”

One last thing, though. 

She turns, facing Celine, who’s still holding the door open. Mira’s palms are warm against her thighs where her arms flatten against her side. Mira holds Celine’s gaze.

Mira bows, holding the jeol for several moments, head facing the ground. She can count on one hand the amount of times she’s done this and meant it. Not in mockery or scorn, but genuine respect and gratitude. 

Celine’s eyes widen with understanding at the magnitude of the gesture.

Part of Mira is still so angry with Celine. For how Rumi internalized the lessons taught to her - however well-intentioned, they still destroyed her in the process and filled her with shame. 

There’s nothing shameful about Rumi. 

So yeah, Mira is still really fucking pissed at Celine. For Rumi. For herself. Because a million different things could have gone wrong while Rumi’s patterns were a secret. Mira or Zoey could have mistaken her for a soulless demon, could have hurt her without even knowing-

She cuts off that line of thinking swiftly. 

It doesn’t matter. Mira did hurt Rumi. She hurt her with a thousand small cuts of ignorance: she didn’t see; didn’t notice; didn’t listen when Rumi begged; didn’t follow Rumi down the darkness backstage.

There’s plenty of anger and blame to go around. Mira’s learned to not claim a monopoly on it.

Celine returns the bow with her own. They stand, mirrors reflecting one another.

“You get one,” Mira half-threatens, half-jokes after straightening back up. “I’m also still really fucking angry with you, for the record.”

Celine chokes a wet, deprecating laugh, but there’s a heaviness missing that was there just a few minutes ago. “Me too.”

Mira nods back, once, and turns toward Derpy. There’s nothing more for her here, only the living ghost of a warning. 

Home beckons. Her girls await.

Gravel crunches under her feet as Mira approaches the tiger and smooths her palm over his fur. Colors shimmer like the new Honmoon and her chest thrums in sync. He headbutts her hand gently. She smiles and brings her hand down for a scritch, staying connected to him. “Come on, you big lug. Let’s go home.”

A soft rumble is her answer and glowing blue ripples ebb outward on the ground as they sink into the ground. 

The last thing Mira sees before the weird portal vortex engulfs them is Celine watching them silently from the doorway, arm wrapped around her middle, one hand raised in greeting.