On the edge of the world – not its End, for that had been averted by a hairsbreadth – a pair of women stood.

One could barely hold herself aloft, the weight of sin dragging down an exhausted mess of flesh wounds and healing scars, even as insanity scrabbled at her fracturing mind. The other remained unbowed, fear finding no purchase in the set of her shoulders as she stood unafflicted.

The Second asked a question of the First and received an answer in kind. She tilted her head in silent consideration, expression unmoved, as her companion slumped further to the ground.

After a moment's wait, the Second's hand fell into the lapel of her suit, and retrieved her response for the First.

An arm rose –

Bang.

Bang.

And an arm fell, as did the First.

A portal opened beneath her, bidden by machinations set in place long before a final confrontation was ever dreamed of. The limp body of the dying woman passed through without a sound. Of her final thoughts, whatever they may have been, there was not even a whisper.

The Second flicked the safety of her handgun, holstered it, and walked away without another word.

She still had plenty of work awaiting her.

In a space between worlds, where the void howled and tore with abandon, a Girl fell.

She descended for a long, long time, the writhing nothingness unseen by glassy eyes. Her passage almost went unnoticed but for its ripples, tumbling end over end as the phantoms of distant stars gazed down upon her…

Until tendrils of influence, snaking and intangible, enwrapped her descending body.

They could not divert her course, nor save her on their own. Only the faint, almost incomprehensible sensation of –

(HOPE)

Drove the effort on, chasing the Girl into the depths and slowing her tumble, falling ever deeper, into a place where time ran as water and the ghost of lands unknown passed by…

Until, without warning, without knowing, she –

Wasn't falling anymore.

If there was one thing that Edalyn Clawthorne – wild witch, wanted woman, and financially 'stable' homeowner - never thought she'd ever hear herself say, before years of hardship and isolation, it would certainly have to be…

"Man, do I love trash day."

Most folks around the township of Bonesborough were smart enough to avoid the beach during the summer months, too concerned with the heat of both the day and the tide to venture forth into anything approaching an actual 'adventure.' The omnipresent warmth was bad enough without the scalding breeze that kicked up over the open ocean, leaving anyone in its path just about ready to melt. Perhaps it was for the best – it certainly benefitted her, after all. If they did, some of the shmucks buying her kitschy human crap might actually manage to locate some on their own, and then where would she derive a customer base from?

Of course, the federal moratorium on such contraband may also have played a role in scaring them away from the potential bounty, but Eda was never one to let a trifling thing like a felony stop her from making good money.

Scorching sand crunched beneath her old boots, the slick grit sticking to her heel as she eyed up her most recent bounty with avaricious satisfaction, pickaxe thrown over one shoulder.

"Oh, you are just a beauty, ain't you?" She cooed to the bloated corpse of the trash slug.

The mammoth invertebrate was beached upon its side, flesh shriveled by the burning sea and salty waves alike. It looked like the old girl had gone under well into her life cycle; the pale witch could easily make out the silhouette of decaying human appliances stretching against the interior of its leathery gut, and she couldn't resist licking her lips in anticipation.

What was a little grime and slime, in the face of a sizeable sale on the horizon?

She'd just barely laid into the rotting thing – wild mane of hair pulled back with a scrunchy to keep it from draping into any nasty goo – when she heard her companion call out her name, his piping voice high and reedy, leaving the woman's shoulders to slump with a disappointed groan.

"Eda! Eda!"

"What is it, King?" She yelled back, eyeballing her find with concerned greed. Estimates on just how much junk she could shove into a pack before having to deal with whatever 'crisis' her young roommate was having ran through her mind.

"EDA!" His voice called again over the dunes, in that familiar nasally tone, finally dragging the disgruntled witch from her bounty.

"Where even is he…" She muttered, a hand coming up to block the glaring sun from her gaze.

They'd arrived less than an hour ago, canteens and sunblock potions in hand, and she'd let him have the run of the place as he usually did. King was intelligent enough to not go splashing around in boiling sea water unattended, in spite of his haughty attitude, and it wasn't as if the little punk had any plans to actually help her pay their bills. So, as was often the case, she'd simply tossed her hands up in defeat and told him to try and avoid eating – or being eaten by – anything weird while she worked.

Maybe not the most responsible approach to the problem, but whatever. The kid was going to have to learn how to take care of himself eventually, and it wasn't as if the beach was all that dangerous. With most terrestrial wildlife relying on inland streams for fresh water, much like the witches and demons that shared the Boiling Isles with them, they were unlikely to find anything too dangerous.

Or – they shouldn't have, anyway. And he had sounded awfully panicked, with that last shout…

Eda finally crested the offending dune that had hidden her young charge from sight, work boots skidding in the loosened grains of sand, and coming just close enough that she was able to meet the young King of Demons as he came charging down the waterline.

"What'sa matter?" She panted, swiping the accumulated sweat from her brow with a clawed hand. "If it's an animal or whatever, you should probably make less noise before it decides you're a good enough snack."

"Not a… not an animal," Her tiny partner wheezed, much more winded than the taller witch on account of his stubby legs. "There's… someone's hurt. Back down the beach!"

"Ah, hellfire." Eda mumbled the oath under her breath, before scooping up the diminutive demon in her grasp, plopping his furry self upon her narrow shoulders. "Not a coven scout, I'm guessing?"

To be fair, even if it was some unfortunate crony to the Emperor, she'd probably at least haul their scrawny ass back to town for treatment. There might've been no love lost between herself and the local precinct, but setting that poor of a precedent for King by abandoning someone to die on the surf seemed a tad distasteful, even by her lackluster standards.

"I – I don't think so," He muttered into her expanse of silvery locks as she took off in the direction he gestured. She could feel the gentle sensation of his boney snout pressing against her scalp as he leaned into the support her frame offered. "They didn't have a uniform. But Eda, they – it's really bad…"

She hated the way his youthful voice trembled with his words, cursing herself internally for not thinking to canvass their surroundings more closely before they arrived. The Owl Lady had grown lax without the constant threat of arresting officers dogging her heels out in the sticks, and now, she was kicking herself for leaving her unprepared housemate alone, as well.

They booked it down the shore, dodging the steaming tide as it rolled up and down the sand, following King's navigation from atop her head until, finally, the figure he'd spoken of came into sight nearly a hundred meters or so from the bulk of the deceased trash slug, obscured by the bend of the adjacent forest.

Eda stumbled to a stop as the gory scene came into detail, and swore without thought for her young passenger.

"Oh. Oh, shit."

Spinning on her heel, forcefully averting the clutching demon's gaze from the sight, she deposited him back upon the burning sands once more and dropped to one knee so she could look him in the eye.

"Alright, King. This is pretty important. I need you to take Owlbert -" A spin of her wrist summoned her idling staff in a flash of spellwork, her trusty palisman slowly writhing back into wakefulness from his inanimate perch. "Get back to the house, and grab one of my old tarps. The ones down in the basement."

"But, Eda, don't we have…?"

"I'm not sticking anyone that messed up in my loot sack, expanded insides or no," She interrupted firmly, clapping her hands about his shaking shoulders. "Blood doesn't scrub out of burlap that easy. Plus, we might need'ta drop them off quick once we get them back to the house." Her pale fingers squeezed his biceps gently, focusing the demon's jaundiced gaze on her own unwavering look. "Can I count on you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you can count on me." Some of his usual bravado finally returned, replacing that awful uncertainty, and the witch gave him a proud grin at the response.

"Attaboy. Now get going – looks like the clock's ticking."

Eda very pointedly did not glance back at the hemorrhaging body behind her, nor did she voice her doubts about their survival.

She spent a precious moment watching her little buddy soar off into the sky on her staff, winging their way back to more familiar territory, before Eda drew in a bracing breath… and turned to face her newfound patient.

The body's features came into view as she slid to a stop in the sand, moving with purpose as the old witch searched for a pulse. It nearly made her fumble the landing, seeing how poor a shape their unfortunate find was in, but the Owl Lady was no stranger to grievous injuries. A lifetime career of petty crime worked wonders for inundating one against squeamishness in most forms… and the fact that her own little curse tended to leave her limbs popping off on the regular was its own kind of gut-wrenching awfulness for those unused to it.

What struck her most profoundly, taking in the pale and bloodless features of the woman – no, not even an adult, only a girl on the cusp of maturity – was just how battered she was. Feeling the thready thump of fluid passing through veins, though, she set to work. Eda catalogued the injuries as she went, eyes sweeping over the subtly athletic build and curtain of well-loved black curls that her patient sported, rendered lifeless by the limp slump of the body.

Missing an arm – burned off at the elbow… Titan, she's all cut up and bruised. I bet there's more under this weird bodysuit, too… and –

Her gut lurched as she caught sight of the source of the gore now staining the dunes maroon. Two crescent holes punched clean through the unseeing girl's forehead winked out at Eda, trickling lifeblood in their wake.

That the unresponsive form before her barely even twitched as her sodden curls were pushed aside was definitely concerning, as she felt a trill of worry drill deeper into her core.

The witch was familiar with human weaponry, if only in passing. She'd certainly seen examples of their use before, on her more risqué trips to the Human Realm, when the punks she'd opted to rip off had taken umbrage with the pale stranger that had scammed them to the bone. Barking hunks of steel and plastic had chased her heels with speeding balls of lead, punching holes in the car she'd been making off with at the time, a fact she only appreciated after making an emergency pit stop somewhere in the desert when the engine of her joyride finally sputtered its last breath.

Seeing as the shallowly breathing woman bore a pair of softly curved ears to mark her species, the observations provided as many answers as it did questions.

Note to self, Eda thought somewhat frantically, eager to distract herself from the gushing headwound she was applying pressure to. Never go back to 'Vegas' on pain of getting filled with hot metal. Their casinos sucked, anyway.

She knew, buried somewhere deep in her collection of ocean scrap and human refuse, a few of those firespitters could probably be found. Hopefully, the witch wouldn't need to dig them out to do any comparisons against the injuries she was treating now.

More importantly, Eda wondered, how had a grievously wounded human, of all things, ended up on the shores of the Demon Realm – especially considering it certainly hadn't been by way of her portal.

Even more importantly, the alchemist kept the majority of her best stock back at the Owl House, where it was reserved for personal emergencies, emergencies such as this one, which was rapidly approaching a tragedy if King didn't hurry –

Her worries were unfounded, however, because as soon as Eda had truly begun to feel the first tendrils of panic, she spotted movement above her. Head jerking upwards, she watched the furry black form of her roommate descend upon her stave, rippling tarp in hand, and heaved a sigh of relief.

She wasted little time as he landed, all but snatching the expanse of canvas from the air.

"Help me get her on this thing – I'm gonna have to levitate it home, we don't have enough hands here."

It was a simple thing to cradle the unresisting body in the crease of the old tarp, leaving the pale witch's hands free to dance spells into being, twisting sparklers of telekinetic force lifting each flapping corner into the air and sending it forth at a modest clip, with both she and King remounting Owlbert's staff to guide it from the front.

They returned to her property in record time, hurtling in through the front door as soon as they could, jostling the resting Hooty from his nap when they slammed his perch open without ceremony.

"Whoa-ho-hoot!" He yelped, his stringy form spilling from his doorway mount and coiling upon the floor in a mess of feathers and creaking wood. "What's the big rush around here…?"

"No time for gabbing, Hooty," The witch cut through his whine, causing the looming house demon to perk up at her grave tone. "We've got a serious problem on our hands. Clear the counter off for me."

Oozing across the aged floorboards, her doorman swept the handful of things atop the kitchen island to the floor with a wriggle of his serpentine body, avian features twisting into a grimace of concern at the sight of the bleeding form they laid in place of the scattered pots and pans.

"Yeesh, where'd you find this?" He questioned, snaking about for a better look even as Eda tapped the butt of her staff against the tiled floor, bands of magic slipping free to retrieve her medical supplies at the motion.

"Doesn't matter." Her tone brokered no further comment or criticism. "Now clear out until I call you for anything else I'll need. You too, King – it's getting too crowded in here."

The boys backed up in unison, fretfully worrying and muttering even as the witch cracked her knuckles, keeping a keen golden eye on the gently floating forms of her approaching potions and kits. Taking the brief respite to scrub her hands clean of the beach's grit in the sink, she returned to the dying girl thrown across their table.

"Alright – time for mama to get to work."

Sunset had already appeared on the horizon by the time that Eda the Owl Lady, wild witch of Bonesborough and uncertified doctor, finally collapsed back into her plush armchair with a sigh.

"Holy. Hells." Her head lolled against the blessed comfort of the cushion, tension slowly leaking from her exhausted body. "Now I remember why I just stick to making healing potions, instead of playing medi-witch. Surgery is not my forte."

She pawed through the greasy takeout bag that King had so graciously retrieved for her hours earlier, seeing as their kitchen had been turned into an impromptu med bay, munching on the cold food within even as her housemates trickled back into the main foyer, all eyes on the unconscious body of their 'guest' still sprawled over the counter. The girl had barely stirred during the amateur procedure, eyes rolling in her head without sight even as the older woman stitched her wounds shut with twine, hardly a twitch to denote her continued survival.

"Did you do it?" King asked nervously, claws tapping against each other with little clacks of bone. "Is – is she going to be okay?"

"I…" Eda could only sigh, biting back the instinctual urge to fib, as she eyed the young demon's exposed skull with a tired look. "I can't say, bud. I've got her drugged to the gills on as many healing glyphs, regen potions and painkillers as I can. Hate to say it, but this is probably gonna be one of those deals where…"

Glancing at the battered woman she'd just done her level best to save, the witch winced.

"Where it's up to them, if they pull through. We can only make do with what we've got."

Forcing herself up and out of the sweet embrace of her beloved chair, the Owl Lady gave a jaw-cracking yawn, making to head towards her second-floor chambers.

"Which means, if we're having another guest around here for a little bit, I'm gonna haveta get her situated. Luckily, I've already got plenty of enchanted stuff to help out with somebody that can't take care of themselves."

"Oh." King seemed uncertain on how to process that comment. "Uh. That's great, I guess. But… why?"

"It's for my ma," Eda called back as she mounted the stairs. "'Cuz if she keeps pestering me, I'm gonna ship her off to an old folk's home in a straitjacket, and no one's gonna want to deal with handling that."

When she returned, the three of them worked in tandem to make the ailing, nameless girl comfortable in her unbroken slumber, wrapped nearly head to toe with spell-infused gauze and swaddled in baggy, comfortable clothes that the old witch kept on hand for herself. Her skull was heavily bandaged, hair half shaven clean so as to give her surgeon access to the messy holes that had punched clean through her head from one side to the other. There was little hope of getting her back into the tattered outfit she'd arrived in – Eda damn near had to melt the thing down to get it off her, when the witch's jagged pocketknife failed to release her from the confines of the strange silken suit.

They sat her upright in the reclaimed cushions of an old, rickety rocking chair that was dragged up from the basement, enwrapped in enchanted cloth that would help lessen the effects of immobility on the shattered body, and aid the wounded woman with the messy necessities that came with care for an infirm, possibly paralyzed patient.

She seemed so peaceful in her magically enforced rest, wide mouth and stress-lined eyelids slack with sleep, a picture of innocence that juxtaposed the horrific scars she sported. It made Eda wince seeing it all, the only balm to her worries being the slow, steady breath that her extremely lucky patient still drew.

In spite of all that had been done to her thus far, the witch couldn't recall a single sound passing those chapped and battered lips.

The Owl Lady took up residence on the couch that night – consigning herself mentally to plenty more evenings likely to be spent on that same lumpy sofa for the foreseeable future – as the remainder of their home settled in for their own sleep. Hooty retreated back into his mount upon the door, promising to keep an eye out for anything else out of the ordinary that may pop up in his purview of the property. King, meanwhile, claimed the armchair on the other end of the living room arrangement, curling up into a comfortable ball as Owlbert settled his tiny talons atop the old cushions above him.

None of them seemed eager to leave the unnamed girl alone, at least not for that first, terribly uncertain night.

Popping open the cork on a bottle of curse suppressant, feeling its thick contents pour down the back of her throat and rejuvenate her flagging magical stores, Eda let herself slowly drift off to the near-silent sound of her unexpected guest's breathing mingling with that of the boys.

They fell into slumber, one by one, matching the scarred woman facing the expanse of the front window.

Twinkling stars and shifting moonlight fell across her immobile features, casting them in the shadow of spinning nebulae far above.

She remained unmoved.

In Between the folds of the world, a Girl was trapped, wrapped up in webs not of her own making.

Twisting vines of influence held her sagging form aloft, bound into the phantasmal cavern walls of the crevasse she had descended into, phasing in and out of something beyond mere physicality as she hung there, half submerged in the depths of an infinite, inky lake below.

The flickering light of her conscious mind struggled through the mire that swamped her fading senses, dual sensations tugging at a beleaguered soul. She could just barely make out the aches and bruises of a battered body, anchored by flesh and bone beyond the realm of her wandering mind. In the here and now, however, flickering ghostlights and incomprehensible whispers filled the 'air' of her prison, pressing in on her split perception with the weight of the void.

She did not know how long she hung there, suspended by her bound limbs in sucking wells of greedy tendrils and pitch black that jutted from the organic curvature of swooping pillars, before the flash of something other drew her exhausted eyes upward.

At first, the girl couldn't fully comprehend what she now saw, her senses already left reeling by the unreality of the space she occupied, compounded by the ephemeral tug of the real world on her soul. With a jolt of adrenaline, however, the lanky woman jerked in her bonds, bruised eyes shooting wide at the thing far above.

It was penetrating the intangible ceiling of the infinite cavern above her, defying the fragile concept of rules already in place as it stretched into the space. Questing limbs of hooked crystal and writhing flesh jutted at insane angles, slithering and snaking about blindly, searching for something only their master could possibly know.

The beleaguered walls of reality buckled as the being settled somewhat, the bounds of the strange realm acclimating to its intruder, even as more geometric mass poured into the cavern like oozing trails of melted glass. They quested about, snapping and darting, their predatory motions setting off a primal sense of urgency deep in the entangled girl's gut. She began to struggle against her unnatural prison, pulling futilely against their unmoving bulk.

A bolt of fright shot through her as she immediately realized her mistake – and the writhing bundles of crystalline limbs shot towards her immobile form.

She flinched back from them, anticipating the sundering of her flesh… only to freeze in shock as they slowed their approach, taking their time to gently test the contours of her entombed limbs, flagella softly probing and prodding at the otherworldly shackles. They buoyed her, dragging her out of the oily caress of the still waters below that had swallowed her lower half.

Across the warped folds of space and time, resonating through her brainstem like the onset of a growing migraine, a bundle of mixed sensations – sounds and scents and pure intent – blossomed across her mindscape.

(ELATION)

With a swelling mix of trepidation and unexpected relief mingling in her chest, the girl once known as Taylor Hebert responded in a breathless whisper:

"Passenger?"

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Chapter and notes originally posted on 4-28-2023 in my snippets thread.

Time to throw my hat in the ring for the countless snippet threads that exist for Parahumans.

While I haven't revisited Worm in a while, I was always a massive fan of both the story and the long-enduring fandom that surrounds it. Here's hoping folks might get a kick out of my own contributions.

Thanks for taking the time for a quick read, especially to those who leave a like or a bookmark. And if you have any thoughts on it, feel free to drop a comment below!