The journeys taken with Balam usually involve speaking with specific people to trade goods, gathering ingredients in remote locations, and on occasion: find a remote space to practice spells that would raise a brow in polite society.

It would be a lie to outright say that Balam was teaching Tom the Dark Arts...But it wouldn't be a very big lie. Tom's magic is naturally dark (but polluted, Balam had called it. Black, Ximena had called it.) It doesn't mean he sacrifices innocent animals, bloodlets, or summons malevolent spirits. Dark magic is more versatile than that, he's learned. Far reaching and faceted. Though that might be because magic isn't as categorical as he was originally led to believe.

"Humans like organization. Witch or Muggle, they want everything to have a label or binary." Wáng lectures Tom as Balam prepares a potion in his molcajete. "I'm sure you've heard of light versus dark magic in Hogwarts, right?"

When Wáng talks of Hogwarts, it's always with a slight edge of contempt. Tom hasn't commented on it, but he certainly doesn't like it. "All magic falls into one of those two categories. Except when it doesn't."

"Aiyah, so typical." Wáng shakes his head, "That is a school of thought there. In other places, there is as many as twelve categories of magic."

Tom nods, remembering a third and fourth category mentioned in Wáng's writings. "Is it more of a spectrum?"

"Something like that." Balam chimes in, brushing the crushed ingredients into a small cauldron. "A spectrum is too...flat. Two-dimensional."

Tom remembers the first time he felt Wáng's magic. Paz's magic. The magic of the Basilisk. He drums his fingers, "How do you both categorize magic?"

"Harm and healing. It's less complicated than ordering around twelve sections." Balam shrugs, "Though I'm sure there's a better word for the latter… It's not applicable to things like household charms."

"Beneficiary?" Tom offers.

"Good word. Exactly."

Tom preens. "And you, Wáng?"

The man hums, his voice warm and low, "If I had to pick...Three categories. Magic that sacrifices from the body, from the spirit, and from both."

Tom raises a brow, "What about magic that doesn't require either?"

"All magic requires sacrifice.[1]"

Wáng didn't say those words with any malice. Any heaviness or seriousness. Nothing that would make Tom still and shutter. And yet, it happens anyways: deep in the pit of his gut, he feels trembling. Like he had crossed paths with a tiger. A dragon.

"You see?" Balam cannot see Tom's expression, but he reads his silence anyways, "That school of his is ridiculous. Not teaching that sort of thing is shit."

"They probably do, just differently." Wáng pauses. "Hopefully."

Tom presses his lips together, "The closest thing… I've been taught that magic takes away from stamina. That using too much leads to exhaustion, and even death."

"That's called your qi." Wáng explains, "In other places, it's called mana."

The concept of qi was explained in one of Wángs books, and Tom did not take it to mean magic… "Qi is magic?"

"Not...quite." Wáng opens and closes his mouth, trying to find the right words in English before saying something to Balam in Mandarin.

Balam nods, "Everyone has Qi, it's life. But it's also what fuels your magic."

All magic requires sacrifice. Now he understands.

"Magic drains our life?"

"Everything drains our life." Balam rolls his eyes, "Save for very few things, which give life."

Tom leans in closer, swallows the eagerness in his throat, "You mean there are means to extend one's lifespan?"

"Of course." Wáng guffaws, "You need to have your yang energy and your yin energy in balance: as a man, you're constantly running out of yin, correct?"

Tom nods: that was one of the brief lessons given in the man's books. "Yang is masculine energy and yin is femenine energy… I never managed to find how to gain it in large amounts."

"Sex."

Tom chokes on his spit.

"Stop trying to kill my charge, please."

"Aiyah, he's a teenager, he's heard worse."

The two men go on, bickering like this, while Tom composes himself because it was not what he was expecting. The religious teachings he's used to forbid such thoughts, such talks. Of vulgarities, yes, but also of the concept of women being able to give life to men instead of taking it from them. It reminds him of how little he knows of the world around him. Of the world outside of Britain.

That's it. He is not at all bothered because of the mention of sex. Not at all.

"He's a good boy. Stop corrupting his mind."

"Sex isn't dirty! It's a religious bonding experience where you share life energy!"

Tom looks out the window and thinks about literally anything else.

.

Outside of the occasional outrageous comment from Wáng, the cultural differences between Tom, Balam, and the professor are more harmonious than expected. Tom is eager to learn and has very little tolerance for things that stand in his way such as the standards of polite society. Even if he'd rather not hear about some of the...rituals that Wáng has documented.

Just by looking at how his teacher and the professor work, he wouldn't be able to tell what their relationship is: they act and look like work colleagues, despite Wáng being old enough to be Balam's father. If they have a father-son relationship, Tom can't tell either. All he has for comparison is the detached manner in which his boys group interacts with their fathers and vice versa.

It would be something to take note of, to pay attention to, if it bothered him. Good thing it doesn't. He simply follows them on their trips and takes note of things that are useful to him and aren't just stupid little observations that encourage clinging to the past. Like, for example, what on earth they are doing here.

Churches are generally peaceful in his experience, but this one gives him as much repulsion as when he first spoke to Paz just a few days ago.

Dense and bleached and definitely human. Brittle and yellow from age, prominent and impossible to ignore. Cracked and broken and dented. The walls of this chapel are lined with bones[2]. The chandelier is made from bones, the coat of arms is made from bones, there are even little heralds holding horns and skulls. Staring at him from their perch above his head. The sight of it is inescapable. There are coins left at the base of skulls, in the sockets of skulls, for offering. Strange and perverse, he wishes he had never step foot into this structure because if he wanted to see bones and the dead, he would have simply stuck around in London and taken a jolly walk down the street.

And then, he sees it.

His throat is dry. His heart quickening. Fingers itching. He walks. As if drawn to it. Magnetic. Tom analyzes the crude sculpting of a snake emerging from a skull. It's a pitiful depiction of a dangerous predator. No more fearsome than a drawing. Yet it hypnotizes him so. Until no longer seeing an inept piece of art. Until he sees what it symbolizes. A vicious creature emerging from its nest. Living in decay. Thriving in death.

"Christians really shitted things up, didn't they?" Wáng's voice breaks Tom from his stupor, "In these parts, centuries ago, snakes were symbols of healing. Now they're killed for being signs of the devil."

Balam tsks, "Babosos."

.

Ximena's relatives inhabit the house in areas and rooms he does not see nor sense, only occasionally encountering him at odd intervals of the day. It's not until the end of the month that he sees them all out in the open. Witches of all ages, some with skin like his or skin like Willow's, wearing mixtures of wizard and Muggle clothing, buzzing about and cleaning the entire house. The older ones, anyways. The witches younger than him can be seen running around giggling and screaming about who won the game of tag. They dash past him and almost knock over a lamp, earning them a strict scolding by Inés who then looks at him and asks what he's still doing inside the house.

He's shooed away outside by her and the other witches (some of which are still arriving in droves). Telling him to scamper off and find a group of boys to speak to, but all he finds outside is his teacher, standing off to the side and staring up at the waxing moon. His magic is at ease. Stark contrast to the rippling energy emitting from his home.

"They kick you out too?" The older man's amused, back turned to Tom.

"I believe the exact words were 'no place for a man'."

"Old ladies...They never change." He taps his cigarette, the ashes scattering in the slight breeze.

Old witches, Tom's found, are set in their ways. Unable to see the future. He glances back at the yellow light coming from the windows before stepping away, "May I be escorted to Patzcuaro?" There's a small restaurant there he's fond of, somewhere to hide while this all goes on without him.

A blink. A little scoff. "And what do you think you're doing?" Balam's voice tuts at him, "Escaping before you can be match-made by my aunts?"

"I'm invited?"

"Of course you're invited. Don't be stupid."

He's been hearing that word all too often. "I didn't want to assume."

"If they wanted you gone from the area, they would have made it very obvious." Balam rolls his eyes, his bare chest, full of tattoos that move and flicker, open for Tom to see clearly for the first time.

Balam's eye tattoo on the back on his neck is almost identical to Ximena's, if not a complete mirror. There's the ever-slithering boa traveling around his body, huge and docile: its purpose unclear to Tom. Red ink on his teacher's right shoulders that form numbers in the Maya writing system (Balam said it was twenty-three), outlined with a red border of small sigils that glowed whenever the man cast elemental spells. On his back, a labyrinth whose walls were lines of runes and glyphs in the languages of his ancestors. In its center: a flowing fountain that never stopped its animation for anything (this tattoo, Balam had told him was so he may always find his way home). The Arabic and roman numbers on his neck are (according to him) when Balam is set to die, but Tom doesn't really believe him. Or at least, does not want to believe him.

On the back of Balam's left hand is the blooming peony, representing the state of his only daughter. Perky in the springtime of its youth when Ximena is safe and sound. Drooping or wilting when she is sick or in peril.

Balam turns, and while he has more ink on his front side, what catches Tom's attention are the two crescent shape scars under his chest. Clean. Surgical. Curious. As if someone had cut into him to remove a rib from the middle of his torso.

From inside the house, cackles rise. A classic sign of witches gathering, foretold by the meager amount of children's books that Tom had access to at Wool's . Balam exhales sharply, amused and gazing up at the moon. "They get so mad about the rumors of them being witches and then they go and act like that."

Tom's teacher says it more to himself than to him, but still, he replies, "They're ashamed of who they are?"

"Not nearly. They're just...There's ways that witches are seen here. They don't like being thought of as hags."

There's another chorus of laughter, this time mixed with screeching and cheers. Balam takes another drag.

"...Do you always end up out here alone?"

"No one else to come along. Until now." Balam tilts his head, debating, "Ask me."

"I was just wondering, not to intrude, but you're the only male in your immediate family? Your mother said you have no father."

Balam finds immense amusement in that, grinning with his teeth, "Oh did she?" His cigarette is almost finished. "Yes. I am the only male. Ask me again."

The laughter from inside the house shifts to a deep humming. Simmering and harmonious.

Tom presses his lips together, "How?"

"Mamá wanted a son. And what she wants, she gets."

He doesn't doubt it. Books and conversations with his inner circle have told him of noble blooded witches during the witch burnings who would go off for a weekend of copulation only to return pregnant with magical children and no sign of a father. A way to keep their dwindling number steady for a small while. But there seems to be no issue of that here in Mexico.

The humming inside the house rises to song. They're singing. Chanting. But Tom does not look away from his teacher.

"Witches can control the sex of their offspring?"

"Something like that."

"...It's a part of it, isn't it? This curse?"

"You're smart." Balam nods. "But you don't need me to tell you that."

An odd condition. But Tom doesn't have the whole story. He's certain he doesn't even have a sixteenth of it. "You became a man?"

"I was always a man. Well, once I was a boy."

"But to the curse?"

"The curse never specified women. To the curse, I am just a bearer."

Several things click at once. "Ximena said it was like a contract."

"And contracts have loopholes."

"Are you allowed to speak about it?"

"Technically yes, but…It wouldn't be right of me to tell all of it. Just my part. My side of it."

"Personal?"

"Yes. How the curse affected me, my mother, her mother and so forth is different to how it affects my daughter."

Figures. Tom licks his lips. Presses them together. Hesitates.

Balam speaks first. "You want to ask about Ximena's mother."

Tom responds in silence.

.

When the women inside finish up whatever ritual it is they got up to, they invite Balam and Tom back inside to a house smelling of hot foods and herbs. New curtains are up in the parlor, mirrors are set on the walls, and crocheted doilies lie over the backs of the sofas. Even the photos in the frames feel excited, barring the still ones that still sit statuesque as all Muggle photographs do.

He stands in Balam's bedroom before a mirror

"Ximena said it was someone's birthday."

"My great-grandmother. Don't ask how old she is, we're not sure ourselves." Balam holds up a silk tie to Tom's neck before shaking his head and holding up another. "Too stiff… Too like yourself. Will you go like this? As you are?"

"Underdressed?"

"You're overdressed in my opinion." Balam waves off Tom's perceived worries, "It's warm here, roll up your sleeves. Unbutton your collar." The ties float from his hands to the drawer where he retrieved them. "Maybe have some fun?"

It sounds miserable. But worthwhile to study. Already there's a large gap in the way a birthday party is held by the Hidalgos compared to the Parkinsons or Averys (Chopin plays in his head unwillingly). Any fool could point out the obvious, but it's the subtle nuances that interest him. What's the same. Identical.

A gentle knock on the door behind him, Ximena's voice rings "Dad, are you done yet? They don't want to start without you-Oh, hi Tom[3]."

A sigh from his teacher, mutterings under his breath about 'still being treated like a child'. But Tom can't really hear it because something about the way Ximena's said his name is… It leaves his throat dry. Like it's the first time she's ever said it. But it's not. That's ridiculous. He can't...think of any other moments where she's said it before, but surely… Why wouldn't she have said it before? Why can't he remember?

"-Tom," Balam snaps his finger in front of his eyes, "Are you alive?"

He clears his throat, shakes his head, and walks out of the room after assuring his teacher that he's just fine. Just thinking. "When does the guest of honor arrive?"

"Arrive?" Ximena blinks, turning towards him as Balam continues down the hall. "She's already here. Nana and her mom are going to go get her."

Señora Rivera's mother looks visibly older than her daughter, but Tom had mistaken the woman for a sister of Inés' just days earlier when they bumped into each other in the middle of the night. She has the same dramatic white stripe in her straight hair as Inés, but unlike her, she wears it loose and long most days: dragging past her hips. She does not ignore Tom so much as consider him Ximena's personal pet, so when she sees that he's in the hall along with the rest of her immediate family, she doesn't even raise a brow.

"See? You're fine." Balam rests a hand on Tom's shoulder, lightly. He doesn't brush it off.

He watches Inés and her mother begin to open the attic hatch.

"...When did she arrive?"

"She's always been here." Ximena's answer is too casual.

"In the attic?"

"Where else?"

Two women climb up the stairs, there's some mumbling he can't discern. He wants to eavesdrop. "Curious place to store a great-great grandmother."

"Where do you keep yours?"

He has a perfect little reply to her remark, but is interrupted by the low shush of his mentor as the matriarch of Ximena's family comes down the stairs.

As if she had risen from a deep slumber, she emerges from the attic entrance in the hallway grasping the hand of her daughter—Inés' mother—and lets her magic loose and settle in a comfortable nest around her. A magic that feels so ancient and heavy, Tom wants to bathe in it, but keep away at the same time. Powerful, beautiful, and dangerous like a roaring forest fire. It is a deep dark green that almost blends right into black that crackles and crashes like an avalanche. It matches the magic in the house so well, for a moment he wonders if she isn't somehow a ghost tied to the property.

Hair stark grey, almost white, let loose around her body, almost draping around her knees. Completely pin straight. Her skin is cut deep with wrinkles, dappled with age spots, and decorated with tattoos of her own: different from the ones seen before. Alike to the pictures and glyphs in Ximena's book of poems from so long ago.

The proper look for a grandmother, the one he pictured in his head when Ximena said he was to meet her own.

The old woman meets Ximena's gaze, fiercely. Despite being almost half a foot shorter than her. Sizing her up. Almost as if it was their first meeting.

"You've grown." The woman's voice does not sound like a crone's, but rather like a sage's. Wisened and experienced. Her arms rise, hands reaching out for Ximena, who mirrors her actions and squeezes the hands of her Titi tight.

The old woman says something in a language neither English or Spanish. And Ximena's shoulders relax with a sigh as the two embrace.

The family members in the hall with them have watery eyes. Sniffling noses and hands to their chest. Invested in this reunion.

Tom just feels like an outsider again. This is a moment not for him. Separated.

The matriarch spends a good amount of time going from woman to woman and greeting them with quiet words. Brief and personal. Taking the time to even speak to the younger children: granddaughters separated by who knows how many generations, all looking wide-eyed at an old woman with tired eyes and a resigned smile.

She kisses Balam on his forehead, pulling him down by sandwiching his cheeks with her hands and proclaiming "Bónbón! Que guapo!" The witches around Balam giggle, and Tom simply averts his eyes at the motherly affection as the woman moves past him to her next relatives. She ignores Tom.

"She knows you're the reason I'm here" Ximena's voice explains, at his side again, voice low in his ear. "That's why you're off the hook."

.

One of Ximena's younger cousins sits in her lap, bouncing up and down to a silent tune in her head. They share the same wild curls on their heads and peaceful, content expression.

Tom sits next to her, naturally, there's no other place for him. But oddly enough, he sits at the main table in the garden, reserved for 'Nana's closest'. He doesn't have time to be uncomfortable with the idea because before it can really sink in, the matriarch rises from her seat and lifts her glass. He tries not to look directly at her aged face.

"To absent mothers...and fathers." A secretive smile, "Not that we would know anything about that."

The entire party laughs comfortably, Ximena herself gives a shy smile. A private joke.

He eats and he can taste the magic of the witches who made his meal.

.

There's no time to talk with her. All of her attention is taken away from him by her cousins, who sit at their table and steal the topic of conversation. Who ask her to dance and some who do not ask at all. Simply take her hand at the start of a new song and swing her around like a ribbon on a maypole. But she is unbothered by it all. By the attention, the chaos, the love surrounding her constantly.

It is not a displacement. Not like her time at the tapas restaurant in Croydon, where she fit so well into an environment where she did not belong. This is her home. Where she was always meant to be. Away from London. Hogwarts. Him.

Others ask to dance with him, and he politely refuses, citing a lack of rhythm rather than his absolute repulsion to touching another person. Learning these dances won't do him any good, anyways, the ones the purebloods are dancing are much more stiff. Disorganized. Classist.

These dances are lively. Intimate. Some dance in circles and others dance in pairs. He sees couples dancing cheek-to-cheek and others simply dancing beside each other, their arms close to their torsos.

He's been watching his pureblood contemporaries clumsily attempt waltzes and foxtrots with mixed amusement and bemusement. Partly interested that (for all their disdain) wizards covet Muggle culture. Partly offended that more of that tainted world was bleeding into his. While Tom watches, he does not attempt. He does not join in. He expects that soon enough, he will have to. With Balam telling him to treat dueling as dancing, and with the societal standard for pureblood wizards changing.

There's a shift in the music while he was lost in thought: it's higher energy and tempo. Reminding him of the Irish river dancing music he heard on his trip to the Acwellans.

Her feet tap and stomp and move all around as if she were dancing on razor blades. So quick, she could be mistaken for a maenad. Colorful skirts are lifted and tossed around wildly, so he compares them with the flapping of Phoenix wings. Every step she makes is on the beat of the frenzied song, as if it had been injected into her bloodstream. As if it was used to mold her very body and soul. It is an entirely different sort of dance than the one he saw her do just a few years ago, and yet it was so similar. Precise and natural.

He wishes, for a brief moment, that he was up dancing with her too.

.

It's not until he sees a familiar smile that he realizes it is not just family at the party. The shop boy who flirted with him is dancing with Ximena, who doesn't seem to mind the absurd height difference, letting a much shorter Carlos happily lead her in the upbeat song. They're an odd couple of friends.

"He's too stupid for her."

Tom blinks, turning towards Wáng, half surprised that the famed professor is gossiping with him, "Oh?"

"You haven't had a conversation with him?"

Not one that didn't involve a grocery order. "Here and there."

"It's like speaking to a box of tacks. He's content to sit at the bottom of a well to view the sky. He's holding her back."

Carlos? No, he's not Ximena's type. He's leagues different from Adam, and much shorter than her. Less impressive. A no-name. A Muggle. No one of interest or importance. When he dies, he will be left in a pauper's grave.

"Agreed." Inés' voice interrupts his train of thought as she emerges and wraps her arms around Wáng, "Balam's told her to keep away from him, but you know how she is."

Wáng's voice is dripping with affection, "Like you?"

Inés doesn't chuckle this time, but instead giggles. "Yes. My mami still hates you, you know."

Tom looks away from the two of them, sick of their interactions.

.

By the second hour, several adults are already well into the alcohol being served and singing together in a chorus of mis-matched voices. Skilled and unskilled. Serenading about love and life and someone named Borrachita, whom Ximena later tells him is a 'cute' way of calling a woman a wino. He doesn't think there's anything cute about alcoholism.

She informs him of this while holding a very fussy baby cousin in her lap ("Her name is Concepción."), a small evil-eye bracelet of her own on her chubby wrist. The baby's mother, one of Ximena's relatives or neighbors (he's not sure which), is playing the piano with Balam's guitar: accompanying the swaying singers with gusto and skill. Every once in a while, another will join the instrumentals with a drum or some brass. Not ever needing rehearsal, because they know these songs by heart. Ximena says everyone in the country knows them. Probably more than the national anthem.

It's a weird sort of patriotism that he's accustomed to, like all things in Mexico. He's about to ask about the darker side of it when he's interrupted.

"Do you want to hold her?"

Tom blinks, looking back at his ex-classmate and the baby she's holding. "I'd rather not." Small children are heinously disgusting creatures. He grew up around them and he has no desire to try and re-create the feeling.

Baby Concepción fusses more, reaching out towards him as if he were the most precious toy or desirable teething ring. If nothing else, he admires the baby's tenacity.

Luckily for the baby, unluckily for him, Ximena ignores Tom's preferences. "You're worse than Carlos." She chides, almost shoving the sixth month old into his arms, "Is it a boy thing? A macho thing?" His hands try and hold the very tiny human being as steadily as he can while keeping as little contact as possible, though the moment she's in his lap, she seems to calm down. "You hang around those highblood boys too much."

"Bah." Concepción babbles, appearing to agree.

Tom doesn't respond. All of his concentration is placed into this single simple act. His body is stiff and unsure and suddenly very aware of his limbs and how heavy a tiny human really is. She does not wiggle or attempt to move from her spot. She sits, satisfied and happy.

"See? You're fine."

He's anchored by the baby as someone else grabs Ximena to dance.

.

By the time he's rescued by Concepción's mother, the lull in the party has put to bed most (if not all) of the children. The ones staying in the house linger here and there, but anyone visiting has already left or sent theirs home.

Ximena sits quietly to his left, holding a cup of what he's certain is alcohol in her hands, watching her father play while Inés croons out a soulful song.

Inés sings with dramatic gesticulation-as do the rest of the singers-but hers comes with a personal tremble. A sorrowful vibrato rounds out the ends of her words, making him feel like she is just barely holding herself back from crying. From falling apart. A formidable, crumbling, juggernaut of a powerhouse. He knows, of course, by the mood of her magic that she is nowhere near crying, but she is at the height of emotion. Displaying it so openly, he almost feels like he should look away. As if she were disrobed. The words wash over him, and though he understands nothing, he comprehends what she is singing about. Loss. Bitterness. Love. Somehow he does not doubt that she truly feels what she is singing.

Wáng scoops her petite body up to kiss her and the adults around them whoop and holler. Tease them in Spanish and other languages that Tom has yet to decipher.

Then there's chants: they're calling on the matriarch of the family to perform. Before she tucks in to rest. There's some resistance, at first, but the woman looks like she was waiting for this moment. She turns her wrinkled face towards his ex-housemate. Gestures for her to come.

When Ximena sits down gingerly next to her great-great grandmother's knee, she looks nervous. A little sparrowkeet approaching an aged bird of prey. The older woman looks at her with nothing but kindness in her eyes, and perhaps a dash of sympathy. He doesn't have to be alert to feel their magic carefully threading together. He wonders what color magic the older woman has.

Balam plucks solitary strings on his guitar, tuning and searching for the proper pitch. When he is ready, the plucks come together to form a gentle, playful melody. The coastline of a sleepy ocean. It lulls the room into a soothing calm. Makes people sway and sigh. Makes Tom's eyelids grow heavy.

When the matriarch starts singing, it's low. Sweet. Ximena's great-great grandmother's voice is layered with age and tenderness; a strong, heated voice that feels like velvet against his ears. A hearth to warm his hands by at the dusk of an endless day.

And then Ximena joins in. She, in contrast, has an untrained voice. Unlike her experienced relatives, but it's pleasing to him all the same. Unfamiliar yet known so well to him, he's never heard her sing before. Never heard her volume rise above an inside voice. It's comforting. A voice he wants to make into a blanket to wrap himself in and enter a deep sleep. A voice he wants to pour into a pool to dive and swim in. A voice he wants to weave into fabric to wear. Timid, at first, he's reminded of the young girl he first met at Hogwarts so long ago.

It, too, feels like velvet.

[1] The fic "The Myth of Blackbirds" by MaCall is where these words came from, and the fic has inspired me ridiculously. Unfortunately, it's been deleted from this site! Which is a shame, because it was a PHENOMINAL Twilight fic with Paul/OC, magic, and meta worldbuilding… If you're a fan of ASOIAF or Naruto, she has two excellent fics under those categories and some Walking Dead fics under another pseudonym.

[2] The Sedlec Ossuary is a real place, and yes, that snake in skull idol really exists. It looks like a fifth grader made it lol.

[3] This is the first time in all 51 chapters of Serpentine where Ximena has said Tom's name.

Balam is a transman and there are little bits and hints before this that point to this moment. I want to include more of his own story and open transness here, but it's hard because the vocabulary they used in 1940s Mexico is different from the ones used in modern-day.

The song Inés is singing is 'Paloma Negra', specifically the version sung by Lila Downs (who is her voiceclaim). The song that Ximena and her Titi are singing is 'Tú Me Acostumbraste' as sung by Natalia Lafourcade and Omara Portuondo. I recommend watching the music video for the latter, it has the right mood I was going for in this scene.

New fic in the Serpentine/Pretentious Snek Related Title Series! Head over to AO3 to read mine and theaspiringcynic's collab fic, "You look like someone I used to love, only colder."

I think Serpentine will end at or before chapter 65. Yeah. Sorry for being late but also not really, I needed the break. No beta.

The full name of this (and other parts) chapter is "Don't They Look Like They're Crying?"