41. Two months

Beverly could sense a treble in the symphony. A rising quiver, uniting every single breath in New York to a solitary harmony.

This fear was as sticky as honey. Terror of neverending winters and croaking magpies. Like ants caught in amber, this dread solidified, froze, unified people. There was almost beauty in how harmonized this massive metropolis suddenly felt. Though the reason behind it was all but soothing.

Clouds picked up over the weeks and cloaked the sky. Her paths grew foggy, the ink muddier on her partiture. Her fingers ached from playing the slowest tunes.

O, Come… O…

Her invisible presence became denser, thicker.

Beverly panicked one day, convinced that her colorful gown was beginning to show behind her curtains of death. That these threads of light were beginning to creak in protest. That at any second her flight would conclude and she'd… fall.

Visible, a bright green angel, descending.

"I recognize you," she'd whisper into the mist.

Unheard. Unacknowledged. But it did comfort her, to hear herself once in a while.

"In my chest, in my breath. In the thoughts I wander through."

She lingered on one particular memory of Peter during these next months. That of him on the first day in the Coheeries. His back to the window, the light draped like a cape upon his shoulders, his shapeless black hair. A shadow upon his face, the white glinting from his eyes. He spoke of falling from attics with a tremor in his voice.

She hadn't loved him then. Yet the memory of him, in those first few hours she'd known him, brought a particularly-sweet nostalgia to her spirit.

Have I changed so much, since I last felt this weight?

"I guess, in exchange of my optimism, you gave me some of your doubt. You… heh, you still are a terrible salesman… A chocolate bar, a touch… Mm…"

… Come…

Her single green earring, her wings, her compass, weighed from an ear she couldn't touch, limbs she no longer had, in the state she was in.

… Emmanuel…

She'd return to Peter Lake's lungs in instances of stress. He breathed so deeply, so slowly. She couldn't touch him, or reply to his occasional prayers, but she felt held by him, in some abstract new way, whenever he cradled her in the air he inhaled.

"I did promise you a song, didn't I, Beverly? Against my better judgment…"

Cecil smiled up at where he imagined she'd be, winking.

Winter thickened. Coins glinted and never once reached them.

Peter hadn't lied when he'd called himself a poor singer, but his efforts comforted her in ways that American nurses and porcelain hands never could.

He knew he was bad at it. Once or twice his face would break into the flash of a toothy grin, mist flying between his lips, white-washed paint strokes of New Yorkian breeze mixing into the wintry limbo of the city. Tears flashed on his eyes and she glinted off the shine they provoked.

He was alone in the world, save for her, save for Cecil.

Yet one tear of bittersweet amusement did roll down his cheek and slither between his teeth as he struggled with his next lyric. And Beverly's light persisted there, moving, walking, her invisible hand touching his. Death-greyed, thieving, calloused fingers. Flesh she could merely dance in perpetual levitation upon, not brushing, only wafting above it.

Feel me as I feel you.

He reminded her of Willa here. The little girl with the violent strokes of blade on ice, during her sprints and drifts across a frozen lake. The frown of concentration.

Risky people. She envied them.

She was somewhat relieved in acknowledging that she was being risky, now, too.

"You helped your friend, dear?"

Her mother.

Isaac Penn, asleep, on his chair, before the fireplace. Beverly, there, here, everywhere. A tear. A flicker of flame. A set of coins that would never reach the man she loved or the friend at his side. The black bars of a fence they'd soon collide with.

Beverly spoke to the fire, a gust of wind. Silence.

Beverly Penn, glints, screams, sirens.

Silence.

"I helped him, yes… I intended for him to meet you."

"I already met him."

"He hasn't met you. Not properly."

"Well, Beverly, that might prove a bit difficult given the circumstances."

"Peter's not unaccustomed to strange interactions. He'll manage. He's dead, too. He knows our language, even if he's yet not spoken it."

Silence.

"How can you be aflight? Unseen? How can you fly with him weighing you down in your vessel?"

"He doesn't weigh me down. If anything, he paddles with me in this sea of starshine. The effort is halved with him beside me."

"I've heard him. He's touched me and let me dance upon his hands… And I have listened to the machine behind his flesh. His heart. His voice. I recognize in him a familiar fear."

Fear is not regret.

"Can you see the sky? Can you read the map?"

Peter Lake's face turned to the sky, to what the buildings cut up into shards of glassy greys and silvers.

"I see pieces. That's plenty for me so far."

The fire popped and crackled.

"I couldn't stand it. The uncertainty, the shattered puzzle. It drove me mad. I felt so useless."

"I never said I wasn't overwhelmed… Or bitter, or sad… Or afraid."

"That's one reason why I've never come to fully regret this choice, even if it's cost me your respect… To sell my harness… Turn to the magpies, give my star away, sacrificing a future haven for the sake of present warmth…"

Little Willa's tiny frame suddenly floated before the doorframe. She peeked into the room. She kept walking.

A future haven sacrificed in exchange of present warmth.

Clacking at her back, her shoulders hunched in determination. The blades of her skates glew as they caught the sunshine, what little of it creeped in through blue-tainted glass and silken curtains. And the glint caught the governess's eye as she was going to the kitchen. It made her turn.

She heard the piano. She knew the sound of death.

Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.

I'm back! Did you miss me? XD I certainly missed you.

But, well, these last few months have been a deluge of uni assignments and other life updates. I'll try to be as concise as possible.

So here are some life updates:

1) My uni work is killing me slowly. I'm at year 3 studying 2D Animation and I'm having a lovely time BUT one cannot ever call this degree easy. We're constantly working and all of the stuff we have to do is, well, obviously manual - all drawing, and structuring, and imagining. It's wonderful, really. I love it. But it's a lot. Me and my classmates are flooded in work, we're primarily working on short film suggestions to present on January, because on Year 4 we work on one of the selected shorts we present - I'm working on one of my friend's projects for this, and there's a whole lot of other assignments we must complete as well, like Layout and Environments and Texturing and... Yeah, tiresome. Lots of stuff. But I have no regrets, I love what I do. I draw every day, and the funny thing is that I mostly draw outside of my uni classes. I never stop XD If you follow me on Instagram you know this.

2) I opened up two print and sticker online shops for my art, woo I'm so professional XD One Redbubble and one InPrnt. As most of you already know, my Instagram username is _elevenofspades and the links to these are on my bio right over there :3

3) I also got a lot of commission requests recently, which doubled my work in and out of uni but hey, I've always been one to keep myself busy with many things. As long as I'm doing what I love, writing and drawing, I'll do it as long as I'm able. And if I can get some income for it while we're at it, even better!

4) In relation to my fanfiction duology, I did end up rewatching "Winter's Tale" in full for the first time in a year and a half - twice, in just two days. I watched it earlier on October with one of my closest uni friends, she told me she'd been meaning to check it out at last, given how curious she is about my love for it, so we watched it via Discord, and... it surprisingly blew me away as if I were watching it for the first time ever. Me, who's so familiar with this film. I hadn't watched it all the way through from beginning to end in so long, and... it enthralled me. It was probably the best viewing I've ever had of WT. It was a breath of fresh air. Nowadays, I think so much of my own re-telling of this movie, my own version of these characters and this plot... So to revisit the film and not be thinking of how I'd be rewriting this scene or that character and so on, to merely watch the film as it is, to see this version, the one I love so dearly, the one that inspired me to write my own, I recognized all its beauty as if I were doing it for the first time all over again. My friend was actually bewildered by the end, telling me that she couldn't believe how a movie with this many messages and so much symbolism couldn't be found in any streaming sites, or how no one knew about it. Except me, of course XD And my friends, thanks to me. And all my Instagram followers thanks to my incessant fanart and stories about my writing and how much this film means to me. I dunno. It was powerful to rewatch it all the way through. I even got some new ideas for characters that I wasn't even planning to include on my fanfics, like Lucifer (I promise, I liked him way more on this rewatch than I did on previous ones, I recognized that despite the cheesiness of his presentation he actually works really well in his dynamic with Pearly.

5) ... Just the day after my rewatch with my friend, the same friend told me she wanted to watch it again and another friend of ours joined in to check it out too. So, two viewings of WT in two days, with my friends, I'm in a dream I swear :3 This movie always gives me chills, no matter how many times I watch it.

So... yeah. All in all, this is what my life has been since I uploaded here. Given how busy I am, and how busy I've also made myself with the commissions and print shops and all that, I didn't have much time to write more for this. But, I'll try to be consistent in my uploads. I won't promise to be back very soon, just in case, but remember that I'll always return here. That I'll finish this. I can't leave this unfinished :3

I can't believe it's been more than 2 years since I began this journey... Since I started writing... Mm... Thank you to all who are here, who've waited, who've stayed, who've just arrived. Here's your hug, *hug*, and my gratitude. Thank you. See you later!