Eva and Doug were arguing about the balance of an MMO we all played on and off, and they were being loud about it. They had the same vibes as two kittens growling at each other while they ate their bowls of food.
“You're really pretty,” Jared said quietly, having shifted out from between the argument kittens.
I looked at him as he sat down next to me. Where was he going with that opening line? Did he even know? His face had gone so red it looked like someone had slapped him with a fish — a big one.
“Thanks, dude,” I said, exaggerating the bro-ey attitude in a vague attempt to… I don't know, signal that I was friend, not food?
“Sorry. That was totally weird. Um. I wish I was Spiritborn,” he said, looking down at his dirty, white sneakers.
“I mean…” I said, trailing off when I realised I didn't have shit in the way of a reply.
He played with his laces for a second, then fell back and stared up at the sky. Some blue sky was visible, but there were enough clouds that the sun was only making brief appearances.
“Sorry, I'm totally throwing a pity party,” he laughed. He still hadn't actually looked me in the eye. He did have a lot of trouble being coherent around girls, so maybe that's what was happening?
“You want body changes like mine?” I finally asked, curious. He was specifically talking to me about this, after all.
He laughed awkwardly again and shook his head. “Nah, nah. I just reckon that this group is gonna split. Spiritborn will go one way, normals will go another.”
I rebelled against the very idea of that. It would suck major ass for Jared and Benny. Despite only like… fifteen percent of the population being Spiritborn, our friend group only had two ‘normals’ as Jared put it. I didn't want to leave them behind.
“Jared…” I made sure to give him a long look, so he could see in my eyes that I was serious. “I'm gonna do everything I can to keep you and Benny glued to the gang.”
“Thanks,” he said, avoiding my look entirely as he watched the sky.
What the fuck should I say to him? What would make him realise that I was actually going to do everything I could.
Before I could say anything, Noah tumbled into the grass in front of us and wiggled into a sitting position. “Hey, Jared’s talking to you!”
“Yeah, but I immediately went and made it weird,” Jared grumbled, his face heating again. “She's just so fuckin’...”
Without thinking, I'd growled.
His eyes widened. “I'm sorry. I forgot you said you weren't psyched about the girl thing yet.”
I rolled my eyes. Were guys all this stupid, or was Jared a special case? “I wasn't salty about the ‘she’ thing — you were going to call me pretty again. It's a bit weird.”
“Oh, good,” Noah said, tension easing in his posture. “I was sorta dancing on eggshells in my head trying to figure out what to call you. If you're okay with she…”
Pursing my lips, I tried not to scream. A scream was not warranted right now. I was just, maybe a little frustrated. “Look, I don't want to make a big deal. I don't want everyone to get all in their heads about how to talk to me. I'm just Tia. Don't call me a guy, I guess? I hated my old body, and this one is nice. Except for periods — those suck.”
Noah nodded thoughtfully. “So you’re saying that because you didn’t get a choice, you’re reluctant to accept anything until you’ve stewed on it for however long you need to? That honestly makes sense to me.”
I shrugged. “Pretty much.”
A contemplative silence settled into the moment.
Jared cleared his throat. “Why don't you want to be called… you know…?”
God, I was not enjoying this deep, personal probing shit. Just accept that I didn't want it and move, the fuck, on.
“Jared, it's because it feels weird when one of my buddies suddenly starts saying that while he can't even make eye contact,” I said, pulling at the reins on my frustration so it would stay at least a little chill. “I went from one of the boys to… y’know…”
Understanding dawned on him like a searing sunbeam directly into the retinas. He blinked and looked up at me with wide eyes. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled, flicking an ear in annoyance. If I stuck to fox mannerisms, he wouldn't be able to figure out just how much he'd fucked up. “I'm still the same person who'll carry your ass in Valorant while you clutter comms with apologies about how you lost your lane again.”
Noah snorted and started to choke on his own saliva. “Damn, that's a low blow.”
Jared's face heated, and I saw a flash of anger spark in his eyes. “Okay, sure. What about when I get left alone trying to clutch a match because you bum-rushed a corner and got drilled.”
I grinned, letting the expression stretch my lips until my large canines were bared. “Yeah. There he is. No more of this scared puppy shit, okay?”
Jared's eyes widened, and flicked his gaze back down to his sneakers. “Okay, but you gotta put those teeth away. They're way bigger than I thought they were… and like, all your teeth look a little too sharp to be human, which is kinda alarming. Can you still eat normal food or is it just meat?”
“I can eat anything I want to,” I said, slowly closing my mouth so they could both see the way my sharp teeth interlocked. Better to have them a little scared of me than mooning after me.
Just as my mouth shut, my gaze flicked to the side when I noticed someone watching me. Eva. Her face was slightly flushed, and her clear blue eyes were wide. I raised an eyebrow, and she quickly looked away. Okay… unless they were into teeth, in which case I'd basically just lifted my shirt for them… or rather, her.
An ear-piercing screech annihilated the moment, shattering coherent thought in my mind. It came from six different directions, meaning there was no escape from the horrifying noise.
Dimly, I was aware of a body hitting mine, and then warm, shaking arms wrapped around my head, flattening my ears against the side of my head. The noise dulled, and the pain subsided.
“EMERGENCY ALERT. Dangerous magical entities are in the area. Seek immediate shelter indoors. Avoid windows and doors. Do not travel. Await additional instructions.”
The alert was replaced by more loud screeching, which I now realised was coming from our phones. Then, the alert repeated.
I flinched every time the awful tone came around, but I was suddenly very distracted by the soft chest that my face was pressed into. My slightly more sensitive nose picked up the odd smell of organic body wash — definitely not the kind that mum bought for me and Saoirse. Eva. She was protecting me.
The alert finally ended for good — tossing us into a deafening silence. Slowly, my friend eased her crushing embrace, but she kept her hands near my ears just in case.
She was so damn close. I swear, even though she wasn’t touching me anymore, I could feel the warmth radiating off her. My gaze drifted up from the cute blue T-shirt she was wearing, until I landed directly in her soft blue eyes.
“Thank you,” I whispered, giving her a shy smile.
She returned it with a little breathy giggle. “Ever since I saw your ears, I kinda figured that loud noises might be a problem…”
Wait.
“Saoirse!”
I spun, looking for her. She was crouched on the ground, hands still pressing her ears flat. Her eyes shone with pained tears.
I was beside her instantly, folding her larger frame into a tight hug. “Are you okay?”
She made a small squeaking noise. Okay, I will take that as a no.
Pulling my phone out, I fumbled through the menus, looking for mum's number. The screen lit up with a call from her before I could make it.
“Mum!” I exclaimed. “Can you come get us? We're where you left us. I think we go back to the courthouse after that. It's big and made of brick, so—”
She interrupted me. “Yes, I'm on my way. I need you to be ready. Are you still where I left you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good,” she said, and I saw her car coming towards us.
She hung up, and I turned to everyone else. “Guys! We're gonna squish into my mum's car and shelter in the courthouse.”
Everyone nodded, but Eva looked… unreadable as she did so. Her eyes flicked to Saoirse, and her expression darkened slightly. What… did she not like Saoirse for some reason? Was it because she was a spirit?
The roar of mum’s car pulling in drew my attention back to the latest goddamn crisis. With mum hurrying us along, we squished awkwardly into the car as best we could, then raced back to the courthouse.
The courthouse was a huge limestone building built to look like a roman or greek temple with faux marble pillars holding up a big triangular roof. It looked very sturdy, despite the way they were trying to grasp at credibility with their architectural style. Mum parked the car by slamming on the brakes in front of the door, and we all spilled out of the car and rushed towards the entrance.
The vibes, the atmosphere seemed mysteriously… tense. It felt like when a storm was trying to sneak up on you — making the air cloak you in a sort of humidity that hummed, if that made sense. Except the tension in the air right now wasn't for a storm. The sky had all sorts of clouds, sure… but no storms in sight — not immediately anyway.
We passed between the big pretend-marble columns, and court security ushered us in with urgent calls, then quickly closed and bolted the heavy wooden doors. There were quite a few random people in here with us, and everyone looked… concerned.
Minutes passed as nothing happened. People got restless, and yeah, I counted as ‘people’. The courthouse had huge glass windows spaced along the front of the foyer, which ran from one side of the building to the other. I cautiously approached the window, waiting for security to tell me off. When nobody did, I peered outside.
Nothing was different. The clouds were still lazily wandering across the sky… except that every single bird suddenly scattered, rushing towards the park. Then I heard it. Boom. Boom. Boom. A drumbeat, heavy with sinister confidence, rattled the ground like grandma's favourite stack of decorative bowls.
A figure walked into view, her slim bladed legs hammering down into the pavement of the street. Chunks of concrete and asphalt flew with each step.
“Where are they?” Her voice shook my chest, and my eyes blurred. “By the ice and the brine of the seas that I name as mine — where are they?”
Concentrating, I forced my attention to sharpen onto the ten foot tall figure out in the street. As she came into focus, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. It was like someone had used a kind of blue-white ivory to carve delicate floral curves, then wove them all together with connecting tissue of inky sinew, until they had a surrealist sculpture of a woman. Her legs, for example, were these long, gently spiralling ribbons of white, connected at the hip and knee with dark, organic black masses. She didn’t have feet — her shins just extended downward into long blades of that odd ivory stuff.
Her face turned to survey the parking lot of the courthouse… if you could call it a face. It looked like the very tip of the prow of an icebreaker ship. Where you’d expect the rest of the ship to be, only the flat upper section extended back, following the curve of the hypothetical ship into two long, elegant horns. The face, or maybe mask, was carved from the same ivory as the rest of the rigid sections of her body.
In her elegantly curved three-fingered hand, she held a long shard of ice that trailed frosty mist as it swept lazily through the air with her movements. The point of that ice sword, and the prow of her mask turned slowly, until they came to a stop… aimed directly at me.
Her voice boomed and sawed through the air. “You think your ephemeral structures can stand against my tide? The arrogance of mortals has no end, other than at the point of a blade. I will guide you to the end I now promise.”
She pivoted the rest of her body to face the courthouse, and one long, bladed leg extended further than was necessary, tearing up the pavement as she dragged it through the road. It looked like some sort of graceful ice dancing move, except for the fact that the tip of her sword and the point of her mask didn’t move at all in space.
“Helimar.”
The second voice reverberated with the same gravitas as the tall spirit’s did, but the volume was lower — calmer. The ice spirit shifted, turning towards the sound of the new voice.
An impossibly beautiful figure stepped from the shadows of an alley. She had long, straight black hair, and she wore a simple white tunic, and in her hand was a shining, unstrung golden bow.
Her voice sounded like a song of caution and woe when she said, “What are you doing?”
“Artemis.” The massive statuesque woman said the name of the goddess like it was a curse. “Come to finish what the spreading infection of your mortal followers could not?”
“We all fell in the end, Helimar,” Artemis said softly. Despite the volume, her voice was impossible not to hear.
Helimar’s wordless, hummed response sounded like a howl of arctic wind. The kind that sometimes blew in from the north during the start of winter. I actually loved those winds, normally — it meant it was time to read books and drink hot chocolate.
Artemis hefted the shaft of her bow and placed the tip on the ground, then stepped over it so the point was between her legs. Bending down, she touched the very lower tip and pulled a string of liquid moonlight up, up, up towards the other end of the stave, then used the weight of her thigh to bend the rod until she could loop the string over the end.
Now strung, she removed her leg and lifted the golden bow. “You need to leave, Helimar. You won’t find vengeance here. The people of the Dawnlands still live. They may know where your beloved cousins are.”
“They were left behind,” Helimar said, and even though she didn’t have eyes, I could see her watching Artemis’ bow warily.
“They were tied to the land — of course they were,” Artemis said, drawing an arrow with the kind of casual grace that only a goddess could manage. “The ebb and flow of mortal society may have driven them back… or the mages might have murdered them. Either way… you need to leave.”
“You are lucky that your followers — and their descendants — spread themselves far enough that your name has not been forgotten,” Helimar growled, her tone resonating in the windows like the shearing of a glacier.
“Luck had nothing to do with it. The Fates have been dead a long time, Helimar,” Artemis said, and her serenity cracked in half, replaced with the grin of a predator. “Do you not remember? I took their lives with this bow, and skinned them with my blade.”
Helimar turned, her massive, graceful body spurred into fearful urgency. The metal-into-stone sound of her bladed legs shattering the road as she ran began to fade into the distance while Artemis watched, licking her lips. She didn’t chase, though, and in the end her head rocked backward and she closed her eyes.
Finally, with her expression back in I-am-very-pretty-and-also-better-than-you mode, she opened her eyes and spiked me with her gaze. “You’re welcome. See you round?”
Then she vanished back into the alley, and all of us in the courtyard suddenly let out the breaths that we’d all apparently been holding.
What the fuck was that? Who was Helimar? I’d have to google her later… and Artemis was just in a fucking Concord alleyway? Ohhhh man, our world was so screwed. We thought we were getting some control back, but if the gods were just walking into cities like that, then nah, we for sure had zero control. Wow.
“Was that… was that the Artemis?” Eva squeaked from beside me, causing me to startle and spin to face her. When did she get there? Sneaky elf!
“Yeah… I think it was,” I nodded, trying not to act like I’d absolutely seen her before. Thank fuck the distance was far enough that it was impossible to tell she’d been looking directly at me.
“She was hot,” Doug said in a whisper.
Eva and I both frowned at him as he stood peering out the window over the top of our heads. Of course that was Doug’s first take-away from that whole encounter.