“And that’s my origin story,” Chela concluded, allowing herself a small sigh.
Oliver was just staring at her in silence. She’d never imagined she’d reveal any of this, not even to friends. A past that lay beside her, deep within. But sharing it had been the sole means of remaining friends with Oliver—if she’d kept it under wraps, she’d never have been able to meet his eyes again.
“…Your past is, in a sense, my future. Despite the similarities, there is a fundamental difference. And it’s all too clear how that difference led to where we stand now,” Chela said. “Simply put, I adapted to it. But you rejected it and are fighting it even now. That’s the long and short of it.”
Her voice rasped. Facing each other’s darkness shone a light on this discrepancy.
His past was a wound still bleeding. But she no longer even viewed hers as painful. Her heart had grown up with a piece missing, and now she acted as if that had always been her nature. And for that reason, she’d hurt him. She’d blinded herself. By asking him to match her, she’d wounded him all over again.
“One thing fell into place. I wasn’t drawn to you just because we stood in similar depths. That alone is likely matched by any student from an old house. It’s clear to me now—I was drawn to you because you were desperately trying to keep your feet on the ground within those depths. That’s something I unconsciously peeled off and cast away—something you’re still clutching close to your chest.”
Chela revered that. She could not begin to call it hope. What he held on to was a corpse, one that would never breathe again. He knew it would never answer, but he could not stop himself from calling out to it, loving it.
And for that reason, she wished only to put her arms around both.
“May I—hug you, Oliver? If I still have that right.”
She spread her arms, and Oliver nodded, moving closer and leaning against her. Chela felt as if a huge missing piece snapped back in place. She couldn’t lose this. It was too precious to her to ever let go of again.
“…You matter so much to me…,” she whispered, trembling.
Oliver’s arms closed tightly around her. Leaving no gaps between them, as if staving off the chill winds. In the hopes that this could satisfy her, if even for a moment—just as he had always done.
✦ ✦ ✦
He’d kept them waiting too long. Seeing Oliver in that last class had made that painfully clear to Guy.
Clearly, he’d been too optimistic. He’d only once seen his friend in that bad a state—back in their second year, when he’d been in the throes of that mystery slump.
“““““Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”””””
“Ngh…!”
In a dimly lit curse wrangler workshop, Zelma’s cursed dolls assaulted Guy, scissors and razors in hand. Bisque dolls in frilly lace, cackling wildly—an unsettling sight, but Guy fought them off with puppets made from the cursed wood of his toolplants.
A basic training exercise on the use of familiars, but not an easy one. Zelma’s automatons were unsurprisingly powerful, but what ran rings around that was the law of curse conservation. Each hostile doll he felled meant that much more energy stored in his own puppets.
✦ ✦ ✦
