Parts Made Whole

[Mallory]

24 May, 2017 C.E.

Everything under the sun is the sum of its parts, without exception. However pure an element, it is not only itself. To say that silver is silver is not useful. What defines its character? What comprises it such that it shines, and tarnishes, and rends shapeshifters? Only when you understand the sum of a thing’s parts can you create it. That is alchemy.

The whisk settled in the bowl with a clatter and Safiya jumped, juggling the two eggs she held as they started to tumble from her hand. She hissed a string of curses, more pleading than angry, and managed to scoop them up to crack into the bowl.

There seemed to be no one to chide her for either her clumsiness or her cursing, as Wayside Manor was as close to empty as it could be. Mallory had said something about her girlfriend, she thought, though she couldn’t be sure since she’d been reading when the witch tried to talk to her; the familiar footsteps and crinkling cigarette pack that could only belong to Trick soon followed out the door.

Spencer was at work. Haley and Rob had invited her to the park that morning, and hadn’t been back since. Lucifer was prowling around the library, trying to assert a claim over a room that had gone and changed without his permission. And Prim?

“Meer!”

It should not have surprised Safiya to find Trick’s little fluffball had flown the coop to hound her steps again, but she’d become a much jumpier person since her time Away. The tiny thrill only lasted a moment. There was no threat to be posed by a mere kitten.

At least, Safiya was pretty sure the witch had not turned this one into a fiendish familiar.

“Come to watch me practice my craft?” she asked Prim as she cradled the chipped glass bowl and whisked. The small cat blinked slowly in response to the eye contact. “Observe: I have taken sugar, butter, vanilla, egg, flour,” grunting as the dough thickened, “baking soda, and salt… and transformed them into a futile effort to reach out to my gracious housemates without actually having to speak to them. Ta-da,” and she lowered the bowl down for Prim to observe the fruits of her labor.

The kitten sat up, giving the dough-filled bowl a tentative sniff, and sat back to stare at her again. “Meer!”

“What do you mean, there is not space enough in my heart for fear, anxiety, gratefulness, and grief? I am an expert at juggling. I know you did not miss my little performance with the eggs.”

Prim went bounding after her striped-sock-clad feet as Safiya crossed the kitchen. She pounced and gnawed harmlessly on the outside of her big toe.

“No, I think that is far too feral a tack. They seem fond of having their flesh unbitten and their blood within their bodies -- Mallory, a little less so,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

The kitten continued to chew with the side of her mouth, undeterred by her words.

“Well, I think that would give her the wrong idea. All I want to do is show them that I am… grateful. Glad that I am sheltered. Glad that I am here.” She stopped to frown over the baking sheet, only three dollops of dough lining one corner so far. Her long fingers curled around the edge of the counter.

Prim, shaken off a moment ago, followed her new friend in three bounding steps and stopped to rub against her calves, purring loudly.

“I am,” she insisted to the kitten, who did not reply. She sighed and knelt down to tickle behind her fuzzy ears. “Mostly, I am. There are good things, now, a few of them… but there is also fear, and nightmares about the Void, and things remembered by my empty body… things I am not ready to confront.” She rubbed her thumb across Prim’s cheek, who purred louder at the pressure on her scent glands. “Oh, to be a cat. To bask in the sun and sleep away the day and chase crickets all night.”

She scooped Prim up, cradling her in one arm, letting her watch as she managed doling out the rest of the cookie-dough one handed. The kitten nuzzled and mewled softly, and Safiya ducked another conspiratorial look at her.

“Maybe you are right. Maybe she can turn me into a cat. I shall ask her.”

((Related to this story arc.))

[Mallory]

5 October, 2017 C.E.

It was still early in the afternoon, but after opening to help the bookstore’s new cafe staff get set up, Safiya was already done with her workday. She juggled her keys into her purse, and her phone back out, as she stepped out into the clear autumn daylight on a wide avenue near the Marketplace. It was harvest time, and there were even more strange faces in her neighborhood than usual: farmers that only traveled into town a few times a year to sell their bounty, their families spending the little pocket money they had on the countless curiosities that they couldn’t find in the little villages near their homesteads, and people drawn from all over the city to take advantage of the busy, well-stocked farmers’ market.

“Maybe I’ll get a few pumpkins,” she said to no one, imagining Prim on her shoulder as she often did when talking to herself, and took a few seconds to adjust her eyes to the daylight… and to search the crowd for the familiar face of the young woman who was supposed to meet her there. It took three passes to recognize Mallory St. Martin sitting on top of a retaining wall built with glittering black stones, her freshly shaved head bent to a book titled Collected Early Arabic Poetry, with English Translations.

She did not have to guess that the witch’s interest lay in the sha’ir, tribal soothsayers in late Pre-Islamic Arabia; but what intrigued Safiya more was the state of her one-time rescuer and roommate. “You have been getting into more trouble,” she ventured carefully as she approached.

“It’s not my fault,” Mallory protested, though she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Safiya. She slipped a raven’s feather into the pages as a bookmark and stuffed the book into her bag without much care. “This time, it wasn’t.”

Safiya lifted her chin thoughtfully, and only hummed in reply when she decided to believe her. “Do you want to tell me about it?” she said, extending a hand to her, welcoming her company.

“Maybe a little. I kind of… had something else on my mind.”

* * * * *

They strolled along the riverwalk south of the Marketplace in companionable silence after Mallory had finished her abridged tale of the pit and the viper. Safiya’s mind was at work trying to untangle the web of enchantments that the viper must have festooned across his pit, how the shape of the chamber may have helped him, why thirteen dancers specifically… Glancing aside at Mallory, she could not begin to guess at the witch’s thoughts. She recognized trauma all too well, but her friend seemed to be working on a question…

“Dr. Bronner…”

Ah.

“Seeing someone like her… does it… help?”

It was a much more complex question than the witch could have realized. Healing the mind was a puzzle that contained a dozen more puzzles within, enough to confound even a keen-minded Ptolemaic circle mage like herself. Often, the conversations seemed to go nowhere for weeks, setting up the framework for something larger while the good doctor sussed a mosaic of details out of her patient. Often, there were recommendations, or follow-ups on recommendations. Always, there were questions about how she felt, and the difficulty of articulating those feelings, something that ordinary people going about their ordinary lives rarely put words to, no matter how much healthier they might be for it. And occasionally, miraculously, there was something that felt like a breakthrough… that still presented a long slog ahead, as she never woke up the morning after such a session feeling cured, if such a thing was even possible.

Then there were nights after a session where the feelings she had confronted and the questions she had struggled to answer left her sleepless, and she felt like she was trudging through an even worse misery until the next time she could sit down with Dr. Bronner. There were times when she questioned whether finding a strong enough lid to contain all these problems might be better than trying to untangle them, after she had been pricked by their thorny vines too many times; but she knew, deep down, it would be worse to ignore them.

She had to know what her mind was doing, and what to do about it -- no matter how long, or painful. So after a long moment of smiling out at the water while she walked along the river, watching the reflection of golden sunlight ripple and part around passing flatboats, she decided to answer:

“Yes, Mallory… it does help.”