A/N: twO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER, the next chapter! This is set to be fairly slow development, so things are still in that gear-up stage. Also! We get to see a certain Henry reincarnation this go around 😀
Saying yes to
Meung-soo had been easier than Bentley thought it would be. Her reply to his
suggestion, though still a little distant, felt more relaxed, more human, than
the last message. She had also agreed to lunch at Tarannala’s Treasury, though
it seemed that Mikael wouldn’t be coming with her; apparently, he had work at
home and couldn’t make the trip over from Switzerland. Bentley found himself
looking forward to the meeting, oddly enough. He was interested enough that on
Saturday he found himself at an outside table at Trannala’s early, fingers
curled around a tall glass of complimentary, cherry-infused water, waiting for
his Aunt to arrive.
On the table, his phone vibrated. He
took a sip of water, then murmured, “Open, show message.”
The phone expanded with a quiet sshhf, the screen blinking to life
before his messages were selected by the phone’s program. He was glad to have
remembered to set the phone to silent before coming out; the family at the
table next to him seemed very straight-laced, the kind that stared loud
strangers into submission. Bentley shifted in his chair so that his back was
more to them, and read the message.
Oh my god ben
they have the new stars of wood and gold, they have the new swg I’m going to
die I’m so happy.
Bentley snorted,
his shoulders lifting with humor. He reached for the phone and typed back a
quick reply telling Torako that she could buy it if she wanted, but don’t
expect him to read any kind of Twin Souls related drudgery, and he didn’t care
how good the prose was.
Moments later, his phone vibrated in
his hand and he looked down at it.
Hey now, even TYRONE is excited about
it. Tyrone.
Don’t care,
he typed back. And you’re bluffing, he
might not hate Stars of Wood and Gold, but he doesn’t actually like it.
He set the phone
down and took a sip of his water again. Half of the reason to go to
Tarannala’s, he thought, was this right here. Thanks be for complimentary
cherry water. The phone buzzed, twice, and he went to read the message—in
all-caps, so Dipper was borrowing Torako’s device—when he heard his name.
“Bentley?”
Bentley looked up into the face of a
woman he didn’t know. She was clutching the strap of a small purse in her hand,
thin bracelets glinting off her wrist. The spots of light let through the
revolving canopy above the table tracked slow and smooth across the curves of
her wide face and the faux-cotton texture of her light jacket. She had crow’s
feet around her eyes, but he thought that he could see his mother’s nose—seen
only in photos and in the bridge of his own—in the way hers lay on her face.
“Aunt Meung-soo?” he asked, standing
up on reflex.
“Hey, are you
going grocery shopping after work?” Torako asked as she tapped her stylus
against the top of her desk. It was her final year of grad school, and Practical
Demonology students had to do a semester to year of internship work—for her, that
meant she was working at the municipal police station.
“Yeah, we’re low on bread and organics
and candy. Butter too. Probably some other things. I’m just getting out of the
lab, so I should be home a bit after you are, assuming you’re still at the
station.” On the other end, there was a rustle of clothing. “Anything you
need?”
Torako grinned. “Moffios!”
Bentley sighed in her ear. “No,
Torako.”
“Why not?” Torako asked, spinning
the stylus on her knuckle and telling herself that she was not, in fact,
whining. “I don’t play hurling anymore, so I don’t have a coach that forbids
them!”
“Torako, they’re literally
advertised as 100% sugar. No.”
There was motion out of the corner
of Torako’s eye, and she turned to see her supervisor’s unimpressed blood-shot
eyes. She grinned and held up a finger. “But they’re not banned! I can eat them
if I want, I’m a full grown adult!”
“That’s true,” Bentley said. “But
you can also go out and buy them yourself if you want to eat them, because I’m
not doing it for you.”
“You jerk!” Torako said, but she was
smiling. “Jeez, you know what Tyrone would say to that?”
“Yes, yes, that I’m besmirching the
continuity of the Mabel-line, I know, but Tyrone also has a tendency to stick
his head too far up his own ass regarding this matter, so I don’t really care
too much about his opinion,” he said.
She huffed. “Fine then, be that way.
I have to go anyways, so enjoy your boring shopping trip filled with dumb
necessary adult things and no glorious Moffios.”
“Ah, yes,” Bentley said. She could
hear clicking and whirring and then a door sliding open in the background. “The
peace, the quiet, however will I stand it.”
Torako snorted. “All right you dork,
I’m hanging up now. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Bentley said, and he
disconnected the call. Torako pulled her earbud out and slid it into the tiny
pocket dimension in the phone—the new Naaama model, 3029— then looked back up
at her supervisor. “Hey Officer Nathan.”
Officer Nathan closed his eyes and
rubbed at them carefully with his hands, even though his iron nails wouldn’t
have done more than scratched his durable skin. “You know, sometimes I wonder
why we still have you on,” he said, voice hissing against his iron teeth.
A/N: Long time no see! Posting this because I reread Xonge and Silver Morning and decided that the best time to post an incomplete multi-chapter work was in the middle of the school year when I have other pressing things to do 😀 (this is really a prologue, and the title is a working one)
The study was
large and well-lit by two giant windows, whose thin, magically reinforced-glass
somehow seemed to let in more sunlight than they should be capable of. In front
of the shorter window at the head of the room sat an off-white desk, which
hummed low as it hovered a few feet off the floor. Along its underside was a
dim blue glow, and on its front were several buttons and sliders. On it were a
few old physical books, stacked carefully, a pair of archivist gloves laid on
top of them. A blank journal sat next to the stack, closed, a ballpoint pen
marking the writer’s progress close to the leather back. Behind both of them
was a clear crystal vase filled with orange lilies, placed there by the owner’s
housekeeper on request.
Perpendicular to the desk was a long
couch, a sharp red in the light environment of the room. On that couch, leaning
against the rightmost armrest, sat a person, pale-skinned and pale-clothed.
Their hair was styled to curl close to the scalp, layered in deliberate arcs.
Their eyes, such a dark brown that they were almost black, were trained on the
Reader in their hands, skin tinted pale blue by the glow of the holographic
screen. They were frowning.
They tapped their fingers on the
canvas cover of the armrest and swallowed. After a moment, they scrolled down the
Reader’s surface with the thumb resting on the edge of the screen. They read,
and read, and then stopped mid-sentence, only to cast their gaze up a few lines
and reread, slower this time.
“Power to curse,” they murmured,
tone smooth with years of speaking experience. They stopped tapping the arm of
the couch. “Alcor’s demonic energy found in their victims…”
They looked up and over at the desk,
at the orange lilies sitting under a stasis spell that extended their shelf
life. They stood slowly, setting the Reader down on the couch as they did so,
long fingers tugging down the semi-formal blouse they wore. Taking three steps
towards the desk, their feet bare against the ash wood floorboards, they waved
away the desk chair with a languid motion. They then stood before the desk,
thighs pressed against the edge, fingers hovering over the lurid petals. Breathing
in, they canted their head just slightly to the side, and then set their
fingers on the smooth surface.
For a moment, nothing. Then, they
jerked their hand back, hissing in a sharp breath and cradling their fingers
close to their chest. They stared at the flowers, eyes wide, lips pressed
together. Their shoulders were tight, their stance uneven and drawn back in an
uncharacteristically frightened manner. There was no new quiet in the room, no
new noise, but a sort of tension set itself to the air, drawing particles into
and against each other. Their fingers twitched against the silky fabric of
their shirt, cool against too-warm, and eventually they pulled their gaze away
from the flowers and to their own hand.
They relaxed their shoulders and
straightened their fingers, looked down at the pads of them. The fingertips
were red and shiny in the way the newest, thinnest layer of skin always is,
blood pumping through delicate veins just under the fragile surface. The whorls
and lines of the epidermal ridges were faint there, barely formed, too young to
have been shaped completely. They would have to change security requirements
until the skin had fully formed.
The person held their injured hand
up to the light, only a slight tightening at the edges of their eyes a sign of
their residual discomfort. Steam, barely visible even with the sunlight behind
the fingers, untwisted itself into the air, dispersing with no sound and barely
any motion.
“You will burn,” they murmured into
the humming stillness, “wherever they touch you.” They looked up to the ceiling
and sure enough, along the edges, warning runes glowed just enough to be
visible to the discerning eye. Demonic energy. The person looked back to their
burned-raw fingertips, and their face smoothed out the signs of pain and fear.
“I don’t know whether to be happy or
upset,” they said, slightly louder and still to themselves. They reached down
with their good hand and brushed the archivist gloves off the books and onto
the leather bound journal. Snapping their fingers to dim the windows, they slid
the glove on using the knuckles of their burned hand and glanced over the title
to the topmost book. Gleeful, Silent,
Ferocious: Following the soul of ‘Mizar’ through three lives.
Carefully, they pulled one orange
lily out of the crystal vase, making sure the water running down the stem did
not drip on the valuable books. They thumbed one petal, fabric between skin and
plant, and waited.
Nothing happened.
Their eyelids rose just a fraction,
and they replaced the orange lily in the vase. They did not let go of the stem
until the bottom of it hit crystal; only then did they withdraw. “If you are
Mizar,” they said, dropping their hands to their sides, still staring at the
flowers in the vase, “then I wonder what you
might be called, Bentley Farkas.”
They tipped their chin up, stared at
the fading runes on the ceiling, and blinked once, slowly. The desk hummed, but
nothing else made sound in the study, darkened by the dimmed sunlight filtering
in through the windows.
“I wonder,” they said, and then
looked back down, at the book. They did not smile, did not frown—just reached
their hand out, still in the archivist’s glove, and ran their fingers over the
embossed lettering of the title. “I wonder.”
I MESSED UP A LOT and wasn’t gonna put this Inktober up but there is something that I enjoy so I dunno.
I sketched it with my brush pen hence why it is so wonky. I should’ve done pencils first.
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