[Iɴ ᴀ ғᴏʟᴅᴇᴅ ᴘᴀʀᴄʜᴍᴇɴᴛ, ʙᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴍᴇssɪʟʏ ɪɴ ᴛᴡɪɴᴇ, sᴇᴛ ᴀᴛᴏᴘ ᴀ ᴅᴜsᴛʏ ᴄʜᴇsᴛ ᴏғ ᴅʀᴀᴡᴇʀs, ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ʀᴇsɪᴅᴇs ɪɴ ᴀ ᴡᴏʀɴ-ᴅᴏᴡɴ ʀᴇsɪᴅᴇɴᴄᴇ ɪɴ Bᴏᴏᴛʏ Bᴀʏ. Hᴇʀᴇ sɪᴛs ᴀ ʟᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ, ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ᴀᴅᴅʀᴇss, ɪɴ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴛʏ ɪғ ɴᴏᴛ ᴀᴡᴋᴡᴀʀᴅ sᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪɴɢ. Dᴇsᴘɪᴛᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇs ᴍᴀʏ sᴇᴇᴍ, ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ's ᴡᴏʀᴅɪɴɢ ɪs ᴄᴏɴғɪᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ sᴜʀᴇ.]

It was about as unglamorous as she thought she could get: still dressed in her clothes from the previous night, sitting on the edge of the bed in the hostel's communal dormitory, holding her head. She'd awoken moments ago to someone gently shaking her awake.

~~~

"You're having a nightmare. Time to wake up." The Lightforged draenei's tone was supportive and concerned. Messy had blinked awake, but to vision that swam and blurred, blackening at the periphery. Oh. _Oh_. She sat up on the edge of the bed with the other woman's helpful hand and took deep breaths. Not a nightmare. Not a hangover, no matter what it looked like. No, it was the aura she had come to expect when Sight was impending. Her stomach was tight, her head was pounding, and her heart fluttered with a lingering palpitation. The woman sat with her a few minutes, until she was such Messy was stable, then provided a wash basin and a towel in case she would need to vomit. She apologized for needing to leave, promising to check on the nightborne later as she headed toward the door. She thoughtfully kept the lights off--the rest of the occupants had left for the day already. Messy had wanted to tell her that it wasn't a hangover, that she hadn't even drank any alcohol the night before--though she had smelled of it after getting splashed an enthusiastic fan at the fencing exhibition match last night. Messy wasn't sure why she felt shame that the other woman would think she was a drunkard--there were plenty of youths who stumbled into the hostel late at night inebriated. She just hadn't been one.

She swallowed hard and turned her face up, opening herself to her Goddess and silently promising to do Elune's bidding. Sight struck her immediately, freezing her in her seat and her eyes glowed with unfocused Light appearing before her in runes and cryptic symbols. Her mind did not see the same divinity manifested. She saw great blue fungal caps creating a canopy over ethereal machines and works. She saw familiar wrapped figures moving about their business. Ethereal arcane batteries piled high. Conduits thrumming with power arcing through them. It felt purposeful. It felt imminent. A wrapped head turned toward her point of presence. It started toward her, gaining momentum with the snap and rustle of arcane power so associated with them. A foreign moon--White Lady--hung in the sky and brightened, drawing her awareness, and pulled her toward it; rocketing her perspective out of the vision. Messy collapsed over her legs and felt too heavy in her body. She trembled, unable to do more than focus on her breath for more than a minute. When she had gathered herself, it wasn't the basin she reached for, but her sketchbook and colored pencils.

~~ "Ahhh, that looks like Naigtal. I have never seen those particular mushrooms elsewhere. I have fought there, though it was a Legion world, not Ethereal." The Lightforged gently corrected, looking at the rendering Messy had put to paper. She had been true to her word and returned to check on the young Priestess of Elune.

Messy looked over to her slowly to keep her head from feeling like it was going to rupture. Her voice was hoarse and her shoulders tired. "This is today." "No," the draenei shook her head and smiled reassuringly, "the Legion is vanquished and the Ethereals have no presence there. Rest." Mesandrèaux considered fighting, trying to warn, trying to convince. But the simple confidence of the other woman was heavy and familiar. So, her own pulse felt like it was beating against the inside of her skull, she simply answered, "Oh," and laid back down on the bed.

“That smells delicious,” Jes’champe said as he walked into his kitchen and smirked at Nahi who was in short shorts, a tank top and an apron with no shoes. He had gotten to play hero when her stove went out while she was cooking brunch for her and Irenthalas. While she was trying to figure out what was wrong Irenthalas had reached out to him to come and help figure out what was wrong. Which was clearly an attempt at matchmaking as the two men had known each other long enough for Iren to know that he didn’t know how to fix anything, that is what repairmen were for. 

The horrified look on her face as he stepped through a portal on her patio was amusing and he didn’t hide that fact in the least. Her step-father had explained why he was there but the look on her face turned into a scowl and turned it on Iren instead of him at least. As it was clear Nahi had been working hard on the dishes so he suggested that they just move everything to his estate. Her beautiful violet eyes rolled but she capitulated when Iren started picking up ingredients, and that it would be a shame to waste everything. 

She had been practical and agreed, even if she wasn’t happy about it, so they all ferried the brunch makings to his kitchen, and a pitcher of sangria had somehow ended up on his white shirt, the fact that she bumped into it as they came through the portal was a poorly veiled way of letting him know she was unhappy with him for interfering. The excuse that she must have tripped coming through the portal was a blatant lie, Nahi was too graceful to trip over nothing, plus she managed to move away just enough to get nothing on herself. 

Nahi looked at Jes’champe, she had mostly forgiven him for his interference, it wasn’t his fault Iren still hoped that the two of them would begin to see each other, felt it was the perfect mix as he cared for them both. She loved her step-father but they were going to have words when alone again, because she wasn’t looking to become involved with anyone, let alone Jes who she knew was not opposed to them deepening their connection. 

The bacon on the stove was rendering out, she had to start it again as it was what was on the stove when it went out, luckily nothing else was started when it happened. “Thank you, and tell your chef that I am grateful for the use of his kitchen.” Yes, she ignored the fact that it was Jes’s house, she was well aware that the kitchen was the chef’s domain and Jes was afraid to overstep as his chef was a treasure. Nahi spent a lot of time in the kitchen when she stayed, she adored the chef and he would teach her things he was working on. 

She thought to apologize to him for the sangria that she had absolutely spilled on him on person, but she really wasn’t sorry for it and, even though she hated lying, it had made her feel better. The new stove was an expense she hadn’t been ready for so maybe she would call Key and see if he could fix it, if anyone could it was him, and she knew he would not gouge her on the price. Was it childish to take her frustration out on him? Most definitely, but he could take it, he was a big boy. 

Moving behind her, he made a cup of coffee just the way she liked it, and set it next to the stove for her, then followed with a melon mimosa. “Do not worry about it, you know he likes you enough that he won’t mind you being here cooking.” Leaning against the counter far enough away from her so that he wouldn’t end up with more food on his clothes, intentionally or not. “You should come by and tell him yourself, or just stay over. We could order dinner later.” 

She already had tension in her shoulders and his suggestion made that worse. “I can call my massage therapist in, let you relax a bit after what happened.” They had known each other long enough that he knew the things that would convince her to stay. 

Then the other thing that would help was Iren and he decided to do so, “Yes Nahi, you should. If I had an extra room in the pool house I would roll out the red carpet, but as Jes already has, it is covered.” He smiled winningly at her, “We can make sticky caramel brownies later.” 

After HoT Fest Nahi had planned on taking a few days to just relax, but her mind wouldn’t settle, so she had gone up to the Tasty Pastry to work on Fire Fest plans, and her performance. This brunch with Iren was supposed to be her time to decompress and then the stove, nothing at all was coming together enough for her to find some peace. She on,y had to make it through Fire Fest, then she had nothing to do until the Gala, unless the sky fell again, which was possible. 

At the appearance of the coffee and mimosa next to her, she smiled up at Jes and offered a heartfelt smile, “Thanks.” He looked good, really good, the light blue shirt she had spilled the sangria on had been replaced by a black one, and he knew she liked how he looked in black. There wasn’t anything in his closet she didn’t like him in, the man had exceptional taste.

Her first instinct was to turn him down, even when Iren spoke, he was on her list for this whole situation, but one of the things Nahi loved about when Jes would ask her to go with him for an event, was getting to spend time on his estate. In trying to put distance between them, she had to admit she missed some of the benefits, the way he took care of her was one of them. 

“Sure, I can stay until tomorrow.”

Maybe one day of doing nothing wouldn’t hurt.

(@daily-writing-challenge )

@daily-writing-challenge

When military types have difficult interpersonal matters on their mind before a decisive mission, there are two kinds. Some bury the personal to concentrate on the matter at hand and not render their comrades unable to act, even if it means compromising their own attention and judgment for the cloud still hanging over them. Others insist on clearing the air beforehand so as to have their full focus ready for the mission, even if it means compromising the others with what they’d just dropped on them.

With the Darkwell threatening to swallow up Silvermoon and then the rest, Arthas and I tried to hold to the former. We should have calculated in Arator. We had seen he was the latter type, repeatedly. And now, troops gathering for a concentrated assault, he wore that look when we saw him, the one that said he knew whose spirit was living with me. We were coming to recognise it on people.

mini guache painting by Kinko White

Daily Writing Challenge @daily-writing-challenge Day 7

Melody's Wicked End

Melody wasn't the type of girl to sleep well. As her body erupted into the phases of womanhood, so did her restlessness. She often woke up at strange angles in bed as if her flesh wanted to join her mind in all the starry hopeful dreams that pulled her through the night. Sharing with her sibling in their family's cramped cottage was also becoming a problem. Her long legs always accidentally kicked her small sister in slumber, causing wails and sleepy fighting.

The sheets suffocated in the still humid night air. Melody scowled angrily at the black shadow of morning glory blooms hanging their bonneted heads from the stars outside her open window. They were bowed and missed the sparkling promise of ancient starlight blessing and teasing mystery no mortal could know. She wondered about other worlds and yearned for perfect hearts waiting for her eager desire to give hers.

Her mind drifted to Freddy, her father's farmhand, who just started working for them. He had a strong jaw that made her cheeks blush but with the gentleness of youth fresh on his face. His young muscles were already easily competitive enough to a grown man's. She wished he smelled better though. He didn't seem to understand good hygiene after sheering their sheep the day before. When he shook her hand and let it linger too long, the lanolin musk wouldn't wash off easily from her own. Something about this frightened and excited her. She felt violated from the careless disrespect of his stink even though the touch of his fingers filled her with wild thoughts. The urge to punish him for it rose. Angry that she was still thinking about this stinky pretty farm boy, Melody snapped the sheet off and snuck out of the warm bed.

A large stewing pot simmered over an old and worn, but well maintained, stove that Ries knew kept a steady temperature better than some of the more modern ones. She trimmed the "grapes" off the ends of the rockwrack she had scooped up off the beach in the early dawn, and piled the rest of the seaweed's fronds into the roiling water to cook down into a mushy paste. It didn't take long for her alchemy kitchen to smell like brine and hot pond water.

The ventilation was great in here, so that didn't stay bothersome for long. She smiled a bit as a new, up-beat and brassy song started on the record she'd picked up from a little shop she'd stopped by on her trip to Booty Bay. That vacation had been a gift that continued to give! The scratching of her pencil was all but drowned out as she rendered the strange shape of the algal bladder pod on her paper, adding it to her anatomical reference drawings of rockwrack leaves and stems. The water-warped pages before this one were filled with graphite and watercolor sketches of the botanicals she had found beneficial for her practice and the recipes for custom salves made for specific client treatment plans.

Her mother had been the one to insist on drawing lessons, and the act of putting pencil to paper would always bring back fond memories. Of course, she also had many other pages of drawings of this seaweed in particular in her book, but she needed to have a bunch of options to pick the best one if she was ever going to publish her work someday.

Sure, it'd been twenty years since she'd had the thought to put together an official manuscript. That didn't mean it wouldn't happen eventually. Things just kept coming up.

The tip of her paring knife sliced through the outer shell of the squishy pod, allowing her to get to the gel inside. Ries squeezed the goo out into the glass collection jar she had purchased for this purpose and rubbed what was left on her fingers into her cuticles. Her sister, Syrah, would be horrified. She had viscerally hated anything sticky, gooey or slimy on her skin. This, she knew, would have been her hell had she survived the scourge. But, it was an excellent salve for skin hydration, but she could mix in concentrated essences of other herbs to make pretty fantastic topical balms that had positive effects. Sanguithorn and peacebloom helped to relax the muscles, winter's kiss provided a many hours long sensation of cooling and fire lily did the same with warmth.

A single salve pot took six or seven pods to fill. It was nice that she only needed a few to send home with clients this week. The rest of the seaweed she'd use in other formulations — it was a great ingredient for the face mask cream she liked to slather on at the end of a long day to keep her complexion bright. Her father used to join her for her skin care routine in the evenings. Every now and again she'd catch Syrah doing his nails. Retired gangster or not, Ries was never sure if he had ever fully given that lifestyle up after having children, no one ever doubted how much he loved his daughters.

A slow, warbling jazz track started up as she tossed the empty bladder shell into the bubbling pot. As lonely as it could be being the last one left in her family, she still had an awful lot to live for. Like her manuscript — eventually —, new clients at the Shielded Mind and friends she had yet to meet.

Day Seven DWC 6/6/26 Horrify/Render

Elutia pulled herself up that night at the Silvermoon port, but her heart was heavy. It‘s been weeks since her run-in with Lady Ravenwood, and she found out who Mellanthios is. She tries to reach out to him, to locate him, but it is as if he has disappeared into the very void itself. Perhaps he had. A part of her wants to hunt him down; another knows if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.

She knew he would reach out when he was ready. Lady Ravenwood said as much. Now she felt as if she were always looking over her shoulder. Waiting. Wondering. She isn’t scared, of course. She doesn’t fear death. Truthfully, she didn’t think he wanted her dead.

Unless, perhaps, he has also been brainwashed. Perhaps that is the long game, for him to be the one to render the actual retribution for what happened to Dementri Ravenwood. Frankly, she doesn’t know, and the not knowing is driving her crazy.

Weeks go by, and she throws herself into her work with those trying to save Silvermoon and the world as a whole. Some of what she sees is enough to horrify even the most veteran of fighters. It feels like the more they eradicate, the more that comes. She is exhausted, pushing herself to her limits. Many times dropping from exhaustion. But no matter how much she does, how much she tries to keep herself busy. He is always in the back of her mind.

So she returns home, the last place she saw him. Perhaps he would show up there. Though if everything she knew is so, he will have completely accepted the dagger. She isn’t sure how powerful that will make him, especially since he is trained heavily by Lady Ravenwood, who is almost an anomaly in herself. There is no telling how she has enhanced him or how long she has been training him. It had to have been years, probably from the moment she received the letter from Emperria.

She makes it home and pauses in front of the door, taking a deep breath. The house is dark. Most of the occupants are gone. They were also a part of the war effort that she had just left. She enters the house, able to see well even in the dark. She makes her way to the living room and doesn’t even bother turning on a light, and sits down with an exhausted sigh.

A voice, soft and deep, breaks the silence of the room, making her tense immediately and on guard. But it is a voice she recognizes.

“Welcome home, Grandmother. I think you know why I am here.”

@daily-writing-challenge

( TW for execution and death )

( If anyone is curious about what Sybil keeps dipping into! I like to use Gaelic as an inspiration for old Drust / Old Common. It is a genuinely beautiful language that I’ve been putting in effort into learning as well! )

The crowd thickened near the Ashvane yard, pushing toward the harbor square like a tide with nowhere else to go. Dockhands, fishwives, and children balanced on their fathers' shoulders gathered together, all craning necks to see the timber scaffold where three nooses swung in the salt laced wind, heavy and patient. Three pirates from a crew that had been raiding merchant ships now stood there, stripped of their coats and boots with their hands bound behind their backs with tar-stiffened rope. Merrick walked ahead, broad-shouldered and easy in the press of bodies, parting the crowd with nothing more than the way he carried himself. "Oi, look at that." He jerked his chin toward the gallows, where the hangman was adjusting the length of the first noose. "Sloppy rigging, that is. Rope's too long by 'alf. Bloke'll bounce like a fish on a line 'fore 'e goes." He laughed, a short, barking thing, and elbowed Ridley's arm. "Bet you five silver the fat one pisses 'imself.” Ridley didn't answer. He was walking a half-step behind to the left, his usual position. His pale gray eyes swept the crowd out of habit—counting exits, noting the pair of guards flanking the gallows, and cataloguing the pickpockets working the edges of the mob. A boy no older than eight was lifting a merchant's coin purse near the fish stalls. Ridley watched him palm it and vanish between legs like a rat through a drain grate. Dampwick-born, he had to be. Merrick was still talking. "Should charge admission, they should. Only free entertainment this city gives, an' they don't even do it proper—" The first pirate was shoved forward and the crowd roared. Somewhere behind Ridley, a woman cheered and a man threw a half-rotten cabbage that struck the condemned man's shoulder with a wet thwack. Ridley glanced back, and he saw that Sybil had stopped walking. She stood three paces behind them, small and still in the press of bodies, her shawl pulled tight around her narrow shoulders. The crowd jostled around her as though she were a stone in a river, and she did not move, she didn’t even blink. Her mismatched eyes were focused not on the pirates, but the nooses. The hangman pulled the lever and the trapdoor dropped with a bang that cracked across the square like a pistol shot and the crowd erupted. Sybil flinched as if she'd been struck across the face. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Her fingers, poking from the frayed ends of her shawl, had gone white at the knuckles. Ridley saw it happen in pieces. The way her breathing changed—shallow and rabbit-fast, her chest barely moving under the wool. The way her eyes went glassy and distant, fixed on something that wasn't the pirate jerking at the end of his rope but something older, something further away, something strung up in a village square in Drustvar where the trees grew crooked and the fog never fully lifted. "Oi, Rid!" Merrick was grinning, his full attention on the spectacle. "Told you—fat one's next, watch 'is face, 'e's already gone green—"

The second trapdoor banged open and  Sybil made a sound that was so small, it was barely one at all—it was more like the air was being pressed from her lungs by a hand she couldn't see. Her knees buckled, just slightly, just enough that she swayed, and her lips began moving in fragmented whispers that were lost under the crowd’s jeering. "—mo dheartháiríní, Rowan, Thane, a stóirín, don't be lookin', don't be—" Her hand came up to her own throat and pressed against the collar as if she could feel a different rope there entirely.

Ridley moved without thinking about it. He didn't glance at Merrick for permission, his body simply turned and closed the distance between them in two strides, his long dark coat cutting through the crowd like a curtain being drawn. He stepped directly in front of her and blocked the gallows from her sight as completely as a wall. "Oi." His voice was low, barely above a murmur. "Don't look. Yeah? Eyes on me. Right 'ere."

She didn't seem to hear him. Her gaze was somewhere past his chest, past the fur-trimmed collar of his coat, past Boralus entirely. Her lips were still moving—names, fragments, old Drust prayers tangled with Common like briars through a fence. "—Da were first, they took Da first, an' Mam were screamin', Bran were cryin', he were only—an' Alaric, Alaric had the blood comin' out of 'im, out of his belly, an' they dragged him up anyways, they dragged him up with the—"

"Sybil." Ridley's gloved hand came up and hovered near her shoulder without touching. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscle twitched. He could hear the third trapdoor bang behind him and the crowd screamed approval. 

Sybil's whole body jerked like a marionette whose strings had been yanked. "Máthair," she whispered. "Máthair, tá brón orm, ní raibh mé in ann—"

Something hot and ugly twisted in Ridley's chest. He'd seen people die. He'd watched Merrick break fingers, burn ledgers, and put a knife through a man's hand for shorting them on a shipment. None of it had felt like this—like watching someone drown in air, standing right in front of him, small enough that his shadow swallowed her whole. He took her by the shoulders gently—more gently than his hands knew how to be, the leather of his gloves creaking with the effort of not gripping too hard. He turned her bodily, steering her away from the gallows, away from the crowd, away from the roaring and the creak of taut rope and the wet gurgling sounds a man makes when the drop doesn't break his neck clean. "Come on," he muttered. "Come on, we're goin'. We're walkin'. That's it." He kept himself between her and the spectacle, one hand on her shoulder, the other hovering at her back without quite landing. He guided her down a side alley between a chandler's shop and a sail-maker's, where the crowd thinned and the noise dulled to a muffled roar, and the air smelled like tallow and old canvas instead of sweat and harbor brine. Sybil's legs gave out halfway down the alley but she didn’t fall because Ridley caught her, his arm hooking around her waist before her knees hit the cobblestones. She weighed almost nothing, it was like catching a bundle of sticks wrapped in wool. He lowered her against the chandler's wall, crouching in front of her. Her breathing was wrong. Too fast, too shallow, catching in her throat like hiccups. A thin line of blood had started from her left nostril—bright, and startling red against her freckled skin, and her hands were shaking so badly that the tremor traveled up her wrists and into her forearms. "'Ey. 'Ey, look at me." Ridley's voice had gone even quieter. He pulled off one glove with his teeth and, after a beat of hesitation that cost him visibly, pressed the back of his bare hand against her cheek. Her skin was ice-cold. "You're in Boralus. Yeah? Boralus. Not—wherever you were. You're 'ere. Alley smells like shit, seagull's screamin' up there like it's bein' murdered, an' there's a drunk bloke asleep in that doorway. See 'im? That's Boralus. That's now."

Sybil's eyes slowly focused. The lavender one first, then the brown, dragging back from wherever her memory had taken her. "They didn't—" Her voice cracked, thin as thread. "They didn't drop clean, Ridley. None of them dropped clean. Alaric were already dyin' from the shot an' they hung him anyways an' he—hhh—" A sob hitched in her chest but didn't fully form. Her hand came up and gripped the front of his coat, fingers twisting in the dark fabric as the blood from her nose reached her upper lip.

Ridley fished a rag from one of his belt pouches. It wasn’t exactly clean, but it was at least cleaner than the street—and pressed it to her face with a clumsiness that betrayed how unused his hands were to gentleness. "'Old that there. Tilt your 'ead forward, not back. Forward. There you go."

Sybil obeyed, but her grip on his coat didn't loosen. If anything, her fingers tightened, as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had suddenly gone liquid and dark. Her breathing was still ragged, but slowing. The tremors came in waves now instead of one continuous shudder. "I ran," she whispered into the rag. "I ran an' I left them. I were a doe an' I ran through the trees an' I didn't stop an' when I came back they were—still up there. Still hangin'. The crows were already—"

"Sybil."

"—already at Bran's—"

"Sybil." His free hand found the back of her head, rough fingers sliding through the choppy sandy hair, and he held her there, holding her at a fixed point. An anchor dropped in a storm she couldn't swim out of alone. "You was one girl against a whole village gone mad. You'd 'ave died with 'em.”

Sybil's face crumpled and the sound she made was barely human—it was a thin, keening thing, muffled against his knuckles and the rag. Her shoulders curled inward until she was folded almost in half. Ridley stayed exactly where he was. Crouched on the wet cobblestones, knees aching, with one hand on the back of her head and the other holding the rag to her bleeding nose. He didn't speak. He didn't move. He barely breathed. Behind them, muffled by brick and canvas, Merrick's laugh rang out over the crowd like a bell. Ridley's jaw tightened and he shifted his weight, putting his back more fully to the alley's mouth, and let his shadow fall over Sybil like something he could give her when he had nothing else.

She cried for a long time. Quiet, airless sobs that shook her frame and left dark spots on his coat where her tears soaked through. At some point her whispers slid entirely into Drust—a Athainne, glac aire díobh, coinnigh solas orthu, tá siad beag, tá siad chomh beag. Ridley understood none of the words but sat with them anyway, steady and silent and unmovable, until the shaking finally slowed and her grip on his coat loosened from a death-clutch to something merely desperate. "M'sorry," she breathed at last. Her voice was raw and small. "M'sorry, I didn't mean to, I just heard the—an' I were back there an'—"

"Don't." He pulled the rag away and checked the bleeding, seeing it had stopped and so he tucked it back in his pouch. "Don't apologize for that. Not to me. Not to anyone." He said it with the same gruffness he said everything, but something underneath it had shifted. Something he didn't have a name for and wouldn't have admitted to under torture.

Sybil looked up at him. Her face was blotched and swollen, her mismatched eyes red-rimmed, and her nose pink with a drying smear of blood still on her upper lip he'd missed. She looked wrecked and very young and very old at the same time, the way only grief can make a person look. "You see things too, so," she said quietly. "Don't you. Things you can't unfind in your head."

Ridley's expression shuttered. He stood, offering her his hand—bare, scarred across the knuckles, and rough-palmed. "Can you walk?"

She took it. Her fingers were still cold, still trembling faintly, but they wrapped around his hand and held on. "Aye," she said. "If you stay atween me an' the noise."