All right, I know it's been a while, but I've (finally) gotten this chapter done. As long as it is, the reviewing process shaved two pages off of the total. So yeah.
Thanks this month go to Helixical for favoriting and following both Birthright and myself, and shotgunRunner for adding this story to their favorites and follows. Thanks!
And for reviewer cookies, the usual thanks go to AGM, who came up with the details for the planet Xelne, which is a rather, ah...interesting anomaly on Etrides (and one that may or may not feature in a future story?).
Review cookie #2 goes to shotgunRunner for their input. X'D That's quite a bit of reading to do, and I'm glad you've liked it so far! As for the dialogue stuff, you're right about that being a style preference.
As for this chapter, it's mostly exposition and...stuff. As per usual, I don't own Magic: The Gathering or anything else created by Wizards of the Coast, and I certainly don't own the whole "Inner World" concept. That comes from one of my favorite anime, but is by no means evidence of a crossover. I just liked the idea and -cough-shamefullystolen-cough- Ahem, LOVINGLY BORROWED for this fanfic.
Enjoy the chapter!
Chapter Eleven
Inner World
Maera opened her eyes, and she was sitting cross-legged on her bed.
It wasn't the bed in her quarters aboard Sleipnir, though she knew that's where she still was physically. This was her bed, at home. She was sitting in the middle of the mattress, wrist resting easily on her knee, and her staff laid across her lap.
No, wait; wrists. Here in her mind, she still had both arms. Both very whole, very there, flesh-and-blood arms. She looked around, both knowing intimately and not recognizing her surroundings Nostalgia filled her. This wasn't just her room...this was her room. The bedroom she'd grown up in, back in her hometown on Terrestiel. The home she hadn't been to in years.
It looked the same, but at the same time it was completely different. What she remembered were the furnishings of a preteen, the floor covered in a mess of books and dirty clothes and stuffed animals. The manifestation of her room in her head was still mess, but it was the mess of her adult self, her mind littered with the accumulation of the nearly fifteen years since she'd last seen the physical space.
There were two windows, as she remembered; one on the north wall to her right, and one on the east wall she was facing, both framed by galaxy-patterned curtains. The door was to her left, and the loft bed on which she was perched was situated the same way her bed growing up had been. There was even an overly-tall nightstand with a lamp to her left, both of which (minus the height, in the nightstand's case) twins to the ones in her childhood bedroom. She already knew where the closet and dresser were without looking, just as she knew this room so very, very well.
Yet...it wasn't the same. It was familiar, yet very different.
For example, the old school desk in the northeast corner was gone. In its place there was a corner computer desk, with a closed laptop on top of it. There were papers and pencils strewn all over it, folders filed in its shelves, full of finished and half-done drawings...and books. So many books.
The corner opposite was similarly different; growing up she'd had one small, three-shelf bookcase there...which even then hadn't been enough to store all of her books. That was still the case now, despite the fact that the corner was no home to not one, but two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, taking up the bare wall space to either side of them. They were full of books, all from her real-world collection.
And the walls...all those years ago, they'd been plastered with posters of bands she'd liked and actors she'd had young-girl crushes on. Okay, so she still liked Simple Plan and Evanescence, but now those posters were replaced with ones of Ravnica, Zendikar, Nirn, Innistrad, Kamigawa...and, yes, next to her nightstand, Etrides. All of which were planes she'd been to, at some point or another.
Maera unfolded her legs and set the staff on the ground, leaning it against the bed frame as she climbed down from the loft bed. Underneath there were more loaded bookshelves and a pair of beanbag chairs...and a photo album. One that had her scrawl written across it, with a picture of herself and the rest of her friends on the cover, one she'd taken at the last New Year's celebration at Belinda's.
She picked it up and flipped through. It was full of photos, more than the book should have been able to hold—but, it wasn't a physical album, either. It was a manifestation in her headspace, a mental representation of her memories, one that she could pick up and handle here in the world of her mind.
She sat cross-legged in one of the beanbags, paging through the album. In it was everything from meeting her childhood friends—Nikolas Ivano the shadow nymph, Lise Soryen the drow, and Darren Asgard the dork of a vampire—to high school when she'd met Bels..to her Sparking.
Maera was an...oddity. She'd always believed in magic, even while the children on her world outgrew their magical sight. Even into high school and adulthood she retained her knowledge of the magical world, even as she remained—as far as she'd known—a normal human.
And then...she'd met Belinda and then Karr, both Planeswalkers. Shortly after, her own dormant faerie blood had begun to manifest, and she'd quickly gone from an outside observer to a battlemage. After years of being one of the 'muggles' protected by the magical nastiest, she hadn't thought when she decided to start putting herself in the line of fire.
She hadn't known what it was getting into. Even as, ten years after her first lessons in spellcasting, she finally Sparked. And promptly landed, quite literally, on Jace on Ravnica.
She traced the scar over her eye at seeing the image of Gideon, Chandra, Jace, Nissa, herself and Bels on Zendikar after taking down the Eldrazi. Liliana early in the morning, right before Maera had had to run for her life from the sleep-deprived necromancer. Ral with his hair in a sparking afro, after electrocuting himself for the umpteenth time.
Rill and Dane and Lini and Sorin and Amanisa...and Allandir, when she and Bels had been pulled back in time to seal away a demon that had threatened their home plane. When Allandir had passed his staff on to her.
All of them. All of the friends she had made over the years, all the things she'd been through with them were recorded in this book of memories. Every single one, from when she'd started kindergarten to the disaster of Amonkhet were symbolized as photographs in her mind.
"And it's still not full."
She'd never heard the voice before, but at the same time she knew it. She didn't know how, but she did. She looked up and was faced with...a reflection.
He was tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed, freckled, and built like a tank. He wore...mage robes from Nirn, which in the modern Terrestiel surroundings looked very out of place. He looked more like he belonged in the College of Winterhold, than in the bedroom doorway from Maera's childhood.
But, as she studied his features, she saw more of her in this young man standing in her doorway. He stood like she did, frowned like she did...even wore the same glasses as her. If she didn't know any better, she'd have said that he was her twin brother, if she'd had one.
His mouth quirked up in a smirk. "Now you're getting it." He rocked back on his feet. "Or, this is what you'd look like if you were a guy."
Maera nodded slowly and rose. "...I've never met you before."
"But I've always been here."
Again she nodded. "Yeah...I...know..." A pause. "Uhh...who are you?"
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "You tell me." He said. "After all, I'm the manifestation of your power."
Maera blinked. "My...huh."
"I'm pretty sure I didn't stutter."
Maera held up a hand and shook her head. "No, it's just..." She ran her other hand through her hair. "I'm talking to myself. Literally talking to myself."
"Well, a part of yourself, anyway." He corrected. "Like I just said, I'm the manifestation of your power within your own mind. The rest of it is, well..." He waved a hand, encompassing the bedroom. "That's all you."
Maera gave a nod. "Then why isn't the rest of my psyche represented as people?" Other than the fact that it'd be crowded as hell, if each facet of my personality was a being.
He shrugged, holding his hands up in an 'I dunno' gesture. "My running theory? Magic has a life of its own, and as a result one's magical ability does too." He shrugged again. "But I don't need to tell you that what makes magic magic is kind of...wibbly."
Maera snerked. That it was. "So...since you're the manifestation of my power, you've got some sort of idea of what's been off...right?"
The look he gave her didn't just say no...it screamed it. Maera groaned and hung her head. "Why."
"Hey, this is your head."
She flipped him off. She pinched the bridge of her nose and strode over to him. She squinted. "You look like shit."
"No. Really." Her...companion's tone was deadpan. Thunder crashed outside, and Maera started—she hadn't noted the storm outside. He snorted a laugh. "It's been like that for a while." A beat. "Since Amonkhet."
Maera's mouth went into a thin line. That was when her magic got all screwed up. She rubbed her shoulder, her right arm tingling—a ghost of it exploding in a shower of blood and bone and flesh. "Can't imagine why." She muttered, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She shook her head. "Sooo...the storm's what's wrong with my magic. Why it's all screwy."
He raised an eyebrow. "Not...exactly."
"Aren't you my magic? Don't you know what's going on?"
"Yes...and no." He made a face and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's...hard to explain." He sighed. "This isn't entirely your mind, and I'm not exactly the one in charge."
Maera let out a breath and rubbed her temples. All this esoteric shit is why I do labs and explosions. Straightforward shit. "Okay. How is this all in my head and yet not?"
Her male 'double' made an 'ehhhh' gesture. "It's...weird. It's your inner world." He replied. He pointed to her head. "It exists as much in here," his hand lowered to point at her heart, "as in here. It's where everything about you is kept in some kind of incarnation. Your hopes, your fears, likes and dislikes, even your subconscious is represented somewhere in this inner world."
Maera grunted and nodded, looking around her bedroom again. Thunder crashed again, followed by lightning. "And mindset."
"Yeah. And that."
It explained the book of memories, the posters, the drawings, the metric fuckton of books on the shelves, and the mix of old memories and new possessions. Despite not having seen her childhood home in years, she'd immortalized it in her heart and it had grown as she had.
It gave Maera a case of the warm fuzzies. A case that was muted by the amount of thunder, lightning, and rain going on outside.
She scowled at the windows. "It sounds like that storm's trying to churn itself up into a tornado."
"Coming from the one who's been running around in circles, it's not a surprise."
Maera, being the mature adult she was, blew a raspberry at him. "If this storm is in my head—and frankly, you look like shit too—"
"Thanks for your ringing endorsement."
"—I need to confront it. It's not a normal storm that'll stop on its own, I'm gonna have to give it a nudge." She eyed her 'twin' up and down. "That storm and your state are connected, since this is where my self lives and you're part of that."
"Yeah."
Maera's eyes drifted to the stairs across the hall. "And since it's my head, I'm the one in charge...I make the rules. You live by them."
"And try to point out which rules are kind of dumb."
"Are you my common sense, or my magic's manifestation?"
"Yes. And speaking of common sense, you should listen to yours a bit more often. Probably'll help with the whole blowing-your-face-up problem."
"Har-dee-har." She nodded to the hallway behind him. "The rest of the house part of my inner world too? Or is it just my old bedroom?"
He shook his head as they headed down the hall and down the stairs. "It's all here, far as I know." He paused. "Y'see...the thing about someone's inner world is it shows who they really are, whether they know it or not. Or want to admit it or not; I can guarantee you'll find things in here that you probably don't want to find.
"If someone's powerful enough, that power—whether it's magical, spiritual, or otherwise—will often manifest as a being in that world—like me, here. But whether there's a manifestation or not it reveals every bit f them, no matter how buried it is. Every facet of a person's inner world is a facet of them." A beat, during which thunder crashed again. "Including weather."
Maera nodded, taking it in. From the stairwell, she could see the entryway and living room. The entryway had coats hanging up and shoes scattered, the ones she didn't recognize she assumed were her companion's. The hall that passed the living room and led to the kitchen didn't have the computer desk along the stairs, anymore—it was taken up by another bookshelf, it too laden with books. The living room was located through a large arching doorway, opposite the stairwell; it still contained the ugly, paisley-patterened sofa, two big squishy armchairs, a coffee table to one side of the room strewn with sketchbooks and pencils and yet more books, and the lamps next to the furniture. Even the familiar entertainment center was there, complete with TV and movies.
But, it had been updated as her room and the hallway had been. The armchairs were black and dark blue, and the drapes on the windows matched the galaxy-patterned curtains in her bedroom. The rug on the floor, rather than blue, was done in a night sky pattern to compliment the drapes. Mess was strewn about the floor, looking like he general disorder of someone living in the house.
Or simply a reflection of the garbage that usually floated around in Maera's head on a daily basis. It was a toss-up.
She could see the storm even better through the large living room windows; rain lashed them violently, so much so that even when the lightning flashed all she saw of the trees were dark blurs. The panes rattled as the wind howled outside. If anything, the storm was worse down here on the ground level than it was in her bedroom upstairs.
Whatever was wrong, the deeper she went the worse it was. Something deep, deep down was indeed broken. And Maera didn't like it.
The young woman readily admitted that she didn't have all her shit together (any look inside her lab on Ravnica would show anyone that), and that she was in reality a hot mess in human form. But it was a...well, a mostly controlled chaos. The fact that there was silent, unnoticed damage lurking in her psyche was...disturbing.
And the fact that she didn't know abut it until now frustrated her. The chaos of battle didn't bother her, and she lived in a constant case of controlled chaos normally. It was something that came with being a Planeswalker, or so she'd told herself. But this...this she hadn't known about it. It made her wonder how long it had been going on, and whether she should've stopped and tried entering her inner world earlier.
Either way, she could see the signs now, in the storm outside and mess inside. Her mind, conscious and unconscious, was a flying mess.
It was related to her lost connection to her magic. She knew it. She didn't know how she knew it. Maera swallowed; if this had been lurking in her being, getting worse over time...
"No." She started, almost tripping over her feet and landing face-first on the tile of the kitchen floor. "There's been storms before, but none this bad or this long. And your brain is usually a gods-forsaken mess, but it and the storms have been worse since the Amonkhet disaster. And they've been worsening as time goes on."
Maera glowed at the young man as she took a seat at the kitchen island. "It's really freaky when you do that."
He shrugged, putting on water for tea. "I live in your soul, which means I live in your head. It shouldn't come as a surprise that I can read your hot mess of a mind."
Maera stuck her tongue out at him. As he moved about the kitchen, she got a better look at him; his skin wasn't just pale like hers, it was waxy and sallow, as if he were ill. There were dark bags under his eyes, and the slope of his broad shoulders wasn't relaxed; they sagged and slouched, looking less like he was chill and more like he was tired and in serious need of a good rest. His hair stuck up in back, making Maera wonder when the last time he'd used a hairbrush was.
In short, saying he'd looked like shit earlier was an understatement; he looked like walking death. A tingle ran down he right arm, reminding her that in the real world it wasn't there. She remembered how twisted and knotted up her magic was, and how she couldn't draw mana and her spells went haywire when she tried to cast. Something in her mind clicked, and the words jumped out of her mouth almost faster than they came to mind. "You look fucked up because my magic's fucked up."
He paused. Then smiled. It was tired, and didn't do anything to help him look less like a corpse, but it was real this time. No sarcasm present. "Exactly."
Maera got up. "Here, let me." She strode around the island and took the teapot from him. "Take it from someone who has dumped boiling water down her front, you don't want that to happen." She pointed to her newly-vacated seat. "Sit. Before you collapse."
He held up his hands in an 'I surrender'. "If you insist."
"If you don't I'll sit on you."
He sat. "You figured out what's wrong."
Maera grunted and pulled a box of tea from a cupboard—earl grey, one of her favorites. "Yeah. My magic's sick, hence you're sick." She spooned a healthy amount of tea leaves into the strainer in the pot before pouring the boiling water over them. "And my spellcasting's showing it. And the storming outside is part of it too, the whole fucked up mess my magical innards are in."
He winced. "Thank you for that image. Not sure when my appetite's going to come back after that."
Maera snorted and set the pot between them, pulling out a pair of mugs. She handed one to him before taking a seat again. "I..." She trailed off, chewing her lip. She didn't want to admit it, even though she knew she had to.
He arched an eyebrow, reaching for the teapot. He poured himself a cup, nodding in approval at the smell of bergamot. "And?"
Maera ran a hand through her hair and poured her own cup. "Ever since things went sideways on Amonkhet, I...haven't been sure. About a lot." She chewed her lip, not wanting to voice the thought. Because voicing it meant admitting it was true, admitting that there might not be a fix.
"I'm...afraid."
He was taking a drink of his tea. With slow, deliberate movements he lowered his mug and wrapped his hands around it. "You've been afraid before. Weren't you the one who said that the reason you fought so hard and so well was because you were afraid of dying?"
Maera shook her head. "This is different." She pulled her feet up onto the stool, drawing herself in. She raised the mug of tea, the warmth seeping into her hands. "That fear in battle is logical, and purely for self-preservation. I'm afraid of dying, so I funnel that fear into anger, and when I get angry I tend to hit whatever's making me angry. Like whatever's trying to kill me."
Her companion grunted. "Or whoever just jumped out of a closet with a Grim Reaper mask."
Maera gave him a deadpan look. "Oh shut up."
His eyebrow cocked and he quirked an amused smile at the corner of his mouth as he raised his tea mug. "What makes this fear different?"
Maera didn't answer right away. She took a drink of her tea, holding the liquid in her mouth, taking the moment to savor the taste of the bergamot as she thought about her answer. She wasn't really sure how to place it, really...and that frustrated her almost as much as the fact that it existed in the first place. She swallowed, speaking slowly. "It's...at myself." She said, quietly. "At my power, at my abilities..." She took a breath, her mouth dry. "Afraid that, even will all this," she motioned to the world around her, "it's just...gone. For good. That I won't be able to use magic again. And that if I can cast, what it'll do..."
She cut herself off, biting down hard enough on her lip for her to taste blood. Her hands shook, and she put the mug down on the counter before she dropped and broke it. The fear that her magic was screwed up beyond repair, that she'd been pushing to the back of her mind...she had to admit it now. And she hated it.
More than that, she hated that it seemed like she couldn't do anything about it.
A hand came into her vision, the owner placing it over hers. "Hey. If it was permanent, I wouldn't be here. Your inner world would be empty, and you'd just be punching holes in the walls."
Maera looked up at him through her hair. "You sound like you're trying to tell me that just talking to you is helping."
"Solving." He gave her a small smile, tired as it was. "Just making the decision to look for me has done more towards repairing your connection to your power—to me—than you know." A beat. "And it's not like you haven't faced steep odds before. Zendikar comes to mind."
Maera nodded. He wasn't wrong...the battle at Sea Gate was what they'd named their little group after; the Gatewatch. It had been a spur-of-the-moment naming, but one that seemed to fit all the same. They'd first come together—Jace, Nissa, Gideon, Chandra, Belinda, Karr and Maera—to take on the Eldrazi. It had been the planning that had gone into it and their combined power that had allowed them to first trap and then destroy Ulamog and Kozilek.
They'd had similar successes on Innistrad and Kaladesh, neutralizing Emrakul on the former and driving Tezzeret to retreat from the latter. And in the case of Kaladesh, they wouldn't have even gotten involved if it weren't for the past baggage that Jace—and Liliana—had with the bastard. If Maera ever got her hands on the sicko, she'd take that metal arm and stick it up his—
"Image not needed." Her companion rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "I get it. You want to do evil things to Tezzeret. He's not the point here, though."
Maera's mouth went into a thin line. He was right; she forced her mind back on topic. Back on the disaster that had been Amonkhet.
As an artist, Maera thought it was a beautiful plane. Or it had been, until Bolas loosed the hordes of lazurite-armored undead on the populace, effectively turning the city of Naktamun into a necropolis.
The six of them had still been riding the high from their previous successes; they'd proven to be a good team, blending their individual skill sets and experiences to take on different brands of nasty. It seemed coutnerintuitive to stick a reckless pyromancer, shady necromancer, shy elf, awkward mind mage, charismatic heiromancer and smartass artificer together, but that was exactly what made them so effective; their dynamics. They'd thought it would be enough to best Bolas, or at least give him a bloody nose.
But it hadn't. Instead, everything that could have possibly gone wrong did, and they didn't just lose. They'd gotten destroyed, and Maera had watched s each of her friends had been beaten, one by one, and had been forced to emergency-'walk away.
Her grip on her mug tightened. She still heard Jace's scream. Saw Nissa's face contort in agony, the plane's magic so twisted and mangled by Bolas's meddling that it physically hurt the elf to touch the leylines so much that she couldn't scream.
A phantom burning rippled through the nerves of her arm, reminding her how she'd been thrown across the Eternities to Etrides. She'd reached out, using a spell that she'd never cast before and wasn't sure she could handle—not much unlike how her Spark ignited, now that she thought about it. She'd been intending to us a variation of that spell to literally set the blood in the Elder Dragon's veins on fire.
Instead, Bolas hadn't just noticed what she was trying to do...he'd been amused by it. He countered the spell as easily as he batted away a fly, catching and redirecting it back at her. Maera suspected he'd held back on purpose, given that it had only been her arm blown away. If he hadn't, even the hasty, imperfect ward wouldn't have stood a chance against the hijacked spell. The result had ended up with the arm she had been using to cast exploding into a burning red mist.
"It's a shame you'll never know how much you could do, little faerie."
Rage and the now-familiar frustration bubbled up inside her. He'd won. He'd beaten them all. Jace's mind had been scrambled. Nissa had been poisoned by the plane's messed-up mana. Maera had been magically crippled, and she had no idea what had become of Chandra or Gideon.
And Liliana? She'd run. She'd bailed on them when they were being overrun by the dead, reanimated by Bolas, and left them to take on the asshole Elder Dragon and his zombie army alone.
They'd lost. Bigtime. And now the rest of them were only the gods knew where.
Hells, I might even be the only one still alive. For all I know, the others could've ended up blind 'walking into the caldera of an active volcano, or just gotten lost in the Eternities. I might be the only one who was lucky enough to make it to another plane.
Her grip relaxed on the mug, her shoulders sagging as the thought sunk in. Now that she was in her inner world, there wasn't a whole lot she could do to distract herself from the horrible possible truth. Just like the fact that maybe, just maybe, she was cut off from her magic altogether.
That she'd never be able to draw mana again. The hell with what her new companion said. The thought hit her like a sledgehammer, right to the chest.
It scared her.
She didn't like being scared. She usually punched or exploded or threw something at what scared her. But she knew that this was one fear that she couldn't fix by throwing an artronach at it.
Which just made her more scared. And then more mad. And then more scared...and created a positive feedback loop. She balled her hand into a fist and punched the counter top, swearing in elvish. "Fucking hell!"
Across the table, he didn't reply. Just let Maera go, yelling and swearing and cursing the various higher powers, the Blind Eternities, the Multiverse as a whole, and punching the wall until the steam was blown off. And until there was a fist-shaped hole in the aforementioned wall.
It was several minutes before the rage was blown off, her head cooled enough to think. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, her fist bloodied from putting the hole in the wall. As well as several more dents. Tired out and with much less steam and marginally less rage, she sank back down on her barstool and put her head in her hands. "Fuck. Flying fucknuggets. I hate this shit."
Still, the manifestation of her power remained silent. She kicked at the island, weakly. "Fuck this shit. Just...fuck it." She looked up at him through her fingers. "Well? Why aren't you saying anything?"
He just peered over his mug at her. Finally, he let out a breath and set down the mug of tea, pulling off his glasses and cleaning them with the hem of his robe. "Sometimes, you need to have a breakdown. And swearing, screaming, and punching a hole in the wall definitely qualify."
Maera gave him a deadpan look. "I normally punch holes in walls." Jace had even framed one she'd left at his place, for shits and giggles. It had been made purely by accident, but the look on Gideon's face when she had had gotten everyone dying of the giggles.
"Not like that. That was all the things you were bottling up." He replaced his glasses. "Though seeing the damage you did to your fist at the same time, it might not be a bad idea to invest in a punching bag..."
Maera looked sheepishly at the hole and dents in the wall, then at her bloodied knuckles. She felt her ears reddening. "Um. Oops."
"Don't apologize. Gimme your hand." She obliged. "Damage to the wall and your hand notwithstanding, you feel better, right?"
Maera nodded as the young man examined her hand. "Yeah. Like I just got done killing a bunch of shit in a video game."
He grunted, eyes glowing blue. "Well, you certainly killed the shit out of the wall." Maera felt a coolness creep over her hand as the magic healed the damage. "And I'll bet that that's the first time you've felt like that since the Amonkhet fiasco."
Maera opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it. Then thought about it. He wasn't wrong...and it wasn't just because she hadn't played any video games since landing on Etrides either.
Blowing shit up in video games didn't do a whole lot when the frustration was directed at yourself. Even if the bulk of the rage is for certain dragons with ego issues.
Ah, the bottling up of self-doubt and rage. If Maera needed any more proof that there was English in her, that was it. Emotional constipation, thy name is Maera.
She watched the wounds heal from her companion's spell. "I hope I didn't kill a few neurons while I was wailing on the wall."
"Doubt it." He let go of her hand, and the woman flexed her fingers and fist. No soreness, and not even a scar or bruise left from the wall-punching. "Those'll close up, and the wall shouldn't be any worse for wear. This place can take more abuse than you think."
"You sound like you're speaking from experience."
"Because I am." He fiddled with his mug again, and gave her a gimlet glare. "You do the English proud with your case of emotional constipation."
Maera snorted. "You're funny." She drained the last of her tea, then cocked her head quizzically. "You hear that?"
His brow furrowed as he quirked a confused eyebrow. "Hear what?"
"The storm it's..." Thunder rumbled, but it wasn't as loud this time. Quieter, muffled...as if it were at a distance. No lightning came, and the only sound was the rain hitting the windows. "It's calmer."
Her companion let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a chuckle. "So it is." Another soft, distant rumble of thunder. The storm wasn't completely over, but it wasn't threatening to blow over the house like it had been earlier. "Still got a ways to go though."
Maera frowned, draining the last of her tea. She scowled at the empty cup, offended at it. "Don't know where to start, though. Withthe...rest."
"Perhaps you should start by asking my name."
Maera paused as she reached for the teapot, to refill her cup. That's right. I never did. "You never told me."
He shrugged, expression mild. He pushed his glasses up his nose, another very Maera-esque affectation. "You never asked."
Maera nodded slowly as she refilled her mug. She raised an eyebrow, then refilled her new friend's at his nod. Deliberately, she put down the teapot. "Well, I'm asking now. What's your name?"
He smiled, sitting back on his stool. "It's about time." He said, crossing his arms.
"Call me Taibhse."
For those curious, the name Taibhse is Scots Gaelic for "Ghost". It's a bit of a sideways reference to Ghost in the Shell, another favorite anime of mine. For her, her whispering 'ghost' is this guy.
In any case, expect another chapter to come in the next week or so, partly out of apology for the long wait...and partly because the bitter cold I've been having 'fun' experiencing has done wonders to getting editing done.
Keep reading, everyone!