There's a humming in the restless summer air
And we're slipping off the course that we prepared
But in all chaos there is calculation
Dropping glasses just to hear them break
-Lorde, Glory & Gore
"Wait! Wait, come back!” Karma yelled after the retreating elementals as they zipped away, down a hall and through one of the numerous walls of the Tower of Air, leaving her alone once more. This had been the trend since becoming Keeper less than a week ago. Some of the elementals seemed a little apprehensive about her presence there, but others were outright frightened of her, as if they saw something in her that terrified them so thoroughly that they could not stand the sight of her.
The Tower of Air was a labyrinthine thing, carrying bits and pieces of all who had come before her. She could feel them vaguely, tiniest wisps of influence. The most recent keepers were the most prominent and the essence of keepers like Ellie and Morgan, Michelle and Xanth, Claire, and Matt were all very much an echo within the Tower. With over a thousand days in the Tower, Karma was sure that Matt would be the most heavily imprinted and in some aspects, she was right. But there was something beneath even that, calling to her, tickling at the periphery of her attention. It called her further into the Tower, away from the soft sanctity of the libraries and the sweeping Isle-wide views.
It was there, in the very center room of the Tower of Air, that she found not answers but rather more questions. There was no hint of elemental essence and the air elementals that floated about the tower to help the present Keeper all refused to come anywhere near this room.
“What… happened…” She murmured, toeing the very center of the circular room and lifting onto her tip-toes for a ballerina pirouette in a slow fashion survey of the room at large. It was a regular room for all intents and purposes, featuring priceless art and curved windows at the cardinal directions with smaller stained glass panes facing the intercardinal directions. It washed the room with smoky twilight filtered by the shimmer and sheen of the tower itself and filtered through the pale orange gas light lamps that dotted the walls and hung overhead at the apex of a curved dome ceiling. An odd touch, considering the room was in the center of the tower rather than the peak.
But as with so many things on Twilight Isle and within the domain of arcana, it did not have to make sense. It simply was.
Karma’s slow turn came to a stop as she dropped to a flat foot with a frown and a sigh, her hands settling on her hips. It was a pose reflected in a nearby mirror, a glossy antique thing with a thick, ornate bevel etched with clouds.
“What am I missing here, Nem?” She asked her reflection and much to her pleasure, her reflection answered.
“I am not the Keeper here, I cannot tell you.” The curl of a coy smile that contrasted her actual frown served only to deepen the lines of the latter.
“This is me inviting you in, you smartass. Are you going to take it or not?” She asked herself once more. The reflection shifted to match its real world pair and a moment later, a heavy haze settled over Karma’s mind.
Hmm…
With the guidance of another, she felt her eyes close and her body sink slowly toward the floor, first to her knees and then upon her backside. Further, further still, until she was laying upon the floor with her eyes closed and her fingertips just barely touching the marble beneath her like a pianist poised to play the opening notes of a sonata.
“Listen. What do you hear?”
I hear… nothing.
“Precisely. Not so much the whisper of wind or the breath of word. This sound has a name.”
I… I do not know it.
“Then push further. Feel. What do you feel?”
Residue…
“Of?”
Struggle. Magic used for ill intent. It hurts to breathe.
“As Keeper of Air does this not concern you? Think, Karma. Think. What happened here?”
It was a conclusion that came at precisely the same time as her counter-presence. Her eyes snapped open wide, fixed but unfocused upon the highest point of the dome above. The aura hung over her like a storm cloud, brewing with latent power. An omen.
Death.
“Death.”
It pressed against her chest like a crushing weight, stealing her very breath. She let herself sink into the feeling, aligning with it on a molecular level in a bid to try and gleen something, anything from it. Everything within her told her to fight it, to push back against it, but she caved, little by little until the edges of her vision began to darken. Her hands slid to press flat to the floor, connecting fully with the residual energy lingering there.
A man, a woman. A ritual?
“Yes… yes, go on…”
A storm… a… a… failed ward? I don’t know…
“Close… keep going. Push through it. What do you see?”
There is another there… within him…
“You are familiar with this.”
Don’t sound so smug, Nem.
“What else do you feel? Open your mind.”
He… she… I…
Whether it was rising panic or a simple lack of oxygen to her brain, Karma felt her head swimming and jerked reflexively out of her hypnotic reverie, bolting upright. Sweat stuck her shirt to her back and matted her hair to her forehead. She panted, catching her breath slowly but surely. The darkness over and around her faded with the return of sweet oxygen to her brain and extremities.
“Nem?”
Nem was gone, leaving Karma alone with her confusion in the otherwise empty room. She eased herself to her feet and looked down at the floor. The marble was pristine, having been cleaned many a time since whatever had taken place here. Save for the echo of aetheric energy, there was no other sign that anything was even amiss.
Karma frowned and looked up.
The Tower of Air darkened around her, spreading outward from the room in which she stood. Out and up until the entire structure had filled with an ominous hue. Normally, it would be near transparent or invisible to those outside but now… now a storm was brewing in the east and centered on the spire of the tower. The eye centered perfectly over the peak of the tower, leaving a last lingering glimmer of twilight sky as the storm clouds spread out from there. Thunder rumbled overhead and periodically the dark clouds lit with lightning not quite ready to arc to the ground. Karma took a deep breath and set her jaw.
“Always a calamity brewing, isn’t it?”
You told someone once you do not get out of bed for anything less, right?
“I was looking for a breath of a life
For a little touch of heavenly light
But all the choirs in my head sang, no, oh oh oh
To get a dream of life again
A little vision of the start and the end
But all the choirs in my head sang, no, oh oh oh”
-Florence + the Machine, Breath of Life
“Hey Nem, you there?” It was an odd thing. The Tower of Air was the one place that Karma had trouble reaching out to the Paragon essence within her. Like static on a phone line, if that phone line were in a 90’s phone booth at the bottom of the ocean. Though she had not yet returned to the center room of the Tower, she most definitely had not stopped thinking about the energy there and the way drawing from it had impacted the tower both in and out.
“Nem? Do you believe in souls?” She asked the otherwise empty room. Only by happenstance had she stumbled upon the suite and after a single night there, she already liked it better than her suite in the New Haven hotel she had called “home” for months now. Streamlined and pure white, the only touches of color came from the twilight sifting through crystal glass window panes. The centerpiece of the whole room was a tall, four post bed from which hung gauzy draped fabric panels that managed to block out the light but only when pulled shut completely. Otherwise, light passed freely through the panels which seemed to sway with a breeze that was not actually there.
The pillows were plush and the down comforter was simultaneously warm without being stifling. Carved nightstands and an ornate desk were both stained pure white. A comfortable leather chaise lounge angled its way out of the corner of the room and bumped against the edge of a fluffy rug in front of a white marble fireplace. In truth, she could spend all day there. She probably would, in fact. At least so long as she held the tower. Even the dark skies and looming storm over the tower did little to sway her from her time there.
What is a soul, really? Nem answered at last, a sibilant hum in the depths of her mind.
“You know… like… a soul. What makes us different from animals or plants.” Karma wriggled down into the cloud-like comfort of the bed, frowning up at the canopy of the bed, which was enchanted with images of a pale blue sky dotted with cotton candy wisp clouds in shades of white and grey.
Are we so different though? Animals have sentience. Plants feel pain. We all seek growth and survival and love. But if you speak of the essence that makes you human, then yes. For without it, I would not be here with you.
Karma quieted, considering Nem’s answer rather than arguing it or questioning it, at least temporarily.
Do you believe? After a long silence, Nem poked at her psyche to see if she would talk again.
“I do not know... Do made things have souls? If they do… how? But if they do not… then… then what?” She asked softly. Just a week in to her keepership and the elementals were already used to her talking to herself. Those that didn’t flee her presence at least.
Then what? Souls come from different sources, I think. My soul... would come from a drastically different source than say someone born of this land.
“Born. What about those that are… created? Wished into existence?” Or in Karma’s case, invoked out of spite. Wrought of bitter malice and resentment, she had never experienced birth in a conventional sense and it was a contentious fact that she had tried to work through frequently over her twenty years. Who brings a kid into the world just to punish someone?
Have you an unquenched emptiness in you, Karma? Nem asked, her curiosity piqued. Do you believe yourself to be something less than human for want of a soul?
“I don’t know… not less. Just… different. Always different. When I die, I do not stay that way, so I have never really had to think about it. But… what happens when the day comes that I do stay dead… what happens then? To me? To what was me?” Her fingers picked at the seam on the comforter, pinching at the calamus stem of a small downy feather that had poked out of the edge. Pulling it free, she rubbed it between her fingers until it frayed and bent in her grasp.
That is hard to say. For some, they return to the earth and become one with the soil. For others, they return to the aether from whence they came. You… I like to think you will transcend mortal understanding and become what you are meant to be.
“What does that even mean, what I’m meant to be?” She wrinkled her nose and tossed from one side to the other, burying her face into the pillow.
Time will tell, won’t it? Until then, worry not about what will happen to you at your life’s end and worry more about getting there first.
"Shame, blame
Words like these fester and I pray
For no change in seasons I hate rain
Don't let me drown in this room"
-Badflower, Move Me
Distractions were simultaneously a beautiful and terrible thing. In the wake of Caleb’s win for the Barony of Old Market, thoughts of the center room, the tower, all of it fell to the wayside in favor of basking in his victory. While she had liked Jaycy well enough, she was thrilled to see the assassin succeed where she had not in her own bid for Battlefield Park. What was a sporting title but another distraction on a list of many at the end of the day?
The Barony itself had meant a walk down memory lane, a revisitation of her time there as Squire, short as it had been. Sixty-nine days Harris D’Artainian had brought chaos and disorder to the district with no small amount of help from herself. Some days she was ashamed of her dealings there. Usually when she had clandestine meetings with the remnants of the Deadmen who were still operating on a contractual basis, bringing in residual income for Harris and Karma both. More the former than the latter, but money was money and she actually kind of liked a few of the guys in the squad. They were less… brutish than the rest of the Blackguard had been. Not quite refined, but definitely not pure muscle.
Those days, yeah, those days the guilt clung to her like a second skin, making her feel unclean and impossible to redeem. It was just supposed to be about the money. The yacht. The cash flow. People weren’t supposed to get hurt. They definitely weren’t supposed to die. But people had… a lot of innocent people for that matter. Some not so innocent ones too, but she cared a little less about that expenditure. Some of those that had lived to tell the tale still popped up from time to time. On the street, in the dueling venues, in her dreams.
How do you say sorry when you have done something heinous?
Nem had no answers for that one. Save for something about trusting in yourself to do the right thing no matter the cost. Which was by no means helpful and left Karma even more annoyed than usual.
So she let herself take the distraction and rolled with it for several days over, helping acquaint the newly minted Baron with his new digs. While they didn’t have the baronial cars anymore, the Cardinal Inn was still a nice place to lay your head. A warm great room and a kitchen with an old and wily but phenomenal cook, two floors above that, each sporting six quaint and comfortable rooms. At the height of the Blackguard’s terror reign over Old Market, she had spent most of her nights there if only because leaving was a hazard to her own health unless she brought along armed muscle.
It felt a lifetime away, like it was barely even her own memories that revisited her on the nights she could not sleep.
People ‘round here seldom forgive and even more rarely forget. Yet… nobody held her transgressions against her.
Redemption was a fickle, funny thing.
It gave her a lot to think about when she finally returned to her proverbial tower in the sky, the darkened storm plagued monolith that looked over the rest of the Isle. Only the Celestial Citadel had a better view. When at last she made her less than triumphant return to the Tower of Air, she climbed its stairs alone and went up, up, up until she reached the final hatch to the roof. This high up, the wind was a wicked thing, static charged and frigid cold on the cusp of a winter that would never come.
“How do you say sorry when you have done something heinous?” She repeated an often thought of question out loud.
“We’ve been over this, have we not?” Seldom did the Paragon take a corporeal form with her own voice instead of an echo in Karma’s head, but there she stood as Karma turned around, lovely in robes of white and purple. Robes that Karma herself wore often behind the closed doors of the Convocation. The patrician cut of her bone structure spoke to exceptional genetics, she was pretty with or without makeup with her high cheekbones, delicate but defined jawline, and pert nose. White haired, golden eyed, she was the mirror of the influence that had exerted its control over her the past… how long had it been?
Too long. Karma had lost count.
“No… I mean… here. Something bad happened here, in this very tower. I don’t know what per say, but I vaguely know who. And now I am right back to wondering… how do you seek redemption when what you have done is irredeemable?” She asked the woman who was staring at her like she was only slightly unhinged. Then again, she was standing at the top of a magical tower in the middle of an electrical storm talking to a woman who wasn’t actually there. So maybe she was a little off her rocker.
Either way.
“I suppose that depends. Do you think anyone is truly irredeemable?” Nem countered, canting her head. The slip of pure white strands over the slope of a shoulder caught Karma’s eye for a brief moment, stark white against the hazy grey and black that surrounded them.
I was an adventurer, but she was not an adventuress. She was a 'wanderess.' Thus, she didn’t care about money, only experiences - whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it was all the same to her.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess
“What is family but a vague collective of genetics and flesh that annoys you less than other living things?” Karma’s mother told her amidst a winding walk through the woods that covered much of Twilight Isle’s earth. While the lava had cut out the dueling area and the lagoon lapped at the sands and carved out the shore and man had eked out a sliver of space for the market, the island truly belonged to the forest. They were the same trees, same paths, same landmarks that Karma had spent her childhood calling home. A small semblance of consistency in an otherwise chaotic life with all that she was.
Bargaining chip.
Neutral ground in an eternal war.
Watcher of watchers.
Timeslipper.
Harbinger.
Paragon.
Wanderess.
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Karma asked, looking up at her mother’s face in profile. Twilight was a flattering light for already beautiful features. Her mother was a handmade thing too, sculpted within the pits of Hell itself from broken pieces filled in with a generous amount of artistic liberty in her recreation. More than half a foot taller than her daughter, she was a statue of a woman, the picture of sin and cruelty and vehement loyalty to her family.
Dichotomous to say the least.
“Of course not, Kitten. Our family, chosen and blood alike, is the only thing I have ever genuinely given a shit about and you know it. What I am getting at though is that family… is… simultaneously complex and simplistic. At its base, it’s a unit meant for survival… to achieve mutual goals and continuation of morals, oral traditions, genetics, so on and so forth. It staves off loneliness, provides an easier route to food and shelter… if you have a partner in your family, they fulfill other needs as well… you’re familiar with Maslow, no?” She finally looked at Karma, the molten tint of her gaze bright even beneath the canopy of the trees overhead. Karma nodded, her mother continued. “Of course I put that in your head. Anyways. Family serves those needs. Simple. But more intricately, your pack, so to speak, does so much more than that. They are your first friends… your sisters, your cousin. They are your first protectors and maybe your only protectors, the adults in your life. Or at least… I hope. They are your first cheerleaders, your first confidants, they are the ones who encourage self development and actualization and they often understand you in ways that others will not.”
“So, why then would someone… hurt their family?” Karma continued her line of questioning. The two had broken away from the home deep in the foliage, far, far from any hint of dueling or marketplace or school or tower. There they could speak without eavesdropping ears or wagging tongues.
“Because family is complicated. And sometimes, just sometimes, we do not always get a say in our actions. Surely you are acquainted with that, no?” She countered a question for a question, making Karma’s stride falter briefly. She caught herself though and fell back into step with the taller woman, her chin lowered toward her chest and her brows knit into a deep furrow. That seemed a satisfactory enough answer. “Anyways. With that in mind, I hope you can see how someone might take an action they regret later, particularly when it pertains to a family member. It does not necessarily equate to intent and it does not mean they live with a clear conscience.”
“Is that… is that why he doesn’t talk about her?” Karma piped up after digesting it bit by bit. Her own independent investigations into the goings on within the Tower of Air had yielded very little save for a need to ask her mother of all people about this. It wasn’t as though she wanted to be having this conversation, but here she was.
“Would you in his shoes?” Countered again by her mother, Karma shook her head. Her mother sighed, her pace slowing as their circuitous course began to lead them back toward the small collective of houses built in a modest clearing deep in the woods. “Right, so… I don’t want you asking him about this either. Understood?”
“Yes, mater. Do… do you know how I might fix it though? Without asking him, of course. The mark made there in the tower is… a deep one and I guess, um, I guess I don’t want that to be the lasting mark he leaves behind, you know?” Karma spoke quietly, her arms wrapped around herself as if to ward off a chill unbecoming of the deep jungle like woods of the isle.
“I… hmm.” That seemed to render her mother silent for what felt like a much longer moment than it was, staring off into the distance, obscured by thick trees as it was. It took her a few seconds but Karma realized that her mother was looking east to where the Tower of Air sat beneath a perpetually brewing storm, a dark shadow over the otherwise cheerful festivities of Twilight Isle on the cusp of Yule.
“Mama?” Karma prompted, drawing her mother from her reverie.
“Ah, yes, Kitten. The storm’s coming whether you are ready or not… I find it best in those cases to let it rain and bend with the gales. Let it work out all of its thunder and all of its rage and when the wind finally calms, wash everything away. All of it, from top to bottom, until there is nothing left to tell the tale of what transpired.”
Vague, sure. But it was more than she had to go off of before.
Karma took a deep breath and nodded.
“Thank you… I’ll… I’ll do my best.” She said at last, turning not toward the footpath heading to the houses but rather the beaten path twisting back toward the isle proper.
“And Kitten?” Her mother called after her, causing her to pause and look back.
“Yes?” Karma tipped a look over the line of a shoulder, just enough to catch her mother’s eye.
“Be careful. If I have to go down there to bring you back myself, there will be Hell to pay.” She said, her smile soft.
“Quite literally, I’m sure. I’ll be careful.” Karma answered the smile in kind. They both knew the reality of it. Hell was no threat to either of them.
“I can hear your whisper and distant mutter. I can smell your damp on the breeze and in the sky I see the halo of your violence. Storm I know you are coming.”
― Robert Fanney
You dodged a bullet.
“No… I think Mallory is the one that dodged the bullet.” Karma said aloud to a voice only she could hear. Outside, thunder rumbled and the seemingly endless storm over the Tower splattered the library windows with fat drops of rain. It was a soothing soundtrack over which to pour through book after book, archive after archive of arcane knowledge and historical lore alike. It was a strange sort of realignment of all she knew. It was no secret that each of the towers had undergone varying degrees of change through their various keepers. Corruption and cleansing, structural and metaphoric shifting, it was the inevitable way of things.
Good Keepers. Bad Keepers. Misunderstood Keepers. The Tower of Air had seen them all.
The Isle had a way of righting wrongs, resetting back to “normal” what had been twisted and corrupted by ill intent and malicious hands. Each Keeper’s influence extended only until the end of their reign with little diversion from that fact, but subtle marks were easily left behind as Karma had learned deep in the centermost room of the Tower.
“Keeper?” A squeaky voice called from the library’s doorway, prompting Karma to poke her head out from behind a towering stack of tomes on a seemingly ancient oak table.
“Hm?” She prompted, eyeing the skittish looking cloud sylph hovering in the doorway. It was a mousey thing with wild tendrils of smoke-grey hair and pure white eyes. It took a feminine form but the voice was androgynous enough that Karma couldn’t make assumptions on their gender identity. To make sure she could hear them, she tapped the pause button on the screen of her phone, momentarily silencing the trickle of music coming from its speaker.
“There’s, ah, another leak… How would you like us to tend to it?” The sylph asked. As the storm over the Tower had at last opened up to dump torrential amounts of rain upon the monolith and its surrounding grounds, the poor Tower seemed to be leaking at the seams, dripping rainwater in the strangest places. Karma had first noticed it while walking down a first floor hallway only to be plinked between the eyes by a frigid raindrop. It seemed to be an isolated occurrence until the ceiling had dumped a barrel’s worth of ice cold water upon her as she slept. It had devolved from there; a drip here, a trickle there, until the pitter-patter of water seemed to echo through the entire structure.
“Um… uh… another bucket, I guess. Are the others being emptied regularly?” She asked with a diffident rub of the back of her neck. They had warded the library’s ceiling just in case, making it one of the few truly dry rooms in the tower. Karma couldn’t stomach the thought of all of these books being ruined by even the remnant moisture of the leaks elsewhere.
“My apologies, Keeper, but we’re out of buckets.” The sylph cringed a little as if expecting anger or something from the violet haired Keeper. Karma’s cheeks puffed as she exhaled. Quickly the sylph added, “But yes, the buckets are being emptied every hour!”
“Of course we’re out of buckets.” Karma sighed. “Magic tower full of magical creatures and we can’t magic up an extra bucket. Of course we can’t.”
“Well, as you know, the Blue Wizard’s Theory of Matter Continuity advises against conjuration of something from nothing if only to avoid interruptions of the something from somewhere when it goes from somewhere to some-here.” The sylph said with a bob of their head, nodding. Karma blinked a few times.
“Uh… yeah. I’ll take your word for it.” Karma sank back in her seat, looking up at the magic tinged ceiling with a slow breath out. “A pot or pan from the kitchen will have to do for now. I’ll order us some buckets or something, I don’t know.”
Would Rhymazon deliver to the Isle? With Rhymazon Prime, she sure hoped it would.
“Understood, Lady Keeper.” The sylph bowed deeply and began backing out of the room as if disinclined to turn their back to the Keeper on the way out.
“Hey, wait.” Karma called as she sat back upright, fixing the sylph with a curious look. The sylph’s white eyes widened as they froze in the doorway. “What’s your name?”
“M-most mortals cannot pronounce my name. So they just call me Aeamaef Yewel din-Ehshultis.” They told her. Karma’s mouth thinned into a tight line.
“You, uh, got a nickname shorter than that by chance?” That was a mouthful otherwise. She could probably manage it but in a pinch, whew.
“Yewel, Keeper. My friends call me Yewel.” It said nervously, wringing its hands into a tight knot in front of it’s diaphragm.
“Yewel. Got it. You can call me Karma. Or Strawberry. I’ll answer to either one.” Karma said. The sylph looked confused judging by the furrow of snowy brows and the tight purse of their mouth. “This Blue Wizard… you think he knew anything about cleansing aetheric imprints of past events from a corporeal structure?”
“She.” Yewel corrected. “The Blue Wizard was more of an arcane theorist specializing in alignment of physical and metaphysical hypotheses.”
“I… understand about half of that. So you’re saying no then?” Karma followed up. Yewel looked nervous and quickly shook her head.
“Well… yes. But no. But… well. Maybe not the Blue Wizard. But the Dawn Witch might.” Yewel offered out with a meek shrug.
“Dawn Witch… I’m afraid I’m not familiar with him… her… them.” Karma shrugged, dog-earring the page she was on and closing the tome gently.
“He came to the Isle shortly after its formation. The goblins say that he helps maintain the twilight balance alongside the Dusk Witch but what do goblins know, right? Dolts, all of them. I think there is a book here that he wrote… perhaps I can locate it for you. The Treatises of Twilight: A Discourse of Dawn, I believe it is called, speaks of releasing trapped spiritual essence from physical items. Perhaps that might help?” Yewel rambled along until they broke off with another shrug to go with their offering.
“That… that may actually do the trick. I’ll order buckets, you help me find this book, and uhh, we’ll go from there, how about that?” Karma offered, getting to her feet. Even at a few inches above the five foot mark, she still towered over the cloud sylph, who seemed to shrink away as she stood.
“Y-yes, Keeper. I’ll get right on it!” Yewel bobbed a fervent nod and zipped into the hallway, disappearing through a wall a moment later before Karma could finish calling out.
“Call me Kar… ma.” Karma sighed, shaking her head. “Alright, let’s go find some buckets.”
“Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
"Are you tired of the bitch line yet?"
"The bitch line?"
"Karma's a bitch."
"It never gets old, let's be real."
It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last time she was asked such a thing. Her name was an exercise in irony and it was no wonder that she had gone by a nickname for the better part of her young adult life. One could only hear the Karma’s a bitch line so many times before reactions shifted from amusement to exasperation.
With the loss of the Tower, her time was fast dwindling to do something about the center room, the storm, the dripping corridors, the terrified elementals. All of it. The blue opal won in Diamond Quest CIV had helped with one of those, serving to put a chill through the Tower until the drip of stormwater had slowed to a crawl before freezing entirely. Sure, it meant that the entire place was preternaturally cold, but it didn’t seem to bother her or the elementals. It did make the wind outside even colder though, putting those that came to visit at risk of frostbite or at least windburn if they lingered outside too long.
Give and take, she supposed.
Friday night found her sagging over a stack of books and notes scribbled in red ink late into the night. She was running out of time and while she had ideas, ideas could only go so far. When her forehead hit the open book in front of her after slipping off the cradle of hand, she jolted upright with a start, blinking away sleep’s remnants with the help of a rub of her hands against her eye sockets.
“Fuck.” She groaned, massaging her forehead.
Fuck, indeed.
“Shut up.” By now the elementals were used to her talking to herself in full conversations. Those that dared venture near the strangely familiar Keeper listened intently but found nothing to answer their questions. But crazy ran deep in Rhy’Din and she was not the last odd Keeper they would have, of that they were certain.
Karma’s karma, how will you fix this?
“I don’t know.”
You’re so close, you know.
“Then why don’t you give me a fucking hint, Nem.”
Because what would be the fun in that?
“You’re really a pain in the ass sometimes, you know that?”
We both know it. Just like we both know how to fix this.
“I’m… I’m not some avenging angel. I’m nobody’s karmic retribution. My name is just that. A name.”
And what is in a name?
“Please don’t Shakespeare me.”
I’m not. Think, Watcher, what is in a Name?
“Power.”
There you go.
“Okay, but what does that have to… oh.”
Mhm.
“Fuck. I’ve got it!”
Karma shoved her chair back with a scuffle of wood on marble and slammed the tome in front of her shut. She shuffled it all into a stack and scooped it up into the loop of her arms and hightailed it out of the library, scattering a pair of wind elementals lingering in the doorway watching her. Hushed tones chased her departure, traded behind semi-opaque hands held to non-existent mouths.
“She’s lost it, hasn’t she? Absolutely off her rocker.”
“I'm the violence in the pouring rain
I'm a hurricane.”
-Halsey, Hurricane
Sand in the hourglass, a steady stream accumulating in a growing pile at the bottom of a glass bowl. The simultaneous tick-tick of a cuckoo upon the wall, hidden within a wooden house behind an ancient clock face. Karma always liked that clock. Its hands were carved wood but fashioned into little cartoonish wind gales or perhaps blowing clouds, it was hard to say for certain.
The penultimate day of January found Karma making hurried preparations for something she was not wholly sure she could pull off. Jaycy had been gracious enough to allow her every last minute that she could take in the wake of her reign and so on the Saturday prior to having to turn the key over to her, rather than going out to dance or party or drink her fill of a certain handsome assassin, Karma was on her knees in the circular center room of the Tower of Air, painting a red, red circle upon the white, white marble floor.
“C’mon… just a little more, damnit.” She squeezed her hand tightly over a wide mouthed bowl, dripping crimson from a cut across her palm that had long since given up the proverbial ghost when it came to bleeding. Karma dug her nails harder into the edge of the wound, aggravating it all over again until a pitiful drip wove its way down the creases in her curled palm and dripped from the edge into the stained bowl with a splat-splat-splat.
”You know, there are easier ways to go about that, you know.” A semi-corporeal Nem had pitched a lean against one of the curved walls, her arms crossed over the front of her pure white robes. Karma didn’t so much as spare her a glance.
“Are you offering?” Karma growled, shaking the last bit of blood from her hand and wrapping it in a reddened cloth for the time being. Her head was spinning, either from blood loss or stress. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, really. Nem’s laugh caught her ear and her mind in just the right way to make her cringe as she dumped a few glugs of opaque milky white liquid into the bowl from a mostly empty glass vial. It sizzled and hissed as the two combined, burning away the void influence in her blood until all that remained was fae touched divinity and a bit of plain old human.
”Were I restored, yes, I might. But you’ve seen fit to not let that happen just yet so, alas, you will have to make do.” Nem hummed, sounding all too smug with herself.
“If I could punch you right now, I definitely would. If you aren’t going to be helpful, you will go away.” She answered the apparition with the sort of command in her tone that said she wouldn’t hesitate to force her presence into a tiny little box in the back of her mind and shut her away for the foreseeable future.
For what it was worth, Nem said no more. She didn’t disappear either, but the silence was enough for Karma.
Back to her macabre artwork she went, dipping the flat brush into the bowl and spreading what gathered on the brush across the marble. One big arc, two big arcs, a touch up to connect the two. She climbed into the boundary of the circle and swapped brushes, taking up the round brush to create finer lines and markings. The opened tome just outside of the circle provided her reference for most of them but thanks to the time crunch, she had to improvise on a few of them.
It was one of the few times she was grateful that her mother had put her through such intensive runework lessons.
They weren’t the prettiest, but they should do the trick.
Sigils of cleansing and clarity, peace and prosperity. Marks for protection, calm, and ominously enough, connection with the dead.
Now, she had learned long ago that necromancy was not a field in which she would ever dabble, but communing with the deceased was a different story if it didn’t call them back to the land of the living.
Or so Karma told herself.
It took hours but when it was done, she sat there on her knees in the midst of it, pale but satisfied with her work. When she finally felt well enough to rise, she did so carefully, tiptoeing out of the circle and to the edge of the room. Nem had long since disappeared, leaving Karma to the echo of her thoughts and the apprehension of what was to come.
“Well…” She said quietly, brushing her hands off on her thighs as if it might repair the damage done to her palm. “I suppose we’ll see if this works…”
If it doesn’t?
“Shh. We aren’t going to think about that.”
Confidence. Good. I’m here if you need me.
“I might.”
It was a soft admission she didn’t want to make. But this might truly take everything she had and then some. Sometimes it could pay having additional entities occupying your head. Especially after insisting to Caleb that he did not need to be present for this. How the assassin had come to have such an important part in her life, she wasn’t quite sure, but it was what it was and she thought it better to just not question it. What it was was nice and she didn’t plan on fucking that up any time soon.
Provided this all went well, of course.
In the moment, her head cleared, a boon from her patron that had her looking up toward the domed ceiling with a twitch of a grateful smile. Any ounce of clarity would go miles in this. Karma looked back down to the wide circle before her and nodded twice.
“Yewel?” She asked without looking up. To her right, a light breeze brushed across her skin.
“Yes, Keeper?” The cloud sylph toed the threshold of the room, hesitant to enter fully.
“Is the tower clear?” Earlier in the day, Karma had requested all elementals depart the tower temporarily. This had resulted in a number of nervous and downright upset air elementals who were none too keen to dissipate or go outside into the raging thunderstorm. Yewel gulped.
“Y-yes, m’lady. It is only you and I at this point.”
"Every storm runs out of rain, just like every dark night turns into day."
-Gary Allan
The Dawn Witch was long gone from the Isle but his work would help guide her through what came next.
“First we cleanse the physical…” Karma murmured aloud, reading from the book sitting outside of the circle. The Treatises of Twilight: A Discourse of Dawn had proven to be exactly what she was looking for in her quest to cleanse the tower of the lingering taint of death and betrayal. Yewel stood with their hands clasped in front of their chest at the very edge of the room, watching with wide eyes. Grinding a bundle of burnt sage across the first rune, Karma began.
“I choose to cleanse myself and release any and all thought forms, beings, situations, and energies that are no longer of service to the highest and greatest good.” The sage smoked when it came in contact with the bloodrune, eventually setting the rune aflame. It flared a few inches above the floor before sputtering away.
“Across all planes of my existence, across all universes, and across all lifetimes. I ask that all energies that are less than love and light be transmuted for the highest good of all. I am love. I am light. I am clarity.” The second rune was diluted with a drip-drip-drip of purified water drawn from the mountain springs of the Isle. This rune bubbled and gurgled then faded back to red.
“I cleanse this place of all selfishness, resentment, critical feelings for our fellow beings, self-condemnation, and misinterpretation of our life experiences.” On her hands and knees, she lowered herself toward the floor until her mouth was a few inches above the next rune. With pursed lips, a soft breath was blown across its surface. Like ash in the wind, the mark flaked away and twirled into a tornado-like whirlwind, lingering there for a moment before gently falling to the marble once more.
“I bathe this tower in generosity, appreciation, praise, and gratitude for our fellow beings, self-acceptance, and enlightened understanding of past, present, and future.” From a shallow copper bowl Karma scooped a handful of Twilight Isle soil and sprinkled it over the fourth rune. It thrummed with energy, the marble beneath rumbling with barely there tremors before going dormant as well.
Karma leaned, flipping pages in the book. The circle on the next page was a near identical match for the one she had drawn around her.
A small comfort at least.
“Blood of my blood. Bone of my bone. Bring equilibrium once more…” She murmured through the cantrip, taking care to enunciate each word clearly but quietly.
“Fire. Water. Air. Earth.” She crossed the runes with a pass of her hand, north, south, east, west. From afar, one might have mistaken it for a Catholic’s cross, but the only one watching was Yewel, who had no idea what such a thing was.
Lucky break.
Upon the conclusion of the crossing of runes, she pressed her hands to the floor and all four marks flared to life once more, a combination of bubble and flame, whirlwind and rumble, whipping her hair into a maelstrom that half obscured her vision. She shook her head to clear her vision and her mind without taking her hands from the marble. The power exchange between the connection had positively vibrating down to her very essence.
“Yewel…” Karma said, nodding her head. “Open the doors.”
Yewel did as was requested, rushing out of the room to open the tower’s doors. In her head, Karma counted to one hundred, her mouth rounding each word until she reached the end.
“Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine… one hundred.”
The final syllable found her curling her fingers against the marble until her fingernails bent against the stone, tearing from her nail beds and springing forth a new welling of blood. She cringed only minorly, too lost to the ebb and flow of power running through her to fixate on the pain for too long.
“Release…” She spoke the Power word and pushed with all of her might against the floor, splitting the warring energy and returning it to where it had come from. The negative; the hurt, the pain, the lingering regret of death that had hovered in this room for years began to dissipate. She felt a trickle of warmth dribbling from her right nostril and wrinkled her nose, annoyed at herself.
“A little more… a little more…” Willing herself onward, she pushed and pushed and pushed until…
Pop.
Outside of the tower, the entire structure shivered with boiling energy, turning it red, blue, brown, grey until finally a pillar of light formed above the tower, drenching it in brilliance. It seemed to shroud the tower in the mountain for a long moment before bursting upwards as if expelling the storm and its rain and thunder. As the storm clouds began to fade away, serene twilight spread over the tower once more. The gale force winds died too, falling away into a gentle breeze. The tower itself became a shimmering silver-white, barely perceptible to the naked eye and in the moment, it seemed all was well.
Inside, Yewel hurried back down the twisting winding stairs from the very top of the tower to the bottom where they excitedly went to tell the Keeper that it seemed to be a success. The tower was better! The storm was gone!
Bursting through the doorway, they went skidding to a stop just short of the red circle’s outline and gasped.
Slumped in the middle of the circle, the Keeper of Air lay in a prone heap, blood leaking from her nose and mouth onto the smudged marble beneath her cheek. She didn’t seem to be breathing at a glance. Overtop of her stood a woman in white robes, beautiful but cold as she peered down at the pale Keeper’s body.
“What did you do to her!” Yewel cried out, aghast.
“Nothing. This is her doing…” Nem said with a frown, squatting down beside the woman. “Come into the circle… take her phone and call someone.”
“C-can’t you do it?” Yewel stood at the edge of the circle without stepping in. The robed Paragon looked back at the sylph, brow arching as she leaned down and passed a hand right through Karma’s arm. Yewel’s shoulders sank. “Guess not…”
“The assassin. Call him, he is nearby, he will get here the fastest.” Nem sighed, looking none too pleased by the thought. But with Karma’s mind inaccessible, it wasn’t as though she had much of a choice in the matter. Yewel carefully tiptoed into the circle, fumbling through Karma’s pockets to find her phone.
“There are lots of assassins in this realm…” Yewel held the phone up to the unconscious Keeper’s face so that it would unlock. Thankfully it worked. Turning the device back, they poked through various screens in search of something, anything really, that would tell her who to call.
“The one she is frequently with, the man. Caleb.” The Paragon flapped a hand, exasperated. Good help was so hard to find.
“The one she has very… loud relations with?” Yewel’s face was reddening. Nem’s too, for that matter. But the latter sighed, drawing a hand to her face to palm it with a sigh.
“That would be the one, yes. Call him. Hurry.” Nem snapped her fingers at the sylph, fast running out of patience.
Yewel bobbled a nod and finally punched the button to call one Caleb Feren. He was just outside, thank the gods there was still reception on the Isle. While they waited for him to answer, Nem bowed her head to quietly whisper to Karma.
"Storms don't come to teach us painful lessons, rather they were meant to wash us clean."
-Shannon L. Alder
He had been sitting there outside the tower since she had left him. He had been given explicit instructions that he wasn't needed, but there was a feeling, and he had learned long ago to listen to those gut feelings. So, here he sat, on a rock, outside the Tower, in the storm.
He continued to sit there, quietly, watching that Tower she had gone into. A statue had more movement in this storm than he did, and still he sat there. He sat there as he watched the elementals depart, and sat there as they rushed around in their confusion and worry over what it meant to be ejected from the tower. He continued to sit there, sentinel on that stone, even as some of those elementals braved the interaction with an outsider and came to ask him what was going on. Questions he didn't answer. He had no answers to give, in any case.
He continued to sit there as he felt the ground tremble for just a moment. He continued to sit there as the Tower pulsed with energy that turned it a gambit of different colors, then slammed the sky with a blinding white light, parting the storm like a mushroom cloud, blowing those heavily laden clouds to another place.
Still, he sat there... until the phone rang and he reached for it. Seeing her name on the small screen, he flipped it open, not even considering it wouldn't be her. "Hey..."
Within the Tower remained just three beings. Or maybe one and two half beings. Something like that. The elementals hadn't been given the clear to return to the tower even if it looked like it might be safe to go back in. Needless to say, many of them watched Caleb from afar as his phone rang, hoping that he might receive the good news that they could go home.
Instead, he would receive instead a squeaky, pitchy voice of a sylph he had likely not met yet.
"Is t-this Mister Caleb?" They asked. Without waiting for him to answer, Yewel continued quickly. "The Keeper lady's keeper says you must come quickly. We're in the rotunda, the door is unlocked. Please hurry!"
No sooner had that voice come through the phone than he was moving. It wasn't hers and there was a problem.
His silent feet pounded the ground as he quickly moved to the Tower. He didn't pay mind to the elementals... they would either move or be run through. He didn't stop as his shoulder slammed into the door, flinging them wide open until they slammed against the the walls behind them.
He had no idea where the damn rotunda was! The phone still open, he skidded to a halt and lifted it. "Details. And where the hell is the rotunda." The voice that came out was quiet and deadly.
"Oh! Ah, uhhhh..." Yewel paused to think. "From the front entrance go straight down the hall, down the stairs and around the left corner into the center room. That's where we are. Actually... here..."
Yewel lowered the phone to peer at Nem, still semi-corporeal and standing over Karma. "I'm going to go find him."
A single nod was all she got and then Yewel was off, zipping down the hall, up the stairs and through the front hallway to find the man. The cloud sylph was a small, mousey thing with curling tendrils of smoke-grey hair and pure white eyes. Short, even shorter than Karma, Yewel had to crane their neck to peer up at him as they neared. A beckon of a hand, quick and frantic, gesturing him to follow her back to the rotunda.
"I came back after she finished the cleansing and she was just... on the floor." Yewel explained as they rounded the bend. Beyond the final doorway, it could have been mistaken for one of Karma's more abstract art projects or perhaps a scene from an 80's slasher movie about satanic rituals. Who knew really. But the white floor had been painted with a wide red circle marked by four large runes at the cardinals with smaller looping markings in between those. Karma was at the middle of it, pale and unmoving with a ghostly looking woman standing over her. At a glance, from the back it could have been mistaken for Karma herself with the white hair and the hourglass build but when she heard footsteps, she turned to look at the doorway. It was not Karma, definitely not Karma. Lovely but lacking the warmth the Keeper so often had.
He followed that whisp of a whisp as they led back to where Karma was, his feet moving as quickly as the elemental would move. Faster if he knew the bloody way. As he came around the bend and through that door. Then he stopped.
He quickly took an assessment of what was laid out before him. Not that he knew a damn thing about runes or the like. But she was there, in the middle of them, and a woman who wasn't her, despite her looks, was standing over her.
His hand quickly slid behind his back and pulled free a blade. It wasn't the usual sickle that he used. It's blade was rust-colored with a sickly mustard edge. It measured around fourteen inches and the hilt was made of diamond, two in fact, placed as the scales to the handle.
Perhaps his ignorance of magic and runes would be a good thing, or a bad one.. but he quickly slid a foot across the outer ring, smearing his feet in the blood as he began to move towards the one standing over her. His body shifted sideways and that blade came to rest along the forearm and the other was raised, but loose.
Nem put her hands up in front of her to show that she was no threat, palms out. Like Karma, she too had white runic markings on the flesh of her palms, nearly identical to the ones the Keeper wore on her own hands.
"Whoa, I'm not your enemy here. I requested they call you." She spoke, calm and collected. Her voice was huskier than Karma's, honey and smoke, a bit like her not fully there form. She seemed to be full monochrome, like a vintage memory, if it weren't for the gold of her eyes. A familiar gold at that. Yewel caught up to Caleb and nodded her agreement with what the woman had said. The break in the circle seemed to let loose an audible sigh of relief, like a dam cracking and spilling over. Nem looked down at the prone Keeper, frowning. No change.
"You are Caleb, I am called Nem." She said, indicating first him and then herself. Finally she indicated Karma. "She overdid it, pushed too hard. That was... a lot of power through a single conduit. I need you to take her away from here, away from the Isle entirely, if possible. The less magic, the better. She should be fine in a few hours. I think."
Those eyes caught him and he knew them, if only from glimpses. It was the reason he bought the knife. But he paused at her words.
"That depends on one point of view." In regards to being his enemy. As far as he was concerned, she was causing Karma problems and harm, and he would be her shield, at the cost of his life if need be.
But he did turn his gaze to the one at her feet. Though his attention was there, those muscles were poised to stride.. a viper at the ready with the slightest of provocations.
"Move." Was his only response as his gaze came up to land on Nem's again.
"I can appreciate differing perspectives." For that he garnered a smile, an indulgent thing that said far more than words could. With a silent shift of her robes, Nem simply disappeared from the circle and reappeared outside of it, just at the edge of Caleb's periphery. Maybe she was fucking with him, who knew. But she clasped her hands in front of her and rocked heel to toe idly.
"Please watch over her." She said, as if she had any right to ask. Of course she knew all that Karma had told him, which admittedly had been a bit limited and vague. Just the same, Nem watched the pair with a tilt of her head. "Her time here is through but she still has so much left to do. In this time... and in others. She mustn't burn out before her time."
"Attempt to use her, in this time or in others, and I'll burn you out." There was quiet determination in that voice. It was a voice that said he didn't give a damn if he was going to lose that fight, he would take the other down with him. A voice that said he wasn't bothered by death, or even the idea of it.
His moved as he spoke, the pace of a killer approaching his mark, even though his mark in this was the prone body of Karma. Each step was quietly slid just before it landed, as if testing the footing before he put the weight down. As such, he was smearing each line that he crossed. Still clueless to what this was doing to the magic, he kept moving forward.
When he neared, his body slowly lowered, those muscles tightening further under the tension, ready to spring, or snap. That knife was still laid along his forearm as he leaned down and took her into his arms, softly drawing her close to him, rolling her over until he placed that knifed hand under her knees and the other under her back and shoulders, drawing her up and close to his body as he stood.
Those eyes turned towards Nem then, and he started the return trek, his steps finding the exact same places as they came in, as he backed out.
"I suppose it's better when people use you so long as you're properly compensated for what you offer, isn't that right, Mister Feren?" No chill to her tone, if anything, the almost-there woman sounded amused. No different than children taunting each other on the playground.
One mark he crossed hissed like boiling water, another curled wisps of smoke as he slid his foot through it. For anyone sensitive to it, they seemed to be about out of gas power wise. To Nem's credit, she stayed exactly where she had disappeared to, an ever demure Watcher observing each motion. After all, it wasn't often she was allowed to see the man, let alone interact with him. Assuredly when Karma found out, there would be hell to pay but that was a problem for the future. Karma, on the other hand, was ragdoll limp, dark blood smeared across her right cheek from where it had pooled beneath her face. She was pale and cold, but that was pretty normal even when she was at her liveliest.
Nem simply watched. As he began backing toward the door, she followed his progress with her eyes and a slight turn of her head.
"Water." She said finally. "Rather than alcohol. She'll likely argue, but trust me on it. You can thank me when we speak next."
Finality, there would be a next time, of that much she was certain.
He kept that pace and footing going backwards until he had turned the bend. He didn't bother with an answer. He had none. He knew he was used and was paid for it. He knew she was right in her call of him. However, there was a difference. He made that choice and could choose the contracts he took. He wasn't sure Karma had that anymore.
Even as he turned the bend once out that door, he didn't let his body relax. He turned and was quickly moving through the stairs and then the hall. Even as he moved, he kept a vigilante eye out for Nem. She had shown that she could move without walking, which meant she could appear at any time.
Once he was out the door, he was moving swifter and towards the nearest portal that lead off the Isle. He didn't give a damn about how it made him feel, and didn't even think about it. It was a means to get her off the island and away.
One of the elementals chased after him, either in worry or in question. "Cleanse the place for your new keeper." His voice again came out cold.. business-like. He didn't bother to look back when he spoke, nor to see if they obeyed. His attention was on the one in his arms.
There was no sign of Nem after he left the rotunda though she did give him a dainty little wave before he turned the corner. She seemed to be of a similar mind to him when he made it outside, turning to Yewel with a quiet, almost tired sounding sigh.
"We should be sure this gets cleaned up. I know she left a note for the next Keeper, but I'd rather not leave this scene here. You know how it goes, yes?" She asked with a tip of her head. The sylph nodded and scurried out of the rotunda to go gather supplies to clean up. Once alone, Nem looked over the mess they had made and shook her head. No further commentary from the peanut gallery though, she simply disappeared into oblivion to bide her time until she could return to the sanctity of Karma's mind. As for the soon to be former Keeper of Air, she stirred only after Caleb stepped through the portal.
"Nngh... did I do it?" She murmured without opening her eyes, the words thick on her tongue.
"Shh... You did." What she did? Hell if he knew, but he knew she had did something.
He kept moving as they stepped out of the portal. His stride carried them through the various parts of town until they were outside the place he had been renting on Kabuki street. It wasn't much, but it was furnished and well protected, in so far as he could make it.
Stepping within, he moved to the bedroom and set her gently on the bed. Only after he had made sure she was comfortable did he finally slide that dagger back home. Then he moved to the kitchen and pulled a few bottles of water.
Walking back in the room, he slid a chair over next to the bed and settled himself there, setting the bottles on the table next to her.
There wasn't much out of her after that, at least not immediately. She seemed to slumber for several hours, as had been predicted, before finally she awoke sometime in the early afternoon. Both hands came up to cover her face with a quiet groan. It was a bit like the worst hangover she had ever experienced but turned up to eleven. It took her a few moments to realize she wasn't in the tower or at her own place, but it wasn't like his was wholly unfamiliar.
"Ah fuck." She mumbled, not wanting to look and confirm if he was there. She knew he was, he was reliable like that, but seeing her like this was not what she had intended. "They called you?"
He had cleaned what he could of the blood and the mess about her without disturbing her rest during the time she was out. He was still sitting in that chair, having not moved other than that since he had settled in.
When she spoke, there was a bit of relief that washed through him. It was almost as if he was holding his breath during that entire time, and was just now able to release it. He leaned over and set his elbows on his knees, not reaching for her, though he wanted to.
"They did." No accusation there. No hidden question. Just affirmation that they called, and that he had come... would always come.
She groaned again, pushing her hands back through her hair until her face was clear and her eyes open. Her hands fell away, one coming to rest on her stomach, the other turning palm up near him. An invitation perhaps. Quiet for a moment, she seemed to be chewing on her words before deciding just what to say.
"Thank you." She started there, it seemed as good of a place as any. Easing herself up a bit, she felt her muscles protest as if she had been hit by a truck or something. Wild, all things considered. "I can only imagine the mess when you came in. I think... it just got to be too much and my body shut down, I guess."
A glance turned toward the table. Water would have to do, she supposed. The hand not turned toward him reached for one of the bottles to draw it back and press it against the side of her neck for a moment. "I, um... I really appreciate you. I hope you know that."
He took that invitation for what it was, and set his hand in hers. But when she moved to sit up, he forced himself to let her do it. She didn't need him to hover, though that was what he was doing. He would not be that person. She was her own person, and he would respect that, as he always had with her. That was why he didn't question, much.
"It wasn't that bad of a mess." For anyone else, it might have been. His line of work, though.... "I do. Just like I know that I will always be there." I am yours.
Karma curled her hand into his, weaving their fingers loosely. With her other hand, she managed to crack the bottle open carefully, setting the lid aside so she could drink the vast majority of the water in a seemingly continuous swallow. The plastic crinkled and only when it was empty did she relent, sucking in a deep breath as she capped it and set it aside. Her gaze found his and her teeth worried into her bottom lip where she could still taste a faint hint of her own blood, acridly sweet as it was.
"Well that's good... hopefully it resets itself before Jaycy gets there." She didn't want to think about the alternative. That would have been a hell of a handover though she doubted it was the worst condition a tower had been in when switching holders. Plus she had left Jaycy a letter explaining what they'd had to do so maybe that would help. Pulling up their interlaced hands, she turned it over to kiss the back of his, leaving behind a faint red mark that was thankfully just lipstick. "Caleb, I...," there was a pause, a catch, more consideration due, "I'm immensely lucky to have you. Maybe eventually I'll be able to repay some of that luck."
He watched her and that half grin of his shifted just enough to be an almost full smile. It was something he didn't offer to any.. except her.
"I'm sure things will be cleaned and ready for her when she gets there." Not that he knew if that was what she meant or not.
"Karma. I'm already lucky. You decided I was worth..." It was his turn to pause, "... your attention."
"You know, some would say such a thing is immensely unlucky." She teased him. Smiling hurt but she did it just the same. It seemed to go that way though, things left unsaid, meant to linger like each one hoped the other would understand. Maybe they did. Or maybe that old saying about assuming making an ass out of you would be more true. Who knew. "Would you, um, mind if I crashed here tonight? Maybe we can order in and watch movies or something? Or if you've got something on your agenda, I can always keep myself occupied."
"I have no where else I would need, want, or rather be than here with you. And you're welcome to crash with me any time." He leaned in finally and set a kiss to her. "What you do want to eat and watch?"
"Well of course, but you know, work is a thing. So I just didn't want to impose." Even if she knew he would have dropped most anything for her if she just asked. Raz had given her so much hell about that the first time Karma realized it. Her cheeks warmed with the kiss given and returned. "Thai? And have you ever seen Labyrinth? It's one of my favorites."
"You don't and your not. Haven't had any pan woo sen in awhile." He paused a moment and thought. "Labyrinth? That the one with that girl who doesn't realize what she has and tries to bargain her brother way to that Goblin king?"
"I know a good place that ought to deliver here." She nodded, patting around for her phone. Must have forgot it at the tower. Oh well. "Exactly that one. An old friend of mine showed it to me a long time ago, now I watch it at least a couple times a year."
He offered his phone to her. He knew she laughed at him for still having an old flip phone, but it still worked, and it was there.
“I’ve seen it a few times, but it has been a while.”
It was better than nothing. She took it and looked a little silly for a moment as she tried to remember how to use such a thing. Thankfully she had the number memorized, a marvel in this day and age, and soon she was putting in an order. When she hung up, she looked back to him, offering his phone back. "So it's settled. Food and movies and you're mine for the evening, aye?"
He shared with her that smile once more. “Aye, tonight and always.” He ventured that. Assumptions and all be damned.
"And always hmm?" She smirked and looked down at their hands. "Yeah... I think I'm good with that."
End
(Written with a whole lot of help from Caleb, thank you!)
