#ck writes

Zhongli was seated to her right, a square cup as his goblet of preference but containing the same substance balanced in his own elegantly gloved grasp. He’d opted to don one of his more traditional robes rather than his typical suit this morning, likely because he knew he’d be spending the day in leisure with his partners rather than turning up in the harbor for work. After the joint New Years and birthday celebration from the night before he didn’t mind the reprieve, and Director Hu had been quite insistent when she’d sent them all home with plenty of goodies and an additional warning to not even bother trying to make some attempt to circumvent her orders, because it would all only prove to be in vain. The retired Archon of Geo sipped his tea with a smile, reveling in the peace and potential this bright new day was already brimming with.

To Nova’s left the esteemed Iudex of Fontaine, Neuvillette, adjusted his gloves as well before raising the silver chalice before him to his eager lips. While his companions were partial to a bit of additional flavor in their morning beverage, Neuvillette enjoyed the simple and refined flavors of an untainted drink of warm water instead. Something about the way the natural taste of the water was affected by and transformed with the heat, and even over the cooling process, convinced him that nothing could ever turn him against the majesty of water in its purest form. He was as contented by the calm nature of their shared morning as his partners seemed to be, appreciating the warmth wafting off his drink as he focused on the stillness of the moment, and the soothing ambiance of nature that only enhanced the sensation.

Here in Qioaying Village where the unlikely trio made their home they could be as authentic as they wished, safe in the lowlands of the remote rural mountains that formed Chenyu Vale, accepted and welcomed even in their less than human presentation. The star dyed and lovesick feline situated between her beloved dragons just couldn’t seem to help admiring the way Zhongli’s dark brown and gold draconic traits contrasted with the white, iridescent, frilled quality of Neuvillette’s. Despite the largely aquatic nature of his features, Neuvillette’s ears were still white, fluffy, and pointed in a manner not dissimilar to Zhongli’s, and not dissimilar to the otters with whom he shared a large part of his humanoid color scheme. Whether it turned out to be a true coincidence or not was anyone’s guess. But the frills and fins that accented the edges of his hydro-resistant fur and the dark blue scale lined tail that ended in a flourish of dazzling iridescent fins were indicative of his Leviathan nature; they were as much a part of him as anything else. And he was learning how to embrace that, especially now that he had Nova and Zhongli to help.

Nova sipped her drink in an attempt to keep her hands to herself, fighting the alluring enticement of Zhongli’s grand horns that parted his long, dark locks with branches of gleaming gold as they curved up into the sky, contrasting beautifully with the way Neuvillette’s smooth dark blue fins followed the downward flow of his cascading cloud white locks. She reached out to impulsively give both of their silky mane’s a long stroke, from the crown of their heads to the ends, which she found to be impressively and carefully groomed. She’d come to expect nothing less of her sophisticated husbands, and she only hoped she could project even a mote of the kind of poise and grace they managed to conduct themselves with.

They’d come a long way since the existence they’d known only as ancient dragons; life had become about more than just survival and strength. Than rules and conquering. Even as harrowing memories of the past crept out when they least expected, seizing their hearts and minds in the most inopportune moments when all they really wanted was to move on. To heal. To accept the terrifying reality of change. And here, now, seated at this modest table set in a scene straight out of a fairy tale, or perhaps just a pleasant dream, they all had hope that maybe such seemingly insurmountable hurdles weren’t so out of reach if they reached for them together.

It's been years since any poetry has done that. In that moment, I found myself back in high school English, an open book in front of me to my left, and a blank sheet of paper to my right. Interpret this. What does it mean? What was the author trying to say?

What resonates with you?

The music stuck. Even though I didn't understand the meaning, each verse was carried on a genius score--which was both used by the lyrics and which lent itself to the lyrics. Punctuations within the music itself actually supplemented the interpretation to the point where one can't be separated from the other. It's impossible to read the words of each song without also listening to the song.

And I realized I'd find my meaning in the analysis. The desperation ebbed, and I sat down to work.

Overall, the album has a melancholy tone. This isn't positive. It carries themes of falling, invisibility, darkness, and pain. It's strange to see this side of Avidan, who presents himself to the world as a generally upbeat person. It's also a little strange to run an interpretation of the lyrics on someone who has essentially talked about himself on an internet show for the last ten years of his life. It's an advantage that seems almost ill-gotten, like I know too much. I shouldn't have this window into someone's life.

But overall... It seems like that's where a lot of his writing comes from. Basically, that he's exposed, and he has to deal with that.

Autobiographical lyrics sometimes fall short of making a connection with their intended audience, especially those whose writers live on a completely different social strata. I can't entirely understand what Avidan has been through, because I'm not known by millions of people. However, he's done his best to make each song relatable, so I feel it's only fair for me to provide my interpretation of his writing, then attempt to relate the meaning to my own experiences.

Part One: White Whale

This may be the most obvious when it comes to inspiration, with the source material evolving from Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

I had a hate-hate relationship with this book from a young age, because I accidentally committed myself to reading it in sixth grade. I'd read Black Beauty and Watership Down, The Call of the Wild, and White Fang, among other animal-related books, and so I thought that Moby Dick would be a fun romp about a whale. I selected it for a semester-long book report to be turned in three months later.

Anyone who's read Moby Dick knows that it is not a fun romp about a whale, but is instead a near-biographical account of whale hunting in the 1800s, which deals mostly with the types and consistencies of whale blubber.

I don't remember if that's really what the book was about, but my ten-year-old brain just hooked onto that and wouldn't let go. My concentration ebbed, I struggled to find the story amidst dozens of chapters that varied between 30 pages and half a page, then I tried to give up after reading eight whole pages.

I say I tried to give up, because apparently I was committed. I'd chosen my 400-page white whale, and my teacher said I just had to live with that.

So of course I said, "fine, okay, that's rational," and set right to work on reading it.

Except that's not what I did at all. I put it off until just a few days before it was due, and with eight pages read and the wrath of God waiting to descend on me if I didn't turn in a book report, I read the whole thing in two nights, then turned in my first ever scathing literary review. I cannot for the life of me remember the grade I got on it, but it must have been decent. I got an A in the class.

The point is: Shadow Academy's "White Whale" almost makes me want to try reading it again. Maybe I will. Did you know there's a chapter in Moby Dick titled "The Crotch?" There's also one called "The Nut." And if I recall correctly, the entire story takes place in the last three chapters.

It's important to note that the term white whale has entered the English lexicon with a meaning most people understand, even if they haven't read the book. It's an obsession. A goal that might be impossible to attain, despite one's earnest efforts. Maybe even one that seems pointless to other people.

Avidan's white whale is laid out in the first verse of the song.

So, silent tide / Tell me which face do I show the world and which one do I hide?

All well-known personalities are essentially two different people: Their private, real self, and one self they present to the world. Avidan has talked about this before when it comes to the Sexbang persona he created for Ninja Sex Party and how it differs from his actual personality. He's also discussed how the two have begun to blend together.

It should be obvious who he is. The song goes on to state that he, of course, has intimate knowledge of his real self, but it's important that he uses the term demon eyes. More about that later.

The entire song seems to be a dive (pun intended, I guess) about how he's interpreted, versus his real self, versus how much he actually knows of himself. And therein is the eponymous "white whale" itself: When you present as two different people, which one actually is the real you?

There's lines in the song that suggest this may be an internal battle against how he's perceived, as well, although this could be pure interpretation on my part. Endless waters and the loss of the "trail" may suggest the entirety of the internet, with which Avidan has expressed an adversarial relationship in the past. This is reinforced by the lines:

Dive, vicious dance / Tell me poison pouring from my heart / Can burn into the lance

Finding a balance between one persona and the other--or even deciding which is "real" and which is "invented" may be affected by criticism. I won't get too far into some of those trials, but to summarize, there was a lot of postulating that the Sexbang persona was real, and that was who Avidan was becoming.

How can one not pour poison from their heart when seeing something like that? It hurts when people you barely know judge you for something untrue. You want to strike back. You want that anger and anxiety to crystalize into a lance that can silence your critics. But when there are so many and you're only one person, tactical strikes become impossible. You're overwhelmed. And you realized your white whale is an insurmountable hurdle.

I do know how that feels.

Probably not on the same scale, but as someone with a personality disorder, I'm often judged for split second actions and poor decisions. I've therefore cultivated a near-lifetime of adversaries who can't separate my real self from the beast of mental illness. People I don't even know or whom I've never spoken to make sure to judge me--anonymously, of course. If the Internet gives us nothing else, it gives us anonymity. So while I'm busy laying myself bare, others are hiding in the shadows to snipe at me. Some of that is deserved.

But on a compounding scale, I sometimes find myself buried under those criticisms. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone feels like they have the right to voice it. Even if it's been said before. It's like a single axe strike against the trunk of a tree compared to a thousand: one single cut doesn't hurt the tree, but those strikes add up, and eventually the tree falls.

A coffin with no nail.

You eventually become numb to these things. You've been killed, but you're not dead. The coffin is still open and you still see these interpretations of your actions. But you've already been felled. You can't fall again.

The other day I received a half dozen comments on my mental health blog calling me a terrible person because of a misinterpretation of something I wrote. Leaving aside the fact that willful misinterpretation plus anonymity is a staple of internet interaction, the scathing words didn't hurt. They can't anymore. I've heard it all.

Is this where Avidan is? Becoming numb to those emotions isn't a great way to exist.

I have no way to know / Unless you've seen a ghost.

I find these lines to be the most telling in the song. It seems to speak of searching for the truth, but being unable to discern it by his own power. Either both personas have so thoroughly blended together that it's impossible to separate the two (the slightly more positive interpretation) or he can't tell one from the other. The line Unless you mean it may be asking if the negative interpretations are real or simply meant to hurt. IE: Do you mean what you said, or have you seen the opportunity to do harm and embraced it?

Sometimes it seems like I've had a persona created for me, with labels attached to it without my permission. And this is the persona people have chosen to see--rather than the real me, or the one I've cultivated for myself.

Avidan sees himself with demon eyes, which he doesn't know if he can trust. And: If I am interpreted, is that my real self? Or is my real self the one I feel at the center of my being? Do I have a right to judge myself, or is the judgement of other people more accurate? Should I place credence into how I'm perceived, or should I rely on my own--possibly flawed--intimate knowledge?

Trying to figure this out is an endless struggle. I can't help but to pursue it, but at times it's definitely Hanging my own rope. I can't win.

A lot of what makes writing and music important to me is being able to connect with the writer. Of course that means I'm going to interpret lyrics in a way that makes sense to me personally, and as Avidan himself said (and I'm paraphrasing here), it's more interesting for the audience to be able to take these lyrics and make them their own.

At the same time, as a fan of Game Grumps and NSP, it's hard to remove the writer from the writing entirely. The aforementioned personality disorder comes with more faults than one, but among the more interesting symptoms is the desire to constantly pursue empathic connections with other people. Those with this particular disorder find parasocial relationships harder to navigate than most, although I've struck a healthy balance in the past couple years.

The point is, I'm always going to see these as Danny's lyrics. Even while putting my own interpretation to them, I'm always going to wonder about--and worry over--his thought process while writing. I think that's the kernel of internal beauty that comes from this longing for empathic connection. It's usually painful, frustrating, misconstrued, discarded, and brushed off.

James looked around the aftermaths of his baby sister’s nonsensical haste with a sigh. He truly loved Lucie, but her energetic self was so very at odds with the life of tranquility that reigned over the London Institute.

Not only was James’s tea spilt onto the small table they’d been on’s tablecloth, and Lucie’s chair on the plush carpet that covered the floor: Lucie had also foregone the slipper she’d been balancing on her foot, her embellished stele, and her silver hand mirror. All, James supposed, left for him to return to their owner.

James kneeled down to right Lucie’s chair and take her shoe, then picked her mirror. It was a shadowhunter’s mirror, if that made sense. It’s silver was engraved in protection runes, and the Herondale family motto as well as emblem of flying herons. For a brief moment, James’s twin stared at him on the mirror. His black hair curled up around his ears and reached almost to his shoulders; it did a good job of shielding his grey eyes, but it wasn’t perfect. James disliked his eyes terribly: Lucie had their father’s eye colour —the eye colour which had characterised the Herondales for centuries— but James had inherited his mother’s eyes. A warlock’s eye colour on a seemingly shadowhunter boy.

Not wanting to dwell on such depressing thoughts, as Barbara had told him he shouldn’t, James slipped the hand mirror into his pant’s back pocket. He turned to the table.

He ought to take off the tablecloth so that not that much of his tea seeped through the fabric and stained the wood underneath, yet he hesitated. His eyes were fixed on Lucie’s stele with a grimace. James…

Wasn’t the fondest of steles. Of anything nephilim, if he were honest. But he especially disliked steles. Lucie’s.

A long time ago, before Lucie had gone off to the Shadowhunter Academy, she and James had been gifted twin steles by Charlotte Fairchild; who, James believed, had once been Will’s adoptive mother of sorts. The steles were a magnificent work of art, there were no words to describe them nor how wonderfully they’d slid across James’s arm as he marked himself (therefore James had been unwilling to so much as think of their price).

But the steles had coincided with the arrival of Augustus Pounceby and his gang of pre-pubescent minions. James had been equal parts excited and nervous to showcase their steles to Augustus, but then it all had turned to dread when the boy had snided at Lucie and him because they ‘weren’t real shadowhunters’ given how their mother was a warlock. James had been devastated, and in his devastation, he had silently drifted away from the ideals of divine warrior-hood of the nephilim.

In her fury, Lucie had taken her stele, announced to all that she was a better shadowhunter than any of them, and challenged Augustus to a duel to proof her words. Lucie had broken that bully’s nose and hauled him down a set of stairs.

From that day onwards, it was made clear who Lucie Ella Herondale was. And who James could never be.

James’s fingers twitched, and he quickly shot to grab the stele and get it with the hand mirror.

“Easy there,” a feminine voice said, amused “Did you burn yourself?”

“Leave it be, Jessamine.” James protested.

He pivoted on his heels and almost crashed against Jessamine. Well, he wouldn’t be able to crash against her, per se, since Jessamine Lovelace was the London Institute’s residential ‘guardian’ ghost. Semantics.

Jessamine’s eyes widened at their close proximity —as if scandalised that James’s face would pass through her immaterial form— and she promptly traveled to the other corner of the drawing room; the top of her head nearly grazing the ceiling and a gloved hand to her chest. “Goodness gracious, James!” she exclaimed, scandalised “A proper lady does not stand so close to a gentleman, it’s unseemly unless he’s declared his intentions to wed her beforehand,” she huffed, her small nose crunching up “Which you have not, I shall remind you.”

James rolled his eyes. “And I shall remind you that it is unseemly for so-called proper ladies to go frolicking around with their hair unbound at four in the afternoon. In the presence of a gentleman and only a gentleman, at that,” James bit back.

Jessamine gasped indignantly; she hastened to gather her flowing blonde strands of hair in a poor attempt at a braided-curled-plaited proto-coiffure monstrosity from her times, the 1870s. To no avail, naturally: the moment she retired her hands —shooting James a winning smirk and a ha!— the whole arrangement crumbled down, and once again, her hair continued floating in the air.

James’s relationship, acquaintanceship, with Jessamine was tempestuous at best. Jessamine was always chiding James for staying ‘locked up’ in his bedroom enjoying the company of a good book, she thought it unacceptable that James’s only friends were his parents and Barbara, and was deeply saddened that James was neither a ‘handsome gentleman like Will’ or a ‘pretty lady with whose hair she could let her fashionista nature run rampant’ at the very least twice a day.

Lucie was in much better terms with Jessamine, and not only because of Lucie’s affinity for ghosts nor because she was a pretty lady with whose hair Jessamine could while away her lifeless life. Lucie was also Lucie: she was likeable, unlike James. Alas, Lucie was also in Idris most of the time.

Although now that James pondered on the matter, it didn’t make sense that Jessamine was with him and not his sister. Unless, that is, Jessamine was running an errand.

“Is Lucie asking for her stele? Or her hand mirror? Or,” James waved the discarded slipper “This?”

Jessamine flew to James; her face getting alarmingly close to Lucie’s smelly shoe while her feet swung down and up in a childish manner on the air onto which she floated horizontally.

“Lucie didn’t ask for any of that,” Jessamine murmured. Then, she looked up at James “However she did ask for your presence at her bedroom after supper. Make sure to be on time.”

“But won’t Lucie— Jessamine, I beg you to wait for a moment,” James belaboured when Jessamine began disappearing “Dear Raziel, won’t you wait for a moment?”

Jessamine sighed, and girlishly ‘sat’ on a settee. “What?” she deadpanned.

James suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

“Won’t Lucie be at supper to request my presence herself?” James asked.

“Oh, no she won’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

And with that and a ‘remember not to be late!’ Jessamine disappeared in a cloud of petticoats and blonde curls. To Lucie’s room, he guessed.

James plopped down, sighing, on the settee Jessamine had vacated. He sighed rather a lot when Lucie and Jessamine where nearby, especially when they were together. He propped his feet up —heedless of his shoes— on the backrest, and fished his reading glasses out of his waistcoat. Then, he proceeded to carry out the activity that brought him the most joy: reading.

Presently, it was The Regent by some Clarín bloke what was entertaining James. Barbara had personally translated the manuscript from Spanish to English for his seventeenth birthday. The Regent was entertaining.

James didn’t wonder why Lucie wouldn’t be at supper. Lucie was a free spirit who did whatever she wanted because she could, and was also not to be questioned. Besides, Will and Tessa doted on her too much to forbid her from doing anything during the brief months she returned to her family in London. She was the pride of the Herondales.

So James, simply, got comfortable and read.

As Jessamine had said, Lucie had, indeed, not been present at supper. Therefore supper had been a quiet affair not unlike the ones usually had when the Herondale’s youngest member was in the Shadowhunter Academy.

However the sheer ruckus coming from within her bedroom, that was very dissimilar from the London Institute James knew and loved.

“Lucie?” James asked, raising his fist to knock on her door.

But before he could do so, Lucie jerked the door open. “James, oh James. Come inside, come inside,” she urged “Make haste, most agonisingly slow brother.”

James obeyed, though he didn’t move more than a step from the threshold. The sight of Lucie was simply too bizarre. “Whatever are you wearing?”

Lucie kicked the door closed and whirled around to face him. “A suit.”

Well, James could see that.

Lucie was clad in fashionable dark menswear. Pants that clung to her legs, a white, pristine shirt, a marvellous velvet waistcoat, and a jacket smartly embellished with rune embroidery. She looked fashionable, she looked like their cousin Anna Lightwood, who was not like Lucie. Or perhaps…?

“It was a gift from Matthew,” Lucie added, going to her bed and picking a matching black bowler hat “And this as well. Do you like it?”

James gulped down once. In spite of being close to Anna, of being the closest to Barbara, he was oddly nervous. His palms sweated and he had to clean them on his pants.

“Lucie,” he began, rather gingerly “Is this your way of telling me you fancy ladies? Because you know I support you; by the Angel, I fancy ladies and it would be awfully ungentlemanly of me to claim I can have that attraction by sole virtue of my being a—”

James’s speech was cut short by Lucie bursting into a dreadful bout of laughter. She had to hug her stomach, and support herself on the wall to keep from stumbling to the floor.

James guessed he was not the most inspirational speaker.

“I do not fancy ladies,” Lucie eventually said, when her laughter had subsided and she could then wipe her tears away with a black-gloved finger “As far as it concerns me, the only thing I feel for women is companionship of the platonic sort. I’m wearing this to sneak out. To meet a boy,” she beamed at James “You know, Jessamine used to rendezvous with her husband dressed like this.”

“Jessamine was married?” for some reason, James had latched onto the most inconsequential fact. And it was only after Lucie nodded, that the rest of her sentence sunk in “You’re meeting with a boy?” he exclaimed in alarm.

“Shh, don’t be too loud,” Lucie clamped a palm on James’s mouth “I’d loath it if Papa and Mama found out by you belting out my departure from the bachelorette status.”

James circled his hand around Lucie’s wrist. “You have an understanding with this boy?” he whispered.

“Yes, his existence is quite the particular matter,” Lucie stepped back, to the open window.

James’s eyes widened. Lucie could summon and control ghosts; see and touch those who didn’t want to be seen and touched. But this… James had to ask whether Lucie had an understanding with a ghost. He was going to, when Lucie opened her mouth.

“However, just for future reference, James bach, me meeting with a boy does not necessarily carry romantic implications. Look at Matthew, and Thomas, for instance. They’re my friends, and only my friends,” she swung her legs over the windowsill “Mundane novels have got into your brain and made you think opposite sex friendships an impossible feat. But despair not! When Matthew, Thomas, and Christopher arrive tomorrow, you’ll have plenty of instances to be proven wrong.”

“Wait, what—”

“I bid you my farewells and adieu, brother!”

“Lucie, wait!”

James ran to the windowsill, but Lucie jumped off it too fast. She was lost into the night, and James could not afford to choose to search for her over his debilitating panic.

Matthew Fairchild, Thomas Lightwood, and Christopher Lightwood were Lucie’s friends; James knew of them, but knew them only as residents of Idris. Why hadn’t he been informed of their imminent arrival sooner? Hadn’t Will and Tessa thought James would like to know?

They probably thought this could be a surprise for James, something that would, somehow, make him happy. Matthew and Christopher were his age (Christopher was his cousin), and Thomas Tessa’s best friend’s son; Barbara’s youngest sibling. And still.

This was horrible. James would have to socialise. And the last time he had socialised, Augustus Pounceby had happened.

“I must—” James went for the door in two long strides “I must speak to Barbara.”

Barbara Lightwood lived in a lavish flat at Soho, all things considered, quite far from her cousin Anna’s own abode, also in Soho. The two loved each other dearly, James knew, but happened to live diametrically opposed lives.

Anna was a ladies gentlewoman; her nights were spent in downworlder gatherings with a lovely girl on her lap, and later on, surely, on her bed. Barbara was different. James’s mentor had the odd pastime of having midnight strolls around the darkest nooks of London to do Angel knew what; if Barbara lived in Soho, it was only because her lover, the warlock Hypatia Vex, hadn’t been very different from Anna before meeting Barbara.

James hid within the shadows of the street to ward off unwanted stares —he hadn’t marked himself, he hardly ever did. He could’ve reached Barbara’s flat blindsided, and so he got to the building’s facade in under ten minutes; thereupon he employed his keys to grant himself entrance.

Barbara and Hypatia lived in the attic, in a juxtaposition of the four flats once divided by the elderly landlord. James took the stairs two at a time, his heartbeat increasing by the second, and promptly accessed the entrance.

Once again, he took his keys and let himself in.

“My love, you’re playing a dangerous game.”

James stopped dead in his tracks. That had been Hypatia’s voice, he didn’t know why he was so surprised by the warlock being in her own home. Perhaps it was Hypatia’s tone; she normally was as collected as it got, now…

“This has always been a dangerous game,” someone, Barbara, protested. She sounded exasperated, exhausted beyond description “You know that very well Hypatia. And still you chose to be with me.”

The voices were coming from the kitchen. Slowly, agonisingly so, James took a step forwards.

“Allow me to rephrase my wording, then,” Hypatia retorted “Barbara Charlotte Lightwood, my love, the light that shines upon my darkness, continue this, and you will die,” her voice broke slightly “He will murder you.”

A deep, shaky breath. “I have to.”

Now James was close enough to see the women’s silhouettes. Hypatia was in Barbara’s arms, their lips very close together. James thought they’d kiss, but then Barbara tensed.

“James,” she said. Not a question, not an acknowledgment: an order to make himself visible.

James stepped into the kitchen looking downwards; in shame, in embarrassment. In fear over what he had overheard.

“Half blood,” Hypatia said, swiftly wiping any traces of vulnerability off her expression; squaring her shoulders, building a wall of burning fire between them “You could have interrupted something much more intimate.”

Hypatia might have loved Barbara, but she was disgusted by the sight of James. If anything, she consented to his existence because of his connection to Barbara. James didn’t know quite where Hypatia’s dislike stemmed from.

“Do stop that,” Barbara walked to James, and tilted his head just so to meet his eyes. Her hands were warm, sisterly, on James’s chin, yet her eyes shone with concern “What’s the matter, Jamie?”

Suddenly James felt ashamed of his social insecurities. Barbara clearly had more pressing matters to attend to, and here he was, distracting her from them because he was terrified of socialising with Lucie’s friends. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled.

Barbara quirked a perfectly-groomed eyebrow at him.

“Lucie has invited her friends to London and they arrive tomorrow. I was nervous, that’s it.” he blurted out.

Hypatia snorted, but Barbara led him to a settee and sat next to him. “My Tommy is one of your sister’s friends, he’s a good boy. Nothing like Augustus,” she patted his hand “I haven’t seen him in six long years, though we write often. I wonder if he’s finally shaken off that sickness of his.”

James knew they were approaching dangerous territory. Barbara didn’t consent to speak of her reasons for leaving Idris —and her family— behind to reside in London. James shut up.

He should be grateful for Barbara’s decision; whichever motives it had been fuelled by. Barbara was his mentor, the one person other than his parents and Uncle Jem who’d looked at him and seen something good. Something worthy of a shadowhunter.

She’d trained James, had gifted him a stele and throwing knives and done her hardest to instil on him the notion of him being worthy of the Shadow World, of nephilim society. Barbara hadn’t fully succeeded in her mission, but James didn’t want to think what would’ve happened to him had she not been there.

After a while, Barbara spoke again. “This will be good for you, James,” she murmured “You don’t have to be a social butterfly, but having friends of your age range is healthy.”

James bit his lips. “I’ve never had a friend, and the one time I tried—” he flailed his hands around in lieu of an Augustus Pounceby “Even if your brother and his friends are kind, they ought to see me as the social outcast that I am. No one wants to befriend a social outcast.”

Barbara rolled her eyes. “Trust me. Please, Jamie,” she requested “See, Tommy is a very slight young boy; an avid language enthusiast, kind yet strong, and quiet and caring. Christopher is a science devotee with the purest heart I’ve seen,” Barbara knew what she was talking about “And Matthew may be unlike yourself, but I am of the opinion that different people make the better pairings, romantic or otherwise. Like Hypatia and myself. They—”

James wiggled closer to her. He was hesitant to ask this, but…

“Barbara, what were you talking to Hypatia about? Back when I arrived,”

Barbara’s face darkened. For a moment, an imposing shadow clouded her expression, and her knuckles tightened and her jaw hardened. She stood up hastily.

“Stay the night,” Barbara simply said “The guest room is yours at this point.”

Before James could say anything, Barbara had already left the room to the bedroom she shared with Hypatia, to which James naturally didn’t have access.

A knot of uneasiness set deep in James’s stomach. Hypatia had been talking about a dangerous mission that could cause Barbara’s demise. James could not allow that. He couldn’t lose Barbara.

Decidedly, he stood up in search of Barbara, but the door to her bedroom was locked —and soundproofed— by Hypatia’s magic. There was nothing that James could do but walk to the guest room, and heed Barbara’s advice of staying the night.

“Nothing will happen to you,” James promised, thinking that maybe the air could carry along his promise to Barbara “Upon my name, I, James Herondale, will not let harm come your way.”

When no one replied, James took a step back.

He took a deep breath, and sat on the bed, not even caring to change into his nightwear. It was futile: mattresses in Hypatia’s flat were enchanted into giving way to instant sleep.

James closed his eyes.

He dreamt of resounding bells.

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